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Hacker Psychology

Who is a hacker? A hacker is someone who looks like you and me! but who thinks outside the box. It's someone who discards conventional rules wisdom, and does something else instead. It's someone who think beyond the limits. It's someone who sees a set of rules and wonders what happens if you don't follow them. A hacker is someone who experiments with the limitations of systems. A normal man ask his wife “how many teeth in your mouth?” but a good hacker would have simply counted his wife's teeth without her knowing about it, while she was asleep. A bad hacker might remove some of them, to prove his skill (Well that is next stage of hacking which called cracking!)
Computers are the perfect playground for hackers, as we do all the works and transactions online in this technical age. The best way to defeat your enemy is to know their mindset! So we will discuss how hacker works and what he/she thinks? How they work?
How hacker works? Hacker have several ways to hack information like login and password, it depends who you are, where you are and how the hacker reaches you.
1. Mind Reading This can do anyone! They no need to be specialized for this. A hacker thinks what can their victims can set as password? They start with guesses like date of birth, family names, pet names or address information.
2. Common words What if, I set my password as 12345678? or abcd? These are the most easy to break passwords.
3. Proxy If the hacker is just standing behind you, He will see what you entered from the keypad? This may happen at cybercafé or ATM!
4. Trojan Horse Tools: There are many hacking tools are available on the internet, that can be easily downloaded and used on someone’s machine. {Due to security reason the tool names and how to use is now given here} These software use to extract passwords from cookies saved on local machine!
Key Logger: This is more worst then previous one! This will track entire activity from your keyboard and send the information through email to the hacker. There is also some hardware based key logger that can be fitted before keyboard plug as show below;
Key Logger
5. IP address Hacker can get your IP address and tack back the activity on the IP address by sending some “Trojan horse”. How they get your IP address? Well that’s very easy, If you write comments on my Wordpress blog I’ll have your IP address! {Feel free to write comments at my blog, Coz I’m not a hacker! or interested in doing so!}
6. Try and Try Hackers can program a server to give different passwords to open someone’s account, but after some false try the login screen ask to solve the CAPTCHA CODE that can’t be solved by machine only human’s can solve it {Not so far! now servers also solves CAPTCHA CODE!}
CAPTCHA
The above are some examples only, more can be done by a hacker! After understanding how a hacker hacks some one’s password. we will understand how to make a complex password?
Password complexity A good password is like; 5eR3$1♥x9%#DF (if you able to remember it!)
Keys can be entered from keyboard:
Capital Letters26
Small Letters26
Numerals10
Symbols32
Total Characters94
Suppose you chose 1 letter as you password e.g. “r” so there is maximum number of tries will be 94 {remember this is maximum, minimum could be 1!}. But if you choose 2 letters e.g. “mk”, the number of tries will be 94^2 = 8836 (94x94)
To make a real complex password you have put some special characters like;
CodeKey
☺9786
♥9829
♫9835
There are 65535 symbols that you can put! they can be entered by holding down the Alt key and entering the number from number pad in the right of your keyboard {remember number pad in right of your keyboard, not the above number line on top of QWERTY}
So the above table can be reviewed like this:
Capital Letters26
Small Letters26
Numerals10
Symbols32
Symbols (With Alt)65535
Total65629
Suppose you chose 1 letter as you password e.g. “r” so there is maximum tries now will be 65629!  {but still the minimum is 1 if some get rite guess as the first attempt!!} and think about 2 letters! it will be 65629 x 65629 = 4307165641!! So make the password more complex and hard to guess.

Why they hack?
1. Personal gain Now a days most of hackers gain access to someone’s account or get access to machine and encrypt all files in hard drive, they decrypt your data if you pay them what they want!
2. For fun Some hackers only hack for their own fun, or to prove their skills!
3. Revenge Some time revenge is also a fact to hack some one. As we see often terrorist hacks government websites.
4. Ethical hacking Well ethical hacking is also a part of hacker’s life. Some time to rescue some one or to prevent damage to someone, they have to do hacking which is called ethical hacking.
Hacker targets celebrities to get fame and to be in limelight, as sometime before Britney Spears’ account was hacked!
Note: This article is not to teach hacking or to appreciate it in any manner! this is just to improve your knowledge and to protect you from password hacks! :)
–Rohy

Add anything to MY Computer!

Here is a simple but useful trick to add your favorite software to access from My Computer {now it called ‘Computer’ only! not ‘My Computer’} window, all you have to do is just copy and paste those shortcuts which you like to appear in Computer:

Rohhy

1. Go to following folder:
%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Network Shortcuts
The user %userprofile% is the location like; ‘C:\Users\ABC’ where ‘ABC’ is the user name

So in my case I would open;
image C:
image Users
imageABC
imageAppData
imageRoaming
imageMicrosoft
imageWindows
imageNetwork Shortcuts

2. Copy a shortcut 
For e.g. I’ve copied Calculator from start menu by right clicking on it and selecting ‘Copy’ option.

3. Paste the shortcut in “Network Shortcuts” folder

4. Start ‘Computer’ from start menu and you will see those shortcuts you have added, under ‘Network Location’.

You can add files, folders, and application in this folder! and have direct access to theme through ‘MY Computer’!

-Rohy Chopda

follow me @rohhy

Microsoft confirms 17-year-old Windows bug

Google engineer reveals ancient flaw in all 32-bit versions of Windows


 

Computerworld - Microsoft late yesterday issued its second advisory of the last week, warning users that a 17-year-old bug in the kernel of all 32-bit versions of Windows could be used by hackers to hijack PCs.
The vulnerability in the Windows Virtual DOS Machine (VDM) subsystem was disclosed Tuesday by Google engineer Tavis Ormandy on the Full Disclosure security mailing list. Coincidentally, Ormandy received credit for reporting the single vulnerability that Microsoft fixed last week on its regular Patch Tuesday.
The VDM subsystem was added to Windows with the July 1993 release of Windows NT, Microsoft's first fully 32-bit operating system. VDM allows Windows NT and later to run DOS and 16-bit Windows software.
Yesterday's advisory spelled out the affected software -- all 32-bit editions of Windows, including Windows 7 -- and told users how to disable VDM as a workaround. Windows' 64-bit versions are not vulnerable to attack.
It was Microsoft's second advisory in seven days; last week, the company posted a warning of a critical flaw in Internet Explorer after Google said its corporate computers had been hacked by Chinese attackers. That bug is to be patched later today.
"An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code in kernel mode," said the newest advisory. "An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights."
Jerry Bryant, a program manager with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), said that the company had not seen any actual attacks using the vulnerability, and also downplayed the threat if hackers do exploit the flaw. "To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker must already have valid logon credentials and be able to log on to a system locally, meaning they must already have an account on the system," Bryant said in an e-mail.
Typically, Microsoft ranks this kind of vulnerability -- which it classified as an elevation of privilege flaw -- as "important," the second-highest of the four ratings in its four-step system.
Ormandy said that the vulnerability goes back nearly 17 years to Windows NT 3.1's release, and exists in every version of Windows since. He reported the bug to Microsoft more than seven months ago.
"Regrettably, no official patch is currently available," Ormandy wrote on Full Disclosure Tuesday. "As an effective and easy-to-deploy workaround is available, I have concluded that it is in the best interest of users to go ahead with the publication of this document without an official patch." The workaround Ormandy included in his message was the same as Microsoft's: Edit group policies to block 16-bit applications from running.
Although Ormandy divulged information about the vulnerability, even posted attack code that works on Windows XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008 and Windows 7, Microsoft didn't take him to task in the advisory for prematurely revealing the bug, as it almost always does researchers who spill the beans before a patch is ready. Presumably, Microsoft will issue a fix for the flaw at some point, but as is its practice in security advisories, it didn't promise to do so.

Internet

History and Evolution of Inter-connected Network!

The History
1957 The Cold War!
In 1957, at the heights of the Cold War, the Soviet Union scored one against the United States when it successfully put in place the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik I. To up the ante with the Soviets, the US Department of Defense set up a division dedicated to extreme technology research, ARPA (Advanced Research Project Agency), which later fashioned ARPANET. For the first time in history, computers were able to exchange information electronically. From 1957 to till today the Internet is growing more and more..!







Hardware requirements
For Dial-up connection:
1. Modem
2. Phone Cable
3. Pentium or better Computer
DSL Cable/Broad Band:
1. DSL Modem/Hub
Mobile/Wireless Devices:
1. GPRS enabled phone
2. Data cable (to connect with PC)
Infrared or Bluetooth

Software requirements
Microsoft:
Windows Internet Explorer
Other:
Firefox
Opera
Netscape Navigator
Utilities:
Download accelerator+

The Words:
www World Wide Web
FTP File Transfer Protocol
HTTP Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
HTML Hyper Text Markup Language
TCP Transfer Control Protocol
IP Internet Protocol
ISP Internet Service Provider
DNS Domain Name Server
Surfing/Browsing
Web site/Web page
Follow me @rohhy 

Design Changes Revealed: Firefox 4.0

The release of Firefox 4.0 may still be nearly 6 month away, but the excitement for the new version is already growing. One of the designers behind the browser has shared on his blog updated mock-ups of the new design.


1) App Button One of the more challenging, not to mention contentious, aspects of the Firefox UI update has been how to handle the MenuBar. On our first pass we were informed by how Safari and Chrome had handled this problem by paring down all menu items into two separate Page and Tools buttons. This approach has a few advantages but also some disadvantages. The new proposed approach to this problem is an App Button which is similar to the single menu approach taken by Windows 7 native applications (Paint, WordPad) and by MS Office.

The UX team feels this approach has several advantages over the previous idea:

•It is less complex
•Takes up less space
•Instead of two potentially conflicting locations for menu items, there is now only one unified location
•Can be placed in the upper left analogous to the Menubar paradigm it is replacing
•Similar to the far more ubiquitous Office 2008/2010 + Windows 7 application menu
•Reduces clutter on the Navigation Toolbar
•It also creates a more flexible and rich canvas for perhaps doing some decidedly non-menu-esque things

Appearance and Placement
One of the benefits of the App Button is that it is similar to the way Microsoft is treating its native apps and Office. Another benefit is that the placement is closer to where the Menubar would be and therefore it is more familiar.


One idea that we have already explored with the Pages and Tools buttons is to use text on the button instead of an icon. This is also reminiscent of the Menubar’s textual display and removes any ambiguity involved with icons. This approach is also explored in the most recent Office 2010 beta with the tab simply being labeled “File”. We discussed naming our App Button simply “Firefox” because it contains all the actions that apply to Firefox.

Attaching the button to the top of the window further implies that this menu affects Firefox as a whole.

Status of the Titlebar
In all the mockups up to this point the Titlebar has been removed and the space reallocated for portions of the tabs. Enough room was left for traditional window dragging. The rational behind this change was to further shrink vertical space and to address the redundancy of having the page title in the Titlebar and the tab.

In the original approach you would lose approximately the width of one tab (or less!) due to the window widgets. This was before talk of placing an App Button or an Identity button in this area. As it stands now you would be losing much more. It seems the vertical space tradeoff doesn’t stack up quite as well when losing so much horizontal tab space.

It would be better to leave the Titlebar, giving full access to it and not losing any tab space. It also won’t be frustrating for someone wanting to drag the window.

State of the Menu
What will this single menu look like? Something like the sketch I posted previously but not exactly. Ideas on this are welcome. Thoughts about what should and should no go into this menu can be based on work already done for menu cleanup.

2) Refining Toolbar Button Appearance:
Some initial work has gone into making the toolbar buttons more visible on light backgrounds and more crisp and dimensional (pressable).

This is work I am constantly reevaluating since they appear on variable backgrounds.

3) Location Bar:
Created some very early visuals for reevaluating site identity. Also the location bar is now properly recessed instead of floating.

4) Retain Separate Search Bar:
With the LocationBar containing an increasing amount of functionality it may be best to retain a clear distinction between the two fields.

5) Bookmarks Widget:
On a default profile or existing profile that hasn’t modified the Bookmarks Toolbar it will be hidden by default and the Bookmarks Widget placed in the Navigation Toolbar.

If the Bookmarks Toolbar is shown the Bookmarks Widget will appear there instead.

Current version available at:

www.mozilla.com/firefox/