Poor man’s view of the world

Why is it that ALL human beings (from the absolutely disorganised to the “Monica” organised) have a love-hate relationship with keys?

Do you know anyone who has never misplaced keys? Such an exceptional human being probably does not exist on ToGg’s great green earth.

Keeping this unique relationship (of humans and keys) in mind, I am proposing the following inviolable laws:

Poor man’s first basic law of keys
If you have a key, it will be lost.

Poor man’s second basic law of keys
If you do not have a key, you will lose someone else’s key.

Poor man’s third basic law of keys
If you have lost a key, it will be found when you don’t need it anymore.

Poor man’s first complex law of keys
The probability of losing a key at time “t” is directly proportional to the urgency of using the key at time “t+n”

Poor man’s second complex law of keys
The probability of losing the keys of a person “y” is directly proportional to how much “y” can make your life miserable.

Poor man’s third complex law of keys
The probability of finding a key at time “t” is inversely proportional to the number of people looking for the key (“x”) and inversely proportional to the urgency of using the key at time “t+n”

Ever since Nimda blew my data to bits (…literally), I have been very very worried about computer viruses (and worms and Trojans etc etc). I use AVG on my personal machine but sometimes there are files I am doubly suspicious about. Even if AVG gives the clear signal that the file is virus free, I need a “second opinion”.

virustotal.com is a great place to get not just a “second opinion” but 32 opinions on a suspected file !!

VirusTotal analyzes suspicious files and facilitates the quick detection of viruses, worms, trojans, and all kinds of malware detected by antivirus engines. Its features are:

• Its free!!
• It uses multiple antivirus engines (32 as of today!!)
• It features real-time automatic updates of virus signatures
• Gives you detailed results from each antivirus engine

Before you get the wrong idea, I am referring to my USB stick (or “pen drive” in common parlance Its quite convenient to carry your data on a portable drive (pen drive / portable hard disk). Its even better when you can carry your apps with you.

This is a list of apps that I carry on my USB stick:

1. Firefox browser with the following extensions -

• NetcraftToolBar for blocking phishing sites
• ShowIP for whois
• PhProxy
• Shazou for one click geo-location of websites
• Temporary Inbox for creating random email IDs for online registration
• X-Ray for analyzing web page source code
• Gspace to use Gmail space for online storage
• FireFTP for accessing FTP servers

2. Mozilla Thunderbird email client

3. Open Office for viewing / editing / creating docs, ppts, xls files etc

4. Foxit PDF Reader

5. PeaZip archive manager

6. CurrPorts process viewer

7. PC Inspector File Recovery software

8. Faronics System Profiler

The above are free to download and use. There are also some excellent “paid” apps that I have on my stick. These are X-ways Forensics, X-ways Trace and Elcomsoft office and archive password recovery software.

Its been 24 hours since we began playing around with U3… and I am impressed to say the least. If a suitable number of developers (and  buyers!) show interest in U3, it has a great future…unless the next Microsoft operating system supports USB autorun

My friend and collegue Abhijeet Parandekar just broke up with his girl friend of many years. Instead of drowning his “dukh” in Vodka .. he decided to “code” some happiness into his life….by creating a simple U3 app for data privacy.

Based on the excellent open source project “True Crypt”, his app is titled “MySecrets“. The app (and the source code) and the 10MB MySecrets digital safe can be downloaded from here.

Enjoy!

IMPORTANT: MySecrets is free to download, distribute, enjoy etc etc. In case of any comments, suggestions, bouquets and brickbats…please contact Abhijeet directly….NOT ME!

My 18 month daughter can port an app to u3 (just kidding but it’s actually very simple). Just follow these simple steps:

1. Install U3 Package Prototyper onto your U3 portable drive. (You can get it from www.u3.com)

2. Using the U3 Package Prototyper that you have installed on your portable drive, create a u3p file based upon your application. (You need to select the source directory, destination directory and the main executable for your application).

3. Open your u3p file with WinZip and extract the manifest.u3i file. [Do not rename the u3p file to .zip]. Edit the manifest.u3i file. (Usually you only need to change the application name and description). After editing, add this file back to the u3i file.

4. That’s it! Now just use the “Add Programs” tab of your u3 launchpad and add the modified u3i file. You can use the “Manage U3 Programs” to set the program to “start on insertion”.

Enjoy

I love coffee. And I love having coffee in nice places (who doesn’t??). In my humble opinion, the 3 best places in the world to have coffee are:

1. The TCC @ Clarke Quay in Singapore
Excellent ambiance, nice coffee (DO NOT try the Lamborghini coffee).

2. The coffee shop on the roof of KFC opp the Pyramids at Giza
As a bonus you can watch the Sphinx and Pyramids light show for free! Try the authentic Egyptian coffee (very strong to say the least).

3. “Ankita” nearAsian School of Cyber Laws in Pune
Not a fancy place at all. Excellent machine coffee at 5 rupees a cup. But there is a nice tree under which you can BoC (brainstorm over coffee).

Its got a ton of action…even more than the earlier movies. Some scenes could have been left out (especially the one where Bruce Willis is “riding” on the back of an F35 jet!!)

I expected a lot more “geeky” stuff.. and on that front the movie was a very big disappointment. No interesting equipment really (other than a foldable keyboard !!). All “hacking” scenes were kiddish to say the least.

Saddest thing of the movie -  Maggie Q is killed too early in the movie

Most interesting place - Warlock’s “command center”(actually his mother’s basement).

Silliest Character -  FBI Assistant Director Bowman (played by Cliff Curtis).

Best scene - shutdown of Washington D.C.’s traffic system.

Overall rating - see it for the hard action scenes and maybe for Maggie Q

This small and simple guide lists the best FREE solutions to secure your network.

Smoothwall Express
SmoothWall Express is an open source firewall distribution based on the GNU/Linux operating system.It includes a hardened subset of the GNU/Linux operating system and is configured via a web-based GUI. Best of all….it requires absolutely no knowledge of Linux to install or use.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
AVG Free is an excellent free anti-virus solution. Its very easy to use, needs low system resources, features automatic update functionality and real-time protection.

Snort
Snort is an open source network intrusion prevention and detection system.  It is an exceptional product that uses a rule-driven language.

Nmap
Nmap (”Network Mapper”) is a free open source utility for network exploration or security auditing. Nmap can determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics.

Nessus
Nessus is an extremely powerful vulnerability scanner.

5. National Zoo

4. Sentosa

3. Orchard Road

2. Jurong Bird Park

1. Boat Quay

5. Hagia Sophia

4. The Blue Mosque

3. Grand Bazaar

2. Bosphorus

1. Topkapi Museum