Posts
Exerting a complete lockdown on your Facebook information is a complicated task that someone should write a book about, and which would take eternal vigilance to maintain.
But casual users of the world’s most popular social networking website can take seven easy steps to safeguard sensitive personal information and prevent it appearing to other Facebook users, marketers and across the Internet.
1. Make friends with your Profile Privacy Page: spend 1 per cent of your Facebook time exploring what it can do for you.
2. Control your contact information: you should limit it to close friends or — better yet — nobody. Let people contact you via a Facebook message.
3. Your “friends” aren’t really your friends: they include acquaintances, family and professional contacts. Put people into different Friend Lists — private groupings of people who can be given different privacy settings.
4. Pay attention to photos: avoid the ultimate Facebook nightmare — being tagged in an embarrassing photo that everyone can then see.
This is a little confusing and can be found under the Friends, Tags and Connections section in the privacy settings.
5. Control who can see your albums via the photos privacy page.
6. Remove your Facebook info from search engines like Google via the search privacy settings page.
7. Log out of Facebook when you leave the site.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
World Wide Web Consortium opens India office
The adaptation of a gamut of web standards to the Indian context, especially those connected with the use of local languages in cyberspace, is expected to get a boost following the opening of an office of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in New Delhi on May 6.
The W3C India Office will function under the aegis of the Technology Development for Indian Languages (TDIL) programme, being implemented by the Department of Information Technology's Human-Centred Computing Division. TDIL has been working on the adaptation of W3C recommendations in India since 2006.
The W3C was founded by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. It is jointly administered by three host institutions — Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, United States, European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics, France and Keio University, Japan.
The W3C offices in different countries or regions are hosted by an organisation that is vendor-neutral such as a research institution, university department, or technology transfer institution. The TDIL is involved in the research, development, standardisation and spread of language technology in the country, with focus on the 22 recognised Indian languages.
Benefits for all
The W3C says its mission is to promote the development of the World Wide Web to its full potential “by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure the long-term growth of the Web.” This includes extending benefits accruing from the Web and related technology to all people “whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability.”
The formulation of core standards relating to all kinds of technologies related to the web, and even broader approaches relating to its advancement, constitutes a key area of W3C's activity.
The country office is expected to broaden the organisation's base, by involving stake-holders in the region in its activities, help develop relationships with local technology or policy leaders and assist interested organisations in joining its fold.
It also will try to increase the “diversity of organisations” that are involved in its activities, in relation to industry, research, implementers, and user communities, and also promote international education and outreach programmes aimed at enhancing the W3C's profile in the country.
Apart from the Department of Information Technology, a handful of companies are presently among the members of the W3C. Member-organisations, including commercial, educational and governmental entities and individual members are usually those involved in the development or use of web technologies, or their deployment.
Internationalisation or paving the way for the use of web technologies with different languages, scripts, and cultures is a core focal area of the organisation's activities in different parts of the world. In India, language diversity throws up challenges in the development and promotion of web technology.
Understanding and satisfying the linguistic and cultural requirements of different communities, and gaining a better hold over the technological problems deriving from linguistic and structural differences is part of the mission.
Cascading Style Sheets
An example of how internationalisation will help in improving the rendering of web pages in local languages relates to Cascading Style Sheets, which are used to format text, colours and layout in web pages.
The specifications brought out by the W3C have to be adapted to ensure that the use of CSS results in text in Indian languages being rendered properly by browsers.
Facebook's new Open Graph strikes gold with websites
Talk about instant results. Facebook's social plugins under its new core API Open Graph, introduced at its F8 Developer's Conference in San Francisco last month, have truly struck gold. More than 50,000 websites have plugged in the new widgets within the first week and that number is growing fast. The entire web is reeling under a ‘Facebook-like' icon infestation.
With it, Facebook CEO and the world's youngest billionaire Mark Zuckerberg hopes to redefine web experience, with an eye on keeping Facebook the default login for web users in general.
Developers around the world, even while praising the sheer simplicity and ease of use of the new social tools – websites requiring to add the ‘facebook-like' widget will need to copy-paste and add just a single code to their website's HTML header – they also caution that there is no need for brouhaha. There might not be much ‘open' about Open Graph over the simple fact that it still requires users to have a Facebook account.
Essentially with the introduction of new social streams – ‘Like it,' ‘Friends Feed' and ‘Recommendations' – that can be hooked into websites, Facebook is trying to re-define the way social networks work. Until now, social networks worked as third party services that users and web administrators logged into and accessed for information. What ‘Open Graph' envisages is an all-pervasive social network, constantly feeding and integrating meta data.
According to Mr. Zuckerberg, the web is defaulting to social and hence the changes.
By integrating the new streams on their websites, web administrators are in effect allowing small social networks.
But like all Facebook initiatives so far, this move too has raised some concerns about privacy and security. Chris Messina, a San Francisco-based software professional who runs Citizen Agency, a consulting firm focused on effective and appropriate use of social media combined with open source values and practices, writes on his blog factoryjoe.com: “…those ‘like' buttons only work for Facebook. I can't just be signed in to any social web provider…it's got to be Facebook. And on top of that, whenever I ‘like' something, I'm sending a signal back to Facebook that gets recorded on both my profile, and my activity stream.”
Another controversy is about a policy change to allow the developers to store user data for more than 24 hours so that the new tools become popular. Whilst this has raised eyebrows within the Facebook community, the social network has clarified that only such data that users share under ‘public settings' would be open for developers to store.
With it, Facebook CEO and the world's youngest billionaire Mark Zuckerberg hopes to redefine web experience, with an eye on keeping Facebook the default login for web users in general.
Developers around the world, even while praising the sheer simplicity and ease of use of the new social tools – websites requiring to add the ‘facebook-like' widget will need to copy-paste and add just a single code to their website's HTML header – they also caution that there is no need for brouhaha. There might not be much ‘open' about Open Graph over the simple fact that it still requires users to have a Facebook account.
Essentially with the introduction of new social streams – ‘Like it,' ‘Friends Feed' and ‘Recommendations' – that can be hooked into websites, Facebook is trying to re-define the way social networks work. Until now, social networks worked as third party services that users and web administrators logged into and accessed for information. What ‘Open Graph' envisages is an all-pervasive social network, constantly feeding and integrating meta data.
According to Mr. Zuckerberg, the web is defaulting to social and hence the changes.
By integrating the new streams on their websites, web administrators are in effect allowing small social networks.
But like all Facebook initiatives so far, this move too has raised some concerns about privacy and security. Chris Messina, a San Francisco-based software professional who runs Citizen Agency, a consulting firm focused on effective and appropriate use of social media combined with open source values and practices, writes on his blog factoryjoe.com: “…those ‘like' buttons only work for Facebook. I can't just be signed in to any social web provider…it's got to be Facebook. And on top of that, whenever I ‘like' something, I'm sending a signal back to Facebook that gets recorded on both my profile, and my activity stream.”
Another controversy is about a policy change to allow the developers to store user data for more than 24 hours so that the new tools become popular. Whilst this has raised eyebrows within the Facebook community, the social network has clarified that only such data that users share under ‘public settings' would be open for developers to store.
New fibre-optics technology to speed up internet
It may look like a piece of gel but it’s a new nano-based telecom technology “enabler” that can make computers and the internet hundreds of times faster.
The technology, that may be in use only five or 10 years in the future, is being designed by Koby Scheuer of Tel Aviv University's (TAU) School of Electrical Engineering.
Mr. Scheuer has developed a new plastic-based technology for the nano-photonics market, which manufactures optical devices and components. His plastic-based “filter” is made from nanometre (a billionth of a metre) sized grooves embedded into the plastic.
When used in fibre optics cable switches, this new device will make our communication devices smaller, more flexible and more powerful, he says.
“Once Americans have a fibre optics cable coming into every home, all communication will go through it - telephone, cable TV, the Internet,” adds Mr. Scheuer.
“But to avoid bottlenecks of information, we need to separate the information coming through into different channels. Our polymeric devices can do that in the optical domain - at a speed, quality and cost that the semi-conductor industry can't even imagine,” Mr. Scheuer says.
In the next decade, fibre optic cables that now run from city to city will feed directly into every individual home. When that technology comes to light, the new plastic-based switches could revolutionise the way we communicate.
“Right now, we could transmit all of the written text of the world though a single fibre in a fibre optics cable in just a few seconds,” says Mr. Scheuer.
“But in order to handle these massive amounts of communication data, we need filters to make sense of the incoming information. Ours uses a plastic-based switch, replacing hard-to-fabricate and expensive semi-conductors.”
Semi-conductors, grown on crystals in sterile labs and processed in special ovens, take days and sometimes months to manufacture. They are delicate and inflexible as well, Mr. Scheuer explains.
“Our plastic polymer switches come in an easy-to-work-with liquid solution. Using a method called ‘tamping,’ almost any lab can make optical devices out of the silicon rubber mould we've developed.”
His biggest hurdle, says Mr. Scheuer, is in convincing the communications industry that polymers are stable materials.
“There is a lot of prejudice in this industry against plastics. But this approach could take us to a new level of communication,” the researcher says, according to a TAU release.
He also notes that the process is not much different from the way that mass numbers of DVDs are produced in a factory - except Mr. Scheuer works on a nano, not a “giant” micro, scale.
His device can also be used in the gyros of planes, ships and rockets; inserted into cell phones; and made a part of flexible virtual reality gloves so doctors could “operate” on computer networks over large distances.
These findings were published in Optics Express.
Keywords: fibre-optics, nano technology, semi-conductors, tamping
The technology, that may be in use only five or 10 years in the future, is being designed by Koby Scheuer of Tel Aviv University's (TAU) School of Electrical Engineering.
Mr. Scheuer has developed a new plastic-based technology for the nano-photonics market, which manufactures optical devices and components. His plastic-based “filter” is made from nanometre (a billionth of a metre) sized grooves embedded into the plastic.
When used in fibre optics cable switches, this new device will make our communication devices smaller, more flexible and more powerful, he says.
“Once Americans have a fibre optics cable coming into every home, all communication will go through it - telephone, cable TV, the Internet,” adds Mr. Scheuer.
“But to avoid bottlenecks of information, we need to separate the information coming through into different channels. Our polymeric devices can do that in the optical domain - at a speed, quality and cost that the semi-conductor industry can't even imagine,” Mr. Scheuer says.
In the next decade, fibre optic cables that now run from city to city will feed directly into every individual home. When that technology comes to light, the new plastic-based switches could revolutionise the way we communicate.
“Right now, we could transmit all of the written text of the world though a single fibre in a fibre optics cable in just a few seconds,” says Mr. Scheuer.
“But in order to handle these massive amounts of communication data, we need filters to make sense of the incoming information. Ours uses a plastic-based switch, replacing hard-to-fabricate and expensive semi-conductors.”
Semi-conductors, grown on crystals in sterile labs and processed in special ovens, take days and sometimes months to manufacture. They are delicate and inflexible as well, Mr. Scheuer explains.
“Our plastic polymer switches come in an easy-to-work-with liquid solution. Using a method called ‘tamping,’ almost any lab can make optical devices out of the silicon rubber mould we've developed.”
His biggest hurdle, says Mr. Scheuer, is in convincing the communications industry that polymers are stable materials.
“There is a lot of prejudice in this industry against plastics. But this approach could take us to a new level of communication,” the researcher says, according to a TAU release.
He also notes that the process is not much different from the way that mass numbers of DVDs are produced in a factory - except Mr. Scheuer works on a nano, not a “giant” micro, scale.
His device can also be used in the gyros of planes, ships and rockets; inserted into cell phones; and made a part of flexible virtual reality gloves so doctors could “operate” on computer networks over large distances.
These findings were published in Optics Express.
Keywords: fibre-optics, nano technology, semi-conductors, tamping
Thursday, May 6, 2010
NASA Spacecraft Tracks Raging Saturn Storm
As a powerful electrical storm rages on Saturn with lightning bolts 10,000 times more powerful than those found on Earth, the Cassini spacecraft continues its five-month watch over the dramatic events.
Scientists with NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission have been tracking the visibly bright, lightning-generating storm--the longest continually observed electrical storm ever monitored by Cassini.
Saturn's electrical storms resemble terrestrial thunderstorms, but on a much larger scale. Storms on Saturn have diameters of several thousand kilometers (thousands of miles), and radio signals produced by their lightning are thousands of times more powerful than those produced by terrestrial thunderstorms.
Lightning flashes within the persistent storm produce radio waves called Saturn electrostatic discharges, which the radio and plasma wave science instrument first detected on Nov. 27, 2007. Cassini's imaging cameras monitored the position and appearance of the storm, first spotting it about a week later, on Dec. 6.
"The electrostatic radio outbursts have waxed and waned in intensity for five months now," said Georg Fischer, an associate with the radio and plasma wave science team at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. "We saw similar storms in 2004 and 2006 that each lasted for nearly a month, but this storm is longer-lived by far. And it appeared after nearly two years during which we did not detect any electrical storm activity from Saturn."
The new storm is located in Saturn's southern hemisphere--in a region nicknamed "Storm Alley" by mission scientists--where the previous lightning storms were observed by Cassini. "In order to see the storm, the imaging cameras have to be looking at the right place at the right time, and whenever our cameras see the storm, the radio outbursts are there," said Ulyana Dyudina, an associate of the Cassini imaging team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.
Cassini's radio plasma wave instrument detects the storm every time it rotates into view, which happens every 10 hours and 40 minutes, the approximate length of a Saturn day. Every few seconds the storm gives off a radio pulse lasting for about a tenth of a second, which is typical of lightning bolts and other electrical discharges. These radio waves are detected even when the storm is over the horizon as viewed from Cassini, a result of the bending of radio waves by the planet's atmosphere.
Amateur astronomers have kept track of the storm over its five-month lifetime. "Since Cassini's camera cannot track the storm every day, the amateur data are invaluable," said Fischer. "I am in continuous contact with astronomers from around the world."
The long-lived storm will likely provide information on the processes powering Saturn's intense lightning activity. Cassini scientists will continue to monitor Storm Alley as the seasons change, bringing the onset of autumn to the planet’s southern hemisphere.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of Caltech, manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. The radio and plasma wave science team is based at the University of Iowa, Iowa City.
Color images of the storm are available at: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://ciclops.org.
Scientists with NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission have been tracking the visibly bright, lightning-generating storm--the longest continually observed electrical storm ever monitored by Cassini.
Saturn's electrical storms resemble terrestrial thunderstorms, but on a much larger scale. Storms on Saturn have diameters of several thousand kilometers (thousands of miles), and radio signals produced by their lightning are thousands of times more powerful than those produced by terrestrial thunderstorms.
Lightning flashes within the persistent storm produce radio waves called Saturn electrostatic discharges, which the radio and plasma wave science instrument first detected on Nov. 27, 2007. Cassini's imaging cameras monitored the position and appearance of the storm, first spotting it about a week later, on Dec. 6.
"The electrostatic radio outbursts have waxed and waned in intensity for five months now," said Georg Fischer, an associate with the radio and plasma wave science team at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. "We saw similar storms in 2004 and 2006 that each lasted for nearly a month, but this storm is longer-lived by far. And it appeared after nearly two years during which we did not detect any electrical storm activity from Saturn."
The new storm is located in Saturn's southern hemisphere--in a region nicknamed "Storm Alley" by mission scientists--where the previous lightning storms were observed by Cassini. "In order to see the storm, the imaging cameras have to be looking at the right place at the right time, and whenever our cameras see the storm, the radio outbursts are there," said Ulyana Dyudina, an associate of the Cassini imaging team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.
Cassini's radio plasma wave instrument detects the storm every time it rotates into view, which happens every 10 hours and 40 minutes, the approximate length of a Saturn day. Every few seconds the storm gives off a radio pulse lasting for about a tenth of a second, which is typical of lightning bolts and other electrical discharges. These radio waves are detected even when the storm is over the horizon as viewed from Cassini, a result of the bending of radio waves by the planet's atmosphere.
Amateur astronomers have kept track of the storm over its five-month lifetime. "Since Cassini's camera cannot track the storm every day, the amateur data are invaluable," said Fischer. "I am in continuous contact with astronomers from around the world."
The long-lived storm will likely provide information on the processes powering Saturn's intense lightning activity. Cassini scientists will continue to monitor Storm Alley as the seasons change, bringing the onset of autumn to the planet’s southern hemisphere.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of Caltech, manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. The radio and plasma wave science team is based at the University of Iowa, Iowa City.
Color images of the storm are available at: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://ciclops.org.
Software Helps Developers Get Started With PIV Cards
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed two demonstration software packages that show how Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards can be used with Windows and Linux systems to perform logon, digital signing and verification, and other services. The demonstration software, written in C++, will assist software developers, system integrators and computer security professionals as they develop products and solutions in response to Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 and the FIPS 201-1 standard.
"We wanted to provide IT professionals with a model of one way that PIV cards can be used to support authentication to federal information systems," explains Donna Dodson, deputy director of the NIST Computer Security Division. "Our objective was not to say 'do the steps this way,' but to show an example of how you might proceed."
Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 calls for government employees and contractors to use secure identity credentials to access federal facilities and computers. NIST worked with industry to develop the standards for the PIV cards that will be used for those purposes. Each card contains a unique number, two of the employee's biometric fingerprint templates, and cryptographic keys stored on an electronic chip embedded in the card's plastic body.
While each federal agency will implement the use of PIV cards on its own schedule, NIST computer scientists developed the software to demonstrate that PIV cards can work with common computer activities such as system logon. The typical process of keying in user name and password will be replaced with the user inserting his/her PIV card in a reader and entering a personal identification number (PIN). This secure logon could eliminate the need for passwords for other applications and could provide access to secure databases to which the user is authorized.
The PIV Crypto Service Provider (CSP) demonstrates Windows XP Logon with PIV cards. The Public Key Cryptography Standard #11 module was developed to operate in the Fedora Core 5 environment and to implement Linux Logon, signing and encrypting email (following the S/MIME standard) and Web site authentication (following the SSL/TLS standard), configured in Linux OS, Thunderbird and Firefox applications.
The software is available at http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/piv/download.html.
"We wanted to provide IT professionals with a model of one way that PIV cards can be used to support authentication to federal information systems," explains Donna Dodson, deputy director of the NIST Computer Security Division. "Our objective was not to say 'do the steps this way,' but to show an example of how you might proceed."
Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 calls for government employees and contractors to use secure identity credentials to access federal facilities and computers. NIST worked with industry to develop the standards for the PIV cards that will be used for those purposes. Each card contains a unique number, two of the employee's biometric fingerprint templates, and cryptographic keys stored on an electronic chip embedded in the card's plastic body.
While each federal agency will implement the use of PIV cards on its own schedule, NIST computer scientists developed the software to demonstrate that PIV cards can work with common computer activities such as system logon. The typical process of keying in user name and password will be replaced with the user inserting his/her PIV card in a reader and entering a personal identification number (PIN). This secure logon could eliminate the need for passwords for other applications and could provide access to secure databases to which the user is authorized.
The PIV Crypto Service Provider (CSP) demonstrates Windows XP Logon with PIV cards. The Public Key Cryptography Standard #11 module was developed to operate in the Fedora Core 5 environment and to implement Linux Logon, signing and encrypting email (following the S/MIME standard) and Web site authentication (following the SSL/TLS standard), configured in Linux OS, Thunderbird and Firefox applications.
The software is available at http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/piv/download.html.
Voice over IP
Voice over Internet Protocol (also called VoIP, IP Telephony, Internet telephony, and Broadband Phone) is the routing of voice conversations over the Internet or any other IP-based network.
The voice data flows over a general-purpose packet-switched network, instead of traditional dedicated, circuit-switched telephony transmission lines..
For more information about the topic Voice over IP, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:
Videoconferencing — A videoconference (also known as a videoteleconference) is a set of interactive telecommunication technologies which allow two or more locations to =
Instant messaging — Instant messaging is the act of instantly communicating between two or more people over a network such as the ... > read more
Mobile phone — A mobile phone or cell phone is an electronic telecommunications device with the same basic capability as a conventional fixed-line telephone, but
Wi-Fi — Wi-Fi (also WiFi, Wi-fi, Wifi, or wifi) is a brand licensed by the Wi-Fi Alliance to products which pass testing demonstrating that they
The voice data flows over a general-purpose packet-switched network, instead of traditional dedicated, circuit-switched telephony transmission lines..
For more information about the topic Voice over IP, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:
Videoconferencing — A videoconference (also known as a videoteleconference) is a set of interactive telecommunication technologies which allow two or more locations to =
Instant messaging — Instant messaging is the act of instantly communicating between two or more people over a network such as the ... > read more
Mobile phone — A mobile phone or cell phone is an electronic telecommunications device with the same basic capability as a conventional fixed-line telephone, but
Wi-Fi — Wi-Fi (also WiFi, Wi-fi, Wifi, or wifi) is a brand licensed by the Wi-Fi Alliance to products which pass testing demonstrating that they
New Research Offers Security for Virtualization, Cloud Computing
Virtualization and cloud computing allow computer users access to powerful computers and software applications hosted by remote groups of servers, but security concerns related to data privacy are limiting public confidence -- and slowing adoption of the new technology. Now researchers from North Carolina State University have developed new techniques and software that may be the key to resolving those security concerns and boosting confidence in the sector.
"What we've done represents a significant advance in security for cloud computing and other virtualization applications," says Dr. Xuxian Jiang, an assistant professor of computer science and co-author of the study. "Anyone interested in the virtualization sector will be very interested in our work."
Virtualization allows the pooling of the computational power and storage of multiple computers, which can then be shared by multiple users. For example, under the cloud computing paradigm, businesses can lease computer resources from a data center to operate Web sites and interact with customers -- without having to pay for the overhead of buying and maintaining their own IT infrastructures. The virtualization manager, commonly referred to as a "hypervisor," is a type of software that creates "virtual machines" that operate in isolation from one another on a common computer. In other words, the hypervisor allows different operating systems to run in isolation from one another -- even though each of these systems is using computing power and storage capability on the same computer. This is the technique that enables concepts like cloud computing to function.
One of the major threats to virtualization -- and cloud computing -- is malicious software that enables computer viruses or other malware that have compromised one customer's system to spread to the underlying hypervisor and, ultimately, to the systems of other customers. In short, a key concern is that one cloud computing customer could download a virus -- such as one that steals user data -- and then spread that virus to the systems of all the other customers.
"If this sort of attack is feasible, it undermines consumer confidence in cloud computing," Jiang says, "since consumers couldn't trust that their information would remain confidential."
But Jiang and his Ph.D. student Zhi Wang have now developed software, called HyperSafe, that leverages existing hardware features to secure hypervisors against such attacks. "We can guarantee the integrity of the underlying hypervisor by protecting it from being compromised by any malware downloaded by an individual user," Jiang says. "By doing so, we can ensure the hypervisor's isolation."
For malware to affect a hypervisor, it typically needs to run its own code in the hypervisor. HyperSafe utilizes two components to prevent that from happening. First, the HyperSafe program "has a technique called non-bypassable memory lockdown, which explicitly and reliably bars the introduction of new code by anyone other than the hypervisor administrator," Jiang says. "This also prevents attempts to modify existing hypervisor code by external users."
Second, HyperSafe uses a technique called restricted pointer indexing. This technique "initially characterizes a hypervisor's normal behavior, and then prevents any deviation from that profile," Jiang says. "Only the hypervisor administrators themselves can introduce changes to the hypervisor code."
The research was funded by the U.S. Army Research Office and the National Science Foundation. The research, "HyperSafe: A Lightweight Approach to Provide Lifetime Hypervisor Control-Flow Integrity," will be presented May 18 at the 31st IEEE Symposium On Security And Privacy in Oakland, Calif.
"What we've done represents a significant advance in security for cloud computing and other virtualization applications," says Dr. Xuxian Jiang, an assistant professor of computer science and co-author of the study. "Anyone interested in the virtualization sector will be very interested in our work."
Virtualization allows the pooling of the computational power and storage of multiple computers, which can then be shared by multiple users. For example, under the cloud computing paradigm, businesses can lease computer resources from a data center to operate Web sites and interact with customers -- without having to pay for the overhead of buying and maintaining their own IT infrastructures. The virtualization manager, commonly referred to as a "hypervisor," is a type of software that creates "virtual machines" that operate in isolation from one another on a common computer. In other words, the hypervisor allows different operating systems to run in isolation from one another -- even though each of these systems is using computing power and storage capability on the same computer. This is the technique that enables concepts like cloud computing to function.
One of the major threats to virtualization -- and cloud computing -- is malicious software that enables computer viruses or other malware that have compromised one customer's system to spread to the underlying hypervisor and, ultimately, to the systems of other customers. In short, a key concern is that one cloud computing customer could download a virus -- such as one that steals user data -- and then spread that virus to the systems of all the other customers.
"If this sort of attack is feasible, it undermines consumer confidence in cloud computing," Jiang says, "since consumers couldn't trust that their information would remain confidential."
But Jiang and his Ph.D. student Zhi Wang have now developed software, called HyperSafe, that leverages existing hardware features to secure hypervisors against such attacks. "We can guarantee the integrity of the underlying hypervisor by protecting it from being compromised by any malware downloaded by an individual user," Jiang says. "By doing so, we can ensure the hypervisor's isolation."
For malware to affect a hypervisor, it typically needs to run its own code in the hypervisor. HyperSafe utilizes two components to prevent that from happening. First, the HyperSafe program "has a technique called non-bypassable memory lockdown, which explicitly and reliably bars the introduction of new code by anyone other than the hypervisor administrator," Jiang says. "This also prevents attempts to modify existing hypervisor code by external users."
Second, HyperSafe uses a technique called restricted pointer indexing. This technique "initially characterizes a hypervisor's normal behavior, and then prevents any deviation from that profile," Jiang says. "Only the hypervisor administrators themselves can introduce changes to the hypervisor code."
The research was funded by the U.S. Army Research Office and the National Science Foundation. The research, "HyperSafe: A Lightweight Approach to Provide Lifetime Hypervisor Control-Flow Integrity," will be presented May 18 at the 31st IEEE Symposium On Security And Privacy in Oakland, Calif.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
MICROSOFT FUNDA
i tried it, They work !!!
TRICK #1
An Indian discovered that nobody can create a FOLDER
anywhere on the computer which can be named as “CON”.
This is something pretty cool and unbelievable.
At Microsoft the whole Team, couldn't answer why this happened!
TRY IT NOW ,IT WILL NOT CREATE "CON" FOLDER
———— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— —–
TRICK #2
For those of you using Windows, do the following:
1.) Open an empty notepad file
2.) Type "Bush hid the facts" (without the quotes)
3.) Save it as whatever you want.
4.) Close it, and re-open it.
is it just a really weird bug? Confused?
———— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— —–
TRICK #3
Microsoft crazy facts
This is something pretty cool and neat and
unbelievable. At Microsoft the whole Team,
including Bill Gates, couldn't answer why this
happened!
It was discovered by a Brazilian. Try it out
yourself
Open Microsoft Word and type
=rand (200, 99)
And then press ENTER
Enjoy
TRICK #1
An Indian discovered that nobody can create a FOLDER
anywhere on the computer which can be named as “CON”.
This is something pretty cool and unbelievable.
At Microsoft the whole Team, couldn't answer why this happened!
TRY IT NOW ,IT WILL NOT CREATE "CON" FOLDER
———— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— —–
TRICK #2
For those of you using Windows, do the following:
1.) Open an empty notepad file
2.) Type "Bush hid the facts" (without the quotes)
3.) Save it as whatever you want.
4.) Close it, and re-open it.
is it just a really weird bug? Confused?
———— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— ——— —–
TRICK #3
Microsoft crazy facts
This is something pretty cool and neat and
unbelievable. At Microsoft the whole Team,
including Bill Gates, couldn't answer why this
happened!
It was discovered by a Brazilian. Try it out
yourself
Open Microsoft Word and type
=rand (200, 99)
And then press ENTER
Enjoy
INDIAN SCIENTISTS MAKE UP 36 PER CENT OF NASA'S TECH POOL
Mera Bharat Mahan – these three words mean a lot to all of us, but I really understood the meaning of the words when His Excellency, the Governor of Haryana, Dr A R Kidwai while inaugurating the Nobel Laureates Science Conclave at the IIIT-Allahabad informed the august gathering of scientists, Nobel Laureates and students that 36 per cent of all the senior scientists at NASA (the National Aeronautics & Space Administration, USA) are of Indian origin. Technically speaking this means that Indian brains and minds run the US space research program. He also added that about 35 per cent of all programmers at Mircrosoft are of Indian Origin and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – the Mecca of Technology and Research – boasts of 12 senior professors also of Indian origin.
Dr Kidwai in his very inspirational inaugural speech also reminded the august gathering of IT professionals, students and Indian scientists that India or Bharat pioneered the development of Mathematics in the World by introducing the concept of 'zero' and the decimal system. "World over, Indians are considered to be wizards at Mathematics and are generally supposed to be very good with numbers, " said Dr Kidwai adding that India is the hub for testing of drugs and even the tech park where thousands of software functional engineers test programs that run most Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies in the World.
Dr Abid Hussain former Indian ambassador to the USA and a Planning Commission member said that we must inculcate a scientific temper in the minds of our youth. "The urge and instinct to tinker, to look inside 'how stuff works' and to experiment with ideas must be ingrained in all of us from a very early age. The exhorted youth not to give up dreaming for 'your dreams are tomorrow's reality'.
The Nobel Laureates' Science Conclave at IIIT-Allahabad, a week-long mega symposium, exhibition and lecture series on science and technology was inaugurated today by His Excellency, the Governor of Haryana, Dr A R Kidwai and Dr Abid Hussain, former ambassador of India to the US and a former Planning Commission member.
Nobel Laureate Prof. Claude Cohen Tannoudji while congratulating Indian students and scientists – while referring to the recent terror attacks in Mumbai and certain political disturbances in the region said that, "Science is the best tool against intolerance. The best answer to fanaticism and short-sightedness is to focus and concentrate on the development of a scientific temper in our young minds." Earlier in the morning, Prof Tannoudji delivered a technical lecture on hi-tech and particle physics.
Dr M D Tiwari, founding director, IIIT-A, recollected his days as a student in 1969 where he had the privilege of attending a Lindau Conference of Nobel Laureates. He mentioned that as a young academician he had dreamt of organizing such a conference in India for Indian students and scientists and this was his dream come true. He stressed on the need to promote science in the country and elaborated on the need of the mainstream media to propagate and disseminate scientific knowledge. "Since the IIIT-A was founded in 1999, the institution was graced by the presence of several international dignitaries and even hosted a vice-chancellor's conference," he added.
For the first time in Asia, the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad (IIIT-A) is hosting the biggest Asian gathering of international Nobel Laureates at the Nobel Laureates Conclave, IIIT, Allahabad from December 15 to 21st, 2008. The Nobel Laureates Conclave is part of the Science Conclave 2008.
A salient feature of this event is the Media Open House with the Nobel Laureates for Indian and international media persons – a program that will give the Indian media an opportunity to interact with the best brains from the international scientific community.
The Science Conclave is a Ministry of Human Resource Development and Department of Science and Technology, Government of India initiative.
The Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad (IIIT-A) was established in 1999, as a centre of excellence in Information Technology and allied areas. The Institute was conferred the "University" status by the Government of India in the year 2000. The Institute hence is empowered to have a perpetual seal and award degrees subsequent to the conduct of its own examinations. IIIT-A is conceived with the ambitious objectives of developing professional expertise and skilled manpower in Information Technology (IT) and related areas.
Dr Kidwai in his very inspirational inaugural speech also reminded the august gathering of IT professionals, students and Indian scientists that India or Bharat pioneered the development of Mathematics in the World by introducing the concept of 'zero' and the decimal system. "World over, Indians are considered to be wizards at Mathematics and are generally supposed to be very good with numbers, " said Dr Kidwai adding that India is the hub for testing of drugs and even the tech park where thousands of software functional engineers test programs that run most Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies in the World.
Dr Abid Hussain former Indian ambassador to the USA and a Planning Commission member said that we must inculcate a scientific temper in the minds of our youth. "The urge and instinct to tinker, to look inside 'how stuff works' and to experiment with ideas must be ingrained in all of us from a very early age. The exhorted youth not to give up dreaming for 'your dreams are tomorrow's reality'.
The Nobel Laureates' Science Conclave at IIIT-Allahabad, a week-long mega symposium, exhibition and lecture series on science and technology was inaugurated today by His Excellency, the Governor of Haryana, Dr A R Kidwai and Dr Abid Hussain, former ambassador of India to the US and a former Planning Commission member.
Nobel Laureate Prof. Claude Cohen Tannoudji while congratulating Indian students and scientists – while referring to the recent terror attacks in Mumbai and certain political disturbances in the region said that, "Science is the best tool against intolerance. The best answer to fanaticism and short-sightedness is to focus and concentrate on the development of a scientific temper in our young minds." Earlier in the morning, Prof Tannoudji delivered a technical lecture on hi-tech and particle physics.
Dr M D Tiwari, founding director, IIIT-A, recollected his days as a student in 1969 where he had the privilege of attending a Lindau Conference of Nobel Laureates. He mentioned that as a young academician he had dreamt of organizing such a conference in India for Indian students and scientists and this was his dream come true. He stressed on the need to promote science in the country and elaborated on the need of the mainstream media to propagate and disseminate scientific knowledge. "Since the IIIT-A was founded in 1999, the institution was graced by the presence of several international dignitaries and even hosted a vice-chancellor's conference," he added.
For the first time in Asia, the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad (IIIT-A) is hosting the biggest Asian gathering of international Nobel Laureates at the Nobel Laureates Conclave, IIIT, Allahabad from December 15 to 21st, 2008. The Nobel Laureates Conclave is part of the Science Conclave 2008.
A salient feature of this event is the Media Open House with the Nobel Laureates for Indian and international media persons – a program that will give the Indian media an opportunity to interact with the best brains from the international scientific community.
The Science Conclave is a Ministry of Human Resource Development and Department of Science and Technology, Government of India initiative.
The Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad (IIIT-A) was established in 1999, as a centre of excellence in Information Technology and allied areas. The Institute was conferred the "University" status by the Government of India in the year 2000. The Institute hence is empowered to have a perpetual seal and award degrees subsequent to the conduct of its own examinations. IIIT-A is conceived with the ambitious objectives of developing professional expertise and skilled manpower in Information Technology (IT) and related areas.
IPHONE tips
The I Phone is designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is an Internet and Multimedia Enabled smart phone. The I Phone functions as a camera phone , Internet client and a portable media player. It also has web browsing, WIFI connection and email facility.
There are a lot of Tips and Tricks with regards to the I Phone:
The I Phone, like the Mac, is extremely simple and intuitive to use.
Scroll to Top of Page: Tapping the status bar (the bar at the top) will make scrollable content scroll to the top. It is handy in situations like when you have scrolled down a long web page or mail message and you need to get back to the top. This also has the time, service bars, and battery. In Safari, apart from taking you to the top of the page it also takes to the URL bar.
Saving images in Safari and Mail: An action sheet will be presented which will enable you to save the image by touching an image in Safari or Mail for a couple of seconds.
Email: Press the delete button that pops up on the right to delete email by just swiping left to right on the email list.
Phone Call: To stop an incoming call from ringing, press the sleep / wake button. Press the sleep / wake button twice to send the call immediately to Voicemail.
Domain Resolution: When you want to type an URL on the safari, you can just type the name of the URL instead of typing "www" or ".com". For example if you want to get in to www.icici.com webpage just type "ICICI". Your Search Engine must be set to Google and not to yahoo.
Caller ID: If a contacts photo is transferred with the contact's info from the Address Book, the contact's photo is shown as a thumbnail for the caller ID.
Caps lock: Double-tap the Shift key to lock it. The shift key will turn blue. Also make sure it is enabled in the General Settings. A handy way of saving a tap when you need to type a capital letter is to touch the Shift key then slide over to the desired key.
Address Book: By creating several sub groups it can speed up the location of a contact given the lack of an actual search function.
Characters: Hold a letter for a popup of various versions of the character (i.e. to type Espana with the "n" simply hold "n" and release to the appropriate character).
Take a Screenshot: If you want to take a screenshot, hold the home button and click the sleep button. The screen will flash white and the screenshot will be stored in your camera roll.
Fast Forward/Rewind Music & Video –Press and hold forward/back arrows to fast forward or rewind. Press on the album art to manually Fast Forward or rewind it.
There are a lot of Tips and Tricks with regards to the I Phone:
The I Phone, like the Mac, is extremely simple and intuitive to use.
Scroll to Top of Page: Tapping the status bar (the bar at the top) will make scrollable content scroll to the top. It is handy in situations like when you have scrolled down a long web page or mail message and you need to get back to the top. This also has the time, service bars, and battery. In Safari, apart from taking you to the top of the page it also takes to the URL bar.
Saving images in Safari and Mail: An action sheet will be presented which will enable you to save the image by touching an image in Safari or Mail for a couple of seconds.
Email: Press the delete button that pops up on the right to delete email by just swiping left to right on the email list.
Phone Call: To stop an incoming call from ringing, press the sleep / wake button. Press the sleep / wake button twice to send the call immediately to Voicemail.
Domain Resolution: When you want to type an URL on the safari, you can just type the name of the URL instead of typing "www" or ".com". For example if you want to get in to www.icici.com webpage just type "ICICI". Your Search Engine must be set to Google and not to yahoo.
Caller ID: If a contacts photo is transferred with the contact's info from the Address Book, the contact's photo is shown as a thumbnail for the caller ID.
Caps lock: Double-tap the Shift key to lock it. The shift key will turn blue. Also make sure it is enabled in the General Settings. A handy way of saving a tap when you need to type a capital letter is to touch the Shift key then slide over to the desired key.
Address Book: By creating several sub groups it can speed up the location of a contact given the lack of an actual search function.
Characters: Hold a letter for a popup of various versions of the character (i.e. to type Espana with the "n" simply hold "n" and release to the appropriate character).
Take a Screenshot: If you want to take a screenshot, hold the home button and click the sleep button. The screen will flash white and the screenshot will be stored in your camera roll.
Fast Forward/Rewind Music & Video –Press and hold forward/back arrows to fast forward or rewind. Press on the album art to manually Fast Forward or rewind it.
PASSWORD IN OFFICES
Passwords on sticky notes
>> How about the sticky note under the keyboard
>> or on the monitor?
>
> that only happens for companies that require
> their passowrds to be changed too often and
> make them too complex
Think so, huh? We extended our password life from 30 to 90 days in an effort to reduce this problem and many of our employees still do this. They also routinely share their passwords with their co-workers, citing some "need" to use each other's PC when someone is out of the office. (How about using the PC we issued to you, moron, and storing your files on the appropriate network drives where they're supposed to be? Oh I forgot, you'd no longer have to waste my time recovering your data for you after your PC's hard drive crashes.)
We even loosened up the password requirements after so many people complained they were too strict. Now it just needs to be at least eight characters. So what do many people do? Eight letter K's or J's or whatever is next in the alphabet the next time their password expires.
Then again, I work for a utility where the average length of tenure is over 15 years, and the *average* age has to be somewhere in the high forties. They say they're forgetful; I say they're lazy. Personally, I think giving up your password to anyone other than the network administrator should result in your immediate termination, and screw your damn pension for endangering the company like that.
>> How about the sticky note under the keyboard
>> or on the monitor?
>
> that only happens for companies that require
> their passowrds to be changed too often and
> make them too complex
Think so, huh? We extended our password life from 30 to 90 days in an effort to reduce this problem and many of our employees still do this. They also routinely share their passwords with their co-workers, citing some "need" to use each other's PC when someone is out of the office. (How about using the PC we issued to you, moron, and storing your files on the appropriate network drives where they're supposed to be? Oh I forgot, you'd no longer have to waste my time recovering your data for you after your PC's hard drive crashes.)
We even loosened up the password requirements after so many people complained they were too strict. Now it just needs to be at least eight characters. So what do many people do? Eight letter K's or J's or whatever is next in the alphabet the next time their password expires.
Then again, I work for a utility where the average length of tenure is over 15 years, and the *average* age has to be somewhere in the high forties. They say they're forgetful; I say they're lazy. Personally, I think giving up your password to anyone other than the network administrator should result in your immediate termination, and screw your damn pension for endangering the company like that.
BEWARE OF CHOCOLATES
A survey of office workers in London found that almost three quarters would reveal their network-access password in exchange for a bar of chocolate.
The survey was conducted by the organizers of Infosecurity Europe 2004, a security exhibition to be held in London next week. They offered 172 commuters at Liverpool Street Station a bar of chocolate if they would reveal their corporate password.
Surprisingly, 37 percent immediately agreed, while another 34 percent were persuaded to give up their secret access codes when the interviewer commented that it was most likely to be the name of their pet or their child.
Claire Sellick, event director for Infosecurity Europe 2004, said the results prove that employers are not educating their users about the importance of information security: "This comes down to poor training and procedures. Employers should make sure that their employees are aware of information security policies and that they are kept up-to-date," she said in a statement.
According to the survey, most participants were unhappy remembering so many different passwords and would prefer to use either biometric authentication--such as fingerprint recognition--or smartcards. "Clearly, workers are fed up with having to remember multiple passwords and would be happy to replace them with alternative identification technology," said Sellick.
At the RSA Security conference in San Francisco last month, Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates said traditional passwords are dying out because they cannot be relied on to keep critical information secure. During his keynote, Gates said: "There is no doubt that over time, people are going to rely less and less on passwords. People use the same password on different systems, they write them down and they just don't meet the challenge for anything you really want to secure."
The survey was conducted by the organizers of Infosecurity Europe 2004, a security exhibition to be held in London next week. They offered 172 commuters at Liverpool Street Station a bar of chocolate if they would reveal their corporate password.
Surprisingly, 37 percent immediately agreed, while another 34 percent were persuaded to give up their secret access codes when the interviewer commented that it was most likely to be the name of their pet or their child.
Claire Sellick, event director for Infosecurity Europe 2004, said the results prove that employers are not educating their users about the importance of information security: "This comes down to poor training and procedures. Employers should make sure that their employees are aware of information security policies and that they are kept up-to-date," she said in a statement.
According to the survey, most participants were unhappy remembering so many different passwords and would prefer to use either biometric authentication--such as fingerprint recognition--or smartcards. "Clearly, workers are fed up with having to remember multiple passwords and would be happy to replace them with alternative identification technology," said Sellick.
At the RSA Security conference in San Francisco last month, Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates said traditional passwords are dying out because they cannot be relied on to keep critical information secure. During his keynote, Gates said: "There is no doubt that over time, people are going to rely less and less on passwords. People use the same password on different systems, they write them down and they just don't meet the challenge for anything you really want to secure."
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