Tornodo News

How to Watch Security Camera Streams on the Internet

2009-08-07T13:54:00.000-05:00

Open up your web browser.
Go to a search engine of your choice (i.e. Google, Yahoo, etc.), and input any of the search queries listed below.
After you Google one of these queries, you will see some search results, click on any one of them. Then you will either see a whole bunch of images of a security camera, or the screen of a single camera.
Depending on the type of camera that you have access to, you may be able to zoom, pan, and tilt the camera to see what you want to. If you cannot pan the camera, check the top of the control panel. If it displays "Locked" the motion controls for the camera have been disabled by the device's administrator.
Do not repeatedly maintain long or continuous connections to the feed (30 minutes is a good limit). Access logs for the devices can be created, and may be monitored by administrators. Many administrators will disregard brief attempts to access low importance devices when no harmful use is found. However, long periods of monitoring will likely attract suspicion and may cause the accessing IP address to be reported to authorities.

inurl:/view.shtml
intitle:”Live View / – AXIS” | inurl:view/view.shtml^
inurl:ViewerFrame?Mode=
inurl:ViewerFrame?Mode=Refresh
inurl:axis-cgi/jpg
inurl:view/indexFrame.shtml
inurl:view/index.shtml
inurl:view/view.shtml
liveapplet
intitle:”live view” intitle:axis
intitle:liveapplet
allintitle:”Network Camera NetworkCamera”
intitle:axis intitle:”video server”
intitle:liveapplet inurl:LvAppl
intitle:”EvoCam” inurl:”webcam.html”
intitle:”Live NetSnap Cam-Server feed”
intitle:”Live View / - AXIS 206M”
intitle:”Live View / - AXIS 206W”
intitle:”Live View / - AXIS 210″
inurl:indexFrame.shtml Axis
intitle:start inurl:cgistart
intitle:”WJ-NT104 Main Page”
intitle:snc-z20 inurl:home/
intitle:snc-cs3 inurl:home/
intitle:snc-rz30 inurl:home/
intitle:”sony network camera snc-p1″
intitle:”sony network camera snc-m1″
viewnetcam.com
intitle:”Toshiba Network Camera” user login
intitle:”i-Catcher Console - Web Monitor”

Turn Your Home Computer into a Web Server in 2 Minutes

2009-07-15T10:14:00.000-05:00

You may find this technique useful even if you are not a very tech-savvy user.

Before getting into the actual process, let’s look at a couple of real-world situations that explain why you may want to turn your home computer into a web server.

Situation #1. Say you have music MP3s, documents and other important files on the hard drive of your home computer. If you turn this home computer into a web server, you will be able to access all these files from office or any other Internet connected machine including your mobile phone.

Situation #2. You have some personal photographs that you want to share with other family members. You can either upload these pictures online to a site like Flickr or better still, just convert the computer into a web server. Now you can connect the camera to the computer, transfer the digital pictures to some designated folder and they’ll instantly become available to your friends and family anywhere in the world.

Situation #3. You want to host a website on the internet but the web hosting jargon like FTP, DNS, etc. is way too complex for you. The workaround therefore is that you setup a web server on your home computer (it’s easy) and then host a website in seconds without spending a single penny on external web hosting services.

Now if any of the above reasons look convincing enough, here’s how you can convert your Windows, Mac or Linux PC into a web server in less than two minutes - no technical knowledge required.

Go to labs.opera.com, download the Opera Unite software and install it. Congratulations, you are now running a web server on your machine and just need another minute to configure local file folders that you want to share with others over the internet.

Here’s an illustrated screenshot of the configuration panel - nothing technical here again.

Start the Opera Web browser (yes, that’s also you web server now) and enable the Opera Unite service from the lower left corner. Now double click the File Sharing link and select the folder whose content you want to share on the web. Any file or folder inside this folder can now be accessed over the internet - you can either use a public URL or specify a password for private sharing.

The following screencast video has more detailed instructions on how to get started with Opera Unite or you may refer to the User Guide if you get stuck somewhere.

Opera Unite looks pretty useful but there are other services around that can also do pretty similar stuff. For instance, both PurpleNova and Dekoh Desktop enable users share content on the Internet directly from the hard drive without having to upload it anywhere.

Update: It’s important to note that your computer must be in running state and also connected to the Internet for others to download files and web pages since Opera Unite streams content directly from your machine - it doesn’t upload or caches anything to its own servers. Give it a shot. [flickr]

Keep a Record Of All Things You Do On the Computer & the Web

2009-07-15T10:11:00.001-05:00

There are so many things you do on the computer at the same time.

You watch videos on YouTube, reply to emails, write Word documents, upload photos, listen to MP3 music, play games, read blogs, chat with friends, search the web, share files and so much more.

So here are some free software programs / web tools that help you know exactly how you spend time in front of the computer – they record all computer activity including the websites you visit, the applications you run, etc.

Debut Video Capture – This is like an internal surveillance camera for your computer that runs in the background and can record a movie of everything you do on the desktop.

Unlike other screencasting software, Debut is light-weight and would therefore work just fine on even low-end machine.

Wakoopa – Available for Windows PC and Mac, Wakoopa will help you understand how you spend time with different software applications and games that are installed on the computer.

Since Wakoopa stores all your software logs online, it can track your application usage across multiple computers as well.

Thumbstrips – This is especially useful for Wilfers who surf the web using Firefox. ThumbStrips captures screenshot images of web pages that you visit inside Firefox.

It them put these images in an horizontal strip of images arrange in the order in which they were take. You can also think of ThumbStrips as a visual browser of your web history.

RescueTime – Available for Windows, Mac and Linux systems, RescueTime is an impressive software for tracking computer usage and other online activity.

Like Wakoopa, Rescue Time runs a small monitor in the background that periodically uploads your activity log on the web. Thus you can access the information from any computer that’s connected to the web.

Rescue Time will show you the exact time you spend on different websites or with each software. Best of all, you may setup Goals and Email alerts to get more productive.

For example, you can set a goal that says "I want to spend less than 1 hour per day on Google Talk” – if you cross that limit, you’ll get an email alert. Highly recommended.

Protect Yourself from Inappropriate Content on the Internet

2009-07-15T10:08:00.001-05:00

The Internet hosts billions of web pages but a large chunk of this material may be inappropriate for your young children. Therefore, let’s explore a couple of easy ways that can possibly help parents prevent kids from viewing the dark side of the world wide web.

You don’t have be a tech-savvy person to implement any of the following stuff on your home computer(s) and all the software tools / services discussed here are available for free via the Internet.

Block Adult Sites Automatically

Since you don’t want kids to accidentally see any of sites that contain adult content, an easy option for blocking such sites is OpenDNS.

You don’t have to download or install any software - just go to opendns.com/start in any Internet browser, choose the "Computer" option (let’s keep it simple) and follow the instructions on the screen. Once your computer is configured with OpenDNS, go to Dashboard -> Settings and set the Filtering level to either Moderate or High.

Now whenever your kid mistakenly types a URL of some adult site in the browser (e.g. whitehouse.com instead of whitehouse.gov) or clicks a link that may be pointing to an inappropriate site, the OpenDNS filters will match the address of that site against their own database of adults sites and if there’s a match, the underlying web page won’t be displayed on the child’s computer.

Prevent clicks on Malicious Sites

When you perform a search on Google or other search engines, there is a probability that some of the links appearing on the search results page could be pointing to sites that host malicious or harmful content.

To make sure that your children aren’t clicking these links, what you need is Web of Trust - it’s a simple filter that analyzes web page links in the background and adds colored icons next to them so that you child knows whether visiting the underlying site is safe or not.

Web of Trust is available for both Internet Explorer & Firefox. It can scan links appearing on almost every major search engine and even web email services. You can also use the WOT online service to find the reputation rating of any website as in this example.

Block Selected Websites (like IMs or Social sites)

The filtering option in OpenDNS is great for blocking an entire category of websites on your computer but if you are looking to block only selected sites (e.g. Orkut.com or MySpace.com) because your kids are too young to waste time on these sites, here’s a tip.

Run the Hostsman software (it’s a freeware for Windows) and press Ctrl+O to open the hosts file editor. Click the "Add" icon and type the URLs of all the websites that you want to block on the child’s computer. Hit Save and close the hostsman application.

None of the blocked sites will ever open in any of the browsers installed on your child’s computer unless someone manually deletes the record from the host file.

Turn Safe Search On forever

Google, Bing, Yahoo and most other search engines allow you to search the web (and images) in "Safe Search" mode meaning you are less likely to encounter images or web pages in search results that may not be appropriate for children.

But the only problem with this approach is that it uses cookies so if you clear the browser cache, the "safe search" preference will be lost as well.

Luckily, you can force the "strict filtering" option in your browser even if the parent or the kid forgot to turn that option on himself.

The trick is that you open the Google search URL wherever it appears in the browser database and append "safe=active" before the "q" parameter.

For instance, you can type about:config in Firefox and change the keyword.url value to http://www.google.com/search?safe=active&q= - now any searches performed from the address bar will always show "safe" content.

Track Kids Activity on the Computer

While I don’t suggest using a keylogger program to monitor each and every word that your kid is typing, you may want to explore programs like Rescue Time or Slife as they will give you a good overview of how your kids are spending time at the computer.

You get to know what sites are they visiting, how much time are they spending with IM programs, what software applications are they running more frequently and how much time do they spend on individual sites.

Five Free Security Hacks

2009-05-11T08:48:00.000-05:00

Security software is still the lock on your PC's front door, but we have some tricks to make your front door a little less attractive to crooks.

Let's talk about security hacks—simple yet clever ways to protect yourself in the physical and cyber worlds that cost little or nothing.

The premise behind tricks like this is not that any one—or even all—of them is guaranteed to protect you thoroughly, but rather that each of them will make stealing your system or data difficult or unappealing. It should go without saying that neither one nor all of these can replace good, up-to-date antivirus and firewall protection.

The classic non-tech security trick is using motion detection spotlights or lights on a timer—even fake video cameras or surveillance warning signage—to give the impression that your home or business is occupied. No thief actually wants to be seen, and few want to chance confrontation. Along similar lines, there are easy and free ways to make your computer and data less available to thieves.

1. A surprisingly effective PC security trick is simply to remove the keyboard and mouse. I discovered this when the keyboard on my laptop died and I had to use an external keyboard for a while. It's highly unlikely that a snoop will carry an extra keyboard and mouse with him. This will slow someone down but is far from foolproof, and it should go without saying that every computer should be physically locked to a sturdy object and secured behind a strong password.

2. To protect from podslurping (the connecting of an unauthorized USB device and its use to steal data), disable your USB ports. Or—and we borrowed this one directly from the U.S. military—epoxy over the USB ports. Too permanent? A slightly more elegant solution is to open the PC case and disconnect (or cut) the wires running from the motherboard to the USB ports.

3. Traveling with a laptop? Try not to advertise that you're carrying a valuable piece of equipment: Use a computer bag that doesn't look like a computer bag, or use a neoprene sleeve inside a regular backpack. If you nap at the airport, wrap the shoulder strap around your arm or leg so you'll be alerted if someone tries to walk away with your bag.

4. Here's an easy way to hide your Windows PC on a network while maintaining access to network resources. (This also works when you want stealth but still want to let others access your shared resources.) At the command prompt, type Net config server /hidden:yes. Now you're still a member of your network neighborhood but your PC won't show up when others browse for it. Make sure your software firewall is turned on, and block incoming ICMP traffic. This will prevent a network intruder from scanning for your PC using a ping sweep.

Once you are hidden on the network, you can spend some time trying to figure out who—if anyone—is connecting to your PC and to whom your PC is connecting. To accomplish this, you'll use the command-line tool Netstat and the Task Manager. Get to the command prompt and type netstat –ao. A bunch of info will flash by on your screen listing the type of connection, the IP addresses of remote hosts, the protocols, and the process identifier, or PID. If there's something here you don't recognize, write down the PID. Now, open the Task Manager and add the PID column by opening the View menu and clicking on Select Columns. Check the box next to PID. Now match the PID from Netstat and the PID from Task Manager to learn which applications are holding which ports open. A well-secured machine should have ports open only for authorized apps.

5. One last idea: Enabling secure log-on in Windows XP and Vista will protect your system from malware that attempts to impersonate a log-on screen to steal system passwords. This forces anyone trying to log on to press Ctrl-Alt-Del first. In Windows Vista, open the Run command, type netplwiz, and click Continue when prompted by User Account Control. In the Advanced User Account window, click the Advanced tab, then select the box that says Require users to press Ctrl-Alt-Delete. In Windows XP, go to the Control Panel's User Accounts applet. In the Advanced User Account window, click the Advanced tab, then select the box that says Require users to press Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

OpenDNS - What is OpenDNS and Why You Absolutely Need It ?

2008-03-18T12:52:00.003-05:00

When you type an address like www.yahoo.com in your browser address bar, the computer doesn’t know where yahoo.com points to and it will therefore ask the DNS server.

The job of a DNS server is to translate this human-readable web address (like www.yahoo.com) into a computer-readable number also known as an IP address (209.131.36.158). Once your computer knows the IP location of a web domain name, it opens the website in your browser.

DNS is such an integral part of our Internet life working behind the scenes every time we connect to a website. In most situations, our Internet Service Provider specifies the DNS Server address that we key into the browser network settings or the router.

Unfortunately, this can prove to be the weakest link in the entire workflow. For example, if the DNS server of your ISP is slow, the time it takes to resolve the web address adds up to the overall loading time of the website.

To solve this problem, we look at a simple and reliable service called OpenDNS that speeds up your Internet connection and also handles some other very important issues. There are no software to install, it’s very easy to set up and the price is just right - $0.

To use OpenDNS, all you have to do is open your Network Connections or Router’s settings page and update the default DNS server to point to the OpenDNS nameservers that are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

The whole process takes a few seconds but with this single step alone, you just made your computer safer and increased the overall browsing speed. Here’s why:

Unlike the DNS servers of your less reliable ISP, OpenDNS servers store the IP addresses of millions of websites in their cache so it would take less time to resolve your requests. So if you have asked for an IP address of a website that has been previously requested by another OpenDNS user, you will get the reply instantly.

Another huge advantage of using OpenDNS is that it blocks phishing websites from loading on your computer. It uses data from Phishtank, a community site that is also used by Yahoo! Mail to determine if some particular website is part of any online phishing scam.

OpenDNS also takes care of any typos that you commit while typing the name of popular websites. For instance, if you type www.gogle.com omitting the additional “o” by mistake, OpenDNS will open the main www.google.com site automatically.

If you are a parent worried about kids visiting adult websites on the home computer, you can configure OpenDNS to block any adult website from loading on the computer. In fact, quite a few business places use OpenDNS to block social sites like MySpace and Facebook on employee computers.

Power users can assign abbreviations or OpenDNS Shortcuts to access their favourite websites more quickly.

For instance, you can set “mail” as a shortcut for http://mail.google.com/ or something like “a” for www.reallylongname.com - just type the shortcut to access the site. A good alternative for browser based bookmarks and it works across all computers where you have logged in to your OpenDNS account.

Now that you are prepared to switch to OpenDNS, please don’t expect huge gains in browsing speed since OpenDNS only improves the cycle between your computer and the DNS server.
And do keep handy the old DNS settings given by your ISP as you may need them in the extreme scenario when OpenDNS system goes down or you want to disable / remove OpenDNS completely from your computer.

http://www.opendns.com/ [Piece written for Financial Express newspaper]

Most Useful Websites on the Internet & Cool Start-Ups

2008-03-12T16:02:00.001-05:00

Vuvox Create Stunning and interactive multimedia presentations

Blog Widgets Cross promote your blog on other websites with these professional looking widgets

ToonDoo Create Your Own Comic Strips

uLinx Search Video Clips from Popular Video Sharing Sites In One Place

Vixy.net Download Youtube Videos as Quicktime Videos or MP3 Audio Files

Picnik The Best Online Image Editing Tool

Scribd Embed Docs, Excel Spreadsheets, PDFs as Flash Paper

Email Traceroute Plot your email trajectory on Google Maps

Pipl What Google Think about you - EgoSurfing

Gotuit SceneMaker Trim YouTube Videos and Share them

CircleUp Ask Questions, Get a consolidated reply

Blinx The Best Video Search Engine with News Clips, Video Podcasts..

Dumpr.net Interesting Effects for your Digital Photographs

Photo Flicks Impressive Pictures Slideshows in Flash

Zoho Sheet Embed Excel Spreadsheet in Webpages

Flickr Leech Search and Download Images from Flickr quickly

Package Mapping Visually track shipments from FedEx/UPS/DHL on Google Maps

Visual DNA Share your personality with the world in pictures.

Kiss Youtube The easiest way to download Youtube Videos

Voice Books Invite friends to add voice narrations to your photographs

Qipit Convert a book excerpt or newspaper clipping into digital text

Zaptxt Google Alerts++, get updates on Skype, Mobile Phone, Email

LinkInABox Display your LinkedIn Profile on your blog.

Alexaholic Compare Alexa Rankings of multiple website at one place

MyPictr Create profile pictures and avatars of custom sizes in seconds

SlideRoll Flash Slideshows of Flickr Pictures

Review Basics Get feedback on your blog design, brochures, business cards, etc

ePost Real version of GMail Paper, Home delivery email

Rich Chart Live Create rich, animated Flash Charts online

Short Text Internet clipboard - Copy paste text across computers

IMIfied Interact with Google Calendar, Blogger, Remember the Milk, BaseCamp, TypePad via IM (Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo Messenger)

Text Analyzer Analyze your writing style, count words, paragraphs, word frequency, etc.

Feed43 Create RSS Feeds for any website

Files Upload Rapidshare on Steroids, Supports FTP, No limits

GigaSize Email large attachments without problems

Mozy Online Backup for your computer - set it, forget it

Room Visualizer Design the layout of your new room online

Google Docs Batch convert email messages or multiple documents to PDF

VideoJug, Instructables Learn something new everday through Pictures and Video Tutorials

Yahoo! Badges Add Live Stock Quotes and Market Charts to your website

JumpCut Free Online Video Editor - Mix videos, images and sounds

Zamzar Convert files from one format to another, get results by email

Workarounds When GMail or Google Talk Are Blocked at Work

2008-03-12T15:55:00.002-05:00

The other day I was talking to a friend who recently joined a large investment bank in India and he shared that a lot of websites and IM clients are banned inside his Office under the pretext of “security”.

While he is not a regular on social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace or Orkut, what makes him unhappy about the new workplace is the fact that he cannot check Gmail in Office or connect with other friends over Google Talk – they are all blocked by the corporate firewall.

If you are in a similar situation, worry no more as here are some simple workarounds to bypass the filters (but use them at your own risk).

Google Talk (GTalk) – If you are not allowed to install the GTalk IM client on your computer, there’s a better web based version of Google Talk available at talkgadget.google.com – open this page in your web browser, sign-in with your Gmail user/password and start chatting with friends who are online. You can even group chat with multiple contacts, a feature that’s missing in the desktop version of Google Talk.

Gmail (Google Email) – There are mutliple ways to check your Gmail email in the office. The first option is to create a Gmail filter, an option that’s available right near the search box in Gmail. Type your email address in the To: box and then select “Forward all incoming email”. You can select any other email service that’s accessible from office and Gmail will auto-forward all incoming email to this address.

The other option is to use Gmail RSS Feeds. You can use Google Reader, Newsgator, Bloglines or any other newreader and add a new feed with the URL https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom - then submit your Gmail address and password. All new messages can now be read inside your RSS reader.

Google Web Search – If Google.com web search itself is blocked in your office, you can try other alternatives like www.jux2.com or www.aftervote.com which offer search results from Google. Another option is to use googlesyndicatedsearch.com which is the same as google.com but on a different server that’s probably safe from your corporate firewall.

Attach and Send Any File Type with GMail Like EXE, ZIP, Videos; Trick GMail Antivirus Scanner

2008-03-12T15:46:00.002-05:00

Do you want to send MP3 songs and videos by gmail ? Or want to attach software executables (.exe) to your gmail email ? Read this guide.

When you send and receive attachments with GMail, they're auto scanned for viruses. If Gmail thinks your mail has viruses, it will attempt to clean the file or remove it. But if it detects a virus and can't remove it, then you won't be able to download it.

Thanks to the new GMail Anti Virus Scanner, you cannot send or receive emails with exe, dll, ocx, com or bat attachments even if they are sent in a zipped (.zip, .tar, .tgz, .taz, .z, .gz) format (The .rar format is still allowed)

GMail has some the best spam filtering and phishing detection capabilities but the GMail virus scanning is a bit disappointing. When I tried to email a Firefox 1.5 installer to a colleague, GMail uploaded the entire file (Firefox Setup 1.5.exe 4.98 MB) and then threw this alert:

This is an executable file. For security reasons, Gmail does not allow you to send this type of file.

This is such a poor solution. GMail Virus Scanner didn't scan the attachment, it just blocked it since it was an exe file. Why is Google calling it an AntiVirus scanner when it is merely blocking attachments of certain types like .exe? Yahoo! webmail too have an anti-virus but they accept .exe files since the yahoo anti-virus would scan even exe files and clean them if found infected.

Secondly, why did GMail upload the entire exe file to its server for scanning but didn't scan since it was an exe.? The GMail file uploader should be smart enough to disallow users from uploading files with extensions like exe, com, ocx, etc.

Google has no plans to make the "limited" antivirus feature optional, nor does it plan to stop blocking executables. Yahoo! Mail uses Symantec software to scan for viruses. Hotmail licenses its technology from Trend Micro. Google isn’t saying which vendor is providing the antivirus technology.

Since you cannot Turn Off GMail Anti Virus Scanning, you can use these GMail hacks to send program file (exe), virus samples and other blocked formats with GMail:

Technique

1. Use a free file hosing online service like Rapidshare, Megaupload or Yousendit to upload your file and send the link of the uploaded file in your GMail message.

2. Rename the file: Change the file extension to fool the GMail scanner. The new attachment could contain instructions making it easier for the recepient to derive the actuall attachment type.

For instance,Rename Adobe-Reader.exe to Adobe-Reader.exe.removeme

3. If you have lot of exe files to send, put them in a zip file and change the extension of the zip file as mentioned in the previous step. Remember that GMail denies zip attachments that contain exe files. Pass-Protection won't work either since GMail can examine exe filenames even in password protected zipped files as the archived filename listings are not encrypted by the Zip program.

4. Use a different compression software like WinRAR which compresses files in .rar format. GMail is currently not scanning or blocking .rar filetypes. But there is a high probability that GMail might support rar formats in future. In that case, you can consider splitting the rar files and attaching them separately (like .r1, .r2..)

Important: I would recommend only the first technique since all others violate Google policies and Google could even terminate your GMail account.

Sending Virus infected files with GMail: Yes, it is against the GMail TOS to send viruses in email but occasionally, we need to mail an infected file for reporting purposes to an antivirus vendor. Like the Symantec Security Response center encourages users to submit virus samples for analysis. You can use any of the above techniques to bypass the virus scanner and attach infected files in your emails.

Now that limited virus scanning is in, we can expect GMail to move quickly out of the beta once the GCal (Google Calendar) application is available. The Google Calendar domain is already live.

Bypass Censorship, Unblock All Restricted Websites With Opera Simulator

2008-03-12T15:41:00.004-05:00

Internet filters are active everywhere - Flickr is banned in Iran & UAE, BBC & Wikipedia are blocked in China, Blogspot blogs are banned in Pakistan, YouTube & Photobucket are prohibited for US army overseas while social sites like Bebo, MySpace or Facebook may be banned in your office.

Some companies even block access to mail websites like Yahoo or GMail under the pretext of security.

In the past, we have discussed atleast a dozen methods to help you access blocked websites that are banned in your office, school or by the government of your country. Here's a new method for unblocking websites - you'll probably enjoy it more than the previous hacks because it takes the geekiness out of the whole process and make it extremely easy to access blocked URLs.

Opera provides a free online tool called Opera Mini Simulator that emulates the Opera mobile phone browser on your desktop computer. The tool is done in java and is quite popular among web designers for testing website layouts on mobile phone devices without actually using a mobile phone.

As you probably guessed it by now, this Opera Browser Simulator can also be used for accessing web pages that may be blocked on your computer. Since the requests are made via the Opera.com website, they would easily bypass the local filtering.

To open any site in Opera, just append that site address to the following URL and start browsing.

http://www.operamini.com/demo/?url=[URL] - example

The Opera Simulator can even be used for secure sites that require cookies - for instance, you can check your Hotmail emails via Opera. Though you are restricted to the tiny 200x200 screen of Opera simulator, it's still a very handy tool. [Opera link from Rupesh]

Opera recently launched version 4 of the Mini simulator that offers a better browsing experience than the previous version. You can access v4.0 of Mini simulator here. The above video demo was created in this version.

How to Access Blocked Websites, Unblock Restricted Sites

2008-03-12T15:34:00.003-05:00

How to access blocked websites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo at school or office?
This article suggests workarounds to help you unblock access to restricted websites at universities, school and offices.

Background: Blocking access to undesirable Web sites has been a common government tactic but China, Iran, Saudi Arabia are believed to extend greater censorship over the net than any other country in the world.

Most of the blocked or blacklisted sites in Saudi Arabia are about sex, religion, women, health, politics and pop culture. They even block access to websites that sell swimming or bathing suits. In China, websites that talk about sex, Tibet or Democracy are blocked.

Social sites that are often blocked include Google News, Typepad, ebay, Blogger blogs, Youtube, Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, Pandora, Bebo, Photobucket, Yahoo! Messenger, AOL AIM,Flickr, last.fm, etc.

There are always legitimate reasons to bypass the internet filters and unblock websites. The following tricks will show how to access all websites at school, college, offices or at home.

1: To access blocked website, type the IP number instead of the URL in the browser address bar. However, if your blocking software maps the IP address to the web server (reverse DNS lookup), the website will still remain blocked.

2: Use a URL redirection service like tinyurl.com or snipurl.com. These domain forwarding services sometimes work as the address in the the url box remain the redirect url and do not change to the banned site.

3: Use Google Mobile Search - Google display the normal HTML pages as if you are viewing them on a mobile phone. During the translation, Google removes the javascript content and CSS scripts and breaks a longer page into several smaller pages. Google Mobile

4: Enter the URL in Google or Yahoo search and then visit the cached copy of the page. To retrieve the page more quickly from Google's cache, click "Cached Text Only" while the browser is loading the page from cache.

5: There are anonymizer websites who will fetch the blocked web page from their servers and display them to you. As far as the service provider is concerned, you are viewing the page on the Anonymizer website and not the blocked site.

6: You can access blocked or restricted websites by using Yahoo Babelfish or Google Translate language tools as a proxy server. You just have to invoke the Google translate service with the same language pair like English to English. Assuming that Google is accessible in your school, you should be able to access any website with this method - Babelfish Proxy Sever

7: Anonymous Surfing - Browse the internet via free proxy server. A proxy server (or proxies) is a normal computer that hides the identity of computers on its network from the Internet.

Which means that only the address of the proxy server is visible to the world and not of those computers that are using it to browse the Internet. Just visit any proxy server with your Web browser and enter a URL or the address of the blocked website.

Don't Pay For Virus Protection, Get these Free Anti Virus Software

2008-03-12T15:22:00.003-05:00

The computer security market is flooded with antivirus software that work but don't come cheap.
While viruses remain a threat to our precious data, you need not necessarily invest in expensive antivirus scanners - there are plenty of free options available that may give even some commercial vendors a run for their money.
We look at some of the best software available today for keeping your computer free of viruses and other malware. Later we help you decide the one most suitable for you.

Free Online Virus Scanners [run inside the web browser to scan your hard drive]

Trend Micro HouseCall - An online virus scanner that's absolutely free and scans your PC hard drive for any sort of viruses or even spyware. HouseCall allows you to remove detected infections. Works with Firefox and IE. Requires Java.

McAfee Freescan - This free virus scanner from McAfee is based on the McAfee VirusScan engine. Should viruses be found, FreeScan prepares a list of infected files and links to information about the viruses on your computer. It also gives you an option to clean your system. Requires IE with ActiveX.

Windows Live OneCare Scanner - A free antivirus online scanner from Microsoft that cleans your system from viruses and also recommends ways to improve the overall performance. Part of Windows Onecare.

Symantec Internet Security - An online virus scanner from the developers of Norton Antivirus 2007 can detect most virus threat but there is no option to delete the virus infected file or repair it. Does not examine compressed files. Requires IE with ActiveX.

BitDefender Online Scanner - Their Free Online Virus Scanner version 8 scans your system's memory, all files, folders and drives' boot sectors - the default options automatically cleans the infected files. Requires IE with ActiveX.

Free Anti Virus Software for Windows [Requires Installation]

Avast! Home Edition - One of the most popular antivirus software, can also be run from Explorer context menu. You can either scan the entire hard drive or selected folders. Ships with an Antivirus screen-saver.

AOL Active Virus - a free virus scanner from AOL based on Kaspersky Antivirus that doesn't require an AOL account to download the software. The software can be configure to check only new and modified files thereby reducing the memory requirements. Also support scanning of incoming and outgoing email messages.

ClamWin Virus Scanner - An opensource antivirus software that is great for running routine antivirus checks on your PC. You need to manually scan a file in order to detect a virus or spyware.

AVG 7.5 Free Antivirus - One of most popular free virus scanning software is AVG 7.5 Free Edition (read comments). Initially, there was confusion whether AVG 7.5 would be free like AVG 7.1 but the good news is that AVG 7.5 Free edition is already available for non-commercial, single home computer use.

Conclusion: Which one should I choose ?

Unlike Desktop antivirus software, online virus scanners do not proactively protect your PC against new virus infections.
But if viruses have already entered your hard drive and taken control of your existing desktop scanner program, any of the above listed online virus-scanning services can save your day.
If you are a fairly experienced web user who doesn't need an antivirus software to run in the background 24 hours, scan you drive at regular intervals using HouseCall. Others may install the AOL antivirus software which uses the Kaspersky virus definitions database.

How To: Change Your Ip In Less Then 1 Minute

2008-02-11T15:36:00.000-06:00

1. Click on "Start" in the bottom left hand corner of screen
2. Click on "Run"
3. Type in "command" and hit ok

You should now be at an MSDOS prompt screen.

4. Type "ipconfig /release" just like that, and hit "enter"
5. Type "exit" and leave the prompt
6. Right-click on "Network Places" or "My Network Places" on your desktop.
7. Click on "properties"

You should now be on a screen with something titled "Local Area Connection", or something close to that, and, if you have a network hooked up, all of your other networks.

8. Right click on "Local Area Connection" and click "properties"
9. Double-click on the "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" from the list under the "General" tab
10. Click on "Use the following IP address" under the "General" tab
11. Create an IP address (It doesn't matter what it is. I just type 1 and 2 until i fill the area up).
12. Press "Tab" and it should automatically fill in the "Subnet Mask" section with default numbers.
13. Hit the "Ok" button here
14. Hit the "Ok" button again

You should now be back to the "Local Area Connection" screen.

15. Right-click back on "Local Area Connection" and go to properties again.
16. Go back to the "TCP/IP" settings
17. This time, select "Obtain an IP address automatically"
18. Hit "Ok"
19. Hit "Ok" again
20. You now have a new IP address

With a little practice, you can easily get this process down to 15 seconds.

P.S:This only changes your dynamic IP address, not your ISP/IP address.

HACKERS TIP:- If you plan on hacking a website with this trick be extremely careful, because if they try a little, they can trace it backEnjoy

How to Hide Secret Documents, Videos or Audio Messages inside JPG Image Files ?

2008-02-05T13:22:00.000-06:00

A USA Today story claimed that some operatives were sending out encrypted messages by hiding them inside digital photographs [jpg files] on eBay.

While the claim was never proved, it is very easy to hide [or embed] any other file[s] inside a JPEG image. You can place video clips, pdf, mp3, Office documents, zipped files, webpage or any other file format inside a JPEG image.

And when a suspecting user [read CIA, FBI] tries to open that jpeg file [with concealed information] in either a photo editing software or as a thumbnail inside Windows Explorer, it would be tough to make out if this camouflaged jpg file is different from any standard jpg image.

Let's say you want to hide a confidential PDF document from the tax investigation officers. What you can do is convert that file into a regular jpg image so even if anyone double-clicks this file, all he will see is a preview of the image and nothing else. And when you want to work on the actual PDF, just rename the extension from jpg to pdf.

Here's the full trick:
Step 1: You will need two files - the file you want to hide and one jpg image - it can be of any size or dimensions. [If you want to hide multiple files in one jpeg image, just zip them into one file]
Step 2: Copy the above two files to the C: folder and open the command prompt window.
Step 3: Move to the c: root by typing cd \ [if the files are in another folder, you'll have to change the prompt to that folder]
Step 4: The most important step - type the following command:
copy /b myimage.jpg + filetohide.pdf my_new_image.jpg

To recover the original PDF file, just rename my_new_image.jpg to filename.pdf.

Here we illustrated with an pdf file as that works with simple renaming. If you want to apply this technique to other file formats like XLS, DOC, PPT, AVI, WMV, WAV, SWF, etc, you may have to first compress them in RAR format before executing the copy /b DOS command.

To restore the original file, rename the .jpg file to .rar and extract it using 7-zip or Winrar.

That's it - No advanced Steganography tricks involved here.

Just remember to write the correct syntax of the copy command:copy /b sourceimage.jpg + filetohide.ext targetimage.jpg

Hide data inside photos

2008-02-05T13:17:00.001-06:00

A USA Today story claimed that some operatives were sending out encrypted messages by hiding them inside digital photographs [jpg files] on eBay.

While the claim was never proved, it is very easy to hide [or embed] any other file[s] inside a JPEG image. You can place video clips, pdf, mp3, Office documents, zipped files, webpage or any other file format inside a JPEG image. And when a suspecting user [read CIA, FBI] tries to open that jpeg file [with concealed information] in either a photo editing software or as a thumbnail inside Windows Explorer, it would be tough to make out if this camouflaged jpg file is different from any standard jpg image.

Let's say you want to hide a confidential PDF document from the tax investigation officers. What you can do is convert that file into a regular jpg image so even if anyone double-clicks this file, all he will see is a preview of the image and nothing else. And when you want to work on the actual PDF, just rename the extension from jpg to pdf.

Here's the full trick:

Step 1: You will need two files - the file you want to hide and one jpg image - it can be of any size or dimensions. [If you want to hide multiple files in one jpeg image, just zip them into one file]

Step 2: Copy the above two files to the C: folder and open the command prompt window.

Step 3: Move to the c: root by typing cd \ [if the files are in another folder, you'll have to change the prompt to that folder]

Step 4: The most important step - type the following command:

copy /b myimage.jpg + filetohide.pdf my_new_image.jpg

To recover the original PDF file, just rename my_new_image.jpg to filename.pdf.

Here we illustrated with an pdf file as that works with simple renaming. If you want to apply this technique to other file formats like XLS, DOC, PPT, AVI, WMV, WAV, SWF, etc, you may have to first compress them in RAR format before executing the copy /b DOS command.

To restore the original file, rename the .jpg file to .rar and extract it using 7-zip or Winrar.

That's it - No advanced Steganography tricks involved here. Just remember to write the correct syntax of the copy command:

copy /b sourceimage.jpg + filetohide.ext targetimage.jpg

How To Make A Keylogger

2008-02-01T18:43:00.000-06:00

A step-by-step guide to successfully creating a deployment package, sending it, and receiving information using Ardamax Keylogger. Now, in this guide, I only use one method of receiving information, and that's an FTP. I also do not protect the files. Any suggestions and comments are appreciated.

Let's begin.
Head on over to:
http://www.ardamax.com/keylogger/

And scroll to the bottom. Download the free trial.After downloading, open the program and install it. Simple enough, right? After installing, go to wherever you installed it at, and open it. It should open at the bottom right corner of your screen, down by the time. If not, press ctrl+shift+alt+h. Now, leave that alone.

Next, go to:
http://www.theserials.com/serial/serial_ardamax.html

Download the appropriate serial.
Now, open it, and it should give you a name and a jumble of letters and numbers.
Go back to the Ardamax icon at the bottom right, and right-click it.
Click the "Enter Registration Key" button.
Use your serial/crack to unlock the full version. Congratulations, you are now ready to make your first deployment package.

~NOTE~If you want to attach the keylogger to an existing file, go ahead and place that on your desktop.

~NOTE~Again, right click the icon at the bottom-right.
Click "Remote Installation".
Click next.

Now, if you want to attach your keylogger to an existing file, tick the box that says "Append keylogger engine to.." etc etc.
If you tick it, click Browse, and select the file.If not, continue down.
The installation folder on target computer needs to remain Windows System Folder for added security, so leave it be.

Add any additional components you would like.
I just leave mine as "log viewer" since all I grab are passwords from games.
From this point, click next.
Now, this part is self explanatory.
I tick all of the boxes, as to hide it from everything visible, otherwise they can just see it and be like "Wtf", uninstall, etc.Can't have that, now can we?Click next.

For Security, do what you want.
I leave all of it as-is and click next again.
Now, untick the "Check for updates" box, else it will check for updates on their computer and they will know that they are bugged.
Click next.

Tick the "Start in hidden mode" box, and leave the "Run on windows startup" as-is.
You may pick a date to self destruct, if you like.
Sounds noisy, right? It simply removes itself on selected date.
If not, leave it alone, and it will never self destruct.
Click next.

Tick the "Send logs every.." box, and choose how frequently you would like to recieve information that has been sent.
Select 'FTP' and de-select everything else as a delivery method.
You may choose what you want to see.
I take out screenshots.
Causes lag for me.
Leave log format alone.

You may choose to send logs if it exceeds a certain size, or if you want it to send no matter what, untick the box, which is what I do.
Continue on! (next.)Now the fun part. -_-.

Head on over to:
http://phpnet.us/

Make an account, etc etc.
Save your FTP Account name and password.
You'll need it in a moment.
This site will be the site that holds all information recieved by the keylogger.
When you're done, scroll down a bit.

Under "FTP Accounts", click "File Manager".
Near the top, click the "New Dir" button, and create a directory by any name you want.
My favorite is "lolbeans".
Now, hold that thought.
Bring the keylogger back.
In Ftp Host, put in:ftp.phpnet.usIn "Remote Folder", put in the new directory's name you made. So, in this scenario, "lolbeans" without the "'s.
Fill in your Username and Password.
I leave Passive Mode checked because I'm not sure what it does, rofl. :[Leave port alone as well.

It's default.
Now to make sure everything is correctly done, click test.
It should tell you it all went through.
And to double check, you can refresh your open window.
Click your "lolbeans" directory and there should be a test file in it.
Click next, if you're still alive.Tick anything and everything you want.

Next.
If you selected screenshots to be enabled, pick how you want them delivered.
Click next.
If not, ignore this step.
Browse where you want the keylogger to be placed.
You can also change the icon, which is nifty.
If you're apologizing to a bitch ex girlfriend/boyfriend of yours, you can change the icon to a notepad and name it "Apology", and they fall for it.

Next.
This screen will go over with you everything that you have chosen.
Make sure it's all correct.
Click Finish.
Now, if you appended the keylogger to something, you're going to need to put the "install" (feel free to rename it so it's not so obvious) and appended file into a .zip or .rar file.
If not, you have the simple "Install" on your desktop.
Also, feel free to rename it to something like "Apology" or "OMFGFunnypicture!!!.jpg"Upload the file or .rar/.zip somewhere, and let your target download it.
They will double click it, and on their end, nothing will happen, but secretly, they have been keylogged.

Check your FTP Directory that you made as frequently as you told it to send logs, and you'll have everything you need.
Feel free to test it out on yourself.

10 Email Addresses That Will Be Useful When You No Internet Access

2007-10-27T09:25:00.000-05:00

Have you ever come across a situation where you don’t have access to the Internet but can send or receive email messages? With email and no Internet, how do you read websites and blogs or check the current stock prices, or find what’s the top story on CNN homepage.
Well, you can do a lot of interesting things over email without a web connection - you can read any webpages over email, maintain your task list, convert documents, upload photo and videos, get dictionary meanings of words and more.

Just make sure that you have added the following address to your email address book:
10. pdf@koolwire.com - You have an Office document or a picture on your computer or mobile phone that you wish to convert into a PDF file. Just email that file an email attachment to the above address and it will soon return to your Inbox as a PDF file.
9. ..@photos.flickr.com - Flickr provides a unique email upload address here - you can send your photographs to this email address as attachments and they’ll show up in Flick Photo gallery almost instantly. The subject line of email becomes the photo’s title while the body of the email becomes the photo’s description.
8. e@expenser.com - This is like filling data in a travel spreadsheet through email. You can use this address to gather and record your travel expenses while on the road.
7. go@blogger.com - You can use this address to post pictures on any Blogger hosted blog. Any picture that you send to this email address will appear as a new blog post in your mobile blog. You can also use this service to post regular text entries to your Blogspot blog. In that case, the “Send to Blogger” email address is available under Blogger Dashboard.
6. upload@upload.slideshare.net - If you have (one or more) PowerPoint Presentations and PDF documents that you quickly want to share with friends, just email the files to Slideshare and they’ll instantly turn them into a web slideshow.
5. …@mms.youtube.com - YouTube member can create an MMS profile here - if you have a video clip on your mobile phone or comptuer but no access to YouTube website, you can easily upload that video file to YouTube through that email address.
4. pdf2txt@adobe.com - Send a PDF document to this email address as an attachment and it will come back as a plain text file. Handy when your don’t have a PDF viewer to open the PDF document. Alternatively, you can send the PDF file to pdf2html@adobe.com for conversion to HTML format.
3. ..@prod.writely.com - Google Docs provides a unique email address here - you can upload your documents, spreadsheets and presentations to Google Docs through this address and read them on your mobile phone using the just launched Google Docs mobile at docs.google.com/m.
2. …@rmilk.com - When you signup for Remember The Milk, you are assigned a unique email address. Emails sent to this special address are automatically converted into tasks and appear in your Inbox. Click on Settings -> Info -> Inbox Email Address. Very handy for keeping a track of your unfinished tasks and getting things done while on the move.
1. wsmith@wordsmith.org - Get the dictionary definition and synonyms of any word by sending a blank email to this email address. Make the subject line as: define myword
And now the most useful email address that will help you read webpages through email without requiring a web connection:
0. www@web2mail.com - Send an email with the URL of the web page in the Subject field (e.g. www.cnn.com) and you’ll soon find a copy of that web page in your Inbox. A perfect option when there’s no Internet access in the area or access is restricted (for instance, you want to read the BBC homepage in China).

Another similar service is www4mail@wm.ictp.trieste.it - it will also fetch websites for you through email though in this case, the site address should go in the body of the email message.
These web-to-email services will come extremely handy for receiving on-demand Stock quotes (for the current Google stock price, type finance.yahoo.com/q?s=GOOG), weather updates, currency exchange rates (for USD to INR, type finance.yahoo.com/q?s=USDINR=X) and mroe.

Photoshop Convert Photos Into A Sketch In Just A Few Easy Steps

2007-10-21T10:36:00.000-05:00

A easy way to change your photo into a sketch !

Rapidshare Premium Link Generator

2007-10-15T11:15:00.000-05:00

Here are a few Rapidshare Premium Link Generators where you can generate your premium download links.

A point of reminder: Please be considerate when using these generators, don’t abuse! If you’re a heavy downloader, please consider to get a premium account.
Rapidshare Premium Link Generator

RapidFool.com
MyMegaLink (.de Generator)
KhongBiet.com
MegaEZ
RapidGrab.org
Note: I’ll add from time to time if I found any.
Again, use it wisely and be considerate.

How to Get a New IP Address Even If You Have a Static IP

2007-10-15T11:13:00.000-05:00

To start off, you need a direct connection to your modem and computer. If you have a router, disconnect it and directly hook up your modem to your computer.

1. Open up the command prompt by pressing Start->Run and typing in cmd
2. In the command prompt, type “Ipconfig/all”. This will tell you your current IP Address. After, type “ipconfig/release”. Keep the command prompt open for easy access.
3. Go to “Network Connections” (accessible through the control panel). Right click “Local Area Connection” and click “Properties”
4. With “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) selected, click the “Properties” button.
5. A new window will open. Under the “General” tab, select “Use the Following IP address”. Under “Ip Address”, put “10.0.0.1″. Press the “Tab” key on your keyboard.
6. Press Ok on both open windows.
7. Repeat steps 3-4. Under the “General” tab, press the radio button “Automatically Assign Me an Ip Address”. Press ok on both windows.
8. Go back to the command prompt and type in “Ipconfig/all”. You’ll now notice you have a new IP address.

P.S: So, this will be handy if you want to by-pass Rapidshare 1 hour download limit, provided that you have a static IP address.

Speed-Up Internet In Firefox

2007-10-10T13:16:00.000-05:00

In this post, I tell you how to configure Firefox for Broadband. This makes you internet 2x faster. It works with bot Macs' and PCs'.

First go to firefox and type about:config in the address bar
In the filter text box, type network and scroll down until you see network.http.pipelining
Go to the value and change it to true (default:false)
In the below line (network.http.pipelining.maxrequests) change the value to 10 (default: 4)
Click ok and restart the firefox.

P.S: If you want to be a good netizen, leave it in default. Making this change would use more internet bandwidth.

Hack any computer with Windows

2007-10-10T13:07:00.000-05:00

Learn to hack any computer with windows without erasing the password.It works with VISTA. Please play the video again because it speeds up at the beginning of the video.

Restore Deleted Files

2007-10-10T12:33:00.000-05:00

Restore files which are deleted from the recycle bin or deleted while holding down the Shift key by mistake.

Simple Password Hacking

2007-10-10T12:24:00.000-05:00

Follow the tutorial in the video for an easy way to change somebodys account password without knowing it in the first place.

Does it work in the first place?
Sort of.....
Yes, you can change the password of the account you're currently logged on as, or of an account that you have just created (if you have said privileges) without being challenged for the old password. This is a security hole. (Good reason to never leave your system without first locking it!)But, to change any other account's password it will only work if the user you're logged in as is a Local (or Domain) Administrator. Otherwise, you get a denied error message. Would be a very serious security flaw otherwise.

How To Bypass Registration

2007-10-10T12:20:00.000-05:00

If a website is asking you to register inorder to view their content, here is the simple fix. Just go to http://www.bugmenot.com and enter the website name which you want to bypass registration. Simple to use and works on most websites.

Mind Blowing audio Illusion

2007-10-09T18:51:00.000-05:00

Click on replay again and again..... you'll feel it!

How to find your friends IP?

2007-10-09T14:32:00.000-05:00

To get someones IP (Internet Protocol) you need to have a direct connection from your computer to theirs. When you have a connection established (example: sending a song or image file to someone else(even cam)) open your MS-DOS window and type netstat -a or netstat -n ..This will list all current connections, their host names and IP addresses.

How To Use USB FlashDrives As RAM (VISTA ONLY)

2007-10-09T14:31:00.000-05:00

Windows Vista has a new performance feature called ReadyBoost. This feature enables the use of a USB storage device instead of the slow paging file on your hard disk when you're low on physical memory (RAM). The logic is simple - the USB storage device is faster than your hard disk drive.

In order for ReadyBoost to work in Windows Vista, your USB storage device must meet the following requirements:
- the device must have at least 64MB storage.
- the device must be USB 2.0 compatible.
- the device must have a minimum read speed of 3.5 MB/s.
- the device must have a minimum write speed of 2.5 MB/s.

Follow these steps to enable ReadyBoost:
1. Plug in USB storage device.
2. Go to Computer, right-click on the removable storage device and select Properties.
3. Click on the ReadyBoost tab.
4. Select Use This Device and set the amount of space to use for the system file.
5. Click OK.