Android..Google's mobile revolution

Posted by Shashank Krishna Saturday, February 21, 2009

What is Android?

Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications. This beta version of the Android SDK provides the tools and APIs necessary to begin developing applications on the Android platform using the Java programming language.


Features

  • Application framework enabling reuse and replacement of components
  • Dalvik virtual machine optimized for mobile devices
  • Integrated browser based on the open source WebKit engine
  • Optimized graphics powered by a custom 2D graphics library; 3D graphics based on the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification (hardware acceleration optional)
  • SQLite for structured data storage
  • Media support for common audio, video, and still image formats (MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG, GIF)
  • GSM Telephony (hardware dependent)
  • Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G, and WiFi (hardware dependent)
  • Camera, GPS, compass, and accelerometer (hardware dependent)
  • Rich development environment including a device emulator, tools for debugging, memory and performance profiling, and a plugin for the Eclipse IDE

Android Architecture

The following diagram shows the major components of the Android operating system. Each section is described in more detail below.

Android System Architecture

For more info please CLICK HERE
Before you leave, please promote this article with your favorite bookmarking site using the Share/save button! AND DO please give your valuable comment
Share/Save/Bookmark
Subscribe

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

list of useful sites..part2

Posted by Shashank Krishna Wednesday, February 18, 2009

list of useful sites...

Posted by Shashank Krishna

http://www.tutorialized.com/

http://www.alltheweb.com

http://node.6x.to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.torrentspy.com


very good hacking ebook that has stories of phreaks, hackers, and virus coders from when the scene started.. to when the first busts and raids of Sun Devil started.
ftp.cdut.edu.cn/pub/document/book/ApproachingZeroHacker.pdf

w32 asm and c++ tutorials on winsock and other stuff
http://www.madwizard.org/view.php?page=tutorials.contents

hack tv show
http://www.hacktv.org/

Essential Pascal teaches the basics of delphi/pascal
http://envhort.ucdavis.edu/HRT251/Lab/Epascal/default.htm

http://www.docdroppers.org/wiki/index.php?title=Phreaking

http://www.z4ck.org

packetstorms section on diffrent phone systems
http://www.packetstormsecurity.org/misc/telephony/

nod32 the best anti-virus..
http://www.eset.com


http://www.linuxiso.org/


defcon has lots of good videos and presentations from meetings
http://www.defcon.org

http://www.phrack.org/

http://www.phreaksandgeeks.com

http://www.oldskoolphreak.com

http://www.phreakphactor.net <----good phone phreaking talk show

http://www.phreakvids.com <---damn good phreaking/hacking videos on famous phreaks and hackers like Steve Wozniak, Captain Crunch, Denny Teresi, Kevin Mitnick.

http://www.hackthissite.org

http://www.artofhacking.com <------lots of hacking and phreaking information, also home of the new software orange box, a phone phreaking software that can spoof CID(caller id)

http://www.informationleak.com

http://www.freeprogrammingresources.com

http://www.americasleastwanted.com <----lots of pdf manuels and documents on phone switches, PBX and VMB systens(voice mail box) and ATM machines. Has a very decent documents for Nortel DMS-100 phone switch information

http://spth.host.sk/main.htm <----has virus related information

TONS of video tutorials regarding various kinds of hacking:

http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=securit...kingillustrated

Home of the Auditor Boot CD and Backtrack:

http://www.remote-exploit.org

http://quequero.org/ the best in Italy for Reverse Engineering
N.B, it is italian based but does have english.

programing tutorials

tutorials about every thing

More programing

Log in names

http://milw0rm.com is a good one. (exploits, etc.)

insecure.org/nmap -- nmap port scanner, so STOP ASKING WHERE TO GET A GOOD PORT SCANNER, DAMMIT

http://www.netcraft.com

http://www.dnsstuff.com

http://www.thinkgeek.com

http://www.rohitab.com

http://packetstorm.linuxsecurity.com

http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm

http://www.hackerslab.org/eorg/hackingzone/hackingzone.htm

BlockStatus.com
This site lets you check if msn / aim / yahoo users have blocked you. Also has a few good internet tools.

Google.com - Proxy Sites
List of sites that help you go undetected on sites, can also get around blocked sites.

Wikipedia.org - AOL Vandals
A brief description of what to do with AOL "vandals" and how to identify them; shows all aol ip ranges.

I am adding these two I came across, because they are very useful and some people, especially newbies will find then helpful.

TextFiles.com
Tutorials in many categories; virus, hacking, phreaking, etc.

DarkNet.org.uk - Web Docs
Tutorials for many web categories, like cracking, hacking, exploiting, viruses.

www.google.com
www.astalavista.com

Virus Assembly Book How-To's

http://www.google.com/gwt/n

http://www.planet-source-code.com

very usefull programming website with over 15 languages 100s of thousands of sources codes to help you on anything
Before you leave, please promote this article with your favorite bookmarking site using the Share/save button! AND DO please give your valuable comment
Share/Save/Bookmark
Subscribe

Windows programming...basics part1

Posted by Shashank Krishna

Ok, Let's get started.
Before moving onto GUI programming with C++ I expect you know quite a bit regarding C++ console programming. If not then go back. Don't

read this unless you are confident with your C++. You should at least know what are pointers, arrays, classes and how to create a switch()

statement.

NB: In order for you to compile the following programs, you are going to need a C++/C compiler. I won't go into the details of all of this. Go

and read a basic C++/C tutorial which will explain all you need to know about the basics.

>Your First glimpse at a Win32 application:

CODE
#include

int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow) {
MessageBox (NULL, "Hello World" , "Tutorial", 0);
return 0;
}


Whoa! What is all that garbage. An explanation:

int WinMain is the windows equivalent of int main() in a console app. This is where the program starts when you compile your program.

WinMain() accepts the following parameters:

1. hInstance -Identifies the programs current instance.
2. hPrevInstance -Identifies the previous instance of the program. For a Win32 application, this parameter is always NULL.
3. lpCmdLine -Holds the command line arguments in a string. (Equivelant of argv[1] argv[2] in a console application)
4. nCmdShow -Value to be passed to the ShowWindow() API.

Notice the things like LPSTR in the parameter list. These are windows specific definitions. LPSTR is the same as char *. These things are

there to increase portability. You can use which ever one you prefer. Both char * and LPSTR will work.

MessageBox is a function that can be used to display a ...... MessageBox. tongue.gif
It accepts the following parameters:

1. hWnd -Identifies the owner of the MessageBox that will be created. If this is set to NULL then the MessageBox will have no owner

window.

2. lpText -This is the text that you want to be displayed in the MessageBox.
3. lpCaption -This is caption text of your MessageBox
4. uType -This parameter allows you to customize your MessageBox. Eg: display a warning or information icon.

Ok, now that that is done let's get down to REAL GUI programming.

>Creating a Simple Window:

Here is the source to a simple window:

CODE
#include

LRESULT CALLBACK WndProc(HWND, UINT, WPARAM, LPARAM);

static char sClassName[] = "MyClass";
static HINSTANCE zhInstance = NULL;

int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow) {
WNDCLASSEX WndClass;
HWND hwnd;
MSG Msg;

zhInstance = hInstance;

WndClass.cbSize = sizeof(WNDCLASSEX);
WndClass.style = NULL;
WndClass.lpfnWndProc = WndProc;
WndClass.cbClsExtra = 0;
WndClass.cbWndExtra = 0;
WndClass.hInstance = zhInstance;
WndClass.hIcon = LoadIcon(NULL, IDI_APPLICATION);
WndClass.hCursor = LoadCursor(NULL, IDC_ARROW);
WndClass.hbrBackground = (HBRUSH)(COLOR_WINDOW+1);
WndClass.lpszMenuName = NULL;
WndClass.lpszClassName = sClassName;
WndClass.hIconSm = LoadIcon(NULL, IDI_APPLICATION);

if(!RegisterClassEx(&WndClass)) {
MessageBox(0, "Error Registering Class!", "Error!", MB_ICONSTOP | MB_OK);
return 0;
}

hwnd = CreateWindowEx(WS_EX_STATICEDGE, sClassName, "db Tutorial", WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW, CW_USEDEFAULT,

CW_USEDEFAULT,
320, 240, NULL, NULL, zhInstance, NULL);

if(hwnd == NULL) {
MessageBox(0, "Error Creating Window!", "Error!", MB_ICONSTOP | MB_OK);
return 0;
}

ShowWindow(hwnd, nCmdShow);
UpdateWindow(hwnd);

while(GetMessage(&Msg, NULL, 0, 0)) {
TranslateMessage(&Msg);
DispatchMessage(&Msg);
}

return Msg.wParam;
}

LRESULT CALLBACK WndProc(HWND hwnd, UINT Message, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam) {
switch(Message) {
case WM_CLOSE:
DestroyWindow(hwnd);
break;
case WM_DESTROY:
PostQuitMessage(0);
break;
default:
return DefWindowProc(hwnd, Message, wParam, lParam);
}
return 0;
}


That does look confusing doesn't it? ;D. Well .... don't worry. You don't need to memorize all of this. Most people just create this once, then

save it as a seperate .cpp/.c file. Then, whenever they are creating a GUI application they just copy the code over to their application. This is

the skeleton of a GUI program.

Now lets get down to explaining all that stuff:

Windows programs unlike console applications are event driven. They remain idle until they recieve a message. Once they get a message,

they act on the message and then wait for the next message. When a windows application responds to a message it's called "Message

Handling"
.

As you can see I declared a prototype of my WndProc() function at the begining. It will be explained later.
Inside the WinMain() we see some strange new variables. Some of them include WndClass, hwnd and msg. Now, the msg struct contains

information from a threads message queue. The next thing we come to is when the hInstance is made global in the variable zhInstance. After

that we come to the defining of each of the WndClass settings:

1. cbSize -Holds the size of this structure in bytes, Always set this to the size of WndClassEx or WndClass.
2. style -The style of our window. For now just set it to NULL.
3. lpfnWndProc -This points to our Windows Callback Procedure ie: "WndProc".
4. cbClsExtra -The amount of extra data to be allocated for this class in memory. Set this to 0.
5. cbWndExtra -Amount of extra data to be allocated in memory per Window. Again, set this to 0
6. hInstance -The handle for the window instance.
7. hIcon -The icon that will be displayed when the users presses ALT+TAB. Don't worry too much about this at the moment.
8. hCursor -The cursor that will be used in our program. Again don't worry about this now.
9. hbrBackround -The brush that we will use to set the colour of our backround.
10. lpszMenuName -The name of the menu resource to use. We will not cover menu's in this tutorial, so set it to NULL.
11. lpszClassName -The name to identify the class with.
12. hIconSm -The small icon show in the top-left cornor of our program and in the taskbar.

Once we've filled in all that information, we need to "Register" our window class. So, we pass on our WndClass structure to RegisterClass or

RegisterClassEx.

Now, we need to actually create the window. We will use the CreateWindow() or CreateWindowEx() API to create our window. We store it in

hwnd which will later be passed onto ShowWindow(). CreateWindowEx() takes the following parameters:

dwExStyle -Tells it what style of window we want. We will use a plain static window.
lpClassName -Points to the classname we came up with earlier on.
lpWindowName -The titlebar text of our window.
dwStyle -The style of window we are creating.
x -The horizontal starting position of the window. Setting this to CW_USEDEFAULT will let windows pick a place.
y -The verticle starting position of our window. Again, Setting this to CW_USEDEFAULT will place the window randomly
nWidth -Width of our window.
nHeight -Height of our window.
hWndParent -The handle of the parent window. For now just set this to NULL since we don't have a parent.
hMenu -Identifies the menu for out window. Only applies if it's a child window.
hInstance -The hInstance of our window.
lpParam -Points to a value passed to the window through the CREATESTRUCT structure.

Now.... ShowWindow() sets our windows state. UpdateWindow() updates the client area of our window by sending a WM_PAINT message to

our window. The while() loop will set our program to loop until the WM_QUIT or WM_DESTROY message is recieved. TranslateMessage() will

translate virtual key messages into character messages. DispatchMessage() will dispatch a message to a windows procedure.

WH0000!!! I'm really tired now but wtf? tongue.gif
Let's get to the most important part of our program. Our CallBack Procedure. What this is, is a function with a beeeeg giant switch()

statement to switch of what each message should do. Our CallBack takes the following parameters:

hwnd -Identifies our window.
uMsg -Specified the message.
wParam -Specifies the aditional message information. The contents of this value depends on the value of the uMsg.
lParam -Specifies additonal message info. Again the contents of this value depends on uMsg.

Now, in our switch() statement we see a WM_CLOSE. This message tells us if our user clicked the 'X' button in our program or they hit

ALT+F4. By using WM_CLOSE we can prompt the user if he wants to save his current work or whatever.

OK FOLKS.... thats it. A Basic C++ GUI tutorial. Maybe if i'm bored one day, I will post a more advanced tutorial covering text, buttons and other l33t things.

Before you leave, please promote this article with your favorite bookmarking site using the Share/save button! AND DO please give your valuable comment
Share/Save/Bookmark
Subscribe

Programming in windows...message box

Posted by Shashank Krishna Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Recently i had started writing apps for windows.....n what a crap work.....
below is a code just for generating a small message box


#include windows.h

INT WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE, PSTR, INT iCmdShow)
{
MessageBox
(
NULL,
TEXT("You've started programming Windows"),
TEXT("Message Output Box"),
1
);
return 0;
}




Before you leave, please promote this article with your favorite bookmarking site using the Share/save button! AND DO please give your valuable comment
Share/Save/Bookmark
Subscribe

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Nseries Music library refreshing problems

Posted by Shashank Krishna

Hello again. This time I want to touch on an issue that has been common to all Nseries devices since the N91 introduced the Music Player that most Nseries device share.

I'm talking about the Music Library.

This library contains all the Artist, Album Art, etc. contained in the MetaData of the Music Files.

When you use Windows Media Player and sync (using Media Player USB mode) AKA MTP the Library is automatically updated.

When you drag and drop you need to manually update the Library.

But sometimes something goes wrong and the Update Libraryoperation either doesn't find the songs, hangs, or otherwise fails.

When this happens the most common thing is that the Library may have become corrupted and you need to delete certain files. But which files?

Well after some testing I came to find that these are the files that need deleting in order to get rid of the corrupted library.

Storage Drives: (Mass storage E, Memory Card F)

\private\101ffca9\harvesterdbvx_x.dat

\private\10281e17\[string]mpxvx_x.db

\private\10281e17\[string]pcvx_x.db

  • TIP: Connect the device in USB mass storage mode (File Transfer), to locate the private folder from the PC.
  • TIP: STRING and x_x will change depending on your phone.
After you've done this, then you should be able to re-scan and re-create the Music Library.

As always if you have questions and comments, leave a comment.

Cheers!

Before you leave, please promote this article with your favorite bookmarking site using the Share/save button! AND DO please give your valuable comment
Share/Save/Bookmark
Subscribe

HDD slowdown when booting

Posted by Shashank Krishna Wednesday, February 11, 2009

HDD slowdown when booting

Download Bootvis from www.microsoft.com and run it the next time you boot. Do a 'Trace'
If it shows a very long 'HDD init' time of minutes rather than seconds then this is how to fix it.

This example assumes you have 1 Hard drive on your primary IDE channel and a DVD-ROM(or CD)
and CD-R on your two secondary IDE channels.

Go to start > right click on my computer > click properties. Click Hardware > Device Manager.

Go to IDE/ATAPI Controllers. Select primary channel. Right click properties. Click the Advance settings tab. Then on the device (0 or 1)that does not have 'device type' greyed out select 'disable' instead of 'autodetect'. This should stop windows trying to find a drive that isn't there.

If you have your IDE channels set up differently simply repat the above for the secondary IDE channel settings.

When I did this my boot time went from 3mins 20 to 35 seconds.
Before you leave, please promote this article with your favorite bookmarking site using the Share/save button! AND DO please give your valuable comment
Share/Save/Bookmark
Subscribe
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Getting More Processing Power

Posted by Shashank Krishna

Getting More Processing Power

"In the Run box, type "Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks". This frees up any idle tasks running in the background so that Windows XP can devote its full attention to what you want it to do. For example playing graphic intensive games."

While it DOES free up idle tasks, according to Microsoft, it can take up to 15 minutes to do so. You would not want to run this task before playing a game or using your machine as it will actually cause any tasks waiting for the system to become idle to be performed immediately.

Quote from Microsoft:

"When called from the command line, the ProcessIdleTasks work is done in the background asynchronously. It can take 10 to 15 minutes for idle tasks to complete. Task Manager will report processes running, and the disk will likely be active during this time"

The complete article can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/platform/performance/benchmark.mspx


Note: As the name suggests Idle Tasks are performed only when the computer is idle, anyways.
Before you leave, please promote this article with your favorite bookmarking site using the Share/save button! AND DO please give your valuable comment
Share/Save/Bookmark
Subscribe

Getting More Processing Power

Posted by Shashank Krishna

Getting More Processing Power

"In the Run box, type "Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks". This frees up any idle tasks running in the background so that Windows XP can devote its full attention to what you want it to do. For example playing graphic intensive games."

While it DOES free up idle tasks, according to Microsoft, it can take up to 15 minutes to do so. You would not want to run this task before playing a game or using your machine as it will actually cause any tasks waiting for the system to become idle to be performed immediately.

Quote from Microsoft:

"When called from the command line, the ProcessIdleTasks work is done in the background asynchronously. It can take 10 to 15 minutes for idle tasks to complete. Task Manager will report processes running, and the disk will likely be active during this time"

The complete article can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hwdev/platform/performance/benchmark.mspx


Note: As the name suggests Idle Tasks are performed only when the computer is idle, anyways.
Before you leave, please promote this article with your favorite bookmarking site using the Share/save button! AND DO please give your valuable comment
Share/Save/Bookmark
Subscribe

Faster Dual Boot Timeout

Posted by Shashank Krishna

This tweak is useful if you boot to the default OS most of the time and only boot to the other OS's on a limited basis.

1)Locate and Open the hidden file "boot.ini" in notepad or your favorite text editor. This file will likely be in the root directory on the boot partition of your "master" HD. For example, mine is located in "C:\boot.ini" even though I have Win98 loaded on this partition and the boot.ini file was generated when I loaded WinXP on "D:/"

2) Locate the line - timeout=30 (default is 30 seconds). Change this value to any time desired. I chose 10. Be careful not to choose too low of a setting or you may not have time to select your other OS's. Also, be careful not to change other lines as this may prevent your PC from booting at all.

3)Save the file. The next time you boot your PC, the changes will take effect.


Note: You can also adjust this in Control Panel > System > Advanced > Startup and Recovery > Settings > Time to display list of operating systems


Before you leave, please promote this article with your favorite bookmarking site using the Share/save button! AND DO please give your valuable comment
Share/Save/Bookmark
Subscribe

Faster Dual Boot Timeout

Posted by Shashank Krishna

This tweak is useful if you boot to the default OS most of the time and only boot to the other OS's on a limited basis.

1)Locate and Open the hidden file "boot.ini" in notepad or your favorite text editor. This file will likely be in the root directory on the boot partition of your "master" HD. For example, mine is located in "C:\boot.ini" even though I have Win98 loaded on this partition and the boot.ini file was generated when I loaded WinXP on "D:/"

2) Locate the line - timeout=30 (default is 30 seconds). Change this value to any time desired. I chose 10. Be careful not to choose too low of a setting or you may not have time to select your other OS's. Also, be careful not to change other lines as this may prevent your PC from booting at all.

3)Save the file. The next time you boot your PC, the changes will take effect.


Note: You can also adjust this in Control Panel > System > Advanced > Startup and Recovery > Settings > Time to display list of operating systems


Before you leave, please promote this article with your favorite bookmarking site using the Share/save button! AND DO please give your valuable comment
Share/Save/Bookmark
Subscribe

Launch apps with desired priority setting

Posted by Shashank Krishna

Launch apps with desired priority setting

Let's say you have a game installed called HIGH NEEDS and the executable is called HN.exe

Here's what to do:

-Create a new textfile in the game-app wathever-directory (let's say C:\HN), but instead of giving it the .txt extension you name it HN.bat
-Right-click this file and choose 'Edit', you'll see it'll open notepad. Put this line in:
cmd /c start /High HN.exe
-Save (make sure you save it as .bat, not as .txt) and close.

Now create a shortcut to this file and place it on your desktop. Every time you doubleclick this shortcut HIGH NEEDS will open with priority set to 'high'. (ofcourse you can also create a batchfile on your desktop, containing the full path of the app you want to start but the nice thing of creating a shortcut is you can give it an icon).

These are all the settings: Realtime, High, AboveNormal, Normal, BelowNormal, Low.

*Realtime is not recommended unless you have a dual-CPU system!
Before you leave, please promote this article with your favorite bookmarking site using the Share/save button! AND DO please give your valuable comment
Share/Save/Bookmark
Subscribe

Launch apps with desired priority setting

Posted by Shashank Krishna

Launch apps with desired priority setting

Let's say you have a game installed called HIGH NEEDS and the executable is called HN.exe

Here's what to do:

-Create a new textfile in the game-app wathever-directory (let's say C:\HN), but instead of giving it the .txt extension you name it HN.bat
-Right-click this file and choose 'Edit', you'll see it'll open notepad. Put this line in:
cmd /c start /High HN.exe
-Save (make sure you save it as .bat, not as .txt) and close.

Now create a shortcut to this file and place it on your desktop. Every time you doubleclick this shortcut HIGH NEEDS will open with priority set to 'high'. (ofcourse you can also create a batchfile on your desktop, containing the full path of the app you want to start but the nice thing of creating a shortcut is you can give it an icon).

These are all the settings: Realtime, High, AboveNormal, Normal, BelowNormal, Low.

*Realtime is not recommended unless you have a dual-CPU system!
Before you leave, please promote this article with your favorite bookmarking site using the Share/save button! AND DO please give your valuable comment
Share/Save/Bookmark
Subscribe

Manually crash Windows XP

Posted by Shashank Krishna

Windows-XP has a "feature" (???) with which it is possible to manually crash a system by simply holding the right CTRL key and pressing the "Scroll Lock" key twice. This feature can be turned on by the following steps:

1. Start regedit. (If you are unfamiliar with regedit, please refer to this FAQ)
2. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters
3. Create a new DWORD value and name it CrashOnCtrlScroll
4. Right-click on this newly created value and click on Modify
5. Enter 1 in the Value data field and click on OK.
6. Close regedit and reboot your system.
7. Now you can blue screen (crash) your system by holding the right CTRL key and pressing "Scroll Lock" twice.

Note:

Your system may reboot or show a blue screen whenever this crash is initiated. If your system reboots after initiating the crash, and you want to see the blue screen, follow these steps:

1. Go to Control Panel > System
2. Click on the Advanced tab
3. Under Startup and Recovery, click the Settings button.
4. Under System failure, uncheck the option Automatically restart.

Happy crashing...


Before you leave, please promote this article with your favorite bookmarking site using the Share/save button! AND DO please give your valuable comment
Share/Save/Bookmark
Subscribe

If you wish to disable the Autoplay feature for USB Drives & Audio CDs, here are some ways you can do it in Windows Vista:

1) Type gpedit.msc in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER to open the Group Policy Editor.

Under Computer Configuration > expand Administrative Templates > expand Windows Components > click Autoplay Policies.

In the RHS Details pane, double-click Turn off Autoplay to open the Properties box.

Click Enabled, and then select All drives in the Turn off Autoplay on box to disable Autorun on all drives.

Restart.

Additional Read:
How to selectively disable specific Autorun features and more on KB953252.

2) You can also open the Control Panel

Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > AutoPlay

and set the options as per your preferences.

3) The same can be achieved by editing the Registry.
Run regedit and navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
In the RHS, create a new dword and rename it to NoDriveTypeAutoRun.
Rt click on it and give it a decimal value 225 (or Hexadecimal value 000000FF)
Exit regedit. Reboot.
This will disable AutoRun on all drives
If you wish you may download this .reg fix and double click it and add the entries to your registry.
For more information and options visit Technet.

Before you leave, please promote this article with your favorite bookmarking site using the Share/save button! AND DO please give your valuable comment
Share/Save/Bookmark
Subscribe

Rise of the Conficker worm.(windows)

Posted by Shashank Krishna


Jan 20th, 2009. The Conficker worm seems to have run amuck, the latest being the case of 8000 PCs of a Sheffield hospital having been infected.

The Conficker (Kido, Downandup or Downadup) is a malicious polymorphic worm that spreads through low security networks, memory sticks, and PCs without the latest security updates. Over 9 Million PCs have so far been infected, making it one of the most widespread infections in recent times. It has the potential of creating the world's biggest Botnet. It can be used by hackers and spammers to steal users’ login details and credit card information, and even to re-route web traffic to disguise criminal activity, say security experts.

Conficker disables a number of system services such as Windows Automatic Update, Windows Security Center, Windows Defender and Windows Error Reporting. It then connects to a server, where it receives further orders to propagate, gather personal information, and downloads and installs additional malware onto the victim's computer. The worm also attaches itself to certain critical Windows processes such as svchost.exe, explorer.exe and services.exe.

Microsoft had discovered this vulnerability which the Conficker worm exploits before the worm actually surfaced & addressed it at the end of October 2008 with Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-067. Users who applied that security update would have been protected against the worm.
Confiker Virus

Conficker basically carries out a social engineering trick. When you insert a USB stick you get a dialog box asking what is to be done. One of the options in the dialog box is "Open folder to view files". This could actually be an "autorun.inf" option created by Conficker. Autorun isn't disabled by default. So perhaps you want to disable it for some time.

This Social engineering autoplay trick helps infect Vista as well as Windows 7 too. Windows 7 is still in development, so there might still be time to modify how AutoPlay works in order to limit the scope for social engineering attacks.

To protect against the Conficker worm family, Microsoft recommends that users ensure their anti virus protection is up to date with the latest definition and install Microsoft's MS08-067 patch and all latest security WindowsUpdates. The latest Malicious Software Removal Tool also now has this capability.


Before you leave, please promote this article with your favorite bookmarking site using the Share/save button! AND DO please give your valuable comment
Share/Save/Bookmark
Subscribe
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Figure 2 - Display OS info on Your Desktop

UPDATE: V 1.1 is now available with 20 more tweaks! Howard Lo, Microsoft’s Regional Team Manager (APAC) released Ultimate Windows Tweaker, a Tweak UI for Windows Vista at the South Asia MVP Meet 2008. Windows Guides readers can get their hands on a copy, which does not need installation and is only 370kb. The program lets you apply over 130 tweaks without using the registry once!

Figure 1 - Configure Computer Information

Figure 1 - Configure Computer Information

Using Ultimate Windows Tweaker is easy and you will be surprised at how much you can do.

I changed my computer information (figure 1) to a more mintywhite kind of computer, and I even changed the OEM logo to a Windows Guides one by saving my logo as a BMP file and selecting it. See figure 4 for an example of how this looks on the system information screen.

As you can see from the enlarged screenshot, you can also change your context menu, shortcut specifics and more–and that’s only one screen. This really is Vista’s answer to XP’s Tweak UI.

Figure 2 - Display OS info on Your Desktop

Figure 2 - Display OS info on Your Desktop

One of the many options to choose from is the ability to display your OS information on your desktop (figure 2.) This is useful for me as I run Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Seven all on one machine and I often need a sanity check to ensure I’m in the right OS. These are just a few of over 130 tweaks you can apply to your Windows Vista operating system.

Figure 3 - Apply Changes

Figure 3 - Apply Changes

You can then apply the changes, and after a log off and log on (figure 3), you can see the results of your work (figure 4.) Grab yourself a copy today!


Figure 3 - Apply Changes

Figure 4 - See Your Changes

Ultimate Windows Tweaker


Before you leave, please promote this article with your favorite bookmarking site using the Share/save button! AND DO please give your valuable comment
Share/Save/Bookmark
Subscribe
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Are You Planning on Quitting Facebook? Why?

@Flickr

www.flickr.com

About Me

My Photo
Shashank Krishna
Bangalore, up, India
nothin much to say.........doin B.tech in IIIT allahabad loves bloggingn hacking.... :) and loooves blogging
View my complete profile

ads2

topads