IT Masala

The La Fonera router attaches to a Time Warner broadband Internet connection and becomes a FON Wi-Fi access point that supports 802.11b/g wireless. The La Fonera router has two separate wireless channels, one a secure channel for the owner, and the other an open channel for other Time Warner users that are part of the shared network.

what is FON ?  

According to founder Martin Varsavsky, „FON is a global community of people who share WiFi connections. We call these people "Foneros", as a tribute to our heritage as a Spanish company. In order to become a Fonero, you go to FON, to download software that you install in your router, you place your antenna by a window and you share bandwidth with other Foneros from anywhere in the world. You can also buy the FON Ready router from our web site, plug and play. FON creates a free WiFi roaming environment for those who contribute WiFi signals, namely those who have already signed up with a local ISP and downloaded our software into their WiFi routers.”

The users may sign up to FON in three ways:

they can be Bills, Linus or Aliens. Strange isn't it ? The explanation is quite simple:

- A Linus (who are called like this after Linus Torvalds) shares his/her bandwidth for free with other Foneros,

- Bills (of course named after Bill Gates) share their bandwidth for a small fee.

- Aliens who don't share their bandwidth at all.

La Fonera router is secure out-of-the-box and offers two distinct WiFi channels. One channel is for the exclusive use of its owner; the second channel is shared with other Foneros. The La Fonera increases security through an encrypted private network and Foneros decide how much bandwidth to share. Public users cannot access the private network and there is no anonymous usage.

Also see : [ Hacking the La Fonera ]

First to those who donna what is Hitwise . Hitwise is a company which collects Internet usage data directly from ISPs to measure the traffic to more than 800,000 Internet sites.

It has predicted the next six Web 2.0 companies most likely to reach the soaring success of YouTube, Wikipedia or Flickr.  The list includes Yelp, StumbleUpon, Veoh, WeeWorld, Imeem and Piczo. Hitwise announced its projections in San Francisco at the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo.

Here is in short on what these six Web 2.0 companies do:

• Yelp offers an online guide that allows users to rate various goods and services.
• StumbleUpon allows users to recommend Web sites to others with common interests.
• Veoh provides software to allow users to collect, publish and watch high definition videos.
• WeeWorld allows users to create a graphic alter ego to be used for online or mobile communications.
• Imeem is an online community to allow users to promote their content, blogs, music, photos and videos.
• Piczo is a site that allows users — it targets teenagers — to create their own customizable Web sites.

Wikipedia, the wiki-based encyclopaedia, is the one exception cited in the Hitwise study: 4.6 per cent of all visits to Wikipedia pages are to edit entries on the site.

Besides Wikipedia, other well-known Web 2.0 destinations are social network sites like MySpace and Facebook and photo-sharing site Photobucket.

Visits by web users to the category of participatory Web 2.0 sites account for 12 per cent of US web activity, up from only two per cent two years ago, the study showed.

[ Hitwise ]

According to OneDayBlogSilence.com:

Silence can say more then a thousand words.

This day shall unite us all about this unbelievable painful & shocking event and show some respect and love to those who lost their loved ones.

On April 30th 2007, the Blogosphere will hold a One-Day Blog Silence in honor towards the victims of Virginia. 33 died at the US college massacre.

The Blogosphere is in deep mourning.

All you have to do is spread the word about it and post the graphic on your blog on 30th April 2007. No words and no comments. Just respect and empathy.

Thousands of students are killed ever year by guns. Hope this day of silence will be extended to all those who die needlessly and for the ones who never get such tributes around the world.

On April 30th 2007, the Blogosphere will hold a One-Day Blog Silence in honor of the victims at Virginia Tech.  More then 30 died at the US college massacre.

This day can be a symbol of support to all the victims of our world!

via [ lorelle ] [ Get the Graphic ]

Google announced on Friday that it will acquire Internet advertising company DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash(the largest purchase in Google's history). The deal, which follows Google's $1.65 billion acquisition of video-sharing site YouTube by only six months, is thought by some analysts to have been expedited by the interest rival Microsoft showed in DoubleClick.

Google will integrate its targeted search-ad technology with DoubleClick's graphic display ad technology, allowing it to offer a wider array of options to advertising customers( like Time Warner's AOL and News Corp.'s MySpace) .

What is DoubleClick?

DoubleClick, which connects ad agencies and marketers with website publishers, was bought by private equity firm Hellman & Friedman for $1.1 billion in 2005.

The New York Times is reporting that DoubleClicks revenues are about $300 million/year.

Comments from blogsphere : 

Google watcher Donna Bogatin concludes:

Although Google reigns supreme in the category it catapulted to online advertising fame—PPC text ads—it has not achieved similar success with “image ad” serving.

The acquisition of a dedicated banner ad serving firm such as DoubleClick, with its established clientèle, would complete a virtuous circle of powered by Google online advertising:

Pay For Performance Text Ads,
Pay For Action Referral Ads,
Pay For Delivery Display Ads! 

Michael Arrington @ TechCrunch:

10x revenue for a mature company is a…healthy…valuation. At least part of the acquisition price appears to be due to a desire by Google to keep this asset out of Microsoft’s hands.

Discussions: Screenwerk, John Furrier, GigaOM, Basement.org, Search Engine Land and Leathern

The Storm Worm is back. The e-mail virus, which first attacked in January, has returned with a vengeance during the last 24 hours, boosting the amount of virus traffic on the Internet to as much as 60 times the normal amount. The Internet Storm Center reported detecting at least 20,000 infections today.

Detection :  Nine engines caught the virus, some of which are eTrust-Vet, Fortinet, F-Secure, McAfee and Webwasher-Gateway.

Effects of this Storm Virus:

Once installed on a personal computer, the virus takes control of the machine, sending personal information stored on the PC back to the online criminals who created the malicious program. It can also send itself out to the entire address book of the PC's owner, and turn it into a "zombie" machine sending out more spam.

Speciality : Unlike the original Storm malware, which was hidden in an executable file, this one is hidden in the encrypted zip file .So if they can't detect it , how can they stop it ?

Types of Spam Mails Sent : New Storm Worm variants showing up attached to e-mails with subjects such as "Virus Alert!" or "I dream of you".

Inside the e-mail is an image and an encrypted zip file. The image has the password needed to open the zip file.

Spreading : Only possibility of spreading is through peer-to-peer network, as a standalone pc cannot do any damage outside itself ! 

Caution : So don't open any unexpected e-mail attachments. Even if its sent from somebody you know , check before you open the attachments as the virus picks up email ids from the infected pc to send out spam mails.

Solution :  As this virus spreads only when a user opens an attachment , so it depends on the user , so cant patch all users mind , can we ? . So it solely depends on your common sense !

Most people are familiar with the Lord’s Prayer. Less known is the aXXo prayer, dedicated to the popular DVD ripper that goes by this name. (found this @ Torrent Freak)             

People who use Torrents & download dvdrips from famous torrent sites might know whom i am talking of …anyway ..here it goes !

Our Ripper, who art on mininova,
aXXo be thy name.
Thy torrents come.
Seeding will be done,
Here as it was on suprnova.
Give us this day our latest rips.
And forgive us our leeching,
As we forgive those that leech from us.
And lead us not on to private trackers;
But deliver us from the MPAA:
For thine is the ripping, the seeding, and the glory,
For ever and ever.

Amen…                                        - Courtesy of “the_dwarfer”

Long Live aXXo !  

Anti-spam specialist maps the spam world

Sophos has published its latest report on the top 12 spam relaying countries during the first quarter of 2007.  Experts at SophosLabs have revealed that yet again, the U.S. relayed considerably more spam than other nations, producing just less than one-fifth (19.8%) of the world's spam.

According to Sophos, the overall volume of spam increased about 4.2% during Q1 2007, when compared to the same period in 2006.

The top 12 spam relaying countries are as follows:

 January to March 2007

 1. United States 19.8%
 2. China (including Hong Kong) 7.5%
 3. Poland 7.4%
 4. South Korea 7.0%
 5. Italy 5.0%
 6. France 4.1%
 7. Germany 3.7%
 8. Spain 3.5%
 9. Brazil  3.1%
 10. Russia 3.0%
 11. India 2.8%
 12. Taiwan 2.5%
 Other 30.6%

"Although the U.S. continues its reign over the dirty dozen, it has reduced its output in the past 12 months," said Ron O'Brien, senior security analyst at Boston-based Sophos. "It's likely that computer users in the U.S. are growing wiser and securing their computers more thoroughly."

"Mobile spamming represents a new method for crooked marketers – many people are used to ignoring unsolicited email spam, but they don't necessarily expect it to turn up on their mobile phones," said O'Brien. "Users who receive spam on their mobile phones should call or email their network providers immediately. Although this type of spamming is on the rise, it only represents a small problem compared to email spam." 

via [ Sophos ]

Related Picture :

A nice picture showing the type of spam we get daily …. 

MySpace is at it again ! It has banned use of Photobucket pictures,videos into MySpace..

Photobucket, founded in 2003, has 39 million registered users and ranked 34th among comScore's top 50 U.S. Web properties in March, with almost 16.8 million unique visitors.

Photobucket ranks by far as the most popular photo sharing site in the U.S. with 41.4 percent of visits to sites in that category in March, according to Hitwise.

Photobucket, which lets users store photos, slide shows, videos and graphics on its servers and then link them to other Web sites, receives almost 57 percent of its upstream traffic from MySpace, according to Hitwise.

Photobucket even had exclusive pages like "The most popular myspace icons on Photobucket" etc…

Likely Reason:

Not a word still from News Corp. as to why; though Mike Arrington @ TechCrunch said that it may be because Photobucket is looking for a buyer. Where the photo and video sharing service is to fall into the hands of one of MySpace's main competitors — say Google or another big media company.

From Photobucket's official blog:

MySpace became successful because of the creativity of you, its users, and because it offered a forum for self-expression. By severely restricting this freedom, MySpace is showing that it considers you as a commodity which it can treat as it sees fit.

Is this a bad news to the mashups going on ??How is this ban affecting the users on MySpace ?? Is it too much restrcition?? pour in your comments

1969: The publication of the first “request for comments,” or RFC, documents paves the way for the birth of the internet.

April 7 is often cited as a symbolic birth date of the net because the RFC memoranda contain research, proposals and methodologies applicable to internet technology. RFC documents provide a way for engineers and others to kick around new ideas in a public forum; sometimes, these ideas are adopted as new standards by the Internet Engineering Task Force.

One interesting aspect of the RFC is that each document is issued a unique serial number. An individual paper cannot be overwritten; rather, updates or corrections are submitted on a separate RFC. The result is an ongoing historical record of the evolution of internet standards.

When it comes to the birth of the net, Jan. 1, 1983, also has its supporters. On that date, the National Science Foundation’s university network backbone, a precursor to the World Wide Web, became operational.

(Source: Various)

There are problems with the patch Microsoft released Tuesday for a critical .ANI vulnerability, and hackers have launched a new spam campaign to take advantage of the flaw.

There are problems with the update Microsoft released Tuesday for a critical .ANI vulnerability, and hackers have launched a new spam campaign to take advantage of the flaw by promising nude pictures of Britney Spears to lure users to malicious sites.

Deborah Hale, a handler with the Internet Storm Center, reported in the site's daily diary on Wednesday that researchers there are receiving reports of users having problems with the patch, which Microsoft pushed out a week earlier than its normal monthly Patch Tuesday release. Microsoft confirmed a problem with the patch and provided a hotfix, or a patch for the patch, when the patch was first released.

Hale noted that other issues have arisen, as well, and Microsoft is investigating them.

Sophos reported in an advisory that the malicious site contains the Iffy-A Trojan that points to another piece of malware, which contains the zero-day .ANI exploit. Sophos detects this Trojan as Animoo-L.

"The message is simple: You must patch your computers against this vulnerability now or risk infection," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, in a statement. "Hackers are exploiting people's tardiness in rolling out updates and looking to infect as many PCs as they can. Microsoft issued a patch for the problem yesterday, but the hackers will continue to take advantage of the critical security loophole for as long as they can."

Problem :

The .ANI vulnerability involves the way Windows handles animated cursor files and could enable a hacker to remotely take control of an infected system. The bug affects all the recent Windows releases, including its new Vista operating system. Internet Explorer is the main attack vector for the exploits.

Effects of that Problem : 

Users are being infected after visiting a malicious Web page that has embedded malware designed to take advantage of the flaw. They also can be infected if they open a specially crafted e-mail message or if they open a malicious e-mail attachment sent by a hacker.

Solution :

Meanwhile, security firm eEye Digital Security Inc. has brought out an unofficial and temporary fix for the problem.

Who is spreading the attack code :

It is suspected that several websites, including at least two hosted in China, are offering the attack code that exploits the bug. 

via [ IW ]