Windows 8 Developer Pre BETA : How to get full screen on a VM?

In continuation with my earlier post here about windows 8 Pre Beta edition,one thing that bugged me for a while was not getting the display across full screen in spite of choosing "view full screen" from drop down.The answer to this goes like this

..SIMPLY CHOOSE A HIGHER RESOLUTION AND U WILL GET IT....

Simple to get till u know!!!!!!!!!!!

Windows 8 Developer Preview : Pre Beta Version for Developers

I recently downloaded the Windows 8 Preview Developer edition from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516 and then tried running it as a virtual machine.Found the following issues :

- does not run on VMWARE 7

- runs on VMWARE 8

- Donno y...but runs at a pathetic speed on VMWARE 8 inspite of a good resourceful machine with upto 1.5 GB of RAM.

- Even on installation on VMWARE 8...doesnt show the NIC card so it has no access to Internet.So no updates.

- Runs at a horse's pace in VIRTUAL BOX.

- No NIC issues in virtual box.

DUQU's MICROSOFT LINK!!!

1.   While as on date the security and anti virus teams and experts across the globe are racing to find and unlock the details on DUQU,some useful information on the subject bug has been released by Microsoft,which says that hackers exploited a previously unknown bug in its Windows operating system to infect computers with the Duqu virus."We are working diligently to address this issue and will release a security update for customers," Microsoft said.But on the other hand the odds are that Microsoft won't patch the Windows kernel bug next week that the Duqu remote-access Trojan exploits to plant itself on targeted PCs.

2.   Meanwhile,Symantec researchers said they consider hackers sent the virus to targeted victims via emails with infected Microsoft Word documents attached. If a recipient opened the Word document and infected the PC, the attacker could take control of the machine and reach into an organization's network to propagate itself and hunt for data, Symantec researcher Kevin Haley told Reuters. 

3. Thanks http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com and http://www.computerworld.com

HOW DO U FIND IF YOUR PC IS HACKED?- PART 6

FIND COMMAND

1.   Most of the commands I have discussed so far spew a lot of output on the screen, which could be hard for a human to look through to find a specific item of interest. But, Windows comes to the rescue. Users can search through the output of a command using the built-in find and findstr commands in Windows. The find command looks for simple strings, while findstr supports regular expressions, a more complex way to specify search patterns. Because the regular expressions supported by findstr go beyond the scope of this tip article, let's focus on the find command. By default, find is case sensitive - use the /i option to make it case insensitive.

2.    The find command also has the ability to count. Invoked with the /c command,it'll count the number of lines of its output that include a given string.Users often want to count the number of lines in the output of a command to determine how many processes are running, how many startup items are present  or a variety of other interesting tidbits on a machine. To count the lines of output, users could simply pipe their output through find /c /v "". This command will count (/c) the number of lines that do not have (/v) a blank line ("") in them. By counting the number of non-blank lines, the command is,in effect, counting the number of lines.

3.  Now, with the find command, users can look through the output of each of the commands I've discussed so far to find interesting tidbits. For example , to look at information every second about cmd.exe processes running on a machine, type:

C:\> wmic process list brief /every:1 | find "cmd.exe"

Or, to see which autostart programs are associated with the registry hive H KLM, run:

C:\> wmic startup list brief | find /i "hklm"

To count the number of files open on a machine on which openfiles accounting is activated, type:

C:\> openfiles /query /v | find /c /v ""

Whenever counting items in this way, remember to subtract the number of lines associated with column headers. And, as a final example, to see with one-second accuracy when TCP port 2222 starts being used on a machine, along with the process ID using the port, run:

C:\> netstat -nao 1 | find "2222"

THANKS www.amazingit.blogspot.com

HOW DO U FIND IF YOUR PC IS HACKED?- PART 5

NETSTAT COMMAND

1.  The Windows netstat command shows network activity, focusing on TCP and UDP by default. Because malware often communicates across the network, users can look for unusual and unexpected connections in the output of netstat, run as follows:

C:\> netstat –nao

2.  The -n option tells netstat to display numbers in its output, not the names of machines and protocols, and instead shows IP addresses and TCP or UDP port numbers. The -a indicates to display all connections and listening ports. The -o option tells netstat to show the processID number of each program interacting with a TCP or UDP port. If, instead of TCP and UDP, you are in interested in ICMP, netstat can be run as follows:

C:\> netstat -s -p icmp

3.   This indicates that the command will return statistics (-s) of the ICMP protocol. Although not as detailed as the TCP and UDP output, users can see if a machine is sending frequent and unexpected ICMP traffic on the network. Some backdoors and other malware communicate using the payload of ICMP Echo messages, the familiar and innocuous-looking ping packets seen on most networks periodically.

4.  Like WMIC, the netstat command also lets us run it every N seconds. But, instead of using the WMIC syntax of "/every:[N]", users simply follow their netstat invocation with a space and an integer. Thus, to list the TCP and UDP ports in use on a machine every 2 seconds, users can run:

C:\> netstat -na 2

HOW DO U FIND IF YOUR PC IS HACKED?- PART 4

OPENFILES COMMAND

1.  Many Windows administrators are unfamiliar with the powerful openfiles command built into Windows. As its name implies, this command shows all files that are opened on the box, indicating the process name interacting with each file. It's built into modern versions of Windows, from XP Pro to Vista. Like the popular ls of command for Linux and Unix, it'll show administrators all open files on the machine, giving the process name and full path for each file. Unlike lsof, however, it doesn't provide many more details, such as process ID number, user number and other information.

2.  Considering the volume of information it gathers, it's no surprise that the openfiles command is a performance hog. Thus, the accounting associated with

openfiles is off by default, meaning users can't pull any data from this command until it is turned on. This function can be activated by running:

C:\> openfiles /local on

3.  Users will need to reboot, and when the system comes back, they will be able to run the openfiles command as follows:

C:\> openfiles /query /v

4.  This command will show verbose output, which includes the user account that each process with an open file is running under. To get an idea of what malware has been installed, or what an attacker may be doing on a machine,users should look for unusual or unexpected files, especially those associated with unexpected local users on the machine.

5.   When finished with the openfiles command, its accounting functionality can be shut off and the system returned to normal performance by running the following command and rebooting:

C:\> openfiles /local off

HOW DO U FIND IF YOUR PC IS HACKED?- PART 3

1.  While WMIC is a relatively new command, let's not lose site of some useful older commands. One of my favourites is the venerable "net" command. Administrators can use this to display all kinds of useful information. For example, the "net user" command shows all user accounts defined locally on the machine. The "net localgroup" command shows groups, "net localgroup administrators" shows membership of the administrators group and the "net start" command shows running services.

2.  Attackers frequently add users to a system or put their own accounts in the administrators groups, so it's always a good idea to check the output of these commands to see if an attacker has manipulated the accounts on a machine. Also, some attackers create their own evil services on a machine, so users should be on the lookout for them.

More here.....

HOW DO U FIND IF YOUR PC IS HACKED?- PART 2

1.    WMIC stands for Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line It lets administrative users access all kinds of detailed information about a Windows machine, including detailed attributes of thousands of settings and objects. WMIC is built into Windows XP Professional, Windows 2003 and Windows Vista.

C:\> wmic process

2.    When you run this command, the output may not be an easy to understand format but the same can be formatted in several different ways, but two of the most useful for analysing a system for compromise are the "list full" option, which shows a huge amount of detail for each area of the machine a user is interested in, and the "list brief" output, which provides one line of output per report item in the list of entities, such as running processes, autostart programs and available shares. For example, we can look at a summary of every running process on a machine by running:

C:\> wmic process list brief

3.   That command will show the name, process ID and priority of each running process, as well as other less-interesting attributes.

C:\> wmic process list full

4.   This command shows all kinds of details, including the full path of the executable associated with the process and its command-line invocation. When

investigating a machine for infection, an administrator should look at each process to determine whether it has a legitimate use on the machine, researching unexpected or unknown processes using a search engine.

5.   Beyond the process alias, users could substitute startup to get a list of all auto-start programs on a machine, including programs that start when the system boots up or a user logs on, which could be defined by an auto-start registry key or folder:

C:\> wmic startup list full

6.   A lot of malware automatically runs on a machine by adding an auto-start entry alongside the legitimate ones which may belong to antivirus tools and various system tray programs. Users can look at other settings on a machine with WMIC by replacing "startup" with "QFE" (an abbreviation which stands for Quick Fix Engineering) to see the patch level of a system, with "share" to see a list of Windows file shares made available on the machine and with "useraccount" to see detailed user account settings.

7.   A handy option within WMIC is the ability to run an information-gathering command on a repeated basis by using the syntax "/every:[N]" after the rest of the WMIC command. The [N] here is an integer, indicating that WMIC should run the given command every [N] seconds. That way, users can look for changes in the settings of the system over time, allowing careful scrutiny of the output. Using this function to pull a process summary every 5 seconds, users could run:

C:\> wmic process list brief /every:1

Hitting CTRL+C will stop the cycle.

More good examples here

HOW DO U FIND IF YOUR PC IS HACKED?- PART 1

1.   We all keep ourselves worried over issues pertaining to our PC security including issues like if or not it is a zombie or if the same is already a compromised one etc. But how would you find the answer to these......call an expert and pay from your pocket? NO....the answer is MS it self...yesss!!....Microsoft Windows has a series of commands with the help of which a normal PC user would be able to find out the answers.....

2.   Following are the list of commands which would be used

WMIC Command

            - C:\> wmic process

            - C:\> wmic process list brief

- C:\> wmic process list full

- C:\> wmic startup list full

- C:\> wmic QFE list full

- C:\> wmic process list brief /every:1

The net Command

-         net localgroup

-         net localgroup administrators

Openfiles Command

          - C:\> openfiles /local on

Netstat Command

-         C:\> netstat –nao

-         C:\> netstat -s -p icmp

-         C:\> netstat -na 2

Find Command

For more details on these commands...click here....

ANDROID & GOOGLE : AT LOGGER HEADS????

1.    This news is bound for only one thing.....a first big dent on Google's untouched Kingdom in the cyber world.There is a reported discord among the Android developers who are irked at Google’s Android Market policies.They have formed the Android Developers Union to protest the policies.The new union has compiled a list of seven demands including renegotiation of the 32pc ‘Google Tax’ on app sales, public bug tracking, algorithmic transparency and increased payment options.They threaten Google that if these demands are not met they will cease development and move their efforts to rival platforms.

2.  "If the demands are not met, we will move our applications to alternative marketplaces or the web, cease Android development in favour of other more open platforms, we will dissuade other developers from developing Android projects, and we will work tirelessly to counter any of Google's hypocritical claims about openness in the media."

3.   This seems to be the first kind of big set back to google who may find loosing an edge in its battle for the smartphone operating system and applications market vis-a-vis Apple and Microsoft.The seven demands of the android union can be seen here...

4.   This writeup does not reflect my views of standing against anyone or supporting anyone but wishes to inform the readers only for info........

NOKIA should have merged with GOOGLE : Google CEO

This comes straight after the earlier post news spread across about the merge of Nokia & Microsoft......When asked about Nokia's choice of Windows Phone 7 as its smartphone system, Schmidt said "Google would have loved to see Nokia pick Android instead. Google tried to convince Nokia to choose Android, and it can still make that decision in the future".....(ha ha ha....Google still has hopes of a future revertive action by NOKIA....and who knows...it may just happen..we are just the readers!!!!!)

NOKIA & MICROSOFT : A MERGER TO READ ABOUT

1.    In todays shrinking world when we hear of merger of giants...its part of normal breaking news which hardly puts together rolling eyeballs 7 pop ups ....But this one is slightly different or if not different it is really BIGGGGGGG.This is about merger of fantabulous phone hardware NOKIA and the operating system giant MICROSOFT coming toether to produce and try beating the phones across?

2.    The deal which was in the rumour rounds already went much ahead of the expectations.....in effect, Nokia is handing over its future - in smartphones at least - to Microsoft and Windows Phone 7.  That means Good bye & Happy journey Symbian . So can the combo really become the third horse in the race, giving Apple and Android a run for their money ?I have my doubts....

3.    Crux of the acquisition pointwise listed below :

- Nokia to embrace Windows Phone as its principal smartphone.

- Nokia to contribute its expertise on hardware design, language support.

- Both would closely collaborate on joint marketing initiatives .

- Bing would power Nokia’s search services(nobodys guess!!!)

- Nokia Maps would be a core part of Microsoft’s mapping services.

4.    Just to mention,a year earlier when this merger was being talked about, was once declared an april fools rumour. And now about a year later it is on official Microsoft site.Thanks Microsoft site for info

MALWARE & AUTORUN : LOVE BIRDS OF PROPOGATION

1.    All the family members of trojans,malware and adwares few of which are mentioned above have one similarity in form of a common propagation method. They all ab"use" the autoplay feature of Autorun, many by creating or manipulating Autorun.inf files on network drives and removable media, so that when a user connects, the malware is automatically executed on their system. Newer operating systems, like Windows Vista and Windows 7, have made changes to the way Autorun is configured (Windows Vista) and how it works by default (Windows 7). These changes appear to have had a significant difference in the ability for autorun-abusing malware to successfully infect these newer operating systems, especially for Windows 7.

2.   More interesting details here

3.  Thanks http://blogs.technet.com & Microsoft Malware Protection Center

MICROSOFT & Failures!!!

1.     For a IT giant like MicroSoft,this would not sync well,but for Microsoft,the year 2010 has seen more of closures of major projects launched with lots of promises and fanfare but somehow unfortunately it did not go the way microsoft desired tooo...and so had to be shut down in the same year....the list goes like this with some details in few lines ....

• February 2010 saw Microsoft announcing discontinuation of "Xbox Live service for original Xbox consoles and games.

• April 2010, Microsoft confirmed stopped working on tablet project, codenamed Courier which was touted to be an Apple iPad rival. 

• September 2010, Microsoft announced that the Windows Live Spaces blogging service will be Terminate gradually in favour of WordPress.com.

• May 2010, Microsoft announced halt on the Response Point phone system. 

• June 2010 saw Microsoft announcing discontinuation its new generation of smartphones.

• September 2010, Microsoft announced closure of Vine, a service built to help keep friends and family in touch during emergencies. 

2.      Thanks TimesofIndia

Service Packs & Infection Rates

1.  First it was windows XP..then it was SP1(Service Pack 1)...followed by SP2,SP3 ...further by Vista SP1,SP2 and now Windows 7...how the upgrades in these packs have been reducing the infection rates is briefly reflected as per stats from Microsoft Security Intelligence Report.

- Infection rate for windows XP with SP3 is less then half of that for SP2 and less then a third of SP1.

- Windows Vista SP2 has a lower inefction rate then SP1 which is about 50% lower then Windows Vista Basic.

- In case of Server Operating SystemS,the infection rate for windows server 2008 with SP2 is about 20% less then the predecessor ie Windows Server 2008 RTM.

2. Thanks http://www.microsoft.com/security/sir/

Biggest release of Patch update by MICROSOFT

1.    Patches by MS to be released today are said to be the biggest and largest batch of updates by Microsoft since Oct 2003.According to Microsoft, this batch will be the LARGEST in its history with no less than 16 security updates designed to address a total of 49 vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer, MS-Office and the software giant's .NET Framework.

2.    All this effort and size of the patches by MS reflects how vulnerable each one of us remains to the hacking and leak of personal info in wrong hands....the batch of updates will include Windows 7 critical updates,updates for Internet Explorer, MS -Office 2010.And all those happy using the pirated copies of OS across remain as vulnerable as they are already....

BILL GATES & Khan Academy

1. I m a follower of Bill Gates on twitter and have come to know of this khan academy thru this......

2. When every one looks forward to learning from Bill Gates on so many aspects of IT education.....where do u guess his 11 year old son looks up-to for his education.....he follows Salman Khan...no no...not the Bollywood Dabanggg...he is another Salman Khan....click here to know more.....

3. Khan turns out thousands of videos from a converted walk-in closetin his Silicon Valley home (shown in this pic below) ...................gr888888888 work...and imagine the amount of effort that he has put in single handedly here......

4. This site at http://www.khanacademy.org/ has 1600 plus videos for school level maths,chemistry and science and many more subjects.....more news ....click here

Search Web by FACE recognition - Work is ON!!!: ONE ALBUM

1. Microsoft Israel Innovation Labs is currently working on ONEALBUM ,a project under development, that uses face-recognition technology to search for photos

2. "OneAlbum" scans faces that regularly appear in a user's OneAlbum photo collection, then searches his social networks (Facebook,Orkut, Windows Live and others) for more photos of these people. It then automatically finds relevant photos in other albums on the Internet and brings them to the user's album, and shows them side-by-side with his photos. Not only facial recognition, but OneAlbum also involves event-matching technology by analysing the people, dates, colours, and textures in a set of photos and will recognise these photos as being taken in on the same event.

3. Little confusing in the first reading.....what I understood is like one will be able to find a same persons photo when u bing(.. google)....so u put ur photo in the search bar and press enter...there u r......u see all content results of same person.....difficult to believe but....will be available soon in coming years!!!!

4. Thanks http://www.liveside.net

Google vs Bing : On Data retention policy change

1. Ever wondered about privacy policy of search engines specifically about Google and Bing...i came to know of this recently while i read at http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/search/archive/2010/01/19/updates-to-bing-privacy.aspx on the subject.

2. In case of Bing,the amount of time IP addresses are stored from searchers is 18 months which the claim now to reduce to 6 months. Generally, when Bing receives search data ,the following things undergo action

First, steps to separate the account information (such as email or phone number) from other information (what the query was, for example).

Secondly , after 18 months another additional step of deleting the IP address and any other cross session IDs associated with the query.

3. Under the new policy, all the steps will continue as were applied previously except that now IP address will be completely removed at 6 months, instead of 18 months. Rival Google had cut retention time to 9 months from 18 in August 2008.Notwithstanding, Microsoft executives arrogates their initiative go much further than Google , because Microsoft intends deleting all parts of the IP (Internet Protocol) address after six months, while Google still retains part of the address after its self-imposed nine-month cut-off point.

4. Thanks http://microsoftontheissues.com

ZUNE 120 GB

1. For those of you who are hearing this name for the first time,lemme tell you what it is in brief? ZUNE is a Microsoft entertainment platform and portable media player on the lines of Ipod by Apple on a larger scale in terms of screen, capacity, features. etc. Of the various models of Zune, ZUNE120 measures 4.3 inches high by 2.4 inches wide. I will give some brief on this since i got this one recently.

Features

2. Main menu has the following scroll down as shown in screen shot from my ZUNE.

- Music

- Videos

- Pictures

- Social

- Radio

- Market Place

- Games

- Settings

3. Further brief on few of these of interest are enumerated below

Market Place allows browsing, previewing & downloading music directly from Microsoft's Zune Marketplace online store. Marketplace submenu further allows choosing between browsing Songs, Albums, and New Releases, or search for specific music by keying in a few letters. Songs can be previewed for 30 seconds with the option to add them to your virtual cart or purchase and download immediately. By signing up for Microsoft's Zune Pass music-subscription service (a free 14-day trial is available).....still to be availed by me.....

ZUNE is WiFi enabled and allows keying in the passwords if required vide Zunepad.

Radio : An interesting part of my first few days of interaction with ZUNE was non running of FM stations till the time I got link to this thread ie http://vasudevg.blogspot.com/2007/12/zune-fm-radio-tip.html that involved simply changing country from preset US to Europe

Video format : The only problem that I faced was that the horde of movies that I possess do not run directly on this.One needs to convert them to zune/ipod format with easy to use Windows Media Encoder....time consuming but worth it when we play it here on the ZUNE......I converted Sivaji Rajinikanth(...my fav) with a third party software Cucusoft...but was labelled with trial version watermark throughou(screen shot down)....rest was quiet ok....then converted with windows media encoder...and worked perfectly fine....gr8 output in video and sound....

Ports : Only two including one to ear phone and the other to USB for interface with PC for sync and charging battery.

Capacity : 120 GB...thats awesome for storage!!!!!

4. Any one across with any difficulty or query on Zune player can just leave his/her problem....will get back asap.......thats a promise for while.....