Mantralaya fire@Mumbai and Cloud

1.   The recent Mumbai Mantralaya Fire wherein few sad and undesired casualties took place and more then 2000 computers were destroyed is one example which shows the sad state of affairs in terms of fire fighting preparations and state of taking critical backup in important institutions like mantralaya's and ministries....Offcourse,the loss of human lives has no substitute and my sincere condolences to the berieved families...

2.   In the given case,no one would actually cry over the damage of 2000 computers...all would be worried about all the files and data that were stored on them(..infact few would have been happy to bid good bye to the 486 and celerons with 256 mb that they used to fight day in/out :-).....now had some one realised the importance of CLOUD here at some point of time earlier,the damage of data could have been averted.How ?

3.   It is indeed surprising for me that in the blog's five year existence,there has been very limited text on CLOUD COMPUTING....so let me start a Part series (in subsequent new posts)starting from Introduction to the advantages and the more important security threats that emanate on adopting the cloud.....

Internet Explorer : Vulnerable as always!!!

1.   Microsoft IE vulnerability CVE-2012-1889 is the latest to generate interest amongst avid cyber security readers. The special thing about this vulnerability is that it focusses on users using Gmail, MS Office and Internet Explorer. And the sad thing is that this is still a ZERO day exploit...... Rapid 7,Security software company,explains the vulnerability as follows:

“This is an uninitialized memory bug found in MSXML. According to Microsoft, such a component can be loaded from either Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office. This vulnerability is rumored to be “state-sponsored”, and what makes it really critical is it’s still an 0-day hijacking Gmail accounts. That’s right, that means if you’re using Gmail as well as Internet Explorer or Microsoft Office, you’re at risk. We expect this vulnerability to grow even more dangerous since there’s no patch, and it’s rather easy to trigger.”

2.    Whatever may say...majority of the users still by default keep using IE across the globe....when I see my own blog stats,about 60 % of the visitors use IE...and as we all keep seeing the exponential growth in the users of internet across the globe....but sadly the awareness level of how vulnerable they all are is unknown and is growing at a similar rate!!!

3.    Got the reference from here.Thanks https://community.rapid7.com.

FLAME on way to commit SUICIDE ?

1.    Further to my post on FLAME earlier which made a point wise summary based on my various reads across the web,here is something more interesting.....

2.    The creators of Flame have sent a 'suicide' command that removes it from infected computers ie  it has gotten orders to vanish, leaving no trace.As was mentioned in the post earlier that Flame may delete itself from systems that have been fully exploited without leaving any trace has come true soon......

3.   More on the subject at the link ahead and Thanks THN

 http://thehackernews.com/2012/06/flame-spy-virus-going-to-suicide.html

Zoomit : Incredibly Useful Tool from Microsoft

1.     In any of the presentations or on screen visuals on projections system to a live audience we invariably require sometimes to let the audience get focused on something we would like them to see only on the screen......I mean zooming on a portion of screen without getting into the practise of coming out of ppt or ur application and running magnifier or some similar third party application.....here's what zoomit does free for you without any major installation worries!!!

2.   ZoomIt is screen zoom and annotation tool for technical presentations that include application demonstrations. ZoomIt runs unobtrusively in the tray and activates with customizable hotkeys to zoom in on an area of the screen, move around while zoomed, and draw on the zoomed image. I wrote ZoomIt to fit my specific needs and use it in all my presentations.ZoomIt works on all versions of Windows and you can use pen input for ZoomIt drawing on tablet PCs.

3.  Download and start using it .....from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx

The Lightest Browser : BROWZAR

1.  In the world of browsers when we have chrome...mozilla...safari...opera..and many others.fight it out at ACID3 benchmarking levels...we have a small browser here....thats only in KBs....by the name of BROWZAR.Few good things and features are mentioned below :

-  Takes seconds to download

-  No installation

-  No registration

-  One of the smallest, fastest browsers in the world

-   Just download and go

-   Doesn't save Cookies, History, Temp files, Passwords, Cache

-   Secure delete

-   Great for Banking and Cloud applications

-   Carry it with you on a USB stick

-   Great for shared computers

-   Use it on a friend's PC, Internet Cafe, Work PC, on Holiday

-   Automatically cleans up when you've finished

-   Only 222Kb...u read that right!!!only 222Kb

2.   Test and Download at http://www.browzar.com/.