Thursday, 31 December 2009

McAfee Labs Predicts Facebook, Twitter Will Be Platforms of Choice for Emerging Threats

http://newsroom.mcafee.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=3607

Twitter’s URL shortening services: Since the URL is not immediately clear to a user it is easy for users to be directed to malicious websites.

Chinese made open source XP clone

http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/189551.asp

Monday, 28 December 2009

Airport Security: FFT's Secure Fence and Secure Zone systems

http://www.fftsecurity.com/index.php

A single FFT Secure Fence system can protect airport perimeters up to 80 km long.

No electronics or power in the field required.

Tuesday, 22 December 2009

BlackBerry users hit by eight-hour outage

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/23/blackberry.outage/index.html

What's being copied from your web site

http://www1.tynt.com/see-whats-copied

Microsoft Word patent infringement verdict upheld

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8427474.stm

Microsoft said the ban would prohibit the sale of all available versions of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office software.

Introducing the New Cybersecurity Coordinator

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2009/12/22/introducing-new-cybersecurity-coordinator

Sunday, 20 December 2009

Internet Disease: SPAM and VIRUS

Our Technology is advancing at a rapid pace but just like AIDS and CANCER, we haven't found cure for Internet diseases like "SPAM" and "VIRUS"

Hope one day, Internet experts would be able to find solution.

European Internet usage in 2009 - Households and Individuals

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-QA-09-046/EN/KS-QA-09-046-EN.PDF

Friday, 18 December 2009

Chinese proposal to meter internet traffic

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8417680.stm

Thursday, 17 December 2009

SkyGrabber: the $26 software used by insurgents to hack into US drones

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/dec/17/skygrabber-software-drones-hacked

Wednesday, 16 December 2009

ITIL(Information Technology Infrastructure Library)

What is IT Service Management

• The management of IT services to support one or morebusiness areas
• A set of process and procedures aimed at the provision of high quality, cost effective IT
Services– Driven by business dependency upon IT
• The best definition and independent guidelines for IT ServiceManagement can be found in ITIL

The Four Ps IT Service Management (ITSM) is all about the efficient, effective and economical use of:

• People
– Customers, Users & IT Staff

• Processes
– ITIL

• Products
– Tools and technology

• Partners
– Vendors and Suppliers


ITIL Philosophy

• Capture industry “best practice”
• Organizations should adopt and adapt
• Scalable — organization size and need

ITIL Objectives

• Reduce Costs
• Improve Availability
• Tune Capacity
• Increase Throughput
• Optimize resource Utilization
• Improve Scalability


Service Support

• These are the more “Day to Day” processes which supports
Service Management
• Typically tend to be more “Reactive” than “Proactive”
• Made up of 5 Processes and 1 Function
– Service Desk (Function)
– Incident Management
– Problem Management
– Configuration Management
– Change Management
– Release Management


Service Delivery

• These are the more longer term planning type processes
which supports Service Management
• Typically tend to be more “Proactive” than “Reactive”
• Made up of 5 Processes
– Service Level Management
– IT Service Continuity Management
– Finance for IT Management
– Availability Management
– Capacity Management


Who Is Doing This?

• Government
• Financial services
• Insurance
• Manufacturing
• Publishing
• Outsourcing companies
• Utilities


ITIL Results
Proven Results:
(IDC study of companies who implemented ITIL solutions)
>50% decrease in system & network downtime
>30% improvement in IT staff productivity
>25% improvement in bringing new services online

Summary

• ITIL will change your IT organization into a strategic, business-oriented
delivery operation for IT services, as opposed to simply a tactical provider
of technology
• It will help your IT operation run more like a business. ITSM is an industry
standard that applies best practices to people, processes and technology
across boundaries
• Keep costs in check – By operating with optimal efficiency and existing
resources
• Deliver the highest possible quality of service to internal and external
customers – By catching problems before they happen and maximizing
the performance, availability and capabilities of IT services
• Adapt to change quickly and smoothly – By taking advantage of
unprecedented flexibility and agility
• Make the most of opportunities – By freeing up human and system
resources to pursue new initiatives or business prospects or deal with
competitive threats

Wind launches with cheaper phone rates

http://www.thestar.com/business/article/739543--wind-launches-with-cheaper-phone-rates?bn=1

Monday, 14 December 2009

BSNL loses market share by nearly half in three years

http://beta.thehindu.com/business/article65194.ece

Gone days of Federal Monopoly.

4G mobile phone network comes to Scandinavia

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8412035.stm

Canadian Govt made the mistake of allowing Nortel to sell 4G technology to Ericsson.

Tuesday, 8 December 2009

Embracing Networking Opportunities

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/mns-113009.aspx

RFID - Technology Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zj7txoDxbE

Some other e.g Esso SpeedPass and 407 Toll Road entry and exit using Transponders inside your Car, Truck or Bus.

Wednesday, 2 December 2009

Saturday, 21 November 2009

Quebec comes out on top in IT effectiveness survey

http://www.tele-management.ca/content/10014-quebec_comes_out_on_top_in_it_effectiveness_survey

Vecima's 3.5 GHz WiMAX solution deployed by major Canadian oil production and distribution company

http://www.tele-management.ca/content/9982-vecimas_35_ghz_wimax_solution_deployed_by_major_canadian_oil_production_and_distributio

I have worked on Vecima 3.5 gear and there are lot of bugs that needs to be fixed by Vecima.
Customers will have to Power Cycle their Wimax Subscriber Station units PoE, very often to get back online.

If the TV antenna and Subscriber unit are on the same TV tower, some customers may have problems with some TV channels.

Need to make sure that TV antenna cable and SS are not touching each other and should have some gaps.

The 12 most prominent reforms of the EU telecoms package

http://www.tele-management.ca/content/10022-the_12_most_prominent_reforms_of_the_eu_telecoms_package

Upgrade CRTC or Get Rid

Oman cuffs 212 for selling VoIP calls

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/20/oman_and_voip/

High Court ruled against Skype founders on day of settlement

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/20/skype_founders_ruling/

Happiness on Facebook Cuts Canadian Woman's Health Care

http://www.pcworld.com/article/182740/happiness_on_facebook_cuts_canadian_womans_health_care.html


Something wrong with Privacy here ? Things going too Far?

Friday, 20 November 2009

Google Chrome OS

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/20/google.os/index.html

Chrome OS is a Linux-based, open-source operating system centered on Google's Chrome browser. Applications will run exclusively inside the browser

My Comments:

I am still skeptical about Google OS Cloud Computing because it requires all users to have internet access and the resources are located remotely, which has got its ups and downs.

You have to buy Google specified hardware like Apple?

What about Privacy? Google will have full control over resources even though they will claim that they won't.

Canadian servers hosting child porn: report

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/Canadian-servers-hosting-child-porn-report-70506727.html

Thursday, 19 November 2009

The Top 10 tech moments of the decade

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpposted/archive/2009/11/19/fp-tech-desk-the-top-10-tech-moments-of-the-decade.aspx

Rural Broadband in Canada

Cost of Rural Broadband is very expensive and ROI is too slow. Without Govt assistance its not possible to run this Business in Canada.
With very few customers and the cost of expanding network coverage towers are way to much.
If there are 3-4 small WISP players, they also eat up the market.
WISP is going through challenging period, especilally in Canada we don't have that many people comparing the large land mass.

Should I Start a WISP in My Community?
http://www.bbwexchange.com/turnkey/top10questions.asp

10 Common Mistakes of WISP Beginners
http://www.bbwexchange.com/turnkey/top10mistakes.asp

Tuesday, 17 November 2009

Skpye uses more Video Bandwidth

Skpye uses more bandwidth compared to other messenger application e.g yahoo messenger when it comes to " Video" Streaming but its the other way round for "Voice"

If you have internet plan that allow only certain amount of Bandwith Usage/monthly, then better install a software called " BitMeter" which keeps track of your usage and helps in monitoring your individual PC bandwidth traffic.

China's Great Firewall Software

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/16/AR2009081601697.html

Keywords Used to Filter Web Content in China

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/18/AR2006021800554.html

Researchers eye liquid to boost Net speed

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-for-tomorrow/researchers-eye-liquid-to-boost-net-speed/article1366186/

You Tube Citizens Journalism

http://www.youtube.com/direct

Monday, 16 November 2009

Canadian skiers use 'Stealth' technology

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/11/16/calg-ski-stealth.html?ref=rss

Nortel Learn IT

http://www.nortellearnit.org/

Social Networking

I strongly believe there is a need for a secured Centralized age verification process to make sure, social networking sites users are 18+

Web addresses in your own language

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8362195.stm

TOP FIVE SUPERCOMPUTERS

1] Jaguar, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US. (1.759 petaflops; 224,162 processors)

2] Roadrunner, Los Alamos National Laboratory, US (1.042 petaflops; 122,400 processors)

3] Kraken XT5, University of Tennessee, US(831.7 teraflops; 98,928 processors)

4] Jugene, Forschungszentrum Juelich, Germany (835.5 teraflops; 294,912 processors)

5] Tianhe-1, National SuperComputer Center, China (563.1 teraflops; 71,680 processors)

Wednesday, 11 November 2009

Unsecured Indian Passport application status web site

I found that Govt of India web site for Passport application status is not " secured"
If you already have a passport application file number then by changing random numbers, you would be able to see other applicants name, date of birth, submitted date and status info.
I have already reported this issue to the ministry and media.
Hope this issue will be resolved immeditely.

http://passport.gov.in/

Sunday, 8 November 2009

Uniting World’s Bloggers

Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance

The goal is to create a world wide awareness on a different topic each year through the power of blogging

http://www.blogactionday.org/

Friday, 6 November 2009

Snoop on your own network with ntop

* Author: Vincent Danen

Ever wonder what is happening on your network? Particularly in terms of what traffic is passing in and out? Whether it’s out of curiosity or you have a real need to audit what kind of traffic is passing through your network, ntop is a fantastic tool that will more than likely do what you need.

Ntop is for networks what top is for processes on the local system. With top you can view all kinds of process information: memory and CPU usage, system load, and so forth. With ntop you can view similar information, but related to network processes: network load throughput, active connections, which hosts are connecting to what sites, the amount of bandwidth sent to a particular site, protocol usage, and more. Ntop provides so much information, in fact, that it will take time to wade through it all and narrow down what is pertinent to you.

A number of distributions provide ntop pre-packaged so it’s a simple yum, urpmi, or apt-get away. Once it is installed, it should be started manually, first, so you can set the administrator password; instead of running service ntop start, run ntop directly; it will ask for the password before starting the actual service. Once you have set the password, you can hit CTRL-C to kill the service and then use service ntop start to enable the service to run in the background.

When ntop is running, you can connect to the host it’s running on, using port 3000 by default. There may be access restrictions denying access to everything other than connections coming from the localhost; if you want to connect from a different host you may have to edit the ntop configuration file (/etc/ntop.conf on Fedora). For instance, on Fedora, ntop will listen to 127.0.0.1:3000 for HTTP connections; you will want to change that to a reachable IP address instead (i.e., 192.168.10.1:3000) and restart ntop to make the change effective. Now you can log in using a Web browser pointing to http://[ip_address]:3000 or https://[ip_address]:3001 if the HTTPS server is enabled (again, see the configuration file).

Once you have logged in, there is a lot that you can look at. Ntop has a lot of information available on network traffic. On the main page you will find global traffic statistics which provide information such as:

* Total number of packets broken down by type (TCP, UDP, etc.)
* Total number of packets broken down by packet size
* Bad packets
* Number of hops to remote hosts
* Current and average network loads
* Protocol distribution (broken down by active protocols such as HTTP, SSH, FTP, etc.)

At the top of the page there are links to configure various plugins and configuration options for ntop itself. There are also links to other ways you can view the data, such as looking at network load statistics in nice RRD graphs and a breakdown of communication by host. The latter is really useful if you want to see what systems are connecting to a particular domain and how they are connecting.

As an example, you could click on a link such as “www.facebook.com” and see exactly when traffic was sent to it during the last 24 hours, what hosts on the local subnet connected to it, and what protocol was used (HTTP or HTTPS, etc.). There are even links where you can see where the end-host is located geographically using Google Maps, and you can also obtain WHOIS information with a simple click.

The amount of information you get from ntop is very impressive. If you are curious, need to debug, or need to audit your network usage and throughput, ntop is definitely one good tool to use.

**************M@ani
I have used NTOP and found it very usefull. You can see different types of traffic based on IP address, protocol, ports etc.
You can find out, who is using VOIP,email,Peer2Peer, internet etc
http://www.ntop.org/overview.html

Wanna know Top CPU using processes on Linux

http://www.unixtop.org/download/

Its cool and good tool for troubleshooting.

Cisco Products & Services

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/index.html

World's largest Em@il and Web Traffic monitoring network

http://www.senderbase.org/

One of my favorite sites.

Thursday, 5 November 2009

Yahoo Open Source News

http://news.yahoo.com/technology/linux-open-source

Yahoo! Announces Open Source Distribution of Traffic Server

http://developer.yahoo.com/hadoop/distribution/

Presentation:
http://media.cs.uiuc.edu/DCS/research/upcrc/UPCRC-2009-10-05.asx

Department of Defense standards in overwriting data

http://www.qsgi.com/usdod_standard_dod_522022m.htm

12 tips for safe social networking

http://www.networkworld.com/slideshows/2008/101308-12-tips-social-net.html#slide1

Future of Virtualization Technology

Reduce the number of physical servers and energy consumption, by using Virtualization technology to run multiple virtual machines on a single physical server

VMWare claims that its virtualized infrastructure can decrease energy costs by as much as 80 percent.

Virtualization with Microsoft Hyper-V
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/hyperv-main.aspx

Cisco Certification Tracking System

https://www6.pearsonvue.com/cisco/online/

Pearson VUE Test Taker Services

https://www6.pearsonvue.com/programs/

Cisco IT Certification and Career Paths

http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/learning_career_certifications_and_learning_paths_home.html

Retired Certification Exams
http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/le11/learning_retired_certification_exams_list.html

Cisco Certification Exam Tutorial

http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/wwtraining/certprog/training/cert_exam_tutorial.html

http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/learning_certification_exam_tutorial.html

Future of Cloud Computing=Utility Computing Web 2.0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae_DKNwK_ms

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hplXnFUlPmg

Will Cloud Computing Kill " Inhouse" Hosting v/s Third Party Hosting ?

Cloud Computing: Google already had several outages related to their Gmail services including for Enterprise Customers.

Cloud Computing with also increase the need for Internet Bandwidth Pipe as resources will be accessed from outside ur network, geography etc

Good thing about Cloud computing is Cost and Customization of Server Application based on customer needs.

What about security? You are expecting the Hosting guys to take care of your services security, just like Web hosting services.

Wednesday, 4 November 2009

The Impact of E-Surveillance on Information Security in India

Since Wifi Networks being misused by Anti Social Elements especially Unsecured wireless networks, Govt of India has sent directives to ISP's, suggesting All internet subscribers who have Deployed WiFi Networks within their premises to register their wireless equipment with the ISP

e.g of Directive: http://www.tataindicombroadband.in/mailers/Instructions%20of%20DoT-%20Wi-Fi%20Security.pdf

Cisco Alert: http://blogs.cisco.com/security/comments/the_impact_of_e-surveillance_on_information_security_in_india

Earlier RIM and Skype had refused to share their Encryption key for Blackberry email and VOIP calls, sparking controversy.

Cisco-InterVLAN Routing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd6YQvDSXUg

Learn to subnet in a easy way

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4n2Ofqr6QY

Windows 7 Laptop as an Access Point

http://connectify.me

Its a really cool feature, if it works well.

You Tube Hijacking by Pakistan Telecom

http://www.ripe.net/news/study-youtube-hijacking.html

An Introduction to the BGP Protocol

http://www.skullbox.net/bgp.php

Basics OSPF Route learning process

1] Each router discovers its neighbors on each interface. The list of neighbors is kept in a
neighbor table.

2] Each router uses a reliable protocol to exchange topology information (LSAs) with its
neighbors.

3] Each router places the learned topology information in its topology database.

4] Each router runs the SPF algorithm against its own topology database to calculate the
best routes to each subnet in the database.

5] Each router places the best route to each subnet in the IP routing table.

VPN IPSec Process

1] Interesting Traffic initiates the IPSec process. IPSec security policy configured in the IPSec peers starts the IKE process.
2] IKE phase 1. IKE authenticates IPSec peers and negotiates IKE SAs during this phase, setting up a secure channel for negotiating IPSec SAs in phase 2.
3] IKE phase 2. IKE negotiates IPSec SA parameters and sets up matching IPSec SAs in the peers.
4] Data transfer. Data is transferred between IPSec peers based on the IPSec parameters and keys stored in the SA database.
5] IPSec tunnel termination. IPSec SAs terminate through deletion or by timing out.

Soft Skills

1] Listening

2] Communication

3 ] Confidence

4] Time and Project Management

5] Team Work

6] Empathy

7] Appreciation and Respect

8] Leadership

9] Public Speaking

10] Business Knowledge

ISP Point of View-Common Network Issues

1] Cable

2] Connectivity

3] Network Collisions

4] Software

5] IP Addressing

Tuesday, 3 November 2009

ISP Point of View-Wireless backhaul connection dropping

Problem: Due to some reason, Master and Slave wireless backhaul's dropping connection

Solution: Noticed DFS(Dynamic Frequency Selection) causing "channel" to change resulting in interference on overlapping new channel. e.g Weather Radar
According to Industry Canada: Devices shall employ a DFS radar detection mechanism to detect the presence of radar systems and to avoid co-channel operation with radar systems

ISP Point of View-One Way voice communication

Problem: Unable to hear two way voice communication using Asterisk PBX

Solution: Requires NAT entry for external public and internal private IP under Asterisk configuration

ISP Point of View-Slow Network

Problem: Network too Slow

Solution: Router seeing two Mac address for the same laptop on the same subnet because the same laptop was used to " Clone Mac" address

ISP Point of View-Unable to access Banking Web Site

Problem: One day, I came across a customer issue, where Customer was not able to access RBC Secured Banking Site but able to access all the other Canadian Banking Sites.

Solution: Due to some reason, there was no "Name Resolution" for the Customer IP address.
Found that RBC, has extra layer of security compared to other Canadian Banking Site.

Key things to Maintain, Manage and Expand a Network Infrastructure

1] Connectivity

2] Performance

3] Security

4] Flexibility