Current Affairs : 05.01.2014

1. India successfully launched GSLV-D5 from Sriharikota. GSLV-D5 with indigenous cryogenic engine successfully places GSAT-14 communication satellite on orbit. 

2. Gujarati poet Chinu Modi has been conferred the Sahitya Akademi Award for the year 2013 for his poetry book "Khara Zaran", an official statement said.

3. National Human Rights Commission issues notices to seven states for non-payment of wages under MGNREGA.

4. Boeing machinists have approved a contract that would concede some pension and health care benefits in order to secure assembly of the company's new 777X airplane in the Puget Sound region.

5. Noting that country has witnessed phenomenal growth in IT sector, PM said Centre was committed to providing enabling environment to encourage growth.

6. Top-seeded Li Na defended her Shenzhen Open title by defeating Peng Shuai 6-4, 7-5 in only the second all-Chinese final on the WTA Tour.

7. Tata Consultancy Services said it will set up the world’s largest corporate learning and development centre in Thiruvananthapuram with a total capacity to train 50,000 professionals every year.

8. The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has banned cutting of green mango trees in the state.

9. Serbia's Ana Ivanovic beat US champion Venus Williams for the title at the ASB Classic tennis tournament.

10. Despite the political unrest, the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) decided to go ahead with the Asia Cup in Bangladesh as scheduled from February 25-March 8, a top Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) official said.

Isro successfully launches indigenous cryogenic engine-powered GSLV-D5

Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) on Sunday successfully launched GSLV-D5 rocket, which is powered by an indigenous cryogenic engine, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

Seventeen minutes after liftoff at 4.18pm, the rocket successfully injected GSAT-14 communication satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit.

Isro chairman K Radhakrishnan declared the mission a success. He said, "This shows the maturity of the team. We dedicate the proud moment for the country."

"The launch has been so precise that the satellite was put just 40 metres within the 179km perigee and only 50km of the 36,000km apogee," mission director K Sivan said.

Isro achieved the feat after two failures earlier. While India has mastered the PSLV range of rockets with a string of 25 consecutive successes, GSLV, which can carry heavier payloads including humans to space, has remained a challenge.

In April 2010, Isro tested its first indigenous cryogenic engine, but it failed a little less than a second after the cryogenic stage ignited. A refurbished GSLV-D5 was to be launched in August 2013, but a leak in the liquid fuel tank forced the mission to be aborted two hours before the rocket was to lift off. 

India had got seven cryogenic engines from Russia, and Isro has used six of them. With no affordable supply coming from abroad, India felt the necessity to develop its own cryogenic engine, which uses liquid hydrogen as fuel and liquid oxygen and oxidizer.

Cryogenics, the science of extremely low temperatures, has posed a challenge to rocket scientists across the world. 

Technology : NSA Built Back Door In All Windows Software by 1999 Full Excerpt

In researching the stunning pervasiveness of spying by the government (it’s much more wide spreadthan you’ve heard even now), we ran across the fact that the FBI wants software programmers to install a backdoor in all software.

Digging a little further, we found a 1999 article by leading European computer publication Heise which noted that the NSA had already built a backdoor into all Windows software:

A careless mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows.The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors). The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations earlier this year that another US software giant, Lotus, had built an NSA “help information” trapdoor into its Notes system, and that security functions on other software systems had been deliberately crippled.

The first discovery of the new NSA access system was made two years ago by British researcher Dr Nicko van Someren [an expert in computer security]. But it was only a few weeks ago when a second researcher rediscovered the access system. With it, he found the evidence linking it to NSA.

***

Two weeks ago, a US security company came up with conclusive evidence that the second key belongs to NSA. Like Dr van Someren, Andrew Fernandez, chief scientist with Cryptonym of Morrisville, North Carolina, had been probing the presence and significance of the two keys. Then he checked the latest Service Pack release for Windows NT4, Service Pack 5. He found that Microsoft’s developers had failed to remove or “strip” the debugging symbols used to test this software before they released it. Inside the code were the labels for the two keys. One was called “KEY”. The other was called “NSAKEY”.

Fernandes reported his re-discovery of the two CAPI keys, and their secret meaning, to “Advances in Cryptology, Crypto’99″ conference held in Santa Barbara. According to those present at the conference, Windows developers attending the conference did not deny that the “NSA” key was built into their software. But they refused to talk about what the key did, or why it had been put there without users’ knowledge.

A third key?!

But according to two witnesses attending the conference, even Microsoft’s top crypto programmers were astonished to learn that the version of ADVAPI.DLL shipping with Windows 2000 contains not two, but three keys. Brian LaMachia, head of CAPI development at Microsoft was “stunned” to learn of these discoveries, by outsiders. The latest discovery by Dr van Someren is based on advanced search methods which test and report on the “entropy” of programming code.

Within the Microsoft organisation, access to Windows source code is said to be highly compartmentalized, making it easy for modifications to be inserted without the knowledge of even the respective product managers.

Researchers are divided about whether the NSA key could be intended to let US government users of Windows run classified cryptosystems on their machines or whether it is intended to open up anyone’s and everyone’s Windows computer to intelligence gathering techniques deployed by NSA’s burgeoning corps of “information warriors”.

According to Fernandez of Cryptonym, the result of having the secret key inside your Windows operating system “is that it is tremendously easier for the NSA to load unauthorized security services on all copies of Microsoft Windows, and once these security services are loaded, they can effectively compromise your entire operating system“. The NSA key is contained inside all versions of Windows from Windows 95 OSR2 onwards.

***

“How is an IT manager to feel when they learn that in every copy of Windows sold, Microsoft has a ‘back door’ for NSA – making it orders of magnitude easier for the US government to access your computer?” he asked.


http://xposethereal.com/alternative-news/nsa-built-back-door-in-all-windows-software-by-1999.html

Technology : 4 ways to get the IP address of the Victim or another Computer

1. Using PHP notification Script
2. Using Blogs and Websites
3. Using Read Notify service
4. Sniffing during Gmail and Yahoo chat sessions

As we are here to learn concepts so i will first explain what is an IP address and what's its importance. So friends very basic question What is an IP address? Why its important for hackers and security professionals?

What is an IP address? 
Basically IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a unique numerical value that is assigned to any computer or printer on a computer network that uses an internet protocol for communication purpose. Protocol is basically rules( for Network its rules for communication). 
IP address serves for two basic purposes:
1. Host or network interface identification
2. Location Addressing

For exploring more about IP addressing read on wikipedia.

How to Find IP address of another computer?

1. Using PHP notification Script
Using this Notification script you can get the IP address in just seconds. Steps of using this PHP script:
a. Download the PHP notify script and extract files.
Download here
b. Now you will get two files IP.html and index.php . You need to upload these two files to any free web hosting server.
Example: i used www.000webhost.com to upload these two files. Create an account there and upload these two files there as shown below.
c. Now you will need to send the link of index.php to the victim whose password you want to get. to get the link click on index.php shown in above snapshot. Now a new window will open copy the link in the address bar and send to the victim whose IP address you want.
d. Now when the victim opens the above link nothing will open but his Ip address is written into the ip.html file. So open the ip.html file to get his IP address.
e. That's all this method... I hope you liked it.

2. Using Blogs and Websites
This method is for those who have their blogs or websites. Normal users can also do this as blog is free to make. Make a new blog and use any stats service like histats or any other stats widget. Just add a new widget and put histats code there and save template. And send the link of your blog to your friend and get his IP.
That's only.

3. Using Read Notify service
This is an email based service. Steps to use Read Notify service:
a. First open the Read Notify website : RCPT
b. Now register on this website and then it will send you confirmation mail. Verify your account.
c. Once your account is activated. 
Do the following steps use this service:

Compose your email just like you usually would in your own email or web email program
Type: .readnotify.com on the end of your recipients email address (don't worry, that gets removed before your recipients receive the email). Like this: email@gmail.com.readnotify.com 
Send your email
Some things to remember:
don't send to and from the same computer
if your email program 'auto-completes' email addresses from your address book, you'll need to keep typing over the top of the auto-completed one to add the .readnotify.com
if you are cc-ing your email to other readers, you must add tracking to all of them 

4. Sniffing Yahoo and Gmail Chat sessions
With the help of Sniffers like ethereal, wireshark etc we can sniff the Gmail, and yahoo chat sessions while we are chatiing to any our friend and extract the IP address from there. I will explain this trick in detail in my next article as its a long article in itself.

5. Bonus Method for Online Gamers
We can also get the IP address from online games like counter strike, age of empires in Game ranger etc.. Many counter strike servers use amx mode. Just view which people are connecting and whats their IP addess as plugins show the IP address of people connecting to the game server. If you have more access to counter strike server you can use status command in console. Just go to console and type "status"(without quotes) and press enter there you can see all players details his steam ID and much more depending upon server.

6. Double bonus you can use online website 
i prefered -->> http://iptracking.geniushackers.com/ to find the ip address goto with the details on above link

Current Affairs : 1st January 2014

1. India cancelled its Rs 3,600 crore deal with Anglo-Italian firm AgustaWestland for supply of 12 VVIP choppers to the Air Force in view of charges that kickbacks to the tune of Rs 360 crore were paid in it. The decision to scrap the 2010 deal was taken nearly a year after reports surfaced that two top officials of the company had allegedly paid bribes to bag the contract. Former IAF chief S P Tyagi is one of the accused in the case, which is being probed by CBI. The deal was for supply of 12 helicopters for VVIPs and out of these AgustaWestland has already delivered three.

2. Latvia has formally joined the euro zone with new year, becoming the 18th member of the group of EU states which uses the euro as its currency. Latvia recently emerged from the financial crisis to become the EU’s fastest growing economy as well. This step will improve Latvia’s credit rating and attract foreign investors.

3. Market regulator SEBI has approved the appointment of Saurabh Sarkar as the new MD and CEO of MCX-SX. He now heads the United Stock Exchange (USE), is likely to take charge in February. The appointment of Sarkar comes at a crucial time for MCX-SX, which is seeing a churn in the top management, with the promoter Jigneesh Shah and Joseph Massey stepping down from the board after the Rs 5,600-crore NSEL payment crisis.

4. Former Infosys CFO V Balakrishnan stepped down as Board member of software behemoth Infosys recently creating ripples in the corporate circles, has joined the Aam Admi Party.

5. Kanu Kalsaria, former rebel BJP MLA and farmers’ movement leader, officially joined the Aam Admi Party (AAP), indicating that his new party may contest all 26 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat in 2014 polls. In recent past, the three-term BJP MLA had led farmers’ movement against the Nirma Group which wanted to set up a major cement manufacturing plant in Bhavnagar district.

6. Chief Scientist & Head of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry Division, CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, B. Mahipal Reddy was honoured with the Best Scientist Award of Science-Tech Foundation (STF), Bangalore for the year 2013. He has been selected for his efforts which resulted in the development of novel catalysts for air pollution control, bio-mass conversion to value-added products, synthesis of fine chemicals and solar fuels, and the conversion of greenhouse gases to useful chemicals.

7. V. Kannan has taken charge as Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of Vijaya Bank. He took charge from H.S. Upendra Kamath, who has demitted the office of CMD on attaining superannuation on December 31, 2013.

8. S.K. Sharma has taken charge as the Chairman and Managing Director of defence public sector Bharat Electronics Ltd. Sharma joined BEL in 1978 after graduating from the University College of Engineering, Bangalore. He completed his Masters in Business Administration while in service.

9. P. Madhusudan, Director (Finance), Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd (RINL) – Vizag Steel Plant, assumed charge on Wednesday as the company’s CMD. Madhusudhan, who had joined RINL in 2009, will hold the new post for the next five years, as the company plans to increase its capacity to reach to 11-12 mtpa and become a “maharatna”.

AWESOME‬ Story

While at the park one day, a woman sat down next to a man on a bench near a playground. "That's my son over there," she said, pointing to a little boy in a red sweater who was gliding down the slide. "He's a fine looking boy," the man said. "That's my son on the swing in the blue sweater." Then, looking at his watch, he called to his son. "What do you say we go, Todd?" Todd pleaded, "Just one more minute, Dad. Please? Just one more minute." The man nodded and Todd continued to swing to his heart's content.

Minutes passed and the father stood and called again to his son. "Time to go now?" Again Todd pleaded, "one more minute, Dad. Just one more minute." The man smiled and said, "Okay."

" You certainly are a patient father," the woman responded. The man smiled and then said, "My older son Tommy was killed by a drunk driver last year while he was riding his bike near here. I never spent much time with Tommy and now I'd give anything for just one more minute with him. I've vowed not to make the same mistake with Todd. "He thinks he has one more minute to swing. The truth is . . . I get one more minute to watch him play. "

Spur : Respect your parents

An 80 year old man was sitting on the sofa in his house along with his 45 years old highly educated son. Suddenly a crow perched on their window.

The Father asked his Son, “What is this?” The Son replied “It is a crow”. After a few minutes, the Father asked his Son the 2nd time, “What is this?” The Son said “Father, I have just now told you “It’s a crow”. After a little while, the old Father again asked his Son the 3rd time, What is this?” At this time some expression of irritation was felt in the Son’s tone when he said to his Father with a rebuff. “It’s a crow, a crow”.A little after, the Father again asked his Son the 4th time, “What is

this?”

This time the Son shouted at his Father, “Why do you keep asking me the same question again and again, although I have told you so many times ‘IT IS A CROW’. Are you not able to understand this?”

A little later the Father went to his room and came back with an old tattered diary, which he had maintained since his Son was born. On opening a page, he asked his Son to read that page. When the son read it, the following words were written in the diary :-

“Today my little son aged three was sitting with me on the sofa, when a crow was sitting on the window. My Son asked me 23 times what it was, and I replied to him all 23 times that it was a Crow. I hugged him lovingly each time he asked me the same question again and again for 23 times. I did not at all feel irritated I rather felt affection for my innocent child”.

While the little child asked him 23 times “What is this”, the Father had felt no irritation in replying to the same question all 23 times and when today the Father asked his Son the same question just 4 times, the Son felt irritated and annoyed.

So..

If your parents attain old age, do not repulse them or look at them as a burden, but speak to them a gracious word, be cool, obedient, humble and kind to them. Be considerate to your parents.From today say this aloud, “I want to see my parents happy forever. They have cared for me ever since I was a little child. They have always showered their selfless love on me.

They crossed all mountains and valleys without seeing the storm and heat to make me a person presentable in the society today”. Say a prayer to God, “I will serve my old parents in the BEST way. I will say all good and kind words to my dear parents, no matter how they behave.