Penetration Testing Live CD Updated – Live Hacking 1.2
A new version of the Live Hacking, a Linux distribution designed for ethical computer hacking, has been released.
The updated Live CD contains the tools and utilities you need to test and hack your own network in the same way a malicious hacker would. New in this version is the metasploit penetration testing framework and a range of IPv6 foot-printing tools.
Bossie Awards 2010: The Best Open Source Software of the Year
InfoWorld’s Test Center has picked the top open source platforms, middleware, applications, and application development tools for 2010.
Open Source software has been around now for more than 30 years and it is here to stay. Each year InfoWorld sorts through the millions of open source projects and try to find the best, most promising and most influential projects.
Art Fakers Will Have a Tough Time Hereafter
Researchers at the National Academy of Science have come with a rather new technology that helps people identify art works that are real and that are not! The technology that is based on a system of breaking down the painting to the smallest possible levels, follows an approach that is called sparse coding. The method is aimed at breaking down an artist’s piece of work into smaller 144 squares with 12 rows and 12 columns.
This new computer method of analyzing painting is an improvised version of the method that was in existence from 1999. This method would ensure that art fakers will have a tough time replicating art works as this technical method of analysis was aimed at the smallest levels.
Tweets to Help In Assessing Earthquakes
Reading the title, you would have wondered what tweeting has anything to do with earthquakes! But scientists at the US Geological survey have a different opinion about tweets. The social networking site, Twitter is being used as a tool by the folks at US Geological Survey to get an instant access to public reaction on such earthquakes. The messages are being analyzed to give an idea of how much impact the earthquake had in a particular area.
In a graph of the number of tweets to the time of the earthquakes, there was a spike in the number of tweets when the earthquakes hit. The USGS believes, these spikes in the numbers of tweets can be an emergency responder in assessing such situations. The Tweeter Earthquake Detection project, is one such project by the USGS that aim at singling our tweets with words like quakes or earthquake, however, it has been modified to neglect terms like “Quake”( as in the game) and an icecream named Oreo Brownie Earthquake.
Source: BBC
New Version of Church Song and Video Projection Software Released
A new version of the church song and video projection software SundayWorship has been released.
This release adds two major features to SundayWorship.
- Support for running Microsoft PowerPoint presentations from SundayWorship
- The ability to import songs from EasiSlides.
You can download the latest version from here.
New iPhone Sci-Fi Accelerometer Game Launched; Introducing Nova Ball and Nova Ball FREE
Gary Sims, the technology consultant and author, is pleased to announce the launch of the new iPhone and iPod Touch game ‘Nova Ball’. Developed independently, Nova Ball is a space/sci-fi accelerometer game. In the game you control the ball by holding your device parallel to the floor and tilting.
The game has three modes: arcade, mayhem and missions. In arcade mode you need to see how fast you clear each level. Mayhem is all about survival; stop the stars reaching critical mass. In mission mode you have to clear each level to progress to the next.
‘I am really excited about this new game’ said Gary during the launch. ‘The iPhone, iPod Touch and now iPad is a great platform for developing mobile applications and of course games’
There is also a free version of Nova Ball known as ‘Nova Ball Free’. This lite version can be downloaded from the App Store and played without any limitations or expiry. However it is different to the full version in that the Mayhem mode has been removed and there are only 6 missions to play rather than the full 50.
The games can be downloaded here:
http://itunes.apple.com/app/nova-ball/id356162161?mt=8
http://itunes.apple.com/app/nova-ball-free/id357822431?mt=8
About Gary Sims
Gary Sims is an independent technology consultant and author. As well as developing iPhone and iPod Touch applications, Gary is the author of the book: Learning FreeNAS which is available from Packt Publishing and at Amazon.com. Gary was also a key member of development team for the Live Hacking CD a new Linux distribution packed with tools and utilities for ethical hacking, penetration testing and countermeasure verification.
Report: Deal of ICQ?
A Russian company, Digital Sky Technologies (DST) is negotiating to buy ICQ instant messenger. Presently, owned by AOL, ICQ is one of the most leading instant messengers used today. The deal is supposed to be fixed between $200 millions to $250 millions.
Worth noticing is the fact that AOL bought ICQ in 1998 for $400 millions, and have millions of users all over the world. Market researcher Camscore has rated ICQ as the No.1 instant messenger in Russia so the enthusiasm of the deal is obvious. This news was published in a Russian newspaper Vedomosti.
Digital Sky Technologies was in news in May when it invested $200 millions in Facebook. And the market can see it as company’s yet another deal.
ICQ came into highlight when AOL asked Morgan Stanley and Allen & Co., investment bankers to find buyer for ICQ.
Security Expert Finds Problem with Microsoft’s MSN.com
Someone has discovered a problem on Microsoft’s MSN.com website and the question is being asked, “is a prelude or even the result of an attack on Microsoft’s website?”
The problem is with MSN’s Arabia subdomain. MSN uses subdomains to provide localized content to different parts of the the world. There are MSN subdomains for the UK, France, India and so on. There is also a subdomain for Arabia at http://arabia.msn.com. The problem occurs when users of the site try to access Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
On other subdomains and the main MSN.com website, entering a search term into the Bing search box takes you to the Bing search engine and a page of results for the term entered. But on the Arabia site using Bing results in an error. The error comes in two parts, the general error is “You are not authorized to view this page” and the reason given for this is “Forbidden: IP address of the client has been rejected.”
The problem was dsicovered by Dr. Jahangiri and he is calling on Microsoft to fix this problem quickly but to also check their MSN Arabia website to ensure that it hasn’t been compromised and also to check for any other vulnerabilities in the web server configuration.
[Via Press Release]
X-Ray Vision and Birds
A recent study by a team of researchers suggests that, birds like the small red-breasted robin in your garden has a kind of an “X-ray” vision. The team of researchers from the University of Oldenburg, wrote about their findings in the scientific journal “Nature”. According to them, the migratory pattern of many migratory birds and other birds were linked to the fact that they were able to sense the earth’s magnetic field.
This has now proven to be true, and has in fact revealed even more than that. The research team has said that, the birds can see the Earth magnetic field at night and this was possible by a particular area in the brain called “Cluster N” which processes light. Though they have not determined how this helps the birds in the process, but they have zeroed down on the fact that these birds could actually see the earth’s magnetic field.
Hackers: “Iranian Cyber Army”
On Friday morning, users while visiting Twitter encountered a message from “Iranian cyber army”, a group of some Iranian hackers. A similar thing was observed with Iran’s green movement website. It seems that these sites have experienced an attack of hackers. They call themselves “Iranian cyber army”. It was like a worldwide protest against green movement because it did not really appeared like a typical cyber crime which generally has some financial intentions. That really happened on Twitter was that the web page of twitter was redirected to a web page which displayed a green flag with Arabic words which mean that the site has been hacked by Iranian cyber army.
Not just this, the note at the bottom read, “USA think they controlling and managing internet by their access, but they don’t, we control and manage internet by our power, so do not try to stimulate Iranian people”.
The page contained many other such words of protest and ends with a note “take care”. The good thing about the attack was all the essential information remained safe. A series of talks have begun with these attacks both regarding security issues and political issues. Let’s see how it goes in the coming days.
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