Exploring The Knowledge

I have been seeing this ‘video’ posted on different scrapbooks for some time now but never gave it too much attention until one of my friend brought it to my notice that its a virus and not a funny video.

The video in the scrapbook appears something like this:

Beware that its not a YouTube video, its simply an image hosted at Orkut. Its also accompanied by “Olha so que encontrei arios flagras no BBB8 vc vai pira” in Portugese which when translated to English means something like “Look so I found arios flagras no BBB8 vc vai pira Several flagras in BBB8 cn will pyre “.

So how does this virus affect you?

This virus is very similar to this one.  The only difference is that instead of using .exe files its using VB Script to cause damage. Once you click on the link, you are taken to either of the two sites: http://one.xthost.info or http://two.xthost.info. Once there it downloads a virus called VBS:Encrypted-gen into your computer. This virus has two known aliases as well: ASP/Ace.AY and Backdoor.ASP.Ace.dg. These viruse attacks ASP backdoor and replicates itself by sending scraps to all your friends.

How can I protect myself from it?

As far as I believe, the following steps should help you get rid of it:

• Download an Antivirus (Avast is recommended since it has been known to detect this virus)  and an AntiSpyware . Scan your whole computer in safe mode.
• Download  Mozilla Firefox  and  get  the  Adblock and Flashblock plugins for Firefox.
  
• Log into Orkut and change your password and delete all scraps from your scrapbook that you think are malicious.

cheers

Hackers that use their skills for good are classified as "white hat." These white hats often work as certified "Ethical Hackers," hired by companies to test the integrity of their systems. Others, operate without company permission by bending but not breaking laws and in the process have created some really cool stuff. In this section we profile five white hat hackers and the technologies they have developed.

1. Stephen Wozniak: "Woz" is famous for being the "other Steve" of Apple. Wozniak, along with current Apple CEO Steve Jobs, co-founded Apple Computer. He has been awarded with the National Medal of Technology as well as honorary doctorates from Kettering University and Nova Southeastern University. Additionally, Woz was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in September 2000.

Woz got his start in hacking making blue boxes, devices that bypass telephone-switching mechanisms to make free long-distance calls. After reading an article about phone phreaking in Esquire, Wozniak called up his buddy Jobs. The pair did research on frequencies, then built and sold blue boxes to their classmates in college. Wozniak even used a blue box to call the Pope while pretending to be Henry Kissinger.

2. Tim Berners-Lee: Berners-Lee is famed as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the system that we use to access sites, documents and files on the Internet. He has received numerous recognitions, most notably the Millennium Technology Prize.

While a student at Oxford University, Berners-Lee was caught hacking access with a friend and subsequently banned from University computers. w3.org reports, "Whilst [at Oxford], he built his first computer with a soldering iron, TTL gates, an M6800 processor and an old television." Technological innovation seems to have run in his genes, as Berners-Lee's parents were mathematicians who worked on the Manchester Mark1, one of the earliest electronic computers.

3. Linus Torvalds: Torvalds fathered Linux, the very popular Unix-based operating system. He calls himself "an engineer," and has said that his aspirations are simple, "I just want to have fun making the best damn operating system I can."

Torvalds got his start in computers with a Commodore VIC-20, an 8-bit home computer. He then moved on to a Sinclair QL. Wikipedia reports that he modified the Sinclair "extensively, especially its operating system." Specifically, Torvalds hacks included "an assembler and a text editor…as well as a few games."

4. Richard Stallman: Stallman's fame derives from the GNU Project, which he founded to develop a free operating system. For this, he's known as the father of free software. His "Serious Bio" asserts, "Non-free software keeps users divided and helpless, forbidden to share it and unable to change it. A free operating system is essential for people to be able to use computers in freedom."

Stallman, who prefers to be called rms, got his start hacking at MIT. He worked as a "staff hacker" on the Emacs project and others. He was a critic of restricted computer access in the lab. When a password system was installed, Stallman broke it down, resetting passwords to null strings, then sent users messages informing them of the removal of the password system.

5. Tsutomu Shimomura: Shimomura reached fame in an unfortunate manner: he was hacked by Kevin Mitnick. Following this personal attack, he made it his cause to help the FBI capture him.

Shimomura's work to catch Mitnick is commendable, but he is not without his own dark side. Author Bruce Sterling recalls: "He pulls out this AT&T cellphone, pulls it out of the shrinkwrap, finger-hacks it, and starts monitoring phone calls going up and down Capitol Hill while an FBI agent is standing at his shoulder, listening to him."

For more information about White Hat Hackers click here

The Internet abounds with hackers, known as crackers or "black hats," who work to exploit computer systems. They are the ones you've seen on the news being hauled away for cybercrimes. Some of them do it for fun and curiosity, while others are looking for personal gain. In this section we profile five of the most famous and interesting "black hat" hackers.

1. Jonathan James: James gained notoriety when he became the first juvenile to be sent to prison for hacking. He was sentenced at 16 years old. In an anonymous PBS interview, he professes, "I was just looking around, playing around. What was fun for me was a challenge to see what I could pull off."

James' major intrusions targeted high-profile organizations. He installed a backdoor into a Defense Threat Reduction Agency server. The DTRA is an agency of the Department of Defense charged with reducing the threat to the U.S. and its allies from nuclear, biological, chemical, conventional and special weapons. The backdoor he created enabled him to view sensitive e-mails and capture employee usernames and passwords.

2. Adrian Lamo: Lamo's claim to fame is his break-ins at major organizations like The New York Times and Microsoft. Dubbed the "homeless hacker," he used Internet connections at Kinko's, coffee shops and libraries to do his intrusions. In a profile article, "He Hacks by Day, Squats by Night," Lamo reflects, "I have a laptop in Pittsburgh, a change of clothes in D.C. It kind of redefines the term multi-jurisdictional."

Lamo's intrusions consisted mainly of penetration testing, in which he found flaws in security, exploited them and then informed companies of their shortcomings. His hits include Yahoo!, Bank of America, Citigroup and Cingular. When white hat hackers are hired by companies to do penetration testing, it's legal. What Lamo did is not.

3. Kevin Mitnick: A self-proclaimed "hacker poster boy," Mitnick went through a highly publicized pursuit by authorities. His mischief was hyped by the media but his actual offenses may be less notable than his notoriety suggests. The Department of Justice describes him as "the most wanted computer criminal in United States history." His exploits were detailed in two movies: Freedom Downtime and Takedown.

Mitnick had a bit of hacking experience before committing the offenses that made him famous. He started out exploiting the Los Angeles bus punch card system to get free rides. Then, like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, dabbled in phone phreaking. Although there were numerous offenses, Mitnick was ultimately convicted for breaking into the Digital Equipment Corporation's computer network and stealing software.

4. Kevin Poulsen: Also known as Dark Dante, Poulsen gained recognition for his hack of LA radio's KIIS-FM phone lines, which earned him a brand new Porsche, among other items. Law enforcement dubbed him "the Hannibal Lecter of computer crime."

Authorities began to pursue Poulsen after he hacked into a federal investigation database. During this pursuit, he further drew the ire of the FBI by hacking into federal computers for wiretap information.

5. Robert Tappan Morris: Morris, son of former National Security Agency scientist Robert Morris, is known as the creator of the Morris Worm, the first computer worm to be unleashed on the Internet. As a result of this crime, he was the first person prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.


for more information about Black Hat Crackers click here

hi,

One of the toughest problems in desktop management is letting offline users work just as if they were working online. The need is greater than you might think—users are a lot more mobile than they were even five years ago. Though there are a number of cases where you might need to work

offline, the three most common are when you disconnect your laptop from the office network and go on the road, when you connect over a slow or intermittent link, and when your branch office loses connectivity to the main office.

In these circumstances, how do you maintain a copy of a file on the offline computer while the original is on the main server? More importantly, how do you handle a conflict if someone in the home office changes the file on the server while someone else changes it on the road? Fortunately, these issues are handled by the Offline Files engine, which is built into Windows^® 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista^®.
Caching Is the Answer

The Offline Files engine is really a giant caching machine. Indeed, underneath the hood (and inside Microsoft) it's referred to as client-side caching (CSC). The Offline Files engine is configurable and flexible enough to let users decide what they want to cache as well as help you get the system to cache what you want. It allows you to access the same files offline as online—and the namespace doesn't change. That is, files are accessed using the same UNC path or drive letter whether you're working online or offline.

You can set up the files to be cached either manually or automatically. If you know you often use particular files or folders while on the road, you can simply designate a file or folder as one that will travel with you. To do this, a Windows XP user would right-click on a file that is stored locally or on a network share and select the option to make files available offline (see Figure 1). In Windows Vista the option is called Always available offline. Manually making a file available offline is sometimes called pinning a file.

Figure 1 Making a file available offline (Click the image for a smaller view)

The share you're using can be connected via UNC path or mapped with a drive letter. Indeed, the file doesn't even need to be one that's stored on a machine running Windows Server^®. It can reside on anything that serves up the SMB (Server Message Block) protocol, such as a Samba server or NAS device (with some rare exceptions), which also adhere to the SMB protocol.

The first time you choose to pin a file, Windows XP walks you through a series of wizard screens, asking when to synchronize. If you click Next on every screen and take the defaults, synchronization happens every time you log on or log off, and also in the background when idle. When the wizard completes, you'll see an icon change indicating that the file is now available offline.Once you disconnect from the network, all other files on the share become unavailable except those chosen for offline use. That's sometimes problematic: the icon shows which files are always available offline, but it's not immediately clear before you've disconnected that not all the other files will be available.

If you have used the Disk Cleanup Utility and utilized it to clear the hibernation file, you may be surprised to find that the Hibernate option is no longer available. You can restore the hibernate option by following these instructions:

1. Click the Start button.

2. Select All Programs.

3. Select Accessories.

4. Right-click on Command Prompt.

5. Select Run as Administrator.

6. When the UAC prompt appears, click Continue.

7. Type powercfg /hibernate on and press Enter on your keyboard.

8. Close the Command Prompt window.

9. Reboot your PC.

• %Windir%\PictureAlbum2007.zip (A zipped copy of the worm.)
• %System%\prodigys323.dll
  or
• %Windir%\myphotos2007.zip
• %System%\newsystem25.dll

� HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{448BAC42-AABD-42C5-A550-826BF4AF4BB3}\InProcServer32\”(Default)” = “prodigys323.dll”

� HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\ShellServiceObjectDelayLoad\”prodigy1″ = “{448BAC42-AABD-42C5-A550-826BF4AF4BB3}”

� HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\[RANDOM CLSID]\InProcServer32\”(Default)” = “newsystem25.dllThe MSN virus killer:

There is a way to kill that virus . A tool that automatically delete all the registry file but it is in the beta state You can download it from Here

 Its new name:



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