Securing Your Private Wireless Network

It has been all over the news lately that corporations and even government computer systems have been broken into. While this is happening, sensitive data is being stolen and leaked onto the Internet or used to distribute company secrets. This is the nightmare of every head of network security in the world at this time as well as for home users and telecommuting workers all around the globe. When careful attention is paid to trends in the news and through specialty publications that focus solely on network security, there is a far better chance of keeping protocols up to date and avoiding any significant breaches. Within this article, the focus will be on Wireless LAN security and the various pitfalls and methods currently in use that has proven to be reliable. Closed Networks Most networks will be a closed system of one flavor or another. It can be a home network where a user does personal banking or a telecommuting employee whose laptop is like the best friend and travelling companion

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Securing Your Private Wireless Network

IRC: The Longest Standing Chat Protocol

On our personal computers, we have AOL Instant Messenger , Yahoo Messenger , MSN Messenger , Skype and perhaps, if you are one of those users who has friends on all of those networks, a multi-messenger program, like Trillian or Pidgin .  On our phones, we have mobile versions of these, or we have proprietary messaging software such as Blackberry Messenger . We live in a world where the ability to be connected to others instantly is so important that we are bombarded with ways to do so. IRC: the program that helped the world communicate in real time In 1988, an avid Bulletin Board Service (BBS) user was inspired to replace the chat function on the service called “MUT” or “MultiUser Talk” with something a bit more elegant.  From that moment of inspiration came IRC, for “Internet Relay Chat” . During its early days, IRC was used primarily for group discussions held in real time.  Through the use of a client to reach the server, the user chooses a nickname to go by in the channel (chat room) that they choose to be in.  Most IRC servers do not require that you register an account, however most offer the option so that your nickname will not be taken by another user. When a user connects to a server, they then choose a channel or a chat room in which they want to participate and from there go on to meet and speak with others from around the globe. Initially IRC was a plain-text only service, however as time went by and new client programs were created, this became more of a standard although not a hard and fast rule.

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IRC: The Longest Standing Chat Protocol

Future Uses and Growth of Cloud Computing

We live in a day and age where technology is advancing so fast that just ten years ago we could not have foreseen the technological advances that we enjoy today. Certainly we have seen plenty of retina scanning and fingerprint scanners in the movies and in science fiction books. Now, however, we see fingerprint security on personal laptops and just about everyone knows what encryption is and uses some form of it. So, when this strange phenomenon called “ Cloud Computing ” came into the public eye, it set imaginations running and people began asking questions about what it was and what is it capable of. A large part of the problem in accurately describing cloud computing is that there are many different definitions that are all technically correct. It is application deployment, decentralized office applications, customer service management solutions, storage and much more. Today, I want to focus on the three most popular uses of cloud computing: Cloud Storage, Cloud Hosting, and Software as a Service. Cloud Storage This is really a simple idea that can be made complex when you put too much thought into it. At the end of the day, cloud storage is off site backups and storage that can be accessed from any computer or cellular with an Internet connection. It lets the user share large multimedia files across several locations with several people at the same time, all without needing a laptop or a flash drive. Most cloud storage services also allow for multiple users to access the account, such as in cloud services like AVG’s LiveKive which assigns a separate file sharing link to whomever you wish to share with.  The link accesses only the files that the administrator designates. Some of the most popular cloud storage services are: Amazon Cloud | http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ This Amazon product allows you to store your documents and applications as well as e-books bought in Kindle format.  It also allows you to upload your music to their service and no matter how much music there is, you have unlimited space that does not go against your quota for photos, movies, documents and other file types.

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Future Uses and Growth of Cloud Computing

Popular Music Streaming Websites

In this world today, it’s unbelievable sometimes how many things we take for granted. One of the ones that I think we should be most appreciative of is how readily-accessible music is. Among the many “When I was your age” lessons that’s already taking root is how just 20 years ago, you had to wait for songs on the small handful of radio stations available, or else buy an expensive CD or tape. We’ve now gone so far to the opposite extreme that we can’t picture it being any other way. Almost every song ever recorded is now available somewhere. Sometimes you have to (*gasp*) pay $0.99 for it if it’s truly rare, assuming you want to listen to it legally, and listen to it now. Most of the times, you don’t. Usually, it takes not even a minute to find it and start playing it

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Popular Music Streaming Websites

How to Start Your Own Social Networking Site – And Keep it Up

If it exists on the internet, chances are someone has made it easier for you to do the same thing yourself.  Social networking is increasingly included in this rule.  As it becomes a world onto itself, it’s becoming easier for individual users to create their own islands within it. If you’re tired of FaceBook, Twitter, and all of the other sites that you can name as well as we can, you always have the option to just go it at yourself, and create your own place to share LOLcats pics and YouTube videos .  Like all such endeavors, it comes with its own caveats and warnings ahead of time that should be heeded. Know why you’re doing it Perhaps more than most other types of internet endeavors, you need to think clearly about exactly why you are doing this.  With so much of the world already taken by existing networks, you’re not going to get people running to your new one just because it exists. If you want to have any reasonable hope that your network will go anywhere, it needs to be a place that services a type of community that isn’t well-served anywhere else.  Here are a few examples: Business and artistic guilds and communities that need to maintain strong ties to one another. Social groups that are, if not marginalized, perhaps at least specialized enough that they could benefit from the special attention that someone who understands them can give. Religious groups that would benefit from the safety of an environment in which they know they wouldn’t be judged. Know where you’re doing it If you’ve gotten that far, then your next question is where you are going to setup shop.  Included in the question of “where” is “how”.  There are two main routes you can go here.

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How to Start Your Own Social Networking Site – And Keep it Up

Memory Engineering: What is this new Trend?

As with all trends on the World Wide Web, we have a plethora of new terms used to describe new ways of organizing your on line and off line lives. Newest to this assemblage is “Memory Engineering” term coined by Clive Thompson , who is a writer for the popular technology trend magazine Wired. It is becoming less of a trend, more of a utility used by professionals, students and homemakers alike. It takes on many forms, from applications for your cell phone, to websites that connect your vast social network presence on line to photo and music play-lists that are kept and meticulously stored in order to bring back memories from a week, month or year ago. With the shortening of attention spans worldwide in every single age group, this new utility will assist the user in keeping a track record of their lives as they appear on the World Wide Web. OK : Sounds neat, where do I go in order to sign up for one or many of these sites? Well, first of all you need to define exactly how you would like your on line life to be tracked

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Memory Engineering: What is this new Trend?

What is Tor? A Closer Look at The Onion Router

It’s been a hot topic in the news for years now.  Privacy on the Internet is something that users not only want but expect, even if they know they shouldn’t.  So much of our daily activity resides there.  From our entertainment and paying bills to shopping for gifts, clothing and bulk household items, Internet service has become a utility, not just a frivolous addition to your cable TV package.  With so much activity going on in the strange in-between world of the Internet, there was bound to develop an underground.  Much like in your day-to-day world where the world’s secret places thrive, there is an equivalent world on the Internet where anarchy is king and the rules are few.  One of the ways you can get to this place is called Tor. In the Beginning: Tor was once an acronym standing for “ The Onion Router ” which was a reference to how the program layered and encrypted the users on the network; it became its official name in early 2006.  Tor began as a project of the United States Naval Research Laboratory for reasons that to this day are shrouded in mystery.  When it came to be funded through the Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF), it ceased to be a military endeavor and took its first breaths as an independent project.  It is currently run by “The Tor Project”, an educational 501c3 devoting its time and services to developing a web browser designed to preserve anonymity on the Internet. The gritty details Let’s get a little more technical and see how this works.  Tor protects the user by taking the outgoing signal and bouncing it through various relays across the globe. In order to do this however, one must download and install a Tor browser package which is available on the Tor Projects homepage.  The browser itself is very pared down and as no-nonsense as it gets, allowing no scripts to come through that you do not by hand approve and no cookies to be saved so that your information remains private. When you visit a website, it sends out the signal to the first relay and that relay encrypts it which sends it along to the next for further encryption, and so on.  By the time it reaches its destination, often hundreds of relays have been used to get there.  This still usually happens in a matter of seconds, making Tor browsing not that much slower than using your normal services.  The browser itself is set up to access a different type of web page called an “unindexed site” or a “hidden service”:  these are web sites that are invisible to everyday search engines.  They achieve this by using public encryption keys and 16 character hash tags followed by the pseudo-top level domain marker “.onion”. Doesn’t make sense?   That’s the point: to most browsers, it’s not supposed to.  Normal web browsers cannot decrypt the information produced by a .onion service or page.  When a user starts the Tor/Onion browser and enters in a .onion domain address the information going forward to the first relay gets encrypted and sent forward to the next relay.  Because the next relay in the line cannot tell from where the incoming connection came, the user is effectively protected from any attempt at traffic analysis.   Even if someone could either decrypt one node or get some legal order to release the data, it’s one of dozens or hundreds of nodes.  In summary, the traffic is effectively impossible for anyone to trace, even the people who themselves take part in it.  There’s literally not a single person on the planet who could trace a request made through Tor

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What is Tor? A Closer Look at The Onion Router

Google’s Galaxy Nexus and the Ice Cream Sandwich: A big player arrives

Let’s get it out of the way, first of all.  Just about every article that you read about the new Android software is going to throw at least one cutesy pun in about the name.  So we’re putting in our veto now: no food jokes here. More than in most cases it would really miss the point.  The Galaxy Nexus and the Android 4.0 operating system it utilizes, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich, looks to already be a major entry in the phone and tablet wars.  This is no minor release.  There is every reason to believe that this might be even bigger than all of the hype says it is. Riding the cresting waves Part of what makes this debut so important is that it turns on the turbocharger for a number of trends that were already flying high.  Possibly the biggest of these is the Android operating system.  Its initial release was a mere three years ago, and the 3.x Honeycomb versions were only released this year.  Today there are an estimated 190 million Android capable devices in use, with another half million activated every day (that’s about 8 every second)! Part and parcel with that is the supernova that is Google.  This company is simply on fire.  Name just about anything related to the internet.  At this point, either Google has their own version of it, or they’re working on it.   It’s clear from the various news releases that there is going to be monumental support for both this operating system and this device. What makes Ice Cream Sandwich so special? The primary design goal behind Android 4.0 was to create an operating system that could work equally well on tablets on phones, eliminating fragmentation.  Given how ubiquitous this would make it, Google put immense redesign effort into just about every aspect of it.  While it is described as still being intuitive to 3.0 users, even the compacted list of features and improvements is far too long to list. Where do we start?  Perhaps the interface is best.  The physical buttons have been replaced with virtual ones.  This creates a lot of versatility, as the phone uses a hefty 1280

The Case of the Overzealous Security Guard

Just last week, I had an interesting experience with a web host that I use (as always, names of the guilty withheld).  It highlighted some of the things that I’ve talked about in this column about customer service, security, and employee empowerment.  It wasn’t that big of an issue, but it was a reminder of how little problems can easily cascade, eventually resulting in lost customers (which I considered becoming before they fixed the problem). Let me hit rewind and go through the play-by-play.  I think there are some important lessons to be reminded of here. The prosecutor’s case I was attempting to setup a common CGI package on my account. I went on for a while and ran into problems that I knew meant that there was something wrong with either their servers or the installation process.  The host’s online help docs didn’t get me anywhere, so I went searching around the net.  With a little Google mojo, I found a good lead.  There was a configuration file that needed to be adjusted. The problem was that it wasn’t clear exactly how it was supposed to be adjusted.  I tried just about everything obvious.  Nothing worked.  Finally at a standstill, I threw in the towel.  I dropped an email to their tech support.  They had an online submission form, but it went to the email that the host provides, which I’d never used or redirected. The defendant’s case I received a reply back pretty quickly.  It stated that since my address wasn’t the primary email address for the account that, per their security procedures, they would have to contact the address that was, and see if this was a valid address to offer tech support to. From that point on it was mostly smooth sailing. Well, gee, that doesn’t sound all that bad.  So where’s the problem?

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The Case of the Overzealous Security Guard

Competition in Social Networking: The Rise of Google+ and the Status of FaceBook

It’s been seen all over the tech world news, people are increasingly displeased with FaceBook and their questionable privacy practices  as well as their increasing addition of new features without even a previous statement giving the user the opportunity to choose if they wish to implement them at this time. It has also been a well-known fact that, generally speaking, Google has not gotten the hang of social networking, just yet. Thankfully, those days are now over. When Google announced its newest social networking initiative, Google+ , most people were, of course, skeptical. After all, Buzz shared all of their contacts information and their own publicly and angered their users to no end. It also brought the company under an oversight committee with the FCC for the next 20 years.

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Competition in Social Networking: The Rise of Google+ and the Status of FaceBook

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