Stay Safe Online: Strong and easy passwords

Passwords are the most critical part of security, it keeps everything from your emails,social networks  to your financial transactions, safe. No matter how secure the systems are, or how much money  was spend to buy the latest security software, you are totally vulnerable if the chosen password is your second name or date of birth.

Most difficult question is, how to make easy-yet strong passwords????.I have came across an interesting article in this topic, you can read it here.

My favorite method is to use a long phrase or a sentence  as password.For example "youwillneverhackmyaccount" will be a very strong password, very easy to remember also.

If you want to have separate passwords for different websites you can customize the phrase to suit it.For example "ihaveastrongpasswordfororkut" can be used for orkut and for facebook change the name to FB :)

To create passwords with numbers and alphabets, form a statement containing numbers.Example "mydobis28june2010".There is very little chance that, anyone will be able to guess this password even if he/she knows your DOB.

For even more security, you can include special characters also in the password. The key to remembering them is to apply the fact that, those characters  can be typed by pressing shift and pressing the corresponding number.You can remember "mycarsnumberis12#$" as 'mycarsnumberis12shift34'.

Hope this info help you to create a strong password next time you decide to have one.

Stay Safe on Gmail : Recovering from a password hack

Ever had the nightmare of someone hacking into your mail account?Losing all the contacts you had in a moment....unable to access important mails, or even worse someone is taking advantage financially?Well these are common scenarios theses days, with the increased number of malware infections,increased online presence and reused passwords.If you depending gmail as your main email address you may want follow some precautions to ensure that you can recover your account without much loss and in time, in the event of an incident.

Have a separate secondary email address ready: The first step in recovering your gmail(or google account in general ) password is through the secondary email id.  If the hacker haven't changed your secondary email address,then you can reset the password, hence regain access. If are not sure about your secondary email or haven't set it yet, go to google account settings.There select change password recovery option. Then set your secondary email, security question and update your phone number also. Its better to have a dedicated email account separately to be used as the secondary email for various services you use.Make a point to set a different password to this account, and also do not enable email forwarding.For added security,do not disclose this address to anyone or use it for any other purpose.

Try your luck with security question: If you lost access to your secondary email address or couldn't remember the id itself now, you can try password recovery using the security question you have set.But if the the hacker is smart, he will immediately change these details once he have access.So the only option left with you is to use the password recovery form and prove that you are the rightful owner of the account by entering few details.

Proving your ownership: If all the recovery methods specified above is failed, then the only option left is to prove to the google  that you are the rightful owner of that account.The recovery form can be found here.So take a sheet of paper and write down the following details( you can also use your mobile for easier access).Even if you can't find the exact details,get the closest data.

 Account Creation date:Go to the oldest emails in your Inbox.There will be a welcome email with the subject "Gmail is different. Here's what you need to know" from the Gmail Team upon creation of your account.If you have deleted that email,take the date from the first email you have received.

Orkut and blog creation date:Most likely you will be having these two enabled(if you don't have it,create it and note down the dates).For getting the approx creation date of orkut account, take the date of the first scrap you received.For blogger, go to your profile and note down "On blogger Since" date.

Also note down the account creation date for any two of the google services like analytics,adsense etc.[If you don't have any of these services activated, now is the time :) ]. For Analytics, look at the first date when it started collecting stats for your website(s). For AdSense, you may take the help of your AdSense account manager.(I don't know how to get the creation date for services other than these,if you have any idea kindly let me know, I uses these only.)

Noting down some more details like, most emailed contacts,custom labels created, email address of the person invited you to gmail may also help you in some cases.

Once you have recovered your account, reset your password,secondary email,phone and security question immediately. Also do check the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab in the settings page for any forwarding rules added.The hacker could have added a forwarding rule so that he will be able to read all your mails, even if he lost control of the account.You may also check the activity history by clicking the "Details" link at the bottom of the page.It will give you the IP address of the hacker, by which you can pinpoint(may not be possible always) the attacker.


But always prevention is better than cure, do take precautions while browsing on a public system,un-secure wireless connection.Be cautious about the links/files you get in mails etc.You can create a backup copy of your inbox locally using  an email client like Evolution/Outlook etc for better security.

[Update: Friend of mine suggested another idea for archiving, create a separate gmail account and add an email forward to this account from your normal mail.Also add send email as u r original email in this secondary email.So even if your email is compromised you will have all your mails and still will be able to send emails.  ]

Facebook SCAMS

As Facebook is growing in popularity,its increasingly becoming the target for various kinds of malicious attacks.I have spotted one such scam couple of days back, which will trick people into copy pasting javascript code into their browser's address bar.The code in the scam which I spotted did nothing but to invite all FB friends to view this particular scam page by sending out suggestions.Though it seems a harmless( irritating though) trick, one could some malicious intend ( say fetching the contacts personal details or session cookie) to it.
It started with the suggestion I received from a friend that I should become the fan of the page "WORST STATUS UPDATE ON THIS PLANET".Clicking this particular invitation will bring you into a page like this.

According to this page it is a two step process(!!) to reveal the WORST STATUS UPDATE EVER, first of which is to click the [LIKE] button.  

One you click the button, it will redirect you to another page, which will ask you to copy paste the given code into the browser's address bar and wait for the content to load.
While you wait, the code running in the background will send out suggestions to your FB friends, to become the fan of this page( which explains the suggestion I got).This page is no longer accessible now(thankfully), it might have taken down by the FB.

Googling parts of the javascript code showed that its a readily available piece of code to invite all your friends.Which shows this is not the only attempt made.( google revealed same tricks were used by scammers for long time, but still 2000+ people fell for this!!!).Its really disturbing to see that people blindly believe everything they see in the social networking sites( esp if it's supported/suggested by a friend). We really need to realize that not everything  we see needs to be true. So the best practice from my point of view is to think before you do something online.
Always remember, "NEVER COPY PASTE ANYTHING INTO THE ADDRESS BAR, NO MATTER WHAT IT CLAIMS TO DO" 

How to Stay safe on public Wi-Fi

I have found an interesting article about staying safe on public wifi, so thought putting some points of my own. You can read the article here.

What are the safety concerns associated with public Wifi?
         Public Wi-Fi networks will be mostly un-encrypted, which means anyone with a wireless card and a laptop will be able to see the pages you are visiting, you emails etc.People hesitate to turn on the encryption on a public network inorder to avoid the hassle of key management.Every encyptd network needs a key( like a password) for decypting the traffic, how do you share the key among the users, say in an airport where people come and go very fast. Thats not the case in your home network where you once setup the network, set the passkey and tell all of your family members.
         Even if the network in encrypted, still all the people in the network will be able to see the traffic you are generating. Yet another problem ( its not exactly with public wifi, but with windows wifi implementation) is that if a default access point is set in your XP machine, it will automatically try to connect that SSID. If it didn't find such a AP, it will create an ad-hoc network with that particular SSID. An attacker can listen for the broadcast signals from your machine for the SSID and can create a fake wireless network with that SSID, allowing them to connect to your PC.
So some one else can see my traffic, whats the big deal??
         Well, eavesdropping in the traffic won't do any harm if you are using the net for only, say seeing the cricket score or checking the weather or any other activity which does not require a login or some other kind of authentication. If you are checking mails, or logging into a social networking site, then there is a chance that your password might get compromised, as your login information will be send over the network which could be read by an attacker.Most site has an option to use SSL(Secure Sockets Layer ) to protect its users from such attacks.But most of them may not use this by default( use of SSL can be recognized by looking at the URL, SSL uses https:// instead of the normal http:// )
or some even donot have such an option!!!. 
        Another problem is the usage of email clients like Microsoft outlook or Thunderbird. These softwares will not use any encryption for mail transfer, which basically means if you use you laptop in a public wifi to dowload your work mail using Outlook, its almost like printing the mails and giving it all the people around you!!.

What are the precautions that can be taken??
       Whenever possible try not to use a public wifi, especially for financial transactions or offcial purpose. The best thing to do is to switch off your wireless card when in a public place.Even if you are not using the network, malicious softwares can still sneak in, if your system is just connected to the network, through the bugs in your installed softwares using what is know as remote exploits.
       It may not be always possible to stay away, especially if you have to kill hours or have to send some urgent mails etc. You can do the following things to keep you secure as much as possible.

•        Keep your softwares and OS up to date, that means windows updates as well.If you are having a pirated OS, your are in trouble. Either buy an original version or switch to a linux flavor.
•        Install and keep  updating  an antivirus and firewall software
•        Always use SSL ( URLs  beginning with https:// ) for the whole session,by default most sites protect its login pages with SSL, but not after that, you are still at risk as some one can steel your authentication tokens send with each request or read your mails.( Its worth mentioning that gmail now by default uses SSL for all the communications.).How to do that, use https:// always. For example instead of going to http://www.twitter.com goto https://www.twitter.com.
•      Never open Outlook while in a public wifi, as it will automatically download the mails through an unencrypted channel. Always use the webmail, as most of the standard installations protect all the communication with SSL by default.
•      If you have VPN access to your company network, use it. It will not only protect your mail transactions,also it will protect your all other traffic. If you are using VPN, then it will be OK to use Outlook, since the communication will be happening over the encrypted VPN tunnel.In fact if you are under a VPN, you are protected from most the above described threats.  
•    Never use a website that does not offer SSL for during any serious transactions. A good example will IRCTC website. They donot offer any SSL. So its best NOT to use it while on a public Wifi.

"Shadows in the cloud" - Is indian defence secrets are at risk?

The recent news in the Indian media about Indian defense documents being stolen by Chinese hackers is a pretty disturbing one. The news is based upon the research report published by the Information Warfare Monitor and Shadowserver Foundation, titled "SHADOWS IN THE CLOUD: Investigating Cyber Espionage 2.0". You can read the actual report here

The most interesting observation from this report is the shift in the focus and the nature of the attackers, the face of attackers are changing from lonely kids in their parents basements trying to impress their friends to well knowledgeable professional doing organized crimes for financial benefits. There has been incidents in the recent times that even state actors are promoting hacking for there own profit.

The research is started on the lines of earlier research works done, which revealed that computers of His Holiness Dalai lama was compromised along with that of several others to form a eave dropping network that they called 'GhostNet'. The findings given in the report is shocking as far as Indian Computer Security is concerned. There has been clear evidence that, its a cleverly plotted one tailored to compromise Indian defense systems and to steal sensitive data.


It has been confirmed by them that the malware used in these attacks have uploaded a number of documents from the compromised systems to few Central servers controlled by the attackers.They were able to recover documents( mainly in pdf ) from one of these control servers, few of them are marked SECRET, CONFIDENTIAL etc.The recovered documents also include 1,500 letters sent from the Dalai Lama’s office between January and November 2009. The profile of documents recovered suggests that the attackers targeted specific systems and profiles of users.

Compromised systems includes that of National Security Council Secretariat India, Diplomatic Missions ( Indian Embassys ), Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis,
Defence-oriented publications like FORCE and United Nations. From the nature of the targets selected, it is clear that the attack was indeed intended to collect intelligence on India military and related organizations.

Researchers identify the attackers to hail from PRC.Evidence of links between the Shadow network and two individuals living in Chengdu, PRC to the underground hacking community in the PRC. Though there are no evidence to suggest a tie between the hackers and PLA, considering the mode of operations of PLA and the patriotic hacking activities in PRC, there is a high probability that the documents that were siphoned from the compromised systems can end up in with PLA.

They were not able to clearly identify the exact method used by the attackers to infect the target machines, but the evidence suggested that exploits are used against PDF and MS office files which will install a trojan leading to first level infection. Attackers have used a well know services like google groups and twitter to control the infected systems.This attack is the latest example of using trusted sites for malicious purpose in order to circumvent easy detection.

It can be concluded that this incident should not be seen as an isolated one, but should seen in connection with previous attacks. The underground hacking community has become a well organized crime unit. In order to combat the terror mutual co operation between various governmental/non-govt agencies and even between counties are required.

Viruses Simplified

3 types of "viruses" demystified

In the anti-malware business we often quibble over details the general public does not care about. To us these differences are important, though, as classifying a piece of malware helps us define and understand its nature and helps those of us stuck with detecting or cleaning up an infection.

Many people, especially journalists and Mac users, try to use their understanding of these terms to defend their poor choices in security practices. I thought it might be a good time for a little review over the Easter weekend to explain the differences between these types of malware, and unblur the lines between them.

Read the rest of the story...