January 18, 2006
IPSec Dead?
I usually take Gartner's 'prophecies', 'surveys' and 'magic quadrants' with huge dollops of salt. They are good for using as quotes in presentations to scare the gullible but reality is mostly otherwise. I did so again when I read their report on the IPSec protocol.
The first fallacy in their statement is the 'younger technological rival' part -- SSL encryption technology is the grand daddy of IPSec, not the other way around. But yes, SSL VPNs are newer that IPSec VPNs. They are more as an afterthought rather than ground up. VPNs have existed in many forms. You had MS PPTP VPNs, L2TP VPNs and even unencrypted simple IP over TCP virtual networks. IPSec was considered strongest.
Secondly, SSL VPNs are not a replacement for IPSec VPNs. They are convenient for most people which is why they are increasingly used. You don't have to install any client software. All you need is a web browser to initiate an SSL VPN connection. They will succeed over IPSec VPNs in most remote applications. But IPSec will still be around for network-to-network VPNs.
Thirdly, IPSec is an integral part of IPv6. So is Gartner suggesting that IPv6 will be dead? :-) In fact, I predict, when IPv6 becomes widespread, it will be easier to use IPSec than SSL because SSL is more of an IPv4 technology and using it as VPN will mean more overhead for applications in the future.
January 20, 2005
Bangalored!
Bangalored adj. for a corporation, project, or employment, having been relocated to India; having lost business or employment due to such a relocation.
Hmmm, so Bangalore is on its way into the dictionary after Shanghai. [via as2max]
December 26, 2004
Now, catch me if you can
Frank William Abagnale [FWA], the real-life "hero" of Catch Me If You Can, has vowed to stay away from all on-line, computer or cyber security conferences. The reason? Some other famous infosec professionals were irked by his presence as the keynote speaker at the CSI's 31st Annual Conference. They boycotted the conference. William Murray had this to say about his boycott -
For most of my forty year career I have systematically and consistently refused to participate on programs with known rogues and felons. At first it was because it was a condition of my employment. As I became more independent, it was to protect my professional reputation. Now it is to protect the profession. Most of the senior members of the profession have followed this policy; I consulted some of them before making my decision.
If you ask me, I'd say these people are simply trying to put up a face of 'professional ethics'. I see no harm in listening to how an actual forger operates. This is very essential today because of the everchanging nature of security threats. Unless you see things from the eyes of the doer, it becomes very difficult for you to keep pace with things in the security world. The use of honeypots essentially means you are seeing attacks from the eyes of a black hat or a potential felon. The Blackhat Briefings are the most informative of any security conferences.
Besides, Abagnale is apologetic about his deeds as a teenager -
When I was 28 years old, I thought it would be great to have a movie about my life, but when I was 28, like when I was 16, I was egotistical and self-centered. We all grow up. Hopefully we get wiser. Age brings wisdom and fatherhood changes one's life completely. I consider my past immoral, unethical and illegal. It is something I am not proud of. I am proud that I have been able to turn my life around and in the past 25 years, helped my government, my clients, thousands of corporations and consumers deal with the problems of white collar crime and fraud.
Now compare that with the self-centered convicted felon, Kevin Mitnick who used similar social engineering techniques to break into systems. But when you read what Mitnick's girlfriend had to say some time back, you know the real difference.
December 09, 2004
Defeating CAPTCHAs
If you have commented on Yazad's or Madman's weblogs, you must have noticed the small images with numbers in them. Called CAPTCHAs, they literally expand to Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. As you may have guessed it, they help in keeping software bots at bay, in web applications. In case of weblogs, they help in blocking automated comment spamming tools.
The most popular CAPTCHAs are the ones which display an image with distorted text and expect the human reader to read the text and enter it in a textbox. The assumption is an automated bot wouldn't be in a position to identify distorted text in the image. Then there are those which ask the user to hear to a short audio clip of distorted voice and write what was said in the audio clip.
Aren't they secure enough? No, they are not. Computer researchers at UCB have developed a program which can solve "ez-gimpy" (from captcha.net) with 92% accuracy. Spammers have devised unique ways of cracking CAPTCHAs. Someone designed a software robot that would fill out a registration form and, when confronted with a CAPTCHA test, would post it on a free porn site. Visitors to the porn site would be asked to complete the test before they could view more pornography, and the software robot would use their answer to complete the e-mail registration.
Isn't that incredible? The easiest way to bypass CAPTCHAs — software bots using humans to do their work! So what could be the next solution? The answer is logic puzzles. You can present a simple problem to the user in the form of 3 + 5 = ?. Software bots will have to be very advanced in parsing text and figuring out the problem and then figuring out the solution for the problem.
November 10, 2004
The Stable Fox is out
Welcome to the world of secure internet surfing. Welcome to Firefox 1.0 - combining the best of browser security, features and cool extension magic. The last few days have been especially good for Firefox. And to top it all, Google has created a custom start page for firefox. This is the default homepage on a standard Firefox installation. As someone said on Slashdot, fire your conspiracy theories...
September 16, 2004
PRA - Purposefully Regressive Algorithm
Microsoft is again doing what it is best at - impeding progress of open Internet standards. The IETF has rejected Microsoft's draft proposal for the SenderID Framework (something to do with anti-spam) because of the patent issues surrounding the PRA algorithm. But does that affect Microsoft's efforts to push forth their agenda? No, not even the Internet's premier body can do that.
Microsoft had released the algorithm under a "non-transferable & non-sublicensable" license which locks out open source implementations of the algorithms since they now cannot sub-license their implementations under the GPL/Apache/BSD licenses. This affects about 60% of the mail relay servers on the Internet! And what do Microsoft have to say on this? "We don't care". If you check the link, the second para tells you all -
…it does not make sense to discuss alternatives to PRA if those alternatives may be reasonably inferred to be covered by the patent application (though not necessarily the license) since this working group does not wish to discount Microsoft's patent application…
Don't forget to read the whole thread. So finally, Microsoft will go ahead with PRA's incorporation and will not use the other alternative MAILFROM method for checking incoming mails. Another quote from the above link -
While Microsoft plans to incorporate both mailfrom and PRA checking information in the records it maintains, it has no plans to use mailfrom to check incoming e-mails, saying PRA is the superior technology.
Pretty roguish attitude!
So what is the SenderID Framework?
The SenderID Framework is a method to authenticate whether a mail server sending mail for say, yahoo.com is indeed yahoo.com server. This is verified by asking the DNS servers of yahoo.com on who are its mail servers and comparing the returned information with the connecting server. If the IP address is listed in the DNS information, the mail is accepted. Now there are two proposals on how this can be implemented. One is SPF and the other is well, PRA. SPF has been freely available for quite sometime, but not PRA.
So does the SenderID Framework kill all spam? The answer has always been NO. Authentication Is Not an Anti-Spam System. Some more links - one, two.
July 05, 2004
Phantom Phone Vibrations
I experience this everyday on the drive to office and sometimes in meetings too -
Phantom Cell Phone Vibrations: The phenomenon of experiencing a sensation of vibration in the pocket-region, leading one to believe their cell phone is vibrating. The sensation can be triggered by other vibrations, such as the engine in a car, but can also appear when no external stimuli is present.
The same cannot be said about Phantom Cell Phone Ringing. But I have observed vibroglaze during meetings.
April 20, 2004
Shuffle Happy
The fact that I am not the only impatient person while listening to songs on my Zen, is supported by the article Wired.com published a few days ago. And all geeks seem to share the same trait. As some one says in the Wired.com article, random shuffle likely appeals to the MTV generation -- kids with short attention spans who are likely "brain damaged." Hummph, that's not true at all!
December 08, 2003
Acoustics and Electronics
It is most likely that you must have heard the electronic version of a piano before you ever heard an acoustic one. 
What are the chances that you have heard authentic electronic reproduction of the tambura? or the tabla? Most probably none. Radel is a small ISO 9001 company based in Bangalore that makes microcontroller-based gadgets which almost exactly reproduce the tambura and the tabla. Although they have some small audio clips of the sounds that these radio-shaped boxes produce, they show promise! The controls seem minimal - the tambura has controls to tune pitch whereas the tabla has about 60 preset taals (rhythms). Now, I have seen my friend using African instruments to mimic Indian percussion instruments while composing on the computer. So theoretically, if electronics can produce close reproduction of Indian string and percussion, so can software.
July 22, 2003
Mobile Files
There are no limits to how you can use technology to your advantage today. The other day, I had downloaded a driver file for a specific hardware and didn't have a floppy to carry it home. Since I do not have internet access at home for the moment, I had to think of ways in which I can take home the single 10kb INF file. It didn't take long enough for me to figure out how - I had my new Nokia 6610 with me and most of its 725 kb shared memory was lying empty. So I connected the phone to the IrDA port of my office PC. Since initially I didn't want to take the risk of damaging my phone with wrong filetypes, I created a blank image and inserted the driver file into the image using a steganographic tool. I went home, connected it to my laptop and got back the file. Eventually I got bolder and started dumping small files directly into the phone. And guess what, my phone is still alive! So now, I can add the mobile phone to my growing list of file-transfer-media - floppies, CDRWs, hard disks, thumb drives and MP3 Players.
June 24, 2003
Blue Gene
After being toppled from the numero uno position in the Top 500 Supercomputer list, IBM had vowed to regain its earlier position with the help of Blue Gene. Well, NEC's Earth Simulator is still leading the list since 2002.
May 15, 2003
Interplanetary Internet
It isn't a dream. It isn't a reality as yet. But the IPN may soon be real given that Vinc Cert too is backing the idea. As soon as 2005. It will connect the various space ships and planets of our solar system. IP address ranges have already been assigned to all the planets and spaceships in our solar system. The IPN will have a lot of latency because of the large distances. Even light takes 8 minutes to reach the earth from the sun. So IPN would be more suited for email-like applications, atleast initially, till we think of better ways to transmit information.
May 11, 2003
Buy Other Sound Equipment
Well, if you haven't guessed that, it's acronym is BOSE. About five years back, when my friend took me to his brother's place to flaunt his new Bose Lifestyle 5, I was astonished by the clarity and power of the tiny system. Little did I know about acoustics at that time. On my journey of assembling my dream music system (which by the way, hasn't taken shape), I came across some disturbing facts about Bose. Me and Michael(a.k.a. Flypig) have been to the BOSE store at Haji Ali, Mumbai. When I heard the speakers this time, I was pretty much unimpressed. Heck, my Creative Inspire PC speakers sound alike. At the store, I did get one familiar feeling though, the same when a Microsoft salesperson talks with you. While I don't consider myself as an elitist audio purist, I do have that little sense of differentiating between good, bad and worse. We have had a good sampling of `unpopular' brands like B&W, Pune based Cadence, Onkyo and Paradigm. To have a complete lowdown on Acoustimass, you need to go to a serious audiophile's review of the cheaply built BOSE AM-15 system. After all, the BOSE's and Nakamichi's are all the Microsofts of the audio industry.
May 08, 2003
The Zen of MP3
One of the great desires of a music buff who is also a technogeek is to own
an mp3 player which can store his whole music collection in a single place.
Well,
I have
realised it sooner than I expected it to happen. The Creative
Nomad Jukebox Zen 20GB is a perfect balance between affordability, quality,
storage and features when it comes to handling MP3s. If you wish
to put yourself in
misery for not owning one, here's my biased review of this techno toy.
Read More (1264 words) »»
April 08, 2003
IT fears
The Register says that the UK govt might give people IT skills `passports' which keep track of their training and expertise in IT. This is to increase the low IT skills levels in the UK. This, after the recent developments related to Indian IT pros, shows that countries all over the world are fearing that India might dominate IT expertise in the world over. They are right and India will, anyway, given its population. ;-)
April 03, 2003
PCs revisited
If you don't remember the famous PigeonRank technology you might just need a little refresher. Some time back Google let open the secret of its fast search results. They reasoned that low cost PCs could be used to calculate the relative value of web pages faster than humans or even machine-based algorithms. They rely mainly on the superior trainability of Columba Livia to achieve this. By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, they are able to process queries at superior speeds as compared to the traditional reliance on birds of prey and brooding hens. It seems till date no one has been able to beat Google on this technology. Read more here.
January 29, 2003
Desktop in your hand
How about this - You are standing in a crammed local in Mumbai and you are operating your home desktop from your CDMA phone. Doesn't that sound romantic? Not at all. It is quite practical and possible. Buy a Kyocera 7135, get a CDMA cell service and download PalmVNC2 directly to your PDA. And you are ready to go!
January 26, 2003
Internet at Base Camp
You are probably not aware that 2003 is the 50th anniversary of the conquest of Mount Everest when Edmund Hillary alongwith Sherpas had made it to the highest point on mother earth. And on this occasion, the grandson of the only surviving Sherpa is preparing for a big celebration. He has managed to setup an internet cafe at the Everest base camp. Using a satellite dish, some WiFi radios and bandwidth from an Isreali ISP, he is providing Internet access to climbers on expedition. Given that a climb to Mount Everest makes your pocket lighter by about US$65000 , Internet access can cost you US$2000 per expedition. Anyway, hats off to the enterprising Tsering Gyaltsen.
January 17, 2003
Wireless waters
A different kind of surfing in the sea - WiFi web surfing. A firm called Wheat Wireless has constructed a coastal wireless network from Baltimore to Florida Keys in the US to cater to the cruise ships which come in the area. They have managed to extend the range of the access points to about 30 miles or 48km away from the coast, probably using directional antennas. Cool, isn't it? Probably not. I would prefer internet access when I am in the middle of the ocean, not when I am nearing my destination. : - /
December 29, 2002
IndiaMobile
Well, I did get to see the IndiaMobile phones today at the display booths at DAKC. From what I saw, the demo models(definitely the more expensive ones of the range of mobiles being offered) were the CDMA version of Samsung SGH-T100 and the CDMA-enabled Kyocera 7135. I certainly liked the Kyocera one more because of the PDA factor. No it is not like the Orange SPV I posted about earlier. 
One doesn't really need Word & Outlook on a mobile PDA. PalmOS 5 remains as simple as ever but with full colours. The streaming videos were crystal clear and I saw our PM's address and the India-New Zealand highlights on it. Internet is blazing fast at 144kbps (it should remain that way once people start using it). As a bonus for spending my Sunday in office, I also got to see and touch the new 10.6" footprint Apple iMac. Nothing to do with mobiles, it was being used in one of the CDMA video-conferencing demos.
Mood T
Even on a cool night of fusion music at Mood I, you can't escape the firm clutch that technology has over us today. From the relative low-tech sound equipment of yesteryears to the two ton arrays of mixers/equalisers/amps/drives, we have become too dependant on technology. For the first time, I saw a traditional percussionist Sivamani using beat detection and looping devices, live, to enhance the effect of his performance. But that does not reduce the weight of his feat of using more than twenty types of percussion instruments. However, there is nothing as uncomplicated and pure as listening to a rendition of Megh Malhar from the flute of Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasiya, sitting near him and far away from any electronics whatsoever.
December 28, 2002
CDMA 2000 1x arrives
Yesterday, Reliance Infocomm launched one of the largest CDMA networks in the world [Google news]. This wireless network will cover 90% of India's population on a backbone of 60,000 kms of optic fibre. They have dreams of providing an Internet-enabled Java-powered CDMA2000 1x phone to almost every Indian citizen for around tariffs as low as 40 paise per minute or 0.8 cents per minute. The Samsung/LG/Kyocera phones will be replete with >2.5G applications ranging from internet banking to video on demand and online gaming. Now who do we call `competition'?
Today, although I know the backbone infrastructure to a good extent, I couldn't see the actual demo of the video on demand CDMA handsets because of the maddening rush of people drooling over the phones. But even looking at the recorded demo, I was convinced enough that it was indeed a revolution. Talking of wireless WLL phones replacing the phones at home, Wireless ATMs replacing the present day wired ATMs, Java-based applications for shopping, billing, banking, etc., the mobile networks in India will be almost at par with the 3G networks across far-east Asia.
Now all we need is Quake for Java and we'll have college kids playing deathmatches with each other in classroom at 144kbps. The next game revolution is in sight. And then the next internet revolution in India with the promise of wiring up 10 million homes with 100mbps ethernet connections, and the next banking revolution with wireless ATMs. I could go on and on. :-) Perhaps I am getting too excited.
December 26, 2002
Sonic Fridge
Did you ever feel a cool wave, standing next to that bunch of one storey speakers at IndiRock? No, nor did I. :-) But yes, sound as loud as 173dB is being used to cool gases in a fridge. This means no ozone-punching gases in future. Using the high compression and expansion caused by high amplitude sound waves, it is possible to cool certain gases to a considerable extent. As this fridge does at the Applied Research Lab in Penn State, US. This thermoacoustic fridge has even been tested on the Space Shuttle and might be commercially available in future.
December 24, 2002
All the IM belongs to me
ICQ, now owned by AOL has quietly got the `broad ownership rights' to the Instant Messaging technology, says Washington Post. The IM patent issued in September says that the `invention' is a communication system which helps users communicate with each other irrespective of whether they are bound to a specific terminal or not. The system also gives each user information about the network status of other users. Now that's too diluted an argument for a patent. Actually I really shouldn't be cared about such ridiculous patents being filed in the US. They surely do not have any standing outside the US. FYI, here is an abstract of the patent »
Read More (257 words) »»
December 21, 2002
Mhz Mania
Hugh Bradlow says, "I have a rough theory that says I already have enough processing power. I am not going to buy a new computer because the machine I have is powerful enough for what I require. In terms of human experience, there is not a lot of real difference between the performance of an 800MHz laptop and a 2GHz desktop. A lot of people are now saying that, instead of crunching things faster, technology needs to work better for the human being."
I have been saying that for a long time. Since the time the Pentium III was launched. The PIII was and is adequate enough for daily computing needs even for a power user like me. Even in corporate setups, PIIIs are preferred over P4s for servers. In fact I would never have upgraded from the PIII-450 to this AthlonXP1600+ if not for that unexpected power surge ruining my PC. All that a power user needs is loads of RAM, a 19" and good speakers. ;-)
December 10, 2002
Super Ragged Floats
First
there was slantastic
and then curvelicious.
Then came ragged
floats and then finally here is Super Ragged Floats, advanced
CSS for your viewing pleasure. If you have used Eric Meyer's method
to wrap around images, you will like this too. Here is a simple
tutorial on how to use CSS for wrapping text, but not by slicing.
An alternative to Eric Meyer's ragged floats. And a live example
can be seen here. »
Read More (762 words) »»
November 22, 2002
Weaker Bond
If you are a keen observer of Bond movies, you must have discovered that off late, smart gadgetry which used to be the key attraction of the old Bond films has now been replaced more and more by special effects and heavy commercial interests. I am not at all a crazy fan of Bond and his gimmicks, although I do watch the films sometimes. Here's an article by Bob Sullivan on why the latest films have lost the 007 touch.
November 20, 2002
Cheap Phone calls
No news for me, but for you, yes definitely - Reliance to offer cheapest telecom service in India. Proud to be a small but significant part of it. (There goes another shameless plug)
November 18, 2002
Earth Simulator
What does the world's fastest computer do every morning? It simulates the Earth. Yes, the Earth Simulator Center in Japan has the NEC built "ASCI Q" doing climate modelling, simulating the Earth's climate to predict better about weather in future. 
This mega supercomputer built using 640 clustered supercomputers is 41/2 times faster than the nearest competitor. It has about 10 terabytes of RAM and 16Gbps inter-node bandwidth. Nowadays, high-performance machines created using clustered commodity hardware are moving up into the top 10 list of supercomputers. Like the No.5 is built using Linux as the underlying OS. To learn about the competitors, go to Top500 Supercomputer sites.
June 10, 2001
Emulators
Have you ever used VMware? There is also GPL project like VMware called Bochs IA-32 Emulator. It is an x86 PC emulator. it can be compiled to emulate a 386/486/Pentium CPU. It runs on Linux, Win95, DOS and WinNT4.0. Well, these are not the only x86 emulators available. There are a lot more. You may try out Plex86 or Wine or User Mode Linux or a386 or the Brown Simulator, GPL-VM or Connectix Virtual PC or probably Win4Lin.
