Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http) is a system for transmitting and receiving information across the Internet. Http serves as a request and response procedure that all agents on the Internet follow so that information can be rapidly, easily, and accurately disseminated between servers, which hold information, and clients, who are trying to access it. Http is commonly used to access html pages, but other resources can be utilized as well through http. In many cases, clients may be exchanging confidential information with a server, which needs to be secured in order to prevent unauthorized access. For this reason, https, or secure http, was developed by Netscape corporation to allow authorization and secured transactions.
In many ways, https is identical to http, because it follows the same basic protocols. The http or https client, such as a Web browser, establishes a connection to a server on a standard port. When a server receives a request, it returns a status and a message, which may contain the requested information or indicate an error if part of the process malfunctioned. Both systems use the same Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme, so that resources can be universally identified. Use of https in a URI scheme rather than http indicates that an encrypted connection is desired.
There are some primary differences between http and https, however, beginning with the default port, which is 80 for http and 443 for https. Https works by transmitting normal http interactions through an encrypted system, so that in theory, the information cannot be accessed by any party other than the client and end server. There are two common types of encryption layers: Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), both of which encode the data records being exchanged.
When using an https connection, the server responds to the initial connection by offering a list of encryption methods it supports. In response, the client selects a connection method, and the client and server exchange certificates to authenticate their identities. After this is done, both parties exchange the encrypted information after ensuring that both are using the same key, and the connection is closed. In order to host https connections, a server must have a public key certificate, which embeds key information with a verification of the key owner's identity. Most certificates are verified by a third party so that clients are assured that the key is secure.
Https is used in many situations, such as log-in pages for banking, forms, corporate log ons, and other applications in which data needs to be secure. However, if not implemented properly, https is not infallible, and therefore it is extremely important for end users to be wary about accepting questionable certificates and cautious with their personal information while using the Internet.
MORE HACKS: internet hacking, Public Hacks, windows hacks, wireless hacking
The first thing you should do, after getting a new PC or reformatting, is to run Windows Update.
In my household, I have 4 computers running Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Ubuntu 9.04, Xubuntu 9.04. Some dual-boot while one triple-boots etc.
Whichever operating system you are using, make sure to update them frequently. Especially if you're running Windows, I recommend that you turn on the auto-update in 'Windows Update' if not already done so. Microsoft releases frequent vulnerability and security fixes.
Keeping your operating system up to date is the first step in keeping your computer safe. To check if you're covered (in Windows), open up your control panel and click on Windows Update. If you see the automatic update option selected, you're all set. If not, either choose the full auto update or the option that gives you the chance to choose which updates to install yourself. Just don't turn it off. If you must turn it off for whatever reason, manually check the Windows Update website at least once a week.
Recommended: Try out Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distro. Using a Linux OS may sound too nerdy for some, but the level of user-friendliness has gotten a lot better over the years. It has all the pretty GUI, too. And, if you're having problems, a huge online community is waiting to help you. It's FREE and SAFE.
2. Install Anti-Virus and Keep the Virus Definitions Up-to-Date
An anti-virus software is a MUST. If you don't have one, you are almost guaranteed to get infected; it's only a matter of time.
It is amazing how many people don't have an updated anti-virus running on their computers. Especially if you bought a pre-assembled PC from Dell or HP or Acer etc., your computer may come with a free trial period of 30 days to 1 year. Be mindful of this when you purchase a new PC.
When your subscription period runs out, you will need to either pay to continue using the anti-virus you currently have or get a different anti-virus software. Shop around.
Recommended: There are tons of options out there. But Avast and AVG are two of the best. Why? Because they're free and very effective. Now, if you want more features and protection, you can move up to a paid anti-virus software. I know Symantec and Mcafee are two of the dominant players, but I don't recommend them as they take more resources to run and there are others with better detection rates. Full list of recommended antivirus.
3. Anti-Spyware / Adware
Many times when a PC user complains about a sluggish computer or a slow startup, it is due to a presence of ad/spyware. Most common ones are mostly cookies from your browser as you surf the web and are not very dangerous, while some spywares are very malicious in nature. One example is a key-logger that can log your key strokes to steal your credit card numbers and passwords.
There are also adwares that hijack your browser's homepage to display their content every time you load up your browser and toolbars that won't go away.
These days, a lot of anti-virus softwares are able to protect your PC from spy/ad-wares, too. But if you want to be extra safe, install a couple of anti-spyware programs that will more aggressively block various malwares.
Recommended: Free: Spyware Blaster, Windows Defender, SuperAntiSpyware
You can get started with just a couple of those. If you have Windows Vista or 7, you will have Windows Defender by default. So, you might as well use it. I recommend Spyware Blaster in all cases. You simply run it, update, and protect. It doesn't need to run in the background. It adds black lists to your browsers, and provides an effective prevention. SuperAntiSpyware is a complete suite with real-time protection.
4. Secure Your Home Network
In today's typical household, multiple computers share a single internet connection. Usually, a router is used to share that connection.
What many people forget is that router is not only an internet sharing device, but a firewall to protect your whole network as well.
Setting up your router's firewall is the first thing you need to do when setting up a network. Make sure that the firewall feature is turned on in the router settings.
What's more concerning is that, with the gaining popularity of wireless (WiFi) networks, people are leaving the door wide open to potential hackers and your neighbors (who's accessing your wireless network right now). You need to protect your computers not just from threats on the internet but also from threats close to your house.
If you have a wireless network enabled in your router, please look at your security settings. If you've never touched it, it is very likely that your neighbors had a peek inside your network a few times.
Set it up so that you are using WPA or (preferably WPA2 if supported) with AES encryption (or TKIP if your device doesn't support AES). WEP is no good. It can be cracked within a couple of minutes. Even WPA is not all that safe these days, but you might not have the option to use WPA2.Create a shared key (password) that's impossible to guess.
My key is 60+ characters long with numbers and lower/upper case letters randomly generated by the router.
5. Use a Firewall
A firewall prevents intruders from getting in. If you have a router, you already have a firewall. Just confirm that it is up and running. A software firewall can increase the level of security, and especially if you don't have a router, you need a software firewall. Windows has a built-in firewall, and should be enabled by default. There are other popular firewalls like Zone Alarm.
What I'd recommend, if you want to keep things simple, is to use a security suite that has both anti-virus and firewall included. Full list of recommended firewall
6. Try Something Other than Internet Explorer
If you are still using Internet Explorer as your main browser, you really need to switch. IE is the most vulnerable and is also the least efficient browser on the market.
Browsers such as Firefox, Opera, and Chrome are much faster and safer. At the moment, Firefox is the most popular alternative. But I encourage you to try out all the browsers and see which one you like the best.
I highly recommend Opera. Opera is faster than Firefox. It has built-in email client, bittorrent client, widgets, mouse gestures and more. Opera has all these features built-in, yet, it is smaller than Firefox. With the new release of Opera 10 with Turbo (speeds up browsing for slower connections), I predict it will gain more market share. I personally use Firefox, Opera, and IE. Firefox is my main browser; Opera is number two. IE is only used when testing website changes and visiting Korean websites. Lots of Korean websites are only compatible with IE, which I really hate.
7. Careful Opening Email Attachments
Even if you receive an email from one of your friends, don't assume it's safe to open file attachments. Some viruses take control of a person's email account and sends viruses to all his contacts.
If an email is from a stranger, most likely the attachment is a virus. Having an anti-virus should protect you from email threats, but still be careful.
Now, if you experience harm because you had replied to a Nigerian email saying you won a $10 million lottery, there's nothing that can help for you other than your common sense.
8. Try OpenDNS
OpenDNS is a free DNS service that can help your browsing experience to be faster and safer. DNS (Domain Name System) "translates domain names meaningful to humans into the numerical (binary) identifiers associated with networking equipment for the purpose of locating and addressing these devices worldwide.
An often used analogy to explain the Domain Name System is that it serves as the "phone book" for the Internet by translating human-friendly computer hostnames into IP addresses. For example, www.example.com translates to 208.77.188.166." - Wikipedia
OpenDNS keeps track of and blocks harmful websites and also has a parental control feature and more.
All you have to do is put these two numbers "208.67.222.222", "208.67.220.220" into your router settings or your computer's network settings.
Instructions for various routers and computers are available on the website.
9. Be Careful about Which Sites You Visit
If you got OpenDNS all set up, you can worry about this a little less. But OpenDNS cannot protect you 100% as news malicious sites keep on popping up.
Warez, crack, and adult sites are the most dangerous categories of websites. Don't visit them unless you know it's safe.
Again, an anti-virus will protect you from this kind of threats as well. See how important an anti-virus is?
10. Keep Your Personal Information Safe
Many of these threats are aimed at getting your personal information. So, keep them safe!
Don't easily give away your name, email, phone, and address to any website.
Don't store credit card and other sensitive information on your computer. Sometimes, you have to store them on your computer. If so, don't save an Excel file with your credit card numbers as "credit card numbers.xls" and put it in a shared folder.
Your neighbor who was sharing your internet connection might be tempted. Playing with files will be of little help. You should encrypt your files with a password, too, if it stores sensitive information.
Overall, be mindful of protecting your personal data.
When most people think of identity theft, they think about a thief using a victim’s credit card. Although a serious crime, this form of identity theft does not require the long, time consuming process of the two most serious forms of ID theft known as Identity Assumption and Synthetic Identity Theft.
The crime of Identity Assumption occurs when the thief uses your social security number and your name to commit fraud. The crime of Synthetic Identity Theft occurs when the thief uses your social security number and an alias to commit fraud. In both cases, the thief either steals or buys a social security number and establishes a new address and phone number. The thief then directs all communication of the fraudulent activity to the address and phone number that the thief controls. The victim remains unaware of the activity for months or even years. The longer the thief can prevent you from learning of the fraudulent activity, the more the thief benefits and the more you are harmed.
Identity Theft is the fastest growing crime in America. According to the Federal Trade Commission, over 9 million Americans have their identity stolen each year.
What ID Theft is not….. Identity theft is not just about monitoring your current credit reports for credit card fraud or credit history infringement. It is not just about identity thieves using your current credit cards. Rather, it involves creating new fraudulent accounts from your stolen identity information.
Update: It will work only if you are logged in. Sorry for the false alarm. My intention were to alert the bloggers so that they could safeguard their blogs. For more details Click Here
Bad news for just about every WordPress blogger out there. Thousands of WordPress 3.2.1 installations are at risk of being compromised. It has been found that the latest version 3.2.1 of WordPress, an extremely popular suite of tools for powering blogs, is vulnerable to XSS injection attack which allows users to inject malicious JavaScript as a result of failure in sanitizing the comments field. Without discussing much about what this vulnerability could do to your blog I will jump to how it works and the solution.
Inject one of the below codes into the comment field of the target. Or use your brain to make a more powerful injection
Popup “alert” Box
Redirect to www.hungry-hackers.com
Cookie Stealer (need a logging system in place)
Upgrade to the latest version when available, In the meantime disable comments or hold comments for moderation as I did
Popularity: 1% [?]
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We all love torrents because they are free. In the last few weeks I have been downloading a lot of movies/softwares from torrents. While messing with the torrents I found a few things which turned out to be very fruitful. Today I will show you how to use those tricks to get maximum performance from your P2P Softwares.
Note: I use uTorrent so all the following Hacks have been tested on the latest version of uTorrent only. You may test it on other P2P softwares and let us know about your experience
Do the following changes in the preference of uTorrent.
Go to Options>Preferences>Network
Under ‘Port used for incomming connections’, enter any port number. It is best to use a port number above 10000. I use 33333.Randomize port each time utorrent starts: UNCHECKED. I leave this unchecked because I have a router. If you do not have a router or a firewall, and want extra security,check this option.Enable UPnP port mapping (Windows Xp or later only): UNCHECKED. I leave this unchecked because I have experienced it slowing down speeds. It is not needed if you manually port forward.Add utorrent to Windows Firewall exceptions (Windows XP SP2 or later only): UNCHECKED (do this only if you have windows firewall disabled)Global Maximum upload rate (kb/s): [0: unlimited]: 22 (for 256k connection)Protocol Encryption: ENABLED. I would recommend everyone to enable this. This can help increase speeds with many ISPs.Allow incoming Legacy Connections: CHECKEDGo to Options>Preferences>TorrentsGlobal Maximum Number of Connections: 130 (for 256k connection)This number should not be set too low or the number of connections made to your torrents will be limited. Setting it too high may cause too much bandwidth to be used and can cause slowdowns.Maximum Number of connected peers per torrent: 70 (for 256k connection)If you see that the peers connected to a specific torrent are exactly this number, or very close, increase this number to improve speeds.Number of upload slots per torrent: 3 (for 256k connection)This depends on how much you want to upload to other users. Do not set too low or it may affect download speeds.Use additional upload slots if upload speed <90%: CHECKEDMaximum number of active torrents: 2 (for 256k connection)Maximum number of active downloads: 1 (for 256k connection)Enable DHT Network: CHECKEDThis is recommended to be checked to improve speeds. More people will be available for sharing if this is checked.Enable DHT for new torrents: CHECKEDEnable Peer Exchange: CHECKEDEnable scrapping: CHECKEDPre-allocate all files: CHECKEDAppend .!ut to incomplete files: UNCHECKEDOpen up the options/preferences/settings for the firewall – usually your firewall will have an icon to click in the taskbarLook for the keywords “allow list” or “programs”Add the application you want to give access to the internetMake sure to save your settings when you are doneGo to start>run>type cmd, press enter>type ipconfig, press enterRemember both your ip address and your default gatewayType in your default gateway into your default browser, a password prompt may come up. The default username and password are admin for my routerUnder ‘Applications’ fill out one line for each p2p client you useYou need to use your ip address, the correct port range and set either tcp or udpYou can find and change the ports in the actual p2p client’s settings, just make sure they are the same in the routerMost p2p apps need both tcp and udp checked, if you are not sure check your p2p client’s FAQSave your settings
Anti-P2P organizations are actively polluting P2P networks with fake peers, which send out fake or corrupt data in order to waste bandwidth and slow down file transfers. At its worst, when downloading major copyrighted torrents, as much as a fourth of the peers you are connected to can be attributed to various Anti-P2P agencies. There is also a much more serious side to this. Once you’ve established a connection to one of these fake “peers”, your IP has been logged and will most likely be sent to the RIAA/MPAA.
But there is a way to fight back! If you are using the latest uTorrent, you can employ a little known feature called IP filtering. The author of uTorrent has gone out of his way to hide it, but it’s there nonetheless. But before we can activate this filter, we need to retrieve a list of currently known Anti-P2P organization IPs.
This is most easily done by downloading the latest blacklist from Bluetack (the same people who wrote SafePeer for the Azureus BT client).
This list is updated daily, and contains all known Anti-P2P organizations, trackers and peers, aswell as all known Goverment/Military IP addresses as collected by the Bluetack team. Once downloaded, extract and rename the file to “ipfilter.dat” in preparation for the final step.
To make the list available to uTorrent, you need to put it in %AppData%\uTorrent\. So type this into the Address Bar, or click Start -> Run and type it there. After placing the ipfilter.dat in this folder, start uTorrent and go into preferences (Ctrl+P), then click on “Advanced”. In the right hand pane, make sure that “ipfilter.enable” is set to true, and then close the dialog. That’s it for the configuration.
You can verify that the list has been loaded by looking under the “Logging” tab of uTorrent, where you should see the line “Loaded ipfilter.dat (X entries)”.
Your IP address is your online identity and could be used by hackers to break into your computer, steal personal information, or commit other crimes against you. Hide My IP allows you to surf anonymously, change your IP address, prevent identity theft, and guard against hacker intrusions. This software can not only be used in case of hiding your IP from other peers but also useful if you want to browse internet anonymously.
Popularity: 1% [?]
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Bad news for just about every WordPress blogger out there. Thousands of WordPress 3.2.1 installations are at risk of being compromised. It has been found that the latest version 3.2.1 of WordPress, an extremely popular suite of tools for powering blogs, is vulnerable to XSS injection attack which allows users to inject malicious JavaScript as a result of failure in sanitizing the comments field. Without discussing much about what this vulnerability could do to your blog I will jump to how it works and the solution.
We all love torrents because they are free. In the last few weeks I have been downloading a lot of movies/softwares from torrents. While messing with the torrents I found a few things which turned out to be very fruitful. Today I will show you how to use those tricks to get maximum performance from your P2P Softwares.