Computer Cookie - Working, Vulnerability and Security

Computer cookies are small piece of information in text format that’s sent to an web browser by an web server. This information can be accessed either by the web server or by the client computer. Cookie information can be used for authentication, identification of a user session, user's preferences, shopping cart contents, or anything else that can be accomplished through storing text data.

What are the types of Cookie?
Session cookiePersistent cookieSecure cookieHttpOnly cookieFirst-Party CookieThird-Party CookieSuper cookieZombie cookieUnsatisfactory Cookie
Role of Cookie in Internet
Session Management
Session management is the process of keeping track of a user's activity across sessions of interaction with the computer system.
Personalization
Cookies may be used to remember the information about the user who has visited a website in order to show relevant content in the future. For example a web server may send a cookie containing the username last used to log in to a web site so that it may be filled in for future visits.
Tracking
Tracking cookies may be used to track internet users' web browsing habits. This can also be done in part by using the IP address of the computer requesting the page or the referrer field of the HTTP request header, but cookies allow for greater precision.
How to View Cookies in Web Browser?
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Open the Microsoft Internet Explorer software program.Click on “Tools” in the main menu area of the Internet Explorer browser.Scroll down and select “Internet Options” from the tools menu.Look under the Browsing History section on the General settings tab.Press the “Settings” button.Select the “View Files” button and scroll down until you see the files labeled as cookies.Mozilla Firefox
Start or open your Firefox Internet browser.Select the “Tools” option from the main menu of the Firefox 3 software program.Find the “Options” setting on the tools menu and click on it.Click on the “Privacy” button.Locate the “Use Setting for history” tab and select the “Show Cookies”.Google Chrome
Launch your Google Chrome Internet browser.Find the wrench icon located on the main menu and right click on it.Choose “Options” from the menu.Locate and select the “Under the Hood” tab.Look under cookie settings and press “Show Cookies.”Apple Safari

Open the Safari Internet browser software program.Click on “Preferences” in the main browser menu.Discover the “Security” tab and click on it.Select the “Show Cookies” option on the Security.
Vulnerability on Cookies
Cookies are tracking devices for websites They keep track of commonly used information to help your browser operate more efficiently. They usually won't store passwords but often times track browser history, usernames, and other possible identifiers that can be used to gain access to accounts or exploit security vulnerabilities in your computer. Often they are simply text or web URL files so they won’t contain programs (i.e. viruses). The problem that cookies pose is that they have the ability to “share” this information over the internet.
How to Prevent Cookie from hackers?
Delete all cookies or individual cookies from your browser regularlyUse an updated antivirus in your systemEnable a firewall in your systemUse HTTP Secure Connection if available

Brute Force Attack

Brute force attack is a computer cracking technique in which the attacker uses an automated program to try every possible combination for a password.This password attack does not attempt to decrypt any information but continue to try different passwords again and again to gain a authentication/access.The amount of time it takes to complete these attacks is dependent on length of the password.Traditional brute force attacks attempt to guess username and password combinations for services like FTP, SSH, or other authenticated

Example
Let us assume the password length is 3. we have characters set (abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789)
Number of Permutation to first character :
Upper case letters(26 )+Lower Case Letters(26)+10 Numbers =62
Total permutation to find Password:
62*62*62=238328 ways.
Thus the automated brute force program need to try for an 238028 possible password. You can also calculate the time take to complete the brute force attack from "Last Bit"

Tools for Brute Force Attack
Here,I suggest some of the tools to crack an password using brute force technique
Cain and Abel
Aircrack
L0phtcrack
Brutus

Advantage
Probability of finding the password highIts fairly simple attack that doesn't require a lot of work to setup or initiate.
Disadvantage
Brute Force attack is noisy, and they take a long timeIt takes an processing power and hardware intensive.Nowadays a security measures is done that they might lock you out after 3 fail attempts and this extends the amount of time needed to crack

Free Backlink Checker Tools to Find Your Link Popularity

Backlinks are the links on other websites that direct the users to your website/blog, This incoming links to your website is used to determine the page rank of your site in a search engine like Google,Yahoo,Bling,etc., The number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or blog

Lot of tools are available in online to check your site backlink. Here, I suggest you some backlink checker tools that show maximum accuracy or your link popularity.
Backlinkwatch: This is a most popular tool to check your bakclinks, dofollow or nofollow links, anchor text links, no of out bound links and more.
iwebtools: It’s also very popular like backlinkwatch.com. its shows no of backlinks, with page rank of the link.


Backlink Analyzer: Good tool to check your link popularity. Its shows anchor links, number of out bound links and more.


Backlink Finder: Favorite backlink checker tool, it’s says no of links in google, yahoo, alexa rank, domain age and more.
Webmaster Toolkit: The Link Popularity Checker tells you how many websites are linking to yours. You should try different methods of inputting your URL, as some search engines treat them differently. Different methods will probably produce slightly different results.
Submit Express: How popular is your website? This tool will show you how many other sites are linking to you. Most search engines use this data to calculate how popular your website is.
Link Popularity.com: Knowing who links to your site and increasing the number of quality links is an important part of any web site promotion effort. This free service allows you to query Google, Yahoo, and MSN and reports on link popularity.
SEO Centro: The Link Popularity analysis program will search Google, Yahoo, AllTheWeb, AltaVista, and MSN to determine how many pages are linking to your web page.


Add pro: Use this free tool to check the number of web pages linking to your site. You can also use it to find out how many links your competitors have and who’s linking to them. Some of the websites that are linking to your competitors could also be linking to you, if you let them know you exists.
SEO Chat: This tool will query all the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) when you enter the “link:” operator with your chosen URL. It will return the total link count for each URL.
Add me: To find out how popular your site is, just enter your URL in the box below and press the “Check Popularity” button. If your site represents a business, don’t forget to also check your competitors backlinks as well! You might be surprised by the results.
SEO Guy: Just type in www.domain.com in the “Your URL” Field and hit “GO” also if you want to see how you stack up against your competition feel free to place up to 3 competitors URL’s in there to compare.
Free Web Submission: Their Link Popularity script checks links to your website on 3 major search engines.
SELF Seo: With this tool you can check the link popularity for any given page – just enter the URL in the box below. You will see how many links has been already “noticed” by the major search engines – Google, Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, and Alltheweb & Hotbot.
Go Rank Tool: This link popularity tool will detect up to the first 30 links currently present in Google as backlinks for the URL you enter. This tool then analyzes the contents of each of these pages for the specific link text to the URL you selected. The text of each link is displayed in the final report as well as the title of each linking page.
Google Backlink Checker tool: Google Back link Checker tool enables you to know the number of websites who have given a link to your website or web page.
Yahoo Backlink Checker Tool: A back link is an inward link to your site that may or may not be reciprocated with an outward link back. If page A links to page B then a back link would be a link which goes from page B back to page A.
MSN Backlink Checker Tool: Our tool for checking your back links tells you how many websites are linking to yours. Website popularity is an important factor in your search engine ranking.
Link Popularity Checking Tool: Tells you the number of backlinks for AltaVista & All the web.
Link Popularity Comparison Tool: This Link Popularity Comparison Tool allows you to quickly and easily compare your link popularity scores to competitor’s websites.


Web Confs Backlink Summary Tool: This tool will give you a summary of your competitor’s backlinks.


Multiple Datacenter Backlink Checker Tool: Their Multiple Datacenter Backlink Checker Tool helps you determine the backlinks of your site with various Google Datacenters.
Link Popularity Romov: Measure the link popularity by checking its Google Page Rank, search engine backlinks, Alexa traffic rank, as well as its popularity on major social networking web sites.


Free Link Popularity Checker Tool: Link Popularity Check offers free, instant, online reports of a webpage’s link popularity rating in 3 top search engines; Google, Yahoo! Search and Bing (MSN)

Make Firefox Address Bar Work Like Google Chrome's OmniBar

Google Chrome‘s Omnibar is one of the best feature in an Chrome browser, which combines the regular address bar and the search box into one which is said to be an "Omnibar". Mozilla Firefox being the most popular and fastest  browser has an many features but it loses this Omnibar feature.

Omnibar Firefox addon that integrates Address bar  and Search bar of the browser into one bar allowing you to search directly using the address bar. After its installation, on typing the search query in the address bar, Omnibar for firefox shows your search and URL suggestions. It can also quickly switch search engines using search engine keywords.

Download link for Omnibar Add-on :
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/omnibar/
Note: To View the above picture in larger view click on the picture

Disable Google.com From Redirecting To Local Country Google Domain

Google Web Search is customized for a number of countries and regions across the world. For example, Google.co.in provides search results that are most relevant for users in India; Google.co.uk is the Google domain for United Kingdom.Google try to direct users to the site that will give them the most relevant results.

Google.com redirects to local Google country specific domain, depending on the country you are located. For example in India Google.com redirects to Google.co.in and In China Google.com redirects to Google.cn, Similarly it redirects in other countries.In the below picture "Image-1" show browser before redirecting,"Image-2" shows browser after redirecting.  

How to disable this redirection and use Google.com for search queries?
  This does not involve any software or plugin install. Just type www.google.com/ncr instead of just typing www.google.com in the address bar, where ncr stands for “No Country Redirect”. Next time you type Google.com it won’t get redirected to your country google domain.This information is stored in cookie and you can turn ON the redirection again by deleting internet files and cookies.