How can you gain access to windows m/c after forgetting password

Did you think that if you forget admin password, thats the end of the world for recovery. Guess not. Here is a brief writeup on how to gain access to a windows NT/2000/XP machine if you forget administrator password. This document discusses common ways to gain access. It list down various free tools out there using which you can either access the data or reset the password. Very handy at times

Color blender

Nice and handy tool to find out matching and contrasting colors for web design or be any design. Has multiple options to select the colors. Neatly displays matching and contrasting colors. You can easily select similar colors.

Phising ... whats about it?

What is phishing?
Phishing was coined by some hackers when they were ‘fishing’ for user names/password during the AOL days. It is a technique used hackers to collect personal information from unsuspecting users.

What can go wrong? Why should I be worried about phishing?
Here is the deal. Lets think that someone creates a banking website and lures you into entering your login and password. Or lets say he makes you enter your SSN and other personal details. He will collect this information and will silently log in his database. With this information, he can do whatever he wants. He can log into your account and transfer the money to his account. Even if you don’t have money, he can open a new account and get a car loan and buy Porshe :D All this time, you will be clueless of happening and suddenly you will get a big lawsuit one day and only then you will realize that you have been phished.

If this true, what can I do to prevent this?
Be careful. That’s right, you have to be a little careful while entering any information in any website especially banking web sites.

Let me dive into details
Whenever you visit a banking website or any site or a site that request you for a credit card look for the following information

1. Make sure that the URL is secured (i.e.) it starts with https://
2. Make sure that the secure (lock) icon appears in the bottom of the internet explorer window.
3. Double click the lock and make sure that the certificate is valid
a. The name issued matches the URL you are viewing
b. The date is still valid
c. And you trust the issuer (optional)
d. And internet explorer doesn’t complain about this certificate
4. Another item is look for, to make sure that when you right click on the page and click Properties on the popup menu and match the URL shown with that of the certificate. This is especially useful when entering information in a POPUP window.
5. Last one, just be careful with credibility of the site themselves and you know that they are trust worthy
6. NEVER TRUST the URL that comes from any email (even it’s from your trusted friend). Lot of viruses can easily forge the email headers to make it look like it came from your friend, but actually from a hacker.

Go through following two articles. I would highly recommend you go through both of them for sure. It will help you identify fraudulent emails
Phising Basics. Part 1: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/quiz/phishingbasics1.mspx
Phising Basics. Part II: http://www.mailfrontier.com/forms/msft_iq_test.html

Don’t think that you know everything about phishing. You know nothing until you take the above quiz.

How to trace an email sent to you?

We get lot of spams from everywhere on the net. We also get some suspicious mails containing viruses. But how do we trace it back to who actually sent the email? Ofcourse its hard to pin point who actually sent it. It will be nice to know where the email came from (which ISP) so that we log a spam call to have the sender's account suspended.

Here is a brief document on tracing an email. This document explains how to enable email headers in most of popular email clients and online email providers such as Yahoo, Google, Hotmail etc.

2001 predictions way back from 1989

Have a look at the predictions put forth in 1989 Conpute! Magazine. We are far ahead of some prediction like 2001 will be full of ISDN network whereas we are using 10Mpbs lines for common household internet. And how optical storage and disk storage cost has come down. Its all GUI interfaces now. We still haven't progressed on display, artificial intelligence, smart systems etc

Click here to read the predictions

Some amazing flash plus javascript work

Check out this flash. Two separate windows acts in
sync in flash. Very good work

http://www.dstrict.com/z107/index.html