Conficker Worm and how to save oneself?

Conficker worm is a worm which came into knowledge of world in Oct 08 is being treated as currently most dangerous malware which will become dangerously active on 1st April 09 which is targetted on various exploits and security holes left in the Microsoft Windows OS. 3 variant of Conficker have been released each becoming more dangerous. The third variant which like likely to become active on 1st April will calculate which domains to contact and start dumping all the data onto various server. Prior to that it will make the infected machine as a mini server connecting all the computer either connected through LAN or sharing similar IP address and infect all those computers making them vunerable on 1st April. When all the infected computers start connecting to internet and transferring huge quantity of data things will go haywire and result in chocking of internet. Just Searh for Conficker on Google and you will find numerous pages on it.

Well so how to save ourself?
1. If you are a windows user, head towards Microsoft Update Site and download all the patches, critical and essential update. Well, this is a tough ask for Indians like me downloading atleast few hundred MBs of updates and patches but it is essential in Windows. Once updated Conficker wom though may be sitting in in PC cannot so much and it will have to wait till it discovers another security hole in the Microsoft OS. Then head to this site to download GNU/Linux based Conficker removal tool. Its a real irony that Microsoft has to rely on Linux based removal tool for removing the one of the current biggest threat.
or
2. Alternatively get rid of youw Windows OS and get Linux.

We will discuss the option 2 in detail later on, I bet most of the people will head for option 1 despite the fact that Microsoft is a resource hog, unstable, more prone to virus, trojan, worm etc., having poor security and need to run antivirus, antispyware, antimalware, antirootkit, etc. to keep it safe.

Anyways time to patchup your Windows and let me enjoy my Linux.

Step by Step Guide on How torrents work?

Lets start with some introduction. Here is summary from Wikipedia

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used for distributing large amounts of data. BitTorrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files, and by some estimates it accounts for about 35% of all traffic on the entire Internet.

The protocol works initially when a file provider makes his file (or group of files) available to the network. This is called a seed and allows others, named peers, to connect and download the file. Each peer who downloads a part of the data makes it available to other peers to download. After the file is successfully downloaded by a peer, many continue to make the data available, becoming additional seeds. This distributed nature of BitTorrent leads to a viral spreading of a file throughout peers. As more seeds get added, the likelihood of a successful connection increases exponentially. Relative to standard Internet hosting, this provides a significant reduction in the original distributor's hardware and bandwidth resource costs. It also provides redundancy against system problems and reduces dependence on the original distributor.

In simple words, any file to be shared between multiple people need not be available on a single machine / server. Instead as more and more people share it becomes available from all the computer which connects to the file and makes it available to people looking for same file.

Now coming to to steps....

1. You need a torrent client to handle the torrent file. Download μtorrent using your favorite browser. Install the μtorrent software.

   
   

2. Next you need to download the bittorrent file for the required software, movie or song etc. These torrent files have extension “.torrent” and are shared usually in private forums or torrent groups. Some of these “.torrent” files are also available in free database. Few of the famous such services are Isohunt, The Pirate Bay and Torrentz.

   
   

   
   

   
   

3. Now for example, I want to download the latest release of Ubuntu OS. So it is how I go. First search for Ubuntu and see the results

   
   

   Here I have already arranged sorted the “.torrent” file listing as per total number of seeders “S”. Note that higher seeder count corresponds to more people sharing the file and hence faster download speed.

4. Click to the desired torrent from the screenshot seen above. You can click on comments tab and read the comments of people who have already downloaded the file and them click the large “Download .torrent”.

   
   

   Save the file in a folder preferably with a name like torrents_download or similar to avoid confusion.

5. Now open μtorrent from start menu / desktop / quick launch bar. Click “File ==> Open Torrent” and select the downloaded torrent in previous step

   
   

6. Select the location to save the file

   
   

   Click “OK” and you start downloading.

Now you can see it has started downloading.

The biggest advantage of downloading file through torrent is that its easily available, your download speed depends on popularity of file. And best of all when downloading a huge file you don't need to download in one go. Pause it, Quit the programme and continue downloading whenever you feel like.

So what are you waiting for enter the world of bittorrent file sharing.

An excellent Free Online Syncing Storage Space : Get DropBox

I haven't written any blog for a long time. I was busy with some office work and home issues. As things are less hectic now a days. I discovered a excellent online storage and syncing free file hosting space. The service is offered from GetDropBox. This website offers installer for Windows, Linux and Mac. Once installed you can define a folder as your dropbox. All the files and directory structure will get syncronised on online storage as well as PC. You can create Dropbox configuration with a single account and it will syncronize all the folders on all the PCs. This is particularly useful if you want to work at home and office or on some other remote location. You can simply sync all the PCs and share the files. You can also login using web interface if still download the file and upload back. Things will automatically get syncronised. You can also use it as a online storage.

Free version comes with 2 GB. while paid version comes with 50 GB huge size storage. They also have refferal system, so  you and your friend both  get 250 MB extra storage space  in case any of your friend accept and uses getdropbox. This is limited to upto 6 GB.

Best part of the service is that it supports not only Windows and Mac but also Linux. Also, I haven't felt any speed throttling while uploading or downloading the files. I am happily sharing the files.

Last note: you can also put files like audio files or photos in shared folders and invite friends to view them bysending them the links for files and folder  or alternatively send email from the web interface.

Rating of service : 8.5 out of 10.