Some Ways Anonymous Could Disrupt the Internet if SOPA is passed

This is a piece of science fiction. I wrote while reading Isaac Assimov’s advice to writers in GOLD, while on a beach in Anjuna.

1) Identify senators, lobbyists, senior executives of companies advocating for SOPA. Go for selective targeting of these people than massive Denial of Service Attacks.

This could also include election fund raising websites in the United States.

2) Create hacking tools with simple interfaces to probe commonly known software errors, to enable wider audience including the Occupy Movement students to participate in hacking. thus making hacking more democratic. What are the top 25 errors as per  http://cwe.mitre.org/cwss/

http://www.decisionstats.com/top-25-most-dangerous-software-errors/ ?

 

Easy interface tools to check vulnerabilities would be the next generation to flooding tools like HOIC, LOIC – Massive DDOS atttacks make good press coverage but not so good technically

3) Disrupt digital payment mechanisms for selected targets (in step1) using tools developed in Step 2, and introduce random noise errors in payment transfers.

4) Help create a better secure internet by embedding Tor within Chromium with all tools for anonymity embedded for easy usage – a more secure peer to peer browser (like a mashup of Opera , tor and chromium).

or maybe embed bit torrents within a browser.

5) Disrupt media companies and cloud computing based companies like iTunes, Spotify or Google Music, just like virus, ant i viruses disrupted the desktop model of computing. After that offer solutions to the problems like companies of anti virus software did for decades.

6) Hacking websites is fine fun, but hacking internet databases and massively parallel data scrapers can help disrupt some of the status quo.

This applies to databases that offer data for sale, like credit bureaus etc. Making this kind of data public will eliminate data middlemen.

7) Use cross border, cross country regulatory arbitrage for better risk control of hacker attacks.

8) recruiting among universities using easy to use hacking tools to expand the pool of dedicated hacker armies.

9) using operations like those targeting child pornography to increase political acceptability of the hacker sub culture. Refrain from overtly negative and unimaginative bad Press Relations

10) If you cant convince  them to pass SOPA, confuse them 😉 Use bots for random clicks on ads to confuse internet commerce.

 

Occupy the Internet

BORN IN THE USA

Continue reading “Occupy the Internet”

Product Review – Revolution R 5.0

So I got the email from Revolution R. Version 5.0 is ready for download, and unlike half hearted attempts by many software companies they make it easy for the academics and researchers to get their free copy. Free as in speech and free as in beer.

Some thoughts-

1) R ‘s memory problem is now an issue of marketing and branding. Revolution Analytics has definitely bridged this gap technically  beautifully and I quote from their documentation-

The primary advantage 64-bit architectures bring to R is an increase in the amount of memory available to a given R process.
The first benefit of that increase is an increase in the size of data objects you can create. For example, on most 32-bit versions of R, the largest data object you can create is roughly 3GB; attempts to create 4GB objects result in errors with the message “cannot allocate vector of length xxxx.”
On 64-bit versions of R, you can generally create larger data objects, up to R’s current hard limit of 231 􀀀 1 elements in a vector (about 2 billion elements). The functions memory.size and memory.limit help you manage the memory used byWindows versions of R.
In 64-bit Revolution R Enterprise, R sets the memory limit by default to the amount of physical RAM minus half a gigabyte, so that, for example, on a machine with 8GB of RAM, the default memory limit is 7.5GB:

2) The User Interface is best shown as below or at  https://docs.google.com/presentation/pub?id=1V_G7r0aBR3I5SktSOenhnhuqkHThne6fMxly_-4i8Ag&start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000

-(but I am still hoping for the GUI ,Revolution Analytics promised us for Christmas)

3) The partnership with Microsoft HPC is quite awesome given Microsoft’s track record in enterprise software penetration

but I am also interested in knowing more about the Oracle version of R and what it will do there.

Secure Browsing from Mobile and PC ( Tor ,PeerNet, WasteAgain)

While Tor remains the tool of choice with pseudo-techie hacker wannabes , there is enough juice and smoke and mirrors on the market to confuse your average Joe.

For a secure browsing experience on Mobile – do NOT use either Apple or Windows OS

Use Android  and this app called Orbot in particular

Installing Tor with a QR code

Orbot is easy to install by simply scanning the following QR code with your Android Barcode scanner.

Android QR code

Installing Tor from the Android Market

Orbot is available in the Android Market.

ENTER PEERNET

If you have a Dell PC, well just use PeerNet to configure and set up your own network around the neighbourhood. This is particularly applicable if you are in country that is both repressive and not so technologically advanced. Wont work in China or USA.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/network/p70008/EN/vista_7/peernet.htm

What is a peer network?

A peer network is a network in which one computer can connect directly to another computer. This capability is accomplished by enabling access point (AP) functionality on one of the computers. Other computers can then connect to this computer in the same way that they would connect to a physical AP. If Internet Connection Sharing is enabled on the computer that has the AP functionality, computers that connect to that computer have Internet connectivity as well.

A basic peer network, which requires no networking knowledge or experience to set up, should meet the needs of most home users and small businesses. By default, a basic peer network is configured with the strongest available security (see How do I set up a basic peer network?).

For users who are familiar with wireless networking technology, advanced configuration features are available to do the following:

Change security settings (see How do I configure my peer network?)
Choose which method (push button or PIN) computers with Wi-Fi Protected Setup™ capability can join your peer network (see How do I allow peer devices to join my peer network using Wi-Fi Protected Setup technology?)
Change the DHCP Server IP address (see How do I configure my peer network?).
Change the channel on which to operate your peer network (see How do I configure my peer network?)

 If you are really really in a need for secure browsing (like you are maybe a big hot shot in the tech world), I suggest go over to VMWare

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

create a seperate Linux (Ubuntu for ease) virtual disc, then download the Tor Browser Bundle from

https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en for surfing and a Peernet (above) or  a prepaid one time use disposable mobile pre-paid wireless card. It is also quite easy to delete your virtual disc in times of emergencies (but it is best to use encryption even when in Ubuntu https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EncryptedHome)

IRC chat is less secure than you think it is thanks to BOT  Trawlers- so I am hoping someone in the open source community updates Waste Again for encrypted chats http://wasteagain.sourceforge.net/

What is “WASTE again”?

“WASTE again” enables you to create a decentralized and secure private mesh network using an unsecure network, such as the internet. Once the public encryption keys are exchanged, sending messages, creating groupchats and transferring files is easy and secure.

Creating a mesh

To create a mesh you need at least two computers with “WASTE again” installed. During installation, a unique pair of public and private keys for each computer is being generated. Before the first connection can be established, you need to exchange these public keys. These keys enable “WASTE again” to authenticate every connection to other “WASTE again” clients.

After exchanging the keys, you simply type in the computers IP address to connect to. If that computer is located behind a firewall or a NAT-router, you have to create a portmap first to enable incoming connections.

At least one computer in your mesh has to be able to accept incoming connections, making it a “public node”. If no direct connection between two firewalled computers can be made, “WASTE again” automatically routes your traffic through one or more of the available public nodes.

Every new node simply has to exchange keys with one of the connected nodes and then connect to it. All the other nodes will exchange their keys automatically over the mesh.

Google Plus Hangouts gets Enterprise Level Upgrade

Check out the new Google Plus Hangout with Extras

http://www.google.com/support/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1289346&ctx=go&hl=en

About Hangouts with Extras

Hangouts with Extras is a simple and easy way to connect and collaborate with your colleagues in real time. With Hangouts with Extras you can:

Connect with multiple people simultaneously: With group video chat and web conferencing you can connect with multiple people around the world at the same time.

Share your screen: Ever look at something that you couldn’t quite put into words? Well, with screen sharing you give other people the ability to view what’s on your computer screen. You can choose an open window screen on your computer and give everyone in your meeting the ability to look at it. Learn More

Collaborate in real time: You can meet, share notes, and even work on documents at the same time.Learn More

For enterprises- you can throw out your video conferencing software and collaboration tools and get a new mobile app for free.

Small drawbacks in the Google Plus- lack of integration with Youtube (it is one way integration from youtube to hangouts but not the other way round fixed), lack of a whiteboard  for sketches- (like again a shortcut to a google doc 🙂 ) or even bundling the record from your web cam to record your desktop.

Ultimately enterprises want to know how they can use this stuff for e-learning modules or webcasts.

—————–END—————————-

Alternative uses-

Check out NY Met Museum with Friends (thanks to Google Art Project)

Play Linkin Park Playlist (100 videos) with Friends btw. great graphic redesign of Youtube icons!! Now if we could only convince the Google Docs to get more integrated with Open Office or LibreOffice templates

or even set up a DJ table session using Google Hangouts. with Extras of course.

But as it stands it may be good to go for webcasts !!

 

Kindle as a Tablet for 109$ and how to order it if you in India

I was just blown away by the price and functionality of the Kindle, including the browser and in built Wi-Fi- ( though the 40$ leather bag was a bit sneaky as an accessory, I mean seriously, dude)

And unlike some media technology companies (like Hulu,Spotify , even some Youtube channels)

who offer products to Asia only after a delayed lag, it is just as easy to order Kindle sitting from India.

Thank you Amazon!

 

and lastly some art to help prod those people who offer beta sites for limited countries  even in this age.

Credit- Paul Mutant

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulmutant/4992725876/

Moving data between Windows and Ubuntu VMWare partition

I use Windows 7 on my laptop (it came pre-installed) and Ubuntu using the VMWare Player. What are the advantages of using VM Player instead of creating a dual-boot system? Well I can quickly shift from Ubuntu to Windows and bakc again without restarting my computer everytime. Using this approach allows me to utilize software that run only on Windows and run software like Rattle, the R data mining GUI, that are much easier installed on Linux.

However if your statistical software is on your Virtual Disk , and your data is on your Windows disk, you need a way to move data from Windows to Ubuntu.

The solution to this as per Ubuntu forums is –http://communities.vmware.com/thread/55242

Open My Computer, browse to the folder you want to share.  Right-click on the folder, select Properties.  Sharing tab.  Select the radio button to “Share this Folder”.  Change the default generated name if you wish; add a description if you wish.  Click the Permissions button to modify the security settings of what users can read/write to the share.

On the Linux side, it depends on the distro, the shell, and the window manager.

Well Ubuntu makes it really easy to configure the Linux steps to move data within Windows and Linux partitions.

 

NEW UPDATE-

VMmare makes it easy to share between your Windows (host) and Linux (guest) OS

 

Step 1

and step 2

Do this

 

and

Start the Wizard

when you finish the wizard and share a drive or folder- hey where do I see my shared ones-

 

see this folder in Linux- /mnt/hgfs (bingo!)

Hacker HW – Make this folder //mnt/hgfs a shortcut in Places your Ubuntu startup

Hacker Hw 2-

Upload using an anon email your VM dark data to Ubuntu one

Delete VM

Purge using software XX

Reinstall VM and bring back backup

 

Note time to do this

 

 

 

-General Sharing in Windows

 

 

Just open the Network tab in Ubuntu- see screenshots below-

Windows will now ask your Ubuntu user for login-

Once Logged in Windows from within Ubuntu Vmware, this is what happens

You see a tab called “users on “windows username”- pc appear on your Ubuntu Desktop  (see top right of the screenshot)

If you double click it- you see your windows path

You can now just click and drag data between your windows and linux partitions , just the way you do it in Windows .

So based on this- if you want to build  decision trees, artifical neural networks, regression models, and even time series models for zero capital expenditure- you can use both Ubuntu/R without compromising on your IT policy of Windows only in your organization (there is a shortage of Ubuntu trained IT administrators in the enterprise world)

Revised Installation Procedure for utilizing both Ubuntu /R/Rattle data mining on your Windows PC.

Using VMWare to build a free data mining system in R, as well as isolate your analytics system (thus using both Linux and Windows without overburdening your machine)

First Time

  1. http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_player/4_0Download and Install
  2. http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/downloadDownload Only
  3. Create New Virtual Image in VM Ware Player
  4. Applications—–Terminal——sudo apt get-install R (to download and install)
  5.                                          sudo R (to open R)
  6. Once R is opened type this  —-install.packages(rattle)—– This will install rattle
  7. library(rattle) will load Rattle—–
  8. rattle() will open the GUI—-
Getting Data from Host to Guest VM
Next Time
  1. Go to VM Player
  2. Open the VM
  3. sudo R in terminal to bring up R
  4. library(rattle) within R
  5. rattle()
At this point even if you dont know any Linux and dont know any R, you can create data mining models using the Rattle GUI (and time series model using E pack in the R Commander GUI) – What can Rattle do in data mining? See this slideshow-http://www.decisionstats.com/data-mining-with-r-gui-rattle-rstats/
If Google Docs is banned as per your enterprise organizational IT policy of having Windows Explorer only- well you can see these screenshots http://rattle.togaware.com/rattle-screenshots.html