For the un-initiated folks in twitter(I am one of you until few weeks back), you should first ask "what is twitter ?". Twitter is a kind of social networking tool where you post small messages(max 140 chars). Its like micro blogging and is a new fad of the world. People follow you to know your latest updates. It is a nice way to keep your friends and family updated. The small messages that you post are called twits. My loginid on twitter is 'sunilvirus'. So, you know where to follow me.
Engadget is running this article about a new human computer interface(HCI) where the user can type anything just by thinking about the alpahbet. The computer system will analyze your brain patterns and does the job of typing for you. Ofcourse, this technology can be used in many applications, but it seems the inventors of this gadget are obsessed with twitter. They developed an application to send twitter messages. See the below video for this technology in action. Do not have high expections thinking that you can type at the speed of thought. This is still in very nacent stages and is slow. Damn slow actually!
update: A related article from washingtonpost about a mindcontrol gadget.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Confiker is paging home...
In case you do not know about confiker(a.k.a downup/downadup), it is the most widespread virus till date. It propagates by exploiting a vulnerability in windows. The estimated number of computers that this virus has affected range from 9million to 15million (by different security teams). Microsoft announced $25,000 reward for any information that will lead to finding the creators of this virus but none was successful till now because the code is very obfuscated. See the wikipage for more information on this.
The interesting part is that the malicious action to be performed by this virus is not hardwired into it. First it just spreads and form a big botnet(a network of affected machines). It has the capability to download a payload(action to be performed) later and execute it. It has an interesting way of dowloading the payload. The 'D' variant of this virus generates a pool of 50000 domains everyday and randomly pick 500 of them and look for payload. Many experts believed that this virus will download the payload on 1st of April signifying the April Fools Day, but nothing happened on that day. It really made a fool out of the experts :)
A week after the April Fools Day, this virus seems to be actively downloading payload. It is downloading payload from the Waledac botnet, which is a botnet known for data-theft and spamming. Slashdot is running an article on this which points to this article. Here is one more article about this activity from Trendmicro and one more article from Zdnet.
Update: Cnet has an article where it mentions that this virus installs fake antivirus software which actually installs a trojan downloader. It fakes as if the system is effected with a virus and offers to clean it for $49.99. Funny, isn't it ?
The interesting part is that the malicious action to be performed by this virus is not hardwired into it. First it just spreads and form a big botnet(a network of affected machines). It has the capability to download a payload(action to be performed) later and execute it. It has an interesting way of dowloading the payload. The 'D' variant of this virus generates a pool of 50000 domains everyday and randomly pick 500 of them and look for payload. Many experts believed that this virus will download the payload on 1st of April signifying the April Fools Day, but nothing happened on that day. It really made a fool out of the experts :)
A week after the April Fools Day, this virus seems to be actively downloading payload. It is downloading payload from the Waledac botnet, which is a botnet known for data-theft and spamming. Slashdot is running an article on this which points to this article. Here is one more article about this activity from Trendmicro and one more article from Zdnet.
Update: Cnet has an article where it mentions that this virus installs fake antivirus software which actually installs a trojan downloader. It fakes as if the system is effected with a virus and offers to clean it for $49.99. Funny, isn't it ?
Saturday, April 4, 2009
iphone music over bluetooth headset
In my previous blog post when I wrote about bluetooth file transfer in iphone using iBluetooth, I mentioned that we cannot listen to the music or video in the bluetooth headset. I explored more about this topic and am happy to find that I am wrong. There are couple of tricks to workaround this limitation. It is possible to listen to the iphone music or video in the bluetooth headset. The trick here is to exploit the capability of iphone to transfer audio during calls over bluetooth. The beauty is that these tricks does not need any hardware or software changes. The following tricks assumes that you have already coupled your bluetooth headset to your iphone.
The first trick is simple but not practical to use. As the phone can export audio over bluetooth during active call, the trick is to play the music while you are active on the call. While you are on the call if you press home button, it will give access to the main screen when you can select ipod and play the music. But the problem is that the music will stop if the call ends. So, this is not practical as you do not want to burn out the phone minutes.
The second trick is to exploit voice mail. You do not need to be on active call to use this. Go the voicemail tab in the phone menu. If you have voice mail enabled and configured, you will see a button for audio source. Tap it and select your bluetooth headset as the source. Then open the ipod and start playing your music. You will hear it in your headset.
The third trick is the geeky way. It reminds me of the days we used to jailbreak by making a fake call. As an active call is needed to have voice over bluetooth, we make a fake call. If you dail *#301#, the iphone will call itself. You can answer the call and it will be active till you end it. As you are calling yourself, you do not pay for the minutes. But there is a catch. You cannot get calls while you are on this unless you have call waiting enabled. See this video which explains the procedure.
The first trick is simple but not practical to use. As the phone can export audio over bluetooth during active call, the trick is to play the music while you are active on the call. While you are on the call if you press home button, it will give access to the main screen when you can select ipod and play the music. But the problem is that the music will stop if the call ends. So, this is not practical as you do not want to burn out the phone minutes.
The second trick is to exploit voice mail. You do not need to be on active call to use this. Go the voicemail tab in the phone menu. If you have voice mail enabled and configured, you will see a button for audio source. Tap it and select your bluetooth headset as the source. Then open the ipod and start playing your music. You will hear it in your headset.
The third trick is the geeky way. It reminds me of the days we used to jailbreak by making a fake call. As an active call is needed to have voice over bluetooth, we make a fake call. If you dail *#301#, the iphone will call itself. You can answer the call and it will be active till you end it. As you are calling yourself, you do not pay for the minutes. But there is a catch. You cannot get calls while you are on this unless you have call waiting enabled. See this video which explains the procedure.
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