BBC is running an article which is reporting a first ever worm on iphone. It is important to note that this worm does not effect all iphones. Only the jail-broken iphones are vulnerable to this problem. Moreover, not all jail-broken iphones are vulnerable. Only the jail-broken iphones, whose root password is left as the default password ('alpine') after installing SSH, are vulnerable. This worm will not spread to phones where the default password is changed to something else.
So, in a way this is a dumb virus which relies on a known root password. But the reality is that many people do not change(or do not know how to change) their default password. The current form of the worm is not harmful. It just changes the wallpaper. But the author has released the source code of the worm. This can lead to harmful virus in the future using the same technique.
Update: There is already a second worm named "iPhone/Privacy" which uses the same technique as the above. This worm is a harmful one. Its steals personal data, like e-mails and contacts etc, without the knowledge of the user. See this article.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Tutorial to unlock iphone 3G/3GS using Blacksnow (link)
Geohot, the first hacker to find an unlock solution for the iphone(2G), just released a tool to unlock 3G & 3GS phones. This tool can unlock the phones running the latest firmware (3.1.2). This is supposed to the fastest unlock solution which does things in a snap. Please note that this tool is not meant for unlocking 2G phones.
Iphone hacks is running an article which mentions that this application is available over cydia also. You can use this approach if your 3G/3GS iphone is already jailbroken.
As usual, iclarified is ready with a pictorial tutorial explaining each step of the unlock process using blacksn0w. Happy unlocking!
Iphone hacks is running an article which mentions that this application is available over cydia also. You can use this approach if your 3G/3GS iphone is already jailbroken.
As usual, iclarified is ready with a pictorial tutorial explaining each step of the unlock process using blacksn0w. Happy unlocking!
Hard disk usage visualization tool
Ever wondered how you are running out of disk space even when you have a large capacity hard disk. Its very likely that you have bunch of large files that you do not need anymore. Actually, I faced this problem even more because I have a small capacity hard disk. I am almost perpetually short of disk space. So, I have to be very optimal in its usage. Sometimes, I store large files somewhere and forget that they ever existed after the use. One of the things that I keep doing is to use disk cleanup tool in windows and remove temporary files. But that does not reclaim much space beyond few MBs.
One day I was very frustrated that I have to continuously hunt for unwanted files on my machine. When I turned to the net for a tool that helps me in this, I found this nice tool called "WinDirStat" which stands for "Windows directory statistics". Its is a nice tool that quickly gives a map of all the files in the disk. Its visual presentation is very good with color-coding and size-coding. It visually shows the file sizes occupied by files and the directories.
The files will be shown as rectangular boxes and the size of the box represents the relative size of the file. All the files in a directory will be given same color. If you put the cursor on the blocks, it shows the filename etc. With this tool, you can quickly identify the large files/directories in your disk and delete them if they are not needed. Or you can backup the large files and delete them from your disk. You can do some basic operations like opening, deleting, seeing properties etc directly from the tool. I feel that this is a very convenient feature.
Here is the list of other tools that are available in case you want to explore more.
One day I was very frustrated that I have to continuously hunt for unwanted files on my machine. When I turned to the net for a tool that helps me in this, I found this nice tool called "WinDirStat" which stands for "Windows directory statistics". Its is a nice tool that quickly gives a map of all the files in the disk. Its visual presentation is very good with color-coding and size-coding. It visually shows the file sizes occupied by files and the directories.
The files will be shown as rectangular boxes and the size of the box represents the relative size of the file. All the files in a directory will be given same color. If you put the cursor on the blocks, it shows the filename etc. With this tool, you can quickly identify the large files/directories in your disk and delete them if they are not needed. Or you can backup the large files and delete them from your disk. You can do some basic operations like opening, deleting, seeing properties etc directly from the tool. I feel that this is a very convenient feature.
Here is the list of other tools that are available in case you want to explore more.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Motion-Activated Headphones
Wow! it feels very nice to blog after a long time. I had been busy the last 1.5 months both at work and off work. At work, its the usual boring stuff. Off work, I had a wonderful vacation for 2 weeks roaming all over(not really) the country. I had visited some places which I always yearned to go. And...Even more wonderful thing is hapenning in my life. I am getting married!. So, busy for obvious reasons. Just wanted to share this with the world :). Lets come to the topic...
Sony Ericsson launched earphones with an interesting feature. To stop/pause the music you do not need to press any buttons. The control is done based on some gestures. To start playing the music, just put both the earphone in the ear. To stop playing the music, just remove them from the ear. To pause the music, just remove one of the earphones. This earphones are meant for mobile phones. So, one can attend a phone call by removing one of the earphone. This particular gesture might not be good because you will not get to put both the earphones while talking on phone. Hopefully, this is configurable. See this link and/or the following video.
Sony Ericsson launched earphones with an interesting feature. To stop/pause the music you do not need to press any buttons. The control is done based on some gestures. To start playing the music, just put both the earphone in the ear. To stop playing the music, just remove them from the ear. To pause the music, just remove one of the earphones. This earphones are meant for mobile phones. So, one can attend a phone call by removing one of the earphone. This particular gesture might not be good because you will not get to put both the earphones while talking on phone. Hopefully, this is configurable. See this link and/or the following video.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Iphone OS 3.0 issues
I wanted to update my 2g iphone from OS 2.2.1 to OS 3.0. I am a little bit apprehensive about upgrading because of the fears that it might have drawbacks or other problems. When I searched the net, I am a bit relieved because I did not find too many complaints. For the time being, I will wait and watch. The most common problem reported is the poor battery performance. See the following snippet from an article in pcmag summarizing the problems.
We received a number of reports from users point to issues with their phones' battery life, slowed speeds, and crashing or a generally inability to run certain apps. A reader named Gary reported that, "[i]t drains my battery in a few hours even if I am not using it." Tom had slightly better luck, writing, "my battery also drains in one day. It used to last three days."
A number of speed issues were reported amongst users, many of whom have considered reverting the software back to its 2.2 iteration. Meanwhile, reader Dave tells us, "most of my iphone apps stopped working after downloading the new 3.0 software on my iPhone 3G." Jason added, "Also Facebook always locks up and won't allow me to move to the desired tab."
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Unlock/Jailbreak 2G & 3G iphones with OS 3.0 on windows (link)
First of all thanks to iphone dev team to come up with unlock almost in parallel to the official release of iphone OS 3.0 launch. The tool name is "redsnow". And, thanks to people from iclarified for coming up with such a nice tutorial.
For 2G phones, you can jailbreak and unlock the iphone having OS 3.0 firmware. Here is the link to tutorial for windows users.
For 3G phones, for now, you can only jailbreak the iphone having OS 3.0 firmware. Here is the link to tutorial for windows users. The iphone dev team will be releasing shortly the tool to unlock the OS 3.0 which they are calling it "ultrasnow". Follow thier blog for updates on this.
Update(june-24th): The iphone dev team has released their "ultrasnow" to unlock 3G phone running OS 3.0. And, here is the tutorial from iclarified. Plese note that none of the above unlock solutions work for iphone 3GS, which is the latest phone.
For 2G phones, you can jailbreak and unlock the iphone having OS 3.0 firmware. Here is the link to tutorial for windows users.
For 3G phones, for now, you can only jailbreak the iphone having OS 3.0 firmware. Here is the link to tutorial for windows users. The iphone dev team will be releasing shortly the tool to unlock the OS 3.0 which they are calling it "ultrasnow". Follow thier blog for updates on this.
Update(june-24th): The iphone dev team has released their "ultrasnow" to unlock 3G phone running OS 3.0. And, here is the tutorial from iclarified. Plese note that none of the above unlock solutions work for iphone 3GS, which is the latest phone.
How to fix 169.x.x.x IP problem in windows vista
The other day me and my friend were struggling to fix this funny problem in windows vista where it always gets 169.x.x.x IP address. And because of this the PC is not able to connect to the internet. When we searched that net I am surprised to see the number of people facing this problem. But unfortunately, the solutions offered in those forums did not work for us. We tried many things like disabling the DHCP and assigning a static IP address, editing some settings in registery entry for the network connection, remvoing and adding the connection again etc.
At the end of an hour or so, when we found the fix for the problem we felt like slapping our face because the problem is such a stupid problem. Ok, the problem is that the mcafee is installed on the machine and the firewall is enabled thereby forming a proxy network which is not allowing us to directly connect to the internet. We simply disabled the firewall in mcafee and voila!, we are able to connect to the internet.
It may not be such a good idea to completely disable the firewall as the machine is directly exposed to the internet. There should be some solution to connect to the internet while the firewall is enabled. But, we will worry about it for some other day.
At the end of an hour or so, when we found the fix for the problem we felt like slapping our face because the problem is such a stupid problem. Ok, the problem is that the mcafee is installed on the machine and the firewall is enabled thereby forming a proxy network which is not allowing us to directly connect to the internet. We simply disabled the firewall in mcafee and voila!, we are able to connect to the internet.
It may not be such a good idea to completely disable the firewall as the machine is directly exposed to the internet. There should be some solution to connect to the internet while the firewall is enabled. But, we will worry about it for some other day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)