Yahoo! You've Got Worm

A new JavaScript based worm has been found crawling through a flaw in Yahoo's webmail servers, requiring Windows users to update their anti-virus protection. The JS.Yamanner@m worm was reported by Symantec on Monday and affects all Yahoo Mail users not using the Yahoo Mail Beta version. Symantec has rated the worm to be of medium damage and medium distribution. The 6,377 byte worm exploits a JavaScript flaw in Yahoo's implementation and when opened, collects addresses in the user's webmail folders and then starts to spread. The worm takes a novel approach in that it does not require the user to click on any attachment for it to function; the e-mail only needs to be opened within Yahoo Mail. By late Monday, Yahoo had already disabled the functionality in Yahoo Mail that allowed the worm to spread. All Windows users, from Windows 95/98/ME to Windows 2000/XP/2003 are affected, and users are urged to download the latest anti-virus updates for their client anti-virus software. The advisory should be a subtle warning to web programmers and webmasters who are pushing forward with AJAX technologies, as extensive use of JavaScript (the 'J' in AJAX) can bring with it new security vulnerabilities.
Source: SecurityFocus.com

Tags: Yahoo, Security, Gr33n Data

Linux NFS Mount

You sure know how to share files on Windows, but as you may have noticed I am biased to Linux more, so here you are how to mount an NFS (Network File System) on Linux/Unix machines.
Lets imagine that there is an NFS share made on a remote PC (10.0.0.5), and we want to mount it on our local PC on /mnt/foo

# mkdir /mnt/foo # mount -o tcp 10.0.0.:/home/bar /mnt/foo

The "-o tcp" part is to mount using NFS over TCP which is more reliable, but may be a bit slower.

Tags: Linux, NFS, Gr33n Data

Linux Latest Reboot

On a Linux pc, if you want to know when was the latest reboot, or how long has it been up and running, you may use the following command:

# uptime

Tags: Linux, Reboot, Gr33n Data

Now I Like Apples

A couple of days ago, I was in a training session, and the instructor was using an Apple Laptop with Mac OS on it. Actually I now nothing about the hardware or software versions of them. And guess what, it was my first time to see MacOS in real life. It's really cooooool. I used to tell people to switch to Linux/FreeBSD as they are open-source and free, but now I think you may pay some money and try Apple/MacOSX, it is optimum for showing off.

Tags: Apple, Computers, Gr33n Data

Taher Elgamal

Dr.Taher Elgamal (born 18 August 1955) is an Egyptian-American cryptographer. Elgamal is sometimes seen as El Gamal or ElGamal, but Elgamal is now preferred. In 1985, Elgamal published a paper titled A Public key Cryptosystem and A Signature Scheme based on discrete Logarithms in which he proposed the design of the ElGamal discrete log cryptosystem and of the ElGamal signature scheme. The latter scheme became the basis for Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) adopted by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as the Digital Signature Standard (DSS).
Source: Wikipedia

Tags: Egypt, Cryptography, Gr33n Data

Blue Blog

One of my friends was asking me about an idea for her graduation project. I came out with an idea that I want to know if it really exists or not. It's a mobile blog, i.e. people can have a tiny web-server on their mobile phones with some blogging script. They may then publish their blog posts there, for anyone in their bluetooth range to see these posts, and may be comment on them too. They may also have some files (ringtones, images, and softwares) on their mobiles to be shared for others to download. Cafes and stores may use the Blue Blog technology to publish some Ads and announce offers to their customers, restaurants may use it to display their menus too.

Tags: Blog, Mobile, Gr33n Data

Big Brother is Reading Your Email

"Big Brother is not only watching but he is also reading your e-mail. According to a new study, about a third of big companies in the United States and Britain hire employees to read and analyze outbound e-mail as they seek to guard against legal, financial or regulatory risk", Wired News.
They may be really concerend about info leakage, but is it ethical to read their employees emails? I think they are supposed at least to tell them that their emails will be monitored.

Tags: Email, Privacy, Gr33n Data

mIRC, I hate the Egyptian Channels

I never liked mIRC, and every now and then I decide to use it, but I find myself hating it more and more. What pisses me off of it most is the moderators and admins there, expecially in the Egyptian channels. They are there just to kick people all the time. They kick you if they do not like your nickname, or if you post some other channel address. They may also kick you if you talk too much, or if you do not talk at all. Sometimes they have bots that kick and ban people just for no specific reason. In a dial-up environment they may ban an IP address, and it may happen that you take that specific IP from your ISP when you log into the net, so you are just banned. I think there must be better Egyptian mIRC channels, other than the nasty #egypt, #cairo, #maadi, etc, because these ones really suck with their idiot admins and foolish bots.

Tags: mIRC, Chat, Egypt, Gr33n Data

Africa Catching India for Call Center Locations

African countries typically offer a low-cost location, workers that often have excellent language skills, and governments and private companies that are working to attract outsourcing contracts, according to Datamonitor, a U.K. research company. Morocco and Tunisia are ideal spots for outsourcing customer care operations that serve French speakers, although Morocco is also developing English and Spanish speaking talent as well. Egypt is already a popular customer care center location and promises to continue to be. South Africa, with a workforce that typically speaks English, is already a dominant and maturing market for outsourced service centers.
Source: Network World
More companies like Equant, Microsoft, as well as banks are moving their call centers to Egypt. I think people here in Egypt are technically talanted, however they need to develop more language skill, especially in languages like English, French, Spanish, and may be Deutsch as well.

Tags: Technology, Africa, Egypt, Gr33n Data

Banned Copyrights

Sometimes I find those pro-copyrights entities having a point in not allowing people to get Movies, Music, Softwares, etc freely. Put yourself in a producer, or music writer shoes, and watch yourself spending time and money on some mastepiece, then you see others downloading it from P2P file sharing programs without paying anything back to you.
But the point is, consider a movie like The Da Vinci Code, it is going to be banned here in Egypt. So what other choice do we have, other than getting it from Kazaa, Shareaza, and BitTorrent? Ok, we will be happy to support you, but we can't buy or pay for your work. So in such case, I think your copyright laws are supposed to take some rest. Don't you think so?

Tags: Copyrights, Law, Gr33n Data

Fortinet ATCA-Compliant Blade

One of the most successful products of Cisco Systems is its Catalys 6500 Switch series. It may not be the best product in the market compared to many other switches like Foundry's BigIron, and Extreme and many other equivalent products. But the main stength of Cisco's backbone switch, is the ability to add various modules to it, making it act as an all-in-one network device. You can find Firewall, IPS, and Layer 4-7 modules that can be integrated into the Catalyst 6500 and also the 7600 Router.
This is why a move like the one taken by Fortinet - a well know security products producer - may be really interesting to Cisco competitors. The ATCS - Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture - defined by the PCI Industrial Computers Manufacturers Group (PICMG), was created to help building systems that include computing and communications products for myriad applications. In other words, it is a standart that help multiple venors to integrate different blades, and modules in their chassis as long as they complu to it, so you may find a Layer-3 switches vendor integrating a firewall blade made by other vendor into its own switches. And as you may have noticed, Fortinet was the first to have is ATCA-Compliant security blade with the ability to run as a Firewall, IPS, AntiSpam, URL Filtering, etc. Actually I've notices some cooperation efforts between Alcatel and Fortinet long time ago, that's why I guess the Alcatel may be the first to add that Fortinet security module in its own OmniStack switches.

Tags: Fortinet, Security, Gr33n Data

Ubuntu-Egypt Group

Ubuntu is a Linux distro based on Debian, it has been marked as the most popular Linux distribution at Distrowatch for more than one year. Ubuntu is starting to gain more popularity here in Egypt too. That's why I have decided to create a group for Egyptian Ubuntu Users.

• Group name: ubuntu-eg
• Group home page: http://groups.google.com/group/ubuntu-eg
• Group email address ubuntu-eg@googlegroups.com

Tags: Ubuntu, Egypt, Gr33n Data

Mozilla and Google Calendars Integration

You now know about the online Google Calendar, but what about being able to see your appointments there from your desktop Mozilla/Thunderbird Calendar. Here you are the steps in order to do so.

1. In Google Calendar press on "Settings", then go to "Calendars" tab, and then press on "Share this Calendar".
2. Now go to "Calendar Details", and press on the "iCal" green button in the "Private Address" section, and copy the URL you get.
3. Now in your Mozilla Calendar, press "Ctrl+L", the choose remote, and press next.
4. Choose WebDAV, and enter the URL you got from Step One, and press next again.
5. Give your new calendar a name and colour, and press next, then finish.

Tags: Google, Calendar, iCal, Mozilla, Thunderbird, Gr33n Data