Un-Trusted Downloads May Crash Your PC

Cyber criminals may get into your PC via unsafe downloads online. So beware about such kind of downloads and ensure you are safe. Here is the full security awareness article for your reference, Just visit http://www.buzzle.com/articles/beware-about-hot-downloads-online.html

Which Linux Distro is best for me....

Best Linux for me

Hi all,

I am back with my next blog. In this article I am going to help those who are planning to install linux for some reason  but are confused to select linux disto because there  are plenty of linux freely available to download. So which linux should I install here is mentioned :

1.I Just want to try linux :

If you just want to try linux then you don’t need to install it at all,

For this you can test linux with the help of Linux live CD known as ‘knoppix “.

Almost all Linux distro provide their live cd.

The user can run many different software applications and he may also save documents / files created during a Live CD session to persistent storage like a hard disk or a flash drive.

A Linux Live CD can also be used in situations when your windows has crashed and you want to save your existing data on another media before reinstalling windows. The only problem is that such distributions tend to run slower than fully installed Linux distributions.

You can also try linux on your windows machine with some virtualization software like Virtual PC (Microsoft ),Virtual Box or with VMWare

2.Linux for Home users /Notebooks :

With my personal experience to linux I think that Ubantu and PCLinuxOS are two best destro of linux for home users. Ubantu and PC Linux OS both offer user friendly applications,Games , Desiging softwares and office Packages. Personaly I installed ubantu in my HP Laptop in 2009 dual boot with windows XP. In  my same laptop ( P4,2.4 GHz /512 MB ) I was unable to run Windows Vista and Windows 7 properly.Even my windows XP takes more than one minute to boot up after grub selection , wheres as my ubantu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx ) takes less than 40 seconds in the same notebook. I run music audio and video files (almost any formate ) in VLC media player and using firefox for fastbrowsing and Impathy for gmail and  hotmails chat client.It has a predictable, six-month release schedule, with occasional Long Term Support (LTS) .Ubuntu is also notable for its ease of use and its inclusion of a migration assistant for Windows users and support for the latest technologies. Version 10.10 of Ubuntu--also known asMaverick Meerkat--will include a multitouch and gesture stack. The final iteration of that version is due out next month  Personaly I don’t remember when I have logged in to windows in my laptop after Ubantu.

On the other hand if you have good hardware (any new computer P4 2.0 or above with more than 1 GB ram then Fedora 11,and Fedora 12 are also very good choices.

3.Linux for old computers :

Puppy Linux is a Live CD distribution that has a small installer and will run just fine on computers with RAM as little as 64 MB. Puppy Linux can boot from several media including USB flash drives, CD or a zip drive. Puppy Linux will run totally in RAM so make sure you save the modified personal files to a disk else you’ll lose the changes when the system shuts down.

Xubuntu, a variant of Ubuntu is also a possibility. Xubuntu uses xfce, a desktop environment that uses less system resources than GNOME that comes with the Ubuntu distribution. Xubuntu versions are released twice a year, coinciding with Ubuntu releases.

antiX is another good choice for old computers – it should run on systems that were considered slow when Windows 98 was released (like the Pentium II series). Damn Small Linux and Zenwalk are other variations that have minimal hardware requirements.

4. Linux for Commercial /Production Environment :

For  core production /Comercial Environement I will recommend some enterprise version of linux such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux ,Oracle Enterprise or suse Enterprise Linux.

However Cent OS is a very good choice if you don’t need any support. It is just clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux without any official support of Red Hat. All  the Red Hat Logos are removed in Cent OS. In my office we are using CentOS as mail server from last 3 years withour any issue till date.

Fedora is also a good choice for both server and desktop end.

And finally Ubantu is always free there.

                       Finaly if you have sufficient resources than you not try to hesitate to taste each flavor of Linux….



                                                                              Regards




                                                                              Satish Malanch

New Computer Security Forum Launched!

Recently Hermesmyth, an India based Online Marketing Services company has launched an new computer security forum �SafeScribble�. SafeScribble Computer Security Forum aims at discussing and solving computer virus related problems and, suggesting the best antivirus software for computer users.

SafeScribble PC Security Forum now invites antivirus technology experts to join the discussion and help grow the community by contributing security related articles and helping the forum users of their pc related questions. Also SafeScribble invites individuals and business users to share their virus related problems by registering in the discussion board for free and make use of it.

To register for free, please visit http://www.safescribble.com/

Web Server Security

Operating Systems still continue to be vulnerable to attacks if the security patches are not installed periodically, which gives way to malwares and massive internet worms. Sometime ago, the internet worm conficker, which is also known as downadup was creating big chaos over the internet, which lead to huge losses to the corporate and website owners. Meanwhile there was also number of buffer overflow attacks reported during the year 2009. It�s quite common that all the web servers do have vulnerability, but its good the website owner need to safeguard their valuable digital assets by periodically updating the security patches and by running quality server security software products, which would prevent from the web server being vulnerable i.e. accessible to the hackers.

Below are a few one-liner precautionary steps that will help you in securing your Web server.
1. Install the Security Patches whenever available
2. Check the client side of the website by running a Malware Scan to ensure the users are safe
3. Disable the unnecessary scripting languages in your web servers, as hacker may target them
4. Subscribe and Keep monitoring the security vendor's security alerts
5. Most importantly use a tough Alpha-numeric-Symbol based password
6. Check for vulnerabilities by running a vulnerability analyser to check your web server security holes
7. Set up permissions at different levels so that no one can access as an administrator, expect the person intended for.
8. DON'T test any new or unknown scripts in your main web server, because some untrusted scripts may inject a malware in your server

Also, now Google provides a free tool called "SkipFish" - a web application security reconnaissance tool, which can run a security audit to your website. Here is the link for your convenience http://code.google.com/p/skipfish/

Still wondering how the attack takes place, here is a pictorial representation of Top Cyber Security Risks by Sans.org http://www.sans.org/top-cyber-security-risks/tutorial.php

Installing Flash Player in Fedora Machine

Usualy we cannot open web pages containng Flash images in Fedora linux because flash player in not installed by default. And as we try to install missing plug-in we get error. so here is procedure to install flash player.



First of all download rpm  or tar format flash plugin form adobe website. In my case i downloaded .rpm format to my /tmp directory . now open terminal and change your working directory to /tmp
and type following

[root@linux1 tmp]# rpm -ivh flash-plugin-10.1.53.64-release.i386.rpm
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:flash-plugin           ########################################### [100%]

The .rpm file also copies the adobe General Public Key (GPG key) to /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux but does not import it. To import the key, type:

[root@linux1 tmp]# rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux

Now install plug-in with yum command

[root@linux1 tmp]# 
yum install flash-plugin alsa-plugins-pulseaudio \
    libcurl'

and finaly

[root@linux1 tmp]# yum install nspluginwrapper 

Now you can open any web contain flash.

Regards

Satish Malanch  

Playing Movies on Ubantu 10.04 Linux with VLC Media Player

Installing VLC Media Player on Ubantu 10.04

Insatlling vlc media player is quite simple in ubantu-box

open terminal and type

% sudo apt-get update
% sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-pulse mozilla-plugin-vlc

and enjoy

..................Satish Malanch

Playing movies ,songs in Fedora linux ,Installing VLC in Linux

One  of the main reason why home users dont prefer linux to use is that they can t play music on linux machine. This article will describe how to play movies in your fedora linux. VLC media player is capable to play any music file . by default Fedora does not come with VLC media player. So here i am going to explain how to install VLC  media Player in Linux. This not big game just 3 step procedure. All you need to have a Fedora working machine with  configured and working yum repositry and a stabel internet connection.

Open terminal and type there: ( you must be login with root otherwise try su )

[root@malanch ~]# rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm

This will display like this:

Retrieving http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
warning: /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.cqf8YE: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 signature: NOKEY, key ID 8fcff4da
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:rpmfusion-free-release ########################################### [100%]

now type :

[root@linux ~]# yum install vlc

and you are done . now you can play any music file (.dat,.3gp,.mpg,vob,avi ) in your linux machine.