If you have ever shared a log on or computer for your web browsing you’ll know how annoying it can be not to have secure web surfing. Organize a surprise party or weekend away and then a list of hotels appears in your partners browser next time she logs on. It’s almost like you share a common surfing history in the house.

Let’s face it perhaps you don’t want your kids to visit all the same web sites as you!

There’s nothing ground breaking in Chromes Incognito mode but it is a very useful feature. Switch to Incognito mode and your web surfing instantly becomes a little more secure.

This is how you can use Chrome for secure web browsing, simply right click on the Chrome Shortcut on your desktop, select properties and you should see the shortcut menu appear.

1) Right Click on Chrome Shortcut on Desktop
2) Select Properties
3) On Shortcut menu add the following to target shortcut menu -incognito

Therefore every time you start Chrome using that shortcut now you will be in ‘incognito mode’. If you just want to use this mode occasionally then you can select a ‘incognito’ windows from the file menu.

All the web sites you visit are now not recorded in your history, all cookies are deleted when you close. There’s no trace of the web sites stored on your computer at all. Most of the browsers offer similar functionality now but most have to be done manually (so people forget). Overall I guess Firefox with it’s multitude of plug-ins and open source model will hopefully produce the ultimate secure browsing. I’ll have a look at these options in a later article.

Of course, it’s a long, long way from real secure web surfing, we still use HTTP which means your browsing is in clear text. Your browsing history and IP address are also stored on the web site you visit, on the ISP logs. But it is a start and at least can keep your PC holding a huge list of your web browsing.

If you want the ultimate secure browsing, have a look here – Secure Surfing Protection

Try the new free demo of Identity Cloaker on the link below.

Anonymous Surfing Program

Take care and stay safe.
Jim

Author: Jim Rjindael
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital Camera News

When it comes to security, versatility and stability, there is no better solution in information technology than open source. From operating systems to Web development to just about any common application, the open-source revolution finally has taken hold.

Businesses have started to truly understand the benefits of opting for open source, not only to save money, but also for the peace of mind it brings to their IT environment.

The term “open source” has a variety of meanings in the IT world. It is used to describe initiatives and collaborations ranging from software projects to enterprise environments with source code that is accessible to anyone. It stands as perhaps the ultimate example of the process of continuous improvement by encouraging everyone to make it better – and share how they did it.

Many open-source-based solutions like RedHat, Ubuntu and Suse are becoming down-right mainstream, drawing offers for proprietary partnerships from hardware giants like Dell, HP and IBM. So far, each has maintained its autonomy and reiterated its commitment to furthering “the movement” rather than its bottom line.

The issue of support no longer keeps businesses from buying in to open-source technology either. Most are fully supported, either through packages by their distributors, as in the case of RedHat and Suse, or via the well-rounded Internet network.

Open-source now is possible – and pragmatic – for every new Web development project. By using LAMP – that’s Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP – an open-source solution can be created that is versatile and secure.

Author: Aaron Wittersheim
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Latest trends in mobile phone

In these post 9/11 days, intrusion and lack of privacy are often justified by the glib phrase “If you have nothing to hide why worry?” Yet all of us at some time or other have something to hide without being a criminal. What if you’re planning a surprise party, buying presents or arranging a secret holiday? Or perhaps you are being very naughty – hiding photos of your girlfriend from your spouse, which if not exactly nice, is not usually a crime.

The best reason of all is for personal security – ID theft is at an all time high and keeping important information secure is not that easy these days. Even if you trust your firewall, anti- spy ware, etc, what if your pc or laptop was stolen? Could you be absolutely sure that no one could read your files, or access your passwords, business accounts, salary files, and new business ideas?

What if you could hide your most cherished information so securely that it couldn’t even be detected? Well now you can, thanks to open source and it won’t even cost you a cent. All you need is a PC running Windows or Linux and the Truecrypt application.

Truecrypt is a remarkable piece of free software that can be downloaded from http://Truecrypt.org It uses the best security methods- algorithms like ES-256, Blowfish, CAST5, Serpent, Triple DES, Twofish, AES-Serpent, and AES-Twofish-Serpent. Even the source code is available to examine or alter. Don’t worry if you don’t know what these names mean; they are all well established and verified means of encrypting data. You can find out more about them on the Truecrypt website or use Google.

There is a very dodgy practice in security- known as “security through obscurity” that works by not revealing how the secured data is stored. It relies on that secrecy to protect your data. This is snake oil. Many programmers think they can write their own encryption algorithms and sell them but it is actually pretty hard to develop robust and secure algorithms. It’s considered far better to use tried and tested methods and keep your passwords secret. That’s what Truecrypt does. There is nothing wrong with hiding the files as well but you should not rely on keeping files hidden as your only means of protection.

Truecrypt is excellent at disguising its encrypted files. It doesn’t use any special type of file so the presence of a Truecrypt file cannot be easily spotted. It is possible to detect that you have used Truecrypt on a Windows PC by looking in the registry but those registry keys can be found and removed if you are really security conscious and know how to use regedit.

In Windows Explorer if you see a file ending in .txt, it is usually a text file, just as .xls is an excel file, .doc is for word etc. With a file named kernel.sys, you might think it is part of Windows. But it could equally be a Truecrypt file. Examining the bytes in a Truecrypt file with a hex editor will not reveal what the file contains or even identify it as a Truecrypt file. You’ll just see random byte values. The whole file is encrypted and only your password can decrypt it. As your password isn’t stored anywhere that means if you forget it, the data is irretrievably lost. There is no back door or recovery utility that you can use.

Unusually for software of this complexity, Truecrypt is very easy to use. It can make use of a file, an entire disk or even a USB drive to hold encrypted files. My preference is to use a file, as it’s easy to make backup copies.

Each Truecrypt file or drive is actually a “volume”, similar to a root folder that holds other files and folders. Each ‘volume’ has to be prepared once- just enter a password and it is filled with random data in a few minutes. “Volume” files can be pretty small – a few hundred kilobytes or very large- up to gigabytes. The overall size obviously depends on what you want to hold in it but as a general rule, keep it as small as you can- certainly don’t make it very big “just in case”. Big files stick out like a sore thumb. Certainly avoid using file extensions that are easy to check. You might be tempted to hide a Truecrypt file in a folder full of large spreadsheets. But Excel would not be able to load your file and that might be a clue.

The Windows folder for instance is full of large files such as win32.fts, a 16 megabyte file that is part of the Windows XP help system. Do you know how to use an fts file? I certainly don’t. So creating a Truecrypt file with an fts extension in the Windows folder is one place to hide files.

Once a file has been prepared, it just needs mounting to make it usable. Select the file, choose the drive letter it will use and enter your password. One second later you’ll have a new drive show up in Windows Explorer. This drive can be reformatted, compressed and used just like a real disk. You can copy your files on to it or work directly on it- it’s as fast as a normal disk and just as safe. How do I know? I’ve used one for over a year and have never lost any data.

Certain countries have laws – the U.K. for instance, that can force you to reveal your passwords to authority if they demand it. If you don’t, you may go to jail. However Truecrypt can provide “plausible deniability”. You can store a secret volume within a Truecrypt volume using a second password. If the first password is used, only the files in the visible part are revealed and you can claim that you have complied with the law. Unless the secret volume takes up a large amount of space, like finding a hidden room in a house, it will be impossible to detect if a secret volume is present.

Using Truecrypt is of course no excuse to avoid the usual security processes like firewalls and anti-virus. Neglect those and you might end up with a key logger on your PC that would record everything you did including your passwords.

I’ve used Truecrypt to secure a large list of website usernames and passwords. It has proved to be extremely robust and reliable. If you’ve got personal data that must be kept private – Truecrypt is one of the best ways to do it. Just don’t forget your password!

Author: David Bolton
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Cellphone news

What is Google Chrome?

Google Chrome is the web browser released in September 2008 by the Google Team, which thrust Google into the already crowded Web Browser market. At the browser’s introduction, Internet Explorer held about 75% market share, Firefox was at around 15%, and Safari was at around 3-5%. The rest of the market was made up of smaller specialty browsers like Opera or Flock.

So What’s the Big Deal?

Well, Google had been fairly adamant in stating that they were not developing a web browser when it was initially rumored that they would enter the market. Industry insiders suggested Google would release a browser as the company had been slowly but surely venturing into new territory. Google had developed a webmail program with Gmail, a calendar web app, a document and spreadsheet app, an rss feeder, and plenty more. It was believed that it was only a matter of time before they developed a browser to house all of these web applications. In September 2008, 4 years after rumors initially began, Google entered the market.

Ok, Well What Makes it Different?

Chrome was developed with the intention of getting out of the user’s way. The development team had decided early on that the content that was being interacted with by the user should be the entire focus. This is reflected in the user interface of Chrome, which has a small “frame” size, and for the most part, lacks any shiny distracting functions.

In addition, the Chrome team developed the browser with speed in mind. The framework of the browser is based on the WebKit platform, which is also the basis of Apple’s Safari. WebKit is typically very fast and efficient, and served as a great starting point for development of Chrome. The altered WebKit framework specific to Chrome is called Chromium, which is an open source platform.Because of the complexity of some of the web applications on the Internet, the Chrome developers believed that it would be important that the browser could maintain stable whilst interpreting these applications. The team created a system which gave each tab its own process which could be killed if it became unresponsive, without effecting the other tab processes.The browser also offers Incognito, which is a private browsing feature. When Incognito is activated, no cookies, cache, or history is saved. After the Incognito browsing session is completed, there will be no record of that session saved. This is especially useful for public or shared computers.The browser also utilizes a JavaScript engine known as V8, which was developed from scratch by Google. V8 was designed to simplify JavaScript which is simultaneously becoming more prevalent and more complex in the web today.

Author: Samuel Crasnick
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Creditcard Currency Conversion Fee

Introduction
Google, the world’s premier Search Engine Company have announced the development of a new operating system labeled Google Chrome.

The company unveiled plans to develop the new system on the 7th of July. Google has now officially made clear their intentions of directly competing with Microsoft in the Operating System market.

Chrome is listed as being a Linux derivative and will be free to use. It will first be launched with netbooks, with a mid-2010 release schedule.

Manufacturers working with Google include:

Acer
Adobe
ASUS
Freescale
Hewlett-Packard
Lenovo
Qualcomm
Texas Instruments
Toshiba

The graphical design is based on the Google Chrome browser, launched 9 months ago, and is being developed as a lightweight operating system with the Internet as its primary priority.

Chrome is focused on consumers who place a lot of emphasis on using the Internet.

Security & Privacy
Google has claimed that the security built into Chrome will shift from the dependence upon Security updates, and that Chrome users won’t have to deal with virus and malware infections. They claim that it will just work!

Their bold claims however remain to be seen. It’s foreseeable that for the time being no computer system can be completely impervious to security problems.

Some individuals have also questioned their privacy and the protection of personal information by Google. We should bear in mind, however, that similar concerns have been raised about other companies that operate in this field.

A Brief History of Google
The Google Search Engine was started in 1996 as a research project by Larry Page, latterly joined by Sergey Brin. Together they devised an algorithm with which to rank websites according to relevancy in Internet searches.

In 2000, the advertising product AdWords was launched. AdWords enabled businesses to purchase keywords for small adverts which could be placed alongside search results.

2004 saw the birth of Google Earth, the result of an acquisition of Keyhole, Inc who pioneered the initial software.

In 2006 Google bought online video repository YouTube.

Since it’s small beginnings Google have continued to offer more services, like iGoogle, GMail, Google News, Talk!, Picasa, AdSense and many more products.

FAQ’s
Q. What is Google Chrome Browser?
A. Chrome Browser is Google’s answer to competing web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera.

Q. What is Linux?
A. Linux was developed to be a free alternative to the once widely used commercial UNIX operating system, and is now also competing with Microsoft. In 1991, Linus Torvalds began work on the Linux Kernel (The ‘brain’ of a computer’s control software).

Q. What are Netbooks?
A. A netbook is a low-cost type of laptop computer designed mainly for wireless communication and access to the Internet.

Conclusion
Expect to hear more news about the development of Chrome OS later this year, we’re waiting with anticipation to see what Google’s’ offering will bring.

Author: Richard P Harrison
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Latest trends in mobile phone

Chrome is the newest browser that is available for people to use on the Internet, and the ‘next big thing’ in terms of addons and applications will be Google Chrome extensions. When Chrome was first released, it was extremely fast and had many features which Internet users had been looking for for a long time. The browser market, however, is already dominated by two major organizations – Microsoft and its Internet Explorer software and Mozilla with Firefox.

How was Google going to position itself in this already slightly saturated market? They went for optimization of their code, making what is sometimes called slow (the browser) and making it lightning fast. They realized that the everyday user online cares only for retrieving information quickly, and that boot-up speed and flexibility was a big factor for people when surfing online.

The launch of Chrome was a huge fanfare, but after a few months they were having problems breaking through the 5% level in terms of overall users. So what was the reason that people were not trying and then sticking with Chrome? The answer was customization.

Internet Explorer’s major advantage over the competition in the browser marketplace was some decidedly shady tactics that Microsoft employed over the last twenty years in terms of supplying their own browser in new installs of its operating system, Windows. This practice has since been challenged in courts around the world, and MS has been forced to pay huge amounts of money in compensation to certain companies, and indeed probably caused the bankruptcy of many, many others.

The Internet generation grew up with Windows and Internet Explorer, and it became the de facto standard software for people who knew no better. It was a huge monopoly which looked as if it would continue unchecked in perpetuity. Then Firefox was born.

Firefox began as an open-source project to create a new, better, faster browser – to try to avoid the drawbacks of a monopoly caused by Microsoft. IE was by no means perfect, and was becoming slow and susceptible to attacks by virus writers and makers who targeted the dominant brand. Firefox was supported by a huge number of organizations and people, especially tech-savvy netizens who demanded more from their product. Google itself invested in the non-profit which was developing Firefox, as well as the once-defeated Netscape organization.

Firefox flourished, and its popularity has grown more and more over the last few years as even regular Internet users have realized that there is an option to using Internet Explorer at home and in the workplace. Communities of people began working on extending the functionality of Firefox ahead of IE, and these add-ons that were written became more widely distributed until they were seen as standard by the surfing population.

When Chrome was launched, people remembered how fast Firefox was when it was first released. Many thought that Chrome would become the new alternative to IE due to this speed, but they failed to realize that the reason it was so quick was because it had a standard installation with zero add-ons and extensions. This was not a good thing for Google.

The Chromium project (who are in charge of developing both the Chrome browser and new operating system) had to adapt, and so they decided to themselves allow extensions to their browser, so that independent developers could advance the functionality of the software and users could be able to use features which they were now used to in their browser.

The first few Google Chrome extensions that were shown off were developed by Google themselves, and include some very simple add-ons as well as a couple of more complex ones. The functionality of adding a site’s RSS to your reader is seen as standard to most people, but it was unavailable until the Chrome extension was released. They also released a ‘check Google mail’ plug-in which would tell you how many messages are in your inbox, and it gives one-click access to your inbox.

The best extension that was revealed early is Bubble Translate – which allowed ‘on the fly’ translation (using Google’s translate facility) of webpages. Obviously these are just the tip of the iceberg, and there will be huge numbers of add-ons, plug-ins and extensions for Google Chrome to come in the near future. We will then see how it fares against its two, well established rivals.

Author: Sammy Till
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Make PCB Assembly

Currently, IE (=Internet Explorer) is the most popular Internet browser. As such, malicious hackers made it their number one target and set out to exploit its flaws. It also has the disadvantage of relying on ActiveX technology, which allows web sites to run executable programs on your PC via your browser. Although there is an improvement in security in IE7 and IE8 compared to older versions, this technology is still vulnerable.

In order to improve security you may choose to use a less popular browser such as, Mozilla’s Firefox or Google Chrome.

Both Firefox and Chrome use a different technology from Internet explorer. They both built on open source code from other platforms. Chrome browser is based on the open-source Webkit engine, which is an open-source web browser layout engine developed by the WebKit Foundation. Firefox is based on the open source Gecko engine, which is a layout engine currently developed by Mozilla Corporation.

For now the most popular alternative to Internet explorer is Firefox. I have a lot of respect to Mozilla and the open source community, but when I have tried to use Firefox 3.5 I had a frustrating experience. It has kept crashing down on me, crashing my PC along with it.

As result of this experience I have decided to give Google Chrome a chance. Google Company has stated in many occasions that Chrome browser has innovative security features.

When investigating these announcements I have noticed four major security features in Google chrome.

1. Safe browsing software (it is also being used by Firefox browser) – Safe browsing features protect users against phishing and malware attacks. It uses a blacklist approach that gets downloaded to the user’s PC on a regular basis. How does it work? Well Google is constantly crawling the web, finding new and changed websites. During this crawling if they encounter a suspicious site that seems to be a phishing site (designed to steal personal information of unsuspecting users), it is being added to a list of suspected phishing websites. If a site contains hints to potentially malicious activity, Google tracks this site for a while and if a clear evidence of malicious activity is discovered, such as, computer viruses being downloaded and installed, it is being added to a list of suspected malware-infected websites.

   If you use Chrome browser and you have safe browsing mode enable, then Google Chrome will contact servers at Google, approximately every half hour, to download updated lists of suspected phishing and malware websites. These lists are being stored on your PC so when you surf the Web each site you browse to is being checked against these black lists locally (This is designed to offer performance). If the requested site is in the black list a warning message will appear stating that the requested site is suspected to be a phishing site or a malicious site and the user can choose to go back to safety.

   This feature seems to help the fight against malware and phishing, but there is a disadvantage. A few bloggers have raise questions about privacy implications. Bloggers have notice that every few hours when an update of the black lists is being done, two parameters are being sent to Google servers – “machineid” and “userid” – both computed information based on machine/user information. This information is sent along with a bunch of other browser information to ask Google if they should download an update. This information can be used for tracking. Google is of course obligated to privacy agreement with Internet users stating it will not use any of the personal information being collected, but would this obligation stand against a court order? I really don’t know. In short, safe browsing seems like a great security feature fighting phishing and malware attacks, but users who are passionate regarding their privacy should think twice before using it.

2. A privacy mode (Incognito) – this feature manages privacy settings and designed to suit users who use public computers, or otherwise wish to keep their browsing habits confidential. When enabled (Click the wrench menu -> Select New incognito window menu item) Chrome browser will not remember visited pages, form and search bar entries, passwords, download List entries, cookies and cached files.You can still create bookmarks, and these will be retained when exiting incognito window.

   A similar feature exists also in Internet Explorer 8 browser and Firefox 3.5 browser. These features probably make live easier for Internet users who want to keep their surfing habits to themselves, but in the same way it helps the adults in the group it also may allow children to surf unsupervised. Internet savvy kids can easily hide their Internet activities from their parents. So it is very important for parents to understand that monitoring of their children Internet activities by viewing the browser history on the child’s PC might not work.

3. Clear Browsing Data – There is a feature in Google chrome which allow the user to clear browsing data, such as, browsing history, downloads history, cache, cookies, saved passwords and saved form data (Click the Wrench menu -> select Clear browsing data -> Select the checkboxes for the types of information you wish to remove). This feature allows you to keep your browsing habits to yourself even if you are not using the Incognito window. Parents should be aware that similar to the Incognito mode their kids can use this feature to delete their browsing history so parents should not rely on browsing history as something that can help them get involved in their children Internet activities.
4. Sandbox security mechanism – This feature, as I see it, is the most significant one. A sandbox is a security mechanism used to run an application in a restricted environment. Browsers are dealing with malicious attacks on a regular basis. The most popular vectors for browser attacks are HTML Rendering and JavaScript execution. The sandbox security mechanism is designed to protect the user’s PC and files against these kinds of malicious attacks. If there is an attack that exploits the browser vulnerabilities and an arbitrary code is being executed on the machine, it will be executed in an isolated environment and the user’s PC will not be harmed. This security mechanism will also prevent access to the user’s files. The sandbox mechanism itself is not a new security model; It uses the security features of Windows extensively. You should be aware that since the sandbox mechanism relies on Windows to achieve its security, it is impossible for it to protect against a flaw in the OS security model itself.

In a nutshell, these four security features seem to be helpful and contributing to a safe Internet experience, but I am not seeing any innovative new security models here. Three of these features – Safe browsing software, privacy mode and Clear Browsing Data, already exist in IE8 and Firefox 3.5, and the sandbox security mechanism can be added to IE8 and Firefox by a plugin/addon.

I think the greatest advantage of Google Chrome is that currently it is not targeted as much by malicious individuals, as IE and Firefox are. Additional advantage is in the usability factor which seems to be in my opinion better than IE or Firefox, but I think this issue is a matter of taste…

For now, if you are looking for a less targeted browser, Google Chrome seems to be a good alternative.

Author: Sara Moses
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Benefits of electric pressure cooker

Installation and Usage:

1. You can download directly to the vendor’s website (link download will appear in the bottom of this article) and choose the Operating System you have used. I am using OS SUSE Linux 11.0. For speed installation, I choose RPM package file Linux i386.

2. After downloading these files, click testdisk-6.10-1.i386.rpm and type your password as a root user, you can wait while the installation is in process. To check the testdisk has been installed or not, just type ‘rpm -qa | grep testdisk‘ (without quote) in the console window. TestDisk-6.10-1 has been successfully installed.

3. Still in Console window, login as a root and type ‘su‘ (without quote) then type your root password, type ‘testdisk‘ (without quote). TestDisk 6.10 Data Recovery Utility will run. Press Enter.

4. Testdisk will detect your storage media/hard drive include my flashdisk Kingston DT Mini Slim. In this case I want to recover my files which have been deleted from my Flashdisk. Choose media using the Arrow keys on your keyboard, then press Enter.

5. Choose the partition type, I choose Intel.

6. Choose Analyse, then press Enter.

7. Choose Quick Search, then press Enter.

8. Type ‘Y‘ (without quote)

9. Press Enter.

10. Type ‘P‘ (without quote) to List/Preview Files

11. You can see, there are 2 different color text in the Console window, Red and White text, the red text is mean the deleted files (which will be restored soon) and the white text is mean the currently files. Type ‘h‘ (without quote) to hide the red text if you want.

12. Select the files you want to restore then press ‘c‘ (without quote) to copy it, and choose the destination of files you want to copy it to, using Arrow keys, then press ‘y‘ (without quote) to confirm the copy process.

13. To copy another files you can select the files and press ‘c‘ (without quote) again, this process is absolutely simple, it’s not difficult. 14. Well done, you have recovered/restored your deleted files.

Note: The usage of Testdisk is not limited for recovery deleted files only. According to the vendor’s website, you can use this tool to repairing harddisk which have bad sector, repairing hard disk which can not boot or bootable, etc. I hope in the next article I will try to explore the usage of this tool more deeper than before.

Author: Harun Abdurrazaq
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Bumper guardian

Many companies, especially the large ones, have their very own websites. Why do they have websites? That is because there are many advantages of having a website for a business. One advantage is that many people can browse your latest products and services easily. Consumers can also communicate with you faster if your website can provide contact information. You can give any information a customer would need from your company to help them decide to avail of the products and services that your company offers. A website truly is an important part of businesses these days.

So if you are planning to have a website, then the first thing that you should do is to look for a web hosting company. The web hosting company that you choose must be reliable. It must have an almost perfect uptime so that your website will be accessible anytime. You need to carefully search for a good web hosting company that can offer you the features that you need and can secure your data from hackers.

While you search for a hosting company, you might find some offering Windows Hosting and Linux Hosting. For many people, there really is not much of a difference between these two. While it is true that the performance and features that the two offer are almost the same, the question is the security. Many people are asking, “Is Linux web hosting secure?” As you probably already know, there are many malwares on the Windows Platform. Malware such as viruses, Trojan, worms and spyware threaten a system. A web server using Windows is open to these threats. A good Windows Hosting can protect their servers from this. What about Linux?

With so many people asking the question “is Linux web hosting secure?” many people have began to doubt Linux web hosting. The Linux platform is also open to different malwares, but there are only a few malwares that can harm Linux. Still, these malware can potentially harm a server hosting your website, which will lead to downtime. If you do not want this to happen, then you must know the answer to the question, “Is Linux web hosting secure?”

So when the developers of Linux was asked the same question, they answered by showing all the security features of Linux web hosting. What are these features? Here are some:

IP (Internet Protocol) Addresses – IP addresses of the visitors of the website are logged. This is used to identify the problems of the server and to prevent fraud.

Data Integrity – Linux ensures that the information on the websites of the customers remains accurate. Their hosting service can prevent unauthorized access, guarantee the correct use of information and preserve data accuracy.

Data Security – Linux also protects the information collected from their customers. They use industry-standard security measures like the SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and Encryption of vital information using Hosting VentureOS web sites.

Data Access – Linux also offers a 24/7 customer support. With it, customers can have access to identifiable information and correct errors regarding this information. Linux takes steps to identify the customer before giving access to the said information.

With all these features, you should now know the answer to the question, “Is Linux web hosting secure?” Looking at all these features, you can say that Linux can do an excellent job at not only providing you with an accessible website, but also one that is secured enough to protect information from leaking out as well as other cyber crimes that can threaten your business. So if you asked me the question, “Is Linux web hosting secure?”, then I shall answer it with a “Yes.”

Author: Mark Andrews S
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Credit card currency-exchange fees

I spoke about IDS (Intrusion Detection Systems) and IPS (Intrusion Prevention Systems) a few days ago in a question posted by a user. So I thought I would dive a little deeper into the subject with a specific application that I have personally used – Snort. Snort is a very powerful IDS that in later versions can act like an IPS. Snort is free to download and use in the personal environment as well as in the business environment. In fact Snort is used by many enterprises as a very effective option for their business because not only is it free, but it is one of the most powerful IDS’s out there if you know what you are doing when you configure it. Snort can be created as a program that you run when you want on a personal computer or it can be setup to run when your OS starts and protect all computers on your network from attacks.

If you want to use Snort to protect your entire network it will need to be placed in line with your Internet connection. So as an example lets say that you have a business Internet account with your local cable company and you want to protect it with a computer running Snort. The computer running Snort needs to be placed between the cable modem and the router, this way Snort is able to monitor every piece of traffic that comes into your network and is in the best place to discover possible attacks.

Installation:

We are going to be installing Snort on a computer running Ubuntu 9.04 which at the time of this article is the newest version of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is also a free OS that is available to download, making this IDS a totally free appliance for you, except the cost of the computer. There are two ways to install Snort onto a Ubuntu Distribution and the easiest is to do it through a command line. If your computer is up to date you can simply type:

sudo apt-get install snort

This will then download and install the newest version of snort on your computer through command line. As soon as it is done you will be ready to use snort. But if you run into an error or cannot install Snort through command line you can always go to the Snort website and download the newest version, but make sure that you are downloading the tar.gz file and follow their installation guide to completely setup Snort.

Once installed you can run snort as just a sniffer and have all packets captured and logged but that will create an enormous log file that you would then have to view. Snort works so well because of its use of rules to know which traffic to log and which traffic to ignore. Rules are going to be beyond the scope of this article but I plan on writing an article in the near future on creating rules for Snort.

How Snort runs depends on the flags that you specify when you launch Snort from command line.

Flag Function

-v View packet headers at the console.
-d View application data with IP headers.
-D Run Snort as a daemon.
-e Show data-link layer headers.
-l Run in packet logger mode.
-h Log information relative to the home network.
-b Log information to a single binary file in the logging directory.
-r Read packets contained in a log file.
N Disable packet logging.
-c Specifies which file will be used to provide a rule-set for intrusion detection.
-i Specifies which port you would like Snort to look at when running.

As you can see from above we have a few different options when it comes to flags used with Snort. Lets start with just viewing IP packet headers by using the command sudo snort -v. Be sure to use the sudo command before snort so that it runs in administrative mode, this is needed to open the appropriate port. Now since we did not specify a port for snort to look at it is going to use the eth0 port by default, well I am not using the eth0 port right now as I write this article I am using the wlan0 port which is my wireless card. We will need to us the -i flag to tell Snort to use my wireless card to check for traffic, sudo snort -v -i wlan0. Now Snort will run and display on the screen every packet header that comes across my wlan0 or wireless card, as you can see this is very useful if you want to monitor all traffic across your network but very impractical if you want to protect your network. To end the application once it has started you can simply hit CTRL+C to end the program and bring you back to a command prompt.

We have quickly discussed installing Snort and then running some basic Snort commands to get some output from the program onto our screen. Stay tuned for the next article on configuring Snort rules and running Snort as true IDS with alerting.

Author: Mike L Walton
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: PCB Prototype & Manufacturing

Firewalls are necessary for computers if we connect to internet. There are different kinds of methods how the firewalls work and check the incoming information. At the same time the firewalls let the outgoing ports open. It gives security for our computer and protects it from the system mistakes as well. For personal computers it can be enough and useful but for networks maybe not.

Linux uses iptables filter to give stronger protection and security. It’s a software in basic Linux packages. We can exactly determine that how we would like to check the incoming traffic with this program. We can define the criteria for each port, services and we can define our own strict rules for our incoming traffic.

For network level’s security there are several distributions for firewalls. IPCop is one of them. It’s only for security. We need a computer on which IPCop is running and there are some basic activities like framework, connection to network and routing. Linux distributions like SUSE or Fedora use to have graphical desktop, text editor and more software but on IPCop there are only these basic activities and the previously mentioned very important iptables. It’s our firewall between our network and the internet so we don’t work on it.

It needs a more complicated setup but it’s worth because it gives strong protection for our network.

www.infosecuritylab.com

In this article we examine some programming languages used to build dynamic websites that interact with databases. These server-based languages are a major step up from traditional web page development languages such as HTML which run on the client computers. The Open Source product is PHP (which stands for Hypertext Preprocessor). The Microsoft competitors are ASP (Active Server Pages) and ASP.NET (Active Server Pages in the Microsoft .NET environment.) ASP.NET is more expensive, more complicated, and more powerful than its sibling. For simplicity’s sake we refer to Microsoft’s offerings as ASP.

As you know PHP is free. ASP is also free but to run it you may need Microsoft’s IIS (Internet Information Server) which is not free. Uploading, downloading files, encrypting passwords, and sending emails from web pages will probably cost you much more money with ASP than with PHP. As discussed in our previous article (Reason 5 Linux, Apache, and MySQL) LAMP’s database management system is either free or quite inexpensive when used with massive databases. In contrast Microsoft’s SQL Server is pricey. I should let you know that my Internet Service Provider usually charges for MySQL accessibility. When available SQL Server access will you cost more. We have been through the monetary issues before. Let’s compare some other aspects of these two web programming languages.

Perhaps not surprisingly ASP resembles Microsoft’s popular Visual Basic programming language. PHP is based on the C++ programming language, a much more professional solution than Visual Basic. For technical reasons PHP programs tend to run faster than their ASP counterparts, even if the latter requires more powerful hardware. Because it is open source, PHP has access to a wider range of individuals who increase its functionality. PHP talks to a wide range of databases, but focuses on MySQL databases. In contrast ASP works best with SQL Server. While you can mix and match you are usually best off to combine components on the same side of the LAMP/Microsoft fence. After all, they were built to work together.

Despite Microsoft’s unbelievable clout, PHP is the most popular web programming language. Some reasons for its success are speed, increased security, and ease of programming. Once again in my opinion, whenever there is a real contest Microsoft comes up short. An ever-increasing number of computer specialists agree with me.

Maybe you are not interested in learning three or four products. (Who can blame you?) What you really would like to get the most out of an old computer that’s collecting dust in the basement. Here Linux really wallops Windows as seen in our next article.

Many people find that Damn Small Linux is an excellent tool for mastering Linux commands and running the Linux operating system. But what if you have no interest in becoming a computer nerd; can this software still be useful to regular people? The answer is a resounding yes. You can use this tiny operating system whether or not you want to learn the sometimes gruesome details of operating systems. This article presents several free games that are immediately available once you have downloaded and installed Damn Small Linux.
To access these games either click on the DSL button in the lower-left hand corner or on the Apps icon toward the top of the screen. Then open the Games: there are eleven; Canfield, Freecell, Golf, Mastermind, Minesweeper, Pegged, Slide_Puzzle, Solitaire, Taipei, Thornq, and Xtris and Taiedit which is not a game, but a game editor. This article looks at the first six games; a companion article examines the rest of them. As with any gaming systems, be careful not to get addicted.
Canfield is a relatively complicated single-deck solitaire card game. If you are not familiar with this game you’ll have to go to a source such as Google to find out how to play it. There is no help function. And sometimes the cards move fast, too fast to learn what is happening if you don’t know the game.
Freecell is a relatively complicated single-deck solitaire card game. I think that it’s easier to win than Canfield but maybe that’s because I am an ex-semi-Freecell-addict. It’s a lot easier to get addicted to the Window’s version of Freecell because it includes a seed number that lets you replay the same game. There is no such seed number in this version of Freecell.
In spite of its name, Golf is yet another card game one that is fairly well known. For more information about this game access http://www.delorie.com/store/ace/docs/golf.html.
Mastermind is a game in which you use a mouse to drag colors from the palette (on the left) to the empty cells in the guess row. When the four cells in the guess row are full, right-click on the right of the screen to see how you did. There will be one black peg for each cell that is the correct color, and one white for a color that is not in the correct sequence. Keep going and sooner or later you can figure out all the colors in the row. If that’s your thing.
Some people will remember Minesweeper from the days of Windows 3.1. The goal is to clear a field of mines by clicking on a square that has no mines and right-clicking on a mined square to deactivate it. The screen indicates how many mines are adjacent to a square that has been deactivated or clicked on. One false move and you lose. When you start the game you can choose from four levels by enter 1 (the easiest), 2, 3, or 4. I vaguely recall that Windows 3.1 gave me additional options, but still Damn Small Linux’s Minesweeper is a good time waster.
Pegged is a field of thirty penguins and thirty-one spaces. Initially one space is empty. A move consists of one Penguin jumping over another generating an additional empty space. You win if at the end of the game there is a single penguin. You really win if the solitary penguin is in the center square. Some would say that you really, really win if you close the Games menu and get back to work.

Damn Small Linux can be an excellent tool for learning Linux commands and running the Linux operating system. But what if you are not interested in becoming a computer nerd; can this software still be useful to regular people? The answer is a resounding yes; you can make use of this tiny operating system whether or not you want to learn the sometimes gruesome details of operating systems. This article presents several free games that are immediately available once you have downloaded and installed Damn Small Linux.
To access these games either click on the DSL button in the lower-left hand corner or on the Apps icon toward the top of the screen. Then open the Games: there are eleven; Canfield, Freecell, Golf, Mastermind, Minesweeper, Pegged, Slide_Puzzle, Solitaire, Taipei, Thornq, and Xtris and Taiedit which is not a game, but a game editor. We will look at the games in order starting with Slide_Puzzle. As with any gaming systems, you must be careful not to get addicted.
Do you remember a hand-held non-electronic game that contained fifteen movable tiles and sixteen squares? By moving the tiles correctly you could reconstitute a series of numbers. Slide_puzzle is similar but even more challenging. First you load an image, a graphics file such as a jpg file. I didn’t have one readily available so I opened Firefox went to google images and downloaded into the /home/dsl directory the first crayfish image that Google offered me. Then I loaded it into the game which chopped it into little pieces to be reassembled. Left-click on a tile to slide it into the adjacent empty space. Right-click to see the original image. If you are really good you won’t have to take a peek at the original image. It helps if you selected an image that’s easy to reconstitute. I don’t recommend crayfish.
Solitaire is the good-old Klondike solitaire card game. While testing it for this article I won twice in a row and even came close the third time. This is the solitaire that I fondly remember as a kid. Watch out, it’s moderately addictive.
Taipei is a very addictive game in which you try to remove pairs of corresponding tiles. Of course whenever one tile is covered by another tile you must first remove the covering tile. To find out if a tile may be removed right-click on it. If it changes colors it may be removed by clicking on its available partner. The partner tile is usually a copy (9 and 9, Heart and Heart) but any of the direction tiles may be paired with any other direction tile, and any color tile may be paired with any color tile.) The numbers in the lower left hand corner of the screen indicate how many tiles remain and how many tiles are presently removable. In one game I started with 144 and 12. By judiciously removing two tiles I went to 142 and 15. I lost that game, like I lose most of the time. If the rules sound a bit complicated, they are. But you can learn by playing. And you can always press the Backspace key to undo your latest tile removal. The last time I played I was blocked, pressed the Backspace key, and went on to win. Some would say beginner’s luck. The instructions claim that every game can be won. I don’t believe it.
Taiedit lets you modify the game of Taipei. Good luck, this application looks moderately sophisticated.
Thornq is yet another solitaire card game. For more information about this game access their website at www.delorie.com/store/ace/docs/thornq.html .
You may not believe me, but I won this game without knowing how to play it. Beginner’s luck. The point is that Damn Small Linux offers a wide variety of solitaire card games. The final game offered with the system is xtris, a version of Tetris, a game in which you arrange falling blocks. This version offers a few controls including the possibility of playing several games at once. One at a time is more than enough for me.

Linux is an alternative operating system for computers. It’s one of the most well-known example for free softwares and open source codes. It can be freely modified, used, and redistributed by anyone.

In the interest of the system’s security the most important and the available files are separated. Linux can be used by more users. This would make the computer more vulnerable but it doesn’t. The users don’t have access to the root’s applications so we can’t modify them accidentally. The viruses can’t access to the system settings because the configure files are in a /etc directory and all this together gives the stability of the Linux.

Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) is an extra security service. We can define in one configuration that who has access to which applications and server and network procedures. This makes our network more protected.

SELinux implements security policies with the use of Linux Security Modules. LSM is a framework that lets Linux kernel to support security models. It has a lot of features for example the interfaces are well-defined, the policy is very flexible and it support for policy changes. The controls over the file systems, directories, files, messages and network interfaces are strong.

SELinux has become available for simple users with in a package with Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 4 and all future releases as well. It can be installed not only with Red Hat but with Fedora, Hardened Gentoo and Yellow Dog as well.

www.infosecuritylab.com