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For almost everyone of us Adobe Reader is a package that is needed without any question, although other PDF readers are available. In fact, whenever the word PDF comes to mind, the first thingy that flashes is the read Adobe Icon for 9 out 10 people, I’m sure.

Last few months, Adobe Reader had gone through some serious exploits and I believe the new ‘Adobe Reader X’, is here to provide some guard from the unknown.

So how does it work?

A sandbox inbuilt for secure PDF reading especially when you don’t know the authenticity of the PDF that you’re reading. It prevents the malicious content, if present; not to do any harm since in the sandboxed environment, a secure area is created and it doesn’t interact with the core functionalities of the Adobe Reader. Now realize this, the sandbox is only as good as the provider of the sandbox – which is normally the operating system.

As per Adobe: Adobe explains, "Adobe Reader Protected Mode represents an exciting new advancement in mitigating the impact of attempted attacks. While sandboxing is not a security silver bullet, it provides a strong additional level of defense against attacks. Even if exploitable security vulnerabilities are found by an attacker, Adobe Reader Protected Mode will help prevent the attacker from writing files or installing malware on potential victims’ computers."

You’re getting it updated right? Get it Here [ 35 MB Download ]

Took the delivery of SX4 (ZXi, BS-IV) on 28th of October 2010 and already put 1000 KM on the ODO. It is indeed a good car and takes much on delivery. I still miss my WagonR though!

We’re at the top for all wrong reasons…. Still the top SPAM position to be acquired

According to a recent study of Internet threats by Network Box, India surpasses the US as the top most virus producer.

Globally, India alone is accountable for 13.74% of viruses, which was 9.5% in July, 2010. It is followed by Russia, which is at second place in August, 2010. Russia’s average rate of viruses on a daily basis increased from 4.01% in July, 2010, to a little bit above 11% in August, 2010.

As a virus producer, the US calculated for a rate over 8% of the entire detected by Network Box, which is considerably lesser than 14.65% in July, 2010. The UK virus levels also came down to 2.5% from 5% in July, 2010. Globally, the UK is now the seventh-largest producer of viruses, which was fourth in July, 2010.

The US retained its position as the world’s leader in generating spam, with a daily average of 12.2%. The other two positions were acquired by India ( second) with 7.69% and Brazil ( third) with 5.4%.

Network Box’s Internet Security Analyst, Simon Heron stated that, continuous change in such kind of data reflected the adaptability of cybercriminals, as reported by InfoSecurity on 31st Aug, 2010.

He also added that, the country sources of such kind of Internet threats moves every month, which reflected how fast the cybercriminals could shift their operations throughout the world and initiate attacks. Organizations are required to be alert and make sure that they are not attacked by hackers while using new applications and techniques.

It is also being reported by Network Box that the largest amount of firewall blocks stems from the US with 18.3% and Korea with 13%. While commenting on these findings, Simon Heron stated that it was amusing to see that UDP: 137 (NetBIOS’ name service) was the second most attacked port. It was absolutely necessary for the organizations to examine their firewall rules, as these data showed that there had to be some system available with this port open to the Internet, as reported by Malware Research Group on 31st August, 2010.

He also added that, web proxies were seemed to be worth checking as TCP: 8080 was third on the list, which showed that cybercriminals perceived this as another backdoor entry.

Source :: SPAMFighter

How often do you update the drivers for the computer/notebook? I did a Google search of this and found out 2 interesting things about it;

1. Users prefer not to update their drivers and the main reason is they are vary of issues that might happen once the new drivers are installed.

2. Users think of driver update the same way as Windows Update, in fact; I saw couple of forum comments mentioning about windows update can break system since M$ releases unstable stuff, so you have to wait.

Pretty much this seems to be the mindset for a lot of folks. Well, I’m a strong believer of update everything when an update is available. So I use for most purpose an aggregate updater service for my software/hardware.

I use Windows Update regularly.

I use 3rd party software upgrade aggregator like the one ‘filehippo.com’ provides. Also use the ‘Secunia PSI’ software – the use of this helps me in 2 ways. If there are instability in the programs, that is why the update is appearing in the first place (for example, take the adobe reader update to patch the vulnerability which was hot couple of weeks back. Secunia PSI helps identify outdated/old program files and helps us derive a score of the machine and helps finding out a download link for the updated software as well.

Now, when it comes to hardware drivers, I do the same thing. Had evaluated a lot of auto updaters/aggregators but seems most of them are paid versions (this is one area where there is not much choice), else it’d be requiring a lot of registration and uploading of your current drivers to that the database can be build (which I guess is good).

Recently I found out something good in this front too and from 2 days of evaluation, it looks like I’m going to keep it.

It is called SlimDrivers, tried it on both my home PC and laptop, it detected most of the drivers and above all, without any mistakes! My laptop is a standard Thinkpad T series and I have the nVidia Quadro NVS 140M. It is a pain to find an updated drivers for this from nVidia’s site itself, and filehippo.com updater makes mistake when it detects this too, after download – you may not be able to install it. However this time, with SlimDrivers; it was a breeze. It is still in beta and I hope they keep it free for ever. Try this out, it is cool.

They do have computer cleaner as well (pretty similar to CCleaner, looks almost the same).

The acquisition spree continues…. Now this looks a little strange at first glance but I’m sure if Intel is paying up $48 per share in cash there is something more aimed at it? Are we looking at an era where security is build on to the chips itself? Looks interesting…

News Highlights:

• Purchase of all of McAfee’s common stock for $48 per share in cash, valuing the deal at approximately $7.68 billion. McAfee will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary, reporting into Intel’s Software and Services Group.
• Acquisition enables a combination of security software and hardware from one company to ultimately better protect consumers, corporations and governments as billions of devices – and the server and cloud networks that manage them – go online.
• Intel elevates focus on security on par with energy-efficient performance and connectivity. The acquisition augments Intel’s mobile wireless strategy, helping to better assure customer and consumer security concerns as these billions of devices connect.
• Intel has made a number of software-related acquisitions of leaders in their respective industries that also rely on great silicon, including Wind River, Havok and now McAfee.

Press Release:- [ Here ]

Use a lot of Juniper equipments/configuration samples/guides etc? Some time back I had written a blog post on getting information on Juniper products which are relevant and with examples was to search it at http://kb.juniper.net

Read here {http://www.rsivanandan.com/2010/01/24/documentation-for-juniper-devices/}

There is a much better way if you use Firefox. There is a search plug-in that you could use to integrate it with Firefox and have the term/configuration you want directly from the browser.

Can’t wait to get it? Head straight to http://kb.juniper.net and below right hand corner, you can see ‘Install Search Plug-in’.

Install it and there you have it;

An example page that I searched was looking as below;

Have fun…

When I started off this site, this was rather a note to self kinda thing and over years I learnt that people actually do visit my site. So recently, very very recently I signed up for Google Analytics to see how much really is the traffic onto this blog.

Prior to that, I thrived to avoid adwords/analytics etc, just ‘coz it was of no interest to me; remember, this was a blog to self and was never intended to do business. So I decided to check how much traffic do I get;

The Google Analytics says that for about a month, I got a total of 1254 visits with an average of 1.44 pages/visit. A rough average over a period is 41 visits per day, looks like a small number? Well, it may be a very small number but for someone who never thought someone would even visit this page, this is a big number. Again, I’m not after ‘reaching 1000 visits a day’ target kind of mission here.

Minimum visitors during the whole period was – 16

Maximum visitors during the whole period was – 75

Again, Analytics did a map overlay of regions people are using this;

This tells me that, I have over 19% of people who’re directly coming over to this site, while majority is referral of Google and other search engines. Geography wise North America and a bit from India/Europe etc…

At this time, the biggest technology industry seems to be Mobile Phone industry with Android breaking iPhone revenues (still can’t believe, a whopping 886% growth for Android from 2009, man – now that is some number!). So I decided to make this blog mobile friendly for those who might be interested in browsing/reading stuff here from their handhelds. One plugin did all those possible, MobilePress, and of course wordpress is just great!; tried using with my Xperia X10 (runs Android 1.6) and it worked just great. Seems this plugin actually offers more to the iPhone users…

Folks, try it out and lemme know. I would be glad to hear!