Spying the Internet: How the “Big 5” Do It!

By now it is well-known that spying the world’s servers for vulnerabilities and remote control as well as communication snooping is rampant and performed by major government intelligence agencies like NSA, GHCQ, etc. The big 5 – an alliance between U.S., Canada, U.K., New Zealand and Australia, performs it primarily. It is indeed a fascinating story as to how they do it and with what ease it is done, which by the way is shocking. Without wasting anymore time, let us dive deep in the process which can be murky and all the reasons for the why and how.

The “Five Eyes”

The "Five Eyes", often abbreviated as "FVEY", refer to an alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. and are bound by the multilateral UKUSA Agreement – which signifies a joint cooperation in signals intelligence. It all started after World War II when the allies formed ECHELON – a surveillance system developed by the FVEY to monitor Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc in general during the cold war. Since that, it has increased in size and forms a supra-national system that does not abide by the laws of their countries as well as share surveillance data of their people and businesses among themselves which otherwise is banned.

Enter “Hacienda”

Many dream of systems that would scan the entire internet for vulnerabilities and exploit them – well such things are now possible. Hacienda is port scanning software that scans ports of all online servers for vulnerabilities and its primary goal being to exploit these to gain remote access and control. It was first uncovered in 2009 by HeiseOnline, which got hold of presentations about the software. Port scanning takes place via 3-way handshaking mechanisms of TCP/IP protocol stack and is quite convenient. It is now estimated that the software is powerful enough to scan the entire IPv4 address space within a few hours running on a single PC. Based on leaked evidences, it has been used to port scan on 27 countries whose actual identities could be revealed. Also, their port snooping involves all network protocols which are secured like HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SSH and SNMP.

0-Day Attacks

An often used word, it implies attacking a system via an identified vulnerability before the security experts find out about it. Thus, one is basically defenseless as it happens. NSA relies heavily on such tactics and firewalls are useless in such cases as in mort probability, NSA has already infiltrated the local network.

With such information about wide-spread spying, port snooping and 0-day attacks, the revelations tell us about how vulnerable our networks are. Most of the surveillance is justified by “increased threats of terrorism on nations”; however, theydo not respect privacy and national laws. While the security principles are well understood, it is the poor implementation, an age-old IPv4 with security “bolted-on” rather inbuilt and vulnerable servers that lead to such surveillance apart from massive investment in resources for the task. It is indeed an eye-opener for most!

Benefits of Electrically Started Turbine Engines

A lithium twin pack like those at Start Pac has to be very powerful to help a turbine engine to function. These have a four hour charge time and do the work that is usually done by gas. In order to understand the power of these electrical charge packs, it is important to understand the nature of turbine engines.

People most often associate the engines with those seen on large airplanes or commercial jets. These have turbofans and use gas to power planes. Other turbine engines have used steam, water and wind for power. In the case of gas turbines, the gas is pressurized enough to make the engine spin. The engine is designed to pressurize the gas on its own by burning kerosene, propane, natural gas or jet fuel. The high speed of the air that occurs during this burning process makes the air expand and churn the turbine.

The three major parts of the engine have specific functions that help this whole process along. The compressor squeezes the air that is coming in and transforms it to a high pressure state. The combustion area does the same thing for fuel, turning it into high pressure gas. The turbine uses the pressure from both of the other chambers and turns it into energy.

Although gas turbines are very compact and effective for the jobs that they have to perform, they can be quite expensive. They create quick wear and tear on engine materials, which already have to be made to withstand high temperatures, speeds and wear from gas. This makes it expensive for manufacturing companies to keep the right materials on hand to safely design new models. There is an additional expense with hiring the right engineers who have enough knowledge to create these models. Their expertise often comes at a high-end price.

One of the other things that makes gas turbines more expensive is that while they are in operation, it is not possible for them to use intermittent of fluctuating fuel loads. The amount of fuel going into the engine must be constant, which means that it takes an enormous amount of it to keep a turbine functional.

In engines that are not used for mass purposes, it makes more sense to use electricity for operation purposes. It is just simpler and a lot cheaper. This is why the lithium twin pack battery has gained so much popularity in smaller applications. It is also the best choice for the average consumer, unless he is prepared to fly a plane.

How to Resolve Bluestacks Graphics Driver Issues

Bluestacks is an amazing software that allows to run android games and apps on computers. Playing android games on big computer screen is so much fun and only gamers addict will understand this. But the system requirement is very high for Bluestacks. It needs a good and updated graphic card along with 2 GB RAM. And if these requirements are fulfilled then android apps and games will run smoothly but many people face problem in installing Bluestacks due to some errors.

The main error that is observed in most of the system is: “Bluestacks graphic card error 25000” or there may be some more but this is the common error faced. The message displayed in this error is something like this: “ Error 25000: Bluestacks currently doesn’t recognize your graphic card. There is a possibility that your graphics drivers may need to be updated. Please update them and try to reinstall. ”

So today in this post we will see how to resolve Bluestacks graphics driver error. We will first see what are the main reasons that lead to graphics driver error and then we will discuss some amazing tricks which you can use to successfully install Bluestacks in your PC.

What are the reasons for Bluestacks Graphic Card Error?
 
Since Bluestacks is very heavy software it will require a highly configured and updated system. So main reason for Bluestacks graphic card error is:

The two graphics cards in the system are Direct3D of Microsoft which is proprietary software and OpenGL which is used to run the android applications. So if you are not updating the windows operating system regularly then OpenGL will not be updated as frequently and regularly as Direct3D. So when we install and run the Bluestacks then it shows the error 25000. So not updating the system is one of the main reasons for this issue so we need to fix it.

How to resolve Bluestacks graphics driver error?
 
So now we are familiar with the reason for the graphics driver error so now let’s see some useful tricks that will help us to fix this error:

1. The first thing that you can try is to update your graphic card driver because this will not only help you to run the Bluestacks smoothly but also it will allow you to enjoy the latest and advanced software and games. It will be good to enable java in your web browser before updating them. The entire graphics card whether it is Intel chipset or AMD or nVIDIA can be updated easily. You can Google it and learn how to update them.

2. Also update your DirectX. May be this can also help you because in most cases it has worked successfully.

3. Since graphic card requires high power energy that is not enabled by laptop batteries so android applications may not run smoothly on PC. So always try to give a live power supply to the PC while running android apps or games. You can test it and feel the difference.

4. If these tips are not working then simply download the older version of Bluestacks and that old version will easily support your outdated system. But this will not support advanced games like temple run but it will successfully run some basic android applications like WhatsApp.

5. There are some software which will help you to bypass the graphics driver error 25000. Orca is one of them. You can learn about this more in Google.

So these are some useful tips that will help you to resolve the Bluestacks graphics driver error and even I would like to suggest you to update the graphic card driver and if you have very old then replace it because it will not only help to install Bluestacks successfully but it will also help you to run other advanced software in your system.

So always be updated with technology. In later posts we will also come with some more amazing tricks so stay connected.

Internet Traffic Disruptions Imminent As Routing Tables Approach Limit

Short Disruption in Internet Traffic Routing

Short disruptions in Internet traffic routing occurred recently which has been attributed to a short surge of registered IPv4 network routes that have made the total number more than the capacity of the old though popular used routers which form the backbone of the internet.Internet users all over experienced major problems on websites which was the result of flood of updates to databases within the internet routers.

This resulted in problems with connectivity issue for companies and many are of the opinion that the modification and the reboot of routers would probably head towards a decline in internet outages in the near future. Experts are of the opinion that this problem could be solved but are speculating that it could only be a precursor to widespread disruption which may come up later on.

 Some of the older kinds that are still operating, like the massive scale data centre Internet router, have hard coded limit to the Ternary Content Addressable Memory – TCAM, which are placed for storing records of internet routes that are broadcasted by various types of servers from time to time which in turn are used to send data like Web sites requests from one part of the world to the other end.

Getaways/Routers Mark Entry/Exit Points

Thousands of getaways which are routers mark the entry and exit points, between the internet service providers’ network and the large backbones which send data packets across the world and are governed as well as synchronised by the Border Gateway Protocol – BGP. The most practical limitation of storable routes is 524288 or 2 raised to the power of 19 in binary or 512,000 which crossed its limitation on Tuesday resulting in congestion as well as blockage of routes. BGP ended in being unable to identify routes which were the cause in the packet loss.

It is essential to have frequent updates to routers in order to explain how networks should operates since internet traffic is designed to move in the most systematic manner, with 512 ports to table data on the internet. Moreover, the frequency of updates to routers is derived from the fact that some of the routers have the potential of accommodating around 512,000 updates in memory excluding any further tweaks. With some of the routers reaching their limits, it seems that the internet has been reaching its full capacity, resulting in a few networks going offline.

Fix Router Memory Allocation Issue

The number of routes has been increasing and stakeholders are gearing to fix the router memory allocation issue but are unprepared for the sudden surge in route records. This issue has been given to BGPMon to rectify the error in Verizon’s system which has been fixed and traffic has now returned to normal.

In May however, Cisco had provided information on how to re-allocate TCAM on Catalyst 6500 as well as 7600 to 1,000,000 and this fix was comparatively simple to apply though it would need each router to be taken offline momentarily. Increasing the capacity should enhance the problem for a longer period of time and is not a permanent fix. As per packet fix.net, the milestone of 300,000 routes, indicting a rapid increase in growth was passed in August 2009.

Intel Inside Your Headphones

Intel is the best company known for developing high class processors and certain electronic chips that are used in 90% of laptops and other electronic gadgets. Intel has always tried to develop something different. The i-core processors are the best examples. So Intel has always created interesting stuffs and now it is developing the ear buds that are used in the earphones or headsets. So these ear buds are not same as before but it’s really different as it will detect the user’s heart rates. This news was announced on Friday that Intel is collaborating with rapper Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson's SMS Audio to create and develop this amazing smart ear bud that will take care of user’s health by detecting his heart rates.

The SMS Audio BioSport In-Ear Headphones will be having an earhook and this earhook will be driven or powered by the user's phone that is smart phone. The best part about this is that it will not only be water-resistantbut alsosweat-resistant. These smart ear buds will be offered by SMS Audio in Q4. The rate is not yet announced but is expected very soon.

Bill Calder who is one the representative of Intel says that it is really a unique product as compared to other earphones in the market and no batter is required to run it and that’s the biggest punch.

These BioSport earphones will be well-suited and compatible with the fitness application Run keeper for not only android smart phones but also for iPhones. And in future it will also support some other applicatons related to health and fitness. And these ear designed in such a way that it will work with any kind of smart android phones available. It is wired instead of Bluetooth because wired ear bud will not require any kind of power source for its charging.

The earbuds will have infrared optical sensors that will display the pulsing of the skin inside the user's ear. It was designed and developed in this way because it is static inside the ear so additional motion sensors are not at all required. The earbuds also have an accelerometer which will track user’s motion and that corrects for gestures and motions like for example users shaking their heads.

The data will be captured by these earbuds of the headphones and this data will be communicated to user’s smart phone that will show the analysis and processing of motions.

The final decisions have been taken regarding the product design and let’s hope that it will be in the market soon. So this is basically related to the health and people who are really serious about their health analysis then it’s a must buy for them. It’s just the beginning for Intel and they said that they can do much more with their technology and related procurements.

Gartner's Blausays that it looks like a fun device but at the same time it is also very useful product for health conscious people. He also said that the success of this product is based on branding, budgets and how well it works.

So overall Intel is really going to give the world an amazing and technology driven product that will change the lifestyle of people. So let’s hope that it will be launched soon in the market.