Swathanthra Malayalm Computing

Note:- Malayalam is the mother tongue of Kerala (India). I don't know people other than keralites interested in it.

I will be a little verbose, if I am telling about my childhood and my mother tongue - Malayalam. It intrude in my words, however I try to hide that. Everything I first heared in Malayalam - stories, poems everything and of course, I first read the Holy Bible in Malayalam. Now what about Malayalm computing?? Now the Open source community offers "Swathanthra Malayalam Computing" for Linux Systems. Just see the Ubuntu malayalam desktop below(this picture is not captured by me. Thanks to http://arunmvishnu.com/).Visit official website of SMC.
You can turn your desktop into full fledged Malyalam desktop if you follow the instructions in the official page. I am not intended to copy the same instructions in the official page.But the following links will be useful:

• If you can't read anything from SMC, your browser probably haven't the malayalam font installed. I purposefully doesn't added any malayalam words in this post in order to clearly read those who haven't their firefox installed with malayalam plug in. Today onwards, you can easily read any malayalm websites on your firefox. Here is the solution.
• Mozhi:You can write malyalam articles of your own using Varamozhi. I personally felt a little difficulty in writing malayalam in Mozhi compared to blogger. But Mozhi offers a unique english character bunch to represent a malayalam letter.
• A guide for malayalam in computer.
• Download Debian Lenny in malayalam.
• Have a look at Wikipedia in malayalam.
  

Some malayalm blogs:
http://berlytharangal.com/
http://karinkallu.blogspot.com/
http://workersforum.blogspot.com/
http://vellezhuthth.blogspot.com/
http://rajvengara.blogspot.com/
http://marjaaran.blogspot.com/
This is a small list and you can see several hundreds  of Malayalam blogs by searching with a keyword something like 'malayalam blogs list' or in this link.

Here comes Octave Online

Before going to read more check whether you know about Octave.

From the inspiration of my last post about the online Python, I searched internet for the online octave. Luckily, it was a success. All scripting languages or tools are feasible to convert to its online version, even though it doesn't exist for the most. Come back to Octave online. I don't know whether it can be called as octave online, but they calls it Math calculator which supports octave. I was successful in executing simple matrix calculations in the Octave online. Anyway, it is the time to dive into Octave online. You just need to click here.
The parent website http://www.online-utility.org/ offers other free online utilities. Search and explore more.

Online Python

My friends always complaint that they don't have an environment for learning python. They have internet connectivity in the college, but not having the permission to install python interpreter on those machines. So they satisfied by just reading the tutorial only and not by doing python. But here is the solution. Online Python Interpreter is an online python terminal and you can enter python commands as like in your shell. The virtual browser shell is a little bit slower and and again slower for slower internet connections. The speed is entirely depend upon your internet connection and no way to increase because entire python engine is on the server side. But I am sure it will be a boon for the beginners and net-book users. Current limitations are:

• Can't define functions or classes.
• Can't run a script
  

Click to enter online python interpreter
Click to view the ubuntu forum discussion about online python interpreter

Let's make our hands dirty with PIC

This is my first cook book on beginner level PIC programing. This book is useful for the very beginners who don't know how to develop in PIC programming. I included a screen cast video to learn the entire tutorial within minutes. The book format is available in both pdf and doc format. Of course, everything is free and distributed under Creative Common's License. All codes under GPL. I am thankful if you suggest any improvement and point out any errors. Nothing more to say.

Download Introduction to PIC Micro (9MB)

View the tutorial video: (It is included in the download package)

How to hack passwords in windows XP?

Warning!
Things here explained can be used in extremely nasty things. They are not recommended by Opentechlab. Use everything in your own risk. Also Opentechlab suggest some tips to avoid password hacking.

Here I am going to say something cumbersome to somebody. Here is a guide to hack the login passwords in windows XP. Also given how to avoid such hacking and keep your PC maximum protected from crackers. Opentechlab does not crack, it will hack only!

Password hacking using Backtrack
You first download the following file

Backtrack 3 Final (BT4 is also available, but I suggest BT3)

BT3 is an opensource Linux OS. BT3 consists of just a slax and the hacking and network security software. Since Slax uses lzm module mechanism, it is easy to install and remove the modules we need to. You ca download it as a bootable iso image or as USB pen drive installation file. I downloaded iso and write it to a CD and everything going perfect. Once you installed BT3, you just need to boot up from CD-ROM. Within minutes, linux kernel loads and backtrack desktop appears. Now you need to do the following things:

bkhive /mnt/hda1/WINDOWS/system32/config/SYSTEM key

(result is the boot key)

samdump2 /mnt/hda1/WINDOWS/system32/config/SAM key
samdump2 /mnt/hda1/WINDOWS/system32/config/SAM key >~/Desktop/password.txt
john ~/Desktop/password.txt -users=Administrator

now the hashed password will be showing below

Here, it is assumed that hda1 is C: drive (where MS windows XP is intalled). If not, that should be repaced with the actual one. The password.txt is file which contain passwords of all users, but they are no readable, they are hashed. To remove hash, you need to call a program called john.
john ~/Desktop/password.txt -users=Administrator
only gives the password of Administrator. If you want to know the password of another user, type:
john ~/Desktop/password.txt -users=username
You can simply do this:
john ~/Desktop/password.txt
to get passwords of all users, but it is time consuming. Knowing what you want is ponentially advantageus than knowing everything. And it will not eat much of your time. Somethimes if the password to be hacked is much complex, you get a leisure time to drink a cup of coffee!

How to use rainbow tables in backtrack?
You can use rainbow tables while hacking passwords. You can download lot of rainbow tables from freerainbowtables. I think downloading all rainbow tables in your hard disk is frustrainting (more than 1000GB!). Download some simple tables to experiment with. To use rainbow tables, BT3 provides a program called 'rainbowcrack'. It can be accessed from:

Main menu -> Backtrack -> privilege escalation ->All -> Rainbow crack

But rainbow crack only supports tables of type *.rt. But rainbow tables with type *.rti is abundant over internet to free download. Solution is to download *.rti tables and conver it to *.rt using rti2rto.exe. Here you are able to use rainbow crack instead of john. All other steps are same.

Using Ophcrack
Ophcrack is also opensource and is also useful. I personally didn't tried that, however many of my friends work successfully with that.

Download Ophcrack
You need to download rainbow tables also.
Read more about rainbow tables

How to prevent password hacking?
Here again, prevention is better than cure. If you care about how much your data secure to be, you should keep your passwords be secure first. First of all, you do not store your passwords anywhere other than your brain. Every time you enter your passwords at login, is boring, but you should aware of the consequences. I said it generally, but here this is not possible. Use more than 10 characters for your password. For each addition of a new character, you can see that how much extra time BT3 takes to find out the password. Add symbolic characters and numbers. Finding a password with symbolic characters and numbers are very frustrating, and a cracker work hard for hours on such computer until he get a message 'Failed to find password'. Don't enter a password with meaningful words. If your password is a sentence such as 'Mary had a little lamb' and others password is 'asdfiuerh', then it is very easy to find out the former even though it is lengthy in character. Use different passwords for diffenrnt internet accounts. If you feel difficulty to memorise all passwords, you requre a good password manager (I recommend Keepass). Change your passwords periodically. It will save you a lot. If you have a top secret information, and is not to be revealed to the world for any reason, I have a good idea but is not guaranteed. Just copy the thing to any portable device and put it in a Bank locker and through your computer to fire and keep watching until it get into ashes.

PYRO : Python in hand with Robotics

Python developers all over the world are searching for fields that are not involved python. I recently found a good job by them - a boon for robotics enthusiasts - that is Python Robotics or simply Pyro.

Go to pyro project page

Download Pyro live CD

Many built-in python scripts are there to define the robotic brain and paths. Of course, you can write your own scripts. Anyway, pyro is a wonderful experience.

I encountered a problem while booting from pyro live CD. It seems to be mother board and chipset specific. My problem was, no x start up. It hangs up when displays "Probing/Loading AGP Modules...". I used several knoppix cheat codes to enter into kde desktop. It was successful. Thanks to knoppix developers forum. The boot time cheat code i entered is:

knoppix noagp

If you encounter any such problem, try to search for knoppix boot problems and not for pyro boot problems.