Open Source For You - August 2013.pdf

Quadratic

Quadrati c Equation Solver for OSFY Magazine
h3>

Solves equations of the form 27 ax² + bx + c = 0

` 28

form

= `

">

}

68 func formatQuestion(for formatQuestion(form m map[string][]string) map[string][]string) string { 69

result := formatSignA formatSignAndNumber("" ndNumber("", , form["a"][0] form["a"][0], ,

"x²") 70

result += formatSignA formatSignAndNumber(" ndNumber(" ", form["b"][0 form["b"][0], ],

"x")

AUGUST 2013 |

41

Developers 71

Let's Try

result += formatSignA formatSignAndNumber(" ndNumber(" ", form["c"][0] form["c"][0], ,

  119 1 19

"")

120 72

return result

122

74

123

if number == "" || number == "0" || number ==

if slice[0] != "" {

125

if x, err := strconv.

ParseFloat(slice[0], ParseFloat( slice[0], 64);

77

return ""

78

}

79

var sign string

80

if signPad != "" {

81

126

err != nil {

127

return oats, "'" + slice[0] + "'

is invalid", false 128

sign = signPad + "+" + signPad

} else {

129

oats[index] oats[index ] = x

82

}

130

}

83

if number[0] == '-' {

131

} else {

84

sign = signPad + "-" + signPad

85

number = number[1:]

132

// The program treats

blanks as 0

86

}

133

request.Form[key][0] request.Form [key][0] = "0"

87

if sufx != "" && number == "1" {

134

oats[index] oats[index ] = 0

88

return sign + sufx

135

} count++

89

}

136

90

return sign + number + sufx

137

}

91 }

138

}

92

139

if count != 3 { // the rst time the form is

93

func EqualFloat(x, y, limit oat64) bool {

94  

if limit <= 0.0 {

95

empty;  

limit = math.Smalles math.SmallestNonzeroFloa tNonzeroFloat64 t64

140 }

if EqualFloat( EqualFloat(oats[0], oats[0], 0, -1) {

}

142

97

return math.Abs(x-y math.Abs(x-y) ) <=

143

(limit * math.Min(mat math.Min(math.Abs(x), h.Abs(x), math.Abs(y)) math.Abs(y))) )

  100 101 func solve(oats solve(oats [3]oat64) [3]oat64) (oat64, (oat64, oat64) oat64) { a, b, c := oats[0], oats[1], oats[2]

144

}

145

return oats, "", true

146 }   147

  103 104

return oats, "The factor of x² cannot not be

0", false

99 }

102

return oats, "", false

141

96 98

148 func formatSolutions( formatSolutions(x1, x1, x2 oat64) oat64) string string { if (b * b) - (4 * a * c) < 0 {

105

// Make x1, x2 complex numbers so

that

149

exactlyOneSolution exactlyOneS olution := false

150

if math.IsNaN(x math.IsNaN(x1) 1) && math.IsNaN( math.IsNaN(x2) x2) {

151

106

// math.IsNaN( math.IsNaN() ) is true ("not a oat

number")

return noSolution

152

}

153

if math.IsNaN(x math.IsNaN(x1) 1) {

107

x1 := math.Sqrt(math.Sqrt(-1) 1)

154

exactlyOneSolution exactlyOneS olution = true

108

x2 := math.Sqrt(math.Sqrt(-1) 1)

155

x1 = x2

109

return x1, x2

156

} else if math.IsNaN(x math.IsNaN(x2) 2) || EqualFloat(x1 EqualFloat(x1, , x2,

110

} else {

-1) {

111

root := math.Sqrt( (b * b) - (4 * a * c))

157

112

x1 := (-b + root) / (2 * a)

158

}

113

x2 := (-b - root) / (2 * a)

159

if exactlyOneSo exactlyOneSolution lution {

114

return x1, x2

160

115

}

  117 118 func processRequest(r processRequest(request equest *http.Request) *http.Request) ([3] oat64, string, bool) {

| AUGUST 2013

exactlyOneSolution exactlyOneS olution = true

return fmt.Sprintf( fmt.Sprintf(oneSolution oneSolution, ,

formatSolution(x1))

116 }

42

if slice, found := request.For request.Form[key]; m[key]; found

124

"0.0" {

 

for index, key := range []string{"a", "b", "c"} {

&& len(slice) > 0 {

string) string { 76

count := 0

  121

73 } 75 func formatSignAndNum formatSignAndNumber(signPad, ber(signPad, number, sufx sufx

var oats [3]oat64

 

161

}

162 162

return fmt.Sprintf( fmt.Sprintf(twoSolution twoSolutions, s,

formatSolution(x1), formatSolution(x2)) 163 }

Let's Try   164

 

if EqualFloat(x EqualFloat(x, , 0, -1) {

167

return fmt.Sprintf( fmt.Sprintf("%.*f", "%.*f", decimals, x)

168

}

169

return fmt.Sprintf( fmt.Sprintf("%.*f", "%.*f", decimals, x)

170 }

The compilation process is simply as follows: $ go build quad.go

The generated executable file must be running (using ./quad) ./quad ) before trying to access the http://localhost:8080 URL with your browser. The 8080 port is hard coded inside the Go code (line 44). Figure 1 shows two screens of the quad application. The line-numbers are added in order to better refer to the Go code and need not be typed. I am now going to explain the code, line by line: Line 1-9: Comments about the Go program. Line 15: The net/http package net/http  package uses the net package to add functionality for parsing HTTP requests and replies. It also provides a basic HTTP client as well as a basic HTTP server. Line 16: The log The log package  package offers logging functions. Line 17: The math package math package contains many math-related constants and functions. Line 18: The strconv package strconv package contains many functions for converting strings into other types and other types into strings. The quad program uses the strconv.ParseFloat() the strconv.ParseFloat() function that converts a string to a oating-point number. Line 21: At line 21, the denition of some string constants begins. Most of them are used for the HTML output. The decimal constant (Line 22) is used to dene the number of digits after decimal points. Line 43: The http.HandleFunc function http.HandleFunc function takes two arguments, a path a path and  and a reference to a function (solveQuad) solveQuad) that will be called when the path is requested. You can register as many pairs as you want. Line 44: The port number 8080 is dened in this line using the http.ListenAndServe() function. http.ListenAndServe() function. The http.  ListenAndServe() function  ListenAndServe() function also starts the Web server. Line 45: If there is an error starting the Web server, an error message is displayed on the screen and the program exits. You will see an error example near the end of this article. Line 49: This line denes the solveQuad() function solveQuad() function that does most of the job, as it is called whenever the website is visited. The writer argument is where the HTML response is written and the request argument holds the details of the HTTP request. Line 52: The fmt.Fprint() function fmt.Fprint() function writes its arguments to the writer using writer using format %v format %v and  and space-separated nonstrings, and returns the number of bytes written and an error or error or nil. nil.  

Line 54: The fmt.Fprintf() function fmt.Fprintf() function writes its arguments to the writer using writer using the format  string.  string. It returns the number of bytes written, and an error or error or nil. nil. Line 93: The EqualFloat() The  EqualFloat() function  function compares two foat64 variables using the given accuracy. If a negative number is given as the accuracy level, the greatest possible accuracy will be tried. The function relies on both functions and constants from the math library math library package. Line 101: The solve() The solve() function  function nds the two solutions of the quadratic equation if they are real numbers. Line 102: a, b and b and c are read here so that the discriminant can be calculated. Line 104: If the value of the discriminant is less than 0, then the solutions are complex numbers, a scenario that is not supported by the quad program. quad program. Line 118: The processReq The processRequest() uest() function  function reads the data in the Web form from the request variable. variable. In case of an erroneous value, an error message is returned. Line 148: The formatSolutions() function takes two arguments and returns a string. It checks the number of discrete solutions and formats the solution or the solutions using the formatSolution() function. formatSolution() function. Line 165: The formatSolution() function formatSolution() function formats a single value. If the selected port is already in use, the error message you will get will be similar to the following: 

165 func formatSolution formatSolution(x (x oat64) oat64) string string { 166

Developers















 

2013/05/31 00:34:13 Exiting: Cannot start server: listen tcp :8080: address already in use



I nd it very impressive that you can write such an application in Go that also includes a Web interface, interface, with just 170 lines of code, including the comments!













Summary Go is a language that gets your work done. The easiest and quickest way to learn it is by programming and experimenting. This article is just the beginning of your journey to Go. Until our next article, keep programming!  Web links links and bibliography  [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Go: http://golan http://golang.org g.org Go documentation documentation:: http://golang. http://golang.org/doc/  org/doc/  Go blog: http: blog: http://bl //blog.g og.golan olang.org g.org Go on Twitter:  Twitter:  https://twitter.com/go_nuts Google App Engine: https://deve https://developers.google.co lopers.google.com/appengine m/appengine/  /  The Way To Go: A Thorough Introduction Introduct ion To To The Go Programming Language, Ivo Balbaert, iUniverse, ISBN: 1469769166, March 2012. [7]  Y  You ou can can find find the the source source code at at http:  http://ww //www w.linu .linuxforu xforu.com .com/  /   article_s  artic le_sourc ource_co e_code/A de/Aug13 ug13/go_ /go_lang language uage.zip. .zip.

By: Mihalis Tsoukalos  The author enjoys UNIX administration, programming programming iOS devices and photography. photography. You can reach him at [email protected] or @mactsouk.

AUGUST 2013 |

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Exploring Software

Anil Set h

Guest Column

Extend Wireless Router Capabilities Using a Netbook or Laptop There are now a range of devices that are Wi-Fi enabled. So for situations where a wireless router is required, the additional functionality of NetworkManager 0.98 is a great convenience.

F

edora 18 includes NetworkManager 0.98 and most new distributions will now have it. In addition to the  Infrastructure and Ad-hoc and Ad-hoc modes,  modes, NetworkManager now supports the Access the Access Point  (AP)  (AP) mode. Currently, the nm-applet does not offer a way to congure an access point. GNOME 3 includes the option to create a hotspot by just clicking a button. It uses WEP encryption and assigns a password to the network. KDE network management offers greater exibility in conguring an access point. In case you are using a lightweight distribution, you can congure an access point by creating a hotspot le in  /etc/   NetworkManager/system-connections  NetworkManager/system-co nnections.. You may then start it manually. You can route the trafc from the hotspot to the Ethernet interface. The limitation is that not all drivers support this mode. For instance, brcmsmac, brcmsmac, which is used by my Lenovo netbook, does not support it, though ath5k , which is used by EEEPC 701, does. This brings up an interesting option. Can you use an old system like an EEEPC 701 easily as a 'proper' router, and what exibility would it offer? The answer, of course, is ‘yes’. You may download and use generic x86 distributions like the OpenWRT distribution in snapshots/trunk/x86/ from  from  http://downloads.openwrt.org/. You http://downloads.openwrt.org/.  You can copy it on a USB stick and may need to change the root partition from /dev/sda1 from  /dev/sda1 to,  to, for instance, /dev/sdb1 instance,  /dev/sdb1 in the Grub conguration le. The generic distribution includes a limited number of drivers and you may need to download the additional drivers. In my experiments, the Ethernet driver needed for Lenovo S10 was included. However, the brcmsmac needed brcmsmac needed for wireless was not included. As mentioned earlier, the brcmsmac does brcmsmac does not have the support for access point mode and is not very useful as a router. However, I could use the netbook to download the drivers needed for EEEPC 701 and use the USB stick on EEEPC 701 for further experiments.

may need to extend the range of your Wi-Fi connection by using a repeater. Inexpensive routers do not come with this option. However, it is pretty simple to implement this functionality in OpenWRT. OpenWRT. OpenWRT offers a number of ways to achieve this goal, which depends upon the driver used. The different options can be found in http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/clientmode http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/clientmode.. The various recipes are available on the same wiki. If the driver supports WDS (Wireless Distribution System) or similar functionality, functionality, the set-up is fairly simple. You You just need to set it up as a client of the main access point and in the Wi-Fiiface section, add the following option:  option wds 1

Both the access point and the repeater need to support WDS. In case the driver does not support s upport WDS, there will be no warnings or errors and the effort to act as a Wi-Fi relay/repeater relay/repeater will silently fail. You can rely upon alternate set-ups that achieve similar goals.

A relay client You need the Wi-Fi to work as an access point for your wireless devices. You also want it to work like a client of your primary router. The router needs to relay the data across the two modes. The rst option makes the entire set-up turn into a single network. OpenWRT OpenWRT recipes will call this a ‘routed client with relayd’. relayd’. The relayd package implements the functionality of WDS. The key part of the wireless conguration le will be:  cong wi-iface option device 'radio0' option mode 'sta' option network 'wan' option ssid 'Wi-network 'Wi-network' '

A bridged router It is very simple to set up OpenWRT as a simple wireless router. router. You dene the Wi-Fi mode as 'AP' (access point) and specify the SSID, the encryption type and the key. The wireless and the LAN are bridged by default. Chances are that you may already have a wireless router. However, its range may not cover the entire premises. You You

46

| AUGUST 2013

option encryption. encryption... .. cong wi-iface option device 'radio0' option mode 'ap' option network 'lan' option ssid 'Wi-relay' option encryption. encryption... ..

Guest Column

You will notice that the single physical device has two virtual Wi-Fi interfaces, each with its own SSID. This set-up is, hence, not totally transparent. Your device will need to explicitly connect to the access point or the relay. The corresponding network configuration will contain the following code:

Exploring Software

this network to the access point. The configuration file for wireless remains the same as for the relay client. The network configuration file will contain the following: cong interface 'lan' option ifname 'eth0' option type 'bridge'

cong interface 'lan' option ifname 'eth0'

option proto 'static' option ipaddr '192.168.2. '192.168.2.254' 254'

option type 'bridge' option proto 'static' option ipaddr '192.168.1. '192.168.1.254' 254' cong interface 'wan' option proto 'dhcp' cong 'interface' 'stabridge' option 'proto' 'relay' option 'network' 'lan wan' option ipaddr '192.168.1. '192.168.1.253' 253'

You will also need to disable the rewall.

A routed client The second option is that the second Wi-Fi router establishes a separate network and routes traffic from

cong interface 'wan' option proto 'dhcp'

The IP address for the LAN will be outside the address range of the main router. The rewall is precongured to forward trafc from the LAN to the WAN. OpenWRT is a Linux distribution. So, in principle, you should be able to add packages to your normal distribution and create a Wi-Fi extender on your normal laptop. But you would lose the convenience of NetworkManager. So you may not want to use it every day, but it is a fun thing to try out.

By: Anil Seth  The auth author or has has earne earned d the the right right to to do what inte interes rests ts him. him. You can can find him online at http:  http://se //sethan thanil.c il.com, om, http:/ http://set /sethani hanil.blo l.blogspo gspot.com t.com, and reach him via email at anil  anil@set @sethani hanil.co l.com. m.

AUGUST 2013 |

47

Developers

Let's Try

Here’s an introduction to Firebug, which is used primarily for debugging client side scripts in real time and reducing development time. It also helps in creating bug-free code that can run across leading browsers seamlessly.

A

s the world of open source development evolves, debugging code is becoming a complex task. When it comes to browser client-side scripting that needs to be debugged, there are few tools available. This is especially true for runtime debugging on HTML, CSS and JavaScript tags. Firebug is one of the most popular add-ons of Mozilla Firefox for Web development. It is a free and open source plug-in with a BSD licence. Initially written in 2006, Firebug went through numerous updates, making it a favourite tool for Web software developers, as it certainly makes their lives easier. Modern content management systems (CMS) such as Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, etc, empower Web development by embedding the client side code within their content entities. This, however, puts a burden on developers, when it comes to debugging the code in scenarios where it works ne on one browser but fails on another. Since CMS systems also add their own payload to the developer’s code, the resultant code obviously becomes very hard to debug. Firebug comes in as an essential helping hand in this situation by breaking code pieces into logical chunks on the screen. It introduces

48

| AUGUST 2013

many features which are essential for Web development, such as inspecting HTML elements, debugging, editing, monitoring any website’s website’s CSS, HTML, JavaScript etc. At the time of writing, the most recent version of Firebug is 1.11.2 for Firefox 20. It has two major implementations: implementations: an extension extension (add-on) for Mozilla Firefox and Firebug Lite, which is for other browsers.

Why Firebug? Firebug is a plug-in or add-on to the browser. browser. What this means is that it has the same s ame level of access and control on the Web page being rendered, as that of the browser entity. Firebug runs in the same security context as the browser, which gives it complete control on the objects and DOMs (document object model) created within a Web page. Due to this, Firebug can perform multiple runtime operations on the client-side code, such as run JavaScript snippets, inspect HTML content, modify style sheets and layouts, etc. Optionally Optionally,, it can also analyse network usage for a given page. This helps you nd out how big the footprint of a page is—including the images and other code resources

Let's Try it contains. Firebug also comes equipped with a nice GUI, which usually sits silently in the background and on the click of a button, comes to the foreground and starts providing useful information to the developers. It is possible to extend Firebug by calling its API library, and to enhance its features as a customisation effort. The latest version of Firebug has advanced features such as editing CSS templates and adding attributes in real time, and viewing their effect on the Web page, dynamically. dynamically. The developer can leverage this feature to try all style sheet combinations, check their effect on the user experience, ensure accuracy and then, accordingly, accordingly, make changes in their release codes. This is a great help when trying out various style sheet objects such as table widths, foreground and background colours, fonts, etc. The newer versions can also help in object stack tracing for advanced developers. The Firebug interface itself is very user friendly. Based on the nature of the code being developed and debugged, it is possible to instruct Firebug to only s how certain types of errors, such as errors for only CSS code, or only for JavaScript, etc. This helps to avoid the clutter and results in quick debugging and faster development.

Developers

i.e., the maximise button or as a bar at the bottom of your browser. browser. This opens up a Firebug panel dashboard, which typically occupies the bottom half of the screen. Please refer to Figure 1, which shows a sample dashboard. Now let’s look at how to use this panel for debugging purposes. To explain better, let’s open the home page of Facebook. Once the page loads up, open up the Firebug panel and from the top menu of the panel, click the second button from the left, which r eads ‘ Click an element in the page to inspect ’. ’. This enables the highlighter on the browser page; so us e the mouse to highlight the section to be debugged and click the mouse button. Figure 2 demonstrates that the text reading ‘Sign Up’ was selected from the Facebook home page and was changed to ‘Welcome’. As seen in that figure, the bottom left portion shows the exact HTML tag that was modified to achieve the result. On the right side of the panel, we can see the CSS code and tags which form that particular area of the page. This technique can be used for modifying any HTML tag, CSS styles, f onts, colours,

Installation While there are no strict prerequisites for Firebug installation, the computer must have the Firefox browser installed, preferably the latest version. It is important to ensure that no previous installations of Firebug are present, and if they are, they should be removed. The latest version of Firebug can be downloaded from getfirebug.com/downloads and getfirebug.com/downloads  and installed. Upon installation, it is advisable to close all browser instances and restart the browser.

Figure 1: Sample dashboard

Using Firebug Firebug can be opened in any one of the following three ways—by clicking on the icon on the right hand side of your browser's navigation bar; by using a shortcut key (default : F12), or by right-clicking the mouse button and selecting ‘Inspect element with Firebug’. Firebug’ . You can open it in a new window by clicking Figure 2: Sign Up' changed to 'Welcome' ‘Open frebug in new window’, window ’,

AUGUST 2013 |

49

Developers

Let's Try

layouts and JavaScript variables, thus demonstrating the power of Firebug. As can be seen in the same screen shot, the CSS section on t he right also shows the line numbers of the .css file, which produces that page section. This really helps developers gain complete visibility of what needs to be modified in their code. Firebug is both an inspector and an editor. All objects, i.e., HTML, CSS and J avaScript can be edited with a single or double click. When things go wrong, Firebug lets you know immediately, and gives you detailed and useful information about errors in JavaScript, CSS and XML. As you make changes in Firebug, you can see their result or effect in the browser instantly. All changes made in Firebug are in real time, so as you refresh your browser, it will show you the page before the changes were made. Firebug just helps you to get a particular CSS f ile with the line number or particular HTML tag on a page to make changes from your local machine, and t hen you can make permanent changes the way you want. It allows you to add new properties in CSS. Now let’s look at a few advanced features of Firebug. As you can see on the panel, it has multiple views to drill down into the code, based on which code area needs to be targeted for debugging. There are two HTML panes, i.e., the Node view pane and the HTML side panels. The Node view , which is on the left, allows you to inspect and modify the HTML tags of the page. When you hover the mouse over the HTML tags, it shows a section being highlighted on the page, which points to the location of elements placed on the page. HTML side panels are on the right, and give more information about the styles of the highlighted elements. There are four side panels: style, computed, layout and DOM.   Style: It shows you which CSS lines affect what part of your code. It also shows which style sheet effects correspond to that part, along with the line numbers. Computed: It shows the CSS with properties such as font size, type, alignment, etc. This gives information about how HTML renders that element.  Layout: It shows you the graphical box model of the element that you have clicked. It helps you to modify the values of the padding, margin and border by double clicking on it in real time.  DOM: It shows the document object model of the selected element. It’s useful for advanced client-side script debugging. 



Console view The console is for logging, tracing, proling and the command line. The console shows JavaScript error message logs. It can also be used to run JavaScript commands.

50

| AUGUST 2013

CSS view The main difference between styles in the HTML panel and CSS view is that it allows you to work on all CSS styles, and not just the highlighted one.

Script view It allows you to jump to the particular section of the JavaScript that you have selected. It allows debugging of functions, shows the stack of functions in real time, the list of currently active breakpoints, etc. It includes JavaScript Debugger, Debugger, which allows you to pause at any time. This feature is important to debug code snippets that are sluggish and need performance tuning.

DOM view The Document Object Model is a great big hierarchy of objects and functions. Firebug helps you nd DOM objects quickly and then edit them on the y.

Net view It gives information about how long it will take for your page to load or which request takes more time to load. The slowness of page loading can be attributed to static code, references to other pages, heavy images, etc. Net view helps you to pin point the exact section of a le which is slowing down the performance. It also gives suggestions regarding which images should be compressed for better performance, etc.

Cookies view The cookies panel shows you the cookies on your current or selected page. You can deny cookies for a particular site, create cookies and also delete cookies, on the fly. Besides these features, there is a search box available on the panel which can be used to find elements or the sections of code being debugged. The panel dashboard can be detached from the browser, and be placed on screen as a floating entity for ease of use. While Firebug is a self-contained environment for debugging, there are a few limitations which will hopefully be fixed in future versions. First, the CSS panel doesn’t allow the edit option. Second, while debugging HTML elements with hover properties, it is cumbersome to use Firebug to highlight a particular section and debug it. This is true in case of client-side slide show containers, which may or may not be using JQuery.

By: Supriya Awati  The author is a PHP developer who loves Web Web programming, and has a passion for server and client side scripting. She is fascinated with the idea of combining Facebook and open source tools to make programmers’ lives easy. She works at Valency Networks (www.valencynetworks.com) (www.valencynetworks.com) as a cyber security product designer and can be reached at  supriya@valencynetwor  [email protected]. ks.com.

How To

Developers

Save Your Data with PhoneGap The article on PhoneGap Application Development in the June issue of OSFY  started  started  with setting sett ing up the environment e nvironment for development followed f ollowed by a simple ‘Hello World’ app and then moved on to exploring various APIs such as Contacts, Accelerometer and Geolocation. This article covers a lot more...

T

he APIs we are going to cover in this article are: Storage, Media, Notifcations, and Splash Screen. •

Storage This API helps to save the data in the SQLite database and to fetch the same data later. It enables the application to use the data across various HTML pages, i.e., the user can save some data from the first HTML page and then retrieve that at a later point of time. Usage: Data storage is used in almost all the apps and games. Some basic methods for using storage are: • openDatabase(): This method will open the SQLite database or will create a new one if it doesn’t already

• •

exist. It returns a database object that can be used to manipulate data. Transaction(): Transaction(): This is responsible for database transactions. changeVersion(): This will change the version with schema updates. executeSql(): This allows the execution of SQL statements. This method invokes SQLResultSet as a callback, which contains properties like insertId, rowsAffected and rows which can be used to display the ID of the inserted row, the rows affected and the rows returned by the executed SQL statement, respectively. AUGUST 2013 |

51

Developers

How To

 Note: There is an object called localStorage, which can be

used to store data in key value pairs. This can be implemented using the function window.localStorag window.localStorage.setItem("key" e.setItem("key",, value"); The arguments to pass through these methods are: • openDatabase (database_name, database_version, database_displayname, database_displayname, database_size): This will create a new database with the details specifed, i.e., name, version, etc. • database.transaction database.transaction (insertDB, errorDB, successDB): This transaction method will lead to running ‘insertDB’, where all the executesql statements will be written, and success and error will return messages for success and failure, respectively. respectively. • changeVersion(‘old_version’, changeVersion(‘old_version’, ‘new_version’): This method will change the version from the old to the new. • executeSql (‘SQL_STATEMENTS _TO_ BE  _WRITTEN_HERE’): All the SQL statements will be written in the executesql method. Let’s see what these arguments will actually do when put together.

} function successDB() {  

alert(“success!”); var db = window.openD window.openDatabase(“MyD atabase(“MyDatabase”, atabase”, “1.0”, “My

Database”, 100000); db.transaction(queryDB, db.transact ion(queryDB, errorDB); } function queryDB(tx) {  tr.executeSql(‘SELECT  tr.executeSql(‘SELEC T * FROM CountryList’, [], querySuccess, errorDB);

(8)

} function querySuccess(tr, output) { console.log(“No console.log( “No of rows returned is “ + output.rows. length);

(9) and (10)

var len = output.rows.length; // Create a le name Storage.html

for (var i=0; i


{



console.log(“Row console.log (“Row = “ + i + “ ID = “ + output.rows output.rows. .



item(i).code item(i).cod e + “ Data = “ + output.rows.item(i). output.rows.item(i).name); name);

<script type=”text/ type=”text/javascript” javascript” charset=”utf charset=”utf-8” -8” src=”cordova-2.7.0.js”>

}

(1)

}

<script type=”text/ type=”text/javascript” javascript” charset=”utf charset=”utf-8”> -8”>

function errorDB(error) { alert(“Error alert(“Erro r processing SQL: “+error.code “+error.code); );

document.addEventListen document.ad dEventListener(“devicere er(“deviceready”, ady”, onDeviceRead onDeviceReady, y, false);

}

(2)

function onDeviceRea onDeviceReady() dy()



{

Fetching

Fetchin g Country list from databases..< databases..

/h2>

var db= window.openD window.openDatabase(“MyD atabase(“MyDatabase”,”1. atabase”,”1.0”,”My 0”,”My

Showing Country list..

Database”,1000000);

(3)



db.transaction(insertDB, db.transacti on(insertDB,errorDB,succ errorDB,successDB) essDB)

(4)

The output of the above code is given in Figure 1. The code shown above displays the list of countries saved in the database. Here is the explanation:

} function insertDB(tr) { tr.executeSql(‘DROP tr.executeSq l(‘DROP TABLE IF EXISTS CountryList’); (5) tr.executeSql(‘CREATE tr.executeSq l(‘CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS CountryList (countrycode (countrycod e unique, name)’); (6) tr.executeSql(‘INSERT tr.executeSq l(‘INSERT INTO CountryList (countrycod (countrycode, e, name) VALUES (61, “Australia”) “Australia”)’); ’);

(7)

tr.executeSql(‘INSERT tr.executeSq l(‘INSERT INTO CountryList (countrycod (countrycode, e, name) VALUES (55, “Brazil”)’); tr.executeSql(‘INSERT tr.executeSq l(‘INSERT INTO CountryList (countrycod (countrycode, e, name) VALUES (1, “Canada”)’); tr.executeSql(‘INSERT tr.executeSq l(‘INSERT INTO CountryList (countrycod (countrycode, e, name) VALUES (91, “India”)’);

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| AUGUST 2013

Figure 1: Storage

How To 1. The PhoneGap PhoneGap support support will be added added by adding cordova.js in cordova.js  in a <script> tag. 2. The document.addEventListener document.addEventListener function  function will let PhoneGap load. 3. When PhoneGap is loaded, loaded, the openDatabase() function will create a new database with the details provided, i.e., database name, version, etc. The size of the database is 1,000,000 bytes. 4. After creating creating and opening the the database, database, the database database will call the transaction, which will call the insertDB method, and if the insertion is successful, then successDB will be called; else, errorDB will be called. 5. In the insertDB method, method, if the table ‘CountryList’ ‘CountryList’ already exists then the table will be deleted. 6. This creates creates a new table table ‘CountryList’, ‘CountryList’, with two columns— countrycode and countrycode and name. 7. This inserts the the values for the the countrycode and countrycode and name in ‘CountryList’. 8. If the values are successfully inserted in the table, it displays an alert ‘success’ and selects all the rows to display. 9. and 10. This displays the number of rows of data returned in the console.

Developers

3. mediaError: The callback callback returned returned when when failure occurs within the process. 4. MediaStatus: The callback callback that is invoked to indicate the status changes. //media.html tle> <script type=”text/j type=”text/javascript” avascript” charset=”ut charset=”utf-8” f-8” src=”cordova-2.7.0.js”> <script type=”text/javascript” type=”text/javascript” charset=”ut charset=”utf-8”> f-8”> var recording; var recInterval;  

document.addEventListener(“deviceready”,

onDeviceReady, onDeviceRea dy, false); function onDeviceRead onDeviceReady() y() ( } var audio = null; var timer = null;

function playAudio(src) { audio = new Media(src, onSuccess, onError); audio.play(); audio.play() ;

(1)

(2)

if (timer == null) {

this example, the the values returned returned are displayed only in the console, but in real time, you can show the values in different formats, i.e., list view, grid view, etc, according to your requirements.

timer = setInterval( setInterval(function() function() {

 Note: In

 

(3)

audio.getCurrentPosition( function(position) function(po sition) { if (position > -1) {

Media This API gives the ability to play and record audio on the device. The different ways in which you can use the Media API are: 1. media.getCurrentPosition(): media.getCurrentPosition(): Returns the current position within the audio le. 2. media.getDuration(): media.getDuration(): Returns the duration duration of the audio audio le. 3. media.play(): Will Will start playing the audio le. Can be used to resume a paused le. 4. media.pause(): Will Will pause a playing audio le. 5. media.release(): Will release all all the OS's audio audio resources being used by the le. 6. media.seekTo(): media.seekTo(): Will Will move the position to a certain point in the audio le. 7. media.startRecord(): Will Will start recording an audio le. 8. media.stopRecord(): media.stopReco rd(): This will stop recording an audio le. 9. media.stop(): This will stop the playing audio. audio. The arguments to pass through are: 1. src: The path of the audio le. 2. mediaSuccess: The callback callback to be called when a media object has played/paused or stopped the audio successfully.

setAudioPosition((posit setAudioPos ition((position) ion) + “ sec”);

(4) } }, function(e) { console.log(“Error console.log (“Error occured=” +

e); setAudioPosition(“Error setAudioPos ition(“Error: : “ + e); } ); }, 1000); } } function pauseAudio() { if (audio) { audio.pause(); audio.pause ();

(5)

} }

function stopAudio() { if (audio) { audio.stop(); audio.stop() ;

(6)

AUGUST 2013 |

53

Developers

How To

} clearInterval(timer);

(7)

timer = null; } function onSuccess() { console.log(“playAudio( console.log (“playAudio():Audio ):Audio Success”); } function onError(erro onError(error) r) { alert(‘code: alert(‘code : ‘

+ error.code

+ ‘\n’ +

‘message: ‘ + error.message + ‘\n’); } function setAudioPosi setAudioPosition(positio tion(position) n) {  

document.getElementById(‘audio_position’).

innerHTML = position;

(8)

Notifications

}

Playing Audio

(9)
onclick=”st opAudio();”>

Inte sition”>Interval

rval

(10)

 Note: media.html illustrates the usage of the play,  pause and stop methods. methods. The methods media.startRecord media.startRecord() () and media.stopRecord() can be used similarly. similarly.

media.html will be displayed as shown in Figure 2. Here is the explanation of the code given above: 1. On clicking the button Play button  Play audio audio,, the method ‘playAudio()' with the path of the .mp3 le will be called and src will src will be replaced by the mp3 le. In case of success or failure, the methods ‘mediaSuccess()'/‘mediaError()' will be called, respectively. 2. The audio.play() audio.play() method will be invoked and and audio will start playing. 3. This will check for the timer and if the timer is null, the setInterval function will be called and the audio's current position will be fetched. 4. If the fetched position position is greater greater than -1 then the ‘setAudioPosition((position)) + " sec")' method will be ‘setAudioPosition((position called, and in Line 8, the setAudioPosition() method will fetch the element by ID and replace its text with the fetched current position. 5. pauseAudio() will pause the already playing audio, and the interval which is displayed below will be paused.

54

6. stopAudio() will stop the audio Playing Playing Aud io and will call clearinterval(). 7. clearInterval() will clear the Play Audio interval displayed below the Pause Audio buttons. Stop Audio 8. This aspect has been already covered in Point 4. 9. On clicking this button, the 39.192 sec path of the audio le to be played needs to be given as a Figure 2: Media parameter to the playAudio() method. 10. This is an element to display the position of the running audio le in terms of seconds. It’s used when the element's text is replaced by the position in the setAudioPosition() method.

| AUGUST 2013

Device notications are used to send alerts to the user or to ask for user input, and so on. These include visual, audio and vibration alerts. To use device alerts in your hybrid app, try the Notication API. Usage: To alert the user to various events. The methods for using this API are: 1. navigator.notication.alert(): navigator.notication.alert(): To show alerts to the user for critical battery, low memory space, etc. 2. navigator.notication.conrm(): navigator.notication.conrm(): To To ask the user for some kind of permission. 3. navigator.notication.prompt(): navigator.notication.prompt(): To To prompt the user to provide some input. 4. navigator.beep(): navigator.beep() : To send audio alerts in the form of beeps. 5. navigator.vibrate(): navigator.vibrate(): To To send a vibration alert to give the users some message or inform them about an event. The arguments to pass through these methods are: 1. navigator.notication.alert navigator.notication.alert (‘message’,alertCallba ck,’title’,’buttonLabel’): Where a message will be displayed as an alert message, and alertCallback will be the method that gets called when the  Alert  button  button gets clicked; title will title will be the title of the alert box and buttonLabel will buttonLabel will be the name of the  Alert  button.  button. 2. navigator.notication.conrm navigator.notication.conrm (‘message’, conrmCallback, ‘title’, ‘btnLabel1, btnLabel2,...’): All arguments are similar to that of the Alert box but, in this case, the buttons can be more than one, to provide multiple options to the user. 3. navigator.notication.prompt navigator.notication.prompt (‘message’, (‘mess age’, conrmCallback, ‘title’, ‘btnLabel1, btnLabel2,...’): The arguments are the same as in the ‘Conrm’ ‘C onrm’ method. 4. navigator.beep(times): navigator.beep( times): The argument ‘times’ decides how many times the beep should ring. 5. navigator.vibrate navigator.vibrate (milliseconds): (milliseconds): This depicts for how many seconds the device will vibrate.

Developers

How To function showAlert() {

Notifcation Examples

navigator.notication.a navigator.n otication.alert( lert( alertDismissed, alertDismiss ed,

Show Alert

(1) ‘Battery Low!’,

‘Alert Box Example’, ‘Ok’);

} function alertDismis alertDismissed() sed() {

Show Confrm

(2)

// do something }

Show Prompt

function showConrm( showConrm() )

(3)

{

Play Beep

navigator.notication.c navigator.n otication.conrm(‘Do onrm(‘Do you want to continue?’,onConrm, ‘Sample Conrm Dialog’,’Continue,Exit’);

Vibrate

} function onConrm()

Figure 3: Notifications

(4)

{ alert(‘Selected alert(‘Sele cted Button Index ‘ + buttonIndex) buttonIndex); ; }

 Alert Box Example

 

function showPrompt()

(5)

{ navigator.notication.p navigator.n otication.prompt( rompt(

Battery Low!

‘Please enter your

name’, onPrompt, ‘Sample Prompt,[‘Ok’ Prompt,[‘Ok’,’Exit’] ,’Exit’]

);

}

Ok

function onPrompt(res onPrompt(results) ults)

(6)

{

Figure 4: Alert

alert(“Welcome” alert(“Welco me” + results.inpu results.input1); t1);  

Sample Confrm Dialog

document.getElemenyById(“enteredName”).

innerHTML=”Welcome”+ innerHTML=” Welcome”+ “ ” +

results.input1; results.in put1;

}

Do you want to continue?

function playBeep()

(7)

{

Continue

Exit

 

navigator.notication.beep(2); }

Figure 5: Confirm function vibrate()

So now, let’s create a simple notifcation.html page and put all types of alerts in there to see their usage.

(8)

{  

navigator.notication.vibrate(5000); }

// Notication Notication.html .html

Notication Examples
h2>

Show

 

Alert

e>

Show Conrm

<script type=”text/j type=”text/javascript” avascript” charset=”utf charset=”utf-8” -8” src=”cordova-2.7.0.js”> <script type=”text/j type=”text/javascript” avascript” charset=”utf charset=”utf-8”> -8”>

Show Prompt

Play Beep

document.addEventListene document.add EventListener(“devicere r(“deviceready”, ady”, onDeviceRead onDeviceReady, y, false);

Vibrate

 

function onDeviceRead onDeviceReady() y() { // }

some functionali functionality ty can be written

The output of the above code is shown in Figure 3. The code shown above will display the corresponding AUGUST 2013 |

55

Developers

How To

Sample Prompt Please enter your name  Anupriya

Ok

Exit

Figure 6: Prompt

alerts. Here is the explanation. Under the body tag, there is a list of alerts in the form of links and these will call respective methods when clicked. 1 and 2: On clicking ‘Show Alert’ the method showAlert() will be called, which will call the ‘notification,alert’ Figure 7: Splashscreen method and an alert box will pop up with the ‘Battery Low’ message; this will call the ‘alertDismis sed’ callback, when ‘OK’ is clicked in the alert box. The output for an alert message is displayed in Figure 4. 3 and 4: On clicking ‘Show Conrm’ the method showConrm() will be called with a ‘Do you want to continue?’ message. On clicking Continue or Exit it will take you to ‘onConrm’, and an alert will pop up which will return the selected button index. The output for conrm dialogue box is displayed in Figure 5. 5 and 6: On clicking ‘Show Prompt’ the method showPrompt() will be called with an edit text box, where the user needs to provide an input. Then ‘onPrompt’ will be called as a callback, and will return whatever the user entered with a welcome message. The output for the prompt box is displayed in Figure 6. 7. On clicking ‘Play Beep’, the device will beep twice with the device’s default beep sound. 8. On clicking ‘Vibrate’ the device will vibrate for 5 seconds. The Play Beep and Vibrate methods should be tested on the device to observe the results.

Usage: It is used in apps where the application needs some time to load. During that time the image will replace the blank screen with a nice picture to give users a better experience. The methods for using this API are: 1. navigator.splashscreen.s navigator.splas hscreen.show(): how(): To show the splashscreen. 2. navigator.splashscreen.s navigator.splas hscreen.show(): how(): To hide the splashscreen. Pre-requisite: Put your splash screen image into the res/ drawable folder of the Android project. The recommended sizes for each image are: • xlarge (xhdpi): at least 960 x 720 pixel. • large (hdpi): at least 640 x 480 pixel • medium (mdpi): at least 470 x 320 pixel • small (ldpi): at least 426 x 320 pixel Now add the following code in the MainActivity.java: MainActivity.java: super.setIntegerProperty(“splashscreen”, R.drawable. splashscreen);

This will take the image from R.drawable.splashscreen (where splashscreen is the name of the image), which will be added to the application. super.loadUrl(“le:///android_asset/www/splashscreen. html”,20000);

There is one more parameter in loadUrl ‘20000’, which denes how many seconds the splashscreen will be displayed. //SplashScreen.html document.addEventListene document.add EventListener(“devicerea r(“deviceready”, dy”, onDeviceRead onDeviceReady, y, false); function onDeviceRead onDeviceReady() y() {  

navigator.splashscreen.show(); }

Similarly, hide() can be used to hide the screen. Though we have covered some more APIs in this article, this is not the end. PhoneGap provides provides many more APIs, which you can easily explore, as all of them use a similar kind of format. There are many more plugins that can be used with PhoneGap to enhance its benets. So try your hand at playing with plugins too. Keep exploring and learning. The doors for help are always open.

 Note:

SplashScreen This shows you how to give your application an image for the starting screen, which will be shown when your application is still loading at the back end.

56

| AUGUST 2013

 Anupriya Sharma  The author has just graduated and is currently currently working in the  Android department of a reputed MNC. MNC. She loves Android and iOS development. Apart from that, she manages some time for cooking, dancing and her all-time favourite, shopping. You can contact her at [email protected]. at  [email protected].

CODE

SPORT 

Sandya Mannarswamy

This month’s column features some questions on algorithms and data structures.

I 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

58

| AUGUST 2013

n the last few columns, we have discussed le system concepts. This month, we take take a break from that and explore a few interview questions. You are given ‘ N’ integers  N’ integers and are asked to nd the second smallest element among them. How many comparisons does it take, in the worst case, to nd this out? A cyclic rotation rotation of a string is is obtained by chopping off a prex of the string and attaching it to the end. For example, ‘esportcod’ is ‘esportcod’ is a cyclic rotation of the string ‘codesport’. You are given two strings P[1…n] and T[1..m]. Write an algorithm to determine whether P is a cyclic rotation of T. You are given a set ‘S’ of ‘S’ of N   N integers integers.. You are not allowed to compare two integers directly to determine which is larger. However, you are given a black box that can determine the median of a set of three integers. integers . You are asked to write a program to determine the pair of the largest and smallest elements in S. What is the complexity of your program? Can you come up with an O(N) algorithm to solve this problem? Now, Now, if you are asked to sort the set S, what would be the complexity of your program? You are given a set of ‘k’ nuts ‘k’  nuts and k bolts. For each bolt present in the collection, there is exactly one nut that matches the bolt. You are not all owed to compare one bolt with another bolt or one nut with another. However, you can compare a nut and a bolt to see whether they match or not. You are asked to find the largest and smallest bolts. What is the maximum number of comparisons you need to make, in the worst case? You are given two sorted arrays ‘A’ and ‘A’ and ‘B’, ‘B’, each containing N  containing  N  elements.  elements. You are also given

an integer ‘k’ such that k < 2N. You are asked to nd the ‘k’ ‘k’th th smallest element in the union of the two arrays A arrays  A and  and B. What is the complexity of your program? Assume that the arrays arrays ‘A’ and ‘B’ do ‘B’ do not contain any duplicates. 6. All of us are familiar with with the utility ‘make’, make’, which typically is used to compile source les into an executable. The ‘make’ utility reads a le called ‘Makele’ Makele’, which species the rules and dependencies. The Makele species the list of source les that need to be compiled and the dependencies. The basic Makele typically looks like what follows: target: dependencies [tab] system command

For instance, if there are two les, say s ay,, hello.c and factorial.c, and factorial.c, and you want to build an executable ‘prog1’, here is how your Makele would look: all: prog1 hello: factorial.o hello.o g++ factorial.o hello.o -o prog1 hello.o: hello.c gcc -c hello.c factorial.o: factorial.c gcc -c factorial.c clean: rm -rf *.o prog1

So if the programmer changes hello.c, then hello.c, then when ‘make’ is ‘make’ is invoked, it understands from the Makele that the target executable ‘prog1’ is ‘prog1’ is

Guest Column

dependent on hello.o which, hello.o which, in turn, is dependent on hello.c. Therefore ‘make’ recompiles hello.c to hello.c to create a new hello.o and hence rebuild the target executable ‘prog1’. ‘prog1’ . Note that factorial.c is factorial.c is not recompiled. Now consider that that you have been given an arbitrary Makele, which species a list of source les as well as the list of dependencies and also a list of changed source les; write a program to identify which of the objects need to be rebuilt and the order in which they have to be rebuilt. Let me give you a hint. Can you visualise the dependencies as a graph? 7. You are given a set R set  R of  of ‘n’ rectangles ‘n’ rectangles lying in a plane. You are asked to determine whether any two of the rectangles in the set R intersect. What is the time complexity of your solution? 8. You are given an array ‘A’ of N  of N  integers  integers such that A[1] >= A[2] and A[n-1] <= A[n]. An element A[i] is a local minimum if it is less than or equal to both of its neighbours. Formally, Formally, we denote an element A[i] as a local minimum if A[i] <= A[i-1] and A[i] <= A[i+1]. You are asked to write a program to nd a local minimum in the given array. array. The obvious solution is to do a scan of the entire array ‘A’ in O(N) time. Can you design an algorithm that can nd the local minimum in log(N) time? 9. You are given a directed graph of the roads in India, with each edge between two cities being associated with an independent safety probability p(e). The safety of a path in the graph is the product of the safety probabilities of the edges in the path. You are asked to find the safest path to travel from Bengaluru to Delhi. Can you design an algorithm for this? 10. You are given a set ‘X’ of ‘X’ of N intervals on the real line. The intervals are represented by two arrays, XL[1..N] and XR[1..N], which represent the left and right end points of each of the N intervals. intervals. A  A subset Y  of X   of X  is  is a set of intervals such that any real value that is contained in some interval in X  in X  is  is also contained in some interval in Y . In such a case, Y  is  is called the tiling path or tiling cover of X  of  X . The size of a tiling cover is the number of intervals in Y , which is needed to cover X  cover  X . You are asked to write a program to compute the smallest tiling cover for X  for  X . What is the time complexity of your approach? 11. As we all know, a palindrome is a string that reads the same forwards and backwards such as ‘x’, ‘x’, ‘pop’ or ‘pop’ or ‘noon’. noon’. Any string can be broken into a sequence of palindromes. For instance, the string ‘popdad’ can be split into two palindromes ‘pop’ and ‘dad’, whereas a trivial splitting would be to split it into 6, such as “p”, “p”, “o”, “p”, “d”, “a”, “a” , and “d”. “d”. You You are asked as ked to write wri te a program to split the given string into the minimum number of palindromic sub-strings. Can you nd the minimum number of palindromic substrings into which you can split the string “bubba banana”? 12. You are given an input string A[1..N]. Of all the sub-strings of A of A,, nd the longest sub-string ‘s’ such

  CodeSport

that ‘s’ appears both forward and backward in  A.  A. The forward and backward sub-strings should not overlap. For example, for the input string “SAWMWASING”, string  “SAWMWASING”, the output should be “SAW”. For the input string “DYNAMICPROGRAMANYTIMES”, the “DYNAMICPROGRAMANYTIMES”,  the output should be “YNAM”. 13. Let’s suppose you are given a weighted graph G and its minimum spanning tree T . Now you are told that the weight of one of the edges ‘e’ in the graph G has been changed from w 1 to w2. How would you recompute the minimum spanning tree when: a. w1 is smaller than w2. b. w1 is greater than w 2. While the brute force solution would be to re-run the MST computation algorithm for the graph ‘G’, ‘G’, can you come up with a better approach? 14. You are given an array A of N positive integers without any duplicates. Write a program program to nd the smallest smallest positive integer ‘k’ such ‘k’ such that k is not a member of A. Is it possible to come up with an O(N) algorithm for this problem? If yes, give the algorithm. If not possible, explain why. 15. Stack is a data structure that supports LIFO (Last In First Out). Implement a modied version of Stack, which pops out the most frequently added item.

My ‘must-read book’ for this month This month’s must-read book suggestion comes from one of our readers, Shanmugavel, and is titled ‘A Discipline of Programming’ by Edsger W Dijkstra. This is a programming classic. Though this is an old book and some of the algorithms have been super-ceded super-ceded by better and newer ones, it is still worth a read to understand the thinking behind designing clever algorithms. Thanks Shanmugavel, for your suggestion. If you have a favourite programming book or article that you think is a must-read for every programmer, please do send me a note with the book’s name, and a short writeup on why you think it is useful so I can mention it in the column. This would help many readers who want to improve their software skills. If you have any programming questions or software topics that you would like to discuss on this forum, please send them to me, along with your solutions and feedback, at sandyasm_   AT_yahoo_DOT_com  AT_yahoo_DOT_com.. Till we meet again next month, happy programming and here’s wishing you the very best!

By: Sandya Mannarswamy   The aut author hor is an a n ex pert in syste s yste ms softw s oftware are and is curre c urrentl ntlyy working with Hewlett Packard India Ltd. Her interests include compilers, multi-core and storage systems. If you are preparing for systems software interviews, you may find it useful to visit Sandya’s LinkedIn group Computer Science Interview Training India at India  at  htt  http:// p://www.li www.li nked nkedin.c in.c om/   groups?h  grou ps?home= ome= &gid= 23391 2339182 82

AUGUST 2013 | 59

 Admin   Overview

IPCop 2.0.6: The New Watchdog! This article describes the various functionalities of a network-based network-based firewall, firewall, besides besides taking readers through through the installation and configuration of IPCop 2.0.6, especially especially from the perspective of a small and medium business. It also illustrates how a securely configured firewall ensures data security and mitigates various risks such as virus spread.

I

PCop is a complete Linux distribution whose sole purpose is to protect the networks it is installed on. By implementing the best of current technology, outstanding new technology and secure programming practices, it has become the Linux distro for those wanting to keep their computers and networks safe.

any protection is exposed to many risks. From a security perspective, once you are connected to the Internet, it is your computer, computer, your system and your network against everybody else on the other side. Even unknowingly, unknowingly, other infected systems could cause harm to your system. A rewall is used to mitigate these risks and to secure your internal systems from malicious users and programs working on the external side.

Basics There are two types of rewalls. Host-based rewalls are typically software programs installed on an operating system. They can control which software programs installed on the computer can access the Internet and who can access the host system. Network rewalls are used to control access between any two networks—for example, your system or network on one side, and the Internet on the other. Any computer system or network directly connected to the Internet without

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Network security for small businesses Though awareness about firewalls is on the rise, even today, many organisations assume that installing the operating system, application software and the connecting network is all that’s required to set up their IT infrastructure. Many key network security aspects such as the use of managed switches, securing the wireless network, changing default passwords, deploying a firewall at the network gateway, etc, are not considered.

Overview

Why open source? One of the primary reasons for not securing networks is the expense involved. Here, open source software is an alternate to commercially available products. These include operating systems, word processors, spreadsheets, presentation tools, graphic tools, browsers, etc. Open source has a wide range of rewall distributions to offer. offer. Some of them are pfsense, endian, untangle, ipre and, of course, IPCop. These can be installed on any computer system supported by the corresponding distro – the hardware conguration requirement is absolutely minimal. Even an old computer system with a Celeron CPU, 512 MB RAM and a 20 GB hard disk can run these rewalls. For the few who think open source has no support, some of these rewalls have paid support available. Readers, please think this over : Any properly congured rewall, even an open source rewall distribution, is certainly better than the best non-congured branded rewall!

SME network and security requirements Let us consider the typical set-up of a small and medium business – a head ofce with 25 users, branch ofces with 4 – 5 users, and a number of eld representatives. Let us try to summarise their IT network requirements.  Head ofce: Computer systems network Isolation of Internet exposed systems from the internal network Internet access control – website ltering, services ltering Gateway anti-virus and anti-spam  Branch ofces: Site to Site VPN Connectivity – for head ofce connectivity Internet access control – website ltering, services ltering  Field representatives: representatives: Host-to-network VPN connectivity (for travelling individuals)

 Admin

Internet

VPN Users

 ADSL modem (shown) 192.168.8.1 red 192.168.8.2 IPCop Firewall/Router  DYN DNS

orange 192.168.3.1

BLUE

green blue 192.168.2.1 192.168.1.1

Service

192.168.2.2

switch or hub switch or hub

email server  web server  192.168.3.2 192.168.3.3 ORANGE

192.168.1.10 Server 

192.168.1.52 192.168.1.50 192.168.1.54 Workstations

192.168.1.30 Printer 

GREEN

Figure 1: IPCop network

support, which is absolutely free!  Note: Gateway anti-virus and anti-spam module is currently not available for IPCop 2.0.6

 











Depending upon the number of users and the features required, the price for commercially available firewalls suitable for SME network ranges from Rs 10,000 to Rs 50,000. In addition, an annual subscription is required for continued support. The first few VPN client licences are free, while additional licences typically cost Rs 2000 per user. The firewall has a pre-defined lifecycle and one may have to purchase a new model after support for the current model expires. Against this, open source distros are available free and come with community support. Paid support/ maintenance is also available through local vendors.

IPCop 2.0.6, the open source rewall that runs on any old computer system and which meets most of these requirements, is simple to install and has excellent community

The IPCop firewall Let us try to understand a network that uses IPCop, with the help of a simple diagram (Figure 1). At the head ofce, the IPCop rewall will segregate the internal network as: Protected computers – Green network –192.168.1.0 Protected wireless network – Blue network – 192.168.2.0 DMZ computers (systems to be accessed from the internal network and from the Internet) – Orange network – 192.168.3.0 Depending upon the number of users in any remote branch, the connectivity will be established either by site-tosite VPN (for over ve users) or by site-to-host OpenVPN. These VPN users can access various services from the internal network—for example, a CRM/ERP software. If more than ve users from one branch wish to connect to the head ofce, at the same time, site-to-site VPN could be deployed using the IPCop rewall at that branch.

IPCop installation Start by downloading the ISO image of the latest stable release from http://ipcop.org/download.php. Burn it to a CD. IPCop installation is very simple and straightforward. You require a computer system with a minimum of two Ethernet cards, 512 MB RAM, a 20 GB hard disk or a 1 GB ash drive, and a CD-ROM drive for installation. Start the installation by booting from the IPCop CD. The first screen greets you with the IPCop mission AUGUST 2013 |

61

 Admin   Overview statement: ‘The bad packets stop here’. Press  Enter at the Boot prompt. Select the desired language; an information dialogue box tells you that pressing Cancel will reboot the system. Continue by clicking OK . Select the type of keyboard and the time zone, then enter the correct date and time, if required. Select the hard disk on which to install IPCop. Beware that all the data on this disk will be erased. Then click OK  to  to continue. Here, a very interesting screen greets you, irrespective of whether the installation is on the hard disk or on a flash drive. Select the desired disk type from  Flash/   Flas h/   Disk . The installer will create the required file systems and swap space, ask whether you have an older backup to be restored, and complete the installation. Reboot the system and continue to configure the box. Enter the host name and domain name, before selecting the Red (Internet) interface type and Ethernet card. Note that here you can configure any Ethernet card to any interface. In the earlier version, the first detected Ethernet was always assigned to Green, and it was tricky to change it later. Also, to identify the card easily, you can set it i n ‘LED blinking on’ mode. Assign Green, Red and Blue (if required) cards, and enter the Green IP address and subnet mask. Also, select the Red type, such as Static, PPPoE, etc. You You may enable DHCP if desired, and enter root, admin and backup passwords to complete this part of the configuration.

IPCop configuration Reboot the system and wait till you see the login screen (which can be used to log in as the root user). Use a client computer browser to open https://IPCopIP:8443 and authenticate yourself as the admin with admin with an earlier dened password. The rst step is to complete the set-up by conguring the Internet. This trial set-up uses PPPoE on the Red interface. Proceed to Network to  Network > Dialup, Dialup, and enter the PPPoE username and password. From the  Home screen (System (System > Home), Home ), click the Connect  button  button to connect to the Internet. Congure the IPCop Green IP as the default gateway and DNS in the client TCP/IP settings. The next important step is to upgrade to the latest release. Start by checking whether new updates are available; go to the System > Update page. Update  page. Select  Refresh Update Lis t and check for the availability of new updates. Do apply all the available patches. After the updates, IPCop will be upgraded to the latest version 2.0.6 (as of July 1, 2013). Configure client systems under Green and Blue with the corresponding IPCop interface IP address as their default gateway and DNS. An external DNS IP address can also be used. That is all... you can now start browsing securely. securely. To conclude this article, let me answer a few questions

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that are frequently asked by users at various organisations, and explain three real life scenarios where a properly congured rewall could have helped. Let me emphasise that not just a branded, but any properly congured rewall would have saved the day.

Firewall FAQs “ All our o ur system s ystemss have hav e anti-vir ant i-vir us. Do D o we require a network firewall?” firewall? ” Yes, anti-virus is not a substitute for a network firewall. “ All our systems have a host-based rewall. rewall. Do we require a network rewall?” rewall? ” Yes. First, conguring host-based rewalls on multiple systems itself is a big task. Also, these rewalls sit only on operating systems and do not protect other network devices such as network printers, access points, Network Attached Attached Storage (NAS) boxes, etc. “Since we have a rewall costing Rs 100,000 installed in our network, aren’t our systems protected?” protected? ” Not sure. While auditing, I have observed that these firewalls are not configured properly. The best approach to configuring any firewall is to deny all traffic from the firewall and allow only the desired traffic by creating rules, one by one. Such an approach generates a lot of reconfiguration calls after installation is completed and hence is not pr eferred by many. You You may buy or install any good firewall. Much depends on its configuration rather than anything else. “ Is it possible to lter https trafc trafc using IPCop?” IPCop?” Yes, let me try to explain. When you browse a http website, all data travels in clear text format. In simple language, this means an intruder can sniff this trafc and read through your login ID and password. To overcome this, https websites use an asymmetric encryption mechanism so that the trafc is sent in encrypted form from the browser to the Web server, thus ensuring its condentiality. Now, since this trafc is encrypted, even a rewall can’t read it! Then the question is, how can it be ltered? There are two ways: Blocking the https protocol will disable all https traffic —even all required https websites will be blocked. You can allow various sites by finding their IP addresses and creating corresponding ‘allow’ rules. This method is tedious, specially considering that many websites have multiple IP ranges, and a few website IP addresses change. Blocking all direct https trafc and allowing it only via Advanced Proxy (inbuilt in IPCop). Here, all browsers will have to be congured with proxy settings. The https proxy functions as follows: 1. Browser https trafc is terminated by the IPCop proxy (instead of the destination Web Web server). 2. The URL lter reads reads the requested URL. 



Overview 3. If the URL URL is on the blacklist, the request is dropped. 4. If the URL is not on the blacklist, a new new connection connection is initiated from IPCop to the destination Web server. 5. A reply from the Web server is terminated on IPCop. 6. IPCop forwards the reply to the corresponding Web browser. Here, please observe that the trafc is decrypted and re-encrypted by IPCop. This results in a slight reduction in browsing speed, and technically, IPCop can read https trafc. But this is the way all https URL lters work.

Real life scenarios Here are some real life scenarios where a properly congured rewall could have helped … Sasser worm: Sasser attacks the vulnerable Microsoft SMB port 445. Once affected, the system shuts down in one minute, displaying a count-down window. window. If you are really interested in experiencing Sasser, try this: Install Windows XP without the service pack, and connect your s ystem to the Internet directly – in a short while, the system will get infected by Sasser. (Be very careful while you play around!) This is because, some Sassers are still in the wild and try affecting vulnerable systems even today! Here, putting your system behind a network-based firewall will definitely help. Port 445 of the internal system will not be accessible from the Internet and the worm will be blocked by the firewall before entering the Internal network. CodeRed worm: On July 13, 2001, a number of computer systems running the Microsoft IIS Web server on Windows NT or Windows 2000 were affected by a worm called CodeRed. It is believed that about 300,000 servers were affected on Day One! The worm was designed in a very peculiar manner. From the 1st of any

 Admin

month to the 13th, it would try to spread to random IIS Web servers. Once a Web server was infected, it would in turn generate a lot of traffic towards the Internet searching for IIS servers randomly, ultimately infecting the vulnerable ones. A properly congured rewall denying any trafc to be initiated from the Web server towards the Internet could have curtailed the spread of this worm. Also, a Web Web server should only reply to the incoming Web Web requests and should not be allowed to browse the Internet. In this case, infection of vulnerable IIS Web servers (even those sitting behind a rewall) was inevitable, but a properly congured rewall could have denitely stopped the spread of CodeRed from the affected Web server.  ISP connectivity issues: In an earlier time, one ISP started its services from a central area of Pune with much fanfare. A horrifying fact was that all connected networks were not separated at the ISP end – in simple terms, double clicking on  Netwo rk Neighbo Ne ighbourhood urhood  made all the systems connected to this ISP visible and, of course, the data on them accessible! Here, deploying a firewall would have assured separation

References [1] Google search for IPCOP LFY  [2] IPCop official website: www.ipcop.org [3] A great IPCop forum: www.ipcops.com

By: Rajesh M Deodhar  The author is a BE in Industrial Electronics, Electronics, as well as a CISA, CISSP, CISSP, CCNA and DCL. He has been working as an IS auditor and network security trainer-consultant for the last two decades.  You  You can contact him at [email protected] [email protected]

OSFY Magazine Attractions During 2013-14 MONTH

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AUGUST 2013 | 63

 Admin

Let's Try

Secure Your Network with Firewall Builder  A firewall firewall isolates a trusted, trusted, secure secure internal network network from from another network network like like the Internet, which is not regarded as either trusted or secure. Firewall Builder is an open source product that makes it easy to configure firewalls.

I

n computing, hardening is the process of securing a system by reducing its areas of vulnerability. This is done by removing needless software, unnecessary logins and unnecessary services. There are various other methods of hardening, which may involve applying a patch to the kernel, closing network ports, setting up intrusion-detection/ prevention systems and rewalls. A rewall protects the resources of a private network from users of other networks. Organisations that allow their employees to access the Internet install a rewall to prevent unauthorised entities from accessing their own core services and core data, which is often condential. Policy is the term often used in relation to rewalls. A policy can be described as a set of business rules or restrictions that are implemented with the use of a rewall. One of the rewall’s methods is to screen requests to make sure that they come from acceptable sources (domain names and IP addresses). Many companies make rewall

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| AUGUST 2013

products that include features such as automatic alarms at given thresholds of attack, logging, reporting, and a graphical user interface to manage the rewall. Firewall Builder has features such as a drag-and-drop GUI, shared objects and search-and-replace. It is available under GPL; its GUI is based on QT, QT, and hence requires the QT runtime libraries and development packages if you wish to build from source. Firewall Builder is based on the concept of objects. With this concept, users create objects such as IP networks and IP addresses to represent entities that will be used in firewall rules. Objects are stored in libraries. There are two object libraries that come with Firewall Builder. The User library stores objects that the user creates while the Standard library, which is a read-only library, contains hundreds of pre-defined objects such as common TCP and UDP services. Once you create a policy with firewall rules in Firewall Builder, the very next thing you need to do is

Let's Try

 Admin

E-Commerce Server 

Internet

Public Cloud Firewall

Firewall

DMZ

Internet

Mail Server 

Firewall

Mail Server 

Figure 1: Firewall Private

to compile the policy. This converts your rules from the Firewall Builder syntax to the command syntax used by the target firewall platf orm. You You need to r ecompile the policy in case you change the rules of a firewall.

Cloud

Figure 2: Firewall and Cloud Computing

Features  

It generates platform-specic rewall commands. Typing rewall commands is an old school approach;



Firewall Builder allows you to create objects such as an IP address to represent your HR server. Groups of objects can be created and can be used to create

You can mail us at [email protected]. You can send this form to ‘The Editor’ - D-87/1, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-1, New Delhi-20. Phone No. 011-26810601/02/03, Fax: 011-26817563

AUGUST 2013 |

65

 Admin

Create Firewall

Let's Try

Defne Firewall Settings

Predefned Template

Import an existing rewall's rules

Manually create a new rewall

Defne Objects

Objects that match the devices, networks, and services

Pre-confgured Objects

Predened TCP services objects for  HTTP

Predened TCP services objects for  FTP

Confgure Policy

Defne Rules

Basic rules in Precongured Templates

Customize Policies from scratch

Congure Rules on newly created Objects

Generate Confguration File

Firewall rules in correct command syntax

Verication for  Errors in Rules

Secure connection using SSH and SCP to run required commands

Secure connection using SSH and SCP to run required commands

Compile Rules Deploy Confguration

Identify Target device

Optimization of  Commands

Done

Figure 3: How Firewall Builder works

 





a rewall rule. Easy search facility to nd where objects have been used. Conguration versioning – this is a facility to automatically roll back on the previous rewall conguration.  Pre-dened templates for rewall rules and familiar deployment scenarios. Start-up scripts – pre- and post-rewall scripts.

Supported platforms Firewall Builder supports policy conguration and management on Linux iptables, Cisco ASA/PIX, Cisco Firewall Service Module (FWSM), Cisco router access control lists (ACL), OpenBSD  pf , HP ProCurve ACL, FreeBSD ipfw and ipfw and iplter. iplter.

providers allow. For Red Hat, Fedora, OpenSUSE, and others, download and install the Firewall Builder R PM, e.g., fwbuilder-5.1.0.3599-1.el5.i386.rpm You need to install libxml2 v2.4.10 or newer, libxslt v1.0.7  or newer, ucd-snmp or ucd-snmp or net-snmp, net-snmp, and QT 4.3.x, 4.4.x, 4.5.x, 4.6.x to 4.6.x to satisfy dependencies. Navigate to your download directory and execute the following:  rpm -i fwbuilder-5.1.0.3599-1.el5.i386.rpm

For Ubuntu, download and install the Firewall Builder package, e.g., fwbuilder_5.1.0.3599-ubuntu-precise-1_  i386.deb You need to install QT 4.3.x, 4.4.x, 4.5.x, and 4.5.x,  and 4.6.x to satisfy dependencies. Navigate to your download directory and execute the following:   dpkg –i fwbuilder_5.1.0.3599-ubuntu-precise-1_i386.deb

For a Windows installation, double-click the  Download fwbuilder-5.1.0.3599.exe (18.0 MB) link, MB)  link, then follow the step-by-step instructions in the installation wizard. Figure 3 shows how Firewall Builder works.

Firewall Builder vs UFW Firewall Builder 

Firewall and Cloud Computing Scenario: For

an e-commerce application, secure one or multiple public-facing Web servers. Regardless of whether that server is situated in DMZ, Amazon’s Cloud, Rackspace Cloud, or in Private Cloud, i t requires the same level of risk management. Considering this factor, it may not be important where the Web server is hosted. A single firewall policy for Web Server and Database Server can be enforced. Hierarchical policies can be made and enforced as per your convenience to make the application more secure. In this situation, the easiest implementation implementation is to leverage the rewall built into each operating system. If we dene the organisation’s rules within the host-based rewall as per policies, the risk mitigation policy is not dependent on the logical location, and hence it can scale as required. All we need is a good tool for managing the built-in rewall without complexities.

How to install Firewall Builder in a Cloud environment In Private Cloud, Firewall Builder can be installed in various operating systems and be used according to the environment or the access to the virtual machine that cloud service

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| AUGUST 2013

Website

 

Uncomplicated firewall (UFW)

  http://www.fwbuilder.  https://launchpad.net/  org/ ufw 

License

GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

Interface

GUI

Command Line

Stable release

0.33

5

Now that you know what Firewall Builder is all about, go ahead and use it to protect yourself and your organisation from unwanted intrusions.

References [1]  http://www.fwbuilder.org/ [1]  [2]   http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/Firewall-Builder  [2]

By: Mitesh Soni  The author is a Technical Technical Lead at iGate Global Global Solutions Limited. He is in the Cloud Services (Research and Innovation) Group and loves to write about new technologies. Blog: http://  clean-clouds.com and https://abcdofcloud.wordpress.com and https://abcdofcloud.wordpress.com

Let's Try

 Admin

Analyse Your Network Packets with LibPCAP Data on a network flows in the form of packets, which are entities that carry your data across the network. These packets are routed from one router to another by intelligent nodes. LibPCAP is a library that lets you ‘capture’ these packets.

P

acket capture lets you intercept and entirely grab any packet (with all its headers) that is seen by the network device. Packet capture is done regardless of which port the packet is sent to, or even regardless of the host. LibPCAP provides an implementation independent library that lets you access the underlying packet capture facility provided by your operating system. Hence, libPCAP is used to capture packets, directly off the network cards.

in this article, is a working C/C++ compiler (I have used gcc in this article) and libPCAP. To install libPCAP on Ubuntu, you can simply run the following command in a terminal: apt-get install libpcap-dev

In other distributions, you can download the source package for libPCAP from http://www.tcpdump.org/#la http://www.tcpdump.org/#latesttestrelease and build it with the following commands:

Pre-requisites There are a few things you should know before you can implement the code provided in this article. Here is a list of things you might want to review before proceeding to read this article. 1. Basics of C programming 2. The basics basics of networking and its terminology

./confgure

Getting started

Understanding libPCAP

The only thing you need to set up, to run the codes provided

Let us have a look at the structure of the PCAP packet sniffer

make make install

Now that we have set up everything we need, let us try and understand libPCAP better.

AUGUST 2013 |

67

 Admin

Let's Try

that we are trying to design. With this, I'll highlight the functions libPCAP will need to perform. First, nd out the device you want to sniff on. In Linux, this can be eth0 (ethernet), eth0 (ethernet), or wlan0 (wireless). wlan0 (wireless). This may vary based on your network connection. LibPCAP can automatically nd which device you want to s niff on. Next, set up PCAP and initialise it, to sniff on the device you found or set up in the previous step. You can then set up lters, to capture only the kind of trafc you are interested in. When you specify a lter, then you must compile it, for correctness, before you apply it. Finally, Finally, make libPCAP grab packets in a loop, until your needs are satised.

Opening the device for sniffing It is remarkably simple to set up your device. If you know your device string (eth0, ( eth0, wlan0, etc), wlan0, etc), you can set it directly, or pass it as a parameter to your program. If you want libPCAP to nd your default device, use pcap_lookupdev use  pcap_lookupdev (char *errbuf). *errbuf). The parameter errbuf  is  is buffer memory (array), which stores the description of the error in case the command fails. Most libPCAP commands let you pass this array as a parameter, parameter, and it universally performs the same function. The code to nd out the default device is given below:

The values of the parameters in the above dened function are as follows. • device: This argument stores the device specied above (the device to be sniffed on). • snaplen: This is an an integer integer that denes the maximum number of bytes to be captured. • Promisc: This is an integer that sets the device to work in promiscuous promiscuous mode. Promiscuous Promiscuous mode sniffs all trafc on the wire -- this could be all the trafc on the network. The downside of using promiscuous mode is that it can be easily detected, and the host may be taxed for resources. In non-promiscuous mode, the sniffer only captures packets that are relevant to the host, which means that only trafc that is to, from or routed by the host will be captured. • to_ms: This is an integer that species the read time out in milliseconds (a value of 0 species no time out). • errbuf: This stores the error message in case the call fails. Notice that the function returns a pointer value of type  pcap_t. This  pcap_t. This function returns a value that is your session handler. handler. The code to open the connection is given below: #include #include

#include

int main()

#include

{

int main()

char *dev,errbuf[ *dev,errbuf[PCAP_ERRBUF_ PCAP_ERRBUF_SIZE]; SIZE];

{

dev=pcap_lookupdev(errbuf); char *dev,errbuf *dev,errbuf[PCAP_ERRBUF [PCAP_ERRBUF_SIZE]; _SIZE];

pcap_t *handle;

dev=pcap_lookupdev(errbuf);

handle=pcap_open_live(d handle=pcap _open_live(dev,BUFSIZ,1, ev,BUFSIZ,1,0,errbuf); 0,errbuf);

printf("Device: printf("Devi ce: %s\n",dev);

return 0;

return 0;

}

}

The size of the error buffer errbuf buffer  errbuf is dened to be PCAP_  ERRBUF_SIZE. This is a value predened in the pca the  pcap.h p.h header  header le. Compile the above code with the following command: gcc code1.c -lpcap

-lpcap is -lpcap is the linker directive to link the associated libPCAP shared library library,, and must be used every time you want to compile code that uses libPCAP. You may also need to run your compiled program with root privileges. Alternatively, Alternatively, if you know the device you want to sniff on, you can simply call the function: pcap_lookup with the dev = “* device id for the device you want to sniff on*” eg – dev=“wlan0”

The value of BUFSIZ is dened in  pcap.h.  pcap.h . In the above code, you are passing the value of the device you want to sniff on, which was found by the pcap_lookupdev the  pcap_lookupdev function,  function, while you are setting the maximum number of bytes to be captured to be BUFSIZ, the packet snifng mode to be promiscuous, and no time out on read time.

Filtering traffic At times, you will be interested in only certain types of trafc, rather than in capturing all packets. Here is where lters come in. They let you only capture certain kinds of trafc. For example, you may only want packets from a specic protocol like UDP or TCP. Now, one may wonder why you shouldn't use if/else statements? if/else statements? Well, you could, but lters are easier to use, and are more efcient. Before you apply your lter, you must compile it. The expression for the lter is a string. Compile it with the following function:

To open the device for snifng, use: int pcap_compile(pcap_t *handler,struct bpf_program pcap_t * pcap_open_li pcap_open_live ve (char *device,int snaplen,int promisc,int to_ms,char *errbuf)

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*lter,char * lt,int opt, bpf_u_int32 netmask)

Let's Try The parameters passed to  pcap_compile are as follows: • handler – This is the session handler obtained earlier. • lter – This is the location where you store the compiled lter. • lt – This is the string that that represents represents your lter. The tcpdump man pages document the syntax of these lters well. • opt – Species whether the compiled lter should be optimised or not. • netmask – Species the network mask that your lter applies to. Once the lter has been compiled, you must now apply it. Use the following function to do so:

 Admin

the packet to be captured. This includes the time it was sniffed, the packet length, and the length of the specic portion of the packet captured (in case it is fragmented). The function returns a pointer of type u_char to a packet that is described by ‘h’. The code to use the  pcap_next  is  is given below: #include #include int main() { char dev[]="wlan0 dev[]="wlan0",errbuf[PCA ",errbuf[PCAP_ERRBUF_SIZ P_ERRBUF_SIZE]; E]; pcap_t *handle; handle=pcap_open_live(d handle=pcap _open_live(dev,BUFSIZ,1, ev,BUFSIZ,1,0,errbuf); 0,errbuf); struct bpf_program lt;

int set_lter(pcap_t *handler, struct bpf_program *lter)

char lter_app[]="port 80"; bpf_u_int32 mask,net;

…where handler is the session handler, and lter is the location where your compiled lter resides. This is straightforward. The following code documents how lters must be used:

pcap_lookupnet(dev,&net pcap_lookup net(dev,&net,&mask,errbu ,&mask,errbuf); f); pcap_compile(handle,&l pcap_compil e(handle,&lt,lter_app, t,lter_app,0,net); 0,net); pcap_setlter(handle,&lt); struct pcap_pkthdr header;

#include

const u_char *packet;

#include

packet=pcap_next(handle packet=pcap _next(handle,&header); ,&header);

int main()

printf("%d \n",header.l \n",header.len); en);

{

pcap_close(handle); char *dev,errbuf *dev,errbuf[PCAP_ERRBUF [PCAP_ERRBUF_SIZE]; _SIZE]; dev=pcap_lookupdev(errbuf);

return 0; }

pcap_t *handle; handle=pcap_open_live(de handle=pcap_ open_live(dev,BUFSIZ,1,0 v,BUFSIZ,1,0,errbuf); ,errbuf); struct bpf_program lt; char lter_app[]="port 80"; bpf_u_int32 mask,net; pcap_lookupnet(dev,&net, pcap_lookupn et(dev,&net,&mask,errbuf &mask,errbuf); ); pcap_compile(handle,&lt pcap_compile (handle,&lt,lter_app,0 ,lter_app,0,net); ,net); pcap_setlter(handle,&lt); return 0; }

In the above code, the function  pcap_lookupnet   is used  pcap_lookupnet  is to identify the network details, like the IP and network mask, given the device. Notice that the variable  lter_app stores the string “port 80”, which is your lter string, which species that only trafc on port 80 should be captured. Port 80 is the TCP port. The syntax for other lter commands is documented in the tcpdump man pages.

In the above code, you captured the packet and printed the length of the packet captured. Also note that, in the above code, the device string has been set to use the wlan0 connection to listen to packets on the wireless device. To see the list of available devices on your Linux system, you can use the ifcong the  ifcong command  command at the terminal, and set your device accordingly. In practice, very few sniffers use  pcap_next  directly.  directly. They usually use  pcap_loop  or pcap_dispatch  to capture multiple packets. They use callback  functions.   functions. If you have worked with Javascript, you might be familiar with a  function. It can be understood as a function that is callback  function. called, every time an event occurs. The functions  pcap_loop and pcap_dispatch  call the callback,  every time a packet is captured. The signature for  pcap_loop  is given below: int pcap_loop(pcap_t *handler,int cnt,pcap_handler callback,u_char *user)

Actual sniffing Now that you have your lters, session and device set up, you need to actually start capturing packets, which you can do using the following function: u_char * pcap_next(pcap_t *handler,struct pcap_pkthdr *h)

…where ‘handler’ is the session handler mentioned earlier and ‘h’ is a structure that will store a pointer to information about

The parameters for  pcap_loop are dened below: • handler – This is the session handler. • cnt – This is the number of packets which should be captured by pcap_loop. • callback – This is the callback function specied only by identier, without the parentheses. • user – These are some additional arguments that we as users might want to pass to the callback  function.  function. AUGUST 2013 |

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 Admin

Let's Try

 pcap_dispatch is  pcap_dispatch is identical in usage. The only difference between pcap_loop between pcap_loop and  and pcap_dispatch  pcap_dispatch is  is that pcap_dispatch that pcap_dispatch will only process the rst batch of packets it receives from the system, while pcap_loop while pcap_loop will  will keep processing packets until the count runs out. The callback  function  function should have the signature, which should be as follows: void callback_function(u_char *arg, const struct pcap_pkthdr *pkthdr,const *pkthdr,con st u_char *packet)

The arguments to the callback  function  function are as follows: • arg - This is the list of user parameters you passed to  pcap_loop • pkthdr—This parameter contains information about the packet captured. The structure of the  pcap_pkthdr is given below: struct pcap_pkthdr{ struct timeval ts; bpf_u_int32 caplen;

Figure 1: Output

bpf_u_int32 len; }

char dev[]="wlan0 dev[]="wlan0"; "; char errbuf[PCAP_ errbuf[PCAP_ERRBUF_SIZE] ERRBUF_SIZE]; ;

•

packet – This is a pointer to the rst byte of data containing the entire packet. As you might imagine, the packet isn't a string, but rather a collection of structures. Now that we have established the basics, we can proceed to build a small packet sniffer using libPCAP. libPCAP. The code for the packet sniffer is given below:

pcap_t* descr; const u_char *packet; struct pcap_pkthdr hdr; struct ether_header *eptr;

/* net/etherne net/ethernet.h t.h */

struct bpf_program fp;

/* hold compiled program */

bpf_u_int32 maskp,netp;

/* subnet mask */

pcap_lookupnet(dev, pcap_lookup net(dev, &netp, &maskp, errbuf); #include

descr = pcap_open_live(dev, BUFSIZ, 1,-1, errbuf);

#include

pcap_compile(descr, &fp, "port 80", 0, netp);

#include

pcap_setlter(descr, pcap_setlt er(descr, &fp);

void callback_function(u_char callback_function(u_char *arg, const struct pcap_pkthdr*

pcap_loop(descr, pcap_loop(d escr, -1, callback_fun callback_function, ction, NULL);

pkthdr,const pkthdr,cons t u_char* packet)

return 0;

{

} int i=0; static int count=0; printf("Count: printf("Cou nt: %d\n", ++count); printf("Size: printf("Siz e: %d\n", pkthdr->len); printf("Payload:\n"); for(i=0;ilen;i for(i=0;i

len;i++) ++) { if(isprint(packet[i])) printf("%c ",packet[i]) ",packet[i]); ; else printf(" . ",packet[i]) ",packet[i]); ;

In the callback_function, we callback_function, we are only displaying the packet number, number, size of the packet and the packet payload. The output of running the above code is given in Figure 1. With this, I conclude the introduction to programming with libPCAP. You have learned some of the basic concepts behind network sniffing. Do test and experiment with libPCAP, libPCAP, to understand its full potential. There are also other sniffers you could experiment with, namely tcpdump and wireshark.

if((i%16==0 && i!=0) || i==pkthdr-> i==pkthdr->len-1) len-1) printf("\n"); } } int main(int argc,char **argv) { int i;

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By: Sahil Chelaramani  The author is an open source activist, activist, who loves Linux, Python and Android. He is a fourth year student at the Goa Engineering College (GEC). In the author's own words, “Beyond anything else, I love to code.”

Overview

 Admin

The Benefits of OpenSSH The SSH service is very widely used in open source infrastructure set-ups. Due to its small footprint on the network, as well as the ease of installation and maintenance, SSH replaces many remote shells in data centres today. OpenSSH is a very famous flavour of this protocol, and this article talks about its benefits and the challenges associated with it.

O

penSSH is free Secure Shell software that provides great services in terms of protocol-based connectivity as well as security. It replaces almost all legacy applications such as Telnet, rlogin, etc. It is important to understand how the protocol works, and the bells and whistles provided in terms of features. Please refer to Figure 1, which shows the protocol stack forming the OpenSSH protocol services. For those who know how Telnet works, it is easy to understand the working operations of OpenSSH. Similar to Telnet, it runs as a daemon service on Linux servers, while the client uses an SSH client utility such as  putty  to connect to the server. SSH is available on Windows as well as UNIX platforms, and is widely used on Linux infrastructures. By default, it uses TCP port 22 for communication. However, unlike the Telnet protocol, OpenSSH is primarily used to ensure

data security and, to that end, it uses cryptography to authenticate the client and the server, and also for data transfer purposes. This ensures confidentiality and integrity of the data that flows on the wire. Its communication has three basic steps—the client-server handshake, authentication and secure data exchange. During the handshake phase, both the sides exchange information about the OpenSSH protocol version and the cipher algorithms they support (which are typically the combinations of asymmetric and symmetric encryption, as well as hashing algorithms and compression algorithms). Unlike SSL, in this protocol, the server sends the rst data block to the client. As for authentication, the server is authenticated using the host key, whereas the client typically stores the key ngerprint at some predened location and validates it later in the process. Please see Table 1, which shows the supported client authentication methods. AUGUST 2013 |

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 Admin   Overview

SSH-ConnectionManagement TCP Forwarding, Session Multiplexing SSH-User Auth Layer  PAM and password based authentication SSH-Transport Management Key based authentication and key creation TCP IP

Installing OpenSSH OpenSSH can be downloaded from openssh.com and openssh.com and the installation steps are as easy as for any other binary installation on a Linux distro. On Windows machines, running the installable exe le guides you through the steps. Remember to check if OpenSSH already exists on the machine; this is because many open source distributions come equipped with OpenSSH as a default SSH daemon. It is also important to secure the OpenSSH protocol, because, by default, it runs services in an unsecured fashion. Securing it involves studying and manipulating multiple parameters parameters in the conguration les, which was covered in some articles in ealier issues of OSFY.

Figure 1: OpenSSH Protocol Stack

Features of OpenSSH

Table 1

Client authentication method

Description

Public authentication

Client and server have key pairs and exchange public keys during the authentication process

Password authentication

Plain text password for the given login user is used for authentication authentication

Host-based authentication

Limits client access to a particular host/hosts

Keyboard authentication

Works on the basis of pre-stored security question and answer

People often mistake OpenSSH for a single utility installed on the server side, which is not true. In fact, it contains many small executables, each for a specic feature or purpose. Table 2 lists such important tools from the protocol stack. Table 2

  sshd ssh   sftp scp   ssh-keygen

Server daemon service Client program to connect to daemon Secure FTP for file transfer Secure file copy utility Helps create keys for public key and host key-based authentication

Now let’s look at the operations of each component as shown in Figure 1. The bottom layer that rides on the TCP protocol is the transport management layer, layer, which is very important, because it takes care of crypto operations such as key generation and management. The next one is the user authentication layer, layer, which is responsible for authenticating end users to the sshd dæmon services, dæmon services, which are hosted on the server side. Once authentication is complete, a secure tunnel is created for data communication. This layer also ensures that you can use one of the many available ways of authentication such as the legacy username and password style, or the more advanced smart cards. The topmost layer is connection management, management, which adds features such as session multiplexing and also ensures additional security by blocking application layered attacks.

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While there are many features available in OpenSSH, let’s discuss those that are important from the security and operations point of view. view. First and foremost, it supports almost all operating systems available, right from the legacy openbsd project to the most recent Linux or Windows distribution. As mentioned mentioned earlier, earlier, it is an open source protocol stack and available under free licensing. OpenSSH has strong authentication capabilities. This is achieved by various levels of encryption as well as a few built-in features that block security holes, especially in the areas of routing and DNS spoong. It also provides very strong encryption standards such as 3DES, AES, etc, which make it a perfect t for industry standard installations. It offers protocol privacy privacy,, by which all authentication happens seamlessly and in a manner that is transparent to the user and systems, but at the same time, is a robust and verbose logging system that ensures audit trails of each activity. activity. The way security is designed in the protocol is as if it never trusts the network or the remote connection. As for the utilities, SFTP and SCP help copy les securely over the SSH tunnel between clients, or the client and server. OpenSSH also supports data compression which reduces chatter on the network, thus making more bandwidth available to other nodes. It also supports protocol tunnelling, whereby legacy protocols such as Telnet or tftp can tftp can piggy-back over an existing authenticated ssh tunnel. For advanced IT implementation, most secure protocols such as Kerberos and AFS ticket passing are also supported.

Summary While OpenSSH is a versatile, robust and secure protocol, it is imperative to tune it up in order to ensure security. OpenSSH is available on all Linux distros as well as various versions of Windows. Read up on the documentation to understand the right and secure way of installing and conguring the protocol. By: Prashant Phatak   The author h as over 22 years of ex perience in t he field of IT hardware, networking, Web technologies and IT security. He runs his own firm, Valency Networks, in India (www. valencynetworks.com), providing consultancy in IT security design, security penetration testing, IT audit, infrastructure technology and business process management. He can be reached at prashant@valency networks.com.

Insight

Developers

Secure Your PHP Application In the open source world, PHP programming is always given first preference due to its availability and flexibility. It is a powerful server side scripting language and provides a robust framework to create c reate versatile Web Web applications. applic ations. However However,, a few recent virus attacks on PHP-based websites have shown that this power can be diminished if the programmer doesn’t doesn’t implement a few important security measures. This article talks about important challenges in PHP programming from the security point of view and provides solutions to avoid or mitigate those risks.

L

et’s quickly look at how PHP works. Typically, PHP runs on an Apache Web server; however, it can also run on commercial Web platforms such as Microsoft IIS. PHP is a set of libraries installed on the Web server side, which forms a framework to process Web requests. It also has the necessary bells and whistles to perform back-end database connectivity and to call Web services. An important part of its engine is to generate dynamic HTML based on the program being executed and communicate it back to the browser over the http connection. PHP does not process HTML, CSS templates or JavaScript. This is because those are client-side scripts and hence are rendered and processed on the browser side. First, let’s talk about website security, in general. No security can be possible without a complete solution around a Web Web server. For example, a properly congured rewall, hardened operating system, locked down Web server and back-end database are essential for end to end website security. PHP, PHP, from the security perspective, is a versatile programming language; however, it doesn’t provide any inherent, built-in automatic means to secure code. It is up to the programmer to

understand security problems and ensure that the code handles those situations properly. When we talk about security in a Web application, it boils down to two categories—remote and local. Local exploitation is caused due to the incorrect or imperfect set-up of Web servers and the conguration of the operating system on which it runs. Remote exploitation takes place when malicious users who know how to exploit code level vulnerabilities make their way through the intricate details of the Web Web deployment system. There are ways to mitigate risks ris ks in both these categories. Please study Table 1, which shows the typical security problems with examples. Table 1

Problem area

Possible exploit

Forms processing

Form submit spoofing

Sessions

Session hijacking

Databases

SQL injection

Shared hosts

File system exposure

AUGUST 2013 |

73

Developers   Insight PHP security Refer to Table 1 and note that there are many problem areas with possible exploits; however, this article is limited to those that are found frequently. Forms processing is a vital area of many websites. Pages such as 'Contact us' and 'Brochure download' can contain simple text boxes and a ‘forms submit’ button. When the user fills in the information and submits the f orm, the information entered makes its way to the server. If this information is not being parsed for errors and is not being validated for malicious attacks, it can lead to trouble. For example, a non-validating form can accept JavaScript, which can get executed on the server. The same applies to XML and HTML content. Remember that the form is always on the browser side and, hence, is very easy to re-construct to launch an attack. To elaborate further, let’s say that a form submit accepts an email address, to which an email bulletin will be sent every day and, hence, the email address will be stored in a database. If the malicious users enter a space character or leave it blank, they would make their way to the database, if not validated. There are two problems here; first, the database will have bogus blank entries and second, when the email server does its daily job, it will have to deal with sending emails to blank addresses, which can possibly create problems on the email server itself. In PHP the form submitted values can be intercepted on the receiving page by using the $_POST function. These values can then be parsed and the user can be directed to an error page in the event of incorrect form entries. Let’s look at another example. Let’s suppose a form that accepts the date range is to be submitted. The program is then supposed to use that information to construct a SQL query to pull up data records in that date range. In this case, if the validation for the date range is not performed to restrict specic dates, malicious attempts could be made to provide a very wide range, resulting in a SQL query that will return millions of results, thus taking down the database server and the website. Non-validation of forms can also result in cross-site scripting attacks, as well as HTTP request spoong attacks. Speaking of database related security problems, please note that the PHP engine works with the Web Web server’s operating system to connect to the database and perform SQL operations. There can be security challenges in the way the SQL server is accessed. For example, the SQL connection must be opened on the PHP server side scripting, which is enclosed in the  tags. It is a common mistake to perform SQL connectivity via JavaScript, which exposes the database user name and password on the client side, thus compromising security. security. Second, if the SQL query is being constructed based on the user’s input through forms, it is important to validate the entries as explained above. If not done, it can lead to an SQL injection attack. Let’s look at the example of a form accepting

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a user name in the form, which is then being inserted into the database table by using the PHP code given below:

If we carefully examine the code, it shows that the username being accessed through the submitted form is being inserted without any validation. Now consider what would happen if a hacker writes DROP TABLE or any other intrusive SQL command instead of the user name. Since there is no validation, it will get executed, thus causing data loss. This is the simplest form of SQL injection and, unfor tunately, even today, most websites are still vulnerable to this type of attack. When a browser connects to a Web server running PHP, it establishes a session that is used by the server to deliver the page and its contents, which are requested. Sessions are important because they help the PHP engine in a way to preserve data across subsequent actions. This further helps programmers to build more sophisticated and user friendly applications. Each session contains its own identier and there are multiple functions available in PHP to deal with the session and its variables. The security problem with a session is that it can be either guessed, predicted or destroyed. For example, if a PHP-based website stores the logged in user’s username in the session, it is absolutely important that on each page request the username is checked. PHP provides the $_Session function to retrieve session variables, and it should be used properly for this purpose. If this sort of parsing is not done, then an advanced hacker can steal the session and impersonate the user, causing data theft.

Summary As explained earlier, PHP security is not a built-in feature that can simply be turned on. It is a consolidated effort by those administering the Web server and the operating system. Besides that, secure programming practices demand that developers understand the implications of their coding and mitigate risks by taking correct security measures. PHP provides many functions that should be studied and implemented. This is especially true for shopping cart websites that are hosted on Apache-PHP engines. By: Supriya Awati Supriya is a PHP developer, developer, loves Web programming and has a passion for server and client side scripting. She is fascinated with the idea of combining Facebook and open source tools to make programmers’ lives easier. She works at Valency Networks (www.valencynetworks.com ) as a cyber security product designer and can be reached at  supriya@valencynetwor  [email protected] ks.com.

Let's Try

 Admin

Set Up a Certificate Authority in RHEL5 in RHEL5 Security certificates are widely used for authentication. This article explores how to set up a Certificate Authority in RHEL5.

S

ecurity certicates are basically used for authentication purposes and you must have encountered a number of websites that use them. These digital certicates are issued by a Certicate Authority. Such certicates contain the public key of the applicants and various other information regarding their identity. In this article, we’ll discuss the setting up of a Certicate Authority in RHEL and certicate signing. Before we start, just make sure you have openssl installed on your system and follow the steps listed below: 1. Open the  /etc/pk  /etc/pki/tl i/tls/op s/openss enssl.c l.cnf  nf  le  le in a text editor and write down the following lines under the [ CA_default ] section:

countryName_default=IN stateOrProvinceName_def stateOrProv inceName_default=West ault=West Bengal localityName_default=Kolkata

These elds are used during the time of certicate creation. 3. Now it is time to create your working working directories using the following command: mkdir –p /etc/pki/my /etc/pki/myCA/{certs,cr CA/{certs,crl,newcerts,p l,newcerts,private} rivate}

4. Create a certicate index index le using the command that follows:

dir=/etc/pki/myCA certifcate=$dir/my-ca.crt

touch /etc/pki/CA/index.txt /etc/pki/CA/index.txt

crl=$dir/my-ca.crl private_key=$dir/private/my-ca.key

You can nd the purpose of each of these objects in the / etc/pki/tls/openssl.cnf le. 2. Under the [ req_distinguished_name ] section, ] section, you can specify the default values for several elds:

5. To create another another le for the next certicate certicate serial number to be issued, use the following command:  echo 01 > /etc/pki/myCA/serial /etc/pki/myCA/serial

Conti nued o n p age 81. 81... .. AUGUST 2013 |

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Open Gurus   Insight

Getting Started with the MinnowBoard With the embedded market being flooded with open source hardware boards, it’s tough finding one that not only suits your budget, computing power needs, etc, but is also backed by a strong community, beginner friendly documentation and a great out-of-thebox experience. The author’s search finally ended at MinnowBoard, which successfully lived up to all his expectations, from a hobbyist’s point of view.

Angstrom OS) Size 10.66 cm x 10.66 cm (4.2” x 4.2”) 

Resources While playing around with MinnowBoard, you will have a number of doubts. The following links would be the best places to start looking for answers: Websites: http://www.elinux.org/Minnowb http://www.elinux.org/Minnowboard oard http://www.minnowboard.org/   IRC: #minnowboard

Operating systems supported by MinnowBoard At the time of writing this article, Angstrom is the ofcially supported operating system. Support for Android, Ubuntu and others will follow soon.

Where to buy MinnowBoard

M

innowBoard (see Figure 1) is an open source hardware board based on the Intel x86 architecture. It is also a reference platform for the Yocto Project (https://www.yoctoproject.org), which lets you build your own embedded Linux distribution. MinnowBoard can be complemented with plug-in boards called ‘lures’, which augment its functionality. functionality. Listed below are some of the cool features of MinnowBoard. Processor 1GHz Intel Atom E640 processor 1GB DDR2 RAM Connectivity SPI, GPIO, I2C, CAN, SATA, SDIO, PCI Express, microSD card slot, DVI Gigabit Ethernet USB host (x2) Software 4GB microSD card with embedded Linux distribution (the

You can buy it from various worldwide distributors such as Mouser, DigiKey, Special Computing, Element14, etc. The cost of MinnowBoard is currently US$ 199.

MinnowBoard lures As mentioned earlier, a ‘lure’ is a plug-in board (similar in concept to the Arduino ‘shield’) used to extend the functionalities of MinnowBoard. At the time of writing this article, breakout board (aka ‘BOB’ lure), trainer lure and beacon lure were available. More are to follow soon. For more information about the lures, please refer to the following link: http://www.elinux.org/Minnowboard:Lures_Specifcations

 



Box contents When you purchase a MinnowBoard, you get the following items included in the box: MinnowBoard, MinnowBoard, a USB cable, 4GB microSD card and a power adapter.

 

Download the latest Angstrom image



Please visit the link below to download the latest Angstrom Linux image for the MinnowBoard: MinnowBoard:

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Insight

Open Gurus

Figure 2: Angstrom

Figure 1: MinnowBoard

http://dominion.thruhere.net/ko http://dominion.thruhere.net/koen/angstrom/m en/angstrom/minnow/  innow/   Angstrom-development-GNOME-im  Angstrom-development-GNOME-image-eglibc-ipk-v20 age-eglibc-ipk-v2012.1212.12minnow-2013.05.24.img.xz At the time of writing this article, the latest image available for download was ‘Angstrom-development-GNOME-imageeglibc-ipk-v2012.12-minnow-2013.05.24.img.xz’

Preparing the microSD card For the purpose of this article, I am using Ubuntu 12.10 running on a 64 bit machine. Now insert your microSD card into the computer but make sure that it is not mounted. Now, identify the correct raw device name (like /dev/sde - not /dev/sde1). You can do this by using a tool called disk utility in Ubuntu. Now navigate to the folder where you have downloaded the image using the terminal. Type the following command into the terminal window to write the image to the microSD card: xzcat Angstrom-development-GNOME-image-eglibc-ipk-v2012.12minnow-2013.05.24.img.x minnow-2013 .05.24.img.xz z | sudo dcdd of=/dev/sdX

Here, ‘sdX’ stands for the raw device ID of the microSD card. Please be patient as this operation will take some time. Once successful, remove the microSD card.

Booting MinnowBoard Now, Now, plug in the microSD card into the MinnowBoard. To power it up, connect the 5V/2.5A power supply to the MinnowBoard. Then, you can either choose to take the GUI or the Command Line approach. In the GUI approach, you will connect an external display to the DVI port on MinnowBoard, and the USB compatible keyboard and mouse on the corresponding USB host ports.

Figure 3: USER LED(s) on MinnowBoard

In the Command Line approach, connect the MinnowBoard to your computer using the USB cable provided. The next step is to setup the terminal emulator so that we can access the board's serial console. There are two possible ways here. Either use a terminal emulator or the Linux 'screen' command. Let us discuss the frst method. Install minicom/Gtkterm in Ubuntu. I personally prefer minicom. Install it by typing the following command in the terminal window: sudo apt-get install minicom

Start minicom by typing the following code into the terminal: sudo minicom -s

Confgure it by selecting the correct USB port, set the baud rate to 115200, and both software and hardware control to NONE. The other way is to use the Linux ‘screen’ command, command, as shown below. It’s much easier too! screen /dev/ttyUSB1 115200

Also, in most cases, the virtual USB serial port is ttyUSB1. If it does not work, try ttyUSB0. If all went well, you should be greeted with a familiar Angstrom login in the terminal as shown in Figure 2. The username for the same is ‘root’ and for the password, just press ‘ENTER’. You You should see the following prompt: root@minnow:~#

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Open Gurus   Insight a virtual filesystem, which enumerates the devices and busses attached to the system (board, in our case) into a file system hierarchy that can be accessed from user space. It is generated by the kernel and always mounted at /sys at  /sys.. As discussed earlier, the trigger for D11 and D12 LED(s) has to be changed to make them function as user LEDs. I would describe 'trigger' as the API used to link an LED to an 'event' in kernel space. Here, 'event' could be a microSD card or E thernet activity, heartbeat, power, etc. To understand this better, let’s look at LED D11, for example. The trigger for D11 has been set by default to ‘heartbeat’. So, to use it as a user LED, we have to change the trigger for it to ‘none’ as shown below: echo none > /sys/class/leds/minnow_led0/trigger

Toggling the user LED Figure 4: LED on

Figure 5: LED off

This is the best part. Write the following commands in your terminal to toggle the D11 user LED (the rst one is for turning ON and the latter for turning OFF):

User LEDs on MinnowBoard There are a total of ve LEDs on MinnowBoard as shown in Figure 3. Out of those ve, two are user LEDs, namely D11 and D12, but by default, they cannot be used as user LEDs. You need to change their default trigger for that. The user LEDs are accessible via the user space in Linux at the location given below, on the lesystem:  /sys/class/leds There is one directory per user LED, named as shown below:  /sys/class/leds/minnow_led0  /sys/class/leds/minnow_led1 Here, led0 is D11 while led1 is D12. Inside each one of those directories, there is a le named ‘brightness’. If you write a ‘1’ or a ‘0’ to this le, then you can control the status of that LED, i.e., toggle it ON or OFF, respectively.

Changing the default trigger In a nutshell, what we are trying to do is to access the on board user LEDs via the user space in Linux. To be more precise, we are trying to use the sysfs interface. sysfs interface. Sysfs is Sysfs  is

THE COMPLETE M AGAZINE ON OPEN SOURCE

echo 1 > /sys/class/l /sys/class/leds/minnow_l eds/minnow_led0/brightne ed0/brightness ss echo 0 > /sys/class/l /sys/class/leds/minnow_l eds/minnow_led0/brightne ed0/brightness ss

You should get the output shown in Figures 4 and 5.

 Acknowledgement I would like to thank Scott Garman, David Anders, Dave Albert for all their help and guidance. A huge shoutout to Dave Stewart and the Yocto Project team at Intel for such an awesome initiative!

By: Jayneil Dalal Jayneil is a FOSS advocate who loves to explore different open source technologies. His prime areas of interest are Embedded Linux, Open Hardware and technical writing. He has presented papers at Embedded Linux Conference 2013, Linuxcon North America 2012, Drodicon Berlin 2012 and various other international conferences. He is a big time Arsenal fan. He can be reached at [email protected] at [email protected]

Your favourite Magazine on Open Source is now on the Web, too.

LinuxF Linux For orU.com U.com Follow us on Twitter@LinuxForYou

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| AUGUST 2013

Open Strategy

Shubhodip Pal: Shubhodip The Man Who Added the Midas Touch to the Micromax Brand Cricket tournaments, movie titles, F1 racing, football...Micromax is seen almost everywher everywhere. e. This is the brand that has grown beyond imagination over a period of six-eight months. It all happened when Shubhodip Pal, the man with the Midas touch,  joined the company as its it s Chief Marketing Officer and took it on an uncharted course to success. Micromax’s Canvas series of smartphones is now a case study for almost all OEMs. One can easily attribute this success to Shubho, as he is fondly f ondly called, because Canvas was his brain child.  Diksha P Gupta Gup ta from Open Sourc Source e For You spoke to Shubhodip Pal  for  for a behind the scenes peek at the strategies that made Micromax the brand it is i s today. today.

Shubhodip Pal, Chief Marketing Officer, Micromax

For U & Me

For U & Me

Open Strategy

Q

: Micromax has come a long way, from being just another name in the market to becoming a pioneer in the smartphone segment. The credit of adding this zing to the brand clearly goes to you. Can you share what you actually did to the brand from the time you joined the firm? Nothing much really! What I did was convert simple rocket science into the basics. I concentrated on getting the basics right. The rst thing I did was knock off the 43 sub-brands that Micromax previously had, classifying our products into four simple categories. We thought smartphones needed to be out there under one sub-brand, therefore ‘Canvas’ came up. The story of how the name Canvas actually came to be used goes back to the time when I was being interviewed by the company. I was asked what ‘nothing like anything’ meant to me, and I said it’s a large canvas and I can do whatever I feel like. And thus, the Canvas series was born. All the feature phones come under the ‘Bolt’ brand, the tablets under ‘Funbook’ and the women-centric phones under the ‘Bling’ brand. We have done away with brands like Ninja. So, that’s the rst thing we did. The second thing we did was to ensure that our communication is clear and cuts across all barriers—  addressing any person I talk to, be it in this country or any other part of the world. Consistency in communication was also an important thing that we ensured. The ton of the brand got reected with all these efforts. We We started looking at Canvas 2, then Canvas HD and went on to Canvas Music and Canvas 4, which has just been launched. You can see a consistent line of communication in all these launches and that is what actually has helped us. Finally, our management also played an important role in all of this. They take decisions pretty quickly. I could easily launch ‘MMS,’ which stands for movies, music and sports, which is the brand ethos for Micromax. We have been consistent with this. There’s no point in doing something only once. If I am on MTV video music awards, I would want to be there for at least three years. If I am associated with music, I would want to get the best bands here, because I know the pulse of the youth of the country. We do not dene the ‘youth’ by the age group but the attitude. Some like rock, some like electronic dance music, and so on. I can cater to all these if I get associated to different kinds of music bands and different sorts of events. I may not be able to get a high rating from TAM Media Research because of all these activities, but I can feel the pulse of the youth on social media and gauge their exchanges online. The measurement tools could reect a particular opinion about what we do, but my gut feel is different. different. I love the freedom I am getting to do different things with the brand. That makes a lot of difference to the work I do.

Q

: Where do you plan to take Micromax with its new image? Global! I wonder why we can’t be the first Indian brand

to go global!

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Q

: When do you plan to do this?

I can’t comment on it at this point in time but very soon, I guess. The pace at which we are working, you never know… it may happen sooner than one thinks. To all the people who want to know the answer to this question, I can just say that we will be the rst Indian brand to go global. It may happen some time next year. And that is the reason why we want to be consistent in what we do. So if I make something here, it has to work across Latin America, Europe and other parts of the world. The concept of MMS cuts across continents. It’s just the artiste and type of sport/music that will change depending upon the geography and taste of local people. All we need to do is to understand that and go ahead with our strategy.

Q

: So what cities and cultures are you targeting right now to go global? Almost every part of the planet. Let’s see where we can really make it.

Q

: With the company going global soon, where do you see your Indian competitors? I won’t differentiate between the local and global competitors. It’s just a function of who does what rst. We are known for innovation and for a lot of ‘rsts ’. So if we can continue with that pace, I think we can make a good dent in the global market as well. It all depends upon how we do it and how well we time ourselves.

Q

: It’s time for touchscreen smartphones but there are takers of physical QWERTY keyboards as well. Are you not planning to get back to that segment? There are takers of physical keyboards but if you look at it from the market perspective, the touch panel is really the way to go. You can still do a QWERTY with the touchscreen phone and you don’t necessarily need physical keys. So, I think there are more takers for touchscreen devices, hence

we stick to them.

Q

: Any logic for sticking to stock Android and not twe aking with Google’s operating system? As I said, it’s Canvas. I can do whatever I want with stock Android. And And that is how we created Canvas 4. If I look at any other form of Android, I cannot do my bit. Stock Android gives users the openness and freedom to do anything

they want to with their smartphones. It also helps my users leverage the applications created by Android developers for the Android ecosystem. Also, if you look at a majority of the devices out in the market, they are all on stock Android. There are very few people really tweaking Android. Android. It’s like if I create a car today, running on fuel which is not diesel or petrol and it is not available everywhere, everywhere, I will have a limited user base for it. So, if I create a platform which is not commonly used across applications, it is of no use. So the fact that you need to be a part of the eco-system is very important.

Open Strategy

Q

: And will you continue to be with stock s tock Android for future devices as well? As of now, yes. We have no plans to change that.

Q

: What about a Windows phone? Maybe in the near future. We are looking at it and evaluating it. It is denitely one of the options before us, but I do not have denite answers as to when you can see a Micromax Windows Phone device. We are looking at it for both phones and tablets.

Q

: Who do you consider your competition in the Indian market right now? Just the top ve players.

Q

: You seem to be aping one of the top five bra nds, Samsung, in the way they do teaser ads…like you did with Micromax Canvas 4. You teased the world with Canvas 4 features one by one, like Samsung does for its devices. What is the idea behind this strategy? It is not Samsung’s strategy—it’s strategy—it’s a well-known marketing

strategy. It’s It’s a marketing plot that people use to generate curiosity in the market place. One can only generate curiosity if the brand has some power. We We have seen that in the last eight months Micromax has been able to develop that pull for the brand, with this teaser ad strategy. strategy. And we have never gone wrong with the expectations of the consumer. We began with Canvas HD, then Canvas 2 and then Canvas 4. If you see, we received around 11,500 pre-orders for Micromax

For U & Me

Canvas 4 in less than 36 hours of opening the pre-booking. So the strategy clearly works.

Q

: What was the idea behind pricing Canvas 4 so aggressively? Micromax Canvas 4 is priced at Rs 17,999. The idea behind

pricing it in this bracket is that there is a big gap in this price segment. The Rs 15,000-20,000 segment is very pricesensitive. Again, Again, we are not here to make losses. We are also not here to make humongous amounts of money. We are here to make the right amount of money. We completely believe that it is all about the democratisation of technology. If I can package everything and still make money, why should the consumer suffer! Just because I am giving them fantabulous features, it does not mean I have to charge them a bomb.

Q

: When you came on board, you probably had two challenges to face. The company lagged in its marketing strategies and in its product profile too. What challenge did you try to address first? I tried handling both simultaneously. simultaneously. I felt the need of addressing both together and the founders of this rm have been very open minded about this. When I had my nal presentation in November last year (and I had not joined the company then), they agreed on what had to be the nal roadmap and what needed to be done. We do not have deep pockets in terms of the budget. We We have ear-marked a certain amount of money vis-a-vis the competition and we took it on from there. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Conti nued fr om p age 75. 75... .. 6. It’s time time to generate generate a private key and a self-signed certicate for your Certicate Authority. Authority. cd /etc/pki/myCA openssl genrsa –out private/my-ca.key –des3 2048

Do remember the passphrase you give at this step. 7. Now create create your self-signed certicate certicate using the command command shown below:  openssl req –new –x509 –key private/my-ca. private/my-ca.key key –days 365 > my-ca. crt

This certicate will be distributed to your users. With this, the process of setting up a Certicate Authority Authority is complete. Now you can make your self-signed certicate downloadable by your users through a Web browser. Let us next check out the process of signing a certicate. 1. First of all, generate a private key key using the openssl genrsa 1024 > mykey.key command.  2. Then create the Certicate Signing Request using the openssl req –new –key mykey.key –out mycsr.csr command. 3. Now, Now, as the Certicate Authority, Authority, sign the certicate certicate using

 command. the openssl ca –in mycsr.csr –out mycert.crt  command. Your certicate is now ready to be used across multiple applications including the Web and e-mail. You can view information regarding this certicate in the  /etc/pki/myCA/  newcerts/01.pem le. Also, if you open /etc/pki/myCA/  serial, you’ll see that its contents have been updated to 2, which is the serial number for the next certicate to be signed. As a Certicate Authority, Authority, you can also revoke a certicate using the openssl ca –revoke /etc/pki/myCA/  newcerts/01.pem command. Here 01.pem id is the le related to the rst certicate that we’ve created. So this was a brief overview of how to set up a Certicate Authority in RHEL5. You can use it for intranet applications management. And if you want to understand the functionality behind the Certicate Security, you can explore the cryptography concepts related to certicates like TLS/SSL handshakes, key distribution, cryptographic hashes, etc. By: Vinayak Pandey   The author is a Red Hat Certified Engineer Engineer on RHEL6, currently working as a teradata administrator. He spends his leisure time exploring open source tools and technologies.

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For U & Me   Overview

A Peek into Open Source Licences Open source is the mantra of today’s tech world. While it’s being used in that personal computer sitting on your desk, it it is also being used in the computing systems in NASA’s NASA’s International Space Station! But merely knowing how to use open source software is no longer enough. Open source enthusiasts should also be aware of the various open source licences used. This article briefly touches upon what open source is all about, and and scratches the surface of a few popular licences.

I

t is better to begin with a thorough understanding of the denition of open source. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has set down certain criteria for open source software. Any software that provides the source code does not automatically qualify as open source. It should satisfy the following criteria: It should be available for free distribution. The source code should be made available free of cost. Deliberate obfuscated code and intermediate forms of code like the pre-processor outputs are not allowed. The licence should allow others to build works derived from the main project, and the works derived from the main project should also be distributed under the same licence. The integrity of the author’s source code. There should be no discrimination against person or a group. This clause ensures that the code is not restricted to within a rm, or discriminated based on groups like developers, designers, etc. There should be no discrimination against the field of application.

 



 



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Regarding the distribution of the licence: The rights attached to the program must apply to all whom the program is redistributed to without the need to execute an additional licence by those parties. The licence must not restrict other software from being used in the same system. The software must be technology neutral. Once the software satises all the above criteria it is called open source. Now, let us explore a few open source licences that are popular. But before that, let us discuss copyleft licences. The most popular belief regarding copyleft is that it is the opposite of copyright laws. But that is not the exact denition. Copyleft is the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modied versions of a work while requiring that the same rights be preserved in modied versions of the work. In other words, copyleft is a general method for making a program (or other work) free (libre ( libre), ), and requiring all modied and extended versions of the program to be free as well. 





Overview

GPL The GNU General Public License is perhaps one of the most famous of all li cences in the FOSS world. The latest version of GPL is version 3. GPL grants a wide variety of rights to users. It allows copying, modifying and distributing the code, provided all the distributions are also licensed with GPL. If the work is derived from a GPL project, the derived work has also to be GPL. This rule is applicable even if the derived work constitutes only a small part of the main work. GPL allows users to charge a fee for the software, but you should provide a copy of the GPL along with your software. This means that there might be sources other than you to get work similar to yours.

LGPL The Lesser GPL, as the name suggests, is a milder version of the GPL. It allows derived works to be published under licences that are not GPL or LGPL. The authors of the derived work are free to choose their new licence. Only the LGPL part’s source code has to be made available. LGPL is mainly used for software libraries. So the LGPL code and the main code of the software remain separate, and the LGPL part of the source code can be made available.

BSD License GPL falls under the category called copyleft licences. BSD or the Berkeley Software Distribution License comes under another category called permissive licences. This category has minimal requirements as to how free software should be distributed. The original BSD was a 4-clause licence that covered the following aspects: Redistribution of source code should retain the copyright and disclaimer notices. Redistribution of binary should retain the copyright and disclaimer notices. All the material used for advertising purposes should acknowledge the author of the main work. Names of contributors should not be used for endorsing the software. The BSD License now comes in two forms. 1. The New BSD License: This is also known as the 3-clause form. It is similar to the 4-clause form mentioned earlier but the third clause referring to advertising materials is omitted. 2. Simplied BSD / FreeBSD License: This is also known as the 2-clause form. It is similar to the 4-clause form, but the third and fourth clauses are removed. A BSD License, unlike the GPL, allows the derivatives to be proprietar y. 







Apache License The Apache License is also considered to be permissive because it does not require a derivative work of the

For U & Me

software or modifications to the original, to be distributed using the same licence. It still requires application of the same licence to all unmodified parts. And in every licensed file, any original copyright, patent, trademark and attribution notices in the redistributed code must be preserved. Also, in every licensed file that is changed, a notification must be added stating that changes have been made to that file. The rights once given by the Apache License cannot then be revoked in future. Another interesting aspect of the Apache License is that it is applicable in every country.

Creative Commons License The CC License comes under another category called public copyright licences, by which a licensor can grant additional copyright permissions to licensees. Public copyright licences do not limit their licensees. The Creative Commons License is mainly used for design works, art, music, textual material, etc. A CC License has four basic parts. 1. Attribution: Licensees may copy, copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits for the original work. 2. Share alike: Licensees may distribute derivative works only under a licence identical to the licence that governs the original work. 3. Non-commercial: Licensees may copy, copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only for non-commercial purposes. 4. Non-derivative: Licensees may copy, copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based on it. The open source philosophy and licences are not just limited to the world of software; there is open source hardware like Arduino. Wikipedia is an example of open source content. There is content released under the Creative Commons License. There are beverages called open colas, for which the formula for the beverage is not a closely guarded trade secret. All this stems from the main idea that knowledge should never be closed but should always be open.

References [1]  http:  http://op //openso ensource urce.org/  .org/  [2]   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_license [2] [3]   http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.htm [3]

By: Vineeth Kartha  The author is an electr ical and electro nics engineer with a great passion for open source technologies, computer programming and electronics. When not coding, he loves to do glass paintings. He can be reached at  at   [email protected] or at  http://www.thebeautifu llmind.com

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For U & Me   Overview

Network Security: An Security: An Exciting Challenge for Modern-Day IT Admins

Sajan Paul, director, Systems Engineering, India & SAARC, Juniper Networks

Diwakar Dayal, lead, Security, Borderless Network Sales, Cisco India & SAARC

Srikant Vissamsetti, VP, Network Security at McAfee India

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Please throw some light on the latest trends in network security.

The BYOD practice poses one of the major threats for IT managers. Can you share s hare what solutions you offer to deal with this?

The kind of attacks happening in the IT world today have changed considerably. Two years back, typically, one would have anti-virus software, a rewall, IDS/IPL with a static signature and static policy. But things have evolved quite a bit because a lot of companies have moved from proprietary applications applications or distributed applications to a centralised application system. In the case of Web-based client entities, earlier there were thick applications but now they have moved to thin applications. The attackers’ proles and attack vectors have changed. From simple malware attacks, things have moved to an Advanced Persistent Threat. This is a slow and persistent attack, involving human interventions and the use of social media.

For dealing with security issues related to BYOD, we do a kind of device tagging, which means that we know the prole of the device. Based on what OS the device runs, we have certain backend intelligence regarding the kind of heatmap that should be drawn about the OS' security level. We prole the users on that basis and apply solutions. After this comes the authentication of the user. We check whether a particular user's prole is eligible for a certain type of message, application or solution. Based on that, we apply policies. So, the rst level of protection is always established and IT team has enough control.

The evolution of threats and the responses to them have changed over a period of time, whether it is a network-based response or one that is applicationbased. They are primarily driven by the two major trends of consumerisation and virtualisation. These two trends have exploded, creating a chaotic world where things like enterprise mobility are being driven by the social media, by phenomena like telepresence and video conferencing, and by the whole virtualisation wave. This is changing the way the threats will be tackled in the future. The BYOD trend is a new challenge that is forcing IT admins to work on ensuring fool-proof network security.

BYOD is one the most important trends affecting IT managers. It is resulting in a lot of movement of the physical computer architecture, which is unlike what we have known as the central architecture or central control system–we are moving to a noncontrolled system. The phenomenon called the cloud is enabling BYOD. Gone are the days when a controlled environment meant physical control over the devices. We are moving to a phase where 'app'ication has come in. Today, the IT admin has to control the device the end-user is using. The scenario has evolved and IT admins clearly have different challenges with BYOD coming in.

Things change constantly when it comes to security. security. In the last two years, advanced malware with targeted attacks have become popular. These attacks are very erosive because they try to focus on one enterprise. So detecting them requires much smarter detection methods. While in the case of generic attacks, attackers aim to reach as many users as possible but in these cases, the damage is much more and IT admins have to come up with different solutions for these targeted attacks. One of the popular forms of attack these days is through social networking. One can launch threats against users by posting malicious links, launching malicious les, et al.

A lot of enterprises these days are going the Bring Your Own Device way with their employees. BYOD is leading to IT losing control over the end points. Those who bring their own devices to ofce can at any time install a threat, unknowingly, unknowingly, which is like giving malware free access to your enterprise. IT admins are no more wary of this trend. There are solutions which offer IT admins control even in this situation. Just by installing one application on the users’ devices and by giving them controlled access to data, IT admins can ensure security.

Overview

For U & Me

With technology threats getting more sophisticated than ever, network intrusion prevention is one of the most challenging tasks for f or today’s today’s IT admins, who have to not only play a defensive  Diks ksha ha P game but also discover and understand the innovative threats coming their way. Di Gupta from Open Source For You You spoke to experts from Ju  Juni nipe perr Ne Netw twor orks ks,, Ci Cisc sco o and McAfee  Indi  In dia a to understand their views on how IT admins should be prepared prepared to face fa ce the threats resulting from the current BYOD (bring your own device) trend and the cloud. The cloud phenomenon is yet another challenge faced by the IT managers as far as network security is concerned. Please share some tips on how IT admins ought to deal with this situation.

What, according to you, constitutes a network readiness checklist for IT admins?

There are applications that ensure such protection these days. The IT admins need to ensure that they have control over whatever devices they are dealing with, in terms of either pushing a patch to the device users or even pushing them out of the network. Depending upon the continuity of the application, we can have a client (a Web-based client or a downloadable application), which can provide security against viruses in your device, and will ensure that your information is secured. IT admins have the full control of the device this way and know that their network is not compromised.

Network readiness, according to me, would be when, before you roll out a network, you understand whom this network serves. Barring the telecom sector, a network is a service that is being given to a business and doesn't yield any nancial results, but is a support function. In that case, you must understand what business is being supported and what its key requirements are. Assessing the risk factors involved in the business is also an important function of an IT admin. One can draw up a good network plan only on the basis of these evaluations.

IT admins have to face the challenge of building an infrastructure, which is conducive, self-defending and intelligent enough to keep the company's information and intellectual property secure. The cloud is a challenging and unavoidable concept. Though the applications are moving to a non-controlled environment, there are ways of ensuring security in them as well. IT admins should identify what data they are sending on the cloud, what kind of access they can offer and to whom.

The checklist is rather simple and involves just three steps. The rst one is defence, which means any network should always be defended against external threats. The second important step is about discovery. discovery. The modern day threats are very smart and there are greater possibilities of breaches happening, but one can only know about a breach when one discovers it. So discovering a breach is an important aspect to curing it. Discovery in this context is the detection of threats in the network and network behaviour analysis. The last step is the mitigation of the threat. Earlier, it was more or less done manually but now this is an automated process.

The cloud is an interesting concept but needs to be handled with care. What applications are being moved to the cloud and how they are accessed makes a lot of difference. A clear idea on t hese two things can make the lives of IT admins easier. Resorting to a selfprotecting cloud environment is the first step that an ID admin can take to ensure security.

One of the most important things in the world of network security is a rewall. Although Although they have been around for a while, upgrading them to next-gen technology is what every enterprise needs. It offers access control and a higher level of safety. Beyond rewalls, one also needs network intrusion prevention solutions and protection against advanced malware. The challenge with targeted attacks is that an IT admin cannot keep waiting for it to happen and then go for a solution. You You cannot protect your network against zero-day, zero-day, so being well prepared beforehand is a better idea.

AUGUST 2013 |

85

For U & Me   Interview

“India has immense under-utilised talent in the cloud security space” Website security is getting increasingly challenging with 'innovative' attacks emerging every day. But, thankfully, as threats increase, so do the security measures.  Diksha P Gupta from Open Source For You spoke to Ritesh Sarvaiya, CEO, Defencely.com, to understand the website security scene in India, and the online threats threats that will affect Indian SMEs and SMBs. Read on..

Q

Please share some details about what Defencely does with respect to cloud security? Modern day attackers can plant a cookie attack, a sniffer, misleading information or anything that can put visitors or customers who visit your website, at risk. So, it becomes extremely important for website managers to be aware of these constantly evolving threats. It is your responsibility to make sure that your security parameters are all up to date, and we at Defencely.com at Defencely.com can  can help you to make your website secure, as we have done for global technology giants like Google, Apple, Facebook, PayPal, etc. Defencely.com currently focuses only on Web applications, penetration testing, and vulnerability reporting and xing. The rst phase of the company's operations commenced just three months back. We We are primarily 86

| AUGUST 2013

focusing on Open Web Application Application Security Project methodology. methodology. In fact, we provide the industry’s early stage testing services; 80 per cent of our work is in manual ‘Search and Report’ mode and 20 per cent via the automated tools.

Q

How do you see the cloud security space evolving in India? As far as cloud security in India is concerned, it has immense scope. India has only about five to 10 recognised cloud security companies that deal in all kinds of cloud application testing. Though Indian companies do focus on cloud security services, this sector, so far, has not been organised because of India’s cyber laws, which according to me, are not up to the mark. India has ample talent in this domain but it is not utilised so far. We aim to utilise these

Interview

brains in this niche field and bring them together under our banner to become the world's biggest cloud security company. Having said that, I am hopeful that the future of cloud security in India is pretty bright.

Q

India is going online and there is growing awareness about security. But are Indians, particularly the SMEs and the SMBs, aware of the concept of website security? India is going online at a faster pace than we expected and there is a lot of scope in that domain as well. Hundreds of e-commerce start-ups are being launched, which is a clear indicator of the growth in the online activity of Indians. Overall, it is a good scenario, but one cannot deny the fact that growing online activity also increases the threats. We We at Defencely.com at Defencely.com are  are serious about this issue, and we aim to be involved particularly with SMBs and SMEs to create awareness about the virtual losses that they may have to face because of not securing their websites. Let's imagine a scenario where an e-commerce portal gets compromised because of some zero day vulnerability, vulnerability, and hackers misuse the entire database of the portal, including the nancial information and personal details of its buyers. Despite being technically sound, small and big online companies overlook the importance of online security. To a lot of online companies, the term 'hacking' means email or credit card hacking. But hacking has evolved and is a million dollar business at present. It is high time that Indian SMBs and SMEs get aware of such threats and start taking appropriate Web security measures. Modern day security services are complete packages of security.

Q

What are the most common vulnerabilities that websites are exposed to, in the modern day world? Some of the most common threats to most Web applications are: (a) Injection vulnerabilities and cross-site cross-site scripting: These are two of the most commonly found vulnerabilities that can occur in any website or Web application. There are various forms of injection attacks, including SQL, operating system, email and LDAP injection, and they all work by sending malicious data to an application as part of a command or query. (b) Cross-site scripting (XSS): These attacks target target an application's users by injecting malicious code—usually client-side scripting such as JavaScript—into a Web application's output. Whenever the compromised output or page is viewed, the browser executes the code, allowing an attacker to hijack user sessions, redirect the user to a malicious site or simply deface the page. XSS attacks are possible within the contents of a dynamically generated page whenever an application incorporates user-supplied data without properly validating or escaping it. escaping it. (c) Broken authentication and session management: Application functions related to authentication and session management are often not implemented correctly,

For U & Me

"Defencely doesn’t limit itself to just providing cloud security services, but has a lot more to offer. Timely reporting of security vulnerabilities is what the core team at Defencely aims at." allowing attackers to compromise passwords, keys and session tokens, or exploit other implementation aws to assume other users’ identities. (d) Insecure direct object references: A direct direct object reference occurs when a developer exposes a reference to an internal implementation object, such as a le, directory, or database key. Without an access control check or other protection, attackers can manipulate these references to access unauthorised data. (e) Security misconguration: misconguration: Good security requires having a secure conguration dened and deployed for the application, frameworks, application server, Web server, database server and platform. All these settings should be dened, implemented and maintained, as many are not shipped with secure defaults. This includes keeping all software up to date, including all code libraries used by the application. In order to prevent all these threats, developers need to have specic knowledge of how to code Web Web applications, keeping Web vulnerabilities in mind.

Q

Can you share some tips to ensure website security? It is sad to see websites getting hacked, by and large, on a daily basis. There are numerous steps to ensure a website's security. When was the last time you moved your les from their default locations to new ones? When was the last time you moulded your HT Access le, or when was it that you noticed your Web mail ID generating spam mail? When was the last time you scanned your website to check if it was affected with any new online threats? Such factors, among many others, play a vital role in shaping your website's security. I guess the best way to get started is to hire an online security company. There are some companies that don’t charge a lot to trial-level users.

Q

How is Defencely contributing to increasing awareness about website security? Defencely doesn’t limit itself to just providing cloud security services, but has a lot more to offer. Timely reporting of security vulnerabilities is what the core team at Defencely aims at. Paypal’s recognition of Defencely being one of the top 10 cloud security companies isn’t the only achievement of the firm. Several other giants such as FaceBook, Apple, Zynga, SoundCloud and iFixit have applauded Defencely for its dedicated work. AUGUST 2013 |

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For U & Me   Interview

Q

With social media being integrated in the websites, does that increase the challenges of administering website security? Most of the social media websites spend millions of dollars to keep their security at very high levels, because of which IT guys do not have to worry about anything specic.

Q

Why do websites get hacked? Although there are no specic patterns that hackers follow, there are a few common loopholes that often get exploited. a) Zero day vulnerabilities: Regardless of whether you have a blog or own a successful Internet business, how often do you consult with a cloud penetration services company for an assessment of your business’s online security? 'Zero day vulnerabilities’ are explained as those unattended website details that were ignored during the development of the website. Once the website is launched and running, the owner tends to ignore reallocation of key directory les and many other sub-domain URLs, a practice that could be harmful to the business’s integrity. integrity. b) Exploitation is a hacker’s favourite favourite tool: Seeing Seeing today’s today’s cloud security scenario, you should know that many websites are not actually hacked, but exposed through exploits. If the website is lacking security because of weak iFrame modules, improper implementation of user info security parameters, failure in redirecting users to secure pages, or the implementation of outdated SSL certicates, the attacker simply has to misuse that information – in other words, the process is called exploitation.

"If the website is lacking security because of weak iFrame modules, improper implementation implementation of user info security parameters, failure in redirecting users to secure pages, or the implementation of outdated SSL certificates, certificate s, the attacker simply has to misuse that information—in other words, the process is called exploitation." c) Technically incorrect: The third category actually involves brute force hacking. We are talking about password cracking, decryption, fuzzing and sending out information to servers. Such forms of hacking are most severe and highly dangerous for any Web business owner. In all scenarios, your best bet is to consult with a credible security services company to shield you from such unforeseen incidents in the near future.

S

QL injection is also one of the major threats to a website. Does Defencely offer a specific solution to SQL injection attacks? Fixing SQL injection is part of the bundled services that we provide at  Defencely.com  Defencely.com.. Once we scan the website with our high-end scanners, we immediately come to know where there are higher chances of SQL injection on a client's Web application; and as a remedy, we patch it immediately, to keep the client's website secure from this threat.

Hiren Shah,

President, Co-Founder

Hiren Shah is an IT veteran and has over eighteen years of experience with multiple entrepreentrepreneurial ventures, investment portfolios and growth-oriented growth-oriented companies. He is actively involved with–QualiSpace.com,, a leading domain name registrar and a web hosting company helping with–QualiSpace.com various corporates in establishing online presence. He is also i nvolved with Infraster.com, Infraster.com, a remote IT Infrastructure management company which takes care of IT Infrastructure Infrastructure remotely covering management, migration and monitoring of servers and various other IT start-ups covering reselling of online web services products. Hiren's core expertise in dealing with web i nfrastructure and data centres has helped Defencely ride the crest of success.

EF Y Group’s  ive  t ve  itia ti Ne w In ti

EB TIMES This 8-page monthly B2B B2B Newspaper is Newspaper is a resource for traders, distributors, dealers, dealers, and those who head channel business, business, as it aims to to give an impetus to channel sales 88

| AUGUST 2013

Let's Try

Open Gurus

Getting Started with Haskell on Emacs Emacs is a popular text editor that can be extended and customised. Haskell is a statically typed, functional programming language. Haskell-mode is an Emacs major mode that provides support to write and use Haskell programs. This article explains interesting features and tips on using Haskell-mode with GNU Emacs.

ou can install Haskell-mode using your distribution package manager. manager. For example, on Fedora you can use:

Y

C-l. It will create a new buffer, load the module in the current buffer and give a prompt to work with. Consider the following Square.hs  program:

$ sudo yum install emacs-haskell-mode square :: Int -> int

Mode

square x = x * x

You can enter Has kell-mode when opening a Haskell source file that has an extension .hs , or it can be started within Emacs using:

Opening a Square.hs  le in an Emacs buffer, and running C-c C-l will produce the following in a new buffer: GHCi, version 7.0.4: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ :? for help.

M-x haskell-mode

Loading package ghc-prim ... linking ... done. Loading package integer-gmp ... linking ... done.

On the modeline, you will now see ‘(Haskell)', indicating that the Haskell mode has been acti vated. You You can enter the indent mode using:

Loading package base ... linking ... done. Prelude> :load "/home/guest "/home/guest/Square.hs" /Square.hs" [1 of 1] Compiling Main ( /home/guest/Square.hs, /home/guest/Square.hs, interpreted )

M-x haskell-indent-mode

Ok, modules loaded: Main. *Main>

The modeline will now show ‘(Haskell Ind)’.

Interpreter To load a Haskell source le into the interpreter, use C-c

If you have multiple buffers opened within Emacs, you can directly switch from the (Haskell) mode buffer to the Haskell interpreter using C-c C-z. AUGUST 2013 |

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Open Gurus

Let's Try

Insertions

with the cursor position indicated by ‘_’:

The equal to (=) sign can be inserted, and the function type can be neatly aligned with the C-c C-= key stroke. If you type the following function:

greeting :: String -> String greeting x = "Hello" ++ x ++  _

volume :: Int -> Int -> Int volume x

...and keep the cursor after ‘x’ and type  C-c C-=, the equal to sign is inserted, and the code gets neatly aligned:

Hitting Tab will take you through the different possible positions for inserting code. When you press Tab for the rst time, the cursor will move under ‘Hello’; if you wish to complete the string concatenation (++), issue the following code: greeting :: String -> String

volume

:: Int -> Int -> Int

greeting x = "Hello" ++ x ++

volume x =

 _

In the following code snippet, after ‘y’ , if you hit Return followed by C-c C-/ , a guard symbol is inserted:

Hitting Tab again prepends ‘greeting’ and the cursor will be placed under ‘x’ for you to add another test condition, as follows: greeting :: String -> String

max :: (Ord a) => a -> a -> a

greeting x = "Hello" ++ x ++

max x y

greeting _

 |

After inserting the second guard in the above example, the ‘otherwise’ keyword can be inserted and the code is aligned using C-c C-o:

Hitting Tab yet again will move the cursor to the rst column if you want to add any text: greeting :: String -> String greeting x = "Hello" ++ x ++

max :: (Ord a) => a -> a -> a max x y | x > y

= x

 _

As you keep hitting Tab again and again, the above sequence will repeat. Comments in Haskell begin with ‘- -’.

 | otherwise = one -- 1

The ‘where’ clause is produced using C-c C-w. In the following example, pressing return after ‘r’ , and using C-c C-w inserts the ‘where’ clause:

two -- 2 three -- 3 four -- 4 fve -- 5

circleArea :: Float -> Float

six -- 6

circleArea r = pi * r * r

seven -- 7

 

where

You can insert the type annotation for a function using C-u C-c C-t . Consider the sphereVolume function: sphereVolume sphereVolum e r = 4 / 3 * pi * r * r * r where pi = 3.1412

Placing the cursor on ‘sphereVolume’ and typing C-u   produces the following: C-c C-t  produces

After marking the above region, use M-x align-regexp followed by ‘- -’ for the regexp, and the comments will be aligned: one

-- 1

two

-- 2

three

-- 3

four

-- 4

fve

-- 5

six

-- 6

seven

-- 7

sphereVolume sphereVolum e :: Fractional a => a -> a sphereVolume sphereVolum e r = 4 / 3 * pi * r * r * r where pi = 3.1412

C-c C-. helps align the code neatly. Consider the  Area. hs program:

Formatting There are a number of shortcut commands that are useful for indentation. Let’s Let’s suppose you have the following function

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area :: Int -> Int -> Int area breadth height = breadth * height

Let's Try After marking the above program, and using C-c C-., the code becomes:

Open Gurus

Insert blank line before the code > quicksort :: Ord a => [a] -> [a]

area

:: Int -> Int -> Int

area breadth height = breadth * height

> quicksort []

= []

> quicksort (p:xs) = (quicksort lesser) ++ [p] ++ (quicksort greater)

Query

>

To know the Haskell-mode version, use M-x haskellversion. As an example:

>

lesser = flter (< p) xs

>

greater = flter (>= p) xs

Using

Insert blank line after the code

Haskell-mode Haskell-mod e version v2.8.0,

where

C-c C-i on a symbol will prompt for getting information about the symbol. For example, ‘Show info of (default Int):’ lists the following:

The modeline will indicate that you are in the ‘(LitHaskell/ bird)’ minor mode. The hasktag package needs to be installed to help generate TAGS TAGS le for source les. For example:

data Int = GHC.Types.I# GHC.Prim.Int# GHC.Prim.Int# -- Defned in GHC.Types

$ hasktags Test.hs

instance Bounded Int -- Defned in GHC.Enum instance Enum Int -- Defned in GHC.Enum instance Eq Int -- Defned in GHC.Base

It will create both tags and TAGS les. You can use  M-. in the Haskell buffer to search for a tag.

instance Integral Int -- Defned in GHC.Real instance Num Int -- Defned in GHC.Num

Checks

instance Ord Int -- Defned in GHC.Base

HLint is a tool that provides suggestions to improve Haskell programs. C-c C-v helps to run hlint on a buffer. Make sure you have the tool installed on your system before using it. For example, running C-c C-v on the above literate quicksort Haskell program suggests:

instance Read Int -- Defned in GHC.Read instance Real Int -- Defned in GHC.Real instance Show Int -- Defned in GHC.Show

C-c C-t will obtain the type of the symbol with the prompt ‘Show type of (default pi):’. For example:

-*- mode: compilation; default-directory: "~/" -*Compilation started at Thu Jun 6 21:31:54

pi :: Floating a => a

hlint QuickSort.lhs QuickSort.lhs:6:22: QuickSort.l hs:6:22: Warning: Redundant bracket

C-c TAB on a symbol returns its denition at the interpreter prompt, as follows:

Found: (quicksort lesser) ++ [p] ++ (quicksort greater) Why not:

*Main> :info sphereVolume sphereVolume sphereVolum e :: Fractional a => a -> a -- Defned at /home/guest/ /home/guest/Sphere.hs:1: Sphere.hs:1:1-12 1-12

quicksort lesser ++ [p] ++ (quicksort greater) QuickSort.lhs:6:44: QuickSort.l hs:6:44: Warning: Redundant bracket Found: [p] ++ (quicksort greater)

To nd Haddock information for a symbol, you can use C-c C-d. Searching for ‘Float’, for example, opens up the following le:  ///usr/share/doc/ghc/  ///usr/s hare/doc/ghc/html/libr html/libraries/  aries/  ghcprim-0.2.0.0/GHC-Types.html  on Fedora. To use the Hayoo search engine, you can use M-x haskellhayoo. It will prompt with: Hayoo query:

The query responses are shown in a browser. Similarly, the Hoogle engine can be queried using M-x haskell-hoogle. If you searched for ‘show’, it will open the URL http://www. haskell.org/hoogle/?q=show  with the search results. Files ending with .lhs are literate Haskell programs. You can use the Richard Bird style to separate text and code as follows:

Why not: [p] ++ quicksort greater

References [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Haskell.   http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell  Haskell.  GNU Emacs.  Emacs.  http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/  Haskell mode 2.8. 2.8. http://projec http://projects.haskell.org/h ts.haskell.org/haskellmode-e askellmode-emacs macs Hasktag. http://hac http://hackage.haskell kage.haskell.org/package/hasktags .org/package/hasktags HLint.   http://community.haskell.org/~ndm/hlint/  HLint.

By: Shakthi Kannan  The author author is a free free softwa software re devel developer oper at the the Fedora Fedora project, project, and also a blogger. He co-maintains the Fedora Electronic Lab project.

AUGUST 2013 |

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For U & Me

Let's Try

Learn How to Solve Non-Linear Equations with Equations  with Linear Algebra In this mathematical journey through open source, we solve non-linear equations using linear algebra in Octave.

I

hope you found out the vegetable prices from the vendor, who had various equally priced stacks for sale at `  30.  30. Recall: One stack had 4 lemons, 7 cucumbers, and 9 tomatoes. Another had 2 lemons, 5 cucumbers, and 27 tomatoes. And the third had just 9 cucumbers and 15 tomatoes. The prices worked out at  ` 2.00 per lemon, ` 2.50 per cucumber, and  ` 0.50 per tomato, computed as follows:

Polynomial solving Note that this is a linear equation, though in three variables. How about solving higher order polynomial equations involving squares, cubes, etc, of the variable? variable? Let’s assume 3 2 we want a solution for x in x  + 3x  + 3x + 1 = 0. Simple! First dene a function for this polynomial. And then use the function solver fsolve to fsolve to solve it, as follows: $ octave -qf

$ octave -qf

octave:1> function y = f(x)

octave:1> N = [

> y = x^3 + 3*x^2 + 3*x + 1;

> 4 7 9

> endfunction

> 2 5 27

octave:2> [x, fval, info] = fsolve(@f, 0)

> 0 9 15

x = -0.99999

> ];

fval = 0

octave:2> inv(N) * [30; 30; 30]

info = 1

ans =

octave:3>

  2.00000

This indicates the value of x as -0.99999 ≈ -1 as the solution to the function f(x), yielding a function value of 0, with info = 1 indicating that the solution has been obtained. You may verify the answer by calling the function ‘f’ ‘ f’ with the variable ‘x’ as f(x) on the Octave prompt. The second

  2.50000   0.50000 octave:3>

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Let's Try parameter in fsolve() is fsolve() is the initial guess of the solution.

Geometric problem solving With the power in hand, why not solve more complex geometric problems? Last time, we found the point of intersection of two straight lines. How about the intersection of a straight line and a circle? Let us have the following straight line and circle, dened in the Cartesian coordinate system, i.e., the x-y system: 4x + 3y = 24 x2 + y2 = 25

To be able to solve it using fsolve, fsolve , let's consider the different variables ‘x’ and ‘y’ as fields of a vector X, say ‘x’ as X(1), ‘y’ as X(2). Then, the equations can be rewritten as follows: 4 * X(1) + 3 * X(2) = 24 X(1)^2 + X(2)^2 = 25

…and hence could be solved using fsolve as fsolve as follows: $ octave -qf octave:1> function Y = F(X)

For U & Me

got those back, squared. Then, he offered some of those owers in the temple and dipped the remaining owers into the second magical pond to get those back, doubled. Then, he again offered the same number of owers, as offered earlier, and dipped the remaining owers into the third magical pond to get those back, tripled, which he took back with him as  prasadam.  prasadam . Now, the number of owers he took back with him, is same as in each one of his offerings. Also, what he took back with him is thrice the number of owers he came with to the temple. How many owers did he come to the temple with? If you think you have got the Octave code to solve the above questions, you may email the solution to me at the mail ID mentioned below. Going forward, we will start to specically explore polynomials.

By: Anil Kumar Pugalia  The author, author, who is a gold medallist from the Indian Institute of Science, is a hobbyist in open source hardware and software, with a passion for mathematics. His exploration of mathematics, in every aspect of life, dates back to the 1990s. Mathematics and knowledge sharing are two of his many passions. Apart from that, he experiments with Linux and embedded systems to share his learning through his weekend workshops. Learn more about him and his experiments at http://sysplay http://sysplay.in .in.. He can be reached at [email protected] [email protected]..

> Y(1) = 4 * X(1) + 3 * X(2) - 24; > Y(2) = X(1)^2 + X(2)^2 - 25; > endfunction octave:2> [Y, Fval, info] = fsolve(@F, [0; 0]) warning: matrix singular to machine precision, rcond = 0 warning: attempting to fnd minimum norm solution warning: dgelsd: rank defcient 2x2 matrix, rank = 1 Y =   3.0000   4.0000 Fval =  

0.0000e+00

info =

2.6691e-07

1

octave:3>

So (3, 4) is the point of intersection. This can be veried by re-substituting the values in the original equations.

Try and solve these Equipped with this knowledge, here are a couple of teasers for your brain: 1. Find three numbers, the product of which is 60, the sum of their squares is 50, and their sum is 12. 2. A sage came to a temple with some owers and dipped all of them into the rst magical pond of the temple and

AUGUST 2013 |

93

For U & Me   Interview

“We have doubled our customer base every single year since we started”

Shashank Mehrotra,

GM and business head, BigRock

BigRock has recently joined hands with Neustar, a provider of real-time information and analysis to the Internet, telecommunications, telecommuni cations, technology, technology, retail, retail, media and advertising industries, to promote .biz as the preferred domain for small businesses in India. As part of this initiative, BigRock and Neustar have outlined an aggressive outreach campaign that includes a series of new television commercials (TVCs), extensive digital outreach, and a complete online presence for businesses. The online presence will include a .biz domain name, Web hosting, hosted email for the .biz domain name and Google  Adwords coupons worth Rs 2500, all of which are integrated  with an easy-to-use interactive website builder pr iced at Rs 199. Dik 199. Diksha sha P Gupt Gupta a  from Open Source For You You spoke to Shashank Mehrotra, GM and business head, BigRock,  about this initiative and the company’s growth in India. Excerpts...

Q

: How big is the domain name business in India these days? Let me rst give you the numbers in terms of the overall size of the domain name business in India. There are two types of domain names—one is gTLDs and the other is ccTLDs. When we try to calculate the size of the domain name industry, we try and ascertain the number of all the registrants (an individual who has booked a domain name) who originate from India. We use that proxy to gure out the size of the industry. There are no external agencies that independently audit this but we have a fairly sophisticated analytics team that looks at this aspect. By our estimates, there are around 3.2-3.5 million domain names in use by Indian registrants today.

Q

: GoDaddy has set up its Indian arm almost a year back. How has its presence affected BigRock? Before I specically answer that question, let me tell you how the industry is actually laid out. This is not a new industry. Domain names have been booked in India much before BigRock started. Historically, Directi, which is the parent entity for BigRock, has been a very strong player in India with over 47 per cent of the market share for over a decade. Directi’s Reseller Club, LogicBoxes and BigRock, combine to hold over 50 per cent of the market for domain name registration. Now coming back to your question about GoDaddy… it has always been present in India, though the company has physically set up operations in India in the last year.

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| AUGUST 2013

Because it is the largest global brand, consumers are aware of GoDaddy. What has changed is that it has started focusing on the Indian market in the last 12 months or so, but it has always been present. To specifically answer your question on how we look at it—we welcome any competition that helps in enhancing the profile of the business and enhances the industry and education levels among customers, in general. If you look at the penetration of domain names amongst Indian users, that number is still ridiculously low. As I said, we have about 3.5 million domain names. The number of domain names as a percentage of Internet users is very low, as we have anywhere between 130-140 million Internet users today. So, only around 2 per cent of the Internet-accessing population has a domain name today. If you look at the ratio of the Internet-using population vs domain names across other markets like the US, China, Turkey, Turkey, Germany, etc, those numbers are much higher. Out of 100 people who use the Internet in the US, at least 26 or 27 actively translate into domain names. Whereas, in India, that number is just 2. So, with the growth of the Internet economy and with the need to get more and more businesses online, we feel this market is only going to grow. GoDaddy being physically present here is an affirmation of this growth in some sense. We have been here, and we have done a lot of campaigns in promoting the domain names business. Their being here is an indication that they agree with us.

Interview

Q

: So does that mean there is enough lunch for everyone to eat and there is no competition, as such? As far as the competition is concerned, it is clearly based on how you look at it. We are experiencing the same situation as in the early days of the telecom boom, when people weren’t so concerned about the competition and were looking at growing the market with different innovations. We are in that phase of the market’s evolution, and the market could grow faster. I expected the market to have picked up and started growing at a much faster pace than it has right now. I think we have been a little bit delayed. But we predict that the growth will come in the next 18-24 months. If I can throw some light on the China story, China has the largest Internet population globally. globally. It has 400-500 million people on the Internet, which means around 40 per cent of the population is online. If you look at the growth in domain names in China, it is unprecedented. Their market is growing very, very rapidly. I think they are a couple of years ahead of us and we aim to reach there as well. Right now, we are trying to build our products and value proposition, our communication strategy and other essentials to establish a strong s trong footing in the market. We We are in that phase and we certainly expect that, some years from now, there will be a lot of excitement in this space and in the Internet space as well.

Q

: BigRock recently announced joining hands with Neustar to promote .biz as the preferred domain for small businesses in India. Everyone these days is focusing on the SMB business in India. What are the challenges involved in bringing Indian SMBs, particularly from Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns of t he country, online? Let me answer this question in two parts. This is something really important for BigRock and we work on it in a major way. We spend a lot of time analysing and strategising on this segment in the country. The rst part of the answer is the current need. Today, in India, only 10-11 per cent of our population is online. And clearly that number will only go up in the coming years, particularly with the mobile revolution. India is doing over 50,000 smartphone activations every single day. An increasing number of people are accessing the Internet. There are multiple models to fulll that need, but almost all the economies in the world that are ahead of us in the curve have shown that businesses are trying to get online with a Web presence, which includes a website, a domain name, hosting packages, and a branded email service. Small businesses are trying to embrace all these services to make their businesses more credible.

For U & Me

"The basis of the growth is a combination of strong service, innovative products, marketing, et al. We are growing in high double digits and we are looking forward to continue doing the same. " As far as the ‘need’ factor is concerned, I think we are at a point where many businesses in India don’t feel the need to be online, which is perfectly fine because they have an absolutely good sense of where their markets lie and who is looking for them. But that is what is fundamentally changing, and it will continue to change. As more and more people start looking for goods, services and products online, I think that behaviour will start to change for consumers. As the need grows, the pull factor will start working in the industry of domain names, rather than the push factor. The second part of the answer is that we need to know the effective way t o reach out to the audience. We have chosen the mechanism of creating some branding through television and online advertising to reach out to our consumers.

Q

: How much do you expect Big Rock’s domain business to grow in this FY? We have doubled our customer base every single year since we started, and the order books are getting taller and taller with every passing year. We have been growing pretty rapidly and we hope to continue doing the same this year as well. The basis of the growth is a combination of strong service, innovative products, marketing, et al. We are growing in high double digits and we are looking forward to continue doing the same.

Q

: How do you plan to reach out to the IT managers across the country, apart from advertising? We have, in the past, reached out to a lot of Web designers, the systems integrators, the IT consultants, individually, individually, apart from the advertising that we do. We have over 10,000 people who have signed on our affiliate channels. These channels make commissions every time they sell a BigRock product, of which a significant number constitutes the website designers, IT managers and IT consultants. We also have a sales team that works with IT consultants. Also, we keep launching new products such as virtual private servers, Enterprise class email, etc, which are an attraction for IT managers.

AUGUST 2013 |

95

For U & Me   Career

Revamp Your Your IT Career Career as a Cloud Security Expert Here’ Her e’ss a ringside r ingside view of some exciting and challenging careers in the cloud security realm.

T

he advent of the cloud, which was once a niche concept, has empowered organisations to shift their focus from maintaining maintaining their complex IT infrastructure infrastructure back to managing their core business. The growing trend of cloud adoption across the globe, irrespective of the size of the organisation, has increased the importance of cloud security. At a time when a data breach is the order of the day, organisations need procient IT managers who can ensure that data moves between secure servers to remote devices without any intrusion or breach. If you are looking for a job in the IT domain or wish to pep up your otherwise unexciting job in the IT gamut, a career as a cloud security professional can be a great option.

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What makes cloud security a challenge is the cumulative security concerns related to various components, and since there is no one standard dened for cloud security, it becomes a more challenging affair. And that’s that’s where the role of a cloud security expert comes into play, feels Dr Rajeev Papneja, chief operations ofcer at ESDS Software Solution Pvt Ltd. “The latest trend is the shift from a simple network security and malware security point of view to a multilayered security approach. Cloud companies providing APIs are working on making the authentication and access services robust to mitigate the risks. Next-generation rewalls that are currently being developed will help organisations to monitor and manage access based on application usage.

Career Cloud providers will have to work on some kind of compartmentalisation techniques to make sure that a virtual machine of one customer cannot be accessed by the virtual machine of another customer, since both these containers are on the same hardware and are sharing compute resources including memory cache. The most important aspect is the threat from inside the cloud service provider’s house—from employees who can access the information. While proper SLAs need to be in place for customers, it is more important to have proper security policies and procedures in place internally, for cloud service providers to start building up customer condence. A good security expert should understand these basic nuances of the cloud terrain.” A recent report by Gartner stated that the cloud will increasingly be incorporated into corporate security endeavours, as 10 per cent of IT data protection offerings will be available through the cloud by 2015. “As the talent pool in the security landscape shrinks, the demand for professionals with a sound cloud experience will only grow in the years to come. Job seekers in traditional IT roles will need to advance advance themselves and get cloud-ready if they want to survive in the market,” says Ritesh A Sarvaiya, CEO and founder of Defencely.Com, a fast-growing cloud security company. Echoing similar views, Dr Papneja explains, “Cloud security is an additional responsibility that will have to be borne on the shoulders of the current technology’s soldiers in cloud providing organisations. Truly, I do not see cloud security as a totally new vertical for professionals because it really does not replace all the things that are currently handled by the existing technology group. Existing employees will have to upgrade their skills from  just being pure IT support suppor t professionals professi onals to those tho se that look at everything from a holistic point of view, backed by knowledge of the various hypervisor architectures and an understanding of risk management. Certied and experienced security professionals will be more in demand in the coming years. We will see the emergence of new job titles such as c loud specialists, cloud computing architect and cloud infrastructure architect to replace the traditional systems architects or specialists. I would not be surprised if, going forward, we come across a cloud security ofcer.” Dr Papneja continues, “In North America, there is a great demand for open source experts in the cloud security arena due to their exibility and ability to work in any environment. This trend will catch up here too in the next ve years.” So, what are the skill sets that a hiring manager looks for at the time of recruitment? “We “We generally look for candidates that have good technical understanding of network security, knowledge related to architecture of various virtualisation platforms and open source tools, and a good understanding of service-oriented architecture,” says Dr Papneja. In today’s competitive IT job market, do certications in this eld help push resumes to the top of the stack? “Certications will denitely help professionals. One of the

For U & Me

Different roles available in the field of cloud security help design a good cloud cloud solution Cloud architects: They help with the right cloud infrastructure based on a client’s requirements. These candidates will generally have sound knowledge of ‘Platform as a Service’, ‘Infrastructure as a Service’ and ‘Software as a Service’, as well as the related providers and solutions available in the market.  These are more like experts in Cloud developers:  These ‘Platform as a Service’ offerings, be it public, private or hybrid. These candidates would be hands-on developers who would understand and know how to design, develop and deploy products on various platforms.  This role requires a thorough Cloud security specialists:  This knowledge of various layers of security and the emerging security models to cater to the needs of the cloud environment. A part of this role is also complemented by the role of cloud auditors. that assist Cloud auditors: These are third party firms that the customers to figure out the level of security that they should look for while outsourcing their data or applications, and assess the criticality of the applications that need to be moved to the cloud. T hey also help customers to be aware about industry regulations and the cloud provider’s provider’s policy on o n vulnerability management. Infrastructur Infrastructure e managers: They are responsible for managing the infrastructure to support the cloud deployment. These would typically be IT managers managers with various skills—a jack-of-all-trades with knowledge of networking, applications, databases, load balancing, etc. (Courtesy: Dr Rajeev Papneja)

major reasons is the gap between the supply and demand for cloud security professionals, which we will start seeing in the near future. According to IT research companies, by the end of 2015, more than 50 per cent of medium scale businesses would be utilising some cloud service or the other, which means a growing need for cloud security professionals. Since there are not enough candidates to ll the need and not enough time to go through some kind of formal academics for the job, the only way left for them to understand the concept of cloud security and all that it demands, is to go through the certication courses offered by cloud providers themselves. I feel, this is the only assistance they have for transitioning from their current roles, to taking the next step in their career,” career,” opines Dr Papneja. So, a career in the cloud security arena can certainly accelerate your IT career graph and enhance your value in the recruitment landscape.

By Priyanka Sarkar  The author is a member member of the editorial editorial team. She loves to weave in and out the little nuances of life and scribble her thoughts and experiences in her personal blog.

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For U & Me   Insight

HP Launches New Servers for SMBs The company’s new ProLiant servers aim to simplify IT and boost business productivity for small and mid-sized businesses in India.

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MBs in India are the biggest market segment for almost all IT service providers, including HP. HP. In a bid to offer cost-effective yet user-friendly IT infrastructure solutions to SMBs across the country, the company has launched HP ProLiant servers that help small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) accelerate growth by simplifying the deployment, management and maintenance of their IT infrastructure. The new HP ProLiant MicroServer Generation 8 (Gen8) aims to provide a simplied set-up, management and maintenance with HP Smart Technologies. The HP MicroServer offers centralised, anywhere, anytime data access to employees to boost productivity and collaboration through data sharing. The size of this MicroServer is really worth a mention. It is small and quiet enough to sit on a desk. Speaking about the product, Vikram Vikram K, director, ISS Business Unit, Enterprise Business, HP, HP, said, “SMBs have limited nancial and human resources to invest when responding to growing customer demands and evolving business needs. Smaller enterprises, such as retail stores, medical practices and real estate ofces need simple, scalable and cost-effective solutions to power their businesses. This new server from HP is good enough for just that purpose.” According to AMI Partners, a global strategy consulting rm, at least 5.1 million small businesses worldwide will purchase their rst server within the next ve years. The data is based on current buying trends. According to Vikram, “Small and mid-sized businesses require innovative server solutions that meet their specic business needs and price points to remain competitive. These new HP ProLiant servers are easy to use, highly reliable and cost-effective to maintain, enabling our SMB customers to boost business performance, save time and cut costs.” Although HP works through channel partners to reach out to IT managers, the company is also working on a portal called ‘JustrightIT.com’ which will be of great help to IT managers, enabling them to choose the right IT infrastructure solutions. Vikram Vikram says, “This portal should be launched

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in India very soon. IT managers can come on to the portal and just ll in the necessary details to determine what the best IT solutions for their companies are. An IT manager in a company of 500 employees just needs to mention that gure to get all the necessary details regarding appropriate IT solutions, besides being able to get help from our people anywhere across the country, if required.” The new HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 claims to deliver the reliability, performance performance and security of a business server in a ‘whisper-quiet’ design that is half the size of most competitive entry-level servers. The company claims it is an ‘ideal’ rst server solution for micro and small businesses, which enables collaboration through centralised information and data sharing. It also enables SMB clients to reduce the time spent on IT so they can focus on managing and growing their business. Designed for organisations with less than 10 employees, the HP MicroServer Gen8 shares and secures critical information in a central server. It leverages several HP ProLiant Gen8 server innovations as well as the HP ProActive Insight architecture, enabling SMBs to: Simplify system installation, the set-up and maintenance with the HP iLO Management Engine (iLO4) and HP Intelligent Provisioning, which are embedded in each server with software and preloaded tools ready to deploy for simplied management. Remotely manage the server from anywhere, anytime to increase productivity while lowering operational costs with HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) Essentials. Continuously monitor performance with HP Active Health, which automatically assesses the servers for optimum health and lowest power consumption, and accelerates application updates to boost server performance and improve uptime via HP Smart Update. Deliver an integrated, converged server and networking infrastructure solution with the optional, stackable HP PS1810-8G managed switch, which automatically discovers, monitors and accelerates the connectivity performance of both devices. 

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OpenBiz

For U & Me

The Making of the SUSE Brand in India

Venkatesh Swaminathan, country head, the Attachmate group

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one are the days when SUSE was known as a distro used by a group of edgy techies. SUSE is now a common name, and that has not happened overnight. A clear strategy, a strong and buzzing community and a super strong conviction to make it big, have combined to make SUSE a success story. The distro has spread its wings from the small desktop space to the wide horizon of the enterprise

SUSE dreamt of making it big in India and has succeeded in doing so, over a period per iod when people were still apprehensive about open source. Read on to learn how SUSE’s success story unfolded...

world. And it has grown substantially in the process. According to Venkatesh Swaminathan, country head, the Attachmate group, SUSE has enjoyed good growth globally in the last financial year. He says, “There was a growth of 22 per cent at a time when the Linux server market was forecasted to grow at 18 per cent. So, you can see that we are growing faster than the market. In India AUGUST 2013 |

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For U & Me   OpenBiz we saw similar trends. We acquired 25 per cent of our new customers l ast year. We We saw some aggress ive growth in the enterprise market, where we had some strategic wins. This year, our focus is to target our existing customer base in the government sector and get aggressive in the enterprise and BFSI space, which our direct sales team will go aft er. We We now have a dedicated team for sales and pre-sales for every region that focuses only on SUSE. Apart from the enterprise space, SUSE is also banking big on the SME space... and why not, since India has plenty of them. Swaminathan says, “We see tremendous opportunity in the SME space, where we will go with our strong partner base. We are running some interesting incentive schemes for our partners. I have met many enterprise and SME customers who have shared their concerns relating to vendor lockin with traditional vendors and that’s where open source technology can help them. We have seen many successes, with enterprises and SMEs deploying their mission-critical applications like SAP, real compute, HPC, etc, on SUSE. Most of the UNIX-to-Linux migrations in the country, especially for SAP, are deploying SUSE. We have had some good wins in the BFSI sector in banks, exchanges, etc, with customers deploying SUSE for their core banking applications. Looking at this trend, our first priority is to build a strong partner community that can get us the scale to reach out specifically to the SMEs. Next on our list would be to work with the BFSI sector and get them to benefit from open source technology, which offers the right balance between cost and business value, with security as the core strength. We have always had a strong hold in the government and the education sector, built around SUSE desktop, and hence that would be a huge opportunity. We are already in talks with some state governments to run this initiative.” India has been a very important market for SUSE and with the growth the company has had here, over the years, it will continue to be so. Swaminathan says, “With the recent wins in banking, and among the enterprises with very large SAP deployments, we foresee very signifcant growth in the coming years. As I mentioned earlier, worldwide, SUSE is growing faster than the market and this is the case in India too.”

Linux: The obvious choice SUSE is growing for the same reason Linux is. IT managers across the globe are realising the importance of open source technology in the context of vendor lock-in. While working in SUSE, Swaminathan has noticed that customers are aware of the key benefits of using Linux, like lower TCO, easy customisation,

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unique hardware and software requirements, and less dependence on vendors. He adds, “SUSE Linux offers greater efficiencies but even more important, it helps customers to be more agile as businesses and reduce risks. Apart from these evident benefits, what worked for us was a renewed focus in the Indian market with a clear Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy to go after the government, the enterprise, BFSI and the SME markets. We have solid experience of 20 years in the enterprise Linux space and I believe that with the right GTM and marketing efforts we will repeat our growth story. Our presence in industry events, campaigns targeting the customer and partner community, and many new initiatives like partner incentives and attractive bundles for customers have worked in our favour. favour. Last, but not the least, is the support and testimonials/references from our existing customer base, which makes it easy for us to win new customers.” So for all those who still think that Linux is not the right choice, think again! The government being a key influencer when it comes to technology adoption is the reason SUSE has banked on this sector. Swaminathan says, “One of SUSE’s initiatives from the very beginning in India is to engage on government projects. The success we have had with many government agencies and with e-governance initiatives is a testimony to our efforts to provide an affordable and sustainable solution to the government. These solutions anyway affect the common man—people like you and me. SUSE has become the only choice on many government projects in education and in school initiatives under way across various states. Exposing schoolgoing children to Linux will only increase this awareness and, in the coming years, we will see people asking for desktops/laptops with open source alternatives.”

‘Success story will continue...’ Swaminathan says, “I believe we can build on the immense successes we have had last year. We have to  just replicate repl icate and reach o ut to many more mor e customers and partners.” The company now wants to increase its presence in the banking segment, specifcally to all those banks that are now on the verge of a hardware refresh. He clarifes, “We want to educate these banks on the alternatives, and we believe we do have a very strong value proposition. We are right now focusing on training our partners to increase our reach.”

By: Diksha P Gupta  The author is assistant editor at EFY. EFY.

Overview

For U & Me

Popular App Launchers at Your Fingertips For readers who have not used application launchers, now is the time to try one out. This article demonstrates the popular app launchers GNOME Do, GNOME Pie and Synapse. They are more powerful and faster than any built-in search system of an OS, and are capable of doing a lot more than just launching apps.

Sound & Video

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n a lazy Sunday afternoon, after eating a rather heavy lunch, I was getting ready to write yet another article. I pressed and a grey window popped up. I started typing into it and had got only as far as ‘lib’ when the familiar icon of LibreOfce Writer came up. I hit the  Enter key and leaned back in my chair, the scene harmonising with my already indolent mood. “Installing Synapse was a smart move,” I thought to myself. Synapse is a ‘semantic launcher’. I’ve always felt that it is an incredibly dry description for an extremely useful program. Synapse is part of a category of software known as application launchers. Such software not only allows you to quickly access your favourite apps but often also includes powerful search functionality. functionality. Call it an over active imagination, but I always think of app launchers as

obsequious digital ferrets running around uncovering les, locating apps and placing them all at your ngertips. Though there is no shortage of application launchers, I would like to review the three most popular ones – GNOME Do, GNOME Pie and Synapse.

History GNOME Do was originally created by David Siegel. It was inspired by Quicksilver for the Mac OS X and GNOME Launch Box. GNOME Pie was created by Simon Schneegans, a student of computer media science at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany. He explained his reasons for creating another application launcher: “I realised the trend in application launchers to be keyboard based. All of them

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For U & Me   Overview (GNOME Do, Synapse, Kupfer, Unity's Dash, GNOME Shell, etc) are mainly focused on keyboard input—I wanted to create something which could be used with your mouse only.” And so GNOME Pie was born and released to the public in September 2011.

User interface GNOME Do is s ummoned using where ‘Super’ is the Windows (or if you’re lucky, Ubuntu) icon key. GNOME Do has a simple two-pane user interface (UI). Your typed text and match show up in one pane while the other pane shows the actions possible. There is a tiny cross icon in the top left hand corner for closing Do and an equally tiny icon in the top right hand corner, which opens a menu that includes the ‘About Do’, ‘ Preferences’, ‘Donate’ and ‘Quit’ options. The UI is fully customisable; you can choose a theme and the background colour as well. GNOME Pie has a unique and intuitive interface. It is a circular application launcher and can be navigated by using both the mouse and the keyboard, though using the mouse is preferable. The UI consists of a central display circle surrounded by the items. The user can choose from several themes such as ‘Funky’, ‘Glossy’ and even some OS-specic themes such as ‘Elementary’ and ‘Unity’. I found the ‘pie’ UI concept cute and refreshing—the only drawback being the lack of icons sometimes. GNOME Pie also has a notication tray icon, which on being clicked shows ‘Preferences’, ‘About’ and ‘Quit’. Synapse is best thought of as a oating search bar that can be activated using . You type in the text, and the icon of a matching application will be shown. You can use the side arrow keys to access lters such as ‘Documents’, ‘Images’, and ‘Videos’, which help narrow the search. Synapse’s UI can also be themed. There are six themes to choose from, including ‘Do-ish’, which turns Synapse into a perfect GNOME Do clone! Synapse also has a notication tray icon, which on being clicked shows the ‘Activate’, ‘Preferences’ and ‘Quit’ options.

Functionality Functionality and ease of use Launching applications from GNOME Do is fairly straightforward. Just type in the name and hit ‘Enter’. Searching is equally simple and surprisingly powerful. The plugins allow Do to search your Tomboy notes, Firefox bookmarks, Banshee and, of course, your files and folders. Your search can also include your Google Calendar events and Google Docs if you provide your user details to the program. GNOME Do also allows you to set simple reminders and find word definitions using GNOME dictionary. These features work well; however, as I experienced with the  Reminder  Remi nder  option, users need to learn how to phrase the command to use these features

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properly. The syntax, though simple, is not necessarily obvious and often leads to a Google search or two. Oh, and did I mention that all the features mentioned so far are just a small part  of  of the ‘Official Plugins’? And that Official Plugins are roughly half of ‘Community Plugins’? With such powerful add-ons, you can do literally anything from the comfort of Do’s two pane UI. An innovative twist to GNOME Pie is that it consists of several ‘pies’. For instance, there is an ‘Applications’ pie, a ‘Multimedia’ pie and so on. Each pie has a different keyboard shortcut. Users can, of course, create their own pies. Each item in the pie is called a ‘slice’, and users can add their own slices with some basic command line knowledge. Unlike Do, GNOME Pie does not have a search function. Though it has some additional features like being able to control multimedia playback with a pie, it primarily is an application launcher. This is not a bad thing since simplicity has its own benefits. Many users will find GNOME Pie intuitive and useful; however, power users who want a host of additional features should probably choose GNOME Do or Synapse. If you’ve ever done a Google search before, you can probably use Synapse. Launching applications and finding files using Synapse is extremely simple. If you’re unhappy with the primary result, use the down arrow key to show a list of alternatives. The side arrow keys allow you to use the filters to narrow your search. Integration with Zeitgeist makes Synapse very effective—it managed to find most of my search queries within seconds. Synapse also has a decent list of plugins, though they are less in number compared to Do. Plugins include the ability to control Banshee and Rhythmbox, search the Web and even perform some basic calculations. These plugins are not always easy to use. For instance, figuring out how to use ‘OpenSearch’ took some time. However, once you lear n how to use them, the plugins are simply awesome and a good return on the initial time investment. All the three programs have the option to automatically start up at login, circumventing the need for any other application launcher to start them. Which application launcher you wish to use ultimately comes down to personal preference. For users who don’t want too many features and just want to access their favourite applications, GNOME Pie is hard to beat. It is easy to congure, looks good and its circular UI is like a breath of fresh air. For users who would like the ability to search for les and folders along with launching applications, Synapse is a good choice. It has a simple UI and a powerful search, along with a decent number of plugins. For power users who want to do everything from their application launcher, GNOME Do with its huge plugin library is perfect. If I had to recommend r ecommend an application launcher launcher to

Overview

Summary GNOME Do Rating: 4 out of 5 The good  Simple two-pane UI Largest plug-in library Powerful search, including content from even Tomboy notes • • •

The bad  Some plugins are complex to use and require a particular syntax Lack of notification tray icon Website: http://cooperteam.net/  Website: http://cooperteam.net/ 

For U & Me

I don't have a lot of time to work on it at the moment.” With the introduction of Unity, many Ubuntu users have questioned the need for application launchers. What do you think? Are app launchers doomed? I would love to hear your responses at the poll on my blog. On a more positive note, Simon Schneegans, the creator of GNOME Pie, is busy working on its successor—OpenPie. According to Schneegans, OpenPie will work on touch devices. Maybe that will be the future form of application launchers, just so long as it’s open source.

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GNOME Pie Rating: 3.5 out of 5 The good  Innovative great looking UI  Ability to use both mouse and keyboard for navigation Many theme options

References [1]   http://www.techdrivein.com/2012/04/synapse-launcher-is[1]  not-maint  not-m aintaine ained.htm d.html l  [2] http://tusha http://tusharbhargava.wordpre rbhargava.wordpress.com/2013/06 ss.com/2013/06/21/the/21/theend-of-application-launchers/

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By: Tushar Bhargava

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The bad  Lack of search capabilities No plug-in library Website: http://www Website: http://www.simonschneegans.de/?page_id=12 .simonschneegans.de/?page_id=12 • •

 The author is a 17-year old college bound-student bound-student who loves Ubuntu and FOSS. He likes to program in Java and C++, and enjoys writing. Of late, he's been trying his hand at making  Android apps. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to his blog at tusharbhargava.wordpress.com for more such articles.

Synapse Rating: 4 out of 5 The good Simple intuitive UI Powerful search with full Zeitgeist integration Decent plug-in library • • •

The The bad  Some plugins are complex to use Only six theme options Website: https://launchpad.net/synapse-project  Website: https://launchpad.net/synapse-project   And the winner of this Software Showdown is…Synapse! • •

someone without knowing much about the person, I would suggest Synapse. It provides sufcient features for most users and its theme-able UI is extremely intuitive.

Epilogue: The end of application launchers? While researching Synapse for this article, I chanced upon an interesting post at a site called ‘Tech Drive-in’. It claimed that the launcher was not being maintained any more. Looking at the project’s Launchpad page, I realised the latest version was about a year old. I asked a question on the same page but got no answer. I can only hope the project is being maintained. Even GNOME Do hasn’t been updated in a long time. Seeing this, a user asked about the project’s status. Here’s how Christopher Halse Rogers, the current project lead of Do, responded, “It's not dead, but it is reasonably mature, and

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 Aircel AT&T, India Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd Bharti Airtel Ltd Broadband Pacenet India Pvt Ltd Hathway Cables and Datacom Ltd Idea Cellular Ltd Indusind Media and Communication Ltd (IMCL) Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd Netmagic Solutions RailTel Corp of India Reliance Communications Infrastructure Ltd Sify Spectranet TATACommunications Tikona Digital Networks Tulip  Aircel AT&T, India Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd Bharti Airtel Ltd Broadband Pacenet India Pvt Ltd Hathway Cables and Datacom Ltd Idea Cellular Ltd Indusind Media and Communication Ltd (IMCL) Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd Netmagic Solutions RailTel Corp of India Reliance Communications Infrastructure Ltd Sify Spectranet TATACommunications Tikona Digital Networks Tulip

A List Of Internet Service Providers Aircel | Gurgaon Aircel Business Solutions offers high performance Internet leased-line services for its customers, for any kind of last mile connectivity. With monitoring tools to check, measure and monitor the backbone, Aircel allows its customers to buy the bandwidths as per requirements and deploys the last mile connectivity over Wimax, fibre or P2P radio. Aircel Business Solutions currently offers the following services like premium Internet bandwidth, shared Internet bandwidth, Preferred Route Internet and Data Centre Internet to its small business and enterprise customers.

AT&T, India | India | New Delhi AT&T is an Internet service provider offering high speed Internet, DSL and broadband. Connecting one’s home or business with the VoIP service from AT&T is easy, as it comes with remarkable voice quality, powerful new features and comprehensive savings. Business DSL from AT&T offers high-bandwidth Internet access at speeds significantly faster than dial-up access, but at a fraction of the cost of T1-based access. It also comes with multiple options for speeds and configurations, and nationwide reach over the AT&T IP backbone.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd | New Delhi This is one of the leading Internet service providers with more than 1.7 million subscribers, providing Internet Internet services ser vices branded Sancharnet throughout the country (except in New Delhi and Mumbai). Sancharnet provides free all-India roaming, and enables its users to access their accounts with the same access code (172233) and user ID from anywhere in the country. In order to make Internet available throughout the length and breadth of the country, Internet dhabas are being commissioned at all the block headquarters. BSNL has also started DIAS and account-free Internet access (CLI based) facilities in a few select cities recently.

        N         I Bharti Airtel Ltd | New Delhi         D         A         E         L

The company is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa. Headquartered in New Delhi, the company’s product offerings in India include 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services, mobile commerce, fixed line services, high speed DSL broadband, IPTV, DTH, and enterprise services including national and international long distance services to carriers. In the rest of the geographies, it offers 2G, 3G wireless services and mobile commerce. The company claims that it had over 269 million customers across its operations, as of the end of March 2013.

Broadband Pacenet India Pvt Ltd | Ltd | Mumbai This is an Internet ser vice provider with a pan-India presence in the seven cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Vadodara, Indore, Jaipur, Jaipur, Dhule and Pune. Its services include high-speed Internet broadband services, ser vices, Internet leased lines for enterprises and SMEs (both wired and wireless), VoIP, VoIP, data storage co-location services, audio and video conferencing, metropolitan security networks, bandwidth on demand, etc.

Hathway Cables and Datacom Ltd | Ltd | Mumbai As a leading service provider, Hathway offers a gamut of dedicated broadband solutions at competitive prices with quality performance and features. It provides cable services in 125 cities while broadband services are provided in 18 cities. The highlights of its services include static IP addresses which can be used for applications like Internet Internet servers (Web servers, mail servers, FTP servers, etc), secured networks, 24x7 dedicated customer support services,

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 the capability to offer specified specified bandwidths, affordable high bandwidth designed for businesses that demand superior performance, and more.

Idea Cellular Ltd | Mumbai Idea offers a range of high-speed mobile broadband devices including Android-based 3G smar tphones, dongles, etc. Idea’s wide portfolio of services for 3G smartphones offers the latest in 3G applications and high-end data services such as Idea TV, games, social networking, etc, at most affordable prices. Idea’s robust pan-India coverage is built on a network of over 100,000 2G and 3G cell sites, spread across over 55,000 towns in India.

Indusind Media and Communication Ltd (IMCL) | (IMCL)  | Mumbai Promoted by the Hinduja Group, IMCL is one of the largest MSO and cable broadband service ser vice providers in India. The company’s cable operations are present across key Indian geographies and it offers high-speed cable broadband services across 11 cities. The company offers high speed Internet services to residential, corporate and SME customers. For corporate and SME customers, IMCL offers dedicated leased lines to enable them to send huge amounts of data. IMCL would also be building a comprehensive services framework that can deliver leading edge voice, video, data and multimedia content services over any broadband or IP-centric network.

 Aircel AT&T, India Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd Bharti Airtel Ltd Broadband Pacenet India Pvt Ltd Hathway Cables and Datacom Ltd Idea Cellular Ltd Indusind Media and Communication Ltd (IMCL) Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd Netmagic Solutions RailTel Corp of India Reliance Communications Infrastructure Ltd Sify Spectranet TATACommunications Tikona Digital Networks Tulip  Aircel AT&T, India Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd Bharti Airtel Ltd Broadband Pacenet India Pvt Ltd Hathway Cables and Datacom Ltd Idea Cellular Ltd Indusind Media and Communication Ltd (IMCL) Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd Netmagic Solutions RailTel Corp of India Reliance Communications Infrastructure Ltd Sify Spectranet TATACommunications Tikona Digital Networks Tulip

Mahanagar Telephone Telephone Nigam Ltd | Mumbai MTNL is presently offering offering a wide spectrum of Internet related services— from dial-up Internet access to broadband Internet access services—in Delhi and Mumbai. Internet related services provided by the company include pre-paid Internet access services, post-paid Internet Express CLI services, Internet telephony services, and Internet services via leased lines.

Netmagic Solutions | Mumbai Netmagic Bandwidth Services offers customers the benefits of high-performance network architecture, ensuring scalability and maximum uptime and availability. The services include reliable 10 MBps/45 MBps Internet bandwidth through a dedicated leased line, burstability available on premium and advanced plans so  that customers can shift gears and manage heavy traffic, built-in redundancy enabled for businesses through access to connectivity from multiple service providers, and more.

RailTel Corp of India | New Delhi RailTel’s RailTel’s enterprise portfolio por tfolio includes transmission networks, broadband services, data and Internet services. RailTel’s MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) data network provides connectivity that meets the industry’s standards for consistent, secure and reliable data delivery. IP services are extended through carrier Ethernet access networks at all the RailTel RailTel locations, inter-connected to the MPLS-IP CORE network. net work. RailTel RailTel provides port speeds of all granularity, granularity, and managed customer traffic. It has set up Internet gateways at Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad, and provides ‘Instantaneous Bandwidth’ leased lines from RailTel PoPs across the country. The IBW is sourced from two or more service providers and on different submarine cables to ensure high availability with low latency. latency.

        N         I         D         A         E         L

Reliance Communications Infrastructure Ltd | Ltd  | Mumbai Reliance broadband Internet services are based on dual ring fibre architecture with FTTB (Fiber-to-the-building), (Fiber-to-the-building), giving exceptional uptime and access speeds. Combined with a wholly-owned 10 GBps data backbone that is monitored 24x7x365, this gives the customer an extremely reliable service, backed by industry leading service level agreements (SLAs). Reliance Wirefree Internet offers a superior broadband experience and unmatched features like capex-free subscription-based services, complete network and PC security solutions, ease of management for services subscribed to over the Web, and round-the-clock help-desks for support. In short, it is a one-stop solution for all communication and IT needs.

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 Aircel AT&T, India Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd Bharti Airtel Ltd Broadband Pacenet India Pvt Ltd Hathway Cables and Datacom Ltd Idea Cellular Ltd Indusind Media and Communication Ltd (IMCL) Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd Netmagic Solutions RailTel Corp of India Reliance Communications Infrastructure Ltd Sify Spectranet TATACommunications Tikona Digital Networks Tulip  Aircel AT&T, India Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd Bharti Airtel Ltd Broadband Pacenet India Pvt Ltd Hathway Cables and Datacom Ltd Idea Cellular Ltd Indusind Media and Communication Ltd (IMCL) Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd Netmagic Solutions RailTel Corp of India Reliance Communications Infrastructure Ltd Sify Spectranet TATACommunications Tikona Digital Networks Tulip

Sify | Chennai  After becoming the first network in India to be IPv6 enabled, the third largest IP VPN services provider in India, and an industry-defining portal, in 1999, Sify became the first Indian ICT company to be listed on NASDAQ. Sify broadband offers home broadband plans with speeds from 192 KBps to 1 MBps. It comes with a contention ratio of less than 30 to deliver consistent browsing speeds. The company has a presence in more than 200 cities across India, so customers can transfer their Sify broadband connections in case of relocation. Sify broadband also doubles up as a provider of an array of business enhancement tools such as website building, domain names, static IP, IP, etc, to empower customers’ businesses. business es. Subscribers can enjoy a host of custom solutions, which include uninterrupted connectivity, dedicated speeds, value added features and 24x7/365 support.

Spectranet | Gurgaon Spectranet Wireless Broadband eliminates the ugly wirin g that usually accompanies a broadband connection. The service gets delivered effortlessly–or wirelessly—to homes at a low cost. Its services include unlimited download/upload on all plans, quick installation (within two days), the ability to surf the Internet on Wi-Fi enabled mobiles, free Internet access at all Spectranet Wi-Fi Zones across the country, hassle-free 24x7 customer support, and numerous value-added services for the entire family.

TATA Commun Communicatio ications ns |  | Mumbai Tata Communications can deploy Easy Internet in less than 10 days, managing both the Internet por t and local loop set-up. Backed by best-in-class best-in-class Service Level Agreements (SLAs), Easy Internet is robust and dependable, with 99 per cent guaranteed network uptime. Flexible ser vice offerings and additional options include business class Internet bandwidth available in 256 2 56 KBps, 512 KBps, 1 MBps and 2 MBps plans; best-in-class Managed Security Services with a firewall; Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDPS) and anti-spam/anti-virus devices; a choice of routers and additional options: business messaging, management of routers and utilisation repor ts. It provides connectivity to over 50 per cent of the Indian market, and its tier-1 IP backbone spans more than 200 countries and territories, providing coverage across five continents.

Tikona Digital Networks | Mumbai Tikona Digital Networks (TDN) is engaged in building the next generation of wireless broadband services for home and enterprise customers in India. Tikona Enterprise Solutions offers the following products and services  to businesses—direct to office office leased leased lines lines with near 100 per cent Internet Internet uptime, with link link load load balancing and failover routing; differential access—for customised bandwidth per user group; secured office Wi-Fi —which allows employees to work from anywhere in the office using devices such as tablets, tablets, notebooks, smartphones, smart phones, etc; secured boardroom Internet—for easy and secure guest Internet access; high definition (HD) cloud video conferencing services that come with collaboration features, etc.

Tulip | New Delhi Tulip’s corporate Internet access service offers a flexible and scalable solution, providing reliable, highly available and on-demand bandwidth to customers. It offers tailor-made solutions as per the requirement of  the customers. Its features include dual-stack suppor t (IPv4 plus IPv6)-ready networks, fully meshed DS3/  STM backbone networks, carrier agnostic networks with Internet connectivity from multiple network operators, no single point of failure and a fully redundant network, last mile access via fibre or radio frequency, a wide choice of bandwidths ranging from 64 KBps KBps to STMs, multiple interface options (i.e., G.703, V.35 V.35 or Ethernet), industry leading SLAs, and 24/7 monitoring via multiple network operation centres.

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 TI  T IPS

& 

 TRI  TR ICK CKS S

Mounting the removable devices automatically at a specified folder

#nd dirname dirname ( -iname *’.c’ *’.c’ -o -iname -iname ‘*.cpp’ )

This trick is for those who deal with many removable devices, with every device changing its name after you restart your system. The solution is to mount devices by using their UUID (Universally Unique Identier). Run the following command: # blkid

 —Rajeev N Sambhu, [email protected]

How to change a user to a super user By doing a simple modication in the  /etc/passwd le you can enable a normal user to act as a super user. Let us see how this can be done. First of all, create a normal user account sampleuser. Then edit the le as shown below:

…which will show the UUID of devices. Now make an entry in the ‘/etc/fstab’ le ‘/etc/fstab’ le as shown below:

vi /etc/passwd

UUID=41c223418-fbad-4da6 UUID=41c2234 18-fbad-4da6-8196-c816df -8196-c816df0b7cc8 0b7cc8 /rt

sampleuser:x:1002:100:: sampleuser: x:1002:100::/home/sample /home/sampleuser:/bin/ba user:/bin/bash sh

defaults,errors=remount defaults,er rors=remount-ro -ro 0

ext3

1

Change uid=0 in uid=0 in the above line. …and then save and exit the le. Make sure you back up the original fstab le fstab le to avoid any problems. Now, type: #mount -a

This will re-read the fstab the  fstab entries.  entries. This tip can also be applied in case of SAN storage, where every Logical Unit Number (LUN) needs to be mounted.  —Rohit Verma, Verma, [email protected]

Finding multiple file types with a single  find  command  command You can nd all nd all the ‘c’ les or ‘cpp’ les in a directory using the nd command, as follows:

sampleuser:x:0:100::/home/sampleuser:/bin/bash

Save and exit the le. Now your sampleuser can act as a super user (root).  —Kannan M, [email protected]

Merge and split PDF files in Ubuntu Often, there is a need for splitting or merging a PDF le. Let’s look at how to do this in Ubuntu. Let’s use pdftk use pdftk to play around with PDF les. Open the terminal and type the following command: sudo apt-get install pdftk

After successfully installing pdftk, installing  pdftk, run the following command to merge PDF les:

#nd dirname -iname ‘*.cpp’ pdftk 1.pdf 2.pdf 3.pdf cat output merged.pdf

This will return all the ‘cpp’ les in the directory ‘dirname’. If you want to nd all the ‘cpp’ or ‘c’ les in a directory using a single command, use:

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To split PDF les, use the following command: pdftk 1.pdf cat 1-5 output new.pdf

This will create a le called new.pdf, which new.pdf, which will have only pages 1 to 5 of 1.pdf. Now let us look at a more complex use of pdftk: of  pdftk: pdftk A=one.pdf B=two.pdf cat A1-7 B1-5 A8 output

which rpm package. So, here is a tip to nd out the name of the package with the help of the ‘yum’ command. For this you should have the Yum server congured on your machine, locally or remotely. remotely. Let’s look at the example of the date command:

combined.pdf #yum whatprovides /bin/date

In the above example, we have selected different pages from different PDF les and merged them into combined.pdf.  —Neeraj Garg, [email protected]

Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit, coreutils-8.4-9.el6.x86_64 : A set of basic GNU tools : commonly used in shell scripts Repo

: base

Matched from:

How to begin with C programming in Linux Here is a simple tip that will enlighten newbies on how to compile their rst program using C. Make sure that you have C compiler installed before trying out the following steps. Now, Now, create a le  abc.c using any text editor. Open gedit and enter the following code:

Filename

: /bin/date

coreutils-8.4-9.el6.x86_64 : A set of basic GNU tools : commonly used in shell scripts Repo

: installed

Matched from: Other

: Provides-mat Provides-match: ch: /bin/date

The above output provides you with the actual name of the package that is installed on your machine. In case the package is not present on your machine, you can ask Yum to do the search work for you. For example, I can’t locate the ‘mutt’ command on my system, so I ran the following command:

#include void main() { printf(“Hello printf(“Hell o world\n”); }

Now save it as abc.c in your home/username folder. home/username folder. Next, to compile this code, open the terminal and run the following command:

#yum whatprovides */mutt

This will list the number of packages so that you can actually get the name of the package, as follows:

#gcc abc.c Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit,

On successful compilation, you will notice that a le named a.out has been created. created. This is the le you will will need to run by typing the following command in the terminal:

5:mutt-1.5.20-2.200912 5:mutt-1.5 .20-2.20091214hg736b6a.e 14hg736b6a.el6.x86_64 l6.x86_64 : A text mode : mail user : agent

#./a.out Repo

In case you want to give the executable le your own name rather than ‘a.out’, then you should compile it by using the -o option, as follows:

: base

Matched from: Filename

: /usr/bin/mu /usr/bin/mutt tt

 —Namrata Mapgaonkar, Mapgaonkar, [email protected]

#gcc abc.c -o hello

…where -o stands for the output le name.  —Rajnish Kumar, Kumar, [email protected]

Know the package behind the command you run Often we need to know which command is packed with

Share Your Linux Recipes!  The joy of using using Linux Linux is in findin finding g ways ways to get around around problems—take problems—take them head on, defeat them! We invite you to share your tips and tricks with us for publication in OSFY  so that they can reach a wider audience. Your tips could be related to administration, programming, troubleshooting or general tweaking. Submit them at www.linuxforu.com . The sender of each published tip will get a T-shirt.

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CALENDAR FOR-2013 EVENTS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2013 DATE

August 22-23, 2013

30th 30th Sep Sep – 4th 4th Oct Oct,, 201 2013 3

October 17-18, 2013

Nov November ber 1111-13 13,, 201 2013 3

Nove Novemb mber er 21-2 21-22, 2, 2013 2013

Nov November ber 2020-22 22,, 201 2013 3

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NAME OF THE EVENT

DESCRIPTION

LOCATION & CONTACT

WEBSITE

Fleming Gulf's 2nd Annual Cloud Computing Summit

The second annual cloud computing summit is bringing back key CIOs onto a single platform in order to overcome the general inertia plaguing the sector.

New Delhi; Tikenderjit Singh Makkar, marketing manager, tikenderjit.singh@fleminggulf. com; Ph:+ Ph:+ 91 20 6727 6727 6403

http://www. fleminggulf.com/  conferenceview/2nd-Annual-Cloud-ComputingSummit/464

Inte Intero rop, p, New New Yor Yorkk

Interop New York offers sessions and networking opportunities open to all attendees including Vendor Sessions, Cloud and Virtualization Theater Sessions, InteropNet tours and classes and Speed Networking.

Javits Center, New York

http://www.interop.com/  newyork/ 

Reseller Reseller Club Hosting Summit, Gurgaon

This is supposedly Asia's largest gathering for the Internet industry. Expect to meet some of the biggest brands from across the hosting world this October a t Gurgaon, Delhi.

Gurgaon; Keenan Thomas, sales manager; Ph:(+91) 22 3079 7637; keenan.t@ rchostingsummit.com

www.rchostingsummit. com

Ope Open Sou Sourc rcee Ind India ia

This is the premier open source conference in Asia targeted at nurturing and promoting the open source ecosystem in the subcontinent.

NIMHANS Convention Center, Bengaluru; Omar Farooq, assistant product manager; Ph: 9958881862; [email protected]

http://osidays.com/  osidays/ 

BYTE BYTE Into Into Big Big Dat Dataa Sum Summi mitt

This summit deals with issues on big data that describe a new generation of technologies and architectures, designed to economically extract value from very large volumes of a wide variety of data by enabling high-velocity capture, discovery and/or analysis.

Bengaluru; Harsha Samtani Marketing & Co-ordination; [email protected]; Contact no: 9742383000

http://www.byteintobigdatasummit.com/ 

Int Interop erop,, Mum Mumb bai

INTEROP Mumbai is an independently organised conference and exhibition designed to empower information technology professionals to make smart business decisions.

Bombay Exhibition Center, Mumbai; Sanket Karode, Dy Marketing Manager, sanket. [email protected], Ph: +91 22 61727403

http://www.interop.in/ 

R N I No. DELENG/2012/49440