Greetings,

Most people use Internet Explorer to browse the net. It loads up fast because parts of it is loaded by Windows as the latter boots up. Using the feedback from its huge user base, Microsoft has made numerous improvements, which you can use to your advantage.

• Disable the Links toolbar and save space. Remove the Explorer view for the same reason.

• Customize the toolbar via View » Toolbars » Customize.

• Blank home page: Set your home page to a blank one so that it loads up faster. This is done via Tools » Internet Options » General » Use Blank.

• Offline browsing:You do not have to connect to the Internet to revisit a page. You can access it from the cache. This is done via Tools » Internet Options » Temporary Internet Folders » Settings » Check newer versions of stored pages: » Never. After setting up IE like this, you can browse offline by, click on the History button. This will open up the History folder in a left pane. Browse through this to access the pages that you have visited earlier. You check the latest version on the net however by clicking on the Refresh button.

• Computer Security: Some websites have ads that tell you that your computer could be transmitting vital/private information about you, which could be targeted by hackers and viruses. They will tell you to download a security software. Considering the fact that they are using wrong tactics to sell their product, it is quite possible that their software could be doing more harm than good. No matter which software you use, it is not possible to completely hide your computer on the net. People who have always-on Internet connections like broadband or cable should instead use firewalls like the trusty ZoneAlarm or Tiny.

There are other websites that will ask visitors to install ActiveX controls like Gator or Bonzi. These are spyware and Internet users should avoid them.
Neither should you install programs like MP3 Dancer. These are spyware. Even if you uninstall them, they will still remain on your computer without your knowledge.

• Tip 1: IE’s autocomplete feature may throw up some web addresses at the address bar, which you may not want others to see. So, clear the history. This is done by Internet Options » Clear History. If otherwise you want to selectively remove history items, then delete the appropriate folders inside the History folder. In Windows 9x/Me, the History folder is inside the Windows folder. In Windows 2000/XP, it will be inside the Documents and Settings\«User name»\Local Settings\ folder.

• Tip 2: Deleting the files in the Temporary Internet Files folder can remove only part of your tracks. Cookies stored by websites usually remain in this folder with their full web address. So, that is a security violation. To remove them, choose Internet Options » Temporary Internet Folder » Delete Cookies.

• Tip 3: All evidence is still not removed. There is a file inside the Temporary Internet Files folder called index.dat, which has some evidence of your browsing history. Delete this file too. IE will regenerate another index.dat later.

• Paranoia 4: When the Autocomplete feature is enabled, all your personal information including passwords are stored on the computer, which is available for others to misuse. So, when you are done with browsing at your office or an Internet cafe, follow the above three steps and clear the saved data by choosing Internet Options » Content » AutoComplete » Clear Forms and Clear Passwords. Sometimes, the Internet Options menu option might be disabled in your office or web cafe. So, delete the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\IntelliForms key from the registry. If you want to steal or backup passwords, export this key and import it on a different machine or installation. You will also have to copy the {username}.pwl file and cookies to the new machine/installation. Sometimes, there are ActiveX programs that sit silently recording everything. You can check them out at Internet Options » Temporary Internet Files » Settings » View Objects. This will open the Downloaded Program Files folder in the windows folder. By right-clicking the contents, you can either remove them or check out their properties.

• Tip 5: In certain Internet cafes, silent keyboard loggers are installed by certain people to collect userids and passwords, and send them to their email addresses. Remove these programs from memory and only then browse. Also disable form fillers such as Gator in Internet cafes.

• Downloading recalcitrant files: Most people use a downloaded manager to download huge files. But, sometimes they run into problems when the download manager is not able to catch the correct url of the file. In such cases, open the source of the page via View » Source and do a search for the download file. Usually, the full url of the file will be found here. Copy this and paste it in the download manager. If some website prevents you from right-clicking to save an image on it, just look inside the Temporary Internet Files folder for it.

• IE Toolbars : Add the Google toolbar to IE. With this toolbar, you will get to the results without having to visit Google’s home page first.

• ESCAPE: Many people do not know this. If a page is being downloaded and you want to stop it, then pressing the Escape key will do that. Also, pressing Backspace key will take you to the previous page.

• Saving web pages: Beginning with Version 5, IE allows saving a web page in a single file including its images and other embedded content. To do this, choose Save As from the File menu. Here in the Save as type, choose Web Archive, single file (*.mht). Sometimes, MHT files may not show anything even though its thumbnail does show something. If you disable Javascript, you will be able to see the whatever something you saw in the thumbnail.

Hello friends,

What is cryptography ?

Cryptography is the study of message protection in secret format. To most people, cryptography is concerned with keeping their communications private and secrete. The protection of sensitive communications has been the emphasis of cryptography throughout much of its history

There are two kinds of cryptography : symmetric and asymmetric. Symmetric cryptosystems use the same key (the secret key) to encrypt and decrypt a message, and Asymmetric cryptosystems use one key (the public key) to encrypt a message and a different key (the private key) to decrypt the encrypted message. Assymetric cryptosystems are also called public key cryptosystems.

Encryption is the transformation of data or message into a form that is as close to impossible as possible to read without the appropriate knowledge (a key; see below). Its purpose is to ensure privacy by keeping information hidden from anyone or unauthorise person, even those who have access to the encrypted data. Decryption is the reverse of encryption; it is the transformation of encrypted data back into an intelligible form.

Authentication is as fundamentally a part of our lives as privacy. Authentication is very necessary in our day to day life with any kind of transactions- when we sign our name to some document for instance - and, as we move to a world where our decisions and agreements are communicated electronically, we need to have electronic techniques for providing authentication. Cryptography provides mechanisms for such procedures. A digital signature.

Cryptography is central to the techniques used in computer and network security for such things as access control and information confidentiality. Cryptography is also used in many applications encountered in everyday life; the security of ATM cards, computer passwords, and electronic commerce all depend on cryptography.

The protocol Stack:
In TCP/IP’s most basic level, a computer network is simply a series of connections between computers which allow them to communicate. The scope, size, speed, content and reliability of the network depending on its protocols suite and implementation. Protocols are pre-established means of communication. The term TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) actually refers to a whole family of protocols, of which TCP and IP are just two. Following figure contains the standard “stack'’ diagram of TCP/IP. Rather than make protocols monolithic (which would mean ftp, telnet, and gopher would each have a full network protocol implementation, including separate copies of kernel code for the devices each protocol uses), the designers of TCP/IP broke the job of a full network protocol suite into a number of tasks. Each layer corresponds to a different facet of communication. Conceptually, it is useful to envision TCP/IP as a stack. In implementations, programmers often blur the layers for increased performance.

Hello,

You are really going to reply with lots of thanks after reading this thread. Its really fantastic tweaks I have mentioned here below.

If upgrading from a previous version please to do the following or the extension will now work:
1) Type ‘about:config’ in the location bar and hit enter
2) Paste this in the blank bar or scroll down to find ‘extensions.toolbarcleanup.findbarchanges’
3) Right click on this and select ‘reset’ and restart firefox and extension will work again
Sorry about that, I deleted the file it calls on and I forgot when you upgrade it doesnt remove old entries from about:config.
This extension allows you to tweak various aspects of the browser’s UI.
This extension allows you to do the following via Tools->Extensions->UI Tweaker Options:
- Remove ‘For Internet Explorer Users’ from the Help menu
- Remove ‘Release Notes’ from the Help menu
- Remove ‘Go’ menu
- Remove ‘Read Mail (* new)’ and ‘New Messages…’ from the Tools menu (1.5 Only)
- Remove ‘Web Search’ from the Tools menu
- Remove ‘Bookmark Toolbar Folder’ from the Bookmarks menu (Only if empty)
- Remove the ‘Go’ button
- Remove the toolbar separators
- Remove the forward and back button drop down arrows
- Remove the close button from tabbar (1.5 Only)
- Make the address bar corners slightly rounded
- Hide the Search Bar except for the site icon until mouse hover over
- Multi-row bookmarks toolbar
- Show only icons on the bookmark toolbar
- Make non-selected tabs less visible, making active tabs stand out more
- Remove white line under unfocused tabs
- Remove the focus rings around the tab titles
- Show tab favicon only on selected tab
- Relocate the tabbar to the bottom
- Remove the tabbar close button and place on active or hoverd over tabs (1.5 Only)
- Add separators, bold text on status message and other small changes
- Add a keyword when adding a bookmark
- Move the sidebar to the bottom
- Remove the security padlock icon in the statusbar
- Remove the RSS Feed icon from the location bar
- Remove the Min/Max/Close buttons while in Full Screen mode
- Remove the bookmark sidebar search bar
- Remove the location bar drop down arrow

UI Tweaker (Formerly known as Toolbar Cleanup) v1.6.4 - Works with Firefox 1.5, branch and trunk nightlies.
Changelog:
- Fixed a spelling error in description
- Updated the extension description
- Tweaked a bunch of hack descriptions
- Changed any instance of address bar to location bar
- Added a hack to remove the security padlock icon in the statusbar
- Added a hack to remove the RSS Feed icon from the location bar
- Added a hack to remove the Min/Max/Close buttons while in Full Screen mode
- Added a hack to remove the Bookmark Sidebar Search Bar
- Added a hack to remove the Location Bar drop down arrow
- Split the Find Bar hack into 5 separate hacks:
- Remove the findbar borders
- Widen the findbar input field
- Add a separator between the close button and find:
- Add a separator between highlight all and the match case check box
- Make the status messages bold/input field light red when phrase not found

UI Tweaker (Formerly known as Toolbar Cleanup) v1.6.3 - Works with Firefox 1.5, branch and trunk nightlies.
Changelog:
- Added icons in the options menu
- Some spelling error corrections

Hacks that are missing/broke from the latest 1.6.3 version
- Multi-row bookmarks toolbar isn’t working for some
- No combined stop/reload button
- Missing Add ‘Print’ to right-click context menus, allowing users to print via the context menus

UI Tweaker (Formerly known as Toolbar Cleanup) v1.6.2 - Works with Firefox 1.5, branch and trunk nightlies.
Changelog:
- Fixed bug in which only the separator and not the bookmarks toolbar folder was removed from the bookmarks menu

Hacks that are missing/broke from the latest 1.6.2 version
- Multi row bookmarks toolbar isn’t working for some
- No combined stop/reload button
- Missing Add ‘Print’ to right-click context menus, allowing users to print via the context menus
- Needs icons in the options dialog

UI Tweaker (Formerly known as Toolbar Cleanup) v1.6.1 - Works with Firefox 1.5, branch and trunk nightlies.
Changelog:
- Fixed bug in which the remove drop arrows for back/forward buttons and round addressbar hacks were swaped in the options dialog.
- Added back hack for tab close button on tabs (1.5 Only)
- Added back hack for removing Read mail from the Tools menu (1.5 Only)
- Tweaked the extension’s description
- Tweaked a couple hack descriptions
- Added a contributor (Pike) to the about dialog

Hacks that are missing/broke from the latest 1.6.1 version
- Multi row bookmarks toolbar isn’t working for some
- No combined stop/reload button
- Missing Add ‘Print’ to right-click context menus, allowing users to print via the context menus
- Needs icons in the options dialog

UI Tweaker (Formerly known as Toolbar Cleanup) v1.6 - Works Firefox 1.5, branch and trunk nightlies.
Changelog:
- Added a working options dialog (Everything is customizeable now!!!)
- Renamed the extension to UI Tweaker (Did not change the guid so no need to uninstall and install this version
- Added hack for icons only on the bookmark toolbar
- Added hack for relocating the tabbar on the bottom
- Added hack for disabling autocomplete in the search bar, location bar and html input fields
- Removed hack for removing ‘Read Mail (* New)’ and ‘New Message…’ from Tools menu (No longer needed since this is in the branch/trunk nightlies….Please let me know if this is needed for 1.5.0.*)
- Added hack to remove the bookmark toolbar folder from bookmarks menu (will only work if empty)
- Added hack to remove the back/forward drop down arrows
- Added hack to add a keyword when adding a bookmark
- Added hack to move the sidebar to the bottom

Hacks that are missing/broke from the latest 1.6 version
- When make non selected tabs less visible + remove white line under tab are used together the non select tabs are pink. but if you use the remove close tab button then everything is fine
- Multi row bookmarks toolbar isn’t working for some
- No combined stop/reload button
- Missing Add ‘Print’ to right-click context menus, allowing users to print via the context menus
- Needs icons in the options dialog

Enjoy..

Hello,

If you are not able to go to your windows registry then do as per below.
1.scan ur system using Quick heal antivirus or brontok washer ‘or whichever u feel is the best .However most other antiviruses fail to even recognize this virus
2.then to unlock ur registry; download ‘freshui’ (google it),will get easily. install it, then under application menu u will find ‘disable regedit’. it will be already chequed. uncheck it.

Enjoy..

Blocking IPs with APF Firewall

A) /etc/apf/apf -d IP Reason
–> The -d flag means DENY the IP address
–> IP is the IP address you wish to block
–> Reason is comments to why the IP is being blocked

Example:

./apf -d 267.14.188.1 TESTING

vi /etc/apf/deny_hosts.rules

Shows the following:

# added 267.14.188.1 on 08/23/05 01:25:55
# TESTING
267.14.188.1

B) pico /etc/apf/deny_hosts.rules

You can then just add a new line and enter the IP you wish to block. Before this becomes active though you’ll need to reload the APF ruleset.

/etc/apf/apf -r