The internet community comes into a sudden halt, like a car being stepped on its brake in the middle of the road last August 6 when hackers snarl up its ugly fangs on the internet’s famous micro blogging platform Twitter. Users cannot log in while others experience a delay in posting their daily updates. Twitter by far is the most popular social media today, so popular that American Idol Judge Paula Adbul uses Twitter to tell the world her resignation over the said reality show.

Twitter is also the platform most Iranian used in their recent struggle to let the world know the cruelty and chaos happening in their land with the latest post election protest and the killings. The micro social media is being utilized not only for entertainment purpose but realistically for political as well. That is why with the news of Twitter being hacked is but alarming and shocking to everyone concerned.

Twitter was hacked by an old-school method of cracking, known as DDos or Distributed Denial of Service. The hacker uses multiple computers located around the world; in fact it can be your home computer. The infected computers are called “zombies.” The perpetrator has a special preference on home computers mainly because they are easy target being on low security level.

Virus was then planted in computers scattered all over the world through unscrupulous websites and spam emails disguising to be a legitimate messages. You don’t have to do anything at all to be infected, just open an infected email and the virus will swiftly finds its way to the backdoor of your computer and resides there waiting for the time the hacker will make his command. Infected computers hardly notice the entry of such virus not until it is activated. It is like leaving your house backdoor open and an intruder suddenly comes in without you knowing it and locks the door from inside, leaving you unsuspicious of the break-in.

The multiple computer sources will make it hard for anyone to trace the “master source” and make it easy to execute the hack. When the hacker finally decided it’s time for the kill, he then executes a command for the entire “zombie” computer to initiate and flood emails and data requests to a victim website. The heavy influx of incoming data requests and emails at a single time can render a website to stood still and overload.

However, the submersion is just temporary; it will last until the influx wanes over, but no one can tell how long. The first time DDoS was recognized was way back in 1998, only gaining much attention in the year 2000 when a Canadian Teenager renders Amazon, eBay, Yahoo! and CNN to freeze. During the Russia and Georgia war, DDoS was exploited to execute Georgian government’s website immobilized. This old-school hacking method was so simple yet so effective, and the sad part is, the authorities are having a hard time tracing the perpetrators of this unscrupulous act.

What to do to prevent the attack

Since there is not much solution there is to tap, we can always refer to the old basic principle of “preventing the disease” instead of curing it. DDoS attack is geared towards popular websites with a steady following of traffic, that is why it is recommended for these popular sites to have at least ample allocation of space on their system to have some room in cases like these. Never let your bandwidth reach its near full capacity. When the attack happens, your system can use up those additional space to free itself of the clog.

Home computer owners can prevent themselves from being the “accomplice” by periodically assessing the behavior of their computer. First off, always perform the necessary virus scan on emails that you suspect contains virus, if proven to be infected, delete it right away. Check out for the unusual behavior of your computer, it might be running slower than the usual and the light flickers frantically on your modem. This is the sign that there is an activity of sending request to another site by your computer without you knowing it. If that’s the case, turn off your computer—cutting the ties of being a participant in the act is what you can do immediately.

how DDoS works

A computer owner should know exactly the behavior of his computer to detect any sudden tantrums that might occur. Though that seems impossible for now, there is free software you can use called Integrity Monitor. The integrity monitor will record your computer’s behavior and all things that have been change since you installed the software. Reading through the changes will definitely gives you an idea of some uncanny things going on inside your unit and act upon any necessary cleaning.

DDos attack for now proves to be less serious, none of which it can kill thousands of people and fire-off nuclear arms remotely. However with its potential destructive capabilities and arbitrary solution, only time can tell when a whacko geek out there will remotely shuts down your bread toaster, and that would be fatal for everybody wouldn’t it?

Innovation comes in different forms depending on the necessity and the inevitability of the situation. We learn how to be adaptable with the changing times, our lives become accustomed to what is happening at the moment especially those that affect our surroundings. With the onset of global financial crisis, people all over the world are learning how to be flexible especially in earning a living. Most of us are making both ends meet through the augmentation offered by internet marketing income.

However, not all people have laptops and netbooks to carry around wherever they may go around conducting meetings, meet up with friends, business acquaintances, seminars or out of town business trips. If you happen to have laptop or a netbook to carry around while conducting business, there lies the issue of security from the people who have their “hot eye” on valuable items and that’s a lot to worry about.

Flash Drive is one major solution to this problem. There are methods on how to utilize those little rectangular things that dangle like a keychain in your pocket or hang in the zipper of your backpack. All you need is to tap any computer that is in the vicinity and you’re as good as carrying a high end laptop with you, complete with all the applications and software you use to have in your computer. Here are the things you need to have inside your Flash Drive:

Portable Applications or Portable Apps are applications and programs that you can install and use in external hard drive and in Flash Drives. The good thing about this application is you can open it in all computers with USB port. There are many useful programs that you can find in Portable Apps that you can carry in compact form enough to carry around.  You don’t have to worry anymore having to use different computers in different locations because you have the programs you often used to conduct business, getting in touch, write, correspond or open an email. Choose from over a hundred applications to suit your needs and stash it away from your flash drive before you go out.

Google Chrome, the most reliable web browser in the world today can be folded and packed in your Flash Drive. Download this lightning speed browser by Google is far neater and easy to use interface is an advantage to bring with you wherever you may go. You don’t have to worry yourself if you have tons of bookmarks that you want to access in your desktop, all you need to do is to import all the bookmarks and you’re good to go

MojoPac is another solution for portability issues. It is like having windows XP installed in your flash drive as you can still have your own settings, files and programs with you. MojoPac is lightweight and is suitable for flash drives; to think that you can install almost all of its programs and utilize it in the size of your finger is great. iPods and ThumbDrives are among the vehicles MojoPac can also drive for safety and flexibility while you’re out there.

MX one Anti Virus is another handy and portable application necessary for any flash drives. It is more likely for you to caught malwares and Trojans when using another computer from the outside, especially on those internet cafes where multiple users come in and out every day. MX one will provide you with the necessary protection in a lightweight and handy mode. Anti-virus often eats a lot of space in your system, but this one is handy and effective. Set it up before you open any files in your USB flash drive and set it again before you close. Download is easy and convenient.

There you go, having all your apps set up in your USB Flash Drive in neat and orderly fashion. With the ongoing fast evolution of technology and the swift change and developments of applications and software, only time can tell whether USB Flash Drives will soon emerge as powerful as a laptop wherein you can utilize it to call like a cell phone or send email through those finger-sized device.

Many of us don’t know that there are other fun ways to do in Windows XP besides being the most reliable OS for now. If you are fond of discovering things and would like to see beyond what’s being presented to you, “hacking” tips would probably excite you. Great inventions come from curious minds that are never satisfied discovering things beyond what is presented within face value.

Here are some “hacking” tips to make your windows experience a little bit exciting, remember that you need a basic understanding of Windows registry first in order to follow the instructions accurately, if not, well it’s time for you to learn now.  One important notice though, whenever you make changes in the Windows registry refreshing it a number of times would enable the changes to take effect. You can do it by simply pressing the F5 button. If that doesn’t work restart your computer.

How to Exit Windows in a Quick and Cool Way

Shutting down your computer sometimes would take a lot of time and process, there are at least 3 to 4 order of procedures before you finally shuts down your system by clicking and pointing your cursor in the process. With this simple step of creating a shortcut on your desktop, you can immediately shut down your computer with single click. Here’s how to do it:

Start by creating a new shortcut on your desktop. Right click on your desktop panel>select New>Shortcut. A command line box should appear (see figure 1.0)

Figure 1.0

In the command line box, type: C:\windows\rundll.exeuser.exe,exitwindowsexec

This will restart your windows immediately, however, to create a shortcut to restarting Windows, you should type this in the command line box:   c:\windows\rundll.exe user.exe,exitwindows

The shortcut created in your desktop will shut down without any warning if clicked. You can change the Icon of your shutdown shortcut to make it look cool by simply right clicking the icon>properties>customize>change icon.

I rename my icon “do not click” as some other users is sure is curious to a “do not touch” warning, and the more you prevented them from touching something the more they will do it. It is indeed priceless to see the look in their faces if they “accidentally” clicked the shut down button on your desktop.

Prevent Shutdown

This is a cool trick to play on shared computers. This “hacking” trick will prevent shutdown on your computer and will send a user baffled on the “unusual” computer behavior while you are laughing your asses out. This involves editing the registry that is why it is advisable to create a back up first.

Launch regedit.exe and go to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Look for a NoClosekey on the right pane. If you can’t find it, create it by right clicking the right pane, select New>string value>(name it as NoCloseKey). Now that you have the NoCloseKey on the right pane, right click it and select modify and input 1 in the value data box.

This will disable the shut down on your computer with the following warning:

“This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator.”

You can enable again the shutdown by changing the value of NoClosekey to 0. Or better yet delete the NoCloseKey entry you have created.