Note: This app is just for fun, it doesn’t cause any damages to anyone other than annoyance. Use it with precaution.

The project is similar to the Upside-down-ternet project: from the phone you can flip pictures on someone’s computer upside down. There are couple of fun things you can do with this app. It lets you:

• Flip pictures on someone’s PC.
• Change Google searches keywords,
• redirect websites to some other sites,
• and many more features to come.

App works well in combination with Shark for Android – combined they allow you to capture packets when logged onto wifi networks.

Simply install from the Android Market (on a rooted device running >2.2), and download the setup files from the application. This requires about 600MB free SD card space. The program needs the phone to be rooted, and have busybox (most custom firmwares have this).

Developers can contribute at Launchpad (main project) and Sourceforge.

Download the App from Market.

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To give you an idea of how we get that number of connected devices, the first thing you should know is that smartphones, tablets are just part of the count, there are other devices that are also connected. Almost Everything – for instance A dutch company called Sparked is using wireless sensors on Cattles to track their activities and health.  So when a cattle is sick or pregnant, it automatically notifies the farmer. Such devices consume 200mb of data per year.

The connected devices int he future would interact with each other and help humans do the daily stuff with nearly no hiccups. With advent of IPv6 we could accommodate 100 IPs for each atom of the face of the earth.

Go ahead and checkout the info-graphic by cisco below:

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Logitech has introduced a new snappy wireless solution for your SOHO (Small office, Home Office) environment, using which you can get the maximum speeds possible today with current Wifi standards. This wireless router can pump 450mbps theoretically. LAN-WH450N/GR offers four Gigabit Ethernet ports, 802.11a/b/g/n wireless networking.

Everything about this router is outstanding, even the design. While it stands in front of you it looks like a thin Robo with a Fan on the Top – a Robo that can fly.

Those antennas are not there just for the look, they do justice with the hardware by increasing the speeds of this router. It’s a futuristic, desktop-straddling robocopter and everyone at that company knows it.

These routers would start shipping in April 2011 and would cost nearly $230.

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With everything from smartphones to Internet-linked appliances and cars getting online, the group entrusted with organizing the Web is running out of the “IP” numbers that identify destinations for digital traffic. IPv4 could accomodate only billions of addresses, but IPv6 would do multi Trillions, enough for assigning IP addresses to each grain in Sahara desert.

As of January 23, IPv4 address depletion would happen in 9 days, i.e. February 1st 2011. 40 million IPv4 addresses will deplete in these 9 days.

The pool in the sky is a fast-draining reservoir of IP addresses maintained by the non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).ICANN has been calling for a change to IPv6 for years but websites and Internet service providers have been clinging to the old standard since the birth of the Internet.”One of the reasons it has taken so long to change is that there is no obvious advantage or killer application for IPv6.

The number of addresses that IPv6 allows for amounts to 340 “undecillion” (followed by 36 zeroes); enough for a trillion people to each be assigned trillions of IP numbers, according to ICANN.

A full shift to IPv6 will take years, with the remaining stock of old IP addresses being allocated to support the transition.

All major websites have their IPv6 alternates, Google first started this, and hopes to make it primary mode of communication, over the coming years.

Here’s a Video Song dedicated to Depletion of IPv4, old song but explains the current scenario in detail:

IPv4 Address Depletion countdown

• IPv6 Challenges Ahead – Security, Migration. Still Not a Next-Generation.
• IPv4 Usage Report

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Bluetooth has long been limited to short range P2p connections or short range networks and Wifi had gained popularity for its better throughput for infrastructure toplogies and have failed to be a p2p media. This is set to change with next verisons of Bluetooth and Wifi.

Bluetooth 4.0 vs. Wi-Fi Direct

Both of these new specifications are promising learning from each others mistakes from past. Both have grown up to to make it easier for you to quickly transfer pictures, files and other data between two wireless devices such as your smartphone and laptop without the need for a dedicated device for Wi-Fi.

The Wi-Fi Direct & Bluetooth 4.0 specs confirm that they would gaurantee fast  data transfers over long distances between two devices. Wi-Fi Direct promises regular Wi-Fi speeds of up to 250 Mbps, yet,easier to configure than previous ad-hoc modes.

Backward compatibility

Wi-Fi Direct devices will be able to communicate with legacy Wi-Fi devices. That means if your next laptop has a Wi-Fi Direct chip, you will be able to create a device-to-device connection with your old wireless printer or wireless digital picture frame.

Bluetooth 4.0 includes a power-saving feature called “low-energy technology.” Actually, Bluetooth 4.0 is three Bluetooth specs in one. Bluetooth 4.0 not only uses the new low-energy technology, but also relies on high-speed data transfers introduced in Bluetooth 3.0 and so-called classic Bluetooth technology found in older Bluetooth specifications. However, the worst part is that Bluetooth 4.0′s low-energy technology is not compatible with existing Bluetooth devices, which in all ways is weird.

However, the rescue is in hands of manufacturers who could incorporate low-energy technology into a newer device using Bluetooth 2.1 or Bluetooth 3.0.

Speed

Wi-Fi Direct goes up to 250Mbps, while Bluetooth 4.0 would provide up to 25Mbps (similar to Bluetooth 3.0).

Network Range:

Wi-Fi Direct devices can reach each other at a maximum distance of 656 feet (more than two football fields) away. So, practically, even if it is half of that, it would connect all your devices across home, no matter how big is your place.

Bluetooth 4.0′s maximum range is not dependent on the specification, but on the capabilities of the Bluetooth device. So as per manufacturers, a distance of at least 200 feet for a Bluetooth 4.0 device is something we would expect.

Power consumption:

Both claim to be of low power, but the question is how low?

The Bluetooth 4.0 uses the new low-energy technology (PDF) feature. What this means is that it can run for a year using a coin cell battery alone. However, such power mangement is only applicable when transferring short bursts of data. And not to forget, it would work with newer devices only.

The Wi-Fi Alliance says Wi-Fi Direct devices can support the WMM Power Save program that promises to improve a device’s battery life by 15 to 40 percent over current 802.11n popular wifi standard. That means it would still consume 100mW or so.

Security

Wifi & bluetooth have suffered poor security in the past, but this is going to change with taping inherent security. Bluetooth 4.0 uses AES 128-bit encryption, while Wi-Fi Direct relies on WPA2 security, an AES 256-bit encryption. Both look great on this.

Availability

Bluetooth 4.0 products should start hitting the market before the end of the year or early 2011. But it looks like Wi-Fi Direct may be first out the gate. The Wi-Fi Alliance recently announced that five wireless networking PC cards from Atheros, Broadcom, Intel, Ralink and Realtek are Wi-Fi Direct ready and should be available before the end of the year.

But the future has one more solid contendor: WiGig, which Offers 7 Gigabit Wireless Home Networking. Who would win?

Related: Multi Gigabit Wireless: WiGig, WHDI, SiBEAM

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Its now as easy as that with a a Firefox extension called Firesheep which can  hijack a person’s current user-session over an open Wi-Fi connection.

Firesheep is a work of  Eric Butler who made the proof oc concept public after after presenting at a Security event. The purpose of the experiment was to showcase the security risks associated with session hijacking, aka sidejacking.

So what all can be hacked with Firesheep? Nearly  26 online services, which includes all popular online services: Amazon, Facebook, Foursquare, Google, The New York Times, Twitter, Windows Live, WordPress and Yahoo.

The extension is so flexible that it can be customized to allow a hacker to target other Websites not listed by Firesheep.

While Firesheep sounds scary, its not as scary as it may sound first. Even though the extension is downlaoded more than 100,000 times, there’s nothing to be scared of.

How Firesheep works

Firesheep is basically a packet sniffer that can analyze all the unencrypted Web traffic on an open Wi-Fi connection between a Wi-Fi router and the personal computers on the same network. The extension polls around network for someone to log in, when someone does, browser’s site-specific cookie communicates with the site and contains personally identifying information such as your user name and an site specific session ID.

As victim’s browser swaps cookie information back and forth with the Website, our packet sniffer can capture this information and hijack the session. Coz cookies has no password information and it  has session timeout, it does eventually. But on a serious ote, even temporary access to the account can bring havocs.

How to use Firesheep

Install WinPcap on windows (Mac Os doesn’t need this) and get the Firesheep extension and then open it up by clicking on View>Sidebars>Firesheep. Click the button that says “Start Capturing.”

Once you click the button, it starts snooping. Then onwards all sessions that are captured are automatically displayed

How to Bypass Firesheep Hijacks?

1. If you feel your account has been compromised, immidiately logout. As soon as you do that, hijacked cookie becomes invalid, and no longer can be mis-used.
2. Use A VPN: Try using a Virtual Private Network client such as the free version of HotSpot Shield. This piece of software basically creates a secure tunnel for your data that runs between the Wi-Fi router and your computer.
3. USe HTTPS Everywhere: If you’re a Firefox user you can also use extensions such as HTTPS Everywhere built by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This extension forces certain Websites to use a secure SSL connection for your entire browsing session instead of just the login.
4. Use Strict Transport Security (STS): Strict Transport Security (STS) is a relatively new security feature that is starting to appear in some browsers. STS automatically forces your browser to make a secure connection with every Web page that supports SSL encryption. Once you start using STS, you will not be able to use an insecure connection ever again when connecting to a specific site such as Facebook or Amazon. Chrome has supported STS since Chrome 4, and Firefox 4 will include STS when the official version launches in the coming months.
5. Encrypt your home/office network:  Use the strongest possible encryption on your Home and office Wifi connections.  WPA2 is much better than WEP.

How to hijack/ capture/ Sniff HTTP traffic

We will be using ARP and iptables on a Linux machine to accomplish most of the stuff. It’s an easy and fun way to harass your friends, family, or flatmates while exploring the networking protocols.

Warning: Do not attempt to do this on a Public Wifi or a Corporate Wifi. Doing so could lead you to serious consequences. In no way is Taranfx responsible for any harms. This is solely intended for fun @ home.

Lets take 3 PCs into reference for our activity:

• Real gateway router: IP address 192.168.0.1, MAC address 48:5d:34:aa:c6:aa
• Fake gateway: A Laptop PC called hacker-laptop, IP address 192.168.0.200, MAC address c0:30:2b:47:ef2:74
• Victim: a laptop on wireless called victim-laptop, IP address 192.168.0.111, MAC address 00:23:6c:8f:3f:95

The gateway router, like most modern routers, is bridging between the wireless and wired domains, so ARP packets get broadcast to both domains.

Step 1: Enable IPv4 forwarding
Unless IP forwarding is enabled, hacker-laptop won’t receive all the network traffic because the networking subsystem is going to ignore packets that aren’t destined for us. So step 1 is to enable IP forwarding. To enable it, set a non zero value like:

root@hacker-laptop:~# echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

Step 2: Set routing rules
We want to set rules so that all traffic routes through hacker-laptop, acting like a NAT router. Just like a typical NAT, it would  rewrite the destination address in the IP packet headers to be its own IP address.

This can be done as follows:

tarranfx@hacker-laptop:~$ sudo iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING \
> -p tcp –dport 80 -j NETMAP –to 192.168.0.200

The iptables command has 3 components:

• When to apply a rule (-A PREROUTING)
• What packets get that rule (-p tcp –dport 80)
• The actual rule (-t nat … -j NETMAP –to 192.168.0.200)

What above command does: If you’re a TCP packet destined for port 80 (HTTP traffic), actually make my address, 192.168.0.200, the destination, NATting both ways so this is transparent to the source.”

Step 3: Adding IP adddress to interface
The networking subsystem will not allow you to ARP for a random IP address on an interface — it has to be an IP address actually assigned to that interface:

taranfx@hacker-laptop:~$ sudo ip addr add 192.168.0.1/24 dev eth0

and verify that the original IP address 192.168.0.200, and the gateway address 192.168.0.1.

taranfx@hacker-laptop:~$ ip addr
…
3: eth0: mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN
link/ether c0:30:2b:47:ef2:74 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.0.200/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global eth0
inet 192.168.0.1/24 scope global secondary eth0
inet6 fe80::230:1bff:fe47:f274/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
…

Step 4: Responding to HTTP requests
hacker-laptop would need a HTTP server setup. t could be any damn server, I used Apache for ease of use. Here you can get creative, e.g. respond with random pages for specific URLs or define a local URL e.g. http://fun

Step 5: Test pretending to be the gateway
Most of the things are already done and our hacker-laptop is ready to pretend as the Wifi Gateway, but the trouble is convincing victim-laptop that the MAC address for the gateway has changed, to that of hacker-laptop.

The solution is to send a Gratuitous ARP, which says “I know nobody asked, but I have the MAC address for 192.168.0.1”. Machines that hear that Gratuitous ARP will replace an existing mapping from 192.168.0.1 to a MAC address in their ARP caches with the mapping advertised in that Gratuitous ARP.
There are lots of command line utilities and bindings in various programming language that make it easy to issue ARP packets. I used the arping tool:

taranfx@hacker-laptop:~$ sudo arping -c 3 -A -I eth0 192.168.0.1

We’ll send a Gratuitous ARP reply (-A), three times (-c -3), on the eth0 interface (-l eth0) for IP address 192.168.0.1.

This can be then verified on the victim’s machine using “arp -a” command

Bingo! victim-laptop now thinks the MAC address for IP address 192.169.1.1 is 0:30:1b:47:f2:74, which is hacker-laptop’s address.
If I try to browse the web on victim-laptop, I am served the resource matching the rules in hacker-laptop’s web server.

That means all of the non-HTTP traffic associated with viewing a web page still happens as normal. In particular, when hacker-laptop gets the DNS resolution requests for Google.com, the test site I visited, it will follow its routing rules and forward them to the real router, which will send them out to the Internet:

The fact is that hacker-laptop has rerouted and served the request is totally transparent to the client at the IP layer and victim-laptop has no clue.

Undo the changes

So, you had enough fun and wish to revert? Here we go:

taranfx@hacker-laptop:~$ sudo ip addr delete 192.168.0.1/24 dev eth0
taranfx@hacker-laptop:~$ sudo iptables -t nat -D PREROUTING -p tcp –dport 80 -j NETMAP –to 192.168.0.200

To get the client machines to believe the router is the real gateway, you might have to clear the gateway entry from the ARP cache with arp -d 192.168.0.1, or bring your interfaces down and back up.

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IP Video conference can be easily hacked using a freeware tool that allows attackers to monitor calls in real-time and record Video files.

The original exploit was first demonstrated more than a year ago, but sadly, most corporate networks are still vulnerable to it, says Jason Ostrom, director of VIPER Lab at VoIP vendor Sipera, where he performs penetration tests on clients’ business VoIP networks.

He says he sees only 5% of these networks are properly configured to block this attack, which can yield audio and video files of entire conversations. “I almost never see encryption turned on,” he says.

Only about one in 20 organizations secures its IP video with encryption or other measures, according to Sipera’s research, so IP video is ripe for attack. Ostrom and fellow researcher Arjun Sambamoorthy used a pair of homegrown open-source tools to perform the hacks at Defcon, which performs video eavesdropping, and VideoJak, which intercepts and replays video.

However, the attacker needs physical access to the IP network to execute these hacks, the researchers say, as well as access to a VLAN port on which the video application resides.

Ostrom demonstrated the attack at the Forrester Security Forum in Boston last week using a Cisco switch, two Polycom videophone and a laptop armed with a hacking tool called UCSniff that he pulled together from open source tools.

How VoIP, IP video hack works

Hacker needs to get access to a VoIP phone jack to which he plugs a laptop with the hacking tool- UCSniff. Using address-resolution protocol (ARP) spoofing, the device gathers the corporate VoIP directory, giving the hacker the ability to keep an eye on any phone and to intercept its calls. There’s a tool within UCSniff called ACE that simplifies capturing the corporate directory.

Once intercepted, the audio and video from the targeted call flow through the laptop, where it can be viewed as it streams by and also where it is recorded in separate files, one for each end of the conversation, Ostrom says.

They used UCSniff to record a ‘safe’ video stream, then converted it to an AVI file. Then we used the VideoJak tool that also supports man-in-the-middle,” he says. VideoJak intercepts the video stream, and replaces it with a malicious or phony video payload.

So, for instance, a bad guy could replace a surveillance feed of his breaking into the CEO’s office with a routine clip trained on the office door, with no sign of the break-in.

How to Prevent VoIP, Video Conference Hacking?

The strongest answer — apply Encryption for both signaling and media. The problem isn’t with the networking or VoIP and video gear itself, but rather with how they are configured in the network.

The scary thing is, 70% of the networks tested by pen-testers are vulnerable to toll fraud attacks that use the corporate network as a proxy for make long distance calls.

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The business proposition is easy: The dying Motorola’s business would prove out to be profitable for Nokia Siemens, as they now achieve #3 spot in Top wireless network vendors in the United States and hence expand business propositions with Motorola’s existing customers.

The acquisition gives  Nokia Siemens 7,500 employees plus solid relationships with Clearwire, Sprint Nextel, Verizon Wireless, Vodafone, and China Mobile.

In the press release from NSN, Rajeev (CEO) said “Motorola’s current customers will continue to get world-class support for their installed base and a clear path for transitioning to next generation technologies while employees will join an industry leader with global scale and reach. Nokia Siemens Networks will see the benefits of a deal that is expected to enhance profitability and cash-flow and to have significant upside potential.”

But at the end of the day, ROI of the  acquisition will depend on how successfully the operations of the two companies are merged  and how well they streamline the development, manufacturing, distribution, bringing overall efficiency.

The acquisition is also aimed to build a stronger infrastructure for 4G/LTE wireless networks being setup all around US.

Most of the industry leading Telecom operators, like Verizon, believe that this is good move for the betterment of wireless industry.

Motorola intends to build a separate entity called  ”Motorola Mobility” out of its cellphone division which has got some industry appreciation after the launch of Android smartphones starting with Droid and then Droid X, but that plan has been postponed due to heavy losses in that unit.

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Obviously, the issue is not same for every one. Users living in areas having good signal coverage would not observe issues. Every phone, agnostic of brand/make, has antenna attenuation problems when covered with hand. These attenuations can lie anywhere between 14dB and 18dB drops. But iPhone 4’s attenuation is as high as 24db, which means total loss of signal in areas where you otherwise get upto 4 bars.

Related: iPhone 4 vs. Android – Why Apple has lost it

That’s definitely a significant problem. But its not as bad as what it might look like.

Steve jobs already hinted on fixes, but is it practically possible to fix an Hardware issue via a software/firmware updates?

iPhone 4 can actually use signal at the lower threshold far more reliably than any previous iPhone could. Thanks to the new baseband, hardware is much more sensitive, which makes the reception is massively better on the iPhone 4 in the real world.

Apple appears to be using digitally adjustable solid state capacitors that can tune the iPhone 4′s antennas to a different level where problems are resolved. Hiring new antenna engineers to reliably test this makes much more sense than ever.

Fixing iPhone 4 Reception via Baseband Tuning

The hack lies in the common RF fundamental: Antenna impedance matching. In every wireless application,every circuit and antenna need some kind of impedance-matching circuit between them. Impedance matching is essential for maximum power output for a given input or in more technical terms: minimum Voltage standing-wave ratio (VSWR) loss, and improved efficiency.

Modern RF devices (iPhone 4 might be the first one) can use variable capacitance to tune more flexibly on runtime. For example, when you place your cell phone to your ear, your body detunes the antenna, the surrounding the ambiance also adds to it. The problem is particularly acute in 3G phones that are technically multiband, multimode handsets that must operate over a wide range of frequencies.

The VSWR in a typical handset is rarely better than 5:1 (3.5 dB loss) when filters, switches, or duplexers are added in. When users put their hands on the handset antenna, they can raise the VSWR to 9:1, severely reducing transmitted/received power and hence the efficiency.

This Impedance-match problem has been solved over the years in higher-power transmitters and larger equipment with variable capacitors or inductors in a feedback network that automatically compensates for changes in antenna orientation, impedance variations, or frequency changes by user’s hands. Very recently, they have been made portable enough to bring to cell phones like iPhone 4.

Solution: All we need is a capacitor that’s small and is controlled by internal circuitry. Dune, pioneers in this technology, has used MOSFET switched capacitors that permit higher-frequency operation, faster switching, and higher Q (quality, tuning). The digitally tunable capacitor (DTC) chip contains five capacitors switched by MOSFETs that operate from a serial input bus with a 5-bit code providing 32 possible capacitor values which help cellphone adjust to surroundings dynamically, without a glitch.

Typical switching speed is less than 5 µs, for the frequency range up to 3 GHz, and power handling up to 40 dBm, which is good enough for phones which operate at 800, 1800, 1900 mhz.

Tuning Mechanism: The closed loop system uses a directional coupler to sense forward and reflective power. A tuning algorithm is implemented to provide automatic adjustment to bring the VSWR to its lowest possible value.

Verdict:

The fix might be coming anytime, it may or may not fix 100% of the issue, but the degree of improvements rather depends upon how smartly Apple’s Engineers tune this antenna.

Tech details: electronicDesign

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Thanks to the popularity of Tablets, all eyes are now on Chrome OS Tablet and Android Tablet.  Knowing the fact that Google is already building one under the hood, several other companies are betting on the concept.

Cisco is trying to step ahead into another direction by creating first Android Tablet for Business users. As per the official statement from Cisco, Tablet would be called Cius and would provide portable collaboration and serve as a great communication device, will arrive in the market around Q1 2011.

The Cius (“see us”), aimed solely at business users, will provide best experience for Cisco’s business applications such as WebEx, Video conferencing (TelePresence) and VoIP services for Realtime collaboration on the move.

Cius Tablet Specs

Cius would be a  7″ WSVGA touchscreen, weighing 1.15lbs, would have a smaller form factor than the iPad.

The tablet comes equipped with a 720p HD front-facing camera for video conferencing, as well as a 5MP rear-facing camera that can stream VGA-quality video.

• Screen:  1024×600 7″ LED backlit
• Camera: Front – 720p video/ 2MP stills , Rear – 5MP stills, VGA video
• Connectivity: 802.11a/b/g/n flavors of WiFi, bluetooth, Micro USB
• Network: 3G (UTMS or EV-DO; it could be both) and Future 4G support
• Accessories: Optional HD audio stations that adds telephone handset, speakerphone, DisplayPort, USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet
• Battery: Removable 8 hours battery life

Cius Tablet Services

In keeping with its business focus, the Cius includes built-in support for Cisco’s collaboration applications, including Cisco Quad, Cisco Show and Share, Cisco WebEx Connect, Cisco WebEx Meeting Center, Cisco Presence, and interoperability with Cisco TelePresence. It would also enable connecting to your corporate IT infrastructure remotely using Cisco AnyConnect VPN, and can be managed by IT support staff using Cisco Unified Communications Manager. Cisco also plans to release a custom SDK so that Android developers can include support for Cisco’s Collaboration APIs.

No word on pricing but  Cisco plans to roll out corporate customer trials in the Q3 of this year, with wide availability beginning in the Q1 2011, stay tuned.

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A chinese scientist is trying to bring back  line-of-sight networking (Bluetooth, Wifi are omni-directional), by streaming video to a laptop, Desktop, Smartphones/PDAs with nothing but ceiling-mounted blue LEDs.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences claims to have attained a 2Mbit per second internet connection that transmits data simply by modulating the flicker of the little diodes, and imperceptibly enough to have them serve as room lighting as well. Since LEDs consume only a partial amount of power that bulbs, it is the most energy efficient combo of Lighting+Networking we’ve see so far.

Looking closely, single mode Optical fibers work on the same basic concept: Quickly switch  lasers (based on LEDs as well) at a high frequency to interpret ZEROs and ONEs as data stream and then encode, compress them using proper techniques. On the receiving end, same process is reversed to get data back. We’ve seen several LED based communications but most of them traditionally needed a media (like fiber) to travel. the ones that traveled through air were painfully slow and unusable.

The current 2mbps may not be ideal for Home networking, but technology has scope of further improvement, above all, its a Green Tech solution we aspire for, for the meantime WiGig would offer great 7 Gigabit Wireless Home Networking solution.

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Read more: New Multi-gigabit wireless Technology: WiGig

The WiGig 1.0 standard brings out best of two different Wireless technologies: 60-gigahertz wireless and Wi-Fi. The first one uses the 60-gigahertz band of the wireless spectrum to create a 10-meter range  network. It also uses something called “beamforming” to extend the range of the 60-gigahertz network beyond 10 meters. The 60-gigahertz wireless network can support devices inside a home and can transfer data as high as 7 Gigabits per second. This is about 10 times faster than the fastest Wi-Fi networking available: 802.11N, which transfers data at 600 megabits per second and 140x Times faster than popular 802.11g (50mbps x 140 = 7Gbps)

However, due to wireless property of High frequency waves, beyond the 10-meters the first technology attenuates, the network will automatically switch to Wi-Fi n at the speed of 600 megabits per second. That network will have a 100-meter range.

WiGig’s direct competitor is Wireless High Definition Interface (WHDI), the group completed its standard this week as well,  and uses 5-gigahertz spectrum with throughputs up to 3 Gigabits a second, with a range of 100 meters. SiBEAM is heading the Wireless HD consortium to make 60-gigahertz wireless chips for networking inside a room. Some of the members such as Samsung and Sony are betting on all three horses.

However, they are looking into different segmentes. WHDI focuses on transferring video, while SiBEAM may focus on replacing cables in a home electronics network. WiGig, meanwhile, accommodates both the Wi-Fi and WHDI uses. Consumers may be confused by the three different standards, but the competition will likely shake out as users figure out what network best suits them.

The  WiGig specification will be made available to partners in the Q1 and that products are expected to go live for consumers sometime in mid-2010. More than 25 companies are part of the new standard, including Intel, Broadcom and Texas Instruments, Nvidia, TMC, SK Telecom and AMD.

What we know of sure is that by the end of 2010, All three groups will be seen in next-generation PCs, mobile handsets, TVs, displays, Blu-ray players, and what not.

Lot of the back-end work deals with complex signalling and RF management which is both tedious and expensive to maintain. But seems like  IBM researchers in China have come up with a faster, yet, elegant solution that reckons shifting the signal-processing overhead from base stations into the cloud. This will make it cheaper and easier to upgrade networks, leading to wireless networks that can provide better coverage by rapidly adapting to user demand.

In order to make offloading the signal processing to the cloud, A new architecture called the Wireless Network Cloud (WNC). WNC would make it possible to step away from “the usual” dedicated hardware for RBS (radio base stations) that serve Radio Frequencies for networks like GSM and 3G cell phone networks. This technique would decouple the radio antennas from the base stations, which now will be processed in the Cloud.

Carrying a voice/data signal is a costly job. There’s a lot of signal processing–the modulation and encoding of the signals to and from the physical antennas–which is carried out using software radio technology. Witht he power of Multicore processors and network grids, a general-purpose data center can do all the signal processing, making it much more cost-effective.
Advanced Network Management
Apart from what is said, WNC enables management of the network in a more centralized way. The Bearer signals would be relayed to and from multiple antennas, “remote radio heads,” via optical fibres from as far away as 40 kms. (The limitation of the distance is set by the acceptable delays.)

Having a centralized network management can certainly give providers added benefits. When it comes to managing networks Optimally, it can provide smart solution. e.g. In areas where cell traffic may vary dramatically depending upon the time of day–residential area where daytime voice traffic is light but evening traffic is heavy, or business areas where the opposite is true–WNC should allow the network operator to allocate, scale resources on-demand, something which was never so easy with traditional Networks.

Cost Benefit
The main attraction for network operators is the cost. Traditional base stations currently account for about 40 percent of a network’s total cost. So that means of a new company starts its setup for say 4G service, 40-50% is spent on the netowrk equipment leaving aside the staffing, assets, etc. And because Telecom hardware is totally proprietary, whenever a network is upgraded, almost all of this equipment has to be replaced. On the other side, WNC upgrades can be implemented relatively cheaply by installing new software.
So is this Cloud Network Management New?

“IBM’s concept is not totally new but rather a combination of familiar themes, such as software-defined radio, network equipment virtualization, and networks as software,” says Dipankar Raychaudhuri director of the Wireless Information Network Laboratory (WINLAB) at Rutgers University.

“For example, there is a U.K. company called picoChip that offers a variety of base stations in software using the same parallel computing platform.

“I think there is a good, strong argument to use software radio in base stations,” says David Grace head of the communications research group at the University of York, U.K., and chair of the World Universities Network Initiative on Cognitive Communications. Grace says the approach is capable of handling the signal processing required of base stations, but he is less convinced about the need to relocate this software and absorb it within the cloud. “It’s the old argument of whether to centralize or distribute,” he says.

Is there a downside of Cloud Network  Management?

Of course, the one I see is that we have to introduce the additional communication between devices to allow that to happen, which can cause problems in bad times. Even with AtoD (analog-to-digital) converters at the antennas, the raw streams of data they would create would be of very high frequencies. Processing this is notoriously difficult because it requires even higher frequency sampling. For instance, a typical GSM network at 1800 Mhz would need sampling at atleast double the frequency 3600 Mhz and converting that into bitstream would quote to very high bitrates, hence large data capacity would be needed for the Fibre, but certianly its not as high as what you would assume, few mbps can serve a typical GSM Antenna (BTS) quiet well.

Has this been Tested in field?

IBM already seems to have a prototype for a 4G technology:  WiMax. This has demonstrated that a general-purpose data server can handle the software radio requirements in realtime.

Verdict

The potential for WNC is huge. Beyond cost effectiveness, it will improve their ability to manage mobile virtual network operators–phone companies that own no infrastructure and instead lease it off larger companies. And although WNC would be most suitable for urban areas with very high density, it could also help in rural areas where network nodes can be hard to access and have unreliable power supplies. Overall, providing optimal solutions in every sector.

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There’s an app called NetBalancer that let’s you throttle your internet connection (and even LAN connections) by limiting per-application bandwidth. You can choose to assign priorities to each one of them (just like CPU priority) and avoid the sluggish throughput. This application Shapes your bandwidth so as to fairly divide bandwidth among applications.

So next time you run BitTorrent application like uTorrent, you don’t have to worry about how much it wants to eat, you can always restrict it.

You can, for example, designate priority to your web browser instead of your BitTorrent client. You can even specify download and upload priorities separately meaning a process can have a high download priority but a low upload priority.

However, the free version of NetBalancer limits you to setting upload and/or download priorities for 5 different processes and the main features include:

• Set download and upload network priority for any process. Currently supported priorities are:
  • High priority
  • Normal priority
  • Low priority
  • Block traffic
  • Ignore traffic
  • Limit traffic
• Set download and upload speed limits for a process
• Show all system processes with their in and out network traffic speed
• Show current connection for any process
• Show downloaded and uploaded traffic for any process since NetBlancer’s start
• View overall system traffic as a graph
• Show last 15 seconds traffic in system tray
• Fine tune priorities (see Level Severity setting).

NetBalanceris one of it’s kind Quality of Service (QoS) on Windows, avail it for free on Windows Platform: Windows 2003 32/64-bit, XP 32/64-bit, Vista 32-bit, Windows 7 32-bit, 64bit

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CRS-3 is designed to serve as the foundation of the next-generation Internet and set the pace for the astonishing growth of video transmission, mobile devices and new online services through this decade and beyond.

With more than 12 times the traffic capacity of the nearest competing system (Juniper), the Cisco CRS-3 is designed to transform the broadband communication and entertainment industry by accelerating the delivery of compelling new experiences for consumers, new revenue opportunities for service providers, and new ways to collaborate in the workplace.

On one side Google wants to experiment Gigabit Internet service, on the Other, Cisco would enable much more powerful systems.

Cisco’s CEO John Chambers highlights the basic facts of the new platform:

• The Cisco CRS-3 triples the capacity of its predecessor, the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System, with up to 322 Terabits per second, which enables the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress to be downloaded in just over one second; every man, woman and child in China to make a video call, simultaneously; and every motion picture ever created to be streamed in less than four minutes.
• The Cisco CRS-3 enables unified service delivery of Internet and cloud services with service intelligence spanning service provider Internet Protocol Next-Generation Networks (IP NGNs) and data center. The Cisco CRS-3 also provides unprecedented savings with investment protection for the nearly 5,000 Cisco CRS-1 deployed worldwide. Cisco’s cumulative investment in the Cisco CRS family is $1.6 billion, further underscoring the company’s commitment.
• AT&T, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, recently tested the Cisco CRS-3 in a successful completion of the world’s first field trial of 100-Gigabit backbone network technology, which took place in AT&T’s live network between New Orleans and Miami. The trial advances AT&T’s development of the next generation of backbone network technology that will support the network requirements for the growing number of advanced services offered by AT&T to consumer and business customers, both fixed and mobile.
• The Cisco CRS-3 is currently in field trials, and its pricing starts at $90,000 U.S.

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UPDATE: Cisco CRS-3 Announced, Boosts Internet Backbone Speeds to 322 Terabits.
Recently, U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that it plans to enforce faster Internet speeds as part of its National Broadband Plan to be unveiled next month, on March 17, according to which bare-minimum Internet data transmission speeds of 100 mbps to 100 million homes within a decade, 96mbps up from current 4mbps. Though, that’s big, it still is far less than what Google is offering with the new Gigabit Internet experiment.

Cisco said on Wednesday it will unveil technology on March 9 that will “forever change the Internet.” On its website, it claims “What’s possible when networking gets an adrenaline boost.”

A while back, we discussed that Windows 7 features a half-baked “SoftAP” feature, also called “virtual Wi-Fi,” that allows a PC to function as a Wi-Fi client and also as an Access Point (AP) a.k.a wireless router.

The idea is not new  but, pretty nifty for sharing data, music, files with others other peers in absence of an actual AP. But often good features come with a backdoor. But it makes executions of certain nightmares handy, e.g.Visitors and parking-lot hackers can piggyback onto the user’s laptop and “ghost ride” into the corporate network, unnoticed.

The problem was first demonstrated at  BlackHat by AirTight networks, a wireless intrusion-prevention system (WIPS). They first executed Rogue APs to fetch user’s frequently-connected Wifi, followed by how to make a wishful hacking on the victim’s machine.

Gopinath KN, director of engineering at AirTight Networks, says a Windows 7 device performs Port Address Translation (PAT), allowing a single public IP address to be used by many LAN devices (and exposing only certain Layer 4 port numbers). So devices that associate with the Windows 7′s virtual AP will be bridged into the wired network unseen because they will be hidden behind the “master” IP address.

The issue is more dangerous than Wi-Fi’s peer-to-peer(ad hoc) mode. In peer-to-peer mode, the only data exposed is the local files and applications on participating users’ laptops — not the whole corporate network.

Remedy

WIPS products such as AirTight’s and those from competitors such as AirMagnet and AirDefense scan the airwaves for unauthorized devices in the airspace — such as a Windows 7 SoftAP — and flag them as rogues that clients are not permitted to associate with.

So using WIPS is one protective option. Another is to provision the laptop with the SoftAP capability turned off and deprive Windows 7 user’s admin rights, so that they can’t turn it back on.

Another way out is to install mobile device management, security agent software on the laptop that enforces centralized policies such as disabling soft APs and ad-hoc Wi-Fi modes. And AirTight, in addition to offering WIPS, also has such a client agent it calls SpectraGuard SAFE.

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Google is planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. Google promises to deliver 100x times faster than most i.e. 1 gigabit per second, FTTH, fibre-to-the-home connections. (Comparing to typical 10mbps AT&T, Verizon FiOS)

With the new and faster internet, Google wants to see:

• Next generation apps
• New deployment techniques
• Openness and choice:

The purpose is to learn from the capacity of High speed internets, explore the possibilities, rather than being an ISP. Watch the video to know more:

Google needs your feedback before March 26th, If you’d like to respond, suggest, visit this page.

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With the current pace of depletion of IPv4, we would run out of address space within a year. The latest usage report is out which gives us exact usage numbers: 80.5% address space is used, up from 75.3% of last year (2009 begining).

As of Jan 1st, 2010, the number of unused IPv4 addresses is 722.18 million. On January 1, 2009, this was 925.58 million. So in 2009, 203.4 million addresses were used up. This is the first time since the introduction of CIDR in 1993 that the number of addresses used in a year has topped 200 million. With 3706.65 million usable addresses, 80.5% of the available IPv4 addresses are now in some kind of use, up from 75.3% a year ago. So the depletion of the IPv4 address reserves is continuing in much the same way as in previous years:

Date         Addresses free   Used up
2006-01-01      1468.61 M
2007-01-01      1300.65 M    167.96 M
2008-01-01      1122.85 M    177.80 M
2009-01-01       925.58 M    197.27 M
2010-01-01       722.18 M    203.40 M

These figures are derived from from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority’s IANA IPv4 Address Space Registry page. Interestingly, the 2985 million addresses currently in use aren’t very evenly distributed over the countries in the world.

However, more interestingly,  the US now holds 50.1% of the IPv4 address space in use, down from 52.4% last year. This means where US has seen some saturation in IPv4 usage, other countries have been still using more.

With the growing pace, we are not far from when they exhaust. By some date in 2012, IPv4 run out of space. But, this won’t happen. IPv6 adoption has been mandated in certain areas like for ISPs starting from this year, 2010. With the Adoption of IPv6, we’ll get improved security, easier manageability, and a wider space to exploit.

For the transitions, IPv4-in-IPv6 tunnels are being used extensively. These tunnels will stay around for next couple of years till IPv4 and IPv6 co-exist. Perhaps this would be forever if not for a decade.

[via BGPexpert]

When WEP was launched it was called Wired equivalent privacy, Now people call it Wasted

On the contrary, WPA based networks are still better, it need dictionary brute force which can be very slow at times coz all the permutations and combinations will take several hours over standard core duo or quad cores. However, what if you could leverage the Power of Cloud computing to do this, it would take couple of minutes.

Confused by WEP, WPA, TKIP, AES & Other Wireless Security Acronyms?

The idea has been taken by WPACracker, a cloud based service that promises to break those WPA keys that took 4-5 days in under 20 minutes.

WPA-PSK networks are vulnerable to dictionary attacks, but running a respectable-sized dictionary over a WPA network handshake can take days or weeks. WPA Cracker gives you access to a 400CPU cluster that will run your network capture against a 135 million word dictionary created specifically for WPA passwords. While this job would take over 5 days on a contemporary dual-core PC, on our cluster it takes an average of 20 minutes, for only $17.

Well, good for crackers, but what about the Security admin nightmares?

We sure need new encryption standards, don’t we?

For those who know little about DNS: It is the service lookup used to find the IP address of a Server/Host based on Fully qualified Domain name (FQDN). Normally, for every visit to a domain: google.com, taranfx.com; a query is made to the DNS server everytime, unless cached by the OS or the browser (almost all OS, browsers maintain it).

Google says that their new DNS servers are Fast, reliable and secure. I’m not sure how fast it will be as compared to querying a local ISP DNS vs. a far off google’s overseas DNS server. I`ve been testing it over the last few hours and found it to be pretty average. However, one point from Google is totally convining “Get the results you expect with absolutely no redirection.” Normal DNS queries don’t do that.

Here’s how you can Try it:

Basically, goto your network settings and change the Preferred DNS to 8.8.8.8 and Alternate to 8.8.4.4 (IPv4)

Also, restart browser, Run this on the command prompt to Clear DNS cache

C:\>ipconfig /flushdns

Soon, Google is planning to release IPv6 version. Surely, Google is heading to era where Interent would be powerful, fast, and more Reliable. I see a pattern already, is this the Future: Google GO + SPDY Protocol + Chrome + Chrome OS+ Google DNS ?

The list of vulnerable devices is huge: Nokia N95, HTC Tilt running Windows Mobile, HTC G1 running Android, and the iPhone 3GS with the 3.1.2 firmware.

All of them are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, carried out via Wi-Fi connections.

Man in the Middle Attack (MITM)
A man‐in‐the‐middle attack intercepts communication between two systems by relaying
messages between them. In this attack, the attacker makes an independent connection with both
of the victim’s machines. The attacker machine forces the traffic between the victim’s machines
to route through it by sending a false ARP reply to both machines. The attacker can than create
new connections and kill existing connections, as well as view and replay anything that is private
between the targets machines.

According to the report by SMobile Systems, smartphone users connecting to unencrypted Wi-Fi hotspots can be easily compromised by knowledgeable attackers using an array of existing tools. The authors of the study used those tools to intercept username/password combinations sent from several different smartphones.

The Test Setup

All the major smartphones were tested, (as already listed). The tests used a laptop with software tools to intercept (capture) communications between smartphones connecting to a Wi-Fi access point, and then to bypass SSL. That information was then used to access a variety of e-mail accounts. The same information could be used to access an online banking account or other information.

Tools used:

The tools mentioned below are just a few of the possible tools that an attacker could use to
perform a successful MITM attack and break the security provided by SSL.
1) Arpspoof: It redirects packets from a target host on the LAN to the intended host on the same LAN.
It does so by forging the ARP replies to target host.
2) SSLStrip: Allows for the transparent hijacking of HTTP traffic on a network, watches for HTTPS
links and redirects, and then maps those links into either look‐alike HTTP links or
homograph‐similar HTTPS links. It also supports modes for supplying a favicon that
looks like a lock icon, selective logging, and session denial.
3)  Wireshark: A multipurpose sniffer/interceptor/logging utility for switched LAN’s. It is also used to
implement MITM attacks in the networked environment . Whereas, Wireshark is a
network protocol analyzer and is often used as packet sniffer .

More detail on the attack is found in the full report.

In each case, the user would have had no idea that their information had been compromised.

“Utilizing this method, the attacker has effectively told the victim device to route all traffic through the attacker’s machine [laptop], and the attacker machine then forwards the requests to the Wi-Fi hotspot.” The attack computer captures all the traffic and can modify or kill active connections. With SSL bypassed, as soon as the victim accesses an e-mail or other account, the login credentials will appear in plain text on the attack computer.

The authors of the study warn smartphone users to “seek out and identify applications that provide adequate encryption technologies to protect confidential or private information.” Applications for doing so exist, but are still rare, the authors note. The end-to-end encryption should be implemented, ignorance at the Client side could lead to havocs.

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