Network Failure
I was at a client today that told me he had a network problem. When I got to his computer, his network settings looked like this:
Click on image for full view
That is wrong. I thought I’d tell you how network IP settings work.
The IP adress is like a normal residential address.
The first set of digits (up to 3), Before the first dot, can be the city you are sending a packet to.
The 2nd set of digits (up to 3), before the second dot, can be thought of as the suburb you live in.
The 3rd set of digits, before the third dot, can be thought of as the street you live in.
the 4th set of digits, after the 3rd dot, can be thought of as your street number.
The correct IP address for a given network can look like this. 192.168.1.5 or 10.0.0.2 or 200.200.201.1
so the 192 can be translated into “Cape Town”
168 can be translated into “Tokai”
1 can be translated into “Tokai rd”
and the 5 could be “nr 21″
A computer wont understand a normal address, so it turns it into numbers.
Local Network
On your local network everyone will have the same first 3 sets of digits, the last one will be different. If it is not, there is a problem. It would then mean 2 different computers life in the same address and the packets won’t know where to go.
So your local network is “in the same road” but on different locations.
Later I will explain what the Subnet mask means. The 255.255.255.0
Let me know if you understand what I wrote here. If not, ask and I will try and explain again
1. Network Failure
2. Subnet mask, the way it works
How safe is your wireless?
I’ve been using this program called wireless key view. When run, it goes through your computer and checks for all the wireless networks you have connected to with your computer and displays them in a nice order for you.
The actual file that is used (wirelesskeyview) is about 32 kb’s in size, so its not big at all and takes seconds to load up. For me, its great. When the people don’t know what their wireless passwords are, I can simply get it off of another computer. Really easy and simple.
Security Wise, its not safe at all. Windows keeps a record of all your wireless networks you have connected to, this program goes and fetches that information and displays it.
I need about 60 seconds to be able to get the wireless key, no matter what encryption, from your computer. I physically need access to the computer, and off I go. You’ll never notice I was there.
So to sum things up. If you are really concerned about wireless security, check with your technician what you can do to make it more secure.
I would recommend a 24bit WEP encryption with Mac address filtering.
What is Mac address Filtering? (more on that later)
So there you go. If you thought you were safe on your wireless network, think again.
To tweet or not to twitter.
I found this great post at problogger: 9 Benifits of Twitter for bloggers
I have now started to use twitter aswell. I’m actually enjoying it. Its strange because I was never really into things like this. But twitter is Different. for me its a mixture of Chat and a forum. And a bit of Social Bookmarking thrown in.
With me starting to use twitter. I also found TinyUrl. It takes all these long URL’s and turns them into short, small ones and takes you to that Long URL.
So this URL:http://www.gitui.com/sharing/important-things-to-know-when-changing-a-wordpress-theme/
will then be turned into this: tinyurl.com/5gxv28
Now does that not look better? it also saves space in the “tweets” and if you want to generally save space on a webiste, blog, forum or anywhere else you might need to.
Robert.
pageRank Does it Matter?
PageRank is a number value that represents the importance of a website on the Internet. Google figures that when a site links to another one, it is casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a site, the more important that site must be!
When I visit a web site, I look at the “PageRank” of the web site. To me PageRank is more of a credibility index than anything. For example, I would feel more confident making a purchase or requesting a service from a web site with a PageRank of 6 than I would from a web site with the PageRank of 2. Therefore I am more likely to convert (try, buy, or recommend) a product, article or service from web site with a higher PageRank.
Google control’s PageRank. They have the final say in what the PageRank of a site would be. It is mostly worked out by a formula. Largely unknown by the public. A basic rule of thumb is that the more links you have to your site the better your PageRank would be.
Hacking 101 how it gets done.
For many of us Hacking is a real threat. Probably for all of us.
Hackers state that they are only after information and they want to test their skills. This is true, because we live in the information age. Where info is king. Information could be anything from the names of your staff to your bank account details and pin. Varying from different danger levels.
Getting the information you want could be a simple task or a very complex one. Usernames are easier than passwords, bank account number is easy to get, but not the pin number ect
I used to think that Hacking was out there and could never affect me. I was wrong. I recently learned how hacking usernames and Passwords for adsl works. All that you need is an IP address scanner, a mouse and a little know how. First of all, IP scanners are great tools when working with networks. It scans the network for A range of IP addresses, and spits out a whole bunch of information about it. You can also setup these scanners to scan IP addresses on the internet and tell it to look for open Ports on the internet. Basically a “door” for traffic to go through.
Once the scan has run and you found a whole bunch of IP addresses that are live (connected) and have the Port 80 open, you can punch in that IP address into your web browser and it will take you to the login screen of that router/computer or just take you to a website. (if you find the right one, you get to the router login screen
In my travels and my experience with working on the internet and networks. I found that the majority of people don’t change their default usernames and passwords on their routers. 
I make a point of doing that
So once the Ip address is in the browser, and you can see the router login screen, try the default username and password for that router. If it works, you have just logged into someone elses adsl router.
ok, but the password is hidden.
Once you have logged in successfully, you go to the account setup. It will then show you the username and the password will be a bunch of stars: **********
What you do then: Right click on the page somewhere, and click on page source. That will then give you the source code of the user interface for that page. Then press Control + F to bring up the search menu. Type in there the username that you just found on the page. eg: user@isp.com
That will then take you to the area where the username is in. Just below that you will see something that looks like this: <password= “whateverthepasswordis” > That will be the password for that account.
You then place that username and password in your router/modem and hit the connect button.
After that you can be called a hacker and do things illegally.
So, to bring me to the point of my post. When you have somebody install your internet for you, or if you do it yourself. Remember to change your default username and password
thanx for listening.
you might enjoy my post About Firewalls
Robert
