IT-CRUISERS: Everything IT

Got home last night and tuned to CNN and here is the headline I saw "ONE BILLION YAHOO ACCOUNTS HACKED" I had to look closely to see if that was "M" as in Million but its actually "B" as in Billion! Mehn... That's huge, had to quickly snap my TV screen with my phone! ONE BILLION YAHOO ACCOUNTS HACKED Anyways here are some tips for every yahoo mail user; 1. First, if you get an email saying your Yahoo account may have been hacked and to click this link to re-secure your account, it's bogus. Yahoo's official, "you're screwed" emails have the subject line: "Important Security Information for Yahoo Users", anything else is just a phishing scam. 2. you must change your Yahoo account password on Yahoo services such as Yahoo Mail or Flickr. To do this, go to your Yahoo account page. Once there, go to Account Info and click on Account security. Then, on that page, choose Change password. While you...

Have you ever wondered where all the information you post on Facebook over the years is hosted? I know someone is thinking of cloud storage! Yes but funny enough the cloud is not an imaginary entity somewhere in the higher altitudes of the cloudy atmosphere. It is actually a physical location somewhere, which might be the next building at your workplace a remote location, usually referred to as a Data Center which hosts tens to hundreds of server machines and corresponding sophisticated computer networking and storage infrastructure. Now here is one of Facebook's Data Centers, about the size of 7 football fields. Located somewhere in Sweden. The location was chosen because of the advantage of low environmental temperature averaging -30C and plentiful power from nearby hydro electric dam. One of Facebook's Data Center  

Ubuntu Linux Mobile Phones On The Way The ever powerful and user-friendly Ubuntu Linux Distro Operating System is to storm the mobile Smart Phone arena, with the official launch of the Mobile Operating System recently, and developers already working on a variety of apps. So for Ubuntu folks like myself, it only gets better and better as open source technologies keep making the IT life more interesting, even towards the mobile platform! Cant wait to have one right in my palms!  :) 

250,000 HACKED USER ACCOUNTS: TWITTER TO INTRODUCE  TWO-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION Following the recent attack on twitter over the weekend which resulted in compromise of over 250,000 users accounts, twitter is on the look-out for a competent software engineer to implement additional security layer for user logins to the social media cum micro-blogging website. Two-factor (multi-factor) authentication is a way of adding additional layer of security in addition to the regular username and password combination, usually in the form of additional random token generated by a hardware or software, or even a message received via SMS which is valid for a short period of time and cannot be chosen by the user or a potential hacker. It has become obvious that multi-factor authentication is the way to go in handling the simple but ever important authentication question of "who are you" we encounter on on web login forms every now and then!

What is Mobile Network Portability (MNP)? Mobile Number  Portability allows mobile telephone users to migrate from one service provider to another and still retain their telephone numbers. It provides a platform whereby a subscriber on any of the existing GSM and some of the CDMA networks can switch from one service provider to another and still retain their phone numbers. For instance, with your current MTN line you can decide to migrate to ETISALAT or vice-versa, and still retain your "stable and popular" phone number. How MNP Works For instance, subscriber A whose original service provider is network P, might wish to change or port to network Q. This can be achieved by subscriber A sending a porting request to network Q, network Q sees the request coming from a user on network P and then contacts them accordingly to setup the process of exchange and transference of subscriber details, this is the most common and it is known as "Recipient-led" porting. Once a...

At one time or the other, you may have used or heard such expressions as “Downloading file from server”, “server is slow”, “Authentication required for server access”, and so on. These are everyday expressions used in the present Information Age. Now let us take a closer look at what a server really is, with emphasis on the type of server that makes it possible for access to the Information Superhighway – the Internet, known as Web Servers , as well as what actually happens when an internet user tries to access a website via a Web Browser by sending a (Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol) HTTP request to the web server. WHAT IS A SERVER? A server is basically a computer program that serves some sort of content to a client using a specified protocol. The term server also refers to the computer or virtual machine running the server program, which in fact is the most common use and understanding of the term. Today, most enterprise organisations with computer network infrastructure do host th...

Yes you can share that USB modem internet connection on one PC with other PCs over an ad-hoc wireless network, even without a switch or wireless router. This is made possible with Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) , a network service/feature of all windows-based systems. The sharing can also be done just between two PCs connected using an Ethernet cross-over cable. How Do I Share My USB Modem Internet Connection With Other PCs Without A Switch/Router, Over My Ad-hoc WLAN? Steps: 1.      1. Connect the USB modem (e.g. MTN 3G USB modem) to the host computer. 2.              Enable ICS on the USB modem connection properties and select the network type    through which you desire to share (e.g. Wireless Local Area Network connection) 3.   Select the services you would want to run by clicking   Settings. The basic services you need in order to access the internet are DHCP, DNS, HTT...