Today Technology

Ransomware is particularly insidious. Although ransomware often travels through email, it has also been known to take advantage of backdoors or vulnerabilities. Here are some ways you can avoid falling victim and be locked out of your own data. 1. Backup Your Systems, Locally & In The Cloud The first step to take is to always backup your system. Locally, and offsite. This is essential. First, it will keep your information backed up in a safe area that hackers cannot easily access. Secondly, it will make it easier for you to wipe your old system and repair with backup files in case of an attack. Failure to back up your system can cause irreparable damage. Use a cloud backup solution to protect your data. By protecting your data in the cloud, you keep it safe from infection by ransomware. Cloud backups introduce redundancy and add an extra layer of protection. Have multiple backups just in case the last back up got overwritten with encrypted ransomware files. 2. Segme...

There are numerous advantages of authentication systems which are used to identify the user of a home, ATM or a security clearance computer system. The main purpose of these systems is to validate the user's right to access the system and information, and protect against identity theft and fraud. While there are still drawbacks with some systems, as the business world and the electronic marketplace become more complex, the advantages of authentication are ever more obvious. Password Based Authentication The use of a password and username is the most common form of authentication used and is generally considered the cheapest and most convenient method. This requires the user to provide and remember a key containing a specified amount of alpha and numeric characters in relation to a username or e-mail address which must be correct at each login. Passwords saved on a network can be encrypted to prevent theft by employee or programs designed by hackers. Find more :  lm authentica...

Here's a list of four of the best programs for Monitoring your LAN and Local Network Traffic inside of your Perimeter. We've really focused on software packages that have management and monitoring capabilities dedicated to a LAN. The Network Performance Monitor by SolarWinds is an excellent overall tool for keeping a close eye on the health of your network. It boasts a strong variety of monitoring tools and a very robust alert system – which means you have to spend less time actively watching your network and can depend on the software to clue you in when something is amiss! The software even lets you customize your own alerts so that you can tailor your awareness to the specific needs of your network's use. This software is all about helping you predict and, ideally, prevent network downtime. It also offers some ability to monitor the actual traffic on your network but focuses heavily on up-time and device management. It also has some handy tools for deployi...

Microsoft Windows contains a range of security utilities designed to work in tandem with other security products, such as anti-virus software, to protect your computer. These include SmartScreen, which warns you when running unfamiliar programs, and Windows Firewall, which stops programs from reaching the Internet. You can also change Family Safety and User Account security settings. To start with any of these settings, press "Windows-X," click "Control Panel" and then change the view from "Category" to "Small Icons." Windows SmartScreen Step 1 Open "Action Center" in the Control Panel. Step 2 Click "Change Windows SmartScreen Settings" on the sidebar. Step 3 Choose whether SmartScreen should block unfamiliar files without administrator access, warn about unfamiliar files without blocking them or allow all files to run. Press "OK" when finished. read more :  lm security

You can configure a computer so that it does not send announcements to browsers on the domain. If you do so, you hide the computer from the Browser list, which can help reduce network traffic. Editing the Registry 1. Open the registry editor and go to Microsoft Registry 1 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters 2.From the Edit menu, choose Add Value and type: Hidden Note: This value is case sensitive and must begin with a capital H. 3.In the Data Type field, choose REG_DWORD and choose OK. 4.In the Data field, type 1 to enable hiding and choose OK. 5.Restart your computer. Using the NET CONFIG SRV command This setting can also be changed using the following command: net config server /hidden:yes|no To hide the computer from the Browser List, type net config server /hidden:yes at the command prompt, and then press ENTER. To unhide the computer from the Browser list, type net config server /hidden:no at the command Find...

Once upon a time, the world of developers was split into two halves: One half was composed of Windows developers, who created most of the productivity apps that powered PCs (and, occasionally, servers). The other half comprised Linux and Unix developers, whose work focused on server-side development.Today, however, as the worlds of Windows and Linux move ever closer together, the distinction between Windows and Linux developers is disappearing. Gone are the days when you had to specialize in one ecosystem or the other. One was a set of programming languages and frameworks that were designed primarily for the Windows world, like C# and .NET. Although Windows developers sometimes also worked with languages like Java, which was engineered as a cross-platform language, you knew you were a Windows dev if you found yourself touting the importance of coding in a “pure” object-oriented language like C#. Most Windows developers were also united by Visual Studio, the IDE of choice in the Wi...

A network hub is a networking device that connects to one or more equipment. For example, a computer can connect to a server, printer and another computer through a network hub. It is useful in sharing of resources and broadcasting data it receives. It helps connects these devices together without having to connect to each other directly. There are three types of network hubs: Passive Hubs, Active Hubs and Intelligent Hubs. Passive Hubs One of the types of a network hub is the so-called passive hub. It's a pass-through that does not do anything more than just broadcast signals it receives through its input port, then sends it out through the output port. It does not do anything to regenerate or process the signals because it only functions as a connector of different wires in a topology. Active Hubs An active hub works more than just a connector but also regenerates the data bits to ensure the signals are strong. Another name for an active hub is a multiport repeater. It pro...

Given that so much of software engineer is on web servers and clients, one of the most immediately valuable areas of computer science is computer networking. With the advent of the World Wide Web, the global Internet has rapidly become the dominant type of computer network. It now enables people around the world to use the Web for e-commerce and interactive entertainment applications, in addition to email and IP telephony. As a result, the study of computer networking is now synonymous with the study of the Internet and its applications. Recently, I finished an online Stanford course called “Introduction to Computer Networking.” The course focuses on explaining how the Internet works, ranging from how bits are modulated on wires and in wireless to application-level protocols like BitTorrent and HTTP. It also explains the principles of how to design networks and network protocols. I want to share a small bit of the knowledge I acquired from the course here. Also read :  network...

There are numerous advantages of authentication systems which are used to identify the user of a home, ATM or a security clearance computer system. The main purpose of these systems is to validate the user's right to access the system and information, and protect against identity theft and fraud. While there are still drawbacks with some systems, as the business world and the electronic marketplace become more complex, the advantages of authentication are ever more obvious. Password Based Authentication The use of a password and username is the most common form of authentication used and is generally considered the cheapest and most convenient method. This requires the user to provide and remember a key containing a specified amount of alpha and numeric characters in relation to a username or e-mail address which must be correct at each login. Passwords saved on a network can be encrypted to prevent theft by employee or programs designed by hackers. Device Based Authenticatio...

By default, Windows creates some hidden shared folders. These folders are identified by a dollar sign ($) at the end of the share name and so they are hidden. Hidden shares are those that not listed when you look at the network shares on a computer in File Explorer's Network node, or using the net view command. Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7 and even Vista and XP create hidden administrative shares that administrators, programs, and services can use to manage the computer environment on the network. In this article, I would like to share with you two ways to disable these shares. Any user with administrative access on your local computer or Active Directory domain (if it is connected) can access any partition on your PC without your knowledge and without you explicitly sharing a folder as long as he has your user account credentials. All partitions are shared for administrators in Windows NT operating systems due to the administrative shares feature. I do not like this defau...

Networking is ever present. Every business needs it from day one. Mobile devices and cloud services depend on it, and IoT devices are mission critical. Nearly every house or apartment has a router and devices communicating with the outside world. Given the proliferation of networked devices, people assume that networking is already a solved problem. But when your network starts behaving erratically, you realize networking is still difficult. Why? The flawed promise of public protocols A network with all its component parts purchased from the same company is extraordinarily uncommon. Modern networking enables hardware from different vendors to interoperate — in theory. There are several flaws in that vision. Public protocols are so flexible that people make hardware do things the writers never anticipated. The protocol definitions can have design flaws or errors in protocols and specifications. For instance, vendors implementing DNS make slightly different choices and those dev...

One of the most important jobs in technology is translating between computers and humans. The pretty pictures you see on your screen, the easy-to-read menus, and the colorful icons you tap or click are all translated into numbers in one way or another, so the computer or another device can understand them. Much the same thing happens when you interact with the internet, which is just an enormous collection of computers talking to one another. Every time you bring up a webpage, you're doing it through a "translator" called a DNS server. What Is a DNS Server? As far as your computer is concerned, there's no such place as www.techwalla.com or www.google.com. Those sites have numerical addresses, a double-digit series of numbers called an Internet Protocol, or IP, address. Computers process those numbers in a flash, tracing them from a top-level server – one that contains every .com address, for example, or every .gov address – to the actual site, wherever it's h...

The components used to establish a local area network (LAN) have a variety of functions. The common unifying theme among them is that they facilitate communication between two or more computers. LAN components are configurable in a variety of ways, but a LAN always requires the same basic components. Network Cards At the most basic level, a network card is a component that allows the computer to communicate across a network. This component is frequently built into the motherboard of today's computers, but it can also be a separate card for use in a PCI slot, or part of an external unit that connects to the computer via a USB port. Network cards are further categorized according to whether they operate on wired or wireless networks. However, some cards do support both wireless and wired networking. Network Cables Network cables are the physical lines used to carry information between computers in a wired LAN. The cables are labeled by their category and are commonly referred ...

A network operating system is a software application that provides a platform for both the functionality of an individual computer and for multiple computers within an interconnected network. Basically, a network operating system controls other software and computer hardware to run applications, share resources, protect data and establish communication. Individual computers run client operating systems, while network systems create the software infrastructure for wireless, local and wide area networks to function. Basic Operating Features Network operating systems support the basic underlying operating features of networks. These include support for processors and the various protocols that allow computers to share data. Many network operating systems can detect hardware within the system to allow for asset discovery within the network. Also, network operating systems support the processing of other software applications that run on both individual computers and within the network....

WEP includes a device level authentication mechanism, pictured in Figure 5-4. The station must provide to the AP a proof of ownership of the key they share. Four messages are exchanged. The station makes a request. The AP sends a challenge, i.e., a 128-bit random value. The station sends a response, i.e., the 128-bit random value encrypted with the WEP stream cipher. The AP decrypts the response. If the decrypted response matches the original challenge value, then a positive authenticate response is returned to the station. WEP authentication is one-way, i.e., the AP is not authenticated by the station. After the completion of the authentication phase, subsequent traffic is not authenticated. The protocol is vulnerable to the authentication spoofing attack. An adversary may obtain the key by xor-ing the intercepted challenge value and its response. The key stream may be used by the adversary to create proper responses to new challenges WPA includes as well an authentication protocol...

Did you forget your Outlook password? It is quite common these days to forget important passwords with so many things to remember. But no worries, today we will show you how to instantly recover your Outlook password instantly without resetting password. In just 2 steps quickly you can recover Outlook password for all versions including Outlook 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, Outlook Express. Here you go, It’s done, so easy to recover your Outlook passwords. As you see, it can recover passwords for all mail protocol types (IMAP,POP3,SMTP,LDAP,HTTP). Here is how this software works. Outlook stores all the login account details including password in encrypted format on your computer so that you don’t have enter it every time. This software automatically discovers & decrypts all the saved Outlook passwords from the encrypted store. Important Note: This software can only recover previously saved Outlook password from your computer So make sure to run it on the computer where Ou...

This policy setting determines which challenge or response authentication protocol is used for network logons. LAN Manager (LM) includes client computer and server software from Microsoft that allows users to link personal devices together on a single network. Network capabilities include transparent file and print sharing, user security features, and network administration tools. In Active Directory domains, the Kerberos protocol is the default authentication protocol. However, if the Kerberos protocol is not negotiated for some reason, Active Directory uses LM, NTLM, or NTLM version 2 (NTLMv2). LAN Manager authentication includes the LM, NTLM, and NTLMv2 variants, and it is the protocol that is used to authenticate all client devices running the Windows operating system when they perform the following operations: Join a domain Authenticate between Active Directory forests Authenticate to domains based on earlier versions of the Windows operating system Authenticate to compute...

SMB or Server Message Block Protocols are used to connect your computer to an external server. Windows 10 ships with support of these protocols but they are disabled in the OOBE. Currently, Windows 10 supports SMBv1, SMBv2, and SMBv3 as well. Different servers depending upon their configuration require a different version of SMB to get connected to a computer. But in case you are using Windows 8.1 or Windows 7, you can check if you have it enabled too. That’s what we are going to do today. How to check SMB version on Windows 10/8/7 First of all, if you have Windows 7, you should not be disabling SMB v2. This is due to the following reasons: Request compounding – allows for sending multiple SMB 2 requests as a single network request Larger reads and writes – better use of faster networks Caching of folder and file properties – clients keep local copies of folders and files Durable handles – allow for connection to transparently reconnect to the server if there is a temporary ...