What’s AT-HDFC, AX-Airtel, TA-IITians…?

Recently, from almost a month SMSs from Banks, Service Providers, Companies have started prefixing something like ID, AT, VK…etc. What’s all this after all!!? Here I am to explain you what it is! Normally these SMSs originates from a Bulk SMS provider where you can use 11 digit Alpha-Numeric characters as "Sender". But there were some security risks in this method. I was able to give a phone number as "Sender" & it appears as that person at the recipient end. Basically there was a chance to send SMSs as a different person! I was actually using this to fool my friends.

But the new TRAI regulation insisted bulk SMS providers to restrict the "Sender ID" to 8 characters. Other three characters should be used to specify who is the service provider & where it’s originated from. Say for example: HDFCBANK sends an SMS to you using bulk SMS provider located at Tamil Nadu which uses Airtel. You will receive it as AT-HDFCBANK. First character specifies which service provider the message is being originated & the second character specifies from which location it’s originated. Here is the table which has details of these SMS codes:

Service Provider Codes:

Service Provider
Code

Aircel, Dishnet Wireless
D

Bharti Airtel
A

BSNL
B

BPL Mobile/Loop Telecom
L

Datacom Solutions
C

HFCL Infotel
H

Idea Cellular
I

MTNL
M

Reliance Communications
R

Reliance Telecom
E

S tel
S

Shyam Telecom
Y

Spice Telecom
P

Swan Telecom
W

Tata Teleservices
T

Unitech Group
U

Vodafone Group
V

Service Area
Code

Andhra Pradesh
A

Assam
S

Bihar
B

Delhi
D

Gujarat
G

Haryana
H

Himachal Pradesh
I

Jammu & Kashmir
J

Karnataka
X

Kerala
L

Kolkata
K

Madhya Pradesh
Y

Maharashtra
Z

Mumbai
M

North East
N

Orissa
O

Punjab
P

Rajasthan
R

Tamil Nadu
T

UP-East
E

UP-West
W

West Bengal
V

So, combination of these two constitutes the first two digit of ?Sender? followed by an hyphen (-) & actual sender name.

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Gmail: Use Reply By Chat to Converse About an Email in Real Time

The Reply by Chat feature allows you (and your contacts) to converse about an email message that you have sent or received, in real time. An added bonus is that if you have Gmail saving your chat history, the chat will be nested in with the rest of the conversation generated by the message.

1. Go to Gmail and log into your account.

2. Open the desired message.

3. Check to see if the contact is online and available.

4. Click the Reply by chat link at the bottom of the message (next to the Reply and Forward links).

5. A chat window will open. You will see the email message’s subject displayed. Begin chatting.

6. When the conversation is finished, close the chat window.

7. After a few seconds, go back to the email message and you will see the chat session included in the conversation. You can reply to it by email or start a new chat session.

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How to Make a Trojan Horse

Most of you may be curious to know about how to make a Trojan or Virus on your own. Here is an answer for your curiosity. In this post I’ll show you how to make a Trojan on your own using C programming language. This Trojan when executed will eat up the hard disk space on the root drive (The drive on which Windows is installed, usually C: Drive) of the computer on which it is run.  Also this Trojan works pretty quickly and is capable of eating up approximately 1 GB of hard disk space for every minute it is run. So, I’ll call this as Space Eater Trojan. Since this Trojan is written using a high level programming language it is often undetected by antivirus. The Trojan is available for download along with the source code at the end of this post. Let’s see how this Trojan works…

Before I move to explain the features of this Trojan you need to know what exactly is a Trojan horse and how it works. As most of us think a Trojan or a Trojan horse is not a virus. In simple words a Trojan horse is a program that appears to perform a desirable function but in fact performs undisclosed malicious functions that allow unauthorized access to the host machine or create a damage to the computer.

Now lets move to the working of our Trojan

The Trojan horse which I have made appears itself as an antivirus program that scans the computer and removes the threats. But in reality it does nothing but occupy the hard disk space on the root drive by just filling it up with a huge junk file. The rate at which it fills up the hard disk space it too high. As a result the the disk gets filled up to 100% with in minutes of running this Trojan. Once the disk space is full, the Trojan reports that the scan is complete. The victim will not be able to clean up the hard disk space using any cleanup program. This is because the Trojan intelligently creates a huge file in theWindowsSystem32 folder with the .dll extension. Since the junk file has the .dllextention it is often ignored by disk cleanup softwares. So for the victim, there is now way to recover the hard disk space unless reformatting his drive.

The algorithm of the Trojan is as follows

1. Search for the root drive

2. Navigate to WindowsSystem32 on the root drive

3. Create the file named “spceshot.dll”

4. Start dumping the junk data onto the above file and keep increasing it’s size until the drive is full

5. Once the drive is full, stop the process.

You can download the Trojan along with it’s source code HERE.

How to compile, test and remove the damage?

Compilation:

You can use Borland C++ compiler (or equivalent) to compile the Trojan.

Testing:

To test the Trojan,  just run the SpaceEater.exe file on your computer. It’ll generate a warning message at the beginning. Once you accept it, the Trojan runs and eats up hard disk space.

NOTE: To remove the warning message you’ve to edit the source code and then re-compile it.

How to remove the Damage and free up the space?

To remove the damage and free up the space, just type the following in the “run” dialog box.

%systemroot%system32

Now search for the file “spceshot.dll“. Just delete it and you’re done. No need to re-format the hard disk.

NOTE: You can also change the ICON of the virus to make it look like a legitimate program. This method is described in the post: How to Change the ICON of an EXE file ?

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Changing the ICON of an EXE file?

Some times it becomes necessary to change the ICON of an executable(.exe) file so that the exe file get’s a new appearence.Many of the Tools such as TuneUP Winstyler does this job by adjusting the Windows to display a custom icon to the user.But in reality when the file is carried to a different computer, then it shows it’s original ICON itself.This means that inorder to permanantly change the ICON, it is necessary to modify the executable file and embed the ICON inside the file itself.Now when this is done the exe file’s ICON is changed permanantly so that even if you take file to a different computer it show’s a new icon.

For this purpose I have found a nice tool which modifies the exe file and will embed the ICON of your choice into the file itself. ie:The tool changes the exe ICON permanantly.

I’ll give you a step-by-step instruction on how to use this tool to change the icon.

1. Goto www.shelllabs.com and download the trial version of Icon Changer and install it (Works on both XP and Vista).

2. Right-click on the exe file whose ICON is to be changed.

3. Now you will see the option Change Icon…Click on that option.

4. Now the Icon Changer program will open up.

5. Icon changer will search for all the ICONS on your system so that you can select any one of those.

6. Now select the ICON of your choice and click on SET.

7. Now a popup window will appear and ask you to select from either of these two options.

• Change embeded icon.
• Adjust Windows to display custom icon.

Select the first option (Change embeded icon).

8. You are done.The ICON get’s changed.

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Custom Excerpts Plugin for WordPress

Author: Sean Bluestone

Custom Excerpts allows you to implement custom excerpt text, length, and to choose HTML tags to allow and whether to make the link nofollow or dofollow. Previously the only way to achieve this was to edit the WordPress core file formatting.php which meant changes would be lost after each update.

Download

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Facebook Now in Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Punjabi

Good news for Indians...Facebook has recently launched itself in 5 Indian regional languages.

 

With more than 1100 million people, a large number of whom are young, India can be a big market for Facebook and similar other social networking sites.

Just a few weeks ago Gmail also introduced Indian languages for composing email on this popular email service provider.

 

After Orkut, Facebook is the second most widely liked networking site in India.

Users can change language settings through the ‘settings’ tab or through the language option on their Facebook homepage.

 

Facebook users can only browse through the site in the five regional languages and not message each other or update their status yet. Rival Google’s social networking site Orkut has Indian language transliteration in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.

Introduction of regional languages was incorporated by Google in its networking site Orkut, however when the facility was tried by users there were some technical drawbacks which did not allow transliteration through Google’s own browser Chrome. Online war to defeat and rise is always on by websites in competition, and the new change seems to be Facebook’s trial to fit in visitor’s convenient requirement.

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Windows 7: My System Won’t Stop Restarting (Looping on System Failure)

If you a bad driver installed on your system and have Windows 7 set to automatically restart upon system failure, your computer can become stuck in a loop of restarting. You can easily get out of this loop and work on fixing your system’s error.

1. Once the computer begns it’s next restart, press F8 on your keyboard repeatedly until the Advanced Boot Options screen appears. If the Windows startup logo shows up, then you will need to start over because you missed the opportunity.

2. Using the arrow keys on your keyboard, select Disable automatic restart on system failure and press Enter on your keyboard.

Wndows 7 will start up and not automatically restart, allowing you to troubleshoot the error and hopefully fix your system’s problem.

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Windows 7: Check Your System’s Power Efficiency

By running a Power Efficiency Diagnostics Report, you can view an analysis of your system and check common energy efficiency and battery life problems as well as check for errors and warnings for your power setup and hardware.

First you will need to access an elevated command prompt, to do this:

1. Click the Orb (Start button).

2. Click All Programs.

3. Go into Accessories.

4. Right-click on Command Prompt.

5. Select Run as administrator.

6. When the UAC prompt appears, select Yes.

Once you have your elevated command prompt, follow these steps:

1. At the command prompt, input the following:
powercfg -energy -output %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\PowerCFG_Analysis.html

2. A 60 second analysis of your computer system will then be executed.

3. When completed, a summary will be displayed.

4. Go to your Desktop and find the PowerCFG_Analysis.html file and open it to view the report.

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How to Enable, Adjust or Disable Transparency in Windows 7

You must have noticed that the borders of windows in Windows 7 are transparent or translucent so that you can see what’s behind the window. You can enable or disable or adjust transparency according to your convenience.

WARNING

You will not have the Transparency option if you have a Basic and High Contrast Theme instead of a Aero Theme.

Aero Requirements to be Enabled in Windows 7:
NOTE: If Aero is not enabled, then Transparency will not work even when enabled.

• 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor
• 1 GB of system memory
• A graphics card with support for DirectX 9 graphics with at least 128 MB of memory.
• The graphics card must support Pixel Shader 2.0 and the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM).
• You must be have True Color (32 bit) set instead of High Color (16 bit).
• The desktop composition and Animate controls and elements inside windows options enabled in Visual Effects.
• Refresh or update your WEI score.

To enable or disable Transparency in Windows 7 follow these simple steps:

1) Right click on an empty area of the Desktop and choose Personalize option

2) In the Personalization window click the Window Color link at the bottom of the window

3) Now check the Enable transparency option to enable transparency
You can then slide the slider forward or backward to adjust the degree of transparency.
OR
Uncheck the Enable transparency option to disable transparency.

4) Click on Save Changes button

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How to Adjust Window Transparency in Windows XP / 2000

Today's tip is on how to adjust the transparency of an application window in Windows XP... By adjusting the transparency of a window, you'll be able to see the contents of any windows beneath, as well as the desktop...

Windows 2000 and XP have the built-in ability to display variable transparency, but do not provide a method to adjust transparency levels for standard applications... We'll be using a free and extremely lightweight utility called Vitrite... Vitrite uses very little resources, and allows you to adjust the transparency for any Windows application...

Vitrite can be downloaded from here...

After you have downloaded and installed Vitrite, you can adjust individual window transparency by pressing Control+Shift+(number from top row of keyboard), for example Control-Shift-1 = 10% visible, etc... Control-Shift-0 returns the windows back to 100%...

Another cool feature of this utility is that you can make a window always stay on top by pressing Control-Shift-+... Pressing this combination again causes the windows to revert back from its "Always on Top" state...

Click on the image below to see an example of Vitrite in use:


Please leave a comment if you have any questions.

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