Rooting Android & Recovery 1-2-3
Summary: Rooting a phone can be a rewarding project, but it also has several dangers attached with it. When considering phone hacking, you need to know what to do if something goes wrong. Read these 3 quick steps to find out what to do if something goes wrong when rooting your phone.
Tweaking a rooted smartphone is mostly a simple process so long as you follow the instructions to the letter. But if something goes wrong it can leave you unable to boot your phon, can you say “brick”?
Thankfully it can be recovered with the helpful ROM Manager app.
Rooting your Android phone is a term that you are bound to across at some point or another while searching on how to optimize your Android device. If you you would like to know more, Wikipedia has a decent entry on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooting_(Android_OS)
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Exercise your Computer
It’s always kind of surprising to me how many people don’t really bother to maintain their PC. A lot of folks seem to think that they can simply let their computer run without any sort of user intervention at all. The trouble is, it doesn’t work that way. As with one’s vehicle, which needs timely maintenance, so does your computer. Your computer’s is a complex, intricate machine, and it needs to be well-cared for in order to properly function, if not you will suffer problems down the road.
What’s more, it’s not just the hardware of a system that has a tendency to degrade over time. Modern computers are complex, intricate pieces of technology- fifty years ago, people wouldn’t have even dreamed this sort of stuff existed. As with any complex system, sometimes things tend to go wrong. A glitch in the software here, a misplaced line of code there, and boom. What’s shocking isn’t the fact that there’s literally thousands of ways a computer could break down and simply stop working. No, what’s shocking is that most of these issues, most of these errors, are preventable. Windows users suffer through lot’s of problems, this is why I openly advocate Linux.
Here’s a few exercises (primarily meant for Windows users) that you should do, to ensure that your computer is in top working condition.
Speedup Your PC
Want to make your Windows PC run faster and smoother? These are some small tips which make great impact on the performance of your computer. Everybody wants a PC which runs the way we want. A newly bought computer just impresses you, with its fast interface, quick reactions, negligible garbage, in short just like what a new computer should.
But after using your computer for about a year or so, like me, you would also face some minor problems with your computer performance e.g. takes more time to boot up, hangs up very frequently, you see a large cluster of useless icons on your desktop, applications run slower, some even refuse to run. Innumerable problems are faced by all of us. This happens from how Windows is designed, the filing system used (NTFS) is sloppy, as opposed to EXT3/4 journaling file system as used on Linux distributions.
Now all of us won’t buy a new computer just for this reason, so what would you do? Format your hard disk? Probably, but who wants to lose precious data? There are many small things that PC users, don’t know about, or though being aware of them don’t prefer to use them as they require investment of time. And who has free time?
I am going to tell you, what I do to my own PC, to achieve the performance level I want from it. This doesn’t require much effort to follow these simple tips, nor do they require much time, but surely they increase our PC performance, your PC would surely run smoother and faster. (more…)
My Scam PC
I’ve seen this ad on TV for a program to speed up your computer off on on when viewing cable. The program that installed was called “Cyber Defender”. It’s listed in many sites on the internet as a possible Virus, Trojan or Rogue.
It would do one and only one operation and that was to scan the registry. Or at least it appeared that’s what it was doing. I was locked out of selecting any other options. Then it reported over 400 errors in my registry, but when I hit the button to Fix the problems, it took me right to there web site, where I was presented with the opportunity to spend money to buy their program. (more…)
Recover Deleted Files – Linux
File recovery on Linux is a bit different than Windows. It requires different software than the Windows counterparts because every OS has their own file system. Windows uses NTFS, orFAT file systems, while on the other hand, Linux uses ext-based file systems. I personally use ext4file system because it’s the latest and greatest ext-journaling system and supports a large level of directory recursion and file sizes, but most installations still use ext2or ext3. When files are deleted from a disk, they are simply modified in binary to tell the computer that those files can be written over.
Today, we are going to be using the data recovery tool suite TestDisk + PhotoRec to carve files from our disk that we have deleted.
TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery program! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting your Partition Table).
PhotoRec is a File Recovery program designed to recover lost files; including video, documents and archives from Hard Disks, CDRom and lost pictures from digital camera memory (thus, its Photo Recovery name). PhotoRec ignores the filesystem and goes after the underlying data, so it can still find files even if your media’s filesystem has been severely damaged or re-formatted (overwritten data, of course, can not be recovered).
Step 1 Download TestDisk + PhotoRec
All commands in bold are terminal commands.
- Download the toolsuite.
sudo wget http://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk-6.13-WIP.tar.bz2 - Extract the archive.
sudo tar zxvf <file archive> - Change to the newly made directory.
cd <testdiskdir> - Configure for compilation.
./configure - Now, compile and install the software.
sudo make && sudo make install
Let’s move on to the simulation of a lost file and its recovery.
Step 2 Delete a File and Recover It
For this example, we should set up a file or picture that we want to have deleted. I chose this one of Tux, the Linux mascot!
Now, open up a file manager, or a terminal and delete the file you would like to practice recovery on. After that’s all set, open up a terminal and let’s run the tool and recover it!
- Run the program.
sudo photorec - Select the hard drive that you will be recovering from.
- Hit Proceed.
- Select Intel partition type.
- Now select your home partition, mine is installed on /dev/sda3.
- Select Ext2, Ext3 and Ext4.
- For this part, I would select free to scour the free-space, or you could use the whole disk, it doesn’t really matter.
- Select the directory you deleted the file in, mine was in ~/Downloads.
- After that runs, you should have all of it figured out and recovered! Congratulations on getting your file(s) back!
Recover Deleted Files – Windows
Everyone has deleted a file or folder on accident before. Sometimes people even delete stuff on purpose, only to find out that they needed the files after all. If you’re experiencing one of these mishaps, don’t worry, file recovery is possible in most cases!
When a file gets deleted on a computer, there’s not as much going on as you’d think. The files are not actually deleted, but are simply modified in binary to tell the computer it can write over that data. So by logic, simply changing the file back will result in a completely undamaged file.
This is why you should always wipe your hard drive clean with a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. one that will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect.
Today’s article is going to show you how to recover files that you may have accidentally deleted. It will also give you some information on what your computer keeps track of and how much personal information it actually stores.
Requirements
- Windows OS
- Admin privileges
- Piriform’s Recuva installed
Let’s get started.
Step 1 Download & Install Recuva
First, let’s install Recuva. In my opinion, it’s the best recovery tool for Windows in terms of recovery consistency and time it takes—not to mention the fact that it’s free.
- Download Recuva.
- Double-click the installer in your Downloads folder.
- Click Next > Agree > Install.
Step 2 File Recover
Watch the video and follow along.
Computer Parts & Jobs
A computer has many parts and each part has its own job. I run into people that do not know what each part functionally does. So here is a general listing.
CPU: The CPU is like the brain. It does all the thinking and makes everything work. The CPU controls all the other parts in the computer. Just like your brain controls your body.
Motherboard: The motherboard is like the skin and skeleton of the computer. It holds every part together and makes sure each part can work with one another.
RAM: RAM is like the hands of the human body. If a person has more hands, they can do more things at once and multitask more efficiently. If someone has a job that requires two hands but they only have one hand, it will slow them down. But if a job requires one hand and the person has four hands, then it is pointless to have a lot of hands. Every program on your computer takes up RAM. More RAM = more programs can run at the same time more efficiently. RAM is measured in GB, and it is usually from 1GB to 8GB.
Power Supply: The power supply is like the heart. Just like the heart has to pump blood throughout the body, the power supply has to make sure there is enough power for all the parts in the computer or it will not work. Power supplies are measured in watts and are usually anywhere between 300W all the way up to 800W+.
Hard Drive: A hard drive is like a huge backpack that is being worn at all times. It is where everything is stored. Pictures, movies, documents, are all stored in this backpack. The bigger the backpack, the more it could hold. Sometimes the backpack gets very messy because there is so much stuff in it so you would want to “defragment” it. What this does is it organizes everything in the backpack so it is easier to find stuff later. Hard drives are measured in GB and TB. 1000GB = 1TB.
Video Card: A video card is like the eyes of a person with very bad eyesight. It lets you see everything that is happening but it needs eyeglasses(monitor) to show you. Without the video card, you can’t see what you’re doing. The video card requires a lot of power and when playing video games and it can get very hot.
Monitor: The monitor is like eyeglasses. It lets you see everything that is happening. Without it, you can’t see anything. The monitor is connected to the video card.
Network: The network is the persons phone, it can be a wired house phone or a wireless cell phone. It is how the person communicates to other people. How fast the person can talk to others depends on how fast the internet is.
Drive availability lessens 30%
The massive flooding in Thailand is disrupting supplies of hard disk drives (HDDs) for the world’s personal computer makers, according to companies and market intelligence firms. Partially-submerged factories in Pathum Thani, outskirts of Bangkok, will effect future demand for the rest of the world.
Around 40 percent of all hard disk drives worldwide are produced in Thailand, making it the second-largest exporter of HDDs after China, it is estimated that factories in Thailand currently affected by flooding account for some 25 percent of worldwide HDD production.
There’s definitely going to be an impact on HDD customers this quarter and next quarter,” Rydning told AFP on Friday. “It’s going to take several months for the HDD industry to recover.”
Apple chief executive Tim Cook told financial analysts last week he was “virtually certain” that the flooding in Thailand would lead to an overall industry shortage of hard disk drives.
“Like many others, we source many components from Thailand,” Cook said during the quarterly earnings call for the manufacturer of the Macintosh computer line.
“There are several factories that are currently not operable and the recovery timeline for these factories is not known at this point,” he said.
“It is something that I’m concerned about,” Cook said. “How it affects Apple, I’m not sure.”
Fang Zhang, an analyst for storage systems at market intelligence and technology consultant IHS iSuppli Corp., said the flooding could cause a 30 percent drop in HDD production in the fourth quarter of the year. Fang said in a statement that the floods could potentially lead to an HDD supply shortage this quarter that may last into the first quarter of next year. Before the disaster, IHS iSuppli had forecast production of 176.2 million hard drives during the fourth quarter.
IDC’s John Rydning has stressed that not all of the HDD production in Thailand is being affected by the flooding and said the impact “is mitigated somewhat by HDD inventory that existed entering the flood period.
“Those inventories will help to satisfy some of the HDD requirements of major customers,” he said. “But we expect that any inventory available will be depleted, probably in the month of November.”
The three-month crisis triggered by unusually heavy monsoon rains has left at least 377 people dead and damaged millions of homes and livelihoods, mostly in northern and central Thailand. Floodwaters are now approaching Bangkok.
Rydning noted that the flooding in Thailand was the second major natural disaster to hit the HDD industry this year, coming on the heels of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March.
“But it’s a very resilient industry,” he said. “It really came out of the third quarter in pretty good shape, not only in terms of meeting demand but having inventories back at levels they were at prior to the earthquake and tsunami.”
Apple is just one of the world’s computer manufacturers expected to be affected by the tightening of supply of hard drives.
“Amongst all of the PC vendors the pain is going to be felt by everyone — more so by some of the smaller PC vendors than the bigger ones,” Rydning said.
Major PC manufacturers will be better able to weather the crisis because of their access to inventory and their ability to negotiate more strategic supply agreements, he said. Rydning said the two HDD assembly companies the most heavily impacted by the flooding are Western Digital and Toshiba.
“They’re the two companies that have assembly factories in the flood zone,” he said. More than a dozen HDD component suppliers were also affected because “they’re congregated and clustered in that same region,” he said.
“But it’s important to realize that these component suppliers are extremely nimble,” he said. “They have factories in other countries as well, in China and the Philippines and Malaysia.“As quickly as they can they’ll transfer production to those factories and try to make up any capacity that’s lost due to flooding in Thailand,” he said. “They will be very helpful to the HDD vendors to help them recover.”
One effect will be that the world output of magnetic hard drives could fall as much as 30% in the final three months of 2011 – and manufacturers who need them are now scrambling to snap up existing inventories, market research firm IHS iSuppli says.
For Asia’s PC makers, already grappling with the prospect of subdued year-end holiday season consumer demand, that could mean a further slowdown in the lunar new year sales season, and lead to weak sales in the first quarter of 2012, hurting the one regional growth area of an industry already facing a challenge from smartphones and tablets, and from slowing corporate spending on technology hardware. Alternatively, it might briefly push up prices on those which are available.
“From the Asia context, of course the impact will be on the Taiwanese PC manufacturers – companies like Acer and Asustek Computer,” said Satish Lele, vice president, consulting, Asia Pacific at Frost & Sullivan in Singapore.
Thailand is the world’s second largest maker of hard disk drives (HDD) after China, and makes about half of global output taking place there. The damage caused by flooding could keep factories closed or hobbled for months, analysts and executives reckon.
Analysts have highlighted Japan’s Nidec Corp, which controls about 80% of the world’s output of a key HDD component – the motor – as the major potential bottleneck for supplies of drives, used to store data in computers.
Nidec has closed some plants in Thailand, as has disk parts maker Minebea.
The total demand for HDDs is presently around 660m units annually, with Western Digital and Seagate having just over 30% share. Hitachi makes about 16% of world supply, followed by Toshiba (11%) and Samsung (10%).
Lele said PC makers will have four to six weeks on average of inventory, but will feel the effects after that is gone. “From that context, the issue will start hitting these companies sometimes towards end of November and December, which for them are also key months because of the holiday season.”
Acer declined to comment and Lenovo Group, the Chinese company that is the world’s No.2 PC maker in the third quarter, had no immediate comment.
Pegatron, the Taiwanese company that is the main contract manufacturer for Asustek Computer , doesn’t see a problem for six to eight weeks as makers have inventory, but after that it would depend on how fast things return to normal in Thailand.
Pegatron Chief Financial Officer Charles Lin said there was one big difference between the Thailand situation and the aftermath of Japan’s earthquake in March, which also disrupted supplies of components across a number of technology industries, including smartphones.
“The concentration of some component manufacturing [in Japan] was very high, but Thailand only makes up about a quarter of global hard disk production, so if plants elsewhere can ramp up, the effect this time may be less than that after the Japan quake,” he said.
Nick Wu, head of investor relations at Asustek, said the company’s inventory and supply chain was enough to last until the end of the fourth quarter. But after that if the situation continued then there could be an impact.
Asked about the effects on Apple, chief executive Tim Cook said in the company’s recent earnings call that “we source many components from Thailand, from many factories. The recovery timeline for these factories isn’t known. The weather really hasn’t allowed an assessment… It is something that I’m concerned about.” He added that “our hearts go out to all the people in Thailand who have experienced these devastating losses of life and property as a result of the monsoons and the flooding.” Apple sold its largest-ever number of PCs in the third quarter, but future sales could be affected by the slowdown in supplies.
Western Digital and Seagate both have factories in Thailand. Western Digital’s factories are closed, and Seagate warned it could face parts shortages even though its plants are running.
“With such a tight supply chain, it’s very unlikely that people have a lot of stock to cover themselves,” said Lillian Tay, analyst at Gartner in Singapore. “But from what we see, the major impact will come in Q1 because it’s a 50-50 (situation). Some of them may not get what they want in Q4 [2011], but I think Q1 [of 2012] is really going to be the quarter that the most impact will be felt.”
Nanya Technology, Taiwan’s second-biggest DRAM memory chip maker, expects some impact from a shortage of hard disks.
“Because notebooks all need hard disks, there will be an impact on the whole IT industry in November, December and into January, and this is a negative factor for DRAMs,” Nanya Vice President Pei Lin Pai told reporters when the firm reported earnings last week.
Taiwan’s Quanta Computer Inc , the world’s top contract laptop PC maker, and the next biggest, Compal Electronics, said hard disks are “confined components”, meaning clients and not the contract makers procure them themselves. Both said they had not received any updates from clients.
South Korea’s Hynix Semiconductor Inc, the world’s second largest computer memory chip maker, said the flood had not had a major impact on it, given the current inventory levels at HDD makers and PC vendors.
Other products have already been affected by the flooding, with Sony delaying the launches of several new cameras, lens kits and headphones after production was halted.
Frost & Sullivan’s Lele said PC makers will also take a hit as they will have to bear the costs of the shortage.
“It will be more for the PC makers to absorb the costs, because it is highly unlikely that they can pass it on to the customer. They will be under tremendous pressure to absorb the additional costs.”
How Windows gets malware
When a Microsoft Windows machine gets infected by viruses/malware it does so mainly because users forget to update the Java, Adobe Reader/Acrobat and Adobe Flash. This is revealed by a survey conducted by CSIS Security Group A/S. This group has been collecting data for 3 months on actual infections of computers by drive-by attacks on browsers. Drive-by attacks are when you go to an innocent website and get a virus anyway. This is typically from ads or hacked links.
Basis of the study
CSIS has over a period of almost three months actively collected real time data from various so-called exploit kits. An exploit kit is a commercial hacker toolbox that is actively exploited by computer criminals who take advantage of vulnerabilities in popular software. Up to 85 % of all virus infections occur as a result of drive-by attacks automated via commercial exploit kits.
The purpose of this study is to reveal precisely how Microsoft Windows machines are infected with malware and which browsers, versions of Windows and third party software that are at risk.
CSIS monitored more than 50 different exploit kits on 44 unique servers / IP addresses. Figures come from the underlying statistical modules, thereby ensuring an as precise overview of the threat landscape as possible. The statistical material covers all in all more than half a million user exposures out of which as many as 31.3 % were infected with the virus/malware due to missing security updates.
Among the vulnerabilities we have observed abused by the monitored exploit kits, we find:
CVE-2010-1885 Microsoft Help & Support HCP
CVE-2010-1423 Java Deployment Toolkit insufficient argument validation
CVE-2010-0886 Java Unspecified vulnerability in the Java Deployment Toolkit component in Oracle Java SE
CVE-2010-0842 Java JRE MixerSequencer Invalid Array Index Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2010-0840 Java trusted Methods Chaining Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2009-1671 Java buffer overflows in the Deployment Toolkit ActiveX control in deploytk.dll
CVE-2009-0927 Adobe Reader Collab GetIcon
CVE-2008-2992 Adobe Reader util.printf
CVE-2008-0655 Adobe Reader CollectEmailInfo
CVE-2006-0003 IE MDAC
CVE-2006-4704 Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 WMI Object Broker Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2004-0549 ShowModalDialog method and modifying the location to execute code
The report above describes those operating systems, browsers, and applications that are vulnerable in the real world scenarios they have observed. Here it is slimmed down:
Internet Explorer is the worst offending browser. Mozilla is second.
Windows XP, Windows 7, and Windows Vista are the worst offending operating systems.
Java, Adobe Reader, and Adobe Flash are the worst offending applications.
Salient point is that, fully updated and patched installs let 70% of the infections through. Mainly because the technology is reactive. Even more salient is that only 13% of the successful infections relied on software that was Windows only (10% were IE exploits, 3% were Windows Help exploits) All you folks encourgaging your friends and families to buy Macs for the specific reason of their security are in for a world of hurt in a few years when Mac hits ~30+% market share. Kits are already starting to appear.
Conclusion: 99.8 % of all virus/malware infections caused by commercial exploit kits are a direct result of the lack of updating five specific software packages:
Java JRE 37%
Adobe Reader/Acrobat 32%
Adobe Flash 16%
MS Internet Explorer 10%
Windows HCP (Help) 3%
Apple Quicktime 2%
For the sake of security, I would not run Java, Adobe anything or Internet Exploiter.
We don’t want you getting viruses because it’s difficult to remove and more importantly, expensive and time consuming.
1. Uninstall java. Most end users never have a need for it and don’t update it.
2. Use Chrome to read PDFs or use Foxit. No need for Adobe, but to be fair Adobe’s new sandbox model in version X is resistant to viral infections and exploits.
3. Update flash as often as it says or switch to Chrome.
4. Use ESET NOD32 & HitmanPro for protection
Software updates: Adobe
Adobe issued it’s monthly update last week, to eliminate 13 security flaws in its PDF Reader and Acrobat products. Adobe’s patches for Reader and Acrobat correct critical vulnerabilities in the programs that could be exploited by attackers just by convincing users to open a booby-trapped file. Updates are available for Adobe Reader X (10.1) and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Adobe Reader 9.4.2 and earlier versions for UNIX, and Adobe Acrobat X (10.1) and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh.
Affected software versions
• Adobe Reader X (10.1) and earlier 10.x versions for Windows and Macintosh
• Adobe Reader 9.4.5 and earlier 9.x versions for Windows and Macintosh
• Adobe Reader 8.3 and earlier 8.x versions for Windows and Macintosh
• Adobe Acrobat X (10.1) and earlier 10.x versions for Windows and Macintosh
• Adobe Acrobat 9.4.5 and earlier 9.x versions for Windows and Macintosh
• Adobe Acrobat 8.3 and earlier 8.x versions for Windows and Macintosh
Severity rating
Adobe categorizes these as critical updates.
Acrobat users should check out the Adobe security advisory. Heads up for users of older versions of Reader and Acrobat: support for Adobe Reader 8.x and Acrobat 8.x for Windows and Macintosh will end on November 3, 2011.
