WiFi offered free in public places poses a major security risk

A researcher armed with a mere $100 (aboutRs 6,400) device recently walked into the Bengaluru airport and confirmed fears of security risk associated with offering free Wi­Fi at public places.

He easily hacked into the computers of hundreds of users who had connected to the airport's complimentary WiFi. And while he was at it, he also accessed the users' WhatsApp conversations, credit card numbers and encrypted user names and passwords for good measure.

This casts a dark shadow over the government's plan to offer free WiFi in 2,500 cities and towns across the country.

Among other users, thousands of senior level executives including CEOs of companies may be sharing confidential information such as business plans without being aware of it. Some of them may even be the target of corporate espionage, cyber security experts said.

According to Shubho Halder, chief scientist at mobile security firm Appknox, who conducted the exercise at Bengaluru airport, most airports and free WiFi hotspots in India are a hacker's paradise owing to lack of proactive security.

Halder, who said he had also found security holes in products from Apple, Microsoft and Google, added that he found users accessing their corporate emails and banking applications at the free WiFi zones and he managed to get all such details in a jiffy.

"While these airports use a lot of security tools, they usually do not track what the users are doing with the WiFi connection which lets hackers use fake WiFi hotspots to gather tons of information from unsuspecting victims," Halder told ET.

Halder used WiFi Pineapple, a portable device which acts as a router and creates fake WiFi hotspots that appear to be authentic — such as Free_airport_WiFi, Free_cafe_WiFi, etc.

Once the user connects to this network, he or she is able to access the internet as usual without realising that somebody else is accessing all the information.
WiFi Pineapple can be carried by hackers around offices of large companies, coffee shops, malls, etc and create massive repositories of usernames, passwords, WhatsApp conversations, and credit card and banking data.

"Hackers are not just randomly collecting data at airports and cafes. We've seen cases where hackers are going after specific targets to steal business plans as part of corporate espionage and then sell it to competitors, which could be in India or overseas," said Jayaraman Kesavardhanan, founder and CEO of K7 Computing. According to American networking equipment maker Cisco Systems, which is working with the government on many public WiFi projects, the company has the tools to identify such fake Wi­Fi hotspots and even locate the user who is trying to do this but smart hackers can get their way around it.

"If a hacker uses a 3G or 4G router to offer a fake WiFi hotspot, there is no way to detect or stop it. The only thing that can be done is to tell users not to use any WiFi hotspot that doesn't ask for SMS verification," said Pravin Srinivasan, lead-security architecture sales, Cisco India & Saarc.

In many cases, while the public hotspot providers have tools to prevent such misuse they often don't activate it, Srinivasan said, adding, "The tools can only tell you what's happening. It is ultimately up to the security teams of the public WiFi providers to monitor and take action."

While there are ways to fix security bugs, there is no way for users to tell if they are the target of snooping.

"We should consider public Wi­Fi as raw internet," said Sajan Paul, director­systems engineering, India & SAARC at Juniper Networks.

"At an average end­user level, it is very difficult to detect such scenarios. However, one must understand that anything that goes into the Internet is subject to snooping and other forms of attacks. The user should be vigilant while accessing and sending sensitive data over such mediums."

According to Symantec Corporation, deployment of security tools is not enough to deal with the menace of snooping in free WiFi zones. "Individual security products cannot help companies handle such a situation," said Tarun Kaura, director­technology sales, India at Symantec.

Source: ET

[Part 2] Useful Image Collection of 2015

Part 1 Link: Click Here

15. Black Money Bill

16. India and China

17. In India Tourism Friendly?

18. Outcomes of Recent Budget Session

19. Child Labour Law

20. India and China the states of play

21. One 'Great Quake' in year, and it hasn't Come yet

22. PM visit China

23. Eye on China

24. RBI plans retail push in T-Bill

25. Creativity is an integral part of everone's life

26. Asia Voice will be stronger in India and China speak in ONE voice

27. Who vs who in Yemen

28. In the Name of Ganga

29. Meaning oney Bill

30. Constitution Amendment

Source: Wiki, Indian Express, The Hindu,BT & Our Teamwork

[Q&A] Most of the countries have a shared navigational system, then why is India developing its own when it can collaborate with the US or EU or Russia? Also, since the IRNSS is capable of covering South Asian region only, how much strategic advantage and autonomy will it give to India when compared with navigational systems of the US, EU, Russia and China?

Abhijit Singh Replies[Maritime Issues, Littoral Security]: 

• To begin, it is important to point out that a satellite navigational system is an onerous enterprise that takes enormous capital and technological investment - not to mention years of research and experimentation - to fully operationalise. The high investment needed is one reason why countries favour developing navigation systems on a shared basis, so that the labour and costs involved can be distributed among the various partner. 

• In practice, the side that seeks the greatest strategic and security gains develops the navigational system at huge costs and then offers it to other partners as a facility for ‘subscription’. The rest simply sign up, knowing fully well that they benefit from it but still remain at the mercy of the dominant power that retains control over vital components of the navigational system.

• A case in point is China’s indigenous satellite navigation system known as Beidou. To make the project a viable enterprise, Beijing has got many Southeast Asian countries to sign up for it. However, questions are being raised on whether it will be able to attract a large enough clientele to make the system a viable proposition. On the other hand, the act of signing up to the Beidou by regional states is being construed in some quarters as a strategic concession to China. Beijing, meanwhile, is constrained by the fact that despite putting 16 navigation and four experimental satellites into space, the project's coverage is still limited to Southeast Asia. For a global cover, the system needs an additional 40 satellites in orbit and another round of huge capital investment.

• In effect, all sea-going nations have a choice – to either develop their own navigational system or join an existing facility, in which case they remain mere consumers. India could, in theory, develop a navigational system in collaboration with the US or EU or even Russia, but can be almost certain that vital systems will remain under the practical control and authority of the bigger partner (as we have seen in the case of co-development of other technologies in recent years). Unfortunately, if an aspiring state chooses to go alone, it rarely has the investment capability or the technological wherewithal to develop a global facility.

• The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) with a constellation of seven satellites and a coverage limited to the Indian subcontinent and South Asia is what India can presently afford, given that New Delhi does not want to be dependent on a foreign power when it comes to military navigation. Apart from the many civil and commercial benefits that accrue from the system, there is no denying the sense of greater autonomy and control over an essential strategic asset.

Source: idsa.in

[Part 1] Useful Image Collection of 2015

1. PBD (9th January 2015):Major Concentrations of Indian Dispora around the World:

2. National Girl Child Day (24 January 2015):

3. Obama's India visit Some of the key demands from each side:

4. Millennium Development Goals:

5. Rail Budget:

6. Economic Survey 2013-2014

7. The National Judicial Appointments Commission in other Countries:

8. Kyasanur Forest Disease:

9. Earthquake: India Map of Seismiczone

Earthquake Scale

10. 304 Section Apply in Salman case:

11. UK Elections:

12. About larks:

13. Siachin Glacier:

14. New 3 Schemes:

Source: The Hindu,Wiki,ET,AIR,Teamwork

Tiny dinosaur fossil discovered in China

Sheds new light on the evolution of flight

• The fossil of a bizarre pigeon-sized dinosaur that had bat-like wings made of skin rather than feathers has been identified in China, shedding new light on the evolution of flight.

• The dinosaur — named Yi qi — the shortest name ever given to a dino, which means “strange wing.”

• At 160-million-years old, the dinosaur is older than the first known birds, such as Archaeopteryx. It also appears to be the earliest known flying non-avian dinosaur.

Unexpected discovery:

• “This is the most unexpected discovery I have ever made, even though I have found a few really bizarre dinosaurs in my career,” paleontologist Xu Xing of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing said.

• “It demonstrates how extreme the experimentation for dinosaurs to get in air is,” said Xu, the lead author of the study.

• Researchers unearthed the remains for Yi qi at Hebei Province in China, Discovery Newsreported.

• The rod-like bones that extended from each wrist of the tiny dinosaur and weighed about the same as a modern pigeon puzzled the scientists.

• Their real purpose was determined by co-author Corwin Sullivan, a Canadian paleontologist now based at the IVPP, after he pored over scientific literature on flying and gliding animals.

• Further investigation of Yi qi’s remains uncovered. While the dinosaur did have feathers, they were more like hairs, bristles or streamers, and would not have been capable of forming good aerodynamic surfaces, Sullivan said.

• “Yi qi was mainly gliding, perhaps in combination with a bit of awkward flapping,” he added.

• Researchers believe Yi qi was a scansoriopterygid, referring to a group of dinosaurs only known from China that were closely related to primitive birds.

• The finding was published in the journal Nature .

Yi qi appears to be the earliest known flying non-avian dinosaur

Source: The Hindu

All you need to know about Earthquakes (Nepal Updates)

For Recent Nepal Earthquake Updates [Part 1-26/04]: Click Here
For Recent Nepal Earthquake Updates [Part 2-12/05]: Click Here

What is an earthquake?

• An earthquake is what happens when two blocks of the earth suddenly slip past one another. The surface where they slip is called the fault or fault plane. 

• The location below the earth’s surface where the earthquake starts is called the hypocenter, and the location directly above it on the surface of the earth is called the epicenter.

• Sometimes an earthquake has foreshocks. These are smaller earthquakes that happen in the same place as the larger earthquake that follows. Scientists can’t tell that an earthquake is a foreshock until the larger earthquake happens.

• The largest, main earthquake is called the mainshock. Mainshocks always have after shocks that follow. These are smaller earthquakes that occur afterwards in the same place as the mainshock. Depending on the size of the mainshock, aftershocks can continue for weeks, months, and even years after the mainshock!

What causes earthquakes and where do they happen?

• The earth has four major layers: the inner core, outer core, mantle and crust. 

• The crust (Fig.2) and the top of the mantle make up a thin skin on the surface of our planet. But this skin is not all in one piece – it is made up of many pieces like a puzzle covering the surface of the earth. 

• Not only that ((Fig. 3) ), but these puzzle pieces keep slowly moving around, sliding past one another and bumping into each other. We call these puzzle piecestectonic plates, and the edges of the plates are called the plate boundaries.

• The plate boundaries are made up of many faults, and most of the earthquakes around the world occur on these faults. Since the edges of the plates are rough, they get stuck while the rest of the plate keeps moving.

• Finally, when the plate has moved far enough, the edges unstick on one of the faults and there is an earthquake.

Why does the earth shake when there is an earthquake?

• While the edges of faults are stuck together, and the rest of the block is moving, the energy that would normally cause the blocks to slide past one another is being stored up.

• When the force of the moving blocks finally overcomes the friction of the jagged edges of the fault and it unsticks, all that stored up energy is released.

• The energy radiates outward from the fault in all directions in the form of seismic waves like ripples on a pond. The seismic waves shake the earth as they move through it, and when the waves reach the earth’s surface, they shake the ground and anything on it, like our houses and us! (see P&S Wave inset)

How are earthquakes recorded?

• Earthquakes are recorded by instruments called seismographs. The recording they make is called a seismogram.

• The seismograph (Fig. 4) has a base that sets firmly in the ground, and a heavy weight that hangs free. When an earthquake causes the ground to shake, the base of the seismograph shakes too, but the hanging weight does not. Instead the spring or string that it is hanging from absorbs all the movement. The difference in position between the shaking part of the seismograph and the motionless part is what is recorded.

How do scientists measure the size of earthquakes?

The size of an earthquake depends on the size of the fault and the amount of slip on the fault, but that’s not something scientists can simply measure with a measuring tape since faults are many kilometers deep beneath the earth’s surface.

So how do they measure an earthquake?

• They use the seismogram recordings made on the seismographs at the surface of the earth to determine how large the earthquake was (Fig. 5).

• A short wiggly line that doesn’t wiggle very much means a small earthquake, and a long wiggly line that wiggles a lot means a large earthquake. The length of the wiggle depends on the size of the fault, and the size of the wiggle depends on the amount of slip.

The size of the earthquake is called its magnitude. There is one magnitude for each earthquake. Scientists also talk about the intensity of shaking from an earthquake, and this varies depending on where you are during the earthquake.

How can scientists tell where the earthquake happened?

(For more about P waves and S waves: Click Here)

• Seismograms come in handy for locating earthquakes too, and being able to see the P wave and the S wave is important. You learned how P & S waves each shake the ground in different ways as they travel through it.

• P waves are also faster than S waves, and this fact is what allows us to tell where an earthquake was.

• To understand how this works, let’s compare P and S waves to lightning and thunder. Light travels faster than sound, so during a thunderstorm you will first see the lightning and then you will hear the thunder. If you are close to the lightning, the thunder will boom right after the lightning, but if you are far away from the lightning, you can count several seconds before you hear the thunder. The further you are from the storm, the longer it will take between the lightning and the thunder.

• P waves are like the lightning, and S waves are like the thunder. The P waves travel faster and shake the ground where you are first. Then the S waves follow and shake the ground also. If you are close to the earthquake, the P and S wave will come one right after the other, but if you are far away, there will be more time between the two. By looking at the amount of time between the P and S wave on a seismogram recorded on a seismograph, scientists can tell how far away the earthquake was from that location. However, they can’t tell in what direction from the seismograph the earthquake was, only how far away it was. If they draw a circle on a map around the station where the radius of the circle is the determined distance to the earthquake, they know the earthquake lies somewhere on the circle. But where?

• Scientists then use a method called triangulation to determine exactly where the earthquake was (Fig. 6). It is called triangulation because a triangle has three sides, and it takes three seismographs to locate an earthquake. 

• If you draw a circle on a map around three different seismographs where the radius of each is the distance from that station to the earthquake, the intersection of those three circles is the epicenter!

How are quakes classified?

Based on their magnitude, quakes are assigned to a class. An increase in one number, say from 5.5 to 6.5, means that a quake's magnitude is 10 times as great. The classes are as follows:

• Great: Magnitude is greater than or equal to 8.0. A magnitude-8.0 earthquake is capable of tremendous damage.
• Major: Magnitude in the rage of 7.0 to 7.9. A magnitude-7.0 earthquake is a major earthquake that is capable of widespread, heavy damage.
• Strong: Magnitude in the rage of 6.0 to 6.9. A magnitude-6.0 quake can cause severe damage.
• Moderate: Magnitude in the rage of 5.0 to 5.9. A magnitude-5.0 quake can cause considerable damage.
• Light: Magnitude in the rage of 4.0 to 4.9. A magnitude-4.0 quake is capable of moderate damage.
• Minor: Magnitude in the rage of 3.0 to 3.9.
• Micro: Magnitude less than-3.0. Quakes between 2.5 and 3.0 are the smallest generally felt by people.

After an earthquake strikes, its magnitude is continuously revised as time passes and more stations report their seismic readings. Several days can pass before a final number is agreed upon.

What are the seismic zones of India?

• The Geological Survey of India (GSI.) first published the seismic zoning map of the country in the year 1935.

• With numerous modifications made afterwards, this map was initially based on the amount of damage suffered by the different regions of India because of earthquakes.

• Color coded in different shades of the color red, this map shows the four distinct seismic zones of India. Following are the varied seismic zones of the nation, which are prominently shown in the map:

Zone - II: This is said to be the least active seismic zone
Zone - III: It is included in the moderate seismic zone
Zone - IV: This is considered to be the high seismic zone
Zone - V: It is the highest seismic zone

Can scientists predict earthquakes?

• No, and it is unlikely they will ever be able to predict them. Scientists have tried many different ways of predicting earthquakes, but none have been successful. On any particular fault, scientists know there will be another earthquake sometime in the future, but they have no way of telling when it will happen.

• First, a statistical study of historical earthquakes in a given region shows how frequent quakes of various magnitudes have been in the past. From those figures, they can guess how likely future quakes will be. For example, if a certain region has been struck by four magnitude 7 quakes in the last 200 years, seismologists would say there is a 50 per cent probability of another such quake occurring in the next 50 years.

• Seismologists can also measure how much stress a certain region of the earth's crust is under, and how quickly that stress is increasing. That knowledge, along with the elapsed time since the last earthquake, helps scientists determine if another earthquake is on the way. This method is far from perfect, though, and requires extremely detailed seismological data, which simply isn't available for most regions.

Is there such a thing as earthquake weather? Can some animals or people tell when an earthquake is about to hit?

• These are two questions that do not yet have definite answers. If weather does affect earthquake occurrence, or if some animals or people can tell when an earthquake is coming, we do not yet understand how it works.

Major Earthquakes (1976-2015 Till now dates):

Date	Location	Magnitude	Estimated number of deaths
April 25,  2015	Nepal (Easten Pokhara & Kathmandu)	7.9	1600+
April 16,  2013	Iran	7.7	40
Sept. 5, 2012	Costa Rica	7.9	Tsunami alert
Aug. 31, 2012	Philippines	7.6	1
Aug. 11, 2012	Northwestern Iran	6.4 and 6.3	306
April 11,  2012	Indian Ocean	8.6	Tsunami alert issued, no major damage
Oct. 23, 2011	Turkey	7.2	603
April 7, 2011	Japan	7.1	3
March 11,  2011	Japan	9.0	Approx. 16,000 (9,000 missing)
Feb. 27, 2010	Chile	8.8	At least 700
Jan. 13, 2010	Haiti	7.0	85,000 to 316,000 (gov't estimate)
Sept. 30, 2009	Near Padang, Indonesia	7.6	1,110
April 6, 2009	Near L'Aquila, Italy	6.3	283
May 12, 2008	Sichuan province, southwest China	7.8	More than 80,000
May 27, 2006	Java, Indonesia	6.3	5,135
Oct. 8, 2005	Pakistan-administered Kashmir	7.6	80,000
March 29,  2005	Indonesia	8.7	1,000
Dec. 26, 2004	Off the coast of Indonesia	9.0	230,000 (includes tsunami victims)
Dec. 26, 2003	Bam, Iran	6.6	26,271
Jan 26, 2001	Gujarat, India	7.7	20,000
June 21, 1990	Iran	7.7	35,000
Dec. 7, 1988	Armenia	6.9	At least 25,000
Sept. 19,  1985	Mexico	8.1	9,500
Sept. 16,  1978	Iran	7.5 to 7.9	15,000
July 28, 1976	China	7.8 to 8.2	242,000
Feb. 4, 1976	Guatemala	7.5	At least 23,000

U also like to see Earthquake Science Explained by USGS: Click Here

Source: usgs.gov, wikipedia.org