VT’s Tech Blog

ZeroDayScan in an online scanner which can scan your site for the following issues:

• Detects Cross Site Scripting attacks (XSS)
• Detects Hidden Directories and Backup Files
• Looks for Known Security Vulnerabilities
• Searches for SQL Injection Vulnerabilities
• Automatically detects zero day bugs
• Performs Website Fingerprinting

Once the service finishes scanning your site for issues and vulnerabilities, it emails you a PDF with what they found for your site.

In order to prevent sensitive security reports like this going out to others, ZeroDay scan asks you to add a text file with some security text to be added to your site. This ensures you can scan only sites which you have control over.

Check out this service at www.zerodayscan.com

I had picked up a BSNL 3G connection a few weeks back hoping for a faster internet connectivity on the move on my N900. The N900 being a mobile computer, I’m able to do most of the work on that without having to boot up the computer. It’s also an advantage having a fast connectivity on the mobile with the 4-8 hour power cuts  in Bangalore, the UPS doesn’t hold up with WIFI connectivity too long during an outage.

When you get a prepaid connection from BSNL, their initial 120 topup gives 25 MB download free. The call rates also seed reasonable. I was pretty impressed with the speeds I got on the mobile. Here’s the screenshot of the speed test on the N900′s browser:

That’s pretty decent speeds for general surfing, VOIP calls, and IM. Even Skype calls go through without any major breaks in the call. This kind of speeds after the ultra slow Edge speeds on Airtel GPRS was mindblowing.

Now the free usage was coming towards it’s end, and I had to look for ways to top up the balance.  After surfing around the unintuitive BSNL portal, I found that their portal shows data plans for prepaid and postpaid over at http://karnataka.bsnl.co.in/3G/dataplans.htm.

First stop’s their dealer

The dealer I got the connection from had no clue about how to get this done. The BSNL rep who was at the shop also was clueless about 3G data plans. He asked me to call the customer care folks to find out the details.

2nd stop: Customer Care Number

Customer care on the other end just want to end the call as fast as possible. The first time I called customer care, the person hardly heard what I was asking for and told me some instructions to get Blackberry service on the mobile and dropped the line. The next call I got through asked me to SMS some text to a number. When I did so, I just got a reply message that the option I messaged was wrong!

Still getting no where!

I searched for other dealers on the way to office and dropped into one more place – they too were clueless about the 3G data recharge. Next stop, Customer Service centres. I hunted and found their CSC locations and phone numbers from their site. I tried the two locations closest to me, and tried calling up to find how to reach there. No replies on the numbers listed on the site!

Recharge online?

They advertise that you can recharge online on their portal portal.bsnl.in. Well you can, if you have the patience for the site to load up. My luck’s been so good this far, that when I try logging to recharge, I never get past the login screen. Luckily I found another service to recharge my talktime balance for BSNL. Unfortunately, neither BSNL or other recharge portals I’ve checked out, provide data recharges for BSNL’s 3G serviceUnfortunately the other recharge portals I’ve checked out don’t provide data recharges for BSNL’s 3G service.

Update: I did check out the BSNL portal after reading a comment from Uday, using Internet Explorer, the site did go through and I did see a data top-up option. But the payment options don’t include a credit card, you’ll need an account from one of the National Banks to pay on the site. The banks I have accounts in don’t seem to be on the list there.

I still have yet to get the data plan top-up done. If any of you know how to get this done, and a CSC/dealer where the people know how to do this, do let me know by commenting below!  BSNL’s service is good while it runs, when you need help, you’re on your own. Their service is like a do-it-yourself kit where the instructions are missing.

Just got an email from Amazon with their announcement of the beta release of the AWS Management Console. This helps users manage their EC2 resources though an easy to use web interface. No more third party browser addons and custom code to check the status of EC2 instances and playing around with Elastic IPs and EBS. I’m sure everyone’s been waiting a long time for this move from Amazon.

Their new interface is quite a help in getting the regular chores done and taking a look at the current activities on EC2. Here’s how the screen looks when you log in (click on the image for a larger version):

Looks like I’ll be using ElasticFox less after getting used to this clean interface. Here’s what you can do with this version of the console:

• AMI Management: browse and search AMIs, launch instances from AMIs, deregister and register AMIs
• Instance Management: launch, reboot, terminate, get console output, RDP/SSH help, etc.
• Security Group Management: create and delete security groups, add and remove permissions, configure firewall settings, open and close ports
• Elastic IP Management: create and release IP Addresses, associate IPs to instances
• Elastic Block Store: create, delete, attach and detach volumes. Take snapshots and manage snapshots.
• Key Pair management: create and delete public/private key pairs.

Though this initial version does provide all the basic interfaces for managing EC2, Amazon’s got a lot planned out for the AWS Management Console. Here’s what’s coming up in the future:

• Tagging – Label and group Amazon EC2 resources with your own custom metadata to make it easier to identify and manage your instances, volumes, and other EC2 resources.
• Monitoring, Load Balancing and Auto-scaling – View real-time monitoring of operational metrics within Amazon EC2, configure load balancing and auto-scaling rules through a web-based UI.
• Amazon S3 Support – Create and delete Amazon S3 buckets, upload and download objects through your browser, edit permissions, set log data, and manage URLs.
• Amazon SimpleDB Support – Construct SimpleDB queries through a point-and-click query expression builder and explore your data through a graphical dataset viewer.
• Amazon SQS Support – Manage your SQS queues, add and retrieve messages from you queues, test and build your applications with help from the AWS Management Console.
• CloudFront Support – Setup and administer content delivery distributions on Amazon CloudFront using a simple web-based tool on the AWS Management Console.

Links:

AWS Console
Amazon Web Services Blog: Manage Amazon EC2 With New Web-Based AWS Management Console

Looking for an easy way to provide social features on your site without having to go through all the hassels of creating login scripts and member databases? Google Friend Connect allows you to do that in a few simple steps. Just signup for an account, upload 2 html files and embed a javascript for the gadget you’d like to use – as simple as that !

Visitors can sign in using their Google, Yahoo, AIM or Open ID accounts, which makes it easier to pull in more interactions without having them to register on your site. Currently Friend Connect provides a few gadgets like the Wall and Review & Rate. You can also create custom gadgets if you’re up to it.

The Wall and Review gadgets can also be set in moderation mode where you get to choose what goes up on the site and delete unwanted posts.

Link: Google Friend Connect