Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Wish U A Happy Retired
Life Sh. Rajesh Thakur !
Consequent upon his retirement on
superannuation Sh. Rajesh Thakur, UDC, AIR , Chandigarh is retiring on superannuation on
31st March 2016. Sh. Thakur was born on
2nd March 1956 at Shimla (Himachal Pradesh). The 20th
day of the July 1977 was a special day in his life when he had joined Govt. service as Lower Division Clerk, at
Central Govt.’s Project i.e. Beas Construction Board, Talwara Township, Distt.
Hoshiapur (Punjab).. On the completion of that Central Govt.’s project, he was re-deployed
in this organization in CCW(Elect.) during January 1985 in the same capacity at
Delhi. During his stay in the department, he was posted at many places i.e. New Delhi, Leh &
Chandigarh, & now he is retiring as UDC from CBS, AIR, Chandigarh. He
always tried to perform his best for the department/nation. He had great
learning experiences during his entire service. During discussion, he told that he has seen
many rises & falls during his service but always tried to perform his best,
with the result he had always been getting full co-operation from his
colleagues hence he would like to say that his retirement day i.e. 31st
March 2016 is also a great day when he is retiring from Govt. service after
completing 38 years 08 months
& 11 days in the service. He
has got a Commendation Certificate from the Executive Engineer ©, AIR,
Chandigarh towards his best service. He thanked all his colleagues &
delivered a message for all to do their work honestly, maintain discipline
& co-ordination for the welfare of the organization & the nation as a
whole. On the day of his retirement on superannuation, we extends best wishes
to Sh. Rajesh Thakur for happy and his future life.
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Sunday, February 21, 2016
Jaswinder Singh Kainaur
Engineer Sh. Anand
Prakash Earned Rs. 1.2 Crore from
Finding Software Bugs in Facebook, Twitter &
Zomato
From hacking into
the social media accounts of his friends, to finding more than
90 security flaws for Facebook – Anand Prakash has come a long way
with his love for technology and interest in ethical hacking. This is his
story.
It was while
preparing for his engineering entrance exams in Kota, Rajasthan that Anand
Prakash first became interested in hacking. “I had a smart phone
and Internet packs were very costly at that time. I came across some
kind of proxy setting and figured out a way to use the Internet for
free,” he says. The service provider rectified the loophole after some time
when many users came to know about it. But for Anand, it was the beginning of a
very eventful journey towards building a career in the field of hacking – the
kind that’s ethical.
The information
given by him is mentioning in italics in this article.
“What
I do now is called security research, not hacking,” he is quick to
correct.
Today,
the 23-year-old is a security engineer with Flipkart, uses
the Internet in a more responsible manner, and has been rewarded
by many organizations for finding flaws in their software or technology
setups.
Anand, who is from
the town of Bhadra in Rajasthan, was always interested in computers.
“It
was always the same with me. I used to score better in technical subjects, but
when it came to subjects like geography, environmental studies, etc., I used to
face a lot of problems,” he recalls.
As a student,
Anand strengthened his newly acquired knowledge of hacking by experimenting
among friends.
“I
used to practice phishing on my friends’ accounts with their permission. It is
the most basic process in hacking. It involves extracting information like
usernames, passwords, etc., by sending out emails to the victims in a way that
they will trust them enough to open the links,” he says. Getting access to the
password of a friend’s Orkut account was Anand’s first hack.
After Kota, he
joined Vellore Institute of Technology to pursue a course in computer science
engineering. Anand continued to polish his knowledge about ethical
hacking and different programming languages in college, and practiced
whatever he learned among friends.
“Up
till then, I only knew about hacking processes that involved using some
automated tools. And that did not interest me after a point.
Finding security flaws in systems is completely different from what I
was doing then,” he says.
In the third year
of college, Anand came to know about Facebook’s Bug Bounty Program. It offers
recognition and compensation to security researchers who find
vulnerabilities in Facebook and report them according to the organization’s
responsible disclosure policy.
By
then, Anand was well-versed in languages like PHP, JavaScript, etc.
“I
liked to analyse codes. And when I learnt that Facebook has given monetary
compensation to someone for finding a bug in their technology, I thought of
giving it a try,” he says.
He utilised the
Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), which is an initiative
by OWASP Foundation for the improvement of software security in
different organizations around the world. The project provides users with open
source study materials to understand application security over
the Internet.
“I
started learning with the help of OWASP, followed experts on Twitter, and read
up a lot about security research. Fortunately, I found a bug on
Facebook in just a month. It was a loophole that enabled me to find people
online even if they had turned off their chat,” he says. Anand received his
first bounty of USD 500 for reporting this issue.
Then he learned
that many such organizations welcome people who
find security vulnerabilities for them. And the work turned out to be
so interesting that there was no turning back for the technology enthusiast. To
date, he has found about 90 bugs for Facebook, and ranks fourth in
the Facebook wall of fame 2015.
The highest bounty
Anand received from Facebook was a sum of USD 12,500 for finding a
major security flaw because of which a user could post anything on
his/her profile using someone else’s account. “For example, I could post a
picture, a video, or text, and it would be visible on my Facebook wall as
a post from your side,” he explains.
After
college, he did an internship with the Cyber Police Investigation Branch of
Gurgaon Police. There he worked on finding the different strategies used by
cyber criminals.
He has also reported issues to companies like Twitter and
Google and has earned Rs. 1.2 crore in the process. He was able to hack into
the systems of the restaurant discovery and search application Zomato to gain
access to the accounts of their 62 million users. He disclosed this issue to
the company and they fixed it in two day, appreciating his efforts.
“I always first report the issue to the organization without
exposing it elsewhere. It is called responsible disclosure. Then I take
permission from them and post about it on my personal blog if they allow it.”
But Anand is not very happy about the way many Indian
companies treat security researchers:
“Some
companies are very responsive. They fix the bugs immediately and also give
monetary compensation without much delay. But if you report bugs to many
companies in India, they reply saying they will take legal action against you.
The condition is very bad in terms of security here. But it is
changing slowly. I have come across some companies that are now open
to security research.”
With new
technologies coming up every day, Anand’s hunger for learning keeps developing.
His advice to those who want to pursue a career in security research:
“Try and report bugs to companies in a responsible manner. And do not disclose
the issue unless you have permission. Security research is a great
thing if done ethically.”
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Saturday, October 31, 2015
Friday, October 30, 2015
An Inspiration story
J.S. Kainaur
‘Chandigarh’
Inspiration story of a Tea seller Sh.
Vijayan
who visited 17 countries alongwith his
wife
Here, I have got an opportunity to presents a story
of a legend man who has discovered this magical dimension of his life. He is simply
tea-seller who travels the 17 countries of the world with his wife. The power of his dreams,
the strength of his will and passion in his single-minded pursuits have let his
spirit spread it is invisible wings and soar into the air, inspite of his
social and economic conditions. After reading about him, it has comes to know
that the name of this inspiration story is Sh.Vijayan & his wife name is
Mrs. Mohana. They belongs to Ernakulam in Kerala state. His wife help him at the shop by
preparing eatables as they also
sells the small food items like idli,
upma & curry etc., besides the tea. He tells about his shop that anyone may satisfy for
his hunger by spending 10 to 25 rupees there.
He provides 06 idly for 20 rupees, an upma, curry or tea for Rs.25/- only. Both are fully satisfied
with their work & leading a joy ful life. About the support of his wife, he
says that in fact she is source of his strength. He don’t know how to explain
it, as she provides him with all the energy which he needs. As Swami Vivekanand
said, “you can see & hear with your eyes and ears, but you cannot
experience any thing with the presence of mind”.
Like the every human, they have also some aims in
the life. Out of them, an aim is to go
to picnic to get the experience &
knowledge by visiting the different places in India & as well as foreign countries. According
to him he visited many places alone. But, together they went to Madras,
Kanyakumari, Bangalore, Delhi, Haridwar, Egypt, Jordan, London, Paris,
Switzerland, Venice, Singapore & Malaysia etc. It seems that they looks
around 55 to 60 years old. As we are aware that almost every human being are
naughty during their childhood. Sh. Vijayan
was also a naughty boy during his childhood as he use to steal food grains from his own house
and sell them in the market to meet the expenses of visiting new places.
There are many thoughts of the prominent personalities.
Mr. Ray Bradury (an writer) said, “First you jump off the cliff and you build
your wings on the way down” . Like that, this story also teaches us to make strong will
power and immense love to achieve their desires. He has good income from the
tea shop. As soon as he has enough money, he approaches banks for a loan, travels
to a new country, and repays the loan over two or three years. It is his hobby
as he want to see the world. That is his desire, his only desire! He praised
the Supreme Power, “God has blessed me with more than what I deserve, dream or wished for”. And thus, with the belief that
all of us have only one lifetime to do everything, he has spent close to Rs.
10-15 lakhs on his journeys. But for him, that money is nothing when compared
to the places he has seen and the knowledge he has gained. And when people call
him crazy, he simply says – “Yes, I am crazy. Everyone has their own will, I got self satisfaction and that is why I do
so.
We are achieving our targets with the grace of
‘GOD’. He believes in ‘GOD’. He thinks
that a time will come when his journey ends as a time granted by the Almighty.
All of this will go on, he strongly believe in it. During their journey, they
got many experiences of disappointments & delights. He has shared an
experience that all the people with whom they travelled so far are
millionaires. All of them, when they exchange 100 or 500 dollars notes, he
exchanged only 5 or 10 dollars note.
Someone asked him with funny way
that he is wasting the money by visiting here & there without any gain. If
he had invested that money on a land or property, it would have been beneficial
for his future. In the reply, Vijayan explained that if money is his only
concern then he would not be able to do any thing, the knowledge and
experiences he gains would have been missed. Amongst thousands of men, hardly
one strives for perfection and amongst those who have achieved perfection,
hardly one knows me in truth. These are his feelings that he cherish.
Mr.Vijayan believes
that their lives are full of journeys, no matter where we are. He want to travel again more as he has desire
& will power. Thus, he works every day with the only aim of travelling to a
new country, his next destination.
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