We live in a world with many technologies, gone or the days when development would be in just handful of languages. Computer languages have evolved and devised have been replaced. The work is more on the mobile devices. Every successful engineer needs to update his skills with time. So lets see what are the Top 10 IT Skills for 2013.

The top 10 tech skills for 2013, as per CyberCoders are listed below:

1. Mobile development (iOS, Android)
2. Cloud computing (AWS, Azure)
3. Front end development (HTML5, CSS3, Javascript)
4. UX/UI design
5. Big Data (Hadoop, MongoDB, NoSQL)
6. C#
7. Ruby on rails
8. Java
9. PHP
10. Linux

“A common theme among these technology skills is the need for open source, mobile, cloud or big data technologies, like iOS, Azure and Hadoop,” said Matt Miller, CTO of CyberCoders.

Restricting zone transfers with IP addresses in BIND DNS Server is an easy to do task. Let me show how.

DNS server can be attacked using various techniques, few of them being :

1. DNS spoofing
2. Cache poisoning
3. Registration hijacking

One of the simplest ways to defend is limit zone transfers between nameservers by defining ACL. Many admin allows BIND to transfer zones in bulk outside their network or organization. There is no need to do this. You are making attacker’s life easier by this.

How to restrict zone transfer with IP address?

You need to define ACL in /etc/named.conf file. Let us say IP 192.168.191.10 and 25.111.24.7 are allowed to transfer your zones.

# vi named.conf

Here is sample entery for domain nixcraft.com (ns1 configuration):

acl trusted-servers {
192.168.191.10; //ns2
25.111.24.7; //ns3
};
zone sample.com {
type master;
file “zones/sample.com”;
allow-transfer { trusted-servers; };
};

Next add zone simple.com. Please note that you must use set of hosts later in each zone’s configuration block i.e. put line allow-transfer { trusted-servers; }; for each zone / domain name. Restart named:

# /etc/init.d/named restart

How do I test zone transfers restrictions are working or not?

Use any UNIX dns tool command such as nslookup, host or dig. For example, following example uses host command to request zone transfer:

$ host -T axfr nixcraft.com
Output:

;; Connection to 74.86.49.133#53(74.86.49.133) for axfr failed: connection refused.

Transaction signatures (TSIG)

Another recommend option is to use transaction signatures (TSIG) to authorize zone transfers. This makes more difficult to spoof IP addresses.

There have been numerous facts and explainations on : Did we Land on Moon ?
Even documentaries exist, if you watch any one of them you will feel both of them true. Ok! Its not about.. whether you believe in God or not. It is based on the evidences that prove we did land on moon. We did not go back again till now as it is way costly to go up there.

I am not going to repeat all Facts and evidences that prove we landed on moon but one of the most important. Third-party evidence for Apollo Moon landings is evidence, or analysis of evidence, about Moon landings that does not come from either NASA, the U.S. government (the first party), or the Apollo Moon landing hoax theorists (the second party). This evidence serves as independent confirmation of NASA’s account of the Moon landings.

Post-Apollo lunar exploration missions have located and imaged artifacts of the Apollo program remaining on the Moon’s surface. Images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission beginning in July 2009 show the six Apollo Lunar Module descent stages, Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package (ALSEP) science experiments, astronaut footpaths, and lunar rover tire tracks. These images are the most effective proof to date to rebut the “landing hoax” theories.[13][14][15] Although this probe was indeed launched by NASA, the camera and the interpretation of the images are under the control of an academic group — the LROC Science Operations Center at Arizona State University, along with many other academic groups.

Apollo 11 landing site photographed by LRO

This is dedicated to – “Neil Armstrong”, the astronaut who marked an epochal achievement in exploration with “one small step” from the Apollo 11 lunar module on July 20, 1969, becoming the first person to walk on the moon, died Aug. 25 in the Cincinnati area. He was 82.

This image of the Apollo 11 landing site captured from just 24 km (15 miles) above the surface provides LRO’s best look yet at humanity’s first venture to another world. When Neil Armstrong took his famous first steps onto the lunar surface.

Apollo 11: ‘A Stark Beauty All Its Own’ via NASA

Some time ago, Mozilla has announced that Firefox add-ons have been downloaded more than 3 billion times. In addition to that, the open source organization has revealed the top 8 add-ons by downloads. Why top 8 and not top 10? We have no idea.

Anyway, here is a list of the mentioned extensions, from least to most popular:

#8. DownThemAll, 1.9 million active daily users
#7. Personas Plus, 2 million active daily users
#6. NoScript, 2.1 million active daily users
#5. Download Statusbar, 2.2 million active daily users
#4. Greasemonkey, 2.8 million active daily users
#3. Firebug, 3 million active daily users [I am in Love with this plugin]
#2. Video DownloadHelper, x million active daily users
#1. Adblock Plus, 13.5 million active daily users

So, that’s Top 8: Most Popular Firefox Extensions Revealed

Firefox is no doubt favorite Web Browser of all Developers

Gauss – A Super Virus. A new “state-sponsored” cyber surveillance virus dubbed “Gauss” has stolen passwords and key data from thousands of bank users in the Middle East, the top IT security firm Kaspersky Lab said on Thursday. Virus are evolving an getting more complicated and intelligent day by day.

According to Kaspersky, Gauss was a complete and “complex, nation-state sponsored cyber-espionage toolkit,” which aims to steal sensitive data, with a specific focus on browser passwords and online banking account details.

It has similarities to Stuxnet and Flame, the Russian company said in a statement, noting that although the new malware program was discovered in June 2012 it appears to have been in use since September 2011.

Gauss has the same source code as Flame, which was apparently designed to steal information from Iran’s suspected nuclear programme, with the United States and Israel suspected of being behind its origination.

Stuxnet was used to attack Iran’s nuclear centrifuges.

Kaspersky said Gauss had a specific focus on banking and financial data and its Trojan capability was used to steal detailed information about infected PCs including browser history, cookies, passwords, and system configurations.

“It is also capable of stealing access credentials for various online banking systems and payment methods,” said Kaspersky, whose virus detection experts discovered and named Gauss.

“Analysis of Gauss shows it was designed to steal data from several Lebanese banks including the Bank of Beirut, EBLF, BlomBank, ByblosBank, FransaBank and Credit Libanais,” and also “targets users of Citibank and PayPal,” it added.

Gauss’s main module was named by its creators after the German mathematician Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss, according to Kaspersky.

Yahoo hacking reveals 10 most common passwords and it shows how much lazy users are when it comes to choose passwords. A security breach at Yahoo, which compromised over 450,000 login details, highlights how careless internet users are while choosing their passwords.

Last month, a hacking collective posted account information belonging to thousands of Yahoo users on a public website in what they described as ‘a wake-up call‘. According to Enterprise Innovation, the incident showed that the company that holds user details in question has poor user security, which allows the hackers to grab this important data.

But most importantly, it tells how blind internet users are when it comes to password security.

According to the report, out of 442,837 passwords that were published, the top ten passwords were

1. 123456
2. password
3. welcome
4. ninja
5. abc123
6. 123456789
7. princess
8. sunshine
9. 12345678
10. 0
11. qwerty

Despite their obvious weakness, numeric-only passwords still appear popular and make up nearly 6 percent of the total, with nearly one-fourth of those being a list of numeric values on the keyboard in order from 1 – 0 such as 123456 or 1234. According to the report, one must follow a simple rule for strong passwords in a bid to avoid their accounts being hacked.

Passwords should be a little complex, just by adding numeric in your name would be best choice.
Example – Rohit + 2311 = R2o3h1i1t

Google, you are awesome. You Google and get a Scientific Calculator Search Result. I just found this feature and can’t stop myself writing a blog on it.

So how does it work ?
Just open google.com and try searching any mathematical expression.
Like : cos 180

And the Search Result is :

Google search has long featured a built-in calculator function but a recent update added a fully functional 34-button scientific calculator. Previously, when a user entered, say, 2+3, Google would simply display the sum (5) above the search result. Now, when that equation is entered into the search bar, the answer pops up along with the new calculator. Best of all, this works in mobile browsers and voice search, too.

This isn’t a stripped down calculator, either. It’s a full-power, voice-enabled scientific calculator with nearly all the functions of a tangible model. Plus, it doesn’t require two AAA batteries. A Google Product Manager pointed out in this post’s comments that the scientific functions appear when the phone is rotated to be viewed in a landscape mode.

This is just Google’s latest addition to its nerdy toolbox. The search bar already performed graphing functions. Now, with Google, Wolfram Alpha, and the sheer number of apps out there, there really isn’t any excuse for not being able to finish your math homework.