Thursday, December 25, 2008

Security Risks in GoDaddy Total DNS Control

Web server authentication is an essential element of an organization's trust strategy for e-business. By reliably authenticating web servers to visiting browsers, SSL server certificates help build that trust.

Until recently, GoDaddy, the world's largest ICANN-accredited domain registrar, have been found a security risk in there Total DNS Control panel. GoDaddy Total DNS Control allows user to perform advanced DNS functions, such as changing zone records. But the  latest revision of TDNS is not safe, because they even the use of http access to the Total DNS Control, This is really terrible. As we know http(Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is extremely unsafe. The others can use Sniffer to intercept, view and analyze all of the HTTP traffic between a web browser or any program that uses the HTTP protocol and the web server. Given these factors, many organizations would prefer to manage web server authentication with the RSA Web Server SSL technology application.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol and a network security protocol.HTTPS has also been known as "Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer"(SSL). An SSL Certificate enables encryption of sensitive information during online transactions. Each SSL Certificate contains unique, authenticated information about the certificate owner. A Certificate Authority verifies the identity of the certificate owner when it is issued.

To fix that security risks in GoDaddy, remember: If you use GoDaddy's Total DNS Control Panel, do not click on the original link to "Total DNS Control and MX Records", that link is unsafe http protocol. To invoke HTTPS, replaces "http://" with "https://" in the Web address. The link is such like this:

https://tdns.secureserver.net/?domain=YourDomainName&prog_id=GoDaddy&type=1

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Top Ten Best Video Games of 2008

In a year when most businesses tried to figure out how to stay alive, the video game industry thrived thanks to two things: great games, and you. So give yourself a pat on the back; your thirst for single-handedly saving the world with magic, guns, and fast thumbs has kept the gaming industry going strong when all else seems to be going wrong.

Of all the games that Time Magazine has reviewed so far this year, 10 games have a tremendous amount of momentum going into the awards.

1. Grand Theft Auto IV



It's ironic that GTA became a football in the debate over sex and violence in video games, because where it belongs is in the debate over whether video games count as art. No game developers are more radical and more passionate about the storytelling power of their medium than folks at Rockstar North, and GTA IV is the company's most ambitious work ever. It's the story of Niko Bellic, an Eastern European soldier-for-hire fighting his way up the organized crime ladder in an archly satirical version of New Yo— I mean, Liberty City. It's a grade-A shoot-'em-up that doubles as an interactive novel and triples as a sly critique of American consumer culture.

2. Braid



Of all the game genres to make a comeback this year, who would've picked the side-scrolling platformer? At first blush Braid looks like a standard old-school Super Mario Bros.-style game. But there's a twist: on top of standard game mechanics like running and jumping, Braid adds the ability to manipulate time: if you make a mistake you can wind back the clock and try again. It sounds simple, but as Portal proved last year, a simple mechanic in the hands of a brilliant developer can yield near-infinite entertainment.

3. LittleBigPlanet



The hero of LittleBigPlanet is a tiny person made out of some kind of coarse-textured fabric. His name is Sackboy. Like everything else in his world, he is a toy. He runs and jumps and slides through an endlessly inventive landscape made of cushions and weights and ramps and springs and glowing bubbles, all rendered with a gritty, high-res perfection which finally shows you why that PS3 you bought was so expensive. Nobody shoots at anybody. When you're done with the levels the game comes with — and that takes a long time — you can build and download more. LittleBigPlanet is not an adrenaline game; it's a restful, chill-out kind of experience. Let Sackboy do all the work. You have all the fun.

4. Rock Band 2



Hands down the best party game ever made, Rock Band 2 does what the first Rock Band did — simulate the experience of singing and playing drums, guitar or bass in an actual rock band — only better, faster, harder and with more songs to choose from. The key is Rock Band 2's candy-colored interface, which is so clear and intuitive that it feels like there's nothing standing between you and the music. Boot up, jack in, and rock out.

5. Gears of War 2



After all that time Marcus Fenix spent in Gears of War sawing Locusts in half the long way, you'd think he would have moved on to some less stressful activity like playing LittleBigPlanet. Actually not. Except for some new multiplayer modes, Gears of War 2 is remarkably similar to the first installment: lots of shooting and duck-and-covering and, yes, sawing, plus the usual hard-boiled gravelly-voiced dialogue. Not that this is in any way a problem. The main difference is that the backgrounds all this action happens in front of are now even more spectacular: ruined churches, soaring caverns, jagged mountains, airships made out of giant bugs. Sera never looked so good — maybe when Marcus is done killing Locusts he can finally retire there.

6. Dead Space



The hero of Dead Space obviously never saw Alien, or he'd know not to answer distress signals from remote mining spaceships. Turns out the ship has been taken over by an evil and really gross alien menace that turns human corpses into horrible deformed zombies. Your job is to figure out what happened and fix it and not die while doing so. Dead Space doesn't break new ground, it's just bloody, scary survival horror at its finest — cool weapons, amazing environments, fast action, fantastic zero-G combat, no letup, no mercy.

7. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed



Evil Jedi walks into a room. Room is full of anonymous Stormtroopers, Jawas, rancors, etc. Does he (a) shock them to death with Force Lightning, (b) grab them with the Force and throw them against the walls and each other till they die, (c) kill them with a sweet light saber combo, (d) pull a passing TIE fighter out of the sky and smash it into them...I could go on. This game has flaws, but it's so unbelievably satisfying to cut loose with the Force, Jedi honor be damned, that the flaws don't really register. This is Star Wars without any Ewokkish sentimentality, and it's the best thing to happen to the franchise in years.

8. Hunted Forever



The future is a terrible place, but at least it's pretty stylin' — it looks like an animated title sequence from a 1960s movie, all angular graphics and silhouettes and primary colors. You're a tiny running man sprinting, jumping and sliding through a post-apocalyptic landscape, relentlessly pursued by an enormous hovering robot. This is a free Flash game, and it's on this list both for its own merits and as a representative of all the beautiful, quirky Flash games that came out this year. Flash developers don't have $20 million budgets on the line when they make a game, which means they can take risks and try anything.

9. Fieldrunners



Fun fact: back in the 1970s, before they founded Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak helped create the original game of Breakout for Atari. But Apple has never really shown much fight when it comes to the gaming market. Now it doesn't have to. With the opening of the App Store and the release of development tools, third-party developers have converted the iPhone and the iPod Touch into handheld gaming devices that will soon be serious competition for the Nintendo DS and Sony's PSP. The pick of the first litter is Fieldrunners, a fast and furious tower defense game that looks great on those super-bright, super-crisp screens and seamlessly integrates the famous touchscreen as a game controller.

10. Spore



Sims creator Will Wright spent seven years writing, researching and designing this evolutionary epic, which may well be the most ambitious game ever made. Spore follows the history of a single species, designed by you, from a cute little single cell up through sentience, civilization and finally space exploration. The innovation here doesn't lie in the gameplay, which is merely entertaining, but in the sophistication of the animations that make your creation walk and move and dance, and in the game's hubristic, near-infinite scope.

Source: http://www.time.com/

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Wordpress 2.7 Released

Wordpress 2.7 has been officially released and is available for download. There are many new features added in 2.7 and the first thing you will notice is the re-designed user interface and Dashboard.

Version 2.7 should be a major upgrade into the WordPress software. Here are some of the changes that it brings:

  • new interface to make it easier to perform the admin tasks

  • customization options on the admin screens

  • the ability to reply to comments from the dashboard

  • embed support for comments threading

  • drag and drop support on some sections


The most exciting stuff is the automatic upgrade. From now when new versions get released all you will have to do is one click, and the software will take care of the rest. I am sure this will make WordPress a much more secure software, too.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Pownce is Shutting Down

Microblogging service Pownce, is closing down on December 15. As of today, Pownce will no longer be accepting new users or new pro accounts. The Pownce team has joined SixApart.

Pownce have built an export tool so users can save the content. Users can find the export tool at Settings > Export. Please export content by December 15, 2008, as the site will not be accessible after this date.