aktconsultancy services blog

Facebook oAuth with PHP

2012-01-09T20:07:00.002Z

Well one project we have been working on is SSO using facebooks oAuth model, this is the mechanism used to allow users to be authenticated on your own website using the Facebook app API.

This is a great API, and from scratch took about 2 days to reverse engineer and use, this system will be going live shortly on www.planettectnews.com also we have been working on some social media bolt ons. So the nerdy stuff.

How the flow works, well first of all you click the signin with facebook link, this takes you to facebook if you haven't signed in and asks you to sign in, if your already signed in it goes straight to the APP dialogue. At this stage you get the usual facebook wants to share your details with such and such app. When you accept facebook fires a token to a PHP controller that i have written. This in turn saves the token for use whenever needed.

The first stage now is the controller does a cURL to facebook using the token ID to get a me.js response, using JSON this is carved to useful information and this is stored in a database, a local user is created to incorporate the existing authentication model.

A second cURL using a post fires the new user details at the existing authentication model logging the user in, the local user account based on the facebook details can be synchronised at any stage using the token in an 'offline' poll.

That simples.

The twitter SSO API is scarey familiar using the same UML flow.

IP Spoofing: An Introduction

2009-09-13T23:46:00.003+01:00

Something I was reading that i have found interesting so i thought i would add the article on here.

Criminals have long employed the tactic of masking their true identity, from disguises to aliases to caller-id blocking. It should come as no surprise then, that criminals who conduct their nefarious activities on networks and computers should employ such techniques. IP spoofing is one of the most common forms of on-line camouflage. In IP spoofing, an attacker gains unauthorized access to a computer or a network by making it appear that a malicious message has come from a trusted machine by “spoofing” the IP address of that machine. In this article, we will examine the concepts of IP spoofing: why it is possible, how it works, what it is used for and how to defend against it.

History
The concept of IP spoofing, was initially discussed in academic circles in the 1980's. While known about for sometime, it was primarily theoretical until Robert Morris, whose son wrote the first Internet Worm, discovered a security weakness in the TCP protocol known as sequence prediction. Stephen Bellovin discussed the problem in-depth in Security Problems in the TCP/IP Protocol Suite, a paper that addressed design problems with the TCP/IP protocol suite. Another infamous attack, Kevin Mitnick's Christmas Day crack of Tsutomu Shimomura's machine, employed the IP spoofing and TCP sequence prediction techniques. While the popularity of such cracks has decreased due to the demise of the services they exploited, spoofing can still be used and needs to be addressed by all security administrators.

Technical Discussion
To completely understand how these attacks can take place, one must examine the structure of the TCP/IP protocol suite. A basic understanding of these headers and network exchanges is crucial to the process.

Internet Protocol – IP
Internet protocol (IP) is a network protocol operating at layer 3 (network) of the OSI model. It is a connectionless model, meaning there is no information regarding transaction state, which is used to route packets on a network. Additionally, there is no method in place to ensure that a packet is properly delivered to the destination.

Examining the IP header, we can see that the first 12 bytes (or the top 3 rows of the header) contain various information about the packet. The next 8 bytes (the next 2 rows), however, contains the source and destination IP addresses. Using one of several tools, an attacker can easily modify these addresses – specifically the “source address” field. It's important to note that each datagram is sent independent of all others due to the stateless nature of IP. Keep this fact in mind as we examine TCP in the next section.

Transmission Control Protocol – TCP
IP can be thought of as a routing wrapper for layer 4 (transport), which contains the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). Unlike IP, TCP uses a connection-oriented design. This means that the participants in a TCP session must first build a connection - via the 3-way handshake (SYN-SYN/ACK-ACK) - then update one another on progress - via sequences and acknowledgements. This “conversation”, ensures data reliability, since the sender receives an OK from the recipient after each packet exchange.

As you can see above, a TCP header is very different from an IP header. We are concerned with the first 12 bytes of the TCP packet, which contain port and sequencing information. Much like an IP datagram, TCP packets can be manipulated using software. The source and destination ports normally depend on the network application in use (for example, HTTP via port 80). What's important for our understanding of spoofing are the sequence and acknowledgement numbers. The data contained in these fields ensures packet delivery by determining whether or not a packet needs to be resent. The sequence number is the number of the first byte in the current packet, which is relevant to the data stream. The acknowledgement number, in turn, contains the value of the next expected sequence number in the stream. This relationship confirms, on both ends, that the proper packets were received. It’s quite different than IP, since transaction state is closely monitored.

Consequences of the TCP/IP Design
Now that we have an overview of the TCP/IP formats, let's examine the consequences. Obviously, it's very easy to mask a source address by manipulating an IP header. This technique is used for obvious reasons and is employed in several of the attacks discussed below. Another consequence, specific to TCP, is sequence number prediction, which can lead to session hijacking or host impersonating. This method builds on IP spoofing, since a session, albeit a false one, is built. We will examine the ramifications of this in the attacks discussed below.

Spoofing Attacks
There are a few variations on the types of attacks that successfully employ IP spoofing. Although some are relatively dated, others are very pertinent to current security concerns.

Non-Blind Spoofing
This type of attack takes place when the attacker is on the same subnet as the victim. The sequence and acknowledgement numbers can be sniffed, eliminating the potential difficulty of calculating them accurately. The biggest threat of spoofing in this instance would be session hijacking. This is accomplished by corrupting the datastream of an established connection, then re-establishing it based on correct sequence and acknowledgement numbers with the attack machine. Using this technique, an attacker could effectively bypass any authentication measures taken place to build the connection.

Blind Spoofing
This is a more sophisticated attack, because the sequence and acknowledgement numbers are unreachable. In order to circumvent this, several packets are sent to the target machine in order to sample sequence numbers. While not the case today, machines in the past used basic techniques for generating sequence numbers. It was relatively easy to discover the exact formula by studying packets and TCP sessions. Today, most OSs implement random sequence number generation, making it difficult to predict them accurately. If, however, the sequence number was compromised, data could be sent to the target. Several years ago, many machines used host-based authentication services (i.e. Rlogin). A properly crafted attack could add the requisite data to a system (i.e. a new user account), blindly, enabling full access for the attacker who was impersonating a trusted host.

Man In the Middle Attack
Both types of spoofing are forms of a common security violation known as a man in the middle (MITM) attack. In these attacks, a malicious party intercepts a legitimate communication between two friendly parties. The malicious host then controls the flow of communication and can eliminate or alter the information sent by one of the original participants without the knowledge of either the original sender or the recipient. In this way, an attacker can fool a victim into disclosing confidential information by “spoofing” the identity of the original sender, who is presumably trusted by the recipient.

Denial of Service Attack
IP spoofing is almost always used in what is currently one of the most difficult attacks to defend against – denial of service attacks, or DoS. Since crackers are concerned only with consuming bandwidth and resources, they need not worry about properly completing handshakes and transactions. Rather, they wish to flood the victim with as many packets as possible in a short amount of time. In order to prolong the effectiveness of the attack, they spoof source IP addresses to make tracing and stopping the DoS as difficult as possible. When multiple compromised hosts are participating in the attack, all sending spoofed traffic, it is very challenging to quickly block traffic.

Misconceptions of IP Spoofing
While some of the attacks described above are a bit outdated, such as session hijacking for host-based authentication services, IP spoofing is still prevalent in network scanning and probes, as well as denial of service floods. However, the technique does not allow for anonymous Internet access, which is a common misconception for those unfamiliar with the practice. Any sort of spoofing beyond simple floods is relatively advanced and used in very specific instances such as evasion and connection hijacking.

Defending Against Spoofing
There are a few precautions that can be taken to limit IP spoofing risks on your network, such as:
Filtering at the Router - Implementing ingress and egress filtering on your border routers is a great place to start your spoofing defense. You will need to implement an ACL (access control list) that blocks private IP addresses on your downstream interface. Additionally, this interface should not accept addresses with your internal range as the source, as this is a common spoofing technique used to circumvent firewalls. On the upstream interface, you should restrict source addresses outside of your valid range, which will prevent someone on your network from sending spoofed traffic to the Internet.
Encryption and Authentication - Implementing encryption and authentication will also reduce spoofing threats. Both of these features are included in Ipv6, which will eliminate current spoofing threats. Additionally, you should eliminate all host-based authentication measures, which are sometimes common for machines on the same subnet. Ensure that the proper authentication measures are in place and carried out over a secure (encrypted) channel.

Conclusion
IP Spoofing is a problem without an easy solution, since it’s inherent to the design of the TCP/IP suite. Understanding how and why spoofing attacks are used, combined with a few simple prevention methods, can help protect your network from these malicious cloaking and cracking techniques.

Matt Tanase is President of Qaddisin. He and his company provide nationwide security consulting services. Additionally, he produces The Security Blog, a daily weblog dedicated to network security.

Why is Exchange Store.exe so RAM hungry?

2009-07-23T09:55:00.001+01:00

This seems to be one of most favorite questions ever: "How come that Exchange Store.exe keeps on grabbing more and more memory, even on the server that is not very busy? Is there a memory leak?". This is many times followed by "I am rebooting my server on the weekly basis to keep store memory consumption in check".

Well, let's see what we have here.

It is absolutely normal for Store.exe to grab as much RAM on the server as it can possibly get - as long as Store thinks it needs it to optimize performance. Store was written to do so. It does this as it wants to do as much stuff in memory as possible, without having to go to the slow page file. It is a common misconception - that Store.exe's increasing memory consumption is a "memory leak". This behavior is expected since Exchange 5.5 days:

182505 XADM: Memory Usage of Store.exe Is Higher in Exchange 5.5
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=182505

That being said:

1. Exchange Store will grab as much RAM as it can if it thinks it needs it, yes. But - we constantly monitor the performance of the system in regards to memory usage and we can use this data to infer when we need more memory and when other applications or the OS needs more memory. We then use this data to act accordingly. This scheme allows the system to act as if there is explicit control when in fact it is actually a few autonomous applications cooperating in a disconnected manner. That means that we should NEVER see a "out of memory" message by any application on the server because of the Store - unless there is a leak on the server, of course... or the page file is too small. If there was a malfunction in this Store mechanism it would cause a lot of paging. That is a big performance problem, but shouldn’t cause actual errors.

2. Store memory utilization can go up to 1.2 GB or sometimes even more when viewing through Task Manager. I have not seen it go over 1.5 GB, but it would typically not take more, even if there is 8 GB of RAM in the machine. So - Store taking 1.2 GB is not an indication of the problem all by itself.

3. Exchange Store is not the only product behaving like this... SQL does something very similar, for example. That is one of reasons why we do not necessarily encourage putting SQL and Exchange on the same server, as they will be fighting over whatever RAM is in the server.

All of the above being said, let's go into what can be manifestations of real problems:

- Are there actual performance problems that might be related to store taking up RAM? For example, other services on the server slow down noticeably when store gets "large", events are logged in the application / system log mentioning lack of memory?

- Does client access to the server slow down when Store.exe grabs a lot of RAM?

- Are there any "out of memory" errors on the server at all? Popups when trying to start applications/services on the server?

If not - there is most likely no problem. Again - Store.exe taking up a lot of RAM is NOT a problem on it's own, as the memory can be returned to the OS when needed by other processes. Store is simply taking advantage of the RAM - as it is in the machine :)

One more note - if Exchange 2003 SP1 is applied to the server and you used to monitor Store memory utilization, you could be seeing an increase in memory consumption unless you change the monitoring settings. This is normal and is covered in more detail here:

867628 Monitoring programs report that the Store.exe process consumes
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=867628

Model–view–controller

2009-07-23T08:58:00.001+01:00

MVC was first described in 1979 by Trygve Reenskaug, then working on Smalltalk at Xerox PARC. The original implementation is described in depth in the influential paper "Applications Programming in Smalltalk-80: How to use Model View Controller".

There have been several derivatives of MVC. For example, Model View Presenter is used with the .NET Framework, and the XForms standard uses a "model-view-controller-connector architecture". However, standard MVC remains popular.

Model view controller is both an architectural pattern and a design pattern, depending on where it is used.
As an architectural pattern

It is common to split an application into separate layers that can be analyzed, and sometimes implemented, separately.

MVC is often seen in web applications, where the view is the actual HTML or XHTML page, and the controller is the code that gathers dynamic data and generates the content within the HTML or XHTML. Finally, the model is represented by the actual content, which is often stored in a database or in XML nodes, and the business rules that transform that content based on user actions.

Though MVC comes in different flavors, control flow is generally as follows:

The user interacts with the user interface in some way (for example, presses a mouse button).
The controller handles the input event from the user interface, often via a registered handler or callback.
The controller notifies the model of the user action, possibly resulting in a change in the model's state. (For example, the controller updates the user's shopping cart.)
A view uses the model indirectly to generate an appropriate user interface (for example, the view lists the shopping cart's contents). The view gets its own data from the model. The model and controller have no direct knowledge of the view.
The user interface waits for further user interactions, which restarts the cycle.

Some implementations such as the W3C XForms also use the concept of a dependency graph to automate the updating of views when data in the model changes.

By decoupling models and views, MVC helps to reduce the complexity in architectural design and to increase flexibility and reuse of code.

As a design pattern

MVC encompasses more of the architecture of an application than is typical for a design pattern. When considered as a design pattern, MVC is semantically similar to the Observer pattern.

Model
Is the domain-specific representation of the data on which the application operates. Domain logic adds meaning to raw data (for example, calculating whether today is the user's birthday, or the totals, taxes, and shipping charges for shopping cart items).
Many applications use a persistent storage mechanism (such as a database) to store data. MVC does not specifically mention the data access layer because it is understood to be underneath or encapsulated by the model.

View
Renders the model into a form suitable for interaction, typically a user interface element. Multiple views can exist for a single model for different purposes.

Controller
Processes and responds to events (typically user actions) and may indirectly invoke changes on the model.

VB.net Class for MD5

2009-07-23T08:56:00.000+01:00

So what is it and what does it do, basically you could write a worm pretty easily to verify hashes if you so wanted, none of the information on here is meant to be used for dodgy script kiddies etc, it just illustraites weaknesses and basic programming functions and methods. Here you go….

In cryptography, MD5 (Message-Digest algorithm 5) is a widely used cryptographic hash function with a 128-bit hash value. As an Internet standard (RFC 1321), MD5 has been employed in a wide variety of security applications, and is also commonly used to check the integrity of files. However, it has been shown that MD5 is not collision resistant[1]; as such, MD5 is not suitable for applications like SSL certificates or digital signatures that rely on this property. An MD5 hash is typically expressed as a 32 digit hexadecimal number.

MD5 was designed by Ron Rivest in 1991 to replace an earlier hash function, MD4. In 1996, a flaw was found with the design of MD5. While it was not a clearly fatal weakness, cryptographers began recommending the use of other algorithms, such as SHA-1 (which has since been found vulnerable). In 2004, more serious flaws were discovered, making further use of the algorithm for security purposes questionable.In 2007 a group of researchers including Arjen Lenstra described how to create a pair of files that share the same MD5 checksum.[4] In an attack on MD5 published in December 2008, a group of researchers used this technique to fake SSL certificate validity, and US-CERT of the the U. S. Department of Homeland Security said MD5 “should be considered cryptographically broken and unsuitable for further use.”.

Show me the code i hear you say, heres a simple console app using the functions…..

Imports System
Imports System.Security.Cryptography
Imports System.Text

Module Example

‘ Return a hash
Function getMd5Hash(ByVal input As String) As String
Dim md5Hasher As MD5 = MD5.Create()
Dim data As Byte() = md5Hasher.ComputeHash(Encoding.Default.GetBytes(input))
Dim sBuilder As New StringBuilder()
Dim i As Integer

For i = 0 To data.Length - 1
sBuilder.Append(data(i).ToString(”x2″))
Next i

Return sBuilder.ToString()
End Function
‘ Verify a HASH and return a boolean
Function verifyMd5Hash(ByVal input As String, ByVal hash As String) As Boolean
Dim hashOfInput As String = getMd5Hash(input)
Dim comparer As StringComparer = StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase

If 0 = comparer.Compare(hashOfInput, hash) Then
Return True
Else
Return False
End If

End Function

Sub Main()
Dim source As String = “Hello World!
Dim hash As String = getMd5Hash(source)
Console.WriteLine(”The MD5 hash of ” + source + ” is: ” + hash + “.”)
Console.WriteLine(”Verifying the hash…”)
If verifyMd5Hash(source, hash) Then
Console.WriteLine(”The hashes are the same.”)
Else
Console.WriteLine(”The hashes are not same.”)
End If
End Sub
End Module

I have been asked alot lately, what software do you use to write code etc, Visual Basic 2008 / Visual Studio 2008 or text pad, writing command shell code i use notepad and then encode CScript using Windows Script encoder from a cmd line..

SQL Split Function

2009-03-24T13:39:00.001Z

Ever wanted to perfiorm a split in SQL, heres a handy function to do just this....

CREATE FUNCTION fn_Split(@sText varchar(8000), @sDelim varchar(20) = ' ')
RETURNS @retArray TABLE (idx smallint Primary Key, value varchar(8000))
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @idx smallint,
@value varchar(8000),
@bcontinue bit,
@iStrike smallint,
@iDelimlength tinyint

IF @sDelim = 'Space'
BEGIN
SET @sDelim = ' '
END

SET @idx = 0
SET @sText = LTrim(RTrim(@sText))
SET @iDelimlength = DATALENGTH(@sDelim)
SET @bcontinue = 1

IF NOT ((@iDelimlength = 0) or (@sDelim = 'Empty'))
BEGIN
WHILE @bcontinue = 1
BEGIN

--If you can find the delimiter in the text, retrieve the first element and
--insert it with its index into the return table.

IF CHARINDEX(@sDelim, @sText)>0
BEGIN
SET @value = SUBSTRING(@sText,1, CHARINDEX(@sDelim,@sText)-1)
BEGIN
INSERT @retArray (idx, value)
VALUES (@idx, @value)
END

--Trim the element and its delimiter from the front of the string.
--Increment the index and loop.
SET @iStrike = DATALENGTH(@value) + @iDelimlength
SET @idx = @idx + 1
SET @sText = LTrim(Right(@sText,DATALENGTH(@sText) - @iStrike))

END
ELSE
BEGIN
--If you can’t find the delimiter in the text, @sText is the last value in
--@retArray.
SET @value = @sText
BEGIN
INSERT @retArray (idx, value)
VALUES (@idx, @value)
END
--Exit the WHILE loop.
SET @bcontinue = 0
END
END
END
ELSE
BEGIN
WHILE @bcontinue=1
BEGIN
--If the delimiter is an empty string, check for remaining text
--instead of a delimiter. Insert the first character into the
--retArray table. Trim the character from the front of the string.
--Increment the index and loop.
IF DATALENGTH(@sText)>1
BEGIN
SET @value = SUBSTRING(@sText,1,1)
BEGIN
INSERT @retArray (idx, value)
VALUES (@idx, @value)
END
SET @idx = @idx+1
SET @sText = SUBSTRING(@sText,2,DATALENGTH(@sText)-1)

END
ELSE
BEGIN
--One character remains.
--Insert the character, and exit the WHILE loop.
INSERT @retArray (idx, value)
VALUES (@idx, @sText)
SET @bcontinue = 0
END
END

END

RETURN
END

Browser Hijacking for the greater good

2009-03-12T10:46:00.003Z

I am also contracted to Searchlogic Plc as a senior developer and as such i tend to work on all sorts of automation and server applications. Recently at Searchlogic we have been working on a data mining application that collects various technical details and analysis information about a given website for the purpose of marketing.

The parts i have been working on is the development of a crawler that gathers SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Position) data. There are various ways of doing this but the approach used has been to utilise a COM object to automate Internet Explorer.

The rational for this is that most search engines do not like automated requests and it is actually in breach of there terms of use. Automating IE and randomly changing behaviour patterns can mimic a users behaviour.

However as it says this is basically a browser hijack, most virus and firewall software detects this as suspicious and this poses a problem when developing such as application. Also this has been designed as a asynchronous thread application that can be deployed on as many drones as you like to speed its overall performance up. Multiple deployments on several different platforms allows for the formation of a cluster to which workload can be shared and allocated via a simple HTTP request. This forms the data access layer for the client applications.

More information will follow regarding this project and further developments on this.
Heres some general information about COM and the Internet Explorer Application COM hooks

-------------------------------------

Opening a new instance of IE in VB 6 can involve subtle problems. You can open an instance of IE in VB 6 with code that looks like this. (Remember to reference Microsoft Internet Controls in your project.)Public ie as InternetExplorer
Private Sub Command1_Click()
Set ie = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
ie.Navigate2 "http://visualbasic.about.com"
End Sub
Simple, No? But suppose you decide that you need to create a new IE window and also to make sure the second web page has completely loaded before continuing. You would need to do this if, for example, there is some critical data on the web page that you need to use later in the program.
One way that you might decide to do this is to use the Flags parameter that you can pass to IE to create the new window. You might, for example, try this code:Private Sub Command1_Click()
' Example Code Only - Do Not Use
' Create the IE window
Set ie1 = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
ie1.Visible = True
ie1.Navigate2 "http://www.about.com"
' Create the second IE window
Set ie2 = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
ie2.Visible = True
ie2.Navigate2 "http://visualbasic.about.com", 1
' Wait for the second one to complete
Dim i As Integer
i = 1
While ie2.ReadyState < READYSTATE_COMPLETE
Sleep 100
Debug.Print "ie busy " & CStr(i * 0.1) & _
" seconds with ReadyState " & ie2.ReadyState
i = i + 1
Wend
End Sub
Beware! The code loops endlessly for reasons that are detailed in the rest of this article. You can stop the program by simply closing the IE windows that are opened. This creates an error condition that lets you at least get back in control.
But ... what is that extra window with nothing in it? What's going on here?
Here's what is happening. A "1" in the flag passed to the Navigate2 method tells IE to open a new window. What the Microsoft documentation doesn't explain very well (if at all) is that the ie object in your program refers to the NEW window after that and not the old one (which is still open). Furthermore, IE simply opens an "old" IE window with no content if one isn't available. And since the object refers to the "old" IE window rather than the new one and that one never has a URL address, the ReadyState is always 0.
The correct way to code "most" of the requirements above is as follows:Private Sub Command1_Click()
' Create the IE window
Set ie1 = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
ie1.Visible = True
ie1.Navigate2 "http://www.about.com"
' Create the second IE window
ie1.Navigate2 "http://visualbasic.about.com", 1
' Wait for the second one to complete
Dim i As Integer
i = 1
While ie1.ReadyState < READYSTATE_COMPLETE
Sleep 100
Debug.Print "ie busy " & CStr(i * 0.1) & _
" seconds with ReadyState " & ie1.ReadyState
i = i + 1
Wend
End Sub
Why only "most" of the requirements? Why not "all"? Because the ReadyState of the first window is being tested, not the second. In fact, you might want to play around with this code a bit and see if you can access the second object at all. My bet is that you can't. .... Unless you use the technique described next!
There are a number of key things that need to be changed to make this work.
The ie object must be declared WithEvents to allow your code to handle the NewWindow event.
A new ie object must be created for the new window.
An event handling NewWindow event subroutine must be added to your project. This event fires before the new window is created and gives you a chance to assign a pointer to the new window object before IE creates a blank one.
The ppDisp property must be set to point to this new window.
When you do all of these things, you will have a project that looks like this one:Public WithEvents ie1 As InternetExplorer
Public ie2 As InternetExplorer
Private Declare Sub Sleep Lib "kernel32" ( _
ByVal dwMilliseconds As Long)
Private Sub Command1_Click()
Set ie1 = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
ie1.Visible = True
ie1.Navigate2 "http://www.yahoo.com"
While ie1.ReadyState < READYSTATE_COMPLETE
Sleep 100
Debug.Print "ie1 busy"
Wend
Debug.Print ie1.LocationURL & "AA"
ie1.Navigate2 "http://www.google.com", 1
While ie2.ReadyState < READYSTATE_COMPLETE
Sleep 100
Debug.Print "ie2 busy"
Wend
Debug.Print ie2.LocationURL & "BB"
End Sub
Private Sub ie1_NewWindow2(ppDisp As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
Set ie2 = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
Set ppDisp = ie2.Application
Debug.Print "NewWindow2"
End Sub

Pirate Bay awaits court verdict

2009-03-08T20:16:00.002Z

The trial of the creators of the file-sharing site The Pirate Bay has ended.

Lawyers for both the prosecution and defence have delivered their closing arguments in the high-profile copyright trial in Sweden.

Frederik Neij, Carl Lundstrom, Peter Sunde and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg - are accused of promoting copyright infringement via the hugely popular The Pirate Bay website.

The judge in the case is not expected to deliver a verdict for several weeks.

In their final statement prosecutors called for a one-year prison sentence to be imposed on the four administrators of the site.

The Pirate Bay hosts thousands of links to so-called torrent files, which allow for movies, TV programmes and applications to be shared online.

No copyright material is stored directly on The Pirate Bay servers.

"I believe that the correct punishment should be one year in prison and that is what I am requesting that the district court hand down in this case," prosecutor Haakan Roswall told the court.

Lawyers acting to defend the four men spent their last day in court showing how BitTorrent works and calling for their clients to be acquitted.

They also challenged prosecution estimates of how much the administrators of the site have made from the site.

The four men have been charged with earning at least 1.2m kronor (£92,000) by facilitating copyright infringement.

The film, music and video games industries are seeking about 117m kronor (£9m) in damages and interest for losses incurred from tens of millions of illegal downloads facilitated by the site.

After the trial closed, Ludvig Werner, chairman of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in Sweden, said: "It is important to see organisations representing rights holders from all over the world show their support in the trial of The Pirate Bay.

"It's particularly encouraging to see support coming from thousands of small, new and independent creative companies," he added.

"That's a powerful response to The Pirate Bay, whose propaganda very often misrepresents this as a battle between young and old, and between new and old techniques," he said.

URL rewrites for older ASP websites

2009-03-08T20:12:00.000Z

URL rewrites for older ASP websites

One of the biggest dilemmas on Microsoft based operating systems using Internet Information Services is URL rewrites. Even though the >NET framework does offer some tools for this for older technologies such as Active Server Pages or even HTML files there isn’t much to offer, there are third party applications that add ISAPI filters to perform rewrites much like Apache but you can perform rewrites buy using the IIS framework itself and custom error pages.

So how to perform rewrites using the error pages and Active Server Pages, well first you will need access to the custom error page settings in IIS or ask you host to change the following to map to your script that you can write explained here. Change the following error pages….

403;14 : Forbidden
404 : page not found
405 : Method not allowed
500;15 Internal Server Error

This means whenever a page cannot be found, or an error occurs (because of a global.asa entry), or even a permissions issue that it fires your custom ASP page. So now the server knows how to handle these errors lets give it the tools to do so…

Use the following below to construct a script to handle these events

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
script = request.ServerVariables.Item("SCRIPT_NAME")
err_input = request.ServerVariables.Item("QUERY_STRING")

target = "newdomain.com/"
oldurl = " olddomain.com "

fixSTR = replace(err_input, oldurl,target)
fixSTR = replace(fixSTR , "404;","")
fixSTR = replace(fixSTR , "/:80","")

if instr(fixSTR, "403;") = FALSE then
else
fixSTR = "http://www." & target
end if

Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location",fixSTR
%>

What this does is if for example you have http://www.olddomain.com/mysite.asp this would perform a 301 redirect to http://www.newdomain.com/mysite.asp.

How this is done is that IIS on error, loads the error page passing the requested resource as a query to the IIS engine to process the error, by grabbing this information, removing the error code and port and then constructing the URL with the correct domain you can build the new URL on the fly. Then by writing a new Status to the engine along with a new Header you can perform a 301 redirect. This is a cheap alternative to third party applications and a lot of server reconfiguration. Also this can be used on any IIS server without any .NET framework.

Of course you could build a case select routine to hardcode set mappings.

Repairs begin on undersea cable

2008-12-22T13:55:00.002Z

A French ship has begun repairing two undersea cables in the Mediterranean that were severed on Friday, disrupting internet and phone communications.

A robot submarine will locate the ends of the cables on the sea bed and bring them to the surface to be re-connected.

They were cut within 5 minutes of each other, possibly by a trawler net.

Egypt says it has been able to restore most of its communications by re-routing services, but other parts of the Middle East remain badly affected.

Experts have warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and that the knock-on effect could have serious repercussions on regional economies.

Lengthy process

Experts from France Telecom Marine arrived at the site of the damage to the SEA-ME-WE4 and SEA-ME-WE3 lines onboard the cable ship, Raymond Croze, at 1330 GMT on Sunday, spokesman Louis-Michel Aymard said.

They then sent a remotely-operated submarine robot called "Hector" to the sea bed to begin the search for the two ends of each line.

It is unclear how long repairs will take, as a ship could have dragged the cables several kilometres from their normal positions.

Once located, the cable ends will be brought to the surface by the robot and repairs will be carried out in a special facility on the ship - a process that could take days.

"We have to fix the cable fibre by fibre, and it's a very huge cable," Mr Aymard told the Associated Press.

France Telecom said it expected to repair SEA-ME-WE4 by 25 December and SEA-ME-WE3 by the end of the year.

A third line, operated by FLAG Telecom, was also cut and will be repaired by another ship.

In January the same line was damaged off Egypt's Mediterranean coast, severely disrupting internet and phone communications for many in the Middle East for days, although only two lines were snapped then.

A few hours before the three lines were cut, a suspected sub-sea earthquake damaged a local GO cable to Malta, severely disrupting communications to the island.

Apple to ditch Macworld gathering

2008-12-17T19:52:00.002Z

In a surprise move, Apple said it is to abandon its annual tech gathering Macworld after this January's event.

Meanwhile news that the keynote address will not be given by CEO Steve Jobs has reignited speculation about his health following cancer four years ago.

Concern was raised earlier in the year when Mr Jobs appeared at the firm's developer conference looking gaunt.

Apple spokesman Steve Dowling refused to discuss the issue and said shows like Macworld were no longer relevant.

"Apple is steadily scaling back on trade shows and in recent years is reaching more people in more ways than ever before," Mr Dowling told BBC News.

"Every week 3.5 million people visit our retail stores. And like many companies, trade shows are a minor part of how Apple reaches its customers."

Mr Dowling also said that as the company had scaled back on such shows, it had ramped up "stand-alone launch events like the September iPod launch seen by millions of people on the internet".

IDG which runs the show put a brave face on things.

"We are on track for a terrific show with strong attendance numbers and nearly 500 exhibitors showcasing their products," Paul Kent, general manager of Macworld Expo told the BBC.

"The conference and expo has thrived for 25 years due to the strong support of tens of thousands of members of the Mac community worldwide. We are committed to serving their interests," he said.

"Greatly exaggerated"

Macworld is regarded as a highlight for Apple fans with new product launches fronted by Mr Jobs.

When Mr Jobs went on stage at Apple's world wide developer conference in June, his physical appearance shocked many. He appeared thin and emaciated and speculation became rife that he had suffered a setback after a bout of pancreatic cancer in 2004.

Later in the year, he joked about it on stage in San Francisco when he launched the new range of iPods. At one point in his demonstration he appeared in front of a giant screen that displayed the words "the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated".

This was in reference to an obituary that had been mistakenly published.

But analysts are again pointing to the possibility that Mr Jobs's health is an issue.

"I think Steve's health is a factor," analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray told MarketWatch.

"I think it means there's a change of power at Apple... Steve Jobs is playing less of a role. And that is not up for debate.

"Apple could have dismissed a lot of rumours by having him give the final keynote and they opted not to."

The keynote will be presented by Phillip Schiller who is Apple's senior vice-president of worldwide product marketing.

Falling share price

It has not been a good week for Apple.

Earlier Goldman Sachs analyst David Bailey downgraded the stock, cut his estimate for Apple's 2009 profit and warned "some nicks have started to emerge".

Mr Bailey pointed out that the first two quarters of next year would be tough for the company with deteriorating consumer demand.

"Shipments of MacBooks, iPod nanos and iPhone were all slightly lower than what was expected going into the [December] quarter," he wrote in a note to clients.

However he said Apple's ability to innovate would keep it ahead of the competition.

Sales of Macs in US stores last month fell 1% from a year ago, while industry-wide PC sales rose 2%, according to research firm NPD Group Inc which tracks retail sales.

Shares of Apple fell just over 5% in after hours trading on the news of the Macworld announcement to close at more than $99.444 (£58).

Yahoo throws down data gauntlet

2008-12-17T14:49:00.002Z

Search engine Yahoo is to cut the time it stores personal data from 13 months to three.

It is hoping its decision will provide a benchmark for industry. Currently Google stores data for nine months and Microsoft for six months.

International data protection officials have been urging firms to do more to protect the data of users.

Privacy advocates have welcomed the move and challenged rivals to go even further.

"I would challenge industry to move to 30 days across the board. People should demand that their information is expunged as rapidly as possible," said Simon Davies, head of Privacy International.

Business needs

A recent rash of data leaks has left users concerned and organisations embarrassed, he said.

"The less time data is online means less risk that rogue companies can establish dangerously comprehensive profiles on users," he added.

Yahoo said its decision to cut the time it stores information gathered from web surfing came about following a "review of its data practices".

"This policy represents Yahoo's assessment of the minimum amount of time we need to retain data to respond to the needs of our business while deepening our trusted relationship with users," said Anne Toth, Yahoo's head of privacy.

As well as anonymising user log data, the policy will also apply to page views, page clicks and ad views and clicks.

But the search giant has reserved the right to keep data for up to six months if fraud or system security are involved.

Privacy campaigners have argued that firms are currently keeping data unnecessarily. Mr Davies is sceptical about what he described as "mixed messages" from industry.

"Only last year, firms were saying that they couldn't go below 15 months but the logic of what Yahoo has done suggests there is no reason why they can't go even lower," he said.

A Windows cluster claims number 10 of the world's most powerful supercomputers!

2008-12-16T21:18:00.000Z

The ego cluster is 1950 blades each with 16 cores and 64 GB memory. 4xDDR IB and 1GB/s GigE networks. Every blade is based on a TYAN motherboard with 4 sockets and AMD Opteron 8347 HE (Barcelona b3) CPUs cadenced at 1.9 GHz (nope, not the fastest by any means). Dawning, AMD, and Mellanox. Fat boxes, fat pipes, thick glue. Performance tuning. LINPACK benchmark. Fingers crossed. The next TOP500 list comes out at SC08 in Austin.

The TOP500 List was created by a wise old group of elders, bent and gnomish, with hooded eyes and long white beards. Ahem, you see, it was these Founding Fathers of the Top500 List who decided that LINPACK would be the best way to rank supercomputers. Or else it was an influential user base who championed the LINPACK test through its early days, and convinced everyone else to accept it as a de facto standard. Either way, LINPACK performance numbers remain relevant and you can get them on most large to medium-sized systems. However, and yet, please-do-keep-in-mind, HPC applications show much more complex behavior than LINPACK, so the benchmark doesn’t give such a great indication of real-world performance. That’s right. . .

It’s like engine torque on a dynamometer. The bench test will almost always score higher than your midnight run down Main Street. Or else it’s like the small print disclaimer for an attention deficit drug:

*the result of the LINPACK test is not intended to reflect the overall performance of a system; instead, it provides a measure of the performance of a dedicated system for solving a specific set of linear equations. Since the LINPACK problem is very regular, the performance achieved is quite high; the performance numbers give a good indication of peak performance and provide an idea of how much floating-point performance is theoretically possible from a given system.

But LINPACK is solid, LINPACK is reliable, LINPACK is deserving of some serious reverence. The LINPACK benchmark gives you that stable and enduring historical yardstick which has always eluded Major League Baseball. A year ago we did a Top500 run on our internal Rainier cluster, and reached 11.75Tflops. One short year ago. Today the Dawning cluster reached 180.6Tflops. More than 15x higher. And the judges at Top500 have LINPACK to make sure everyone takes their home run swings on the same playing field. At SC08 we’ll see how we’ve done against history. If you can't make it to Austin, check out the cool video, https://www.yousendit.com/download/Y2o4WGJIcVhRWUtGa1E9PQ

__________________________________________________________________________________

Heard about The Lizard? What makes The Li (npack Tuning Wi) zard so special is that it’s going public. Not right away, not immediately, but just as soon as Frank gets it tweaked and polished. The Lizard automates a good many of the procedures needed for a Top500 run, to include validating the cluster and optimizing for LINPACK. Pretty soon anyone (we-ell, any slick IT Pro with too many MCSE or MCSA certifications on their Wall of Fame) will be able to benchmark a cluster.

A shameless product plug, sure. But how’s it any different than an NBA point guard snapping out his jersey number after lofting up the fast break oop for a tomahawk dunk? We’re in the game, we’re playing team ball, we’re loving our work.

For now the Lizard still takes a backseat to the traditional methods of manual tuning, but an early test adopter in the US, R-Systems, has been making some bold predictions: "The Lizard is a thing of beauty. It incorporates the undocumented wisdom of Linpack experts to "dial in" clusters and help validate them. I expect the efficiency ratings on the Top500 list will look very good for the Windows HPC 2008 systems."

HPC is and always will be rocket science. Just ask AI Solutions, a little mission design outfit in Maryland: “NASA wanted us to analyze the decay rate of debris from a destroyed Chinese weather satellite, and its impact on NASA spacecraft over the next 20 years. Without supercomputers we’d have been waiting for results for a month or more, but with Windows HPC Server 2008 we completed the analysis in three days.”

HPC is and always will be pushing boundaries. EVE Online is the world’s largest Massively Multiplayer Online Game, hosting 50,000 users in a single environment. Not sure there’s any other MMOG out there that can do that, but CCP Games wants to go farther still. They’re using Windows HPC to take virtual worlds into the next century now.

This year our Many Faces of Go won the 2008 Computer Games in China, beating the champ, even though Mogo had more processing power. Maybe it was all due to Surface. Picture it: those shiny stones on a touch screen checkerboard of 19x19 squares, with 200 or so moves per position as opposed to the 35 legal moves in chess. Go experts were consulted in the creation of the UI and 100s of details were analyzed to ensure it remained true to the game’s long tradition, but you really don’t need a Surface box. Any standard Go frontend that speaks Go Text Protocol can be used to play Go against the HPC cluster. WHPC users can visit Smart-Games’ website and download the parallel version of the game and run it on their cluster for diagnostic purposes or for just pure fun! (Hmmm, sounds familiar, wasn’t that how LINPACK got started?)

____________________________________________________________________________________

All right, let’s talk business, commercial users, economic news you can use. Let’s talk Dell. Drop in the box. Preconfigured. Factory pre-installed Windows HPC Server 2008 and Dell PowerEdge nodes, just in time for Thanksgiving. Raise a glass. Say no more. Moment of silence.

And how about Mathworks? Those preinstalled Dell clusters come with install instructions for MATLAB. Life just got better for umpteen million HPC users in academia and government.

Ansys optimizes their software for HPC. They’ve gotten serious performance gains on Windows HPC Server 2008, they’re giving their customers more capacity and faster turnaround time, but what they’re really eyeballing are new ways to help engineers work with ever-increasing data sets --which is exactly the same problem facing so many big organizations: the data deluge is a tidal wave already.

Cray’s CX1, tell me you’ve seen it. Like it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, or maybe Mies Van Der Rohe, less is more, form follows function, that is one gorgeous desk side cluster. And Cray’s giving away a CX1 in their sweepstakes with us, pay attention, it ends Jan 21st, eleven days before the Super Bowl.

IBM is offering test drives. They’re running Windows HPC Server 2008 on their global network of on-demand supercomputing centers. Log in, buckle up, take a ride in a supercomputer (which reminds me, anyone paying attention to the news out of Ferrari these days?). “IBM’s On Demand Centers are an effective way for new users to tap into the power of supercomputers,” said Steve Remondi, CEO of Exa Corp., Burlington, Mass. “Many of our customers have never used supercomputers before, but they immediately realize that high-performance computing offers a competitive edge.”

ISVs: streamline your HPC development and deployment. HP, Dell, Cray, and Viglen all have a variety of discounted hardware, as well as Windows HPC server 2008 certification programs. Test your server apps on optimized clusters, let those big guys do the heavy lifting, broaden your reach and scale.

HPC is and always will be the next big thing. Or so the old joke says. From the days of vector processing and symmetric multiprocessors and “MPP” offerings, HPC has been a fascinating technology that never quite translated outside the confines of top-level science, engineering, and research. The environment was complex, parallel programming was difficult, the eco-system was highly fragmented. But all that’s changing fast. If you want a preview of coming attractions, a good sneak peek at the future, take a look at Windows HPC Server 2008.

Alternative Internet Browser Comparison for Vista

2008-12-16T21:06:00.001Z

I’m certainly not a big fan of change, but there comes a time when you might grow tired of your current internet browser, Internet Explorer, and perhaps you might want to consider what else is available. There are an absolute ton of internet browsers available now and, while each and every one fundamentally achieves the same goal of allowing you to easily surf the internet, you will find that each and every one of the major internet browser’s functionality is usually drastically different and offers a variety of different features that may not be available in certain others. This article will be highlighting and focusing on the following web browsers: Firefox, Safari, Opera and Maxthon.

Firefox

“The award-winning Web browser is now even faster, more secure, and fully customizable to suit your online life. With Firefox 2, we’ve added powerful new features that make your online experience even better.”

Firefox is definitely up there as being one of my all-time favorite internet browsers of all time and the developers continue to add fantastic features to an already great package. Security issues are also hastily rectified should they arise.

Main Features: Improved Tabbed Browsing, Spell Checking, Search Suggestions, Session Restore, Web Feeds (RSS), Live Titles, Integrated Search, Live Bookmarks, Pop-up Blocker, Phishing Protection, Open Source, Automated Update, Protection from Spyware and Search Engine Manager.

Tagline: “The Firefox Web Browser is the faster, more secure, and fully customizable way to surf the web.”

Link: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

Safari

“Experience the web, Apple style, with Safari: the fastest, easiest-to-use, web browser in the world. With its simple, elegant interface, Safari gets out of your way and lets you enjoy the web — up to 2 times fast than Internet Explorer.”

Main Features: Blazing Performance, Elegant User Interface, Easy Bookmarks, Pop-up Blocking, Inline Find, Tabbed Browsing, SnapBack, Forms AutoFill, Built-in RSS, Resizable Text Areas, Private Browsing and Security.

Tagline: “Experience the web, Apple style, with Safari: the fastest, easiest-to-use web browser in the world”

Link: http://www.apple.com/safari/

Opera

“Why Opera? Safe, secure, powerful and fully customizable, the Opera Web browser is faster and more secure than other browsers available on the market. Opera delivers robust security and a far-richer feature set than any other Web browser and it’s free.

Opera is the Web pioneer that delivered tabbed browsing in 2000, and Opera 9.2 features lots of other great tricks for quick navigation, including Speed Dial, a quick way to put all of your favorite daily sites at your fingertips. You can also take, save and trade Notes attached to any Web site while browsing, or Create Search shortcuts from any search field on the Web. Opera 9.25 is super fast and free, secure and stable, and offers lots of great tools for Web Developers.”

Main Features: Transfer manager, Tabbed browsing, Password manager, Integrated search, Mouse gestures, Fast Forward, Notes, Keyboard Shortcuts, Full-screen mode, Speed Dial™, Fraud protection, Integrated BitTorrent, Widgets Support and Thumbnail Preview.

Tagline: “The award-winning Opera Web browser The coolest, fastest, and most secure free Web browser available.”>

Link: http://www.opera.com/

Maxthon

“Maxthon Browser is a powerful tabbed browser built for all users. Besides basic browsing functionality, Maxthon Browser provides a rich set of features to improve your surfing experience.”

Main Features Tabbed Browsing, Anti-Freeze, Mouse Gestures, Super Drag&Drop, Maxthon Smart Acceleration, Magic Fill, Online Favorites Service, Feed Reader, Super Proxy, URL Alias, Ad Hunter and Screen Capture.

Tagline: “Tabbed environment with features such as extendible multi-language support, pop-up filter, plug-ins, skin support. Formerly MyIE2.”

Link: http://www.maxthon.com/

Go Daddy Plans $2M Company Party

2008-12-16T12:11:00.000Z

At a time when many companies are scaling back, annual holiday parties and cash bonuses may be on the chopping block this year, however, Go Daddy (www.godaddy.com) is throwing its biggest party ever this Saturday to reward its employees, who have
According to Go Daddy's announcement this week, the Arizona-based company is planning on spending $2 million on this year's holiday party, which like last year, will be held at Chase Field in downtown Phoenix.

This year, however, the company will fly in all of its out-of-state employees and their guests, chauffeuring them from the airport and putting them up in a brand new hotel. Almost 4,000 guests are expected, attending from as far away as Washington, D.C.

"Someone asked me, why spend all the money on such a spectacular, expensive party...I say, why not? We've had our best year ever as a company and this achievement is because of our employees," Go Daddy chief executive officer and founder Bob Parsons said in a statement. "I learned a long time ago, if you treat your people right, the rest takes care of itself."
From its inception, Go Daddy has been setting high standards for its employees, known for rewarding their effort by paying top performers' mortgages for a year and giving away other incentives such as cars, cash and exotic vacations, for which it also foots the bill on taxes associated with the prizes.

Likewise, Go Daddy has increased its corporate donations, which it expects to top its philanthropic works total from last year, with 2008 contributions of more than $1.65 million. Its advertising budget has also remained healthy, having just announced last week it would advertise in the Super Bowl for its fifth consecutive year.

As many companies slash jobs, Go Daddy has been expanding its workforce, and it expects to be honored on the annual "Best Places to Work" list for the fifth consecutive year.

"So why shouldn't we celebrate a little this year?" Parsons said. "We have a 45 percent market share of new domain names worldwide and are growing in every area of our company. Our people deserve a party."

By David Hamilton, theWHIR.com

Serious security flaw found in IE

2008-12-16T11:57:00.000Z

Users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer are being urged by experts to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed.

The flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people's computers and steal their passwords, internet experts say.

Microsoft urged people to be vigilant while it investigated and prepared an emergency patch to resolve it.
Internet Explorer is used by the vast majority of the world's computer users.

"Microsoft is continuing its investigation of public reports of attacks against a new vulnerability in Internet Explorer," said the firm in a security advisory alert about the flaw.

Microsoft says it has detected attacks against IE 7.0 but said the "underlying vulnerability" was present in all versions of the browser.

Other browsers, such as Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, are not vulnerable to the flaw Microsoft has identified.
As many as 10,000 websites have been compromised since last week to take advantage of the security flaw, said antivirus software maker Trend Micro.

The websites have been mostly serving up programs that steal computer game passwords, but the flaw could be "adopted by more financially motivated criminals", a Trend Micro security researcher said on Monday.
Richard Cox, chief information officer of anti-spam body The Spamhaus Project and an expert on privacy and cyber security, echoed Trend Micro's warning.

"It won't be long before someone reverse engineers this exploit for more fraudulent purposes. Trend Mico's advice [of switching to an alternative web browser] is very sensible," he said.

PC Pro magazine's security editor, Darien Graham-Smith, said that there was a virtual arms race going on, with hackers always on the look out for new vulnerabilities.

"The message needs to get out that this malicious code can be planted on any web site, so simple careful browsing isn't enough."

"It's a shame Microsoft have not been able to fix this more quickly, but letting people know about this flaw was the right thing to do. If you keep flaws like this quiet, people are put at risk without knowing it."

"Every browser is susceptible to vulnerabilities from time to time. It's fine to say 'don't use Internet Explorer' for now, but other browsers may well find themselves in a similar situation," he added.

Is MySQL's Community Eating the Company?

2008-12-16T11:52:00.000Z

Craigslist's Jeremy Zawodny reviews the progress of MySQL as a project, and discovers that through third-party forks and enhancements like Drizzle and OurDelta 'you can get a "better" MySQL than the one Sun/MySQL gives you today. For free.' Is this a good thing? On one hand it demonstrates the strong community around MySQL, but on the other, it could make it harder for Sun to fund core development on MySQL by diverting potential revenue from the core database project. Is this the fate of successful open-source companies? To become so successful as a community that they can't eke out a return as a company? If so, could anyone blame MySQL/Sun for creating its own proprietary fork in order to afford further core development?

Business Email Hosting Services

2008-06-18T20:19:00.000+01:00

Business Email Hosting Services

A business email service is must for the smooth functioning of every business. Opening a free email account provided by an Internet service provider will not suffice to manage the spate of mail, files, task lists, calendar, and contact information generated for a large organisation. Large organisations require an email account facility to keep a constant watch over the activities of their employees and maintain close coordination between them. The best solution for this is to have a seamless e-mail server that can manage your business email system effectively.

Businesses that wish to run their own email servers will need to buy an email system. This in turn creates the need to employ professionals who can not only run the system but also administer it on regular intervals. This requires a great deal of effort and capital investment hence it would be better to seek the help of reliable e-mail hosting professionals who can provide the desired business email service. Trained professionals will keep watch on the latest trends and bring about the necessary changes in line with the latest technology. A well-hosted email business account enables you to focus your attention on the important aspects of your business rather than concentrating on maintaining the expensive in-house business email system.

A Business email service provides you a competitive edge in terms of scalability. It reinforces the ability of the business to survive and prosper. There are plenty of business email providers in the market so deciding which one to choose from can be a daunting task.

Angel Media Systems enjoys high credibility in the business email market due to their excellent business services. We at Angel Media Systems provide our customers with the highest degree of technical support and lay great emphasis on the convenience of our clients. We specialise in supplying business class services without charging the earth. With the business messaging services that we offer, you can access your business email account from various access points including the web and your phone, with ease. We also supply a custom webmail feature so that you can access your important business mails from anywhere securely. For more information on server hosting in the UK and our business email service, go to our website at www.angel-media.net.

Mailshot 05/05/2008 : Angel Media Referral Program

2008-05-06T23:39:00.000+01:00

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You can earn money by referring visitors to our website, You can do this by selecting one of our banners and placing it on your website, its that easy. Your assigned a unique affiliate code and using this code we can track visitors that you refer. Also we can track conversions from these Referrals and this means money for you. We offer a generous 20% on all conversions.

Also we don't expect you to take our word for it, we offer a control panel where you can login and see how many visitors you have passed to us and how many of these visitors have converted to sales or leads. Use the navigation to the left to view the banners on offer for particular services from us. To find out more go to http://www.angel-media.net/affiliates

How does it work ?

When using our Referral scheme all banners include a unique affiliate code. All the banners are served up from our servers, using the request URL details and the code we know where the banner has been served and what your affiliate code is. When this banner has been clicked we log the click and the visitor for 30 days using a tracking cookie.

If that person comes back and buys within the 30 days they are recorded as a conversion origination from you and you get paid 20% of their order. Unlike most that just log the affiliate code we log the URL serving the banner and various other details. This means that we can provide you with detailed information within your control panel helping you to make this work well for you.

What if the visitor does not have cookies enabled? Well, most affiliate networks will tell you that they cannot track the person. That's why we serve the banners, we can log the URL that the request came from tracking it back to yourself, so that you don't miss out on that all important conversion.

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ASP Tutorials - VBScript and ASP Applications

2008-03-27T21:33:00.000Z

Although many of us are now looking towards .NET technologies there is still worth in Classic ASP and Classic based VB applications. Moving forward in the industry using .NET technologies makes sense but unfortunately it hasn't been around forever and there is still alot of CLassic ASP applications out there and Classic VB applications. The worth of VBScript for simple server side manipulation of file structures and Application manipulation are still apparent and in use today.

Over the years in Senior developer positions and Network Operations often working within architecture planning and implementations i have often hit walls that i have managed to overcome using VBScript and good old Command line hooks. Working for companies that were modelled around SAAS (Software as a service) the need for hardware and cluster management was apparent. Using VBScript to manipulate permissions to lock down possible exploits came in very handy, also using VBScript for provisioning of services and automated tasks simplified alot of the hard manual labour, even virus scanning and network packet monitoring using VB had its uses.

Still it all sounds good but it sounds old hat and why would you want to do that?Well..... still some of the largest suppliers within the UK of ecommerce use the legacy VBScript automation written by our systems staff and its proven as easy to maintain and easy to upgrade. Server provisioning is done completey within scheduled VB hooks using CLI shells to automate tasks. Of course we cant mention names but its safe to say that one example is the largest UK based hosted ecommerce provider and before you think it its not Actinic its bigger! Another being logistics management systems and payment gateways.

So give me some examples if its so good i hear you cry....Ok... lets take a hypothetical situation. Lets say i have 2 servers, i want to mirror the entire file structure by mapping a drive copying the entire contents, oh and lets not forget i don't want to set the permissions manually as its used for a webservice, But to be more secure i want to map the drive, copy, then drop the connection. Lets look at an example and then i will explain.

' Section A
strDriveLetter = "Z:"
strRemotePath = \\SLAVESERVER\d$
strUser = "atempadmin"strPassword = "password"strProfile = "false"

' Section B
set objShell = wscript.createObject("wscript.shell")
Set objNetwork = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Network") objNetwork.MapNetworkDrive strDriveLetter, strRemotePath, _strProfile, strUser, strPassword
path1 = "D:\"
path2 = "Z:\"

' Section C
set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
set tfile = fso.CreateTextFile(path1 & "\lastdone.txt")
tfile.WriteLine(now())

' Section D
iReturn = objShell.Run("cmd.exe /C xcopy " & path1 & " " & path2 & " /e /Y /F /O /EXCLUDE:D:\web\serverside\MyExcludes.txt", 1, TRUE)
iReturn = objShell.Run("cmd.exe /C xcopy " & path2 & " " & path1 & " /e /Y /F /O /EXCLUDE:D:\web\serverside\MyExcludes.txt", 1, FALSE)

Okay so what does it do?
The above script would be run on the server to be mirrored. I have split the script into sections A through D and i will explain each section and what is does. IN this eaxmple xcopy was used as its a stock tools supplied by any version of DOS, its a powerful tool and has the ability to copy ACL infomation saving the use of other CMD tools such as CACLS. So section A this holds the authentication information required to open a mapped drive using the WScript.Network method.

Section B, well this actually maps the drive using the details in section A. Also it sets up the shell object to run the CLI for the xcopy coming later in the script. When the script executes it will execute using a user that is the member of the system group, this will allow pretty much any CLI command to execute without permission issues. Also i have used this section to define the two paths, in this case the two drive letters.

Section C, I wanted to be able to create a simple 1 line log saying when the last sync occured so this section basically creates a filesystem object and writes a line with a date/time. I can then recall this later if i wanted with an ASP file etc to pull back the value contained.

Finally Section D, this copies everything, however you will see 2 xcopy commands, this copies everything from the master to the slave, then it copies back incase theres anything new on the slave so that it is held on the master. As the initial copy goes master to slave then anything that has been updated on the slave that should not have been will simply be overwritten. Xcopy is a great command and well worth looking up. Theres also an excludes files that tells xcopy to ignore certain files.

So theres one example, when we develop an application its not just about writing a system that does a job. We write systems that you can move from one system to another but also systems that get the most out of the enviroment that they are hosted or managed on. Why have a system and a systems administrator. It makes more sense to have a system that manages itself as much as possible. Information on systems development can be found at www.angel-media.net

Mailshot 25/02/2008 : New Look Angel Media Systems

2008-03-27T18:32:00.000Z

New look, new services.....

Angel media has undergone a face lift to celebrate its first year and to reflect its new growing look. Also as part of this first aniversary we have reshaped and refined our services.

Our hosting packages are still some of the lowest priced packages in the UK for Windows Hosting and Fully Managed Windows dedicated servers. Visitors can benefit from a FREE keyword ranking analysis and ongoing Rank reporting services with any Angel Media Systems account.

So whats new with Angel Media Systems

Streamlined Account Management, Pay invoices easily online.
Streamlined Technical Control Panel, Control all your services instantly online.
Improved Keyword Analysis Tools, Site authentication makes sure your competitors don't analyse your site!
Improved Support Channels, Live Assistant added and Skype support.
Microsoft Focused Services, Microsoft Partners and Certified.

Come along to http://www.angel-media.net/ to find out more about our hosting services and analysis services.

The full HTML email can be seen at http://www.angel-media.net/HTML/7.html

Or accessable via the sitemap at http://www.angel-media.net/sitemap.asp

Mail Shot 25/03/2008 : Still amonst the cheapest for Business .....

2008-03-27T18:27:00.000Z

Angel Media Systems offer a range of hosting packages to suit your choice and business needs. The packages available don't just cover a small business needs they allow the flexibility to gow as your needs do. The extensive business hosting packages are not only feature rich but are also easily affordable to all businesses. Benefit from our experience offering business hosting packages to small and large businesses alike.

Most businesses now have a strong online presence, as a result many use PPC or paid submissions and therefore need safe reliable hosting and guarantees of service. Angel Media Systems delivers in both of these by offering a full SLA guaranting a 99% uptime or a refund. Being one of the UK’s most cost effective business hosting providers we enable you to grow your business with minimal risk and investment. This means you will be at a benefiting end and your business will prosper.

We aim to offer a solution to SME and Large Businesses enabling growth and success through little investment. Business hosting package includes:

30 POP mailboxes allowing full forwarding and MRA (Multiple Routing Addresses).
Windows Shared Hosting with 750mb web space.
Unlimited Bandwidth.
Control Panel access with web statistics, so you can see how your website id perfoming, also logfile access.
1 MySQL database
ODBC support
Perl Scripting Support
PHP 5 Scripting Support
ASP Scripting Support
ASP.NET 2.0 Scripting Support
Webmail Access

All these features can be expanded should more be needed at a pay per item bases.

In addition to the above, Angel Media Systems also incorporates a full backup regime of all yoru important files. Our servers are tuned to allow the best service available to your website and all MS SQL and MySQL database engines are tuned to allow a seemless uninterupted service. Our backup of our business hosting packages also incorporate a database backup and off site backup of your files and data.

Whether it be reliable business hosting or dedicated server hosting then Angel Media Systems is the best place. As we offer all these features in an affordable way.

This full HTML email can be seen at http://www.angel-media.net/HTML/9.html
Also all other HTML mails sent on our newsletters can be found at http://www.angel-media.net/sitemap.asp

Business Class Dedicated Servers

2008-03-18T22:24:00.000Z

Are you not getting the performance that you thought you would from a shared hosting package? Then maybe it's time to go for dedicated server hosting. With a dedicated server you don't share your resources with anyone else. The server is solely used by you making performance better and more secure.

Dedicated server hosting usually ensures that all the server resources such as processing power, disk space and memory is entirely devoted to your application which can often improve performance for websites that require more resources such as complex systems or high stress systems. Also with a dedicated server you can tailor the hardware to fit your needs givinh you greater control over your systems.

Moreover dedicated server hosting is also an ideal and economical choice if you require larger disk space or larger package capacity than our shared hosting plans or plan to resell space on the appliance. With root access and a free rein to configure the server thsi entitles you to expand at your own rate. We also offer fully managed dedciated servers so you dont need to worry about the configuration.

Very few know that a dedicated server could also be a computer that manages printer resources. However, not all servers are dedicated as in some networks, it is possible for a computer to act as a server and perform other functions as well. Furthermore, dedicated server hosting is typically a rented service. In this the user rents the server, software and an internet connection from the web host, keeping cost low and minimising comittment..

Angel Media System ’s dedicated server hosting give businesses the ultimate in choice and performance, also reliability as a result of being backed by giants Pipex.

Furthermore, Angel Media Systems provides standard, together with full management service including patching and backup up to application level, servers are hardware mirrored so in case of a disaster recovery situation we can replace faulty hardware immediately, not like we expect fault but we always plan for the worst should it happen. Thus, we can say that having dedicated server hosting from Angel Media Systems is the wise and safe choice. Dedicated server hosting includes:

100GB web space
Unlimited bandwidth traffic
Hi spec Dell servers
2 Static IP addresses
Enterprise level fire walling
DDOS protection
Mirrored Hardware
Windows 2003 Server Web edition
MS SQL 2000 server install optional
MySQL server install optional
PHP and ActivPerl installed

For more information on dedicated server hosting and shared windows hosting please visit http://www.angel-media.net/

Dedicated Servers

2008-03-18T00:03:00.000Z

Unhappy with the level of service provided by your current hosting company and looking for a better option; then Angel Media Systems is the answer. Angel Media Systems provides dedicated server hosting which gives your business a cutting edge and is highly reliable. Their dedicated hosting is performance based and has set high standards in the hosting field. Also Angel Medias network is backed by giants Pipex.

Angel Media System's hosting dedicated services are all powered by state of the art Dell hardware and Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 64 Bit Edition. It is the one stop shop for all your dedicated server hosting needs, this makes sure that you get most approporiate hosting services for your business requirements in an affordable manner. The main highlight of Angel Media Systems is that it operates in a highly secured and redundant hosting network with mirrored hardware.

The Angel Media Systems network is fully mirrored with hot spare chassis ready to swap out in the event of hardware failure. This ultimately ensures that your hosting applications are fully optimised and operate non-stop around the clock.

Angel Media Systems ’s dedicated server hosting is accompanied with Dell poweredge servers as standard and RAID 5 configurations as standard. This means full management service including patching and backup up to application level. Whilst resilient hardware and reduntant PSU and APC ata hardware level.

In addition, Angel Media Systems offers full root access to any dedicated servers subject to SLA adjustments. Angel Media Systems ’s dedicated server hosting is equipped with features such as:

Unlimited bandwidth included

Hardware firewall included

Carrier Class Datasuite backed by Pipex

2 Static IP addresses

Backed by an SLA

Windows 2003 Web Edition

DNS server included

FTP server included

MySQL included

SQL Server 2000 included

POP3, & SMTP included (Mailenable Install)

Daily Backup

Fully Managed and monitored

All these features are teamed with benefits such as:

Considerable reduction in your IT maintenance and support costs

Significant increase in the performance and availability of your web site application

A reduction in your business traveling costs

Reduce your business risks by outsourcing your IT service infrastructure to us

We are experts at running 24x7 systems and will help increase your reliability and scalability.

Experienced Microsoft Experts

Also for shared Hosting and DNS services including web and application development visit http://www.angel-media.net.

Business Hosting Packages

2008-03-17T23:14:00.000Z

Most businesses now have a strong online presence, as a result many use PPC or paid submissions and therefore need safe reliable hosting and guarantees of service. Angel Media Systems delivers in both of these by offering a full SLA guaranting a 99% uptime or a refund. Being one of the UK’s most cost effective business hosting providers we enable you to grow your business with minimal risk and investment. This means you will be at a benefiting end and your business will prosper.

We aim to offer a solution to SME and Large Businesses enabling growth and success through little investment. Business hosting package includes:

30 POP mailboxes allowing full forwarding and MRA (Multiple Routing Addresses).

Windows Shared Hosting with 750mb web space.

Unlimited Bandwidth.

Control Panel access with web statistics, so you can see how your website id perfoming, also logfile access.

1 MySQL database

ODBC support

Perl Scripting Support

PHP Scripting Support

ASP SCripting Support

ASP.NET 2.0 Scripting Support

Webmail Access

All these features can be expanded shoudl more be needed at a pay per item bases.

In addition to the above, Angel Media Systems also incorporates a full backup regime of all yoru important files. Our servers are tuned to allow the best service available to your website and all MS SQL and MySQL database engines are tuned to allow a seemless uninterupted service. Our backup of our business hosting packages also incorporate a database backup and off site backup of your files and data.

Whether it be reliable business hosting or dedicated server hosting then Angel Media Systems is the best place. As we offer all these features in an affordable way.

Shared Windows Hosting

2008-03-17T23:10:00.000Z

Are you looking to have a shared Windows hosting package from a hosting company that provides solid trouble free hosting? Angel Media Systems has years of experience catering for SME to Large business needs. We deliver high quality shared hotsing and affordable services to host business websites in a secure and reliable environment.

Cost efficient shared hosting solutions by Angel Media Systems are delivered with a whole host of features designed to benefit the business user. Below are just some of our many features available with a shared windows hosting account from Angel Media.

Latest ASP.Net environment.

High Perfoamnce Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Frontpage if required.

Easy to use purpose built control panel for administration.

Unlimited bandwidth per month.

From 500mb to 1gb hosting packages.

Top spec Windows 2003 Mirrored Servers.

Web site backup.

FTP or Frontpage site access.

DNS, Database and email control.

PHP scripting Access.

Perl Scripting Access.

XML based API - easy integration.

Optional Comtent management systems.

Web site reporting tools and logfile access.

Optional MS SQL Databases

MySQL Databases

Angel Media's shared hosting can be divided into three types of hosting. These are Windows Starter, Windows Business Hosting accounts and Developer level Windows shared hosting accounts. You can select your type of hosting at the time of signup and you can upgrade your hosting at any time without moving your site or mail. Although Angel Media shared windows hosting packages contain many features and control options these can be purchased at very competitive prices, starting from just £4.99 per month with free setup.

Choosing shared hosting services from Angel Media Systems means you are choosing a flexible that supports ASP, PHP and Perl for your websites and offer MS SQL database hosting and MySQL Database hosting. As well as all this we also offer a purpose built control panel for Windows configuration changes and network backed ny giants Pipex.

Customer service is important to us and we deal with every request personally and you can always talk to a customer service advisor in the UK. All customer and technical staff have full access to all hardware ensuring that problems can be resolved immediately during your call. We dont believe in making you work, we are here to offer a service http://angel-media.net.

Website Design and Development Commissions

2008-03-17T23:09:00.000Z

The developers and webdesigners of Angel Media Systems have developed many bespoke solutions for small to medium enterprises over the many of operation. Also colaboration on Payment integration and third party API development integration has been comissioned through Angel Media Systems in the past. API development of Google Checkout for well known ecommerce systems have been amonst these comissions. We pride ourselves on the flexibility of our developments and the standards of our comissions and customer experince.

Most of our developments have been designed in PHP and ASP utilising database technologies such as MS SQL and MySQL. But it doesnt end there, we have been comissioned to develop custom CRM systems and Server cluster automation for both Linux based architecture and Windows based architecture. All our website design services and bespoke development comissions are individually costed by one of our experinced developers and marketting representitives.

To find out more about website design and bespoke application development solutions visit http://www.angel-media.net

Wondering how do i host my website even if Angel Media Systems designs the website, well for any comission if required we will cost in SEO submission and hosting, this will be on a standard Business Hosting Package, so what else will you get when you recieve your costed hosting package,

Latest ASP.Net environment.

High Perfoamnce Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Frontpage if required.

Easy to use purpose built control panel for administration.

Unlimited bandwidth per month.

From 500mb to 1gb hosting packages.

Top spec Windows 2003 Mirrored Servers.

Web site backup.

FTP or Frontpage site access.

DNS, Database and email control.

PHP scripting Access.

Perl Scripting Access.

XML based API - easy integration.

Optional Comtent management systems.

Web site reporting tools and logfile access.

Optional MS SQL Databases
MySQL Databases