Do they use secured communication? This is the most obvious question one would ask when we have send password to a site or an applicaiton. Without having a secured communication there is no point in authenticating ourself by supplying a password as this information can be taken by anyone while it is transmitted and tamper it.

To my surprise the IRC network is not secure, that means whatever we send including password is send as plain text and can be seen (and changed) by anyone who is capable of doing that. So, it is better not to use IRC for sensitive informaton and use a password that is different from other passwords. It is not a flaw or issue with IRC, it is because of the purpose and principle of IRC. IRC network is not secure and that is how it is and designed to be.

There are works going on to improve this by introducing SSL to make it secure. Freenode has an IRC server which uses SSL with the URL – testnet.freenode.net. Currently they are in testing phase and they need community support to test these new servers. It is a great chance to make IRC secure and give something back to the community.

I am using both windows and ubuntu and use firefox on both of them. The latest version of FireFox (from now on called FF) is available for windows immediately but still it takes time to be available for ubuntu. There are a couple of repositories available but they install a re-branded version of FF which I don’t like and which might cause issues with websites which uses the “user-agent” header.

There is a simple and easy option available to install the latest FF or any software from Mozilla on ubuntu. There is a script available at – http://sourceforge.net/projects/ubuntuzilla/files/ as deb. Install this application.

We could run the script after installation by running the command

sudo /usr/local/bin/ubuntuzilla.py

It will prompt a couple of questions for selecting locale and profile backup and will install the latest version of FF

Just restart the system and we could see that this has taken effect by clicking the browser icon on the GNOME panel, we get the latest version of FF running on ubuntu.

I recently installed opera 10.10 on ubuntu intrepid. I downloaded a binary from opera download site and the installation was smooth. I fired opera and started playing with it for sometime, it is extremely fast and the tabbed browsing was more comfortable than my firefox3.1. But there was one issue that makes it a pain using opera , the fonts doesn’t look good and we soon feel that when we read through some long text.

The issue with opera is that it doesn’t take its font configurations from GNOME. so, its fonts looks different with no sub-pixel smoothing and hinting. I went through the forums and found a solution to this.

We have to enable full-hinting and sub-pixel smoothing. This can be done by typing the following commends in the terminal as root or using sudo.

1. Enable full-hinting

cd /etc/fonts/conf.d
sudo rm 10-hinting-medium.conf
sudo ln -s ../conf.avail/10-hinting-full.conf

2. Enable sub-pixel smoothing

sudo rm 10-no-sub-pixel.conf

We are done. Restart opera and see that the font looking.

In this post let me go through the process of creating a web service client in java on ubuntu.

We need to have the apis for programming web services. Java provides a api called JAX-WS which is version 2 of the java web services api the previous version being JAX-RPC. JAX-WS comes a part of JDK6.0 and above. If you are using jdk5 then we need to download the JAX-WS web-service apis. JAX-WS is developed as a separate project called Metro and the latest version can be downloaded from the Metro project site – https://jax-ws.dev.java.net/. you can follow the instructions on the site for installing it.
Once installed it can be checked by tying wsimport at the terminal. It should give an output which looks like this


Usage: wsimport [options]


where [options] include:
-b specify jaxws/jaxb binding files or additional schemas
(Each must have its own -b)
-B Pass this option to JAXB schema compiler
-catalog specify catalog file to resolve external entity references
supports TR9401, XCatalog, and OASIS XML Catalog format.
-d specify where to place generated output files
-extension allow vendor extensions - functionality not specified
by the specification. Use of extensions may
result in applications that are not portable or
may not interoperate with other implementations
-help display help
-httpproxy:: specify a HTTP proxy server (port defaults to 8080)
-keep keep generated files
-p specifies the target package
-quiet suppress wsimport output
-s specify where to place generated source files
-target generate code as per the given JAXWS specification version.
version 2.0 will generate compliant code for JAXWS 2.0 spec.
-verbose output messages about what the compiler is doing
-version print version information
-wsdllocation @WebServiceClient.wsdlLocation value


Examples:
wsimport stock.wsdl -b stock.xml -b stock.xjb
wsimport -d generated http://example.org/stock?wsdl

If you get an output like this then we are done with the installation. we can proceed to the next step. Otherwise refer tot he metro site for installing this. For people using jdk6 everything is set by default and they can verify their installation by typing the above command in a terminal
Now we will find a site which provides free web service. I found a site http://www.webservicex.net/ which hosts lot of free web services organized into different categories. For this example lets us take a service which is called WHOIS web service which is available in the utilities section. The url for this is – http://www.webservicex.net/WCF/ServiceDetails.aspx?SID=51

Now we have to get the WSDL for this web service and compile it using the wsimport utility to get the start-up code for our web service.
To do this open a terminal and type

here the -keep tells the command to keep the generated java files and the -d is used to specify the output directory. we would get a output like this


parsing WSDL...


[WARNING] Ignoring SOAP port "whoisSoap12": it uses non-standard SOAP 1.2 binding.
You must specify the "-extension" option to use this binding.
line 113 of http://www.webservicex.net/whois.asmx?wsdl

[WARNING] ignoring port "whoisHttpGet": no SOAP address specified. try running wsimport with -extension switch.
line 116 of http://www.webservicex.net/whois.asmx?wsdl

[WARNING] ignoring port "whoisHttpPost": no SOAP address specified. try running wsimport with -extension switch.
line 119 of http://www.webservicex.net/whois.asmx?wsdl

generating code...
net/webservicex/GetWhoIS.java
net/webservicex/GetWhoISResponse.java
net/webservicex/ObjectFactory.java
net/webservicex/Whois.java
net/webservicex/WhoisSoap.java
net/webservicex/package-info.java



Now go to the directory where these files are created and we can create the client.

Create a java file with the following contents


package net.webservicex;
public class WhoisClient{
public static void main(String args[]){
Whois whois=new Whois();
WhoisSoap whoisSoap=whois.getWhoisSoap();
System.out.println(whoisSoap.getWhoIS("www.google.com"));

}
}


or still more usable as


package net.webservicex;
public class WhoisClient{
public static void main(String args[]){
Whois whois=new Whois();
WhoisSoap whoisSoap=whois.getWhoisSoap();
System.out.println(whoisSoap.getWhoIS(args[0]));

}
}


That is it we are donw with our web service client. Now compile the program by setting the classpath to point to the directory that contains the generated class files using the command


javac WhoisClient.java


Now the program can be run with by typing this in the terminal


java net.webservicex.WhoisClient www.google.com


we would get an output as below


Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

WWW.GOOGLE.COM.VN
WWW.GOOGLE.COM.TW
WWW.GOOGLE.COM.TR
WWW.GOOGLE.COM.SA
WWW.GOOGLE.COM.PE
WWW.GOOGLE.COM.MX
WWW.GOOGLE.COM.CO
WWW.GOOGLE.COM.BR
WWW.GOOGLE.COM.AU
WWW.GOOGLE.COM.AR

To single out one record, look it up with "xxx", where xxx is one of the
of the records displayed above. If the records are the same, look them up
with "=xxx" to receive a full display for each record.

>>> Last update of whois database: Sat, 05 Sep 2009 06:29:11 UTC <<<

NOTICE: The expiration date displayed in this record is the date the
registrar's sponsorship of the domain name registration in the registry is
currently set to expire. This date does not necessarily reflect the expiration
date of the domain name registrant's agreement with the sponsoring
registrar. Users may consult the sponsoring registrar's Whois database to
view the registrar's reported date of expiration for this registration.

TERMS OF USE: You are not authorized to access or query our Whois
database through the use of electronic processes that are high-volume and
automated except as reasonably necessary to register domain names or
modify existing registrations; the Data in VeriSign Global Registry
Services' ("VeriSign") Whois database is provided by VeriSign for
information purposes only, and to assist persons in obtaining information
about or related to a domain name registration record. VeriSign does not
guarantee its accuracy. By submitting a Whois query, you agree to abide
by the following terms of use: You agree that you may use this Data only
for lawful purposes and that under no circumstances will you use this Data
to: (1) allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission of mass
unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations via e-mail, telephone,
or facsimile; or (2) enable high volume, automated, electronic processes
that apply to VeriSign (or its computer systems). The compilation,
repackaging, dissemination or other use of this Data is expressly
prohibited without the prior written consent of VeriSign. You agree not to
use electronic processes that are automated and high-volume to access or
query the Whois database except as reasonably necessary to register
domain names or modify existing registrations. VeriSign reserves the right
to restrict your access to the Whois database in its sole discretion to ensure
operational stability. VeriSign may restrict or terminate your access to the
Whois database for failure to abide by these terms of use. VeriSign
reserves the right to modify these terms at any time.

The Registry database contains ONLY .COM, .NET, .EDU domains and
Registrars.



Here we can give different host names as argument and experiment with it. There are many free web services available at http://www.webservicex.net and almost all of them can be consumed using the same method by using java clients. Thanks for reading

There are situations when we need to make file deletion unrecovarable for security concerns. There are simple commands that can do this. Open a terminal and type the following command.

dd ip=/dev/urandom op=~/consumeSpace.txt
This will fill up all space left with random characters and once the space gets over it stops by throwing an exception. Now we can delete the file we have created to free up the space. To delete the file created type the following command into a terminal.
rm ~/consumeSpace.txt
We have now deleted the files permanently from the disk.

There are acouple of gui front ends for configuring iptables
lokkit is a simple gui front end and it can be installed using the command

sudo apt-get install lokkit

For advanced options use firestarter. It can be installed by the command

sudo apt-get install firestarter

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