WORDPRESS

VK (originally VKontakte)

ex-principal programmer of Microsoft’s Halo

producer of Assassin’s Creed and managing director of Ubisoft Toronto

founder and CEO of Grove

early Zynga employee, game-maker

Developer at Phoenix

Co-founder/CEO of @Zencoder

Software engineer at Twitter

created Google with Larry Page

We all hear about the NSA and government surveillance or hackers lurking in the shadows. For some people, the internet can seem like a scary and intimidating place. Do you want help feeling safer online? Do you want to be unafraid about making an online purchase? Would you like in interact and learn with people from all around the world without feeling spied on by some unknown powers at be? If you are like many people you have suspicions or hesitations online, but here are some tips from the professionals on how to help you stay anonymous on your journey.

Step 1. Use a good firewall software for your computer. A good firewall software you can use is a high-end built directly into Kaspersky and Norton Internet Security (2013). Also, using Kaspersky or Norton, you are getting spyware protection and live website protection to protect you from unsafe websites.

Step 2. Purchase a hardware firewall. You can get them for as little as $50+ from a pawn shop (if they have any) and up from there. This will help in protecting not only your computer, but if you hook it into your internet connect before your router/modem, it protects all of your networked devices.

Step 3. Utilize a VPN connection. VPN (Virtual Private Network) actually simulates your computer as if you are logged into the network from another location. a good VPN company to use is from IPVanish. They offer SSL as well as VPN connections.

Step 4. Once you have completed steps 1-3, now you need to get a more secure browser than IE, FireFox, Chrome, etc. I am talking about the Tor Network. Tor is one of the leading web browsers that also comes with another VPN connection and keeps your website viewing privatized. Tor is 100% free and safe to use.

How can you further protect your privacy interacting as anonymous online? Invent an alias, a surname if you will, with a name of your choice. Go and register this name with one of the big email service providers. Use this new email to register any new Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, ‘etcetera’ accounts. Be sure to clear all browser cookies before using this alias, or better yet, use a different web browser for your anonymous identity than you would use for your more typical internet activity. If you have a further need for security beyond these steps you may want look into encryption, stenography or TAILSsystem.

Source:anonhq.com

As always, people are insecure about being watched and spied upon, especially when it comes to our network usage. We can find most of our security measures inside of Linux based operating systems.

Why shouldn’t we want to protect ourselves from unwanted Hackers, Governments, and annoying and harmful malware running around all over the internet collecting any and all digital information?

Yes, it is true that every operating system is designed and developed with a form of security as a requirement from the distributors. Can there be a truly secured OS? No. As time moves on, yes we will see advancing operating systems that are more secure than the last, but if they were truly secure, why provide updates to their security measures? As companies develop better security measures, there are hackers and government agencies that are “Opening Up” the OS and figuring out how it works. Once they know how it works, they then can manipulate and gain access from any device utilizing that OS from any network.

Qubes OS is different than other operating systems starting right from the kernel. Operating systems such as Windows, Linux, BSD, and OSX are based upon a monolithic kernel, this possess a huge security problem as the monolithic kernel contains over ten million lines of code to operate, and to make the issues worse, most of the code comes from untrusted resources. With so many API’s, it would only take one exploit of the kernel to gain control over the entire system.

Qubes OS, on the other hand, utilizes Xen Hypervisor. This is able to provide a more secured isolation connection between servers, and unlike Monolithic Kernels, Xen Hypervisor only contains a few hundred thousands of lines of code instead of millions. Xen hypervisor also only focusses on the main components of your computer such as CPU scheduling, Memory Management, and your power management. And does not need to utilize 3rd party API’s.

Qubes OS is a Linux version security and open source operating system designed for personal computers and usage and runs everything inside of VM (Virtual Machines).

Xen is a bare metal, Native, hypervisor in which utilizes a microkernel framework and even offers a service that allows you to use multiple operating systems at the same time on a single hosts hardware. This is performed by each of your operating systems are using their own space of the processor and memory as well as other related resources that the operating system needs.

Qubes supports the environments of your favorite operating system such as Microsoft Windows, Linux Distributions, and even Whonix.
(Whonix is a Linux based secured operating system by using Debian and provides the user with privacy, security, and even anonymity from your actions online.)
Qubes also enforces a more secured anonymity for internet connection by utilizing the Tor Network. 

When we look at the hypervisor, we see there are two types. The first type is known a “Native” or “Bare Metal”, and our other type is Hosted Hypervisor. With one running directly like a normal operating system would work installed on your computer. This will host the “Guest OS” and the other will run within the Host OS…Just like you installed VM Ware and have 2 Linux distros, 3 Windows, and 1 Apple. Same concept but all running at the same time.

Installation Time;

Like my other articles about a new Operating System, I had to download and install the OS myself on a VM machine. I was able to successfully download Qubes Newest Release “Qubes-R3.0-x86_64-DVD.iso” from here.

You can see a full list of their downloads from the site below;
Qubes-os.org/downloads

Unfortunately, for those who enjoy faster downloads by means of torrents, the Qubes-OS.org website downloads page offers no means of torrent downloads.

After figuring out I have to set my BIOS to accept Intel-VTX Technology, and then configuring my VMWare to use VTX-AMDVT I was finally able to install Qubes OS.

Once the installation was complete and time to reboot the “computer”, I was fascinated and eager to learn and test this operating system out. But my excitement came shortly as I found myself waiting for over 30 minutes during the initial boot up of the system.

Waiting…Waiting….Waiting…

Now that I was finally bypassed the install and booting of the OS, I was greeted with the “Welcome” screen followed by the terms and conditions.

Once I accepted and acknowledged their License Information I was able to create my user account.

And then I was able to set my time and date followed by creating and setting my VM’s for the new machine. I chose to utilize the default option “Create default service VMs.” Just so I can get inside and play around.

And then finally, the login screen. I must say. With the advancing technology, I was hoping for a more “Flashy-Techy” feel, but we are ended up with the image shown below.

So…Now we are in the most secured Operating System in the world, what am I supposed to do? After looking around a bit, I found the task bar to be a similar resembelance. It looks as if though the creators took the Windows feel and applied the Linux functions.

As we can see from the image above, the first box you notice would be the [Dom0] Qubes VM Manager box. This is for advanced users to alter their own versions of the VMs that Qubes will/is hosting. I have set my main computer to Qubes OS, and utilizing one version of Fedora for my network, and another version of Fedora for my systems firewall protection.
So far…The rumors appear to be correct. But let’s test this out.

Now looking at the menu I have pulled up, this does resemble a bit of a Windows interface but with Linux abilities. The highlighted box I have set to is the FireFox web browser. This fully works as if I am using FireFox on a Linux machine. I go onto learning that banking, personal, and the untrusted links are set to protect you and your information from trackers, viruses, and hackers by utilizing their tri-level security in which is setup.

Each time you start a new internet connection, a new VM is setup just for that browsing. This makes things a bit complicated, but also I can see the difficulty of “Hacking” into this machine.

Time to test the vulnerabilities. I booted into another virtual machine known as my “Kali 2.0 Black Box” and loaded up the tools I would use for penetration. My first thought “Do I want to know the designated IP? Or should I use some sort of chat session, cookie cache, or other ways. Since this was supposed to be hard to hack…I cheated a smidge.

After performing vigorous tasks and penetration tests, the task was near impossible. Finally, after breaking into my code bank, there was not a single Linux virus I created. So, time to start writing some scripts. After about an hour of writing a simple Linux virus and sending in the means of an email. I downloaded the virus onto my Qubes system. And sure enough, nothing. The program wouldn’t run, install, operate nothing. It was as if it was an empty .txt file and nothing to do with it. But let’s apply the measures in reverse. I was going to use the same tasks from Kali to Qubes but in reverse. I was soon stopped as my tools and resources where on Kali and not on Qubes. So…Download manager time. After another hour of apt-get install…. And getting the right tools and using DropBox for my viruses, Hacking into Kali was easier than it was hacking into Qubes. I was able to find the location of the IP address. Or so I thought. When I looked the Qubes OS was in another state.
In conclusion, utilizing Qubes OS with a VPN service is extremely hard and practically virus free…For now. There will be a day in which a hacker, government agency, or pentester will develop a software/program in which can hack into Qubes OS. But for no, this has to be one of the safest operating systems I have ever used.

See the original article here!

by: anonhq.com

The offer was being made because, it said, of issues with the game it "cannot fix".

It said the offer was available to anyone no matter how much of the game they had played.

The offer comes only days after a cleaned up version of the game was released for PC owners.

The game lets players control Batman as he tries to wrest control of Gotham City away from a group of super-villains.

Batman: Arkham Knight was released in late June, and the PC version was pulled soon after because technical faults made it unplayable for many people.

The bugs are thought to have emerged because the game was originally made for consoles and later converted or "ported" to run on PCs.

In notes that accompanied the updated release, Warner said one bug meant players on a Windows 7 PC would periodically have to restart the game to avoid crashes.

On Windows 10, Warner recommended players used 12GB of Ram - far more than most modern PCs usually require.

Many people on social media sites such as Reddit said the updated version had not cured Arkham Knight of the stuttering and freezing that had led to the original being pulled.

In a statement, Warner said it was "sorry" that many people "continue to be unhappy with the PC version of Batman: Arkham Knight".

It said it had worked hard to get the game to live up to expectations but understood many people were still "experiencing issues".

As a result, it said, it would offer a full refund to anyone who had bought the game via Steam, until the end of 2015.

Bug fixes would be provided for those that wanted to keep playing the game, it said.

However, it said, it would talk to these players about the issues with the game that it "cannot fix".

The refund will mean that people who bought the game in stores or other places rather than via the Steam gaming service will not be able to get their money back.

Source BBC

Death Ray

Nikola Tesla claimed to have invented a “death beam” which he called Teleforce in the 1930s. The device was capable of generating an intense targeted beam of energy “that could be used to dispose of enemy warplanes, foreign armies, or anything else you’d rather didn’t exist”. The so-called “death ray” was never constructed because he believed it would become too easy for counties to destroy each other. Tesla proposed that a nation could “destroy anything approaching within 200 miles… [and] will provide a wall of power” in order to “make any country, large or small, impregnable against armies, airplanes, and other means for attack”. He said that efforts had been made to steal the invention. His room had been entered and his papers had been scrutinized, but the thieves, or spies, left empty-handed.

Tesla’s Oscillator

In 1898, Tesla claimed he had built and deployed a small oscillating device that, when attached to his office and operating, nearly shook down the building and everything around it. In other words, thedevice could allegedly simulate earthquakes. Realizing the potential terrors such a device could create, “Tesla said he took a hammer to the oscillator to disable it, instructing his employees to claim ignorance to the cause of the tremors if asked”. Some theorists believe the government continues to use Tesla’s research in places like the HAARP facility in Alaska.

Free Electricity System

With funding from JP Morgan, Tesla designed and built Wardenclyffe Tower, a gigantic wireless transmission station, in New York in 1901-1902. Morgan thought the Wardenclyffe Tower could provide wireless communication across the world. However, Tesla had other plans.

Tesla intended to transmit messages, telephony and even facsimile images across the Atlantic to England and to ships at sea based on his theories of using the Earth to conduct the signals. If the project worked, anyone could have electricity by simply sticking a rode into the ground. Unfortunately, free electricity is not profitable. And this system could be incredibly dangerous for the global elite because it could profoundly change the energy industry. Imagine how different the world would be if society didn’t need oil and coal to function? Could the great world powers maintain control? Morgan refused to fund the changes. The project was abandoned in 1906 and never became operational.

The Flying Saucer

In 1911, Nikola Tesla told The New York Herald that he was working on an anti gravity “flying machine”.

“My flying machine will have neither wings nor propellers. You might see it on the ground and you would never guess that it was a flying machine. Yet it will be able to move at will through the air in any direction with perfect safety, at higher speeds than have yet been reached, regardless of weather and oblivious of “holes in the air” or downward currents. It will ascend in such currents if desired. It can remain absolutely stationary in the air, even in a wind, for great length of time. Its lifting power will not depend upon any such delicate devices as the bird has to employ, but upon positive mechanical action.”

Tesla’s flying saucer was powered by free energy system at a time when the fledgling aviation and motor car industry depended on oil and petroleum. His invention met the same fate as his free energy system.

Improved Airships

Tesla proposed that electrically-powered airships would transport passengers from New York to London in three hours, traveling eight miles above the ground. He also imagined that airships might draw their power from the very atmosphere, never needing to stop for refueling. Unmanned airships might even be used to transport passengers to a preselected destination or for a remote aerial strike.  He was never given credit for his invention. However, today, we have unmanned drones carrying out combat missions, supersonic airplanes that fly at amazing speeds and space shuttle technology that can circle the Earth in the upper atmosphere.

It was long suspected that the FBI literally stole all of his work, research, and inventions that he had in his possession when he died. This rumor has now been confirmed by recent, heavily redacted Freedom of Information Act requests released by the FBI.

Source: anonhq.com