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Mercury MagiQ
UNDERSTAND • CHOOSE • IMPLEMENT IT
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FreeC3SPEAR HTC Butterfly
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Actual Data Center in a box
Most Powerful Android Based Smartphone
Complete FAQ on Office 365 Home vs Business Editions
How to use more than one Internet connection simultaneously
Hot Trends8 Ways to Make Full Use of your
Smartphone
Real Challenges to Doing Successful
Business on the Cloud
5 Behaviors That Indicate Advanced Persistent Threat
Infection
Report: India Among Top
10 Web Threats Victims
Robust Smartphone for just ` 12,000
HOW COMPANIES ARE BENEFITING F
ROM IT
We tell you use cases of how compa
nies of all sizes across retail,
healthcare, automotive, and others
can benefit from Big Data.
Plus: Skills required to become a Bi
g Data Scientist and 8 open source
Big Data Tools
Special Treat for Mobile App Developers:• Step by Step Guide to
Build a Complete Call Log
Transfer App for Android• Using Google Maps API in Android
Linux Adoption Trends in India
In DepthUnderstanding
DDoS Attacks and How to Avoid Them
4 Color Laser MFDs Compared
Top 5 RSS Readers
Top Video Streaming
Services in India
100 pages including cover
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Contents
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Special Feature/Security
53 cOVer StOry
HandS On14 Spamhaus internet attacks:
Why network Security needs Strengthening
17 ddoS: the tsunami Of the Online World
20 Fight against ddoS attacks for Free
22 india emerges amongst top 10 Web threats Victims
25 5 Behaviors that indicate advanced persistent threat
infection
59 Supercharge your internet connectivity
60 Make your disks Future-proof for Free by upgrading them to
Gpt
Special Feature/data centerS49 cSpear review + photo Feature
51 5 integrated it infrastructure Offerings For SMBs
tecH n trendS
36 Smartphone iQ test39 linux: coming Soon to a device
near you40 5 Hot trends in adoption of
Business intelligence by SMes42 eight challenges Global SMes
Face in the indian Marketplace44 Winners of top Video
Streaming
Service in india46 Office365HomeVsBusiness:
the ultimate FaQ
deVelOper
62 transferring call logs to calendars in android
68 adding Google Maps to your android application
73 `Whatever had to go Wrong with Java is already History’
Pat Krishnan, Chief Technical Officer, Helios & Matheson
Information Technology, shares his insights on a number of
development-related perspectives that are prevalent today
MAY 2013
SMB cOrner
28 Getting Hold of the cloud
34 ‘customized it solutions is what most SMBs go for’
Big Data=Big Opportunities For EveryoneThere are so many things
you can do once you have data available in digitized format, which
is why everyone seems to be talking about Big Data. By using the
right set of tools to capture and analyze this data, organizations
of any size can gain tremendous business benefits. In this issue,
we talk about how the automotive, healthcare, retail and other
sectors can harness the power of Big Data. Also discussed are Big
Data Tools, and why should be hiring a Big Data expert in your
company
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SuBScriBe nOW!
turn to page 86
32 `We WOuld lOVe tO HaVe a clOud-BaSed aFFOrdaBle SOlutiOn FOr
tHe Backend FunctiOnS OF StartupS’
Divyesh Kharade - Co-Founder & CEO, Deltecs InfoTech talks
about what they are looking for in their next IT purchase
MAY 201314 Open Source Big Data ToolsAll you need to learn and
implement Big Data: Databases, Big Data Stores, Servers Data Mgmt
Apps, Libraries, Storage & Compute Fabric, and much more
Linux Distros of the Month• Network Security Toolkit 125+ Best
of Breed Network Security Apps to
Secure your Network/Systems
• Foresight Linux An extremely easy to use Desktop Linux OS
15 Open Source ERP Software The most comprehensive collection of
ERP software to automate your business processes.
5 Open Source Games • 0 A.D.: A free, open-source,
cross-platform
real-time strategy game of ancient warfare. • Rigs of Rods: A 3D
simulator to drive, fly and
sail vehicles.• Celestia: Real-time 3D visualization of
space
with our solar system, 100,000+ stars, 10,000+ galaxies, and
more.
• Speed Dreams: Motorsport Simulator with high-quality 3D
graphics
• VDrift: Free racing simulator with excellent physics and
graphics.
15 Essential Tools To Energize Your System
dVd HiGHliGHtS
reVieWS84 Mercury MagiQ: a robust
Smartphone for 12k
85 HTCButterfly:TheMostexpensive android Smartphone in india
88 Simmmtronics Xpad X801: Good Features But poor
performance
89 Swipe Fablet F3: dual-SiM, latest OS but not-So-latest
Hardware
83 Woxi Media Smartpod WOX100: convert your Ordinary led into a
Smart tV
91 Gear up for Great Gaming experience
33 lack OF a truely unliMited internet cOnnectiOn iS a Hindrance
tO MOVinG tO tHe clOud
Mahesh Mitkari, Founder, Cognition InfoTech, shares with us the
issues that he faces in running an SMB
SHOOtOut70 choosing the right MFd For
YourOffice 4 MFDs reviewed: • HP Laserjet 100 Color MFP M175a •
Xerox Workcentre 6015NI • HP Laserjet Pro 300 Color MFP
M375nw • Ricoh Aficio SP C240SF
81 5 rSS reader alternatives to Google reader
eXtraedGe93 ciO day celebrated in chennai
94 europe’s largest consumer electronics Show, iFa promises to
be Bigger in 2013
Contents
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31�
SPECIaLFeaTURe Security
— Prasanto K Roy (@prasanto on Twitter) is editorial advisor at
CyberMedia
Spamhaus Internet Attacks Why Network Security Needs
Strengthening
The world witnessed recently, the worst denial-of-service attack
occurred in the Internet’s three-decade history. A
300-gigabit-per-second torrent of traffic flooded the networks
of
Spamhaus (a spam-prevention service based in Europe) and the
Internet’s major switches in London, Amsterdam and Frankfurt. It
was like a million cars trying to get on to Mumbai’s Sealink at the
same time. Some called it the attack that “almost broke the
Internet”.
Can the Internet really be brought down by a single group of
individuals? Is it that fragile? The short answer to the question
is: Yes and No.
Let’s start with the No. The Internet evolved from a network
designed to be robust enough to survive multiple nuclear strikes.
The Internet adapts to attacks and outages, reroutes traffic, and
survives just about anything you throw at it. Fact.
Yet much has changed from that early vision of that robust,
adaptive network. In the early Internet, most traf-fic was text,
and it wasn’t sensitive to “latency” — small delays. It didn’t
matter if that text was delayed by a few moments or even
minutes.
Now, a huge chunk of traffic on the Internet is video and audio.
A lot of the audio, and some of the video, is in real time. If
you’re on a phone call with someone in another country, the call is
probably being routed over the Internet, and you need a guarantee
of “zero latency” — no delays.
And then there’s a range of critical services on the Internet.
Take financial transactions, including stock trades.
Automated systems respond in microseconds to bids or market
changes. Many traders like to be physically closer to stock
exchanges, because they value that one microsecond edge it gives
them. Delay a company’s financial transac-tions by a few seconds,
or minutes, and you’re talking about a hit of millions of dollars
on your target company.
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SPECIaLFeaTURe Security
Given the recent cyber war between CyberBunker and Spamhaus, it
is important to understand the far-reaching implications of a DDoS
attack. We explain how it is launched, and methods to defend
against it....
— Srinivasan Viswanathan
DDoS: Tsunami Of The Online World
1) TeArDrOp ATTACkIn this attack, the botnet sends pieces of a
data packet to the victim server. This is an illegitimate packet,
which the victim system tries to piece together. Due to bugs in
versions of older Windows systems and some Linux flavors, trying to
solve the jigsaw of packets crashes the server.
2) Smurf ATTACkThis is the classic attack described above, where
ICMP(Internet control message protocol) packets are sent to a
network “reflector”, with a spoofed “source” address, so that the
computers send return packets to the “victim” computer. A massive
attack causes the bandwidth of the victim to be completely used up,
and any legitimate traffic does not go through. This is the classic
case of a website going down or “offline”.
3) peer-TO-peer DDOSWith the power of P2P networks, which have
thousands of users connecting with each other to download various
pieces of a data file, there is a pool of resources and bandwidth
power that can be utilized for malicious means. The perpetrator
does not have a botnet, but instructs the peers attached to a P2P
network to terminate their connections with each other and instead
connect with the victim’s server. While a server is able to handle
a few hundred connections, thousands of connection requests will
break the system down.
4) pDOS (permANeNT DeNIAl Of ServICe)This is a special form of
attack that targets mainly
A spat between anti-spam group Spamhaus and CyberBunker, a Dutch
web hosting site, has grown into a full-scale online war. Spamhaus
has been subjected to the “biggest” DDOS
(Distributed Denial-Of-Service) attack of all time, with
security firm Cloudflare claiming that the attack has “become the
source of the largest Layer 3 DDoS attacks we see (sometimes well
exceeding 100 Gbps)”. We find out exactly how a DDoS attack works,
and methods of defence available.
DDoS attack: What’s new?The hacker launching a DDoS attack has a
set of systems under his command called the “botnet”. These will be
a set of zombie systems that have been infiltrated and are ready to
send out packets of data at the hacker’s request. When the “zombie”
army of systems continuously send requests to the victim server or
infrastructure, the overload of data packets sent in overwhelms the
victim server, causing a total breakdown. The hackers attacking
Spamhaus used a clever manipulation of this attack, where the
botnet of the hacker uses innocent computers as “reflectors”, which
then respond by sending response packets to the victim server
instead of the bots. This is done through a method called “IP
address spoofing”, where the IP address of the originator is faked
to be the address of the victim computer. From the point of view of
the “reflectors”, the victim server made the request, and so all of
their responses are directed at the victim. The perpetrators of the
attack are hidden away by the additional layers of redirection
used, and their identities are protected. These are some of the
most popular DDoS attacks taking place:
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322
SPECIaLFeaTURe Security
The number of malicious web links grew by almost 600 percent
worldwide, representing over 100 million new global malicious
websites, according to a report by Websense
— Mastufa Ahmed
India emerges Amongst Top 10 Web Threats victims
The web is becoming central to all the attack vectors, whether
it is sending web links through social media, email or mobile phone
to launch complex and evasive attacks. With the
increasing number of people accessing the web coupled with the
complex nature of security attacks, it is no surprise that India is
having a large number of web threat victims.
Number of malicious sites grew nearly 600%The web became
significantly more malicious in 2012, both as an attack vector and
as the primary support element of other attack trajectories (eg,
social, mobile, email). Websense recorded a nearly 6-fold increase
in malicious sites overall. Moreover, 85 percent of these sites
were found on legitimate web hosts that had been compromised.
85% of malicious sites were found on legitimate web
hostsShortened web links, used across all social media
2012 Total Email Volume
Spam76.5%
Legitimate21.6%
Phishing1.6%
Malware Attachments0.4%
Websense 2013 Threat Report Findings• Each week, organizations
faced an average of 1,719
attacks for every 1,000 users
• Malicious websites increased by nearly 600 percent
worldwide
• The USA, Russia and Germany were the top three countries
hosting malware.
• Legitimate web hosts were home to 85 percent of those
malicious sites
• Half of web-connected malware downloaded additional
executables in the first 60 seconds
platforms, hid malicious content 32 percent of the time. Social
media attacks also took advantage of the confusion of new features
and changing services.
Half of malware downloaded additional executables in the first
60 secondsCybercriminals adapted their methods to confuse and
circumvent specific countermeasures. Fifty percent of web-connected
malware became significantly bolder, downloading additional
malicious executables within the first 60 seconds of infection. The
remainder of web-connected malware proceeded more cautiously,
postponing further Internet activity by minutes, hours or weeks,
often as a deliberate ruse to bypass defenses that rely on
short-term sandboxing analytics.
India sees 280% increase in Bot infections, Symantec reportIndia
has seen a 280 percent increase in bot infections that is
continuing to spread to a larger number of emerging cities in
India, according to Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report,
Volume 18. With the prevalence of such infections, it is not
surprising that the country accounts for
