Friday, April 12, 2013

Notes BitCoin


Bitcoin has been receiving a lot of news lately, especially due to the fact it shot up from $35 to over $200 in a few months, although it went back down to over $100 again soon. This is a technical article contain various tips for those interested in using or creating bitcoins.


The technical details of bitcoin were first outlined in a research paper by Satoshi Nakamoto. The coins debut online in 2009.


Newer alternatives to Bitcoin are:
Litecoins, Terracoins, RuCoins


Some places that handle Bitcoins
Bitpay
Mt.Gox - Bitcoin exchange

Some news on Bitcoins:
Cyber currency bursts mainstream
http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/cyber-currency-bursts-mainstream-20130411-2hni3.html

Zuckerberg's nemeses revealed as Bitcoin moguls
http://www.smh.com.au/money/investing/zuckerbergs-nemeses-revealed-as-bitcoin-moguls-20130412-2hp5h.html


Talks about the economy of Bitconis
http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/bumps-on-the-bitcoin-road/2013/04/27/




How to earn or create Bitcoins

Mining Guide for Bitcoins
https://www.weusecoins.com/en/mining-guide

How to get started using your GPU to mine for Bitcoins on Windows
http://www.newslobster.com/random/how-to-get-started-using-your-gpu-to-mine-for-bitcoins-on-windows

python OpenCL bitcoin miner
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1334.0

Easy Ubuntu python OpenCL mining setup
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2636














Thursday, April 11, 2013

Security - Protection against Botnets

Work in Progress......

This is a collection of notes on protection against botnets

BotHunter - read about this in one article. If anyone has experience with this, please share your opinions.

I'll leave the definitions of Botnet to other articles. Imagine being assimilated by the Bog in Star Trek - "Resistance is Futile - You Will Be Assimilated".

The best cure is prevention. To prevent your PC being a zombie in a botnet, here are a few tips, which are also the same tips from keeping safe from virus or malware.
- Use Firewall - make sure settings are appropriate
- Use AntiVirus, AntiMalware - although some suggest these are not effective against botnet.

How to Identify is you are a zombie in a Botnet.
- Use Firewall. Set the Firewall to the Most Restricted / Paranoid Setting. Switch off all of your user installed programs that run during startup. Do the same to services. Reboot the PC. Look at pop-up Firewall alerts and see what items are trying to make a network connection by itself.

Useful Sites:
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/how-to-tech/how-to-fix-zombie-computer3.htm
This site has many good related sites.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/170546/how_to_clean_bots.html

http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/12446/how-do-i-know-if-my-computer-is-being-used-for-a-botnet-based-ddos-attack
Many good answers from various people. see darknet.

Google: how to tell if your pc is botnet