Security of Internet Banking (Part 1)

Brief Introduction to Internet Banking

Internet has become one of key role in bringing a new way of how we interact with other people and it has opened a new dimension in the way of doing business.

Internet banking allows customers to conduct their financial transaction via internet by visiting a web site. Internet banking has lot of functionalities which are specific to each banking application. But broadly the functions fall into several categories.

• Transactional (e.g., performing a financial transaction such as an account to account transfer, paying a bill, wire transfer, apply for a loan, new account, etc.)

1. Payments to third parties, including bill payments and telegraphic/wire transfers
2. Fund transfers between a customer's own transactional account and savings accounts
3. Investment purchase or sale
4. Loan applications and transactions, such as repayments of enrollments

• Non-transitional (e.g., online statements, cheque links, cobrowsing, chat)

1. Viewing recent transactions
2. Downloading bank statements, for example in PDF format
3. Viewing images of paid cheques

• Financial Institution Administration
• Management of multiple users having varying levels of authority
• Transaction approval process

Security Issue in Internet Banking

Dr.. David Chaum, CEO of DigiCash said that “Security is simply the protection of interests.People want to protect their own money and bank their own exposure. The role of government is to maintain the integrity of and confidence in the whole system. With electronic cash, just as with paper cash today, it will be the responsibility of government to protect against systemic risk. This is a serious role that cannot be left to the micro-economic interests of commercial organizations.”

The security of information is one of the biggest concerns of an Internet user. For Internet banking users and organizations such as banks with dedicated Internet connections face the risk of someone from the Internet gaining unauthorized access or sneak to their network. Especially due to the sensitive nature of the information changed the internet banking systems are highlighted targets. The Citibank $10 million break-in is one example of how the system is vulnerable to hackers.

Being vulnerable will make a bank to lose the trust of its customers and the brand reputation in the market.

HP Pavilion TX Laptop Has Nothing On The Screen After Turing On?

I have a HP Pavilion TX 2500 laptop which is quite awesome when considering about the touch screen, rotatable screen, penabled vacom.. etc. I bought this nearly two and half years ago and still working very well despite the problem I faced recently which is the topic of this post.

Here is my HP laptop,

It has AMD Turion X2 processor and ATI vga and came with Windows Vista originally but it was too slow with Vista hence I installed Windows 7. After installing Windows 7 I could see a significant speed up of performance. All drivers for Windows 7 are freely available in HP Support and Drivers website.

From the very first day I started using this laptop I realized that this baby is little bit too hot :D

Because of the AMD processor this laptop burns like hell. In first few days I was concerned (Even this is a laptop I can't keep it on my lap coz it's too hot for me) and always aimed a fan towards the laptop. But with the time passes on I learned to ignore it. And I realized that even hot much it gets hot never slows down. So I ignored.

And there is a story I must tell one day I went to a laptop repair place with one of my friends to ask for laptop battery cell replacement. Then I saw a TX laptop actually TX 1000 laptop there to be fixed. So I ask around what the wrong, I have the same model...etc. So that guy gave me a prophecy which is "One day your lap will turn on but there will nothing on the screen if it happens bring it here it is a known issue for HP Pavilion TX laptops". It was also nearly two years ago. So recently this guys amazing prophecy came true. I faced the exact thing.

So what should I do. Go find the guy and beat him or sue him? No I didn't do that. But I looked for reasons why this happened so I get to know that this is related to the massive heat this laptop generates. After a long time of heating the VGA chips get burn and work no more. So I had to replace VGA chips. And there is a possibility along with this issue the motherboard also may not work. These all photos are taken after fixing the laptop. She works well now!!

And I must say using this laptop is fun you can do some showing off and grab attention with its awesome features but the screen again a leap. It has this washed away look. You cant see things properly in outside in daylight and to side views.

Dirt 2

These days I've been playing Dirt 2 on my Acer Laptop which has 1GB dedicated NVIDIA GEFORCE GT420M graphics.
For me Dirt 2 is not bad but not good as NFS Most Wanted. I can say that Dirt 2 is the best racing game for me after NFS Most Wanted.

However the speciality of this game is it is realistic. How much I love MW I know that it is not real in world. But when I play Dirt 2 I feel that I am driving a real car. I can't accelerate and go as fast as I can. So this is one game which is realistic. Love to play it......

My First Industry Experience

Today I got the chance to work with the Java development team of Sarasa SoftSolutions. It was a fascinating experience. I have studied Java at the campus and form out side for SCJP certification. But I learnt lot about Java and it's real practice today.
I had to study a very big code of a POS system. It totally dominated me but I love the way they have worked on that project.

fahcore_78.exe

I have a laptop with Intel Core i5-460M processor and 4 GB memory. And I am using Windows 7. Form several days I found that my laptop's processor usage is 100% even when I am doing nothing. Memory is not filled but processor works 100% always and the laptop get heated and the CPU fan works in it's best speed.
Things I realized was,

• The machine gets over heated.
• The machine gets damn slower.
• Couldn't run any lager program.
• Couldn't find any virus or trojan.

I scanned my machine several times using Avast home edition which was up to date. However I couldn't find what it is about. Then I opened Task Manager and in Task Manager I opened Performance tab which shows the CPU usage. In their also CPU usage was 100%. Then I opened Resource Monitor which is in the same tab. There I could find two processes named fahcore_78.exe. When I stop process it starts again. So I suspended the process then CPU speed went to it's normal usage. Around 5% when there is no other things are not running. Then I searched for this fahcore_78.exe then I found it on a sub folder of C:/ drive named folding@home. I went in there and there was an uninstall app. I simply uninstall the application. And after deleted the folder named folding@home. Then my machine came to it's normal behavior. NO OVER HEATING, NOT slow as a bullock cart anymore.

What is this fahcore_78.exe?

Folding@home is a distributed computing project -- people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals. Folding@home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.

source: http://folding.stanford.edu/

මොනවද HVD - Holographic Versatile Disc කියන්නේ?

HVD නැත්නම් Holographic Versatile Disc කියන්නේ CD, DVD, සහ Blu-ray වගේ optical digital data storing device එකක්. මේකත් holography තාක්ශණයට අනුකූලව read/write කියන දෙක මත පදනම් වෙලා තමයි තියෙන්නේ. අනිත් optical digital data storing device වර්ග වගේම දශකයකට දෙකකට කලින් හොයාගෙන තියෙන්නේ. ඒත් නිශ්පාදනයට යන වියදම වැඩි නිසා සහ ලිවීම/කියවීම යන ක්‍රියාවලියන් සංකීර්න වීම යන හේතු නිසා වැඩිය ජනප්‍රිය වෙලා නැහැ.
holographic memory එකකට පුලුවන් යම් වස්තුවක් තුළ ත්‍රිමාන විදිහට දත්ත ගබඩා කරන්න. අනිත් optical devices වල කරන්නේ bumps සහ pits රාශියකින් සමන්විත spiral track එකක තොරතුරු ගබඩා කිරීමයි. ඒ නිසා සාමාන්‍යයෙන් එතාමත් දිගු binary code string අපිට ඒවා වල දකින්න පුලුවන්. ඒත් HVD වල තොරතුරු ගබඩා වෙන්නේ මතුපිටක් මත නෙමෙයි. HVD වලට පුලුවන් දත්ත යම්කිසි තිමාන පරිමාවක් තුල ගබඩා කරන්න. ඒ නිසා HVD එකක Bluray එකක වගේ 20 ගුණයක් දත්ත ගබඩා කරන්න පුලුවන් වගේම සාමාන්‍ය DVD එකක් වගේ 40 ගුණයක් වේගයෙන් දත්ත හුවමාරු කරන්නත් පුලුවන්.
දැනට ප්‍රකාශයට පත්වෙලා තියෙන සඔඛ්‍යාත්මක දත්ත වලට අනුව පූර්ව ප්‍රමාණික HVD එකක ධාරිතාවය ටෙරා බයිට් 3.9 (3.9TB = 39,000GB) ක් පමණ සහ දත්ත හුවමාරු වේගය ගිගා බයිට් 1(1GB) ක් පමණ වෙනවා. දැනට HVD drives සහ HVD තැටි ටිකක් මිල වැඩි උනත් අනාගතයේදී මිල අඩු වේවි කියල බලාපොරොත්තු වෙන්න පුලුවන්. විශේෂයෙන්ම චීනය වගේ රටවල් වැඩේට බැස්සම. ඒ කෙසේ වෙතත් අනිවාර්යයෙන්ම HVD, disk storage කර්මාන්තයේ විශාල වෙනසක් ඉදිරියේදී නිසා බලාපොරොත්තු වෙන්න පුලුවන්.

ICT Applications in the Agriculture Industry

Information and communication technology is covering up most of human interactive areas and makes the life mush easier. We can see ICT applications from getting news to social networking.
But we can see that ICT applications are not mush into agriculture as much as it is bonded with other areas. Most of countries of the world are mainly depended on agriculture. And we can recognize Sri Lanka, our country as a country which has an agricultural economical system. But we don’t have much ICT interaction with our main economical factor.
When we consider ICT with agriculture we can see some main areas that we can mainly focus on. We can create a website where farmers and buyers can meet and discuss prices of their products. Farmers can put the price and amount they have and then buyers can bid on products and buy. These will really faster than the methods that we have now. And again this web site can be extended not only as an ebay but also where information about buyers and farmers can be added. And hosting a web site which contains all agricultural information in it will be also really helpful. And again we can develop a mobile back end application for farmers to inform via SMS about weather, right times to cultivate etc. And if we go more far we can use embedded systems to automate several parts of the cultivation process such as watering, fertilizing…etc.
So we can see that there are so many ways to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of agricultural industry by using information and communication technology. But there are obstacles. We can easily find software engineers to create ICT application regarding to agriculture. But lot farmers do not have ICT knowledge. In most countries we can see this as a common fact. In Sri Lanka we have this lack of knowledge and also the lack of infrastructure for ICT. For remote cities like Horowpathana there maybe not even internet available for people. And attitudes of people also matters in such big change. People may get afraid to interact with new technology.
Creating an ICT application is not a really big deal but the problem comes out when they try to distribute that application among farmers and other related personals. So the infrastructure for information and communication technology should be increased and the ICT literacy in the country also should be increased. So there should be special campaigns for targeted group of people.
If above requirements fulfilled and can establish a good ICT background for agricultural industry, it can be very easily developed. And it will make all processes faster and accurate than present scenario. In other hand more youngsters will be interested in agriculture than this context when agriculture is mixed up with new technology. So ICT application can be really benefitted for agricultural industry if they establish well and implement well.