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Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Cyber Warfare And The Internet Of Things



Internet outage in the US and parts of Western Europe on Friday, after waves of cyberattacks on a major DNS host Dyn may not have made much news in India and other parts of the world but it is unlikely to be an one off incidence and something that if repeated is unlikely to affect the Internet users in the US only. The attack made some of the widely used web services and websites such as Twitter, Spotify, PayPal,Reddit,Github,CNN, WSJ and many other service inaccessible. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have been launched against websites since the time hackerdom came into existence but lately they have been becoming increasingly effective/disruptive with the use of botnets. However, what is really alarming is the fact this attack was carried out using botnet of not zombie computers but Internet connected devices including routers,webcams,DVS and commodities collectively called Internet of Things (IoT). 

Posted By Danish 4:38 AM

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Book Review : Harry Potter and The Cursed Child




Courtesy : pottermore.com
For a long time I have been in two minds about writing a review of the  Harry Potter series' latest instalment. The fact that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was made for the theatre and the book released is a script and not novel as the previous instalments were,did bother me even  before I started reading it but what bothered more was the knowledge that even though the original story is by JK Rowling,the script was written by Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany. But then as a Harry Potter fan, there was no way I was going to ignore this one.  I have never reviewed a Harry Potter book on my blog before,this time I want to precisely because it is part of yet different from other books of the series.
Do note that I haven't seen the play,this review is of the script released in the book format and also that though I will try to avoid including spoilers,I don't offer an entirely spoiler free review especially in the first act.

Posted By Danish 2:37 AM

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Kanhaiya Kumar: One Trick Pony Or Rising Political Star


JNU Students Union President Kanhaiya Kumar has suddenly become a political sensation with prominent TV news anchors and journalists lining up to interview him and politicians across party lines giving sound bytes on live TV. Of course it followed his electrifying speech in JNU campus, hours after being released from jail which was broadcast by most TV channels and went viral with #KanhaiyaKumar trending globally on Twitter and his speech on YouTube, websites and other social media platforms getting millions of hits. Some pundits were quick to pronounce the birth of a new political star but one of the sanest voices in Indian media, Ravish Kumar actually asked the question, partly to Kanhaiya whom he was interviewing and partly to the viewers, if the student leaders new found fame is a flash in the pan or there is a possibility of it becoming something bigger. Though Kanhaiya made a brilliant and noble plea to delink personalities and individuals (especially himself) from battle between ideologies and principles, it is but a fact that it is because of his oratory skill that he is in the spotlight today,the political dynamics of the country have become too personality driven to be wished away.

Posted By Danish 12:24 AM

Sunday, February 28, 2016

The Revenant - A Brutal And Beautiful Saga Of Survival And Revenge

The Revenant (n. One who has returned, as if from the dead.)
After earning Oscar for Birdman, director Alejandro G Iñárritu comes up with another masterpiece, The Revenant, a movie on the legendary American frontiersman and fur trapper Hugh Glass whose gritty survival story is brought to life by the absolutely brilliant performance by Leonardo DiCaprio, excellent direction by Iñárritu and the overall outstanding effort of his crew members. And when I say brought to life I mean it. The movie is executed so flawlessly that it draws the viewers into the torturous ordeal of Glass as he suffers from tremendous violence of wild nature and savagery and malice of fellow-humans to the point of death but returns overcoming untold hardship with an unyielding zeal to survive and extract revenge.

Posted By Danish 3:10 AM