Blawgg

Recently, my personal laptop succumbed to an infection by a new trojan called “Security Tool”. Masquerading as a PC security tool, this trojan will create executable files with random names, and display a sleek dialog box that appears to scan your PC and then warns you to clean up infections by buying the full version of this tool.

The UI this trojan shows is pretty good and convincing:

Security Tool trojan screenshot from pc1news.com

When your system boots up, this UI begins to scan your computer. The trojan also seemed to disable AVG antivirus from running and updating, and removed your desktop icons (only hiding them – not deleting them afaik). It will also prevent the Task manager from showing up and cause issues with browsing using IE or even Firefox, making it very difficult to do anything in order to remove it.

More info on the trojan is here and here (though I haven’t used the spyware removal tool on this second link and have no idea about it)

How I removed it:

Since the trojan will hijack your pc upon reboot, you need to take action before it can. If you are able to boot Windows in safe mode (with networking), then do that and try updating your antiviruses etc. I had issues with doing a safe mode bootup.

So when my laptop booted up, immediately as the desktop begins to show up, press Ctrl-Alt-Del to have the Task Manager show up. In task manager ‘processes’ tab, look for processes that have names like ’16501874.exe’ or ‘wpv42345234534.exe’ or ‘restorer_32a.exe’ (not sure about the last one, but it didn’t seem like a normal file). Click each of these processes immediately (select process, press Alt-E and click OK). New processes with names like these may continue to spring up – keep killing them.

After doing this until your Windows has completely started, if you have killed all such processes, you should now be OK for a while and be able to use your browser/antivirus etc.

I had AVG 8.5 free installed which I updated using its UI. I also downloaded free MalwareBytes’ Anti-Malware, and Trojan Killer (great little app) 30 day trial.

I performed a full scan using MalwareBytes first, then Trojan Killer. When I first installed and ran these two scanners, I had to reboot a couple of times, and each time I had to immediately bring up Task Mgr as described above and kill any trojan processes. After the scans were complete, subsequent reboots were clean and did not show the trojan again. The Security Tool trojan’s UI does not show up either, so I guess it is gone for good for now.

Currently I have all 3 (Malware, Trojan killer and AVG) to start along with Windows startup. Needless to say, all these softwares to update their virus definitions automatically and frequently.

(Click on image for more)

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, the movie

Some photos and video from my trip to Varanasi to witness the Total Solar Eclipse on 22 July 2009.

Varanasi turned out to be the best site to watch the eclipse in India as most other places got rained out. There was intermittent cloud cover until before totality but that provided a chance to view the partial sun with naked eyes since the clouds acted as a filter too. Just before totality and later, there was simply no cloud cover.

I was watching from the first floor balcony of a temple, with the Assi Ghat and Ganga right in front of us. Thousands of people had begun crowding the ghat from morning (some fearing the eclipse, some waiting for it), and that panorama added to the overall experience.

I was all prepared with filters and two cameras.. but I got the exposure and zoom wrong.. I should have focused more on getting a ‘regular’ picture of the totality with the Ganga and the Ghat in view, but the couple of mins of totality had me so engrossed that I forgot to take the filters off, resulting in dark totality pictures and missing the first diamond ring.

Nevertheless, nothing compares to a total solar eclipse. For a brief moment, imagine a huge black button with a golden aura in the sky.. the moments of anticipation towards first contact, totality and the diamond rings.. and the (nearly) 2 minutes of eerie darkness during totality. Now I know why there are people that chase eclipses around the world!

While this was pretty much the last total solar eclipse to pass through the main belt of India for the next 100 years or so, there is an Annular solar eclipse coming up on the Jan 15th 2010 which will be viewable from the southern tip of India. The annular eclipse will not see a diamond ring etc but will witness a somewhat brighter totality, since the disc of the moon won’t cover the sun entirely.

Some pictures, including those from Sarnath where I travelled later in the day, are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thearbitcouncil/tags/varanasi/

Here is a video.. the second diamond ring is visible around the 8:20 mark.

15 sec exposure, with ISO 200 on a 4 Megapixel non SLR, Olympus c770uz

Right Ascension or RA, and Declination or Dec, refer to the coordinate systems for stars and other heavenly bodies. They are similar to the concept of  latitude/longitude on earth and provide a “constant”  reference for locating objects in the night sky. However, for an observer on earth, as the sky moves through the night, a given RA and Dec doesn’t always fall in the same spot, but instead, depends on the local latitude/longitude and date/time.

In order to make practical use of the RA/Dec tables for objects, you also need to be able to convert them to a simple “degrees” format that shows how high from your horizon (technically not horizon but the celestial equator) and how far west or east you need to point your telescope.  The former is the Altitude, and the latter the Azimuth coordinate.

After looking at a dozen explanations of the conversion method, I created this excel sheet where you input certain parameters and get the Altitude and Azimuth outputs. The whole thing is based on the great explanation at http://www.stargazing.net/kepler/altaz.html.

Download the excel

Note that there are progams such as “Stellarium” which automatically do this for you. The excel sheet is probably a handy tool in certain cases if you don’t want a full fledged application running, and is likely to be heplful to understand the conversion method.

Bug reports are welcome. Next version should contain things like automatic time input (using your PC’s system clock) and possibly a version for mobile phones!

2009 is being celebrated as the International Year of Astronomy by the International Astronomical Union. The cornerstone project of this initiative is 100 Hours of Astronomy – a concerted effort by astronomers and organisations at all levels across the globe, to carry out astronomy related workshops from 2nd to 5th April. More details and other programs are listed here.

To get involved in Delhi events, you can participate at Nehru Planetarium where they have many activities planned.

You can also join SPACE’s activities at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi from 2nd to 5th daily, from sun rise to 11 PM. The schedule of the activities is on a Google calendar, that include -

* Measuring Altitude and Azimuth of the Sun (in day time), Moon and Stars (in evening and night) using Ram Yantra
* Marking Sun™s Path on Jai Prakash Yanra and studying the changing declination of the Sun
* Calibration of Samrat Yantra
* Sidewalk Astronomy Gibbous Moon and Saturn will be the highlight for this telescopic observatiieeseson.
* Star counting activities to measure the light pollution level in Delhi (SPACE™s Project Dark Skies)

Live webcast of Delhi’s events at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/space-100-hours-of-astronomy
The schedule for the live webcast is
1145-1215(IST) [0615-0715 GMT] introduction to Ram Yantra
1600-1700(IST) [1130-1230GMT] Tour of Jantar Mantar
1845-1930(IST)[1315-1400GMT] SPACE IYA programmes
1930-2030(IST)[1400-1500GMT] Sidewalk Astronomy

For Bangalore, visit the Bangalore Astronomical Society’s blog.

For a complete list of events in India registered with the IYA, click here.

Join this yahoogroup to stay connected to activities in India – http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/Astronomy_Activities_2009/

A brief history of virtualization

Create a server in Amazon’s cloud in under one hour

Spot the ISS from your backyard

Nehru Planetarium, New Delhi wiki of latest stuff

Nehru Planetarium’s astronomy yahoogroup

Bangalore Astronomical Society

Harvard NASA Astronomy digital library

This is definitely the next level of human-computer interaction.

Augmented Reality refers to a set of new technologies that allow us to interact with our computers/mobile phones etc in a totally new way that includes touch sensitivity, 3d movement and possibly also sound based interaction. Examples include Microsoft Surface, the PerceptivePixel touch screen (used in CNN’s american elections coverage) and even the iPhone’s touchscreen.Beyond those, there’s also ‘self aware’ alphabet blocks called ‘siftables’, the Nintendo Wii and some other basic gaming interfaces.

But there’s another level even further out on the ‘coolness’ radar – basically being able to interact with the computer generated scenario (a game for e.g.), using just your webcam.

GE Energy released a new advert for their windmills that demonstrates this ultimate tech – check out this video of how it works first. And if you’d like to try it, this is the original GE link.

The software basically first recognizes the pattern on the printout, develops an internal 3d mode, then overlays the windmill animations, and then as you move around your printout, follows you in realtime. And that’s not all – if you blow into your microphone, the windmill goes faster!!

I think this is basically Flash + Webcam + motion detection sw + pattern matching sw + 3d modelling sw. Also sound patten recognition to some extent.

Just plain awesomeness.

A friend hosts a website that he hadn’t paid attention to  many days. Recently he noticed the homepage was throwing up a code error. After some checking he found an unknown php code inserted randomly, that contained a link to http://internetcountercheck.com.

The malicious code didn’t actually execute anything – in fact it tried to spout a hyperlink, but only resulted in a runtime error resulting in the whole site being down. If it happens on an active site, it’d be detected in a minute and fixed.