Internet domain names in 22 Indian languages soon

By mid-2012, vernacular domain names in all 22 Indian languages may secure the approval of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

By the end of this year, the central government would approach ICANN for internationalised domain names in seven additional Indian languages. These are Sindhi, Kashmiri, Kannada, Oriya, Malayalam, Manipuri and Assamese.

Internationalised domain names (IDNs) include characters other than the letters of the basic Latin alphabet (A-Z). Domain names are entered in the browser’s address bar to access any website. ICANN allows domain names to be used by a country’s or a territory’s internet community. This means instead of a two-letter country code in Latin characters (like .in and .uk), the IDN country code top level domains can use the country's official language. So, .bharat can be used in Devnagiri script or any other Indian language script.
“Once we get ICANN’s approval, the central government, along with the department of information technology and Nixi, would look into the applications and usage of domain names in the local languages. Getting the ICANN's approval is just the first step. After this, we would need the required infrastructure and administrative experience,” said Mahesh Kulkarni, associate director and head of the department, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing's (CDAC) graphics and intelligent script technology.

Kulkarni said roll-out of all the 22 languages would not happen immediately. “We would like to gather experience before we roll out all the language domain names,” he said.

Domain names are divided into two segments — generic top level domains (gTLDs) and country code top level domains (ccTLDs). The gTLD segment accounts for domain names like .com, .net, .org, and .info, while ccTLDs are country specific like .in (India), .de (Germany) and .uk (UK).

According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India, the country is expected to have 121 million internet users by the end of this year. Currently, India has 100 million users, of which 97 million are active users. Many analysts feel the availability of local language domain names would help get people hooked to the web.

CDAC, the department of information technology and state governments have been conducting workshops to spread awareness about the use of local IDNs. “Workshops are crucial to the success of the IDN initiative for Indian languages,” said Tulika Pandey, additional director, e-infrastructure division, department of information technology.

[via Business-Standard]

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Facebook's Timeline will be a open diary for Hackers

Facebook's new Timeline will make it even easier for criminals and others to mine the social network for personal information they can use to launch malicious attacks and steal passwords, a researcher said today.

Timeline, which Facebook unveiled yesterday at a developer conference and plans to roll out to users in a few weeks, summarizes important past events in a one-page display.

According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Timeline is "the story of your life,"

That has experts at U.K.-based Sophos concerned.

"Timeline makes it a heck of a lot easier [for attackers] to collect information on people," said Chet Wisniewski, a Sophos security researcher. "It's not that the data isn't already there on Facebook, but it's currently not in an easy-to-use format."

Cybercriminals often unearth personal details from social networking sites to craft targeted attacks, noted Wisniewski, and Timeline will make their job simpler.

"And Facebook encourages people to fill in the blanks [in the Timeline]," said Wisniewski, referring to the new tool's prompting users to add details to sections that are blank.

Because people often use personal information to craft passwords or the security questions that some sites and services demand answered before passwords are changed, the more someone adds to Timeline, the more they put themselves at risk, said Wisniewski.

"Remember the hack of [former Alaska governor] Sarah Palin's account?" asked Wisniewski. "That hacker found the answers to her security questions online."

A former University of Tennessee student who bragged it took him just 45 minutes of research to reset Palin's Yahoo Mail account password was convicted on multiple federal felony counts last year.

Hackers can also use what they find on Facebook and elsewhere to craft convincing emails that include malware or links to malicious sites, noted Wisniewski, even if the individual is not the target.

"It may be about the fact that you work for RSA [Security]," he said, referring to the emails sent to low-level employees at that firm earlier this year. Those emails, which included malware embedded in Excel spreadsheets, gave attackers a foothold on RSA's network. The criminals then scoured RSA's systems and stole confidential information about its popular SecurID authentication token technology.

Others, not strictly hackers, could use Timeline to quickly dig up dirt as well, said Wisniewski.

"Someone could use it to gather information to harass you, or someone at work competing for your job could use it," he said.

"The more you put in there to make it complete -- and we've been conditioned to finish forms -- the easier it is for someone with ill intent to gather information about you," said Wisniewski.

Although current Facebook privacy settings will apply to the Timeline -- letting users decide who sees what -- and the Timeline can be edited to remove an embarrassing past, Wisniewski was pessimistic about users' decision making.

"Call us paranoid or prudent -- we're paid to worry about this -- but for 99% of people, the danger doesn't even cross their mind," said Wisniewski.

In an unscientific survey Sophos ran on its website today, nearly 50% agreed that the Facebook Timeline worried them, while about 17% said they liked the idea or would get used to it.

Wisniewski admitted that the poll probably doesn't reflect most Facebook users' opinions. "They're doubly self-selected," he acknowledged, "first for taking the survey and second because they're concerned enough about security to go to our website."

Facebook Timeline - A first Look

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Top 5 Free SMS sending Websites in India

1. www.way2sms.com

Way2SMS - Send Free SMS to any mobile in India


2. www.spicesms.com

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Free SMS, Send Free SMS To Any Mobile In Kuwait, UAE, Saudi

4.www.youmint.com

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5. www.indyarocks.com/send/free-sms

Free SMS | Send free SMS | send free SMS to india

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