Need to Know @IT

Well well well..As I already told you,most of people ask me how to become a hacker,and my usual reply is that I cant make you a hacker,but I can tell you how to be one,and its your interest,your passion,your mindset which will drive you to be one.A hacker evolves from many stages,from the lower level script kiddie to the elite level Guru,one needs to be in constant research to develop their soft and hard skills.I m myself learning a lot,and I would like to share 5 Hacking sites,which you must visit,if you want to be an expert in security.

Phrack

Phrack is the granddaddy of all the hacking sites out there,and is the world’s oldest hacker ezine,by hackers,for hacker. Described by Gordon Fyodor as “the best, and by far the longest running hacker zine” covers deep articles on Hacking and Cracking.A heaven for willing learners,Its articles are worth in gold.

Hacki9

Hakin9 offers an in-depth look at both attack and defense techniques and concentrates on difficult technical issues.Hakin9’s target readers are those responsible for IT system security, programmers, security specialists, professional administrators, as well as people taking up security issues in their free time.

Milw0rm

When it comes to getting exploits,few sites are as comprehensive and updated as Milw0rm.Milw0rm provides a one stop platform for almost all security experts along the world to publish their new found exploits on the web so that other can study them for good or worse.

Hack this Site

Wanna test your hacking skills ? Hack This Site puts your skills to an ultimate test as it throws you real life challenges of almost every type,Trust me,If you have it in you,visit and complete its missions and nothing can beat you.

2600

A great collection of articles and podcasts on security,one has to visit 2600 to get a feel what hacking is.

If you’ve upgraded your Windows Vista computer’s memory(RAM) after you installed the memory, you may be wondering why you suddenly lost some drive space.

In Windows XP, when you added more memory to your computer, you had to manually go and increase the size of your paging file to correctly match the amount of memory in your computer. Windows Vista does away with this by automatically setting the optimal size for the paging file, even after you add more memory to your computer.

For instance, if you had a computer with 1GB of memory, your paging file would be roughly 1300mb, but if you add another 1GB of memory to your computer to make a total of 2GB, now when you look at the paging file, it will have automatically increased:

You can turn this setting on and off by right-clicking the Computer icon, clicking the Advanced System Settings link, then clicking the Settings button under Performance:

Click the Advanced tab, and you should see the current size of the paging file as in the first screenshot. Click the Change button, and you’ll finally see the checkbox to “Automatically manage paging file size for all drives”

You can uncheck this box and set the paging file manually if you’d like. If you have a number of fast drives in your system, you could configure the system for optimal performance by using a faster drive for the paging file, but I’d recommend just leaving the default setting on in most cases.

This seems to help out with the memory usage quite a bit. Generally, when you minimize a window the memory usage goes way down because that application isn’t active. Unfortunately, Firefox by default doesn’t adhere to this behavior. Here’s how to force it to.

Type the following into your address bar in Firefox:

about:config

You will want to right click anywhere in the window, choose New, Boolean, and enter in the following text:

config.trim_on_minimize

To change the value you can either doubleclick, or right-click and choose Toggle. You will have to restart Firefox, but after you do, you should notice the memory usage go way down whenever you have Firefox minimized.

Update: You will want the value to be set to True in order for this to work.

If you are an overclocker, or are just suspecting a memory problem with your computer, you should probably run some memory tests. Rather than spending money, you can use the free tool included in Windows Vista.

Using this tool will require a reboot, so keep that in mind before you launch it.

Type in memory into the start menu, and you should see the first option will say Memory Diagnostics Tool.

A dialog will pop up asking if you want to reboot and check for problems now, or check for problems the next time you restart.

If you choose to restart now, Vista will reboot into the memory diagnostic utility:

You can also get to this utility directly from the boot manager menu. You’ll notice it at the bottom of the window in the screenshot below:

Getting to it is a little strange, though, if you only have Vista installed on the machine. You’ll have to hold down F8 for the boot menu, and then hit Esc to get to the screen above.