Automate irritating ISP login

Well recently my ISP updated their systems and made compulsory web login before giving access to any other site. I found this very frustrating and didnt liked it. Every time I start my modem I have to login to this ISP web login form.

So I just think to automate this process, I wrote a small python script to automate this login process. So as per my convenience I can put it in auto-run after login or whatever I want. Since I am lazy programmer I searched for a library which gave me easy manipulation of web forms. So I found mechanize module for python doing things which were necessary for this script. (Dont ask me why python , I dont want to start unother python Vs xyz Language fight. I like python very much so python :-) )

For easy usage of script I will briefly describe 5 parameters which are needed to be set one time before using this script.

loginURL = "http://login.example.com" # URL to Login form of ISP site

Here you have to put URL of the login page where the login form is shown

loginID = "myUserName" # ISP user name

loginPassword = "mYp4ssw0rd" # ISP Password

Quiet self explanatory : Username and password

loginFormName = "loginForm"

On the login page of the ISP site, check the html code for

tag put the name of the form in this location

successString = """NOW ACTIVATING YOUR SERVICES"""

Do a manual login and check the first page shown after login and copy any string from that page which is shown every time you login. This is used to check whether the login was successfull.

Comments are welcome.

Download script here

PythonScript ISPlogin.py

SL4A:The Scripting Layer for Android

SL4A enables it to support many scripting language
interpreters. In order to make practical use of SL4A, we will need atleast
the rudiments of one high-level scripting language such as Python, Ruby, Perl, Lua,
JavaScript, or BeanShell.

For me it meant ability to create and run python scripts on my phone without having to ROOT the phone. It makes possible to use lots of GUI like Checkboxes, Radio buttons, Inputbox very easily. I checked out some sample scripts and they were small and simple scripts just like normal python.

For ex. only 4 lines code was able to speak time using text-to-speech engine. Mind it two lines of them were import statements :D

import android
import time

droid = android.Android()
droid.ttsSpeak(time.strftime("%_I %M %p on %A, %B %_e, %Y "))



I found out about python scripting on android after months of buying the android phone :D
I feel ashamed of myself for not finding out this long ago. Well there were some battery problems with phone so had to give it back to service center two times. But it feels great now.

Better than that it allows directly creating & editing the scripts directly on phone also :-D

So I would be starting some scripting on python. If done anything interesting I will post it.

What not to do...Job Seekers

and offcourse some to do...

Well I have seen a large number of Resumes and also taken interivew of lots of candidates. I wanted to give some thoughts about to do / not to do about the resume, telephonic conversation, interviews. Others are welcome to add / discuss any points.

Resume

1) Keep your point wise

a. Don’t keep paragraphs of information regarding your skills or background.

b. Always keep information point wise.

2) Highlight the key skills for the job for which you are applying. If you looking jobs in multiple fields (Ex. Developer / Tester / Etc.) keep different resume ready for each field. Each field would have some different skills which you need to highlight.

3) Don’t put too much of information in resume. Also what ever tool / skill / project you have put in to your resume you should be able to answers any question regarding to that.

4) In my experience half of the interview questions would come from what you have written in the resume.

Telephonic Conversations

1) Be professional always ask the basic information like job profile , job location in the first place.

2) If the job profile and job location meets your need then only take forward the talks. Other wise you would be wasting your and other party’s time as well.

3) Always make a note of Name of the person with whom you had conversation for future reference

4) When you give time to any person for telephonic conversation, keep you mobile reachable, well charged. Its not good to give these reasons for not attending the call.

Face to Face Interview

1. Do dress decently in official dress.

i. Even if the office is using casual dresses

ii. Interview is not the place to show off with casuals

2. Carry a copy of resume with you and 2 photographs even if not asked by the company. You don’t know when they would come in handy

3. Do ask permission before going in to the interview room

4. Do not seat down before you are asked to do so

5. If interviewer offer shake-hand give a firm shake-hand.

6. Listen carefully to the question asked , if you don’t able to listen to a question politely ask to repeat the question

7. But don’t ask every time to repeat the question , some time its ok not every time.

8. Do answer with truth, if you don’t know any thing admit it that you don’t know it. No one is perfect.

9. Study the basics well before going for interview.

i. Ex. If you going for Developer interview you should know the basics of the programming language.

ii. If you going for Networking / Security profile your networking knowledge should be sound. (Ex TCPIP / ISO Layers etc). For a fresher at-least there is no excuse to Not have knowledge of TCPIP

Hide text in notepad

Hi there,
After some busy weeks, I am back. I had discussion with my regarding hiding text in the txt file using the notepad. So I am giving here the way by using which any text can be hidden in the notepad and you can have your own password for the hidden text also.
If you already dont know this go forwarding reading...

In windows you can hide some text in the txt file using only notepad and no other tool.

The way to do is ...

use following command to create a text file..

go to any specific folder of your choice in cmd prompt,
type command

notepad secret.txt:thisismypassword

Notepad will ask "Do you want to create a new file?"
Click "Yes"

Now the title bar of notepad should read like
secret.txt:thisismypassword.txt - Notepad

Edit and enter any text in this notepad file.

Close this file.

Go to windows explorer and navigate to that specific folder you will see only one file
secret.txt.

If you open this file you will see blank. You can enter any garbage in this secret.txt also and save it. It will not change your secrte data which was entered earlier.

To reopen the secrete data type same command again

notepad secret.txt:thisismypassword

You will see your data again. When opening file like this you can edit it and change your secrete data.



P.S. Regards to Cybercrawler for his posts

NullCon Security & Hacking Conference

NullCon

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So crack you knuckles, fire your Live CDs, dust your Debuggers and get ready for some serious action this February.

STATUTORY WARNING: nullcon can cause severe exposure to high octane gyan and could leave participants exhausted with wild shack parties. Beware, Be There.

For registartion visit nullcon.net

See you there at NullCon !!!

Using Multiple Monitors - like seen in movies

I had already discussed use of multiple monitors with Microsoft PowerPoint to make your presentations easier. When ever I am in my workplace I use extra monitor with my laptop. I just love using that.
First important thing linux inbuilt support multiple monitor with lots of features so I am not talking about linux os in this section, I am talking aobut Microsoft Windows.

Remember the computer setup in movie Swordfish ?



Dont you like that kinda of setup ??
Well I was also fascinated by that kinda of setup. I will discuss multiple techniques you can use to get that kind of setup. But money does matters so first I will describe about hardware options to get this kinda setup then I will describe software options.


1) If you have lots of money to invest on this setup then you can go for laptop docking station. Something as seen at http://www.digitaltigers.com/sidecar.asp


This kinda of hardware setup can provide you lots of flexibility in terms of how you can use your multiple monitor setup.

2) If you dont have that kinda money (which is always the case with lots of us) then you can go for some other options like using laptops vga out to connect secondary monitor. In this case you can drag drop your applications on the secondary monitor and distribute space taken by your applications.

If you haven't used multiple monitors read the article from Microsoft http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307873

When I started using multiple desktops this way then first thing I noticed was there was no taskbar on the second desktop. After you drag drop applications on second monitor then also the taskbar icons stay on first monitor only. So my taskbar was becoming crowded. So I was looking for a solution which will give me second monitor with taskbar also. I found some solutions like http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/
which give can give multiple desktops with taskbar also. If you dont want to go for paid solution then there is Multimon http://www.mediachance.com/free/multimon.htm which is freeware and only place a taskbar on the second desktop. Which application you drop on second monitor it will take taskbar icon to the its taskbar on second monitor. freemon taskbar dont have lots of fancy options but it does the work.
You can directly download mmtaskbar from this location http://www.mediachance.com/free/mmtaskbar21.exe

3) But you might have noticed that I was only talking about the second monitor and not multiple monitors, but laptops only have one VGA output. So only one monitor can be attached to it. So what about multiple monitor setup ???
Well multiple monitor you will need monitors. Even if you have monitors how will you connect them without hardware. So you cant do anything without getting some costly hardware ??
Well low cost solution is there If you have some spare computer or laptops. There is software solution by using which you can extend your monitor on any machine in the network. Maxivista is the name of one of such products found at http://www.maxivista.com/.



I have tried maxivista with total 4 monitors at a time, and it was working fine. So here you go... Now you can have your own setup like movies.

version 2 of script to check cisco router with Default password

With request from my one fren to make the script more user frendly
I have created version 2 of the script which can be downloaded from http://neo1981.googlepages.com/ciscoPassChkv2.py

Well Here is some Spoon Feeding and brief documentation as Requested by my fren.

This script is checked on windows xp with python version 2.5. Though it should run with python 2.3 and 2.4 also.

You can download python for windows or linux machine from this page http://python.org/download/

On Linux system you can execute the script by using commnd
# python ciscoPassChkv2.py

On windows you can execute script by using command

C:\>c:\Python25\python.exe ciscoPassChkv2.py

Where C:\Python25\ is the directory where you have installed python 2.5

By default the script will ask you IP address of the router to be checked for default login.
If you want multiple routers checked at one go, put the IP addresses of the routers one IP in single line in a file and save
it as iplist.txt
Keep iplist.txt in the same folder as the python script and run python script. The script will read IP addresses from the file and check
those routers for default passwords.