Sunday, January 29, 2017

Love conquers all


It was a normal day, birds chirping on the lush green trees, squirrels wandering in search of food.the stray dog retreating under the shade of the huge guava tree. A sense of calm surrounded the house. Suddenly, a loud crashing noise startles the dog, being used to the cacophony he goes back to his slumber. But the humans of this house once again are subjected to their daily routine. The eldest daughter of the old couple starts hurling abuses at the old man, throwing hot tea on the old lady. Loud screams can be heard in the entire neighborhood. Suddenly everything is quiet like nothing happened in the last 5 minutes.
The daughter picks up her bag and leaves the house with a slam of the door. The old lady sobs with worry of her daughter. Like silverware, the well educated, bright and cheerful person had tarnished.The oxidation had taken place. Depression corroded her mind and she turned into somebody who she wasn't, just like the people who troubled her in broad daylight. The man who kept touching her inappropriately on orders of her father. The shriveled looking witch who pulled out her smile off her smile on the orders of her mother. The politician who was stealing money from her account. The 6 trunk elephant who threatened to trample her if she dint offer him 10 litres of milk in the sink.
She was delusional. She was schizophrenic. The line between fantasy and reality had disappeared. Nobody escapes the ill of the brain. But there was hope. There was life.
It was 2.00 pm when her little angel walked home from school. She served her food. packed her off to tuition. She was this normal person when this little girl was around. The girl would pull her back into reality. She never attacked the little angel whatsoever happened.
The power of love and affection is indeed great. Love cures it all.

Based on a true story....
Often neglected, mental health is equally important as physical well being... When we look around closely we see many people struggling day in and day out fighting battles alone. The most we can do is empathise. Unfortunately there are people who make fun of the less fortunate. Reality hits hard when you realise these ones who throw stones at others are the very people who themselves live in glass houses. 
If normal people behave this way, I am glad to know and love somebody who is not normal.

Dear society, the mentally ill can be treated but unfortunately your filthy mind has no remedy! Get Well Soon 💖


Encrypting Virtual Machine-Virtual Box

Hi all. In this short introductory article, I would like to explain you how to encrypt virtual machine in Virtual Box.

Why encrypt VMs?
  • A propriety code being developed inside a guest (virtual) machine which needs to be confidential from other users using the same host (base) machine.
  • For a Pentester the exploit code or toolkit should be protected from other users using the same machine.
  • Much more depending on the purpose for ehich VMs are hosted.
      Steps:

-          Open the hypervisor (i.e. Virtual Box)
Fig.1
-          Select the machine which you want to encrypt and open the settings windows.
Fig.2
-          Navigate to Encryption Tab.
Fig.3
-          Check the Enable Encryption checkbox to enable encryption and uncheck the checkbox to disable the encryption which will automatically decrypt the virtual machine if already enabled.
-          Now we can use two encryption ciphers which we can use AES-XTS256-PLAIN64 and
AES-XTS128-PLAIN64. (I would prefer using AES-XTS256-PLAIN64 since its stronger and secure than other cipher).
Fig.4

-          Enter the password which we would require to decrypt and start the virtual machine.
Fig.5
-          Click Ok and the machine gets encrypted.
Fig.6
-          As we select and start the encrypted machine we get a window pop-up asking for credentials in order to decrypt and load operating system (In my case windows XP SP3).
Fig.7
-          In order to check whether the machine is encrypted or not we can navigate to the location address where the VM files are stored. (By default the location address for VM files is: C:\User\<User_Name>\VirtualBox VMs\<Virtual_Machine_Name>\).
Fig.8
-          Open the file name with .vbox extension in Notepad++.
-          Look for the <Property> tag which contains all the details for encryption.
Fig.9
-          Please refer below image for your reference.
Fig.10
     Notes:
-          The machine needs to be in closed or paused state in order to enable encryption.
-          The clone of encrypted virtual machine will also have encryption enabled by default.