July 28, 2013

How to make Ubuntu Live Thumbdrive

To run Ubuntu from a USB stick, the first thing you need to do is insert a USB stick with at least 2GB of free space into your PC.

The easiest way to put Ubuntu onto your stick is to use the USB installer provided at pendrivelinux.com. You’ll need to download and install and follow the instructions.


1) Install this software -> http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/



2) Click 'Browse' and open the ISO file you downloaded.




3) Choose the USB drive and click 'Create'.




Now connect the created USB drive while you reboot and it will boot into a live session. You may have to configure Boot Device Order from BIOS setup to achieve this. How to do this ? Follow the below instructions.



1) While you are booting your PC or Laptop, press del key (depends on different computers. Check for yours) to enter BIOS setup.

It will look like this.




2) Now enter advanced BIOS featured and change boot order.




3) Now save and exit.

Now it will boot with USB device.


Hope this helps.

July 21, 2013

Ubuntu Forum HACKED ?



You may have seen this when you opened Ubuntu Forum. If you ask my reaction , SHOCKED !
I really thought someone is messing with my Wifi and I was a victim of a Man-In-Middle Attack, until I googled about it.

Yes, the Ubuntu Forums have been hacked. The attacker took over the entire database of it.
They have every user's local username , password and e-mail address.

While the data from the forums has been compromised they stress that other Ubuntu/Canonical services such as Launchpad, Ubuntu One, ' are not affected by the breach'.

What Happened ?

Reports of the forums being ‘defaced’ surfaced on late Saturday (July 20th). The main page was redirected to that of an image touting a twitter account – @Spuntn1k_ – and text that read: “You dun goofed, it’s as simple as that”.

Early Twitter accounts of the hack say that an unspecified music track was also played when accessing the homepage.



So how did this happen? That’s the question Canonical will be trying to find out as soon as possible.

A Security blog , Sucuri, suggest that the hack may have been achieved due to lax protection on the backend. According to an unnamed source they've been told that the forum was running an outdated version of vBulletin that ‘didn't have the admin panel protected’.

Canonical has since redressed the breach, replacing the image with an announcement on what happened so far.

Hope Ubuntu Forum get well soon...