The Holiday Conundrum

It all began on 20th October. Being done with our submissions and with Diwali round the corner, feeling of excitement and joy albeit with occasional pang of panic about the upcoming exams was in the air. These PLs suck. Its like holding out a candy to a toddler and wolfing it down before it can reach it.You can't study, because,well, its Diwali time and you're not supposed to study in Diwali.You can't 'not study' because, hell, you've got these goddamn exams breathing down your neck all the time! University coves love this. Its like their own strategy of keeping scores in check.Anyway, as I was saying, it all started on 20th October morning........

"Where do you want to go after your exams?", asked my father over his newspaper.I love this discussion! Every semester one month before the exams get over, our family enjoys discussing 'where to go!' ( or rather, 'where not to go' ) We take days to reach an apt conclusion. I like everything grand! 5 star hotels, air travel, that's what travel is all about,baby! But my parents believe in educating me about 2nd class trains with singing beggars and open windows. I staunchly hold on to my ideals though..(whenever I can). Also there's always some kind of twist in the end. Who doesn't like some good suspense? And whats travel without any last minute glitches, anyway ?

I remember once we had a long discussion about the same and we all agreed to visit Japan (Russia, Hong Kong etc were gallant fighters till the end). I excitedly learnt some basic Japanese, we decided what gizmos should we buy, got the visa as well! We ended up going to Ratnagiri. On the similar lines we were all set to honor South Africa with our presence during IPL II but our travel agent loved Ethiopia. He booked us to Jo'berg via Addis Ababa (google it.. :P) which required vaccination against a battery of illnesses. Put off, we (read: my Parents) thought Haridwar was a better choice.We once reached railway station en route to Nagpur but train was delayed by 14 odd hours.To avoid future cancellations and modifications in the itinerary, we traveled overnight in a rickety, smelly bus and shared our seats with some cuddly rats.Thrilling tale, goto http://chinusden.blogspot.com/2011/01/orange-melange.html to read more about it!

So, this time, then the winter session of our family's parliament opened up again, I was determined to make it big. The anticipated question thoroughly woke me up with a jerk faster than the cup of adrak-wali chai I was warming up to. "Iceland!",I exclaimed. I'd been re-reading The Journey to the Center of the Earth the night before and by Jove, how would I have loved to visit Sneffels!

" How about UK? ", my mum joined the party.

"UK ? You sure? It's freezing there this time of the year", said dad.

"So what? We can visit Scottish Highlands.I always wanted to go there."

"Hey wait a minute! Iceland isn't far fr-"

"Okay, let's see. My friend lives in Malaysia. Maybe we could....."

"But, Ice-"

"Malaysia? We can combine Singapore with that!"

and the two conveniently forgot to hear whenever I mentioned anything that stated with 'I'.After several millenia , I realized that my part in the discussion was equivalent to that of Mongolia in the United Nations non proliferation of nuclear weapons debate.Sensing defeat, I retreated back to my computer and forgot all about it.

Evening brought a conclusion. Malaysia it was! Year end in Singapore! It sounded too good to be true. I asked Chinmay, my 'friend in the family' about it. He seemed to like the idea as well. Finally feeling pretty enthusiastic, I ventured off happily to arrange a tour.I called several travel agents, they all seemed pretty helpful at first.They were all talk about the wonders of their tours , their food and even their taxis. But when it came to convey their estimate, they obstinately held on to their 'Puneri' principles. I realized that I should meet them face to face and strike a deal. So after spending an entire afternoon on watching videos like 'how to be a boss' , 'how to strike a good deal' and 'how to intimidate people' on Youtube, I set off.

First few were typical. They refused to budge. 'Take it or leave it',they said. I left it. We Kulkarnis are pretty firm when it comes to pride. The last one was a woman. 'Ha!' ,I thought. 'Here comes my deal.. I knew from watching loads of Hindi movies that women , often , give in easily. How wrong I was. This one , as it turned out, was a true salesperson who seemed hell-bent on selling it to me. When I first received her Quote, I balked at it.'75,000 per person?? No way! We are 6 people. 40,000! Group Discount banta hai! ' Still, after several e mails and 2 pages of my MMC textbook, she finally agreed upon a middle price, 50,000. Feeling smug, I accepted it. Sadly my parents didn't.

'50,000? You want to blow away 150,000 in 7 days? We'll stay at my friend's place in Malaysia. Cut the hotel costs.'

'But the good lady at the agency says she can't do that. We have to avail all their services!',I protested.

'Then you can go with that 'good lady' when you start earning. We can go on our own.'

Gee, I felt bad when I told her our decision. She had worked hard to settle on 50,000. Dejected, I left all the stuff on my parents. I couldn't afford to spend more time on that in any case. DSP still gives me nightmares..

After few days, I casually asked mum,

'So, whats the prograaam? Malaysia, right? When're we going?'

'What Malaysia? oh..that..we dropped the idea.Your Passport has expired this month. We need to renew it. It'll take a month or so. Maybe we could go in Summer. We can even go to Spain! You saw ZNMD na?..'

My heart dropped like a catch from Kamran Akmal's glove. All that planning, all that discussion, all that 'cajoling'..All in vain! With just 2 days left for the exam, I had to let it be. But then I realized, the major attraction of the holiday is in planning it and not executing it. As Oscar Wilde (blame uncyclopedia for that!)pointed out, the point is in journey, not the destination.

PS: As of 12th December, my holidays have started and I'm still in Pune.We plan to visit Savantwadi next week.

mVoIP: Security concerns and Counter-measures

Abstract:

This paper deals with modern cellular phones that operate on Voice over Internet Protocol, their current development, several Information security risks associated with them and various countermeasures that can be undertaken to prevent data theft/misuse. VoIP is basically based on several protocols, some of them newly defined, thereby having their own security risks. VoIP cell phones , if not properly configured, are not only vulnerable to well known traditional modes of attack such as Denial of Service (DoS),Man in the middle (MiTM) etc but also introduce new ones like Toll frauds, ‘Vishing’ etc. Having said that, once we understand the associated risks, with proper planning and checks in place, we can utilize the VoIP network without compromising its security or Quality of Service( QoS).

I. VOIP AND MVOIP

VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. VoIP consists of set of standards that have been adopted to facilitate the transfer of voice over the internet. Broadly, VoIP includes several hosts of applications like Instant Messaging,P2P clients, conventional hardphones, softphones etc. Most notable application that utilizes VoIP is Skype. VoIP is primarily based on:

1.SIP : Session Initiation Protocol is a text-based protocol that allows two user agents to set up, modify and end a phone call between them. Like HTTP in many regards, it also relies on specific requests and responses for its function.

2.RTP:Real Time Protocol is an IETF standard, documented in RFC 3550.RTP provides payload type verification, sequence numbering (a vulnerability for Man in the Middle attack, described later in the paper), time stamping and delivery monitoring features. It generally resides on top of UDP.

mVoIP or mobile VoIP is a relatively new version of the conventional VoIP. mVoIP is specifically designed for VoIP applications over a cell phone. There are several ways a cell phone can be integrated into a VoIP network viz.

1.A mobile device can be converted into a standard SIP client. This then can use mobile’s data network to send/receive SIP messages and to manage RTP for the voice part. A pre-requisite for such a device, at minimum, is high speed IP communication. Here VoIP protocols can be used over any high-speed broadband IP capable wireless network such as EVDO rev A, HSDPA, Wi-fi or WiMAX. Such a device is also called as a Wi-fi phone. It’s coverage, however, is restricted to the boundaries of adequate Wi-fi signal reception.

2.A mobile device can act as an mVoIP device whenever there is a presence of supported WLAN and as a regular cellular phone when its not. It basically uses a softswitch like gateway to bridge SIP and RTP into the mobile network’s SS7 infrastructure .Such a phone can perform dually. It runs on Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) that is a kind of generic access network designed to allow VoIP to run over a GSM cell backbone.

Security Vulnerabilities in mVoIP devices can be found in four basic areas:

1.IP infrastructure: This deals with security risks of the non VoIP systems like the WLAN used for IP communication.

2.Underlying Operating System: VoIP endpoints can be infected with VoIP device or Protocol specific viruses. Certain OSes like WinCE, Symbian OS etc vulnerable in this regard as they are less robust and typically don’t run anti-virus software.

3.Configuration: mVoIP device configurations are set by the manufacturer are rarely changed. This can be taken an advantage of by the attacker, who can guess the default parameters, passwords etc set and thereby cause buffer overflows and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.

4.Applications: Loopholes in various applications can be used by the attacker to eavesdrop, record or modify VoIP calls.

II. SECURITY VULNERABILITIES

Converging voice and data on the same wire introduces a host of security risks. Technically, a VoIP call can be compromised in three basic ways: The call can be eavesdropped on as soon as it leaves the handset, the mVoIP device can be rendered useless by a third party as a DoS attack or the handset itself can be hijacked. Some of the typical attacks are showcased as below:

1.Denial of Service(DoS) attack:

DoS poses a greatest risk to any mVoIP server. VoIP applications provide an excellent cover for launching such attacks. This is a way to disrupt or deny a particular service to legitimate users. If a VCP or any IP phone is bombarded with UDP packets of more than 65,534 bytes, the device ceases to work. This type of flooding is pretty easy for an attacker since UDP source addresses can be spoofed easily by employing one of the many such tools found freely on the internet. Similarly ,a large number of TCP SYN floods or ICMP smurf floods can cause equivalent damage. SIP Inviteflood is one type of attack which consumes a lot of system resources and causes outages. The inviteflood tool is one tool that can execute this kind of SIP inviteflood. It generates semi-valid invite messages that are continuously transmitted at a high rate. This can cause dropped calls and several SIP exceptions in the target. Many a softphone has showcased its vulnerability against it. DoS can be also done by means of ‘botnets’ or a kind of PC’s ‘zombie army’ wherein scores of legitimate machines are employed by the attacker to target one victim. It can be done against a whole WLAN too, where large amount of 802.11 or 802.1x frames are transmitted which can cause a network disconnection thereby compromising all the devices that use that network.

2. MiTM attacks: Man in The Middle attacks are caused when an attacker gains an access to the packets sent and received by both the calling parties. Here, an attacker can either passively monitor the chat or can also modify the packets sent or received and undermining their integrity. MiTM is caused when an attacker intercepts RTP messages of the victim. The attacker can conveniently modify the timestamps and sequence numbering so that this interception goes undetected. This sort of attack is usually observed in a poorly secured wireless medium wherein anybody having an access to the WLAN can sniff out packets sent or received by someone using the same WLAN. A good Wi-Fi network is the fundamental pre-requisite of an mVoIP device. Generally wireless LANs employ 802.11b/g protocols with WEP or WPA/WPA2. WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) is vulnerable because of relatively short IVs(Initialization vectors) and a key that remains static. Even if WEP is enabled, an attacker can easily sniff and spoof MAC addresses because they appear in a clear text format.WPA on other hand relies on hashing passwords(RC4) which can be brute-forced. Free tools such as Wireshark can be employed to sniff VoIP conversations of the target.

3.Toll Frauds and ‘Vishing’ :Toll frauds are caused when an attacker ‘piggybacks’ the victim’s VoIP connection to make free calls anywhere in the world and bill is traced to the victim. This can happen in a variety of ways. SIP registration hijacking is one of them. SIP consists of a Registrar server ,which processes REGISTER requests from the user and maps his SIP URI to his current location. In this, the attacker intercepts the victim’s IP address in this request with his own, thereby gaining an illegal access to his connection. ‘Vishing’ or ‘Phreaking’ is a VoIP term for Phishing. In this, a victim can receive a pre-recorded or an IVR message asking for his bank/credit card details. The call is then redirected to the attacker who in turn can gain access to the victim’s personal details. This however is not a specific vulnerability of mVoIP but a part of the social engineering attacks.

4.Handset Vulnerabilities: mVoIP handset itself can be vulnerable to many security risks. IM applications could be a convenient medium to transfer viruses, worms and other malware onto the instrument. Some older mobile OSes being incapable of handling them may fall prey .A phone can be used by an attacker as a part of a ‘botnet’ , as described earlier, and be used to carry out illegal activities without the knowledge of the victim. Spamming over Internet telephony or SPIT too works in a similar way. Moreover, traditional Bluetooth attacks like Bluejacking, Blue Snarfing etc. too pose a significant risk.

III. COUNTERMEASURES

1.Anti-DoS solutions such as SYN rate limiting, ingress/egress filtering should be implemented. Any VoIP system can be targeted for DoS attack. Stronger authentication policy and removing unwanted network services helps. Although a mass DDoS cannot be completely thwarted, this might give a mVoIP system a fighting chance. Call log monitors should be installed to check SIP Registration hijacking. This again, might not prevent this attack but one can be able to check out its occurrence and possibly trace the attacker.

2.VoIP traffic must be totally encrypted. Even though we can’t maintain 100% security of traffic on the internet, we can implement a harder encryption algorithm so that even if the data ends up in wrong hands, it is rendered unusable e.g. Skype uses a 256 bit AES encryption when it tries to establish connection with the client server. It then uses two central server key pairs for security of 1536 and 2048 bits respectively. Moreover, all sessions are encrypted by XORing of plaintext and key streams generated by the AES.

3.Wi-Fi must be secured by adopting a suitable strategy for MAC address filtering. Firewalling or combination of protocol based measures can also be used to secure a wireless network.

4.WLAN typically behaves like a hub-based wired network which enables broadcasts of data thus subsequently, it must be monitored by a security team regularly to check network sniffing, ARP spoofing etc.

5.Phone OS must be updated regularly and relevant security patches must be installed. Bluetooth must be switched on only when needed and must be monitored to ensure the connection only with the legitimate party.

6.Trusted WLANs should be used. While trying to connect one should make sure that the beaconed SSID is genuine and not the one belonging to a rogue access point. Its recommended to use a VPN application in any case.

7.Default configurations provided by the manufacturer can be easily guessed. Hence they must be replaced at the earliest. User login passwords, AMI manager passwords (in case of Asterisk SIP server) must be long and difficult to guess. It is recommended to have an alpha-numeric password with a mixture of special characters in it. This makes brute-forcing difficult.

8.Credit card/Bank account details must never be confided in to anyone on the IVR , internet or otherwise.

9.mVoIP system must be adequately stress-tested. Fuzzing might be used to check buffer overflows and other such vulnerabilities.

10.Strict laws must be enforced on those who indulge in VoIP attacks.

IV. THE FUTURE

mVoIP is the future of cellular telephony. Use of VoIP in place of current PSTN and cellular network will greatly reduce the cost and also increase the speed and the quality of service. Despite having some glitches, with proper security implementations in place, an mVoIP network proves out to be a much difficult network to attack as compared to PSTN. Mobile phone companies like T-Mobile in the USA have already begun the manufacture of mVoIP cell phones. It’s just a matter of time before mVoIP takes the world by a storm, all the more reason for us to be better prepared for it

Disclaimer: These are my thoughts on the subject. No copyright violations intended.

A Social Network!

Okay, (for those who excitedly wait for discursive insipid stuff) my apologies for such a prolonged delay in writing my new post! And a big 'Hello!' for the rest!(possibly with a few more minutes of agony.Don't tell me I didn't warn you!) After a rather fantastic vacation spent on doing a thesis on the similarity of the color of the ceiling of my room and that of the West Indian sky during the test matches, I've finally got the time to vent out stuff for the online world! Sadly, the thesis hit the dead-end as most of the matches ended well before the fourth day and I was distracted by the huge amount of highly interested aficionados that thronged the stadiums.

Anyway, lets talk about the Social Networks! This thing has become so damn ubiquitous! Why ,even the corny mobile phone advert says "Facebook, Orkut, Twitter!! Bana doon social life better!" I'm sure, all of you, unless you follow the old caveman lifestyle, have an account in some social networking site. Social Networking, they say(my best guess is Sheldon Cooper) ,has become a new paradigm of the 21st century. Or in other words, the best thing since wrestling bouts wherein you can have a lot of fun at others' expense! Where else can you get to spy on the social lives of 300+ people at one place!

Being a social net-worker has its benefits.You get to know all your friends who constantly update their status to impress someone or do some real social service by updating some typical post-break-up songs for their fellow sufferers! It also breeds a sense a competitiveness in you. I remember one incident which happened sometime back. I was on a trip in my holidays and accessed Facebook through my rickety Nokia. The panorama was simply so picturesque that I badly wanted my friends in Mumbai/Pune to know that! (Nothing frustrates you more on a gloomy afternoon than statuses like these! True story!) So after racking my otherwise pathetic creativity for a couple of hours, I came up with "What a place! Feeling Fantastic!" .Feeling smug, I decided to follow the same routine everyday (I was kind of a nerd then,yeah..) So after coming back I decided to press the issue further (to go for the kill as they say ). Here's the excerpt :

(at college)

Me : So how did your holidays go??

Friend: They were okay.

(I was little disappointed..he didn't ask me how mine were! But I decided to let him know all the same!)

Me :Mine were great! You saw my status updates,right?

Friend:Yeah..You do have guts,man.

Me :Yeah..Going up to 5000 odd feet is no mean feat! Even if you go by a car!

Friend:Not that! You updated statuses through your crappy phone!! "Mobile Web" !!! How cheap is that! At least get that MicroMax ka Android!!

Now this was unexpected!! I can't say that my pride didn't puke at me. So I updated my status again, this time through an Apple device! But imagine my agony when I found out, it still was "mobile-web"!! Because I accessed Facebook through the browser and not the App! Jeez, technology makes your life so "easier", doesn't it?

After the success of that 'Social Network' movie, I was hit by this bug again.Inspired by Mr.Zuckerberg, my friend and I decided to make a social networking site as a part of our college project. We spent two weeks doing it and presented it as our entry in the competition. Sadly, the thing didn't impress our honorably just and scrupulous college authorities and we weren't allowed to participate. Oh well.We booked the domain name(waddup.in..it's still there but maybe the site might have crashed) and uploaded it with a great gusto! It has its members as the highly intelligent cognoscenti who really understand it (2 at the last count.. i.e the developers themselves).

Ah well..bad stuff (my blog is clean!) happens right? So where was I? Ah yes, Social networking! And if you speak of that how can you forget to mention Google+ ? The new in-thing! Its the sort of the stuff that acts as the food for your statuses on other sites! Brag if you've got it and despise it if you haven't! For those of you who haven't received an invitation to join it, fear not! Just comment on this blog and you'll have one in your inbox in a jiffy! (Okay, that's a joke! I haven't received one myself! And I plan to write my displeasure to the Google gods right away!) Despite its huge success, somehow the site seems a little confusing to me. Granted, its more secure, fun and has to have a better chat than Facebook but it isn't really social networking when most of your 'social' isn't in it! Still, I'd love to have that coveted golden ticket all the same!

I was always apprehensive of twitter.It had gained a notorious fame ever since the Shashi Tharoor and Lalit Modi incidents! Me, being someone who talks or rather talks too much before he thinks, always kept it at a safe distance. However,I couldn't stop myself from joining it after I found out I could connect with Wayne Parnell , Bill Gates and OMG Facts at the same time and know all about whats happening in celebs' lives! (Pune Times doesn't cover much..what to do?) After an initial gung-ho, it became rather hackneyed by the passing day. No longer did it interest me which brand of toothbrush by favorite actress hates the most or what part of Africa is the latest venture of a philanthropist. The feeling was aptly put by my friend @jam27990 who tweeted "god i'm tweeting! i must be really bored!" I re-tweeted that and that was the only thing I did on twitter!

Of course, networking has gone a certain Paradigm shift but its general essence remains constant. Be it just 'poking' someone on line or giving birthday bumps to someone with a great alacrity in front of petrified crowd in an udupi restaurant. 'Like' it or not, you can't help 'following' it! :D

The Cup of Good hope!

So, there it is again. The big one.The one that we've all been waiting for! Yes, I'm talking about the Cricket world cup (and not the valentine's day :P) which is steadily if not forcefully making its way towards the prime-time television slot. With the film producers and anxious parents hoping for India's early ouster from the tournament, the cup has certainly added a much needed fizz in a rather mundane year so far.

If not the common man, the students owe a lot to this tournament! The tournament is strategically planned after consultations with various educational boards which unanimously decide to schedule exams parallel to it (an excellent way to lower the scores despite setting a really worthless paper! ). I remember in 2007, when I was giving my grade 10 exams (SSC sounds too down market these days, what to do? ), my science II paper was scheduled right after the India-Bangladesh match(wherein they 'Bangla-Dashed' us :( ). So it would take little thinking to imagine my temperament the next day. Anyway, as I was saying the whole sub-continent owes a lot to this world cup.India wishes to make some quick bucks to compensate for its S-Band, 2G-Band and god-knows-what-Band loss, Sri Lanka wishes to make some quick bucks to compensate for its civil war loss, Bangladesh wishes to make some quick bucks to nullify its food problems. Pakistan,too, wanted to make some quick bucks just for the heck of it but their dreams were shattered when ICC came to know about the recent American aid which violated sponsorship clauses. Interestingly , some Pakistani players tried to 'some quick bucks' (yeesh..overdose of a phrase isn't it? ) in England but were caught red-handed when they tried to bargain for a better price.

So, where was I? Ah,yes the world cup! My word, our country never exhibits as much unity as much it does during the world cup. It certainly gets the people all over 'wee-wee'd' up! If we win, we exhibit a great unity in cheering the team and feeling patriotic.If not, well, we exhibit a greater unity rioting through the streets and shattering panes of some poor local transport buses (Great way to pave a way for new ones, see ?). So its a win-win situation for all of us! This brings me to our college. Our college firmly believes to make us withstand any situation in life, no matter how hard it may be.So it got a perfect time to teach us these noble values this semester. Benevolently, it decided to keep Saturdays working and increased one extra working hour. To stop us yielding to our temptations, the authorities also imposed a chiding fine per lecture missed.(Killing two birds with one stone,eh? ;) ) Now, thats something which will always keep us indebted to it! :D

Of all the stuff that usually happens before the world cup, I guess this time there hasn't been much publicity about it.No 'biscuit khao world cup jao' ad campaigns, no Lagaan-type films and no, for that matter, fake IPL player(so far..)! Indian team is relaxed and confident.They know they've lot of cricket to play in the coming months, so they're trying their hand at some football (irony eh! ).Australians, meanwhile have started their preparations methodically and meticulously.They've started the 'mind games' already and would take up 'Hey, this isn't school cricket,Mate!' in due course. Matthew Hayden,too, made up for his absence by publishing his autobiography,of which, if not nobody, Harbhajan Singh might certainly have a copy! Coming back to cricket, I guess, Zimbabwe, this time have got a realistic chance of winning the silverware.They're here since January and are tuning themselves to the fast and bouncy Sub-Continent tracks.Moreover, they've got none other than Brian Lara to cheer them on! I wish them luck!

Sadly(warning : your opinion may differ),the tournament that takes place after the world cup hogs much more limelight (not to mention the controversies! :D ). T20 is the newly crowned king of cricket.With the support of D&G (Dollar & Glamor) it has consolidated its position even further!And why not? These days, the slam bang-boomerang T20 outgrows even the bollywood movies, if not steady one-day cricket! So, this time, the world cup promises some hope for all! Be it you, me or the cricket itself......

Jumping the Bandwagon

For those of you, who know me, it's a big deal to type stuff...Let alone a blog! I'm one of those self-proclaimed purists, who prefer writing on paper and abstain from writing long Facebook statuses.It seems a sort of an act of sacrilege to those brainy Egyptians(or whoever) who first created paper and paved a way for revolutionary masterpieces like vampire novels and 'How to influence people and win friends' (Yes, there's a book like that!). But this electronic world is unforgiving for those who think that a pen is mightier than a pen-drive (Make no mistake, I'm a computer engineer myself. :P). So finally, after a great deal of thought, introspection and reading a rather thought-provoking blog on termites, I yield in.

The name of my blog conceals a deep story. It looks flashy as well. I remember a school-going kid who lives nearby telling me philosophically that the famous 'What's in a name?' dialog by Shakespeare is totally crap and invalid in the modern era. Nowadays, everything is in a name. We prefer 'Britannia' over 'Priyagold' ,'Spiderman' over 'Shaktimaan', 'Katrina' over 'Rakhi' et cetera. So modern man is completely mesmerized merely by the name of the object. Thus inspired , I set out to find my pocket dictionary. I started a search for a jazzy, glitzy looking word starting from 'S' (Needless to say, the letter 'S' holds a special position in my heart!) and came across 'Serendipity'. 'Serendipity' according to a popular online dictionary(I lost my dear old dictionary ever since :( ) means 'something really good you accidentally stumble upon whilst looking for something entirely different'. Bemused, I adopted the name 'A Quantum of Serendipity' ! Now that I've cleared all your hitherto doubts about my fantastic vocabulary, I begin!

I know some people who, you know, are wee bit prone to throw their weight around. They write blogs on 'Android', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Encryption and Cryptology' and such mentally disturbing stuff that most of us don't know/care about. It's good that these blogs try to increase our knowledge about such stuff but I guess they only succeed in getting the reader like me badly gasping for some air! On the serious side, I'd rather read something about dancing Gorillas than 'Android'!(I don't know about you!) .I remember being asked once in my early sophomore days whether I knew anything about PLDs, microprocessors, decoders,........, networking, fuzzy logic (I've conveniently forgotten the rest of the list) by a rather enthusiastic geeky colleague wanting to do a shoddy project. When most of the stuff received a look similar to that of Snoop Dogg's when confronted with questions on Ghazals, exasperated, he said 'At least, you know about RSS feeds right? The one you get with Blogs??' That touched my nerve. Like a determined Munaf Patel who comes in to bat at no.11 when India needs 78 runs to win, I set out to write my own blog.

Coming back to my blog, I guess its uncanny and weird to vent out your thoughts in front of the whole world. Some people may like it, some may ridicule it and some won't notice it at all! But in the end, it does matter. It provides some respite on a ludicrously jobless days like today when even a pesky fly irritates you for an hour and you're too lazy to shoo it away! So keep an eye on this column for some 'Serendipity' in future! Alas! I have to end this blog numero uno right now. Not because that I have exceeded the limits of my typing already, but I'll have to look for some anti-fly weapons....