Save your modem / router from DND MITM Attacks

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Recently I started facing a problem with internet connection. I was not able to open yahoo.com, microsoft.com. Instead of these two sites, Ukranian Site was opening. I thought that these 2 sites are hacked. Then I tried opening both sites on my iPhone with GPRS. It worked properly. Both sites were opening perfectly on GPRS. Then I realised that the problem is with my PC / Network. Then I tried my desktop. Same result. None of the sites were opening there too. So Its not the problem with my laptop or desktop. Its the problem of the network. Then I investigated my WIFI Router (Belkin). Checked the settings every thing seemed to be fine there. Still I reset the router and configured it again. But still no luck with the sites. these were not opening.redirecting me to Ukranian site. Then I decided to get into wired modem (beetel). Here was the problem. I was not able to log in to my modem. I was surprised. I had never changed the default username and password. So, I got it that problem is with my wired modem. Somebody has hacked into my modem and password is changed.Then I decided to reset my Wired Modem and configure it again. Thanks to Airtel Engineer who left the settings document for my modem. After resetting the modem, I tried both sites, Now these were opening.

After 4 days again same thing happened. I directly reset my modem. Didn’t bother much. But when for the 3rd time, it happened. I decided to find out the solution for this. Somebody was changing my modem’s password again and again and I was not able to do anything besides resetting it again and again.
 Then I followed the following steps:

1. It is better to change the default password of the modem.
2. Try to keep backup of the modem’s working configuration.
3. Use OpenDNS Servers instead of using ISP’s DNS.
4. Try to avoid DHCP. Keep it disabled and manually assign IP Addresses to machine.
5. Try to implement MAC Filtering feature if available.It will give you extra security.
6. Disable TFTP and TElnet services for WAN.

These few things worked for me.
If you want to know the more details the attack just follow the link:
http://blog.escanav.com/2012/01/12/disclosure-router-based-dns-mitm-attack
and if you want to know about Man In The Middle {MITM} attacks, then follow the link: http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/understanding-man-in-the-middle-attacks-arp-part2.html

How to prepare Bootable USB Drive / Pen Drive for Windows 7 and Windows 8 Developers Preview

Now a days, DVD / CD are getting out of fashion as installation media. Netbooks don’t even have these cd/ dvd drives. Every one prefers to use USB Drives. So, do I. But in my case, I have to use USB Drive because DVD Drive of my laptop is not working any more and I don’t want to spend money on my laptop.
So I learned how to prepare boot-able USB drive to install Windows 7 and Windows 8. Same thing I will try to share with you in easy manner.

First of all, I will suggest you to get one 8 GB pen drive. I saw many tutorials on the internet which generally says you can use 4 GB pen drive. But whenever I tried using 4 GB drive, every time few files are left for copying. So, I got 8GB pen drive.

Start with inserting pen drive into your system and follow the procedure mentioned below:

1. Format your pen drive with NTFS partition.
2. Start CMD in your system as administrator.
3. Type DISKPART and press ENTER.
4. This command will show you all the drives attached to your system including pen drives.
5. Select disk of your pen drive. In my case, pen drive is disk 1. and generally it will disk 1. so you have to type SELECT DISK 1 and press ENTER.
6. Then type CLEAN and press ENTER.
7. Then type CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY and press ENTER.
8. To view the list of partitions, you can type LIST PARTITION and press ENTER.
9. Now type SELECT PARTITION 1 and press ENTER.
10. Type ACTIVE and press ENTER.
11. Now we have to format the pen drive with NTFS file system again. So, type FORMAT FS=NTFS and press ENTER.
FORMATTING may take some time. In my case, to format 8 gb pen drive, it took 4-5 minutes.
12. Once formatted successfully, now type ASSIGN and press ENTER.

13. Now type EXIT and press ENTER.
ALL ABOVE MENTIONED PROCEDURE IS AVAILABLE IN THE FOLLOWING SCREENSHOT
NOW you will out of the DISKPART utility of the windows 7.
Now don’t close the CMD window. We still need it.

Now minimize the CMD window and insert your windows 7 or windows 8 disk. If you are ISO image then just extract it some where on the hard drive.
1. Now open your CMD window again.
and navigate to windows 7 or windows 8 folder on your hard drive if you have extracted the image on your system or just navigate to cd/dvd drive.
2. Then get into BOOT folder. Type CD BOOT and press ENTER.
3.  Now type BOOTSECT.EXE /nt60 k: and press ENTER.
HERE K: IS THE DRIVE LETTER FOR MY PEN DRIVE. IN YOUR CASE, IT MAY BE DIFFERENT. SO WHICHEVER IT IS, USE THAT ONE.
4. Now copy all the contents of the dvd or windows folder ( which you recently extracted) to pen drive as it is. Make sure there shouldn’t be any thing left which is not copied to the folder.
ALL THESE STEPS ARE MENTIONED IN THE SCREENSHOT BELOW.

NOW YOUR PEN DRIVE CAN BE USED AS INSTALLATION MEDIA FOR WINDOWS 7 OR WINDOWS 8 WHICHEVER YOU HAVE COPIED TO YOUR PEN DRIVE.

Next thing which is important is that you have to select an option from BIOS to boot from pen drive.
Only then you can boot from any usb media. otherwise you can not. If your BIOS doesn’t support booting from USB, then try to google for firmware update of your bios.