Category Archives: hacking

Gmail advanced searching: how to create a powerful query to catch a “wanted” email – Computer forensic

Gmail QueriesIf you want to improve your Google searches you can find many useful queries on internet and, if have time, you can also attend a specific Google free course.

But just few people know that there are specific queries available for Gmail.

I found some of them casually when I need to search some specific, old emails into my accounts some days ago. Then I discovered that Google itself published a complete list of all the possible queries accepted by Gmail.

I warmly suggest you to spend some minutes reading and exploring all the queries because they are really useful when you use Gmail in a professional way.

Here, I just want to sum-up some of them that, in my experience, are the most common you can use when you are becoming crazy looking for a specific email you sent or received.

The powerful feature is represented by the possibility to mix the different queries to create super-queries that can intercept the “wanted” email or documents in a less than a second.

Time

after:2010/10/24 before:2011/09/24

Here you are defining the time range and Gmail will show all the emails sent or received between the two specified dates.

From or To

from xyz@zyw.com
to:xyz@zyw.com

Where xyz @zyw.com is the email address you are focusing on.

from:tom OR from:Luis
from:tom OR from:Luis -meeting

In this case you are looking for an email from Tom or (plus) Luis but it hasn’t to contain (- minus) the word “meeting”.

Bcc or CC

bcc:xyz@zyw.com
cc:xyz@zyw.com

Where xyz @zyw are specific email addresses you are looking for.

Filename

filename:invitation
filename:(jpg OR jpeg OR png)
filename:(doc OR docx OR pdf)
filename:invitation(doc OR docx OR pdf)

Subject

subject:meeting

Attachment

has:attachment

Spam

in:spam

And you check into a specific folder. In my case: the Spam folder

Larger or Smaller

larger:25MB
smaller:250MB

Some complex query examples:

from:xyz@zyw.com filename:(jpg OR jpeg OR png)

to:xyz@zyw.com filename:(doc OR docx OR pdf)

from:xyz@zyw.com filename:invitationfrom xyz@zyw.com to:xyz@zyw.com filename:(doc OR docx OR pdf) subject:meeting

after:2011/10/24 before:2011/11/24 in:spam subject:meeting

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How to install Android on a Nook Color using a Linux OS – Practical Tips

Nook Color Android

First of all, I wanted to test one of the latest version of Android 4 but I didn’t want to spend money for a new device so I decided to use/sacrifice the Nook Color that I used rarely because I am a Kindle enthusiast.

Secondly I didn’t want to void the Nook warranty or permanently modify its ROM.

Last but not least I never pretended to discover a new way to modify the Nook but just find the most simple and practical tutorial into internet.

After some hours of internet surfing I found some interesting commercial solutions (e.g. n2acards) and a lot of good tutorial posts and my final choice was one by xda-developers.

I bought a class 4, 8 GB micro SD card and I followed the detailed instructions described into the xda-developers post…, but I had some practical problems because I didn’t read carefully all the text.

The xda-developers tutorial is really well done and full of right information but, as for my experience, it is best to focus your attention on some few points/steps.

In particular:

– you have to create a bootable micro SD card using these commands on Terminal:

sudo fdisk -l

(in this way you will discover the right address of your SD card, in my case was “sdc”. Pay attention! If you choose the wrong address you risk to wipe your hard disk)

sudo dd if=generic-sdcard-v1.3-CM7-9-10-larger-Rev5.img of=/dev/sdc

where generic-sdcard-v1.3-CM7-9-10-larger-Rev5.img is the the image file you find in the xda-developers webpage and sdc the right address of your SD card

– when you download the three necessary “software”, be sure to choose the right one for the CM you have chosen. I mean: if you choose to install CM 9 you need gapps-ics but, if you prefer CM 10, gapps-jb is the right software for you. If you don’t use the proper file, you will have this type of “error message” when you boot your new Android:

Unfortunately, Google services framework has stopped

Unfortunately, Setup Wizard has stopped

Adding the zip files suggested on the xda-developers guide you are now ready to test the Android 4 on your Nook. During the first boot up the Linux software on the SD card will inflate the proper files creating all the right folders and compiling the libraries. To complete this step you will need about 8/10 minutes and, at the end, the Nook will automatically shut down.

In my case I installed CM 10 and during my first boot-up, after I completed the installation, I was not able to use the Android Keyboard and I read this error message on the screen:

Unfortunately, Android keyboard (AOSP) has stopped

Luckily, I was not the first user to have this kind of problem and I read the right tip into another xda-developer blog. I had to come back at the beginning of the Tutorial and change the gapps zip file to an older version, more precisely the 2012-10-11. After this, the new installation the Android 4 run properly on the Nook Color.

For my experience, the Android 4 on the Nook Color is slowest than I supposed but it is not so slow to force me to come back to an older Android version. When I installed a couple of free apps, Startup Manager and Memory Booster, the speed improved and Android was more fluid.  AddThis

The good third choice: MATE desktop environment. The traditional but rock solid solution for the Unity unhappy users (when also Gnome fails)…

My first Linux OS was a Knoppix but I had so many problems with the hardware drivers, the LAN configuration and the monitor settings that I was really discouraged. After many tests I decided that Ubuntu was the right OS for my notebooks and I continued to use it without any particularly matters till Unity.

Unity is nice to see, intuitive but if you use your OS in a stressful way (I mean doing three or four different tasks all together: reading emails, talking with Skype and writing on LibreOffice), you spend too much time looking for the icon you need to launch the right program. The vertical monitor space has not enough room to visually show all the icons related to programs I use everyday. Surely this is my personal matter but I actually prefer the “old” graphic interface. For this reason I decided to install Gnome 3 but my vetust IBM Thinkpad crashed a couple of time in a week.

To my surprise also the Gnome Classic option encountered some crashes due to the amount and diversity of the software I installed on my laptop during the last years.

As usual, after some web searches I found a solution: MATE. This particular desktop environment is a fork of Gnome 2 and it really looks very intuitive and easy to use. If some software conflicts with the MATE environment, a pop-up message will appear on your sceeen and, if you have the patience to read the Details contained in it, you will able to solve your problems. In my particular case (don’t ask me why) it helped me to focus my attention on Conduit which caused the crashes on Gnome.

To easily install MATE, on almost every Linux distribution, you can read its wiki dedicated page or directly follow the below instruction if you use Ubuntu 12.04.

– open Terminal and type these command lines:

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://repo.mate-desktop.org/ubuntu oneiric main"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-getinstall mate-archive-keyring
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mate-core
sudo apt-get install mate-desktop-environment

When the Terminal finishes all the upgrade stuff, reboot your Ubuntu 12.04 and select MATE on the login screen (click on the upper right “gear” and choose MATE).

That’s all! Have a good week! AddThis

Video – Linux Wifi Mac address spoofing by peruzfinest08

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How to repair a bad screen resolution on the IOMEGA Screenplay Pro HD

This is the situation: you have a IOMEGA Screenplay Pro and while you where trying to find a better output  resolution for your monitor you accidentally (or not) selected the HD option and now you are not able to visualize anything.

In few words this is the easiest problem you can afford but also one of the worst because you are not able to visualize the menu and so you cannot revert the right monitor resolution.

I visited many websites but unfortunately I didn’t find any forum or post about this topic. In any case I like to focus your attention on this ScreenPlay Pro HD wiki which is a real mine of information and tips about this specific hardware.

So I tried to “play” with the Screen Play Pro HD remote but I was not able to find a solution without visualizing anything on the monitor.

At the end, when I was thinking to reset the Screenplay and loosing all the data contained, I tried to use an old solution I used different times with other stuff: I pressed the power button for more than 10 seconds while I was switching on the device.

Something happened because the monitor showed me the Screenplay boot up window for a couple of seconds. At this point I pressed the NTSC/PAL button and the Screenplay Pro HD menu was visualized on my monitor again. AddThis

A quick trick to have the USA google.com always ready

When we use our computer outside the USA, the browser is automatically redirect to the local google page. This is not a problem when you are just surfing without any specific goal but often the google automatic redirecting is very annoying because also your search will be customized depending where you are and the language spoken in that country.

To easily avoid this problem you can instruct google to ignore your location just typing http://www.google.com/ncr and your searches will always start as a USA customer. In fact NCR stands for NON COUNTRY REDIRECTING and allows you to use the USA google.com.

On the contrary, if you are in USA and you want to customize your search focusing to a particular foreign country you have to just add a suffix to the google search results link.

In other words, if you are looking for operating  banks in Ireland, you have to:

– search into google as usual, typing the word “bank”

– go to the end of your search url and add &gl= followed by the country code where you want to focus your research (de or in or ir or it or …) eg: &gl=ir

Last but not least, if you prefer to influence the google research interfering just with the results language, goes to the search settings and choose the languages you prefer. AddThis

How to: Use Google Music for Android by CNET

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Google Music con Aplicación también para Linux

Desde hace unos meses Google ya ofrece el servicio Musica por streaming y de poder tener hasta 20.000 canciones almacenada en ” las nubes “; todavía este servicio no está disponible en España y Europa pero es igualmente posible conseguir una invitación.

Ante de todo hay que tener una cuenta de Gmail o crearse una. Luego dirigirse a la pagina de proxy.org para elegir un proxy de USA. Después de elegir el proxy hay que pegar la dirección que permite pedir la invitación a nombre de vuestra cuenta de Gmail y ya esperar que llegue la invitación por parte de Google, yo ya recibí la invitación y ya tengo mi Google Music activado.

Es un servicio muy interesante y funciona muy muy bien, aparte de los Artistas y las Canciones que nos Ofrece Google de forma gratuitas también podemos administrar nuestra música, la que tengamos en nuestro PC y subirla a nuestro Google Music gracias a una Aplicación especifica para Linux ( .deb, rpm, 32/64 bit ), así que ya no hay que instalar la versión para Windows y lanzarla con Wine. También está disponible una Aplicación para Android para que podamos escuchar en Streaming y administrar nuestra música sin tener que llenar la memoria de nuestro Smartphone.

Me parece un excelente servicio por parte de Google, funciona muy bien y sin coste alguno. Os dejo unos enlaces para que podáis pedir la invitación (yo tengo 8 disponibles, si alguien quiere inviar su correo yo puedo enviarle una invitación) y también otros para poder bajar la Aplicación para Android.

Proxy.org: http://proxy.org/

URL Invitación: http://music.google.com/music/usernotinvited.

Aplicación para Android: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.music

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