Switched the Internet from Menatelecom to VIVA

I have been using Menatelecom for over a year now, it was good, however, I never had success with VOIP with them… I didn’t want to go back to Batelco, it used to disconnect all time, due to the SWITCH being too far and having a very bad ADSL service. I tested VIVA for few months now.. It is simply great!! Even VOIP is perfect! So today, I made the switch, and I am totally connected to the internet via VIVA.. I get about 3Mbits in my house due to low coverage.. Browsing speed is awesome! I connected it via a 3G router, and now my whole house is connected via VIVA. Everybody is happy now! Tomorrow I will pass by Menatelecom and disconnect the line.

Follow me on twitter

I have been a bit active on twitter.. I don’t know when I stop twitting.. However for the time being, you may follow me on twitter (http://www.twitter.com/alialmahdi/).

You have Zero Privacy Anyway — Get over it

I have read a very nice article in OSNews talking about that we have a zero privacy on the Internet. I recommend reading it: http://osne.ws/hfv

LUG Presentation – Internet Privacy

A number of applications and techniques will be presented that can help insure privacy on the Internet. Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) will be shown as a tool to encrypt and protect email communication. SSH tunneling will be shown as a technique to surf the Internet in a secure fashion. Tor (The Onion Router) will also be demonstrated. There will also be a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of these different approaches. The limitations of each approach will also be discussed. I will be the presenter for this session. Looking forward to see you there friends!

LUG meeting will be on 4:00PM Saturday, May 9th at the Youth Innovation Center (for directions see Youth Center Directions).

Bypass online censorship

In my country (Bahrain), many of my friends asks me on how to bypass firewalls, especially those days, where our ISPs started blocking almost everything!
My answer is very simple, whether use TOR or Ultrasurf.

Introduction About TOR: [Quoted from TOR Website]
Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis.

Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.

Introduction About Ultrasurf:
Since not much information about Ultrasurf is available, I have done some reverse engineering and I have applied my network engineering skills to get some information.
Ultrasurf uses port 443, They are using a protocol that is very similar to SSL, although, its not SSL, since I was not able to get any certificate from sniffing the traffic. They use Herricane Electric servers to get you to the internet.
Personally, I think that Ultrasurf is a masterpiece. One of the best softwares ever that gives the internet a freedom. Since it doesn’t only gives you freedom on the internet, but also in your working environment, and it passes almost every proxy setting I have tried it on.