BarCamp: What is it and Why to attend?

What: BarCampPune 6
When: 14 November, 2009
Where: Symbiosis Centre for Information Technology, Hinjewadi, Pune
MAP

Registration: http://barcamp-pune.eventbrite.com/

Pune will have a “BarCamp” free conference this Saturday, 14th November, in SCIT Hinjewadi (bus pickup/dropoff provided from Model Colony). We believe that all technology professionals, and all computer science students should take this opportunity to get exposure to some of the most interesting people and technologies in Industry. To register (free) for barcamp, and for details of venue, timing etc, click here.

BarCampPune6 Logo (Created by Kriti Deb)

A Barcamp is a “democratic” conference. It is not a normal / traditional conference. A normal / traditional conference is usually put together by a committee of professors, or industry veterans, and the speakers selected by the committee and invited to speak. Who can attend is also constrained by money (conferences fees are high), or by other means (only members may attend). And often, talks tend to be boring “lectures” or “speeches” that you fall asleep in.

Anybody who’s been to a traditional conference will tell you that the tea-breaks and the corridor-conversations are the most interesting and important part of a conference. Think of a barcamp as an entire conference that consists only of tea-breaks and corridor-conversations. Well, it’s a little more structured than that… Anybody can attend a barcamp. Anybody can speak on any topic that they are passionate about. A whiteboard is put up in the morning with the available rooms and timeslots. People can write down their name and the title of their talk in any available slot. Based on this, the others can decide which talks they want to attend. Democracy.

You’ll wonder, if anybody can speak, how to ensure quality of speakers and presentations? By the “law of two feet”. The audience in a Barcamp is encouraged to use their two feet and walk away from a talk if it turns out to be boring. People are encouraged to find and create subgroups interested in specific topics, find a room or a corridor, and start discussing – and they often do.

This ensures that everybody finds something interesting, and often something unexpected at a Barcamp. Maybe you might find the 15-year-old kid who knows more about Search-Engine-Optimization than all the “industry veterans” you’ve met. Maybe you’ll go there to learn new technology and instead find some really interesting NGO or other social work organization and join that. Maybe you’ll just land up there, not knowing what to expect, and end up finding not just your first job, but a great career. Maybe you have an idea for a company, but don’t know how to implement it, and you’ll find someone at Barcamp who’s willing to handle the technology for you.

I’m not just making all of that up. Each one of the sentences in the previous paragraph that started with “Maybe” is actually a real-life story that I’ve seen happen during some of the Barcamps in the last couple of years in Pune. And there are a lot more such stories.

Over the next few days, we’ll be writing short articles on why you should attend Barcamp. If you’re a student looking for projects, internships, or recos. Or you are an entrepreneur with an idea, but don’t know enough about technology to implement it. Or you’re an employee of a big company and are looking to hire some really smart people … or you’re looking to be hired by some really smart people. Or you’re a startup looking for collaboration, business development, or simply mentors/advisors.

Thanks to PuneTech for this post:
Orginal Link: http://punetech.com/what-is-a-barcamp-and-why-you-should-attend/

BarCamp

VAPT … Day 1

First day into my VAPT – Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing, (Hacking, in short) was a blunder. I had not contacted my mentor that I was going to start from 15th of April. I forgot :D. Neither did I know his time of arrival to the office, so that I could reach just on time to talk to him and get the project details.

Anyways, reached xyz (the company for whom I work) at around 9:10 am. I contacted my mentor, Mr Danny Nagdev just before reaching their. He asked me to come at 10, since he was in a meeting. Passed my time on Level 9, started my laptop, and began playing Burnout Paradise … believe me, its a superb game, with all the stunts and races and what not … cool cars, great graphics … ok, later, back to the topic.

I was re-directed to another office of xyz, after meeting Mr. Danny, where the security administrator used to work from. Finally, after having a chai with Mr. Namit Kasliwal, the Security Administrator of xyz, I got my project. I did have a choice of skipping office since that was the first day, but I started off with my job, due to 2 reasons, 1) no friends on the campus and 2) i am a workaholic.

The Project:
I was asked to Hack into the xyz servers. Yo. That would be fun! Lets start off. The project was going to be a Black Box type, i.e. the company would provide me with no information, its me who has to find out everything! Imagine, EVERYTHING!!!! Fine, lets go ahead.

Starting off with the Project:
The company people were good enough to provide me with an ethernet cable to connect to their internal network. Good, atleast that would help me find some more information about them!

The only thing I knew about the company (other than its name, and the 2 people I met), was the website. After connecting to the local internet, I found the basic information:
– the subnet I was connected to (IP address and the subnet mask)
– the DNS used by the company
– the default gateway

After this, the logical step was to find out the final gateway of the company, i.e. the final server which connected xyz the world, the Internet. So, for that, I did a traceroute to the google and orkut servers and from there. Traceroute gives you a list of all the hops on the way to the servers. Looking (DNS Lookup) up each one of them, I came to know of the last internal ip address which would take all the requests of xyz to the Internet. Hence, found the NAT Server!

The next step which I took, was in the Internet side. I queried the Whois database for information on the company’s website. Finding a few fields which were unknown to me, I went on to look for details of the fields which are included in the Whois query answer. I found this wonderful site http://www.apnic.net/db/ref/attributes/attributes-inetnum.html which listed all the fields and their descriptions. Having queried the Whois database, I found a lot many details about the company, like the Name of the contact person for the website, the address of the registrant, phone numbers, email addresses, and the most important, the DNS records!! I dont know why the whois database is open for all; well, good for people like me ;).

For the Whois query, I used http://www.samspade.org for the same. I haven’t tried finding how it queries the Whois database, but I did find out how to query the samspade whois database.
http://www.samspade.org/whois?query=;server=auto. This URL would take you to the Whois page of the IP/Domain.

Also, from the Whois query, I came to know that xyz hosted its website on a public domain, and it wasnt in their servers … wow … pretty intelligent!

Having found the DNS records from the Whois page, the next step was to find the subdomains and the other domains, if registered.

Since it was the first day, I din’t want to go into much of details, and so used the tools on the page http://member.dnsstuff.com/pages/tools.php to get more information on the web server. Using the Whois wouldnt have made much of a difference, since all the whois queries would return the same answer!

Used all the tools available on that page to check what all information I get my hands on.

After all this, I sat surfing their website, looking for more information about the company; their products, services, addresses …. anything, everything.

There is a pretty good addon to firefox, “Extract Links”. It would extract all the links from the specified page and print it on a new tab, separating all the links and the domains. Through this, I found various sub domains of the company xyz. Pretty neat. I dint have to use much of the DNS tools to get the sub domains 😉

There is one more addon, External IP Address. This shows the public IP Address which you are using to connect to the Internet. Through this, I got the IP Address range which the company xyz uses! Simple, huh 😉

Lastly, having certain restrictions on surfing the web, I found the page http://www.torproject.org. I installed a client for this and started surfing without any problems! Yo! 😀

Cheers 🙂

SCIT GD/PI 2008-10 NITI

many queries coming up about SCIT GD/PI … heres my GD/PI experience … last year on the 2nd of February:

There were 2 GDs (Technical and Non Technical), 2 PIs (Technical and Non Technical) and a Psychometric Test. Total 12 in our group; 3 were absent. Total students = 150. Out of that 120-125 turned up for the GD/PI.

First GD:
Topic: Nice guys finish last. The GD was good. Everyone was adding good points. I summarized.

Checking of Certificates: Every mark sheet was checked – the 10th, 12th, 1st sem, 2nd sem, 3rd sem and the 4th (for me!). And if wanted, we could show other certificates too!

Second GD:
Topic: Made in India is not yet a brand.
The jury consisted of the Director of SCIT. All in the competitors were fighting, so she said that if we dint have a good discussion, she would disqualify the whole group. We then had a good discussion. Summarized by me again!

Psychometric Test: This test contained some questions through which the PI panel could know the nature of the student. There were 40 questions and 20 minutes were given to answer them. Questions mainly repeated after twisting them 15-20 times. They gave this test to decide the questions to be asked in the PI.

Lunch

Results: The GD was the elimination round. They selected 67 people for the PIs. Got selected for the PI 😀
PI (Technical):

Questions:
1) Why MBA
-> To widen my horizon. I learnt the technical stuff in BCA and now want to learn how to apply them in the business world (exact answer).

2) What are the different types of topologies?
-> Silly Mistake. Explained LAN, WAN, etc. Then panel asked “are you sure”. I replied “no” and gave the correct reply of Star, Bus, Tree, Mesh, Ring!

3) How to setup a network? Have you ever set up a network?
-> NIC and cable needed, with 2/more comps. Connect one computer via NIC to router. Do the same to another. Yes, I have. Got one comp from my friend’s house and connected it. And finally, set the IP address.

4) What is NIC? Which is the best one in market? and why?
-> Device through which we can connect a computer to a network. Network Interface Card. Best is of D-Link. I came to know from various hardware dealers, my friends and teachers.

5) Which hardware dealers do you go to buy?
-> One near my house named New Wave Computers.

6) OSI layer? List all the layers. Explain Transport (I dint know so i explained Application and Physical).
-> They dint ask the full form. Bach gaya :). Remember “Please Do Not Touch Sexy Pamela Anderson”? I remembered that over there and wrote down everything. She asked me to explainTransport layer. I said i dint know since its 1 year i learnt that. So she asked me explainanything. So i explained the Application and the Physical layer.

7) My sixth sem project.
-> Explained the whole Project. She seemed really impressed 😀

The success ( i thot so) of the technical interview was enough for me to appear for the HR interview with the best of me. I wasnt at all afraid, i was instead having fun with the 1st year students of SCIT.

PI (The HR one):

1) Where are you from?
-> I stay in Vadodara. My home town is in Kutch, Gujarat.

2) Then what is this Tanzania? (I had written in the form i filled for SCIT that my dad works in tanzania)
-> my dads business works over there.

3) what work?
-> my dad has a shop over there. Sells stuff like medicine, vessels and other general items.

4) Why not help him?
-> i want to remain in IT field and study more.

5) Hobbies – “Making software from my technical knowledge”. What all softs have you made till date?
-> Digital Diary – containing calc, calendar, games, and an address book. the games consists of hangman, tic tac toe and cows and bulls.

6) explain cows and bulls
-> explained the whole game. (cont with the softs.) various microsoft tools like notepad, messengers, browsers, civiltech and the sixth sem project.

7) (curious about 6th sem proj) Explain.
-> explained the whole project. (impressed by the project 🙂 ).

8) Which newspaper do you read?
-> The Times of India

9) There was something about Yahoo in today’s (2nd feb) paper. you know that?
-> yes sir. microsoft is planning to buy yahoo to compete with goole. (explained it)

10) what do you think? can they compete?
-> no sir i dont think so. since google has established itself in the world. i think its too difficult to overthrow them or even compete with them.

11) who was the chief guest at the republic day at rashtrapati bhavan?
-> sorry sir, i dont know.

12) you said you read newspaper. that was on the front page.
-> i am a bit engrossed in my project (not exactly in these words).

13) How can Internet help in India?
-> In a lot many ways. Sites like google and wikipedia can be used to get useful information. a lot can be known from that. Remote areas can be accessed from internet. communication is possible. (dint speak on globalization 🙂 ).

14) Any questions for me?
-> No sir, I dont have any questions, but just a few suggestions. Being a member of the BCA Training and Placement Cell, and the administrator of the BCA Web Site, I would like to givemy suggestions on the SCIT web site: scit.edu. They are: 1) Too many links on the home page which confuses people who have come for the first time. 2) The home page should not have any “flashy” things. There is this NEWS that flashes on the front page. This is unprofessional. 3) The word “Disclaimer” is added to every page. Thats fine, but the placing of that word is not proper. Sometimes it is between the text of that page, and sometimes it is far away from the text of the page at the bottom of the text. 4) The alumni corner doest work properly, just the main page works.

The interviewer was an external faculty. He said that he would deliver my suggestions to the people involved.

Then sir chkd the Psychometric test. No more questions.

FINISH. overall it was great. the students over there were great. They helped a lot. in all ways. helped a lot to reduce tension.

Hope this is useful for all people targeting SCIT … all the best and cheers 🙂