Linux / Windows: How to Retrieve Serial Number of Server

Sometimes I would need to retrieve the serial numbers of servers remotely – HP ProLiant and Dell PowerEdge servers to be precise. The normal way is to make a trip down to the server room and write down the serial numbers found on a sticker pasted on the server chassis. The other lazy (and smart) way is to retrieve the information from the command line!

Bitwise Operations in Excel – NOT, AND, OR, XOR

The NOT, AND, OR and XOR functions in Microsoft Excel are logical functions and not bitwise functions. What this means is that they only return TRUE or FALSE based on the input expressions given.

How to Decrypt WhatsApp crypt5 Database Messages

A couple of weeks back, WhatsApp introduced a new way of encrypting the backup messages saved on the SD card. The article that I wrote last month on decrypting the WhatsApp messages will no longer work on the new crypt5 files.

Decode HTTP Basic Access Authentication

HTTP Basic Access Authentication is a simple challenge and response mechanism to enforce access controls to web resources. It does not require overheads like cookies, session identifiers, login pages, etc. Since this method is on the weak end of the security strength spectrum, it is seldom implemented except on home Wi-Fi routers.

Free Akamai CDN with Facebook

Akamai operates one of the largest CDN (Content Delivery Network) networks in the world. And if you are not aware, Facebook is one of Akamai’s biggest customers. Most, if not all of the media files that you upload in Facebook are stored on servers operated by Akamai. Now, how does that relate to this article on a free CDN? Continue reading…

Get Route Details for a Destination on Linux

To verify routing entries for a destination IP on a Solaris machine, I typically use the route get command. This will give the source IP address and Ethernet interface used by the kernel to reach the specified destination. On Linux however, the route utility does not support the get sub command.

How to View Facebook Private Album Photos

Do you have a private Facebook album or photo that is viewable only by you or by only a limited group of people? If yes, do you know that those private photos can actually be viewed by anyone as long as they have the direct URL to those photos? Let me explain how this is done.

Keeping Warranty Intact for Sony Xperia Unlocked Phones

An Android phone that has its bootloader unlocked means that the warranty is void. This is the case with most, if not all of the Android mobile phone manufacturers like Samsung and HTC. Sony is no exception. Motorola has recently announced some developer friendly changes to their policies – warranty will not be void for their Developer Edition devices that are bootloader unlocked.

How to Decrypt WhatsApp Database Messages

WhatsApp does a backup of the messages at 4am (local time) every day to the SD card. On Android, this backup is an encrypted copy of the SQLite database containing all of the WhatsApp messages. If you want to read the messages on a computer, you will need to decrypt the file.

Android MMC mmcblk Partition Layout

Android devices have a couple of partitions to store different data. The common ones are the recovery, boot, system, data and cache partitions.

Almost every device has it’s own unique layout even though they come from the same manufacturer. I have seen phones based on MTD (Memory Technology Device), EMMC (Embedded MultiMedia Card) and MMC (MultiMedia Card) devices.