Following is a list of selected posts, all posts can be seen here

• How to upgrade Nexus 4 to Android 4.4 (Kitkat)

  November 15, 2013

  Some experience with adb and fastboot preferred (they are part of android SDK) Download latest factory image from https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images#occamkrt16o and untar them. The extracted images ends up in occam-krt16o directory. tar xvf occam-krt16o-factory-75ccae7a.tgz Backup SMS/call log etc. using SMS backup+ to Gmail. All apks using adb backup -f ashishb_nov_15_backup.ab -apk -obb -noshared -all -nosystem (I mistakenly backed up and restored with -system and that was a bad ...
• Random thoughts: The state of laptop industry

  August 21, 2013

  For past one month or so, I am looking around for a good personal laptop running GNU/Linux. I was looking for something similar to my current Mac Book Pro My constraints were following Intel processor (2.4 Ghz or better) 8 GB (or more RAM) 15-16″ screen (14″ just does not work for software development) Sleek body (~1″ or less thick) Good build ...
• Android Security related tools

  May 18, 2013

  A lot of work is happening in academia and industry on tools to perform dynamic analysis, static analysis and reverse engineering of android apps. Following is a collection of few tools that I am aware of. Online Analyzers AMAT http://dunkelheit.com.br/amat/analysis/index_en.php Anadroid http://pegasus.cs.utah.edu:8080/ - static analysis AndroTotal http://andrototal.org/ - AV scanning Comdroid http://www.comdroid.org/ CopperDroid http://copperdroid.isg.rhul.ac.uk/copperdroid Dexter https://dexter.bluebox.com/ - static analysis Mobile-Sandbox23 http://mobile-sandbox.com MarvinSafe http://marvinsafe.com/ (not working since acquisition by Veracode) Sandroid http://sanddroid.xjtu.edu.cn/ Stowaway http://www.android-permissions.org/ App360scan http://www.app360scan.com/   Static Analysis Tools APKInspector https://github.com/honeynet/apkinspector/ ApkAnalyser https://github.com/sonyxperiadev/ApkAnalyser Smali CFG generator ...
• Book Review: The Tangled web

  August 25, 2012

  Just completed reading “The Tangled web: A guide to securing modern applications” by Michael Zalewski. The book is surprisingly small given the amount of information it covers about interaction of web browsers, web sites and client-side web technologies. The book starts with the discussion of what a valid URL could look like (http://yahoo.com:80@google.com/microsoft.com – think which site ...
• Book Summary: In the Plex by Steven Levy

  June 3, 2012

  An amazing book which describes Google’s journey right from its beginning in the Stanford dorm. The author interviewed several top echelons of Google and presented several interesting insider anecdotes and stories of Google. The book provides details of major projects like GMail, Google Desktop, Google News and Google Toolbar, Google Books and (failure of) Orkut. It also ...
• Towards a broken future of Internet

  December 24, 2011

  Internet, which initially started as a DARPA experiment is under the indirect control of USA government through ICANN despite several objections from Europe as well as IBSA. This worked when most users were from the western world with notable exception of China and few minor quirks. But in past few decades, not only the governments around the world ...
• A fundamental problem with Aakash (Indian Government tablet initiative)

  December 10, 2011

  This blog post is not about how good/bad the product technically is or how indigenous it is, its about a fundamental problem with tablets. It amazes me to see that even a journalist like T. Friedman missed it. Anyone who had ever used a tablet(even the best ones) will tell you that current-generation tablets are for consumption and not content generation. A ...
• Random thoughts: goals and company types in tech world

  August 26, 2011

  Start-up One goal May have multiple products but all products aimed at a single goal. All teams are working towards the same goal. Diversified Multiple similar goals Have several products (or several part of single product) aimed towards different goals. Teams gain by helping each other. The goals to some extent are complementary but (naturally with time) diverges away from each other. The tipping ...
• How do you store my password?

  May 15, 2011

  As world moves towards cloud based storage (and computing), the task of storing our data on a PC hard disk is being replaced with cloud based storage providers. This includes our emails, social data, professional data and financial data. Accessing this data requires authentication, despite its various limitations, username and password are still the standard ...
• Preliminary analysis of Facebook clickjacking (aprilfoolsprank)

  April 4, 2011

  If you have been already a victim of this, then change your password and unlike the page as soon as possible. A malicious app called “aprilfoolsprank” which likes a page on user’s behalf and tries to phish user into disclosing his/her facebook login and password is taking its toll on facebook users. What appears: The app displays a ...