What is a VPN ? Virtual private network

Virtual private network

By Vangie Beal

VPN is pronounced as separate letters and is short for virtualprivate network.

VPN is a network that is constructed by using public wires — usually the Internet — to connect to a private network, such as a company's internal network. There are a number of systems that enable you to create networks using the Internet as the medium for transporting data. These systems use encryption and other securitymechanisms to ensure that only authorized users can access the network and that the data cannot be intercepted.

VPN Security

A VPN is designed to provides a secure, encrypted tunnel in which to transmit the data between the remote user and the company network. The information transmitted between the two locations via the encrypted tunnel cannot be read by anyone else because the system contains several elements to secure both the company's private network and the outside network through which the remote user connects through.

The first step to security is usually a firewall between the client and the host server, requiring the remote user to establish an authenticated connection with the firewall. Encryption is also an important component of a secure VPN. Encryption works by having all data sent from one computer encrypted in such a way that only the computer it is sending to can decrypt the data.

Recommended Reading: Learn more about VPN security in this Webopedia article, What Makes a Virtual Private Network Private?

Consumer VPN Services

Consumers use a private VPN service, also known as a VPN tunnel, to protect their online activity and identity. By using an anonymous VPN service, a user's Internet traffic and data remain encrypted, which prevents eavesdroppers from sniffing Internet activity.  A VPN service is especially useful when accessing public Wi-Fihotspots because the public wireless services might not be secure. In addition to public Wi-Fi security, a private VPN service also provides consumers with uncensored Internet access and can help prevent data theft and unblock websites.

Corporate VPN Communications

Companies and organizations will use a VPN to communicate confidentially over a public network and to send voice, video or data. It is also an excellent option for remote workers and organizations with global offices and partners to share data in a private manner.

One of the most common types of VPNs used by businesses is called a virtual private dial-up network (VPDN). A VPDN is a user-to-LAN connection, where remote users need to connect to the company LAN. Another type of VPN is commonly called a site-to-site VPN. Here the company would invest in dedicated hardware to connect multiple sites to their LAN though a public network, usually the Internet.

What is Computer Bus? – An Introduction

What is Computer Bus? – An Introduction

Bus is a set of electrical hardware lines that is used to transfer/receive data from the central processing unit. Bus is a way to connect computer components (e.g. Microprocessor, Disk drive, Memory, Input / Output ports, etc.) to Computer system for keeping in connection to transfer and receive data from computer.

✔ Bus (by wire or hardware lines) is the common way to transfer/receive data in the form of codes and only the fastest way for communication information between computer and its components. Any part of computer is connected with buses. Usually a bus consists of many parallel wires. Each wire sends one bit of data at a time, thus a bus can transfer/receive many bits. For example, a 16-bit of bus consists of 16 parallel wires and transfers 16 bits ( 2 bytes) of data from one computer component to another.

✔ In old computer, very few buses had used. Nowadays, modern computer contains many buses transfer many types of data, and some buses are used to transfer specific type of data, e.g. Image, Audio, Video, etc.

✔ Bus (Address bus, Data bus, Expansion bus) usually transfers different types of data within a computer. For example, these buses of parallel wires (that is printed on PCB) somewhere in the form of data take information or where data exists took addresses of data, or moving a control signal.

✔ Remember that whenever we speak bus then our gesture to number electrical wires in a PC component. In computer, Buses are present in many forms (wires on print circuit, straight cables, normal wires). However, these are always in parallel.

✔ Data bus:
It is an aggregate of parallel conductors (can pass current and printed circuit on electrical board) that is on a motherboard. These buses are used to send/receive information from connected devices to CPU. These buses are known as External bus/Data bus. Data buses are the basic way to transfer/receive data anywhere in computer. All components that contain data / other components are connected to data buses. Thus, any information (codes) which is in a bus that is available to any devices connected to computer.

✔Expansion bus:
These buses provide a way to connect a device to the motherboard. Expansion buses are kept flowing data with the computer device. These buses also provide a way to connect Add-on devices to motherboard.
System bus: these buses provide a way to connect Microprocessor, RAM chip, and other components to the motherboard. On these buses, motherboard’s primary components are fixed.

✔ Address bus:
These are parallel conductors (on the electrical circuit) on the motherboard, used to find the place of where computer memory is stored. That tells us what information /codes are sending/receive from data buses.

Mother Board

A motherboard is the physical arrangement in a computer that contains the computer's basic circuitry and components. On the typical motherboard, the circuitry is imprinted or affixed to the surface of a firm planar surface and usually manufactured in a single step. The most common motherboard design in desktop computers today is the AT, based on the IBM AT motherboard. A more recent motherboard specification, ATX, improves on the AT design. In both the AT and ATX designs, the computer components included in the motherboard are:

• The microprocessor
• (Optionally) coprocessors
• Memory
• basic input/output system (BIOS)
• Expansion slot
• Interconnecting circuitry

Additional components can be added to a motherboard through its expansion slot. The electronic interface between the motherboard and the smaller boards or cards in the expansion slots is called the bus.

How to Remove Shortcut Virus From Pendrive/USB

Today's article is about how to remove shortcut virus from computer/laptop, pendrive or any other external storage devices. Day to day, there are thousands of viruses created and spread through, actually I don't know from where viruses are created, because today creating virus program is not only limited to hackers system. Even many programmers and developers have started to write codes for virus programs. So we can't point off the topic; the origin of virus within a circle. Mostly, they spread these new types of virus files through internet. Likewise, shortcut virus is too being created in this manner in recent times.

Shortcut viruses mostly travel one computer to another through pendrives. The pendrive is the most common storage device to transfer data between two or more computers. If you attach a shortcut virus infected pendrive with your computer to transfer any data, there is a huge space created for shortcut virus to attack your computer too. Shortcut viruses are not limited to pendrive it also attack your PC hard disk, memory card and other portable storage devices. Once your computer hard disk or other storage device affected with shortcut virus, then the headache starts! When you try to access any files or folder in a shortcut virus affected storage device, the Windows will show you an error message as "shortcut missing".

Many people panic about this virus and they think that they have lost all their data in the particular affected device. It's all because, many antivirus software fails to detect and delete the shortcut virus. Actually shortcut virus is a simple virus program which can be removed easily from the affected device. So let's have a look on what is shortcut virus and how to delete shortcut virus permanently.

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What is Shortcut Virus

Shortcut virus is a type of anonymous malware program which can hide the original file from the certain storage device and create a fake shortcut file. Shortcut virus can easily affect all kinds of external storage devices such as pendrive/flash drive, memory card, memory stick, external hard disk or any other external storage devices. When you connect any of your external storage device to transfer data with a shortcut virus affected computer, then your external storage device too gets affected with shortcut virus. When we analyse what happens to the data in the storage devices after the shortcut virus attack, we found this.

This is a malware program which mostly spread via online downloads to the computers. When this virus affect a storage device, actually the original files and folders of the device become hidden and fake shortcut icons get created for every files and folders in the same storage device. But the truth is, created shortcut icon does not exist or the shortcut is created with wrong path. That's why when you try to open the shortcut file, Windows show file missing error message. But keep in mind that the hidden files are still saved in the certain storage device.

There are plenty of simple methods that we can use to remove or delete shortcut virus from the affected storage device. Let's have a look on the important and working tricks one by one.

Remove Pendrive Shortcut Virus Using Command Prompt

If your pendrive is affected with shortcut virus program and if all your important files appear with shortcut icons, then you can try to remove the virus file manually from your pendrive. Follow my given below steps to recover the pendrive from shortcut virus using command prompt.

• Insert the affected pendrive to computer
• Check the pendrive letter in My Computer - Example Tec-Glitz (F:)
• Now open Command Prompt with Administrative mode
• Navigate the pendrive letter in cmd as shown in the below screenshot. For example type f:and hit Enter
• Then type attrib -h -r -s /s /d f:\*.* and hit Enter ("f" should be replaced with your pen drive letter)
• Or type attrib F:\*.* /d /s -h -r -s and hit Enter ("F" should be replaced with your pen drive letter)

That's all. Now close the cmd and restart your PC once. Then go to the shortcut virus affected drive. Now all the hidden files will turn into normal and you can access them anytime. Also don't forget to delete the shortcut files and folders in the drive, created by malware program.

Remove PC/Laptop Shortcut Virus Using .Bat File

We can easily remove the shortcut viruses from Windows computers and laptops using a .bat file trick. Keep in mind that you can also use the above given cmd trick to clean the viruses from PC. But when all your hard drives are affected with the virus attack, then the .bat file trick is much better than above given cmd trick. If you want to clean the viruses from all the drive using cmd trick, you have type the commands separately for each drive and that's gonna be a waste of your precious time. So lets see how to clean the shortcut viruses from PC and laptop through the .bat file trick.

• Open a Notepad
• Copy the following lines onto the notepad

@echo off

attrib -h -s -r -a /s /d C:\*.*
attrib -h -s -r -a /s /d D:\*.*
attrib -h -s -r -a /s /d E:\*.*
attrib -h -s -r -a /s /d F:\*.*
attrib -h -s -r -a /s /d G:\*.*
attrib -h -s -r -a /s /d H:\*.*
attrib -h -s -r -a /s /d I:\*.*
attrib -h -s -r -a /s /d J:\*.*
@echo complete.

• In the above command, hard disk drive letters are mentioned in red color. Replace the letters with your virus affected hard drive letters
• Now save the file in the desktop with the name VirusRemover.bat (.bat is must)
• Then close the notepad and Double Click on saved file in the desktop

That's all the settings for .bat file trick. Now go to the shortcut virus affected drives. Now all the hidden files will turn into normal and you will be able to view them.

Remove PC/Laptop Shortcut Virus Using Windows Registry

This is a little bit advance technique to remove virus from the Windows computer and laptops. If you fail with the above given tricks, then you can try this trick. When your hard disk is affected with the shortcut viruses, we can remove the source of this virus by doing few changes in Windows registry settings in the computer or laptop. Follow my given below steps carefully to succeed in this process.

• Open the Task Manager
• Go to the Processes Tab
• Now look for process Wscript.exe
• If you find this process, just click on End Process

• Now go to Start Menu and search for regedit
• Open the regedit and now you will be able to view Registry Editor
• Now navigate the following path in registry editor
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER >> Software >> Microsoft >> Windows >> CurrentVersion >>Run
• In here, look for the registry entry "odwcamszas"
• If you found that registry key, just Right Click on it and Delete the entry

This process will clean the viruses from your computer. If you're unable to find the above given registry key, then follow the given below method to clean the computer for virus free.

• Open Run box by clicking Windows key+ R key
• In the run box, type %temp% and click on OK
• Now temp folder will appear
• In temp folder, look for nkvasyoxww.vbs file. If you find this file, just Right Click on it and Delete it
• Then go to following path in your Windows computer

• C:Users >> Double Click on User Account Name >> AppData >> Roaming >> Microsoft >> Windows >> Start Menu >> Programs >> Startup
• Now check the startup folder and if a file exist named nkvasyoxww.vbs, then delete it

• Again open the Run box by clicking Windows key+ R key
• Type msconfig and click on OK
• Now System Configuration window will appear
• In this, go to Startup Tab and look there for kvasyoxww.vbs 
• If you find this file there, disable it by selecting Uncheck
• Finally, click Apply and click on OK

If you are a Windows 8 user, then you have to follow the given below steps to do this

• Open Task Manager
• Go to Startup Tab
• Now you can find kvasyoxww.vbs file
• Just click on it and select Disable as shown in the below screenshot

INVENTORS OF COMPUTER HARDWARE:

INVENTORS OF COMPUTER HARDWARE:
(1) Key board — Herman Hollerith, first keypunch device in 1930’s
(2) Transistor — John Bardeen, Walter Brattain & Wiliam Shockley (1947 - 1948)
(3) RAM — An Wang and Jay Forrester (1951)
(4) Trackball — Tom Cranston and Fred Longstaff (1952)
(5) Hard Disk — IBM , The IBM Model 350 Disk File (1956 )
(6) Integrated Circuit— Jack Kilby & Robert Noyce (1958)
(7) Computer Mouse — Douglas Engelbart (1964)
(8) Laser printer— Gary Stark weather at XEROX in 1969.
(9) Floppy Disk— Alan Shugart & IBM( 1970)
(10) Microprocessor — Faggin, Hoff & Mazor – Intel 4004

GOOGLE, YAHOO, WINDOW, VIRUS, UMTS, IMEI

1) GOOGLE: Global Organization Of Oriented Group Language Of Earth
2) YAHOO: Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle
3) WINDOW: Wide Interactive Network Development for Office work Solution
4) VIRUS: Vital Information Resources Under Siege
5) UMTS: Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
6) AMOLED: Active-matrix organic light-emitting diode
7) OLED: Organic light-emitting diode
8) IMEI: International Mobile Equipment Identity
9) ESN: Electronic Serial Number