Millions effected with windows worm - Conficker, Kido or Downadup

The worm Conficker was discovered in October 2008. Anti-virus firm F-Secure estimates there are now 8.9m machines infected.

According to Microsoft, the worm works by searching for a Windows executable file called "services.exe" and then becomes part of that code. It then copies itself into the Windows system folder as a random file of a type known as a "dll". It gives itself a 5-8 character name, such as piftoc.dll, and then modifies the Registry, which lists key Windows settings, to run the infected dll file as a service.

Once the worm is up and running, it creates an HTTP server, resets a machine's System Restore point (making it far harder to recover the infected system) and then downloads files from the hacker's web site.

Anti-virus firm F-Secure says that the worm uses a complicated algorithm to generate hundreds of different domain names every day, such as mphtfrxs.net, imctaef.cc, and hcweu.org. Only one of these will actually be the site used to download the hackers' files. On the face of it, tracing this one site is almost impossible.

Once the worm is running on the computer, it makes it very hard for users to restore their machine to a safe point before their operating system was infected, and automatically starts to download more malicious programs, that further compromise the PC, from hackers’ websites.

It’s using multiple replication mechanisms, including USB sticks, so if someone got an infection from one company and then takes his USB stick to another firm, it could infect that network too.

Computers users are advised to ensure their anti-virus software, operating system and firewall is up to date, and that they have installed a Microsoft patch designed to combat the problem, MS08-067, which is available from the Microsoft site.

Read More from BBC...

Get GridViewRow in button click event in GridView control

When we use template field columns with buttons in gridview, we may need to access the row number to find the datakeys in the button click event. And here is the code how it looks like..

protected void lnkBtnCheckIn_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
LinkButton lnkButton = sender as LinkButton;
GridViewRow row = lnkButton.Parent.Parent as GridViewRow;
int fleetMovemetId = 0;
int.TryParse(Gridview1.DataKeys[row.RowIndex].Values[1].ToString(), out fleetMovemetId);
}

Njoy..

DataFormatString in GridView control

Here is the DataFormatString for date as 02-Jan-2009 02:10 PM in gridview in asp.net

<asp:boundfield headertext="C.I. Date & Time" datafield="checkin_datetime" htmlencode="false" dataformatstring="{0: dd-MMM-yyyy hh:mm tt}" />

-::HTH::-

Error in Asp.Net : "Redirect URI cannot contain newline characters"

While you send the error message as query string to an error page using response.redirect method in asp.net, you may come across the following error.
To get through, you should use URLEncode and URLDecode alone or with combination of HTMLEncode and HTMLDecode.

Eg:-
Response.Redirect(@"~/errorpage.aspx?.err=" + Server.UrlEncode(exception.Message) + "&.src=" + Server.UrlEncode(exception.Source));

File v/s BLOB storage in applications

This is my one of the old articles on File storage in applications. May help some readers..
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/database/File_Vs_Blob_Storage.aspx

BLOB Storage in SQL Server. How to store and retrive BLOBS in asp.net application

I have written an article on how to work on BLOB objects in asp.net and sql server. This may help the novice application developers.

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/database/Store_and_manipulat_BLOBs.aspx

-:HTH:-

How to improve site performance by compressing ViewState ?

Here is an article that describes how to improve aspnet site peroformance by compressing viewstate. Worth reading...http://www.dotnetbips.com/articles/22d33d11-1a75-42c8-bbf6-ca1a345d3fcf.aspx

Best ASP.NET FAQ for interviews

Here are some useful links...

http://www.syncfusion.com/faq/aspnet/

http://www.aspnetfaq.com


http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=4081&lngWId=10

http://www.techinterviews.com/?p=193

http://blogs.crsw.com/mark/articles/254.aspx

Shopping Cart Web Template

Here is a nice shopping cart web template..Take it up from there...
http://demo.x-cart.com

:)

Another free CSS web template

This will help the beginners to start with the simple site design and layouts..
Grab it..
http://www.free-css-templates.com

Mini icons for your web applications....

Here are some nice icons which we can use it inside the controlsa and for CSS while developing web applications...

http://icons.primail.ch/

Digg it....

Disaster Recovery in SharePoint Products and Technologies 2003

The below informations will help you a lot when you start managing the SharePoint server farm of your organization since failure is not an option for us (IT) !

This URL points to a page on TECHNET that may interest you:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc750142.aspx

How to perform a disaster recovery operation of Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 Companyweb and Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 databases?
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/827701

Move SharePoint sites across server farm
http://blogs.msdn.com/priyo/archive/2006/03/24/559896.aspx

I thought this Help and How-to article from Microsoft(R) Office Online might interest you. "Back up, restore, or move a SharePoint site"

-::HTH::-

Ajax pre-loader image online generator

Here we go!...http://www.ajaxload.info/
You can have your own ajax pre-loader...build your own styles..

Ziyad

Here is a joke!

Long back, a person who sacrificed his sleep, forgot his family, forgot his food, Forgot laughter were called "Saints", But now they are called.. "IT professionals"

Happy Holidays !

Dear readers,
I wish you all Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Holidays !

Rgds, Z

Tool to generate CSS Menu, CSS Button, CSS Page Layout, etc. and free template

Hey developers, here is the nice tool to create your own CSS driven menu, web page layout, button and nice site template for free...

http://www.cssportal.com/

Hope this will help us in our work...

How to render RDLC (local report) as excel in asp.net ?

Here we go - to render the rdlc local report in asp.net web application


public static void GenerateExcelFromLocalReport()
{
//get your report datasource from the database
IDataReader iReader = GetReportDataSourceReader();
LocalReport report = new LocalReport();
report.ReportPath = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/reports
/rdlc/MyReport.rdlc");
report.DataSources.Add(new ReportDataSource("DataSource1", iReader));
ReportParameter[] parameters = new ReportParameter[3];
parameters[0] = new ReportParameter("Filter1", "Filter1's value"));
parameters[1] = new ReportParameter("Filter2", "Filter2's value");
parameters[2] = new ReportParameter("Footer", "Footer's value");
report.SetParameters(parameters);
//
//code to render report as excel document
string encoding = String.Empty;
string mimeType = String.Empty;
string extension = String.Empty;
Warning[] warnings = null;
string[] streamids = null;
//
byte[] byteArray = report.Render("Excel", null, out mimeType,
out encoding, out extension, out streamids, out warnings);
//
HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel";
HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition",
"attachment; filename=MyExcel.xls");
HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("Content-Length",
byteArray.Length.ToString());
HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = "application/octet-stream";
HttpContext.Current.Response.BinaryWrite(byteArray);
HttpContext.Current.Response.End();
}

-::HTH::-

How to generate or render .pdf document from local report (rdlc) with parameters ?

Here is the code to render the rdlc (local report) as pdf document in asp.net web application.

public void GeneratePDFFromLocalReport()
{
//get your report datasource from the database
IDataReader iReader = GetReportDataSourceReader();
LocalReport report = new LocalReport();
report.ReportPath =
HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/reports/rdlc/MyReport.rdlc");
report.DataSources.Add(new ReportDataSource("DataSource1", iReader));
ReportParameter[] parameters = new ReportParameter[3];
parameters[0] = new ReportParameter("Filter1", "Filter1's value"));
parameters[1] = new ReportParameter("Filter2", "Filter2's value");
parameters[2] = new ReportParameter("Footer", "Footer's value");
report.SetParameters(parameters);
//
//code to render report as pdf document
string encoding = String.Empty;
string mimeType = String.Empty;
string extension = String.Empty;
Warning[] warnings = null;
string[] streamids = null;
//
byte[] byteArray = report.Render("PDF", null,
out mimeType, out encoding, out extension, out streamids, out warnings);
//
HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = "Application/pdf";
HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition",
"attachment; filename=MyPDF.pdf");
HttpContext.Current.Response.AddHeader("Content-Length",
byteArray.Length.ToString());
HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = "application/octet-stream";
HttpContext.Current.Response.BinaryWrite(byteArray);
HttpContext.Current.Response.End();
}

-::HTH::-

Error while binding databound control in asp.net. "Eval(), Bind() can only be used in the context of a databound control"

Did you ever get a message "Databinding methods such as Eval(), XPath(), and Bind() can only be used in the context of a databound control" while binding a databound control ?

If you ask me this question, my answer is Yes, i did receive the above message when i tried binding a dropdownlist template column inside the gridview control in asp.net 2.0. I was surprised seeing the message hitting me all the rack and was curious to see the issue in detail.
I had already done the binding of template column (drop down) in the row item created event.

Upong further investigarion i came to know that there is a difference between <%#Eval("field_name") %> and <%# Databinder.Eval("filed_name") %>

In the Eval(), ASP.net resolves the object to which databinding is done where as in the Databinder.Eval() since we give the target object manually, ASP.net has nothing to resolve.

So the resolution is use <%# Databinder.Eval("filed_name") %> instead <%# Eval("field_name") %>

Cannot create/shadow copy <your assembly file> when that file already exists

Cannot create/shadow copy < your assembly file dll > when that file already exists

When you compile the web projects in visual studio 2005/2008, you may receive the above message. 

And in order to get rid of this, you can either kill the process aspnet_wp.exe using the task manager 

or add the following tag in the web.config inside system.web tag.

<hostingEnvironment shadowCopyBinAssemblies="false" />

Although the former resolution is just a temperory fix, the later one will fix this issue for that 

project permanantly.

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