If you are in the habit of downloading WordPress themes from the Internet instead of crafting them by hand, know that many WordPress theme sites (not to mention malicious crackers) encrypt their code so novice users can not read or edit them. These encrypted files could be harmless, or might contain code that will destroy your site.

The most common files that are encrypted would be “footer.php” or “functions.php”

If you open either of these files in notepad and see the following:

< ?php $o=”encrypted text“;eval(base64_decode(‘rubbish‘));return;?>

Their are ways of decrypting this code:

* For code that looks like $o=whatever: you can use this tool to decrypt it.
* For code that looks like $_F=__FILE__: you can use this tool to decrypt it
* For code that looks like eval(gzinflate(base64_decode(‘…’)));: you can use the this script to decrypt it.

Once decrypted, the plain-text code can be inspected. If you deem it safe, cut-and-paste the decrypted code into the source file, which will function as it did before.

While the science of decomposition can be quite complex, starting your own compost pile is relatively easy. The NYC Compost Project has put together practical information on all aspects of composting in New York City, including basic guides for people who are just getting started.

• Read the full quick-start composting guide here.

Procedural, a graphics modelling software company, released a rendered movie of a hypothetical New York City skyline in the year 2259. It was influenced by the New York scenes in The Fifth Element.

The New York April Fools’ Day Parade was created in 1986 to remedy a glaring omission in the long list of New York’s annual ethnic and holiday parades. These events fail to recognize the importance of April 1st, the day designated to commemorate the perennial folly of mankind. In an attempt to bridge this gap and bring people back in touch with their inherent foolishness, the parade annually crowns a King of Fools from parading look-alikes.

The public is encouraged to participate, in or out of costume, with or without floats, and may join the procession at any point along the parade route. Floats can be no wider than 10 feet and no longer than 25 feet. They can be self-propelled, towed, pushed or pulled. Customized bicycles, tricycles, baby carriages and aerial balloons are welcome. All participants are costumed look-alikes, and the Parade Committee assumes no liability for damages caused by satire. Parade floats and marchers must be at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue no later than 11:30 a.m.

• from theApril Fool’s Parade site.

On Tuesday, March 31^st the Girls in Tech tribe is hosting its (re)launch party. Back in September 2008 I attended the first Girls in Tech party that occured as part of Web 2.0 Expo here in NYC. Zahra made fast friends with the crew, and I enjoyed my relatively priviledged status as one of the three or four male supporters in the room.

The 2009 launch party (which is open to men as well as women, by the way) features Juliette Powell, a media entrepreneur, a community catalyst and author — as guest speaker. She will also be signing copies of her latest book. The event will also feature swag bags, raffle prizes (the girls are raffling a KaraB laptop bag and a $100 driving credit from Mint), drink specials, and complementary hors d’oeuvres.

The relaunched New York chapter’s program of events will focus on network mixers, weekend workshops; a summer dinner cruise; a money-smarts seminar for freelancers and small business owners; and participation in Girls in Tech University.

• Event: Girls in Tech NYC – Relaunch Launch PartyDate: Tuesday, March 31, 2009Time: 6:30pm – 9:30pm

  Location: M1-5 Lounge

  Street: 52 Walker Street (Between Church & Broadway)

  City/Town: New York, NY

  Cost: $10 advance sale, $15 at the door

• RSVP for the event here.
• Post-event writeup can be found here.

The Lost Tribes of New York City from Carolyn London who animated inanimate objects from the streets of New York using the voices of interviews with New Yorkers.

On December 30, 2008, at the 25th Annual Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, a security team called MD5 Collision, Inc. presented a paper that declared the Certificate Authority system protecting commerce on the Internet to be entirely compromised.

We have identified a vulnerability in the Internet Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) used to issue digital certificates for secure websites. As a proof of concept we executed a practical attack scenario and successfully created a rogue Certification Authority (CA) certificate trusted by all common web browsers. This certificate allows us to impersonate any website on the Internet, including banking and e-commerce sites secured using the HTTPS protocol.

Our attack takes advantage of a weakness in the MD5 cryptographic hash function that allows the construction of different messages with the same MD5 hash. This is known as an MD5 “collision”. Previous work on MD5 collisions between 2004 and 2007 showed that the use of this hash function in digital signatures can lead to theoretical attack scenarios. Our current work proves that a least one attack scenario can be exploited in practice, thus exposing the security infrastructure of the web to realistic threats.

Attack diagram from a paper explaining the flaws in the current CA system used in e-commerce.

As a result of this successfull attack, we are currently in possession of a rogue Certification Authority certificate. This certificate will be accepted as valid and trusted by all common browsers, because it appears to be signed by one of the root CAs that browsers trust by default. In turn, any website certificate signed by our rogue CA will be trusted as well. If an unsuspecting user is a victim of a man-in-the-middle attack using such a certificate,  they will be assured that the connection is secure through all common security indicators:  a “https://” url in the address bar, a closed padlock and messages such as “This certificate is OK” if they chose to inspect the certificate.

This successful proof of concept shows that the certificate validation performed by browsers can be subverted and malicious attackers might be able to monitor or tamper with data sent to secure websites. Banking and e-commerce sites are particularly at risk because of the high value of the information secured with HTTPS on those sites. With a rogue CA certificate, attackers would be able to execute practically undetectable phishing attacks against such sites.

Read the full paper here.

Windows Live SkyDrive is a free service from Microsoft that gives you an impressive 25 gigabytes of cloud storage space on their servers. Folders and files can be private, shared with a group, or completely public.

The space alone makes this worth the sign-up. This service becomes truly Elite when you mount it on your PC as a virtual hard drive.

The Gladinet client allows you to mount cloud storage from SkyDrive (as well as from Amazon S3 and Google) as a virtual folder from within Windows Vista and XP.

The process is so simple that it doesn’t even require instructions. Just download & install it, enter your credentials, and then add your files.

Download the free Gladinet client here.

IcoFX is a tiny (1.46mb) freeware icon editor.  This program is used by developers at PortableApps, and I consider it to be superior to competing icon editing freeware.

Notable features:
• Create icons for Windows 98 / ME / 2000 / XP / Vista / Macintosh
• Support for Vista icons with PNG compression
• Support for alpha channel (transparency)
• Batch processing for handling multiple files
• Built in resource editor for creating icon libraries or changing icons inside exe files
• Zoom icons up to 10000% for increased precision
• Import image dialog, for creating icons from images
• Convert Macintosh icons to Windows icons and vice versa
• Extract Macintosh icons from resource files
• Snapshot window for creating overviews of the icons
• More than 40 built in effects, including Drop Shadow
• Use custom filters to create your own customized effects
• Resolutions up to 256×256
• Extract icons (including Vista icons) from 32 bit exe and dll
• Import / export images (transparency also) from bmp, jpg, gif, png, jp2
• Many useful drawing tools like brush, line, rectangle and more
• Transparent, Brighten/Darken, Blur/Sharpen tools for retouching
• Create icon from an image with a single click
• Adjust the contrast, brightness, hue, saturation, transparency and color balance of icons
• Change the dimension of images
• Images can be faded using the fadeout dialog
• Increase / decrease the opacity of an image
• Easy shadow handling
• RGB and HSB color modes
• Possibility to store favorite colors
• Capture image from the desktop
• Grid for precision work
• Blur the edge of the brush
• Rotate the image at any angle

Download IcoFx from here.

There is also a portable version available.

Downloading a torrent is easy, but the process for creating and sharing one of your own is a little more challenging. The following is a quick overview of the process.

Using uTorrent

1. First open uTorrent and select File >> Create New Torrent.
2. The Create New Torrent window will appear.  Browse to the location of the torrent directory.
3. Locate the the file or folder you want to create a torrent from, select it, and click OK.
4. Next, enter the trackers where you want the torrent to be found by others. You can use one or more trackers, but in general one is enough. Here are some good trackers you can use:
   

   http://open.tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce
   http://www.sumotracker.com/announce http://inferno.demonoid.com:3391/announce

5. In the comment box add any information relevant to the torrent.  Also check the Start Seeding box so the torrent begins uploading after it is created.  Finally, click on Create and Save as.
6. Windows Explorer will once again open so you can create a name for the torrent and choose where to save the new torrent file. I suggest creating a “Torrents” folder in your My Documents and putting them there.
7. The new torrent should appear in uTorrent and begin seeding across the Internet. If you see a red arrow next to the torrent, that means it hasn’t been added to the tracker(s) you selected yet. Many trackers delay new seeds for processing, virus-checking, and the like. You can right-click on the new torrent and select Update Tracker to speed up the process. Continue clicking it until the red arrow turns green.

Other Torrent Options

If you simply wish to create a new torrent without seeding it, use MakeTorrent instead. Its a small application for Windows and Linux that creates the torrent file and nothing else.