MD5 Password Cracking

A lot of computer systems and applications use standard MD5 hash algorithms to store passwords. Using a straight unsalted MD5 hash of a password in order to store it securely used to be acceptable a few years ago but a recent technique similar to rainbow tables allows someone to recover the password by comparing the MD5 hashed password against a pregenerated list of known MD5 hashes of words. So all anyone has to do is compare your MD5 stored hash against this known list of MD5 hashes and they can then crack your MD5 hash to determine what your password string is. Here are a couple of good online searchable databases of MD5 hashes:

You can also try a Google search. Just take your MD5 hash and use that as the search term in Google. There is a pretty good chance that someone has already cracked the MD5 password and posted the results on their website which Google has indexed.

Hand Holding a Key

AdobePDF.dll Error When Installing Adobe Acrobat in Windows XP x64

When installing Adobe Acrobat whether it be the standalone installer or part of a larger collection such as “Design Studio”, you may get an error about 2/3 of the way through the installation. The error complains about not being able to find the AdobePDF.dll file on the Windows Vista CD. This file is not on the Vista CD but is in the Adobe Acrobat installer files. You need to find the Adobe Acrobat installer files directory and locate data1.cab. Within that will be a file named AdobePDF.dll_64. Copy that to your desktop and rename it to AdobePDF.dll and point the installer to that location. The installation should then proceed normally.

Adobe Acrobat

“Undefined Monitor” X Windows Error After Installing VMWare Tools

After installing VMWare tools you may get the error

Undefined Monitor "vmware"

when trying to start X Windows. To fix this error do the following:

1. Open up the X Windows configuration file in a text editor such as vi. The X Windows configuration file is named xorg.conf and is normally located in the directory /etc/X11/.

vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf

2. Add the following lines to the bottom of the xorg.conf file:

Section "Monitor"
   Identifier "vmware"
EndSection

3. Save the configuration file and then try to start X Windows again. It should now start without any errors.

VMWare Infrastructure

Free Computer Programming Training From Google Code University

Google Code University offers free training for computer programming. The training consists of a website which contains training materials such as slide shows, videos, and problem solving sets. Here is an excerpt from the Google training website which describes the training offered:

This website provides tutorials and sample course content so CS students and educators can learn more about current computing technologies and paradigms. In particular, this content is Creative Commons licensed which makes it easy for CS educators to use in their own classes.

The Courses section contains tutorials, lecture slides, and problem sets for a variety of topic areas:

  • AJAX Programming
  • Distributed Systems
  • Web Security
  • Languages

In the Tools 101 section, you will find a set of introductions to some common tools used in Computer Science such as version control systems and databases.

The CS Curriculum Search will help you find teaching materials that have been published to the web by faculty from CS departments around the world. You can refine your search to display just lectures, assignments or reference materials for a set of courses.

Here is a link to the Google Code University website: Link

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