Connect to a Wifi Network with WEP Encryption (Wifi Router) on Windows 7

It was some strange issue that I was able to connect to the Wifi network on one of my friends place on my phone, but I was not able to connect to my laptop, Whenever I tried to connect, It was asking for username and password. I am wondering what is this additional username field.

Did some Google and found that the issue was that the Wifi Router is using the WEP encyption, which is bit old and less secure, and hence windows 7 does not allow such connections, and you need to setup the connection manually. You need to follow below procedure to connect to such a Wifi Network.

Right Click on Wifi Symbol in Windows 7 Task bar, and select Open Network and Sharing Center.

Click on Setup a new connection or network

Select Manually connect to a wireless network

Now fill the SSID of the network with which it is identified (Hostel in this case) and also the password, select WEP as security type.

Now when you click the setup should complete successfully and it should work fine. All names and passwords are case sensitive, so be careful with case when entering. Hope this makes you day. Enjoy. 

Persistent Mapping of Windows Folder to a Drive

Have you ever wanted to a persistent mapping of a perticular folder to a drive to keep things segregated? I wanted to do it, because in office we were not supposed to partition the C: drive for some reason which I don't know.

So here is how you do it. You need to a Registry Entry for the new Drive. Open Regedit and make an entry as below.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Dos Devices]

Name - Z: (Drive letter you want to use)
Value - \??\C:\Users\pshetty1\2560P

You can go ahead and hide this folder in C Drive, so that you don't want to see here :). You need to restart the PC to see the changes.

Hacking android apps

Offlate I got some time to write a blog post to explain how to hack an android app. I always thought that hacking is very difficult. But later i realised that it is not that difficult.

There are few tools you need to start with android hacking. You would need to decompile the apk, and modify the smalli code,and then recompile the same. Zipalign and sign,. you are ready to go.

There are few things to keep in mind when hacking, first you need to study the application to find places where we see the checks, for example may be the screen where the password is asked etc. Then you can search the String resources with the Strings on those screens to find the logic related to F password cheek etc,you can then either change the logic or skip the code, os may be make that function return true inspte of the failed cheek. You are done, then recompile and see if it is working. If it does not don't be disappointed. You need to try again untilyou get the right hack.

Remember one thing most of the times the changes needed are not more than one line of code change. You would be surprised to see such week apps, But whatever they make to protect the app it is easy to hack.

Enough for now. This is kind of Introduction to hacking, you may need to google to find out how to decompile, recompile, sign, zip align etc, but at the end of the day it is fun

Refreshed Galaxy SL (S3+)

Here the some UI update i did to my Galaxy SL to make it look more refreshed. Galaxy S3 icon, all new launcher,  and keypad.

Screen Capture In Galaxy SL

I was always assumed that this phone does not come with the default screen capture option. i accidentally got a screen capture when some call screen got captured by a combination of key press.

Then I searched a while and found that holding back key pressed and then pressing the home key will capture the screen shot.

I always used the root utility shoot me to capture the screen. I think this is a great deal.