C  WORKSHOP


14th - 17th november ,2011


C workshop is organised by utkarsh to help the students to brush up their concepts in  C. It was an small attempt  to make people more comfortable with C.


Topics covered in the following days were :
Day 1 : Introduction , if-else statement and switch statement.
Day 2 : loops , functions and arrays
Day 3 : Pointers , structures and union
Day 4 : Storage classes , macros and some general C programs

Black Hat: Square Credit-Card Reader Hacked!!

The Square reader makes any iPhone into a credit card reader. Set up an account with square and you can take credit card payments, and the reader comes free with your account­. It’s a great thing for craft vendors and other small scale merchants. And it’s perfectly secure…isn’t it?                                                      

Adam Laurie (also known as Major Malfunction) Zac Franken of Aperture Labs wondered just how secure such a thing could be. It just uses the earphone jack, after all. So it must be converting the magnetic stored data into sound. Confirming this was simple though.

The pair wrote a simple PC-based tool to record the credit card sound and play it back on demand. They bought a $10 cable to connect a laptop to the iPhone. In a small press preview at the Black Hat conference they demonstrated that playing the credit card sound has the same effect as scanning the card with Square header. The researchers notified Square in February; square responded that they see no significant threat.

This hack also allowed them to effectively pull cash from a gift card that officially can’t be used for cash. All they had to do was “pay” themselves using the hack software. Laurie pointed out that malefactors can use this technique to directly get money from stolen credit card data, rather than having to purchase goods and resell them.

The hack poses no risk to users of the Square service. Quite the contrary, the risk is to everyone else form Square users misusing the device. This hack won’t last forever. A new version of the Square device is in the works.

In addition, this hack does not really demonstrate a weakness with Square. The problem is in the magnetic stripe concept itself. Using the Square reader simply lets people skim credit card data with no special knowledge or hardware. Now don’t you feel secure?

Fujitsu Will Be Offering Commercial Supercomputers

Fujitsu has partnered with RIKEN to build the “K Computer” – which is currently the world’s fastest supercomputer. Now Fujitsu has taken that expertise and applied it to a new enterprise – they’re offering a new commercial supercomputer.

World's Fastest Supercomputer Gets Faster

The supercomputer, named PRIMEHPC FX10, will be available as of January, and its specifications are impressive. It’s theoretically scalable up to 23.2 petaflops, which is more than double the current performance of the K computer and ten times faster than the second fastest supercomputer in the world. The supercomputers is comprised of 1,024 racks, and each individual CPU in the supercomputer is comprised of a 16 cores. By themselves, each indivdual CPU is capable of processing 236.5 gigaflops.

The supercomputer’s applications include drug development, disaster planning and application, and other types of research that involve processing and analyzing huge quantities of data. I’d expect that it would be particularly productive when geared towards simulations, and the company mentions the possibility of using it to simulate a new device without the need to build a prototype.

Fujitsu expects to sell about 50 supercomputers over the course of the next three years.

Deeksha gupta
I Yr  CS

QUIZ OR DARE


Quiz or Dare is one of the exciting events organised by utkarsh on 9th November 2011.
Round-1: Four groups each with four participants were made to play spin the bottle separately. The person opposite to lead chose quiz or dare to be solved by the lead. If lead gave correct answer in given time, scores got deducted from the opposite person and added to lead's score and if lead fails, score from lead's account got transferred to the opposite person.
Round-2: From each group, the highest scorer played the game.
Round-3: An interesting rapid fire of 2 minutes between the two toppers.


Winner: 
Monika Gupta (EC I year)


Runner-up:
Nidhi Sethia (IT I year)

BLOGGER OF THE MONTH


Suhani Mishra(CS-IIyear)
Utkarsh introduced a new way to recognize and appreciate the contribution of students- Blogger of the month. Every month utkarsh will declare blogger of the month based upon her active contribution to the blog. A hearty congratulations to our first blogger of the month. 
   

OPEN BOOK

Open book was another exciting event organised by utkarsh with team size two.

In first round team had to search the answer of twenty questions within twenty minutes from the book provided.

In second round one team member was blind folded and the other member was not alllowed to touch the book. They had to search the answers of ten questions within fifteen minutes. 

winners of this event were:

Ist :

Sakshi agarwal  CS IIIrd Yr

Somil garg  CS IIIrd Yr

IInd :

Deeksha gupta CS Ist Yr

Shipra purohit CS Ist Yr