Want To Hack Into Your Android-Powered Smartphone? Here Are 10 Neat Tips!

A lot of tech savvy users like to play around with their smartphones. From editing your lock screen to using your phone to perform other activities, your smartphone can be used for all of them. Here are a few fun hacks that can come in handy!

1.Force reboot

-Press Power Button + Home Key + Volume up button simultaneously, and you can reboot your Android smartphone in case it's frozen.

2.Quick Google Access

Did you know that Android smartphones provide an easy way to access Google search in just a single click.

-Press menu key, hold it for couple of seconds and you'll have Google search ready for all your search needs.

3.Reboot Android in safe mode

Android versions jelly bean and upwards provide an option to reboot in safe mode.

To reboot in safe mode:

-Long press the power button

-Long press on the power off option

Users will be prompted to confirm a reboot in safe mode

The trick will disable all the 3rd party applications on your device, and is particularly helpful when either of these apps is playing spoilsport. You can re-enable the applications when you reboot your phone normally.

4.Unlock android phones by face detection

Android versions jelly bean and upwards provide a way to unlock your smartphone using face detection. Android jelly bean has added another layer of protection to make the feature even more secure. The smartphone can only be unlocked when the face matches as well as you require to blink your eyes to allow access. The blinking feature tells the device that you're alive and not a still image used by someone other than you to access your device.

To turn on the feature:

-Settings > Security > Screen lock > Face unlock

5.Get detailed information about phone status

Get detailed statistics like phone information, battery information, usage statistics and WiFi information by simply dialing the USSD code *#*#4636#*#*.

6.Move android apps to SD card

To move apps from your Android phone memory to SD card:

-Settings > Application settings > Manage application > Select the application > Move to SD card

7.Hard Reset and Factory reset your android phone

-In case of factory reset, your phone will be formatted to factory level: all your settings will go back to factory default and all the internal data will be deleted.

To factory reset a phone dial *#*#7780#*#*.

-In case of hard reset, all the data (including internal and external SD data) as well as settings of your android phone will be deleted without prompting for a confirmation.
To hard reset a phone dial *2767*3855#.

8.Context menu in android

Long pressing on the screen will bring out additional options for customising your android device.

9.Taking screen shots on android phone

You can take the screen shot on your Android phone without using any 3rd party application.

-For most Android phones: Press the Home button + power button.

-For Galaxy Nexus: Power button + volume down button.

-For Galaxy Note 2 and S3: Swipe your palm on the screen to take screen shot.

And so on.

10.Android Version Animation

-settings > about phone > Tab repeatedly on ‘Android version’.

The Android version will be animated after sometime.

Top 8 Android Apps To Automate Tasks!

We live in a tech era where we want everything to be automated. With the versatility of Android and open source, it has become possible too. Number of Android apps are already available that makes this possible. There are limitless things that you can do with Android devices. Power users often tend to use apps that automate the task. Most of these apps are available for free. Today we have listed 8 such apps that can automate your day-to-day activities.
1. SkipLock :
This is a leading password storing app that offers reliability and great user experience to users. The app offers great features to every Android device and users. The app is designed to skip the lockscreen when you are connected to custom configured WiFi network or Bluetooth device. You can even unlock the smartphone by connecting it to paired Bluetooth smartwatch, headset or a car.
2. TOT (Turn Of Text) :
This app promotes safe driving to users. You can set the speed limit and once the speed limit of your vehicle exceeds, the app automatically blocks the alert for incoming text messages. The app has one more add-on version for parents. Parents can remotely block texting for their child’s safe driving. TOT automatically replies to texts received during blocking period.
3. Call Recorder – ACR :
This is another free call recording app. The app features number of functions such as recording, password protection of recordings and various other recording formats too. You can also flag the important and non-important call recordings for the easier access and filtering. You can filter the calls by number, contact name and dates.
4. Changelog Droid:
If you are tired of checking for the update for apps installed on your Android device, this app comes to a great use. You can check the changelog of the app pretty easily using this application. The app checks for the updates in background and also notifies you with the changelog of new version of app. This gives you a choice to know if the app update is really important or not.
5. App Cache Cleaner:
Another big issue of Android apps is the amount of cache data and temporary files it collects. This app simplifies the headache. You can easily check for the cached memory files and junk using App Cache Cleaner. The best part is, the app is available for free and you do not need to have ROOT access to use the app.
6. Velis Auto Brightness :
The app has customised brightness modes which give you complete access to determine the right brightness for the environment that you are in. You can control and choose the optimum brightness level of your smartphone display using this app. This is a great replacement for the existing auto brightness feature in your smartphone settings.
7. AutomateIt:
AutomateIt allows you to automate Android device to run few specific tasks like triggering some specific features based on time and location. The app is very easy to use and comes with multiple customization options. The setup is pretty simple too. The app is great to automate your Android device to run certain tasks.
8. MacroDroid:
The app has very simple and user friendly interface. It can automate tasks. You can simply click on Add Macro to create a custom macro. The app lets you access to number of custom tasks from a list, you can configure an action for the task. There are multiple options to add more constrains too

13 Free Disk Encryption, Network Authentication And Port Scanning Tools

Data security covers a lot of things nowadays. There are tools that protect your data from attackers in different stages and forms. While some protect your network to avoid the entry of attackers, others encrypt the data. Here are some immensely useful tools.

Disk Encryption Tools: The risk of loss of information is a very realistic threat to anyone using a computer regularly. Data encryption ensures that even if your data is stolen or lost, the attacker has another line of defense to get by first.

1. loop-AES

2. dm-crypt

3. cryptsetup

4. SD4L

5. TrueCrypt

Port Scanners When connecting to servers, it is important to find out whether the systems ports are open or closed. These are the tools that do that.

1. Nmap

2. Unicornscan

3. Zenmap

4. nast (Network Analysis Sniffer Tool)

5. Knocker

Network Authentication Servers: Network authentication is an important aspect in maintaining security. The Rapid Authentication Dial In Service (RADIUS) is usually the choice

1. FreeRADIUS

2. OpenRADIUS

3. BSDRadius

7 Most Useful Network Monitoring Tools

In the networking world and server admin world, it’s all about visibility. If you are not aware what your network and servers are doing right now, then it might prove disastrous for you. There are some excellent tools, which are both commercial and open source, which can help you in the networking world. These tools are excellent to use for network and server monitoring, graphing and so on. Here are seven such tools for you:
1. Cacti :
Cacti is one of the best open source network graphing tools in present times. It’s a LAMP application which provides a complete graphing framework for data. There are templates which can monitor variety of devices and there are collections too for a greater array of hardware and software. Cacti’s default collection method is SNMP, local Perl or PHP. The PHP Network Weathermap plug-in for Cacti can create live network maps which show link utilisation between network devices. Cacti is very efficient in performance graphing and it’s highly customisable too.
2. Microsoft Network Monitor :
This is a packet analyser which allows capturing, viewing and analysing network traffic. This tool is extremely useful for troubleshooting network problems and applications on the network. When this tool is launched the adapter needs to be selected from the main window and after clicking on “New Capture” to initiate a new capture tab. In this tab if you click on Capture Settings you can change the filter options, adapter options and hit Start to begin the packet capture process.
3. Nagios :
This is a powerful network monitoring tool which ensures that all your critical systems, applications and services are always running. It helps implement plug-ins to monitor services, applications and metrics. It’s a mature network monitoring framework which is written in C and its Web GUI is quite fast as well as intuitive. Nagios has a full email/SMS notification engine and an escalation layout too. The Web GUI can be used to suspend notifications when they occur, and it can also record notes which are provided by admins.
4. Icinga :
It was initially a forked version of Nagios but now it has a rewritten version as Icinga 2. Icinga 1.x is backward compatible with Nagios plug-ins and configurations. The newer version is sleeker and smaller and it allows distributed monitoring too. It can monitor anything from IP to SNMP. Icinga has more than one Web UIs and it’s the configuration which makes it different from Nagios. Several graphing and monitoring packages are integrated with Icinga like PNP4Nagios, inGraph and Graphite.
5. NeDi :
NeDi is a LAMP application which goes along with the MAC address and ARP tables on network switches. NeDi Web GUI allows conducting searches to determine switch, switch port and wireless AP of a device through its MAC address, IP address and DNS name. It has a very simple configuration and it allows high amount of customisation too. NeDi uses Cisco Discovery Protocol or Link Layer Discovery Protocol and it also integrates Cacti to certain extent.
6. BandwidthD :
It monitors TCP/IP network usage and it also shows data which has been gathered in forms of graphs and tables. Each protocol is colour-coded and it runs as a background service.
7. EasyNetMonitor :
It’s a very lightweight tool which can monitor local and remote hosts. It’s useful for monitoring critical servers from desktop and it also allows immediate notifications when a host doesn’t respond to a periodic ping. After the tool is launched, it appears as an icon in the notification area on desktop where the IP addresses can be added for monitoring.