Welcome to DR's note, your weekly dose of knowledge from the Circuit Stitch Blog

 This week we will talk about autocorrect, spell checker, and grammar checkers.

    To start off, I am not going to talk about how autocorrect, spell check, or grammar check works (even though it might be fascinating to look under the hood on it).  What we are going to talk about are these programs actually making us dumber?  If you think about it, how often do we misspell words and autocorrect is right there fixing them without you intervening.  The problem I see most frequently is the work gets fixed, and I didn't learn how I misspelled the word wrong.  The reason is by the time I notice it was misspelled, it was changed, and I forgot how I spelled it.  Now that might just be me, but I feel that might be many of you out there as well.  How often do you have to google a word in hopes that Google knows what you're trying to type so that gives you the correct spelling, or asking our phones how to spell a word.  I've done it countless times.  Grammar is one of my weakest point and has been since I was a kid.  In fact, after I finish typing up this email, I will run it through an application to check my spelling and grammar.  But are they all bad?

    Let us look at a program I use to help me with my spelling and grammar, it is called Grammarly.  They have a free version (which is the one I use) that not only can help with spelling, but can even see what you are trying to convey and make sure you are using proper grammar.  The program is pretty neat, and is the one I use to check these emails along with other items I write up.  In the settings of Grammarly you can choose; I write in, and choose what language you type in, detect tone in my writing, and writing style.  Detect tone in my writing is Grammarly's way of check to see if you are conveying what you're trying to convey, and if the grammar is correct in that.  Writing style is the personal dictionary, this is where you can add word that you may use all the time but are not maybe spelled properly.  An example of this would be SMC, now it will say that is misspelled, but I can add that to the dictionary, and it won't catch it every time you use it.  This would work for first or last names as well, if they get hit by the spell check every time(I know mine does). 

    So the burning question is, how do these make us dumb?  To answer it simple, the only time I think that it is a detriment to us is when the correction happens automatically.  When it happens automatically, yes it save some time but at the cost of you learning your mistake.  When we make mistakes, they can be used to help us grow and learn.  Does it suck to make mistakes?  Yes, sometimes more than others, but it is in these mistakes that make us who we are.  I know you never hear about people's mistakes only successes, but if you think about it, how many times did they have to make mistakes to get to that success.  A famous quote by Thomas Edison, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”  Who know, maybe one of those mistakes will make you realize something, then down the road you'll remember those mistakes and maybe learn something new from it. 

    I hope you learned a little about grammar programs and maybe a little about yourself.  If you have a questions or concerns, please leave a comment below.  Also, if you have any topics you want to know more about, let me know, and maybe I'll do a DR note on them.  Have a great week!!

Try Hack Me Network Services 2: Task 5 Understanding SMTP

What is SMTP?

SMTP stands for "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol". It is utilised to handle the sending of emails. In order to support email services, a protocol pair is required, comprising of SMTP and POP/IMAP. Together they allow the user to send outgoing mail and retrieve incoming mail, respectively.

The SMTP server performs three basic functions:

•  It verifies who is sending emails through the SMTP server.
•  It sends the outgoing mail
•  If the outgoing mail can't be delivered it sends the message back to the sender

Most people will have encountered SMTP when configuring a new email address on some third-party email clients, such as Thunderbird; as when you configure a new email client, you will need to configure the SMTP server configuration in order to send outgoing emails.

 

POP and IMAP

POP, or "Post Office Protocol" and IMAP, "Internet Message Access Protocol" are both email protocols who are responsible for the transfer of email between a client and a mail server. The main differences is in POP's more simplistic approach of downloading the inbox from the mail server, to the client. Where IMAP will synchronise the current inbox, with new mail on the server, downloading anything new. This means that changes to the inbox made on one computer, over IMAP, will persist if you then synchronise the inbox from another computer. The POP/IMAP server is responsible for fulfiling this process.

 

How does SMTP work?

Email delivery functions much the same as the physical mail delivery system. The user will supply the email (a letter) and a service (the postal delivery service), and through a series of steps- will deliver it to the recipients inbox (postbox). The role of the SMTP server in this service, is to act as the sorting office, the email (letter) is picked up and sent to this server, which then directs it to the recipient.

We can map the journey of an email from your computer to the recipient’s like this:

 

1. The mail user agent, which is either your email client or an external program. connects to the SMTP server of your domain, e.g. smtp.google.com. This initiates the SMTP handshake. This connection works over the SMTP port- which is usually 25. Once these connections have been made and validated, the SMTP session starts.

 

2. The process of sending mail can now begin. The client first submits the sender, and recipient's email address- the body of the email and any attachments, to the server.

 

3. The SMTP server then checks whether the domain name of the recipient and the sender is the same.

 

4. The SMTP server of the sender will make a connection to the recipient's SMTP server before relaying the email. If the recipient's server can't be accessed, or is not available- the Email gets put into an SMTP queue.

 

5. Then, the recipient's SMTP server will verify the incoming email. It does this by checking if the domain and user name have been recognised. The server will then forward the email to the POP or IMAP server, as shown in the diagram above.

 

6. The E-Mail will then show up in the recipient's inbox.

This is a very simplified version of the process, and there are a lot of sub-protocols, communications and details that haven't been included. If you're looking to learn more about this topic, this is a really friendly to read breakdown of the finer technical details- I actually used it to write this breakdown:

https://computer.howstuffworks.com/e-mail-messaging/email3.htm

 

What runs SMTP?

SMTP Server software is readily available on Windows server platforms, with many other variants of SMTP being available to run on Linux.

 

More Information:

Here is a resource that explain the technical implementation, and working of, SMTP in more detail than I have covered here.

https://www.afternerd.com/blog/smtp/

 

Answer the questions below

 

What does SMTP stand for?

How to: This can be found in the What is SMTP? section.

Answer: simple mail transfer protocol

 

What does SMTP handle the sending of? (answer in plural) 

How to: This can be found in the What is SMTP? section.

Answer: emails

 

What is the first step in the SMTP process?

How to: This can be found in the How does SMTP work? section. In the breakdown number 1.

Answer: SMTP handshake

 

What is the default SMTP port?

How to: This can be found in the How does SMTP work? section.  In the breakdown number 1.

Answer: 25

 

Where does the SMTP server send the email if the recipient's server is not available? 

How to: This can be found in the How does SMTP work? section.  In the breakdown number 4.

Answer: SMTP queue

 

On what server does the Email ultimately end up on?

How to: This can be found in the How does SMTP work? section.  In the breakdown number 5.

Answer: POP/IMAP

 

Can a Linux machine run an SMTP server? (Y/N) 

How to: This can be found in the What runs SMTP? section.

Answer: Y

 

Can a Windows machine run an SMTP server? (Y/N)

How to: This can be found in the What runs SMTP? section.

Answer: Y

 

Welcome to DR's note, your weekly dose of knowledge from Circuit Stitch.

This week we will be talking about QR codes.

    Why do we need to talk about these, they are harmless, right?  Wrong!!  These little codes can lead to different places or even download malicious code to your devices.  You should never scan an unknown QR code, if you see one out in the wild on a bulletin board or on a phone pole, never scan it.  If someone you don't know starts to talk to you and then says oh do you want my contact info, then tries to get you to scan a QR code, DON'T. 

    So how does the QR code work then, let me break down the step.  First off, QR stands for Quick Response code, it was developed back in 1994 by a Japanese developer.  Smartphone camera software usually has some lines of code in it to be able to scan QR codes.    QR codes have multiple parts, but three are the most important, and you will see them on most if not all QR codes.  The three parts are the Data module, the Position marker, and the Quiet Zone.  The data module is the black and white area inside QR codes that are scanned, this is the part that will then tell the software where to go once scanned.  The position maker is the three-square boxes you see on all QR codes, they are used to tell the camera what position the QR code is in, so it can be scanned properly.  The last is the quiet zone, which is the white area around the entire QR code.  That blank area is used to let the camera know where the QR code starts and ends.  Now we know the parts of the QR code, it makes it a little simpler how they are scanned.  To put it in its basic terms, they are fancy barcodes, plain and simple. 

    QR codes can do a number of things, both good and bad.  I tend to err on the side of caution and not scan QR codes, all it takes is for someone to replace that good QR code with one that downloads malware or goes to a malicious site.  I hope this has informed you of the dangers we face from QR codes.  If you have any questions, please email me or call.  Thank you and have a great week.

go ahead scan it you know you want too 😈

Welcome to DR's note, your weekly dose of knowledge from Circuit Stitch Blog

This week we will talk about email and how it works.

    At my job I had a snafu with email a couple of weeks ago, this made me think about emails and how they work.  So I researched it and thought I'd share my findings with you and give you a glimpse behind the curtain of what happens after you send an email out.  As we discover about email, we will use my email as an example to help understand it better.

   So what is an email?  Well email literally means electronic email, email is also a very old technology that is still used today.  At one point email was the equivalent of a text message today, now we use it for many reasons that I couldn't even list all of them here.  It may seem as simple as type out the sender, subject, and body.  Click send and off it goes straight to the sender, but there is a little more to it than that.  Let me explain, so after you do your part of putting in the sender, subject, and body of the email.  You click send, the magic happens.  First stop is the SMTP server.  SMTP stands for simple mail transfer protocol(the internet is made up of many protocols that dictate how things work and what purpose those things have, but that is a discussion for another day).  The SMTP server is like the post office, it will check your message to find out where it needs to go.  Unfortunately, this post office doesn't have a list of domains (address's, basically what is after the @ symbol).  So the SMTP server sends a message to the DNS (Domain Name System) server asking what the IP (Internet protocol) address is for, let's say hotmail.com.  If the DNS server knows the IP address it will send it back to the SMTP server, if not it has to go out to the internet to discover what the IP address for hotmail.com is.  Once it gets the IP address, it will also check out to see if that IP address has an MX (mail exchange) server, which means that that IP address is able to receive emails.  So now that the DNS server has all this info, it will go back to the SMTP server with it and hand over that information.  The SMTP server will then use that info to send the email over to the hotmail.com.com or 204.79.197.212 which is the IP address.  Once there it is redirected to the MX server, the MX server then directs it to the user's account.  The user's account will then use either IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) or POP (Post Office Protocol) in its retrieval of emails.  By user account, I mean what you use to access your email, whether it is Thunderbird or through the browser.  Then your user account will inform you that “You've Got Mail”.  Then you can read and access that email, simple, right?

    I hope this has helped you to understand what goes into sending an email, and had you gain a better knowledge of how these boxes we work with daily actually work.  If you have any topics you're interested in, let me know, maybe I do a DR note in the future on it.  Until next week, have a great day.

https://www.howtogeek.com/56002/htg-explains-how-does-email-work/