Monday, January 30, 2006

Pragyan - Celebrating Technology to its apogee & the workshop Hacked by Ankit Fadia.

somewhat around this time last year i had the chance to visit a college well known for its poshness(already blogged giving a full account of it).But this time,call it luck or whatever u want because i had no plans to go to my home this weekend but my last minute decision to spend this weekend at my house at trichy proved to be futile and fortunate for i visited the NIT when it was showcasing its extravagant truly international Tech Fiesta PRAGYAN-06 with its caption "Let's celebrate Technology".Added feature to this is NIT trichy's 30th anniversary(what else one would need?).



when i got down from the bus at the REC stop to reach my home on friday night it was around 11.30 and there was not much crowd around.hey presto where am i? surely not in Las Vegas the city of lights. The college buildings,roads, trees and the fence was dazzling with decoration lights. Voila !! what a sight to watch!!! Eventhough i knew about Pragyan except for the dates i could not figure out the reason for the lightings.. after gaping at the decoration for sometime i went home.



It was only in the morning on seeing the newspaper i remembered regarding Pragyan which was scheduled for that day and continues for 3 more days.myself along with Bharathi mohan set out to the sify iway to know about the schedule for that day. Hurray !!! how lucky we were....That day ie on saturday there was a workshop Hacked by a 20 year old network guru by name Ankit Fadia(Whew!!!! what a profile he has got for his age)... we registered online for that workshop. i rang up Ashok and he was more than happy to join us.



when the clock struck 4 o'clock we(myself,bharathi & ashok) were at the entrance of the prestigious institution.The massive Flexi banners(he he this thing makes me remember my experience with it) for pragyan dutifully welcomed us.We went to the sports ground(to while away the time till 6.30) where there was stalls for each competition and yummy food courts too with recent film songs from Rang de basandi & other hindi films being played at full volume which filled the air with festivity & importance.In one of the stalls we met Kaadi(Karthikeyan) our schoolmate who is presently doing civil at NIT.From him i learnt that some people from our college too had come there to attend some workshops like robovigyan.In fact we later saw some two of them.Kaadi too then joined us.



When we slowly made our way towards the Barn hall where the workshop was supposed to start by 6.30. myself & Bharathi recounted the no of days that we had travelled thro those roads in all sorts of weather that too quite early in the morning to attend the maths tution conducted by Mr.Karuppan chetty (HOD Mathematics,NIT) in 12th std. Finally we went to the barn hall which is of historical importance to us for this where we had our counseling some 3 years back.The whole college was there along with some participants and some foreign delegates.Then the inauguration took place. TCS being the sponsor for pragyan the chief guests were the vice president and the head of chennai operations both being NIT's alumni. the multimedia presentation also needs a special mention here.



Then came the much awaited hour of importance the stage was given to Ankit....(This guy during one of his visits to one of the presitigious institutions in india (at that time he was doing 11th std) had a very few turnabouts, doubting his ability, so he officially cracked that college's mail server and changed the password during his lecture and this made people pouring in instantly(heard this from a friend)). this guy has even helped the international secret agency,Symantec and so on)it was an absolutely Impeccable lecture.he elaborated on how to hack the internet in particular about email forging,proxies and so on.his case studies combined with online demos took everyone to the edge of the seats.Then he briefed about trojans and showed the infamous subseven trojan.he even answered queries on how to perfectly hack a system without being caught...he gave more importance to multiproxy jumping in this regard.he sited many websites where one could learn more and how to prevent themselves from being cracked.



Then he dealt with the Queries during which we went out to have food. Since computer hacking itself took some 2 1/2 hours during the next 1 hour he dealt with queries and then with mobile phones hacking.due to lack of time he left out ATM hacking :( This guy has published so many books which have become the standard books in many universities ( this guy is doing BS at stanford ). one notable book is ethical hacking blah blah...( ethical?) by 10 PM it came to end. what a time we had those 4 hours... fully packed with contents.... never had i been with such a informative & intelligent crowd which was kept electric by a celebrated personality.with this our adventure for that day ended.



It is a pity that we could could not attend all the workshops scheduled for the next 3 days. there were other entertainments like laser shows,3D gaming arena and lectures of many eminent people like prof.yashpal sharma.Pragyan showed the mettle of the nittians and their organising skills needs a special mention.On sunday evening i came to the REC bus stop to board the bus to madurai.I saw prof.yashpal going in to deliver the lecture and the banners & decoration lights beckoning people to enter the world of intellects to celebrate technology.



The rendezvous with Ankit Fadia & the extravagant Pragyan would be in my memory forever. Hats off to the nittians.....

1 comment:

Praveen Krishnamoorthy said...

my school mate.boy only :)