So, this is how to select a file from your phone, and upload it to Amazon S3, using the cordova plugin cordova-plugin-windows-filepicker  and some ASP.NET code on the server.

Here’s the WinJS (Javascript code)

window.plugins.WindowsFilePicker.open(function(uri) {
debugger;
var url = new Windows.Foundation.Uri(uri);
Windows.Storage.StorageFile.getFileFromApplicationUriAsync(url).then(function(file) {
debugger;
Windows.Storage.FileIO.readBufferAsync(file).done(function(buffer) {
debugger;
var bytes = new Uint8Array(buffer.length);
var dataReader = Windows.Storage.Streams.DataReader.fromBuffer(buffer);
dataReader.readBytes(bytes);
dataReader.close();
var base64 = btoa(String.fromCharCode.apply(null, bytes));
$http({
method: ‘POST’,
url: “http://www.yourserver.com/s3upload.aspx”,
headers: {
‘Content-Type’: ‘application/x-www-form-urlencoded’
},
transformRequest: function(obj) {
var str = [];
for (var p in obj)
str.push(encodeURIComponent(p) + “=” + encodeURIComponent(obj[p]));
return str.join(“&”);
},
data: {
“data”: base64,
“extension”: file.fileType.substring(1)
}
}).then(function(response) {
$scope.file = response.data;
}, function(error) {
debugger;
});
});
}, function(error) {
debugger;
});
}, function(error) {
debugger;
});

This code is using AngularJS, but you can modify the AJAX part to use XHR or JQuery, as you need. – when complete it sets $scope.file to a URL hosted on Amazon AWS S3.

And here’s the code for the server-side:

var strBase64 = Request.Form[“data”];
var strExtension = Request.Form[“extension”];
var bBase64 = Convert.FromBase64String(strBase64);
var strUrl = S3.Upload(bBase64, strExtension);
Response.Write(strUrl);

Where the S3 class is as follows (username / password removed)

public static string Upload(byte[] data, string extension)
{
var ms = new MemoryStream(data);
var filename = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(“D”) + extension;
var cfg = new AmazonS3Config { RegionEndpoint = Amazon.RegionEndpoint.EUWest1 };
const string bucketName = “faxoff”;
var s3Client = new AmazonS3Client(“xxxxxx”, “yyyyy”, cfg);
var fileTransferUtility = new TransferUtility(s3Client);
var fileTransferUtilityRequest = new TransferUtilityUploadRequest
{
BucketName = bucketName,
InputStream = ms,
StorageClass = S3StorageClass.ReducedRedundancy,
Key = filename,
CannedACL = S3CannedACL.PublicRead
};
fileTransferUtility.Upload(fileTransferUtilityRequest);
return “https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/xxxxx/” + filename;
}

Fortumo offers a payment service based on premium SMS and direct carrier billing, it’s ideal for collecting micro-payments from customers who don’t have a credit card. It’s ideal for Android / Windows Phone apps.

They have great SDKs for native Android / Windows Phone, but if you’re developing a hybrid app, like based on Cordova, then you can use their WebSDK, and this is how I integrated it using the InAppBrowser

var webbrowser = window.open(“https://pay.fortumo.com/mobile_payments/dafc782dbdb9fd193b970f359af045a8“, “_blank”);

webbrowser.addEventListener(‘loadstart’, function (event) {
if (event.url == “https://infiniteloop.ie/“)
{
debugger;
}
});

Now, the long GUID marked in bold, and the return url will be different for your application – you’ll get this from Fortumo.

Download: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AlkUa-u6o9yJl2Mnv399EnAz4NA8

If you want to extend the functionality of ion-select, and would like to display it as a modal popup, then you can use this code above.

You define the data in $rootScope, and you can edit the template in myPopupBox to determine the properties etc.

This code was written by someone else, it wasn’t me – not claiming credit / responsiblity for it 🙂

If you have a webpage that you’d like your users to download and take with them, such as a ticket, receipt, map or timetable; then offering a PDF download is a handy way to do this. However, if your content is dynamic, then you may find that you’ve hit a problem.

By adding the following HTML to your page, you can create a download link for the current page; so your users can have a PDF version of what they are looking at;

<a onclick=”location.href=’http://pdf.apixml.net/download.aspx?url=&#8217;
+ location.href” >
<img src=”https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/foundicons/3.0.0/svgs/fi-page-export-pdf.svg&#8221; />
</a>

You can get more info on this at http://pdf.apixml.net/

Elixir is based on Erlang, and is being used by some high profile software companies like Moz and Pinterest, I’ve just used it to develop a proof of concept app, which calls a JSON based API from here; https://www.regcheck.org.uk, returning car details based on a number plate. The code example below has the username/password removed, but you can create a free account for testing.

First off, if you haven’t done so; install elixir on OSX as follows;

Mac OS X

• Homebrew
  • Update your homebrew to latest: brew update
  • Run: brew install elixir

Windows, and other platforms are available, and the code below is platform agnostic.

Create a new blank application by typing

mix new example

After. which, you cd into the example directory, and edit the mix.exs file to the following;

defmodule Example.Mixfile do
use Mix.Project

def project do
[app: :example,
version: “0.1.0”,
elixir: “~> 1.4”,
escript: [main_module: Example], # <- add this line
build_embedded: Mix.env == :prod,
start_permanent: Mix.env == :prod,
deps: deps()]
end

def application do
[applications: [:logger, :httpotion]]
end

defp deps do
[
{:httpotion, “~> 3.0.2”},
{:poison, “~> 3.1”}
]
end
end

Lines that I have changed have been highlighted in bold, the line referring to escript defines the entry point, and the deps section determines the libraries I require to run my code example, here I am using httpotion, which is a HTTP client library, and Poison, which is a JSON parsing library.

The next step is to edit the file in lib/example.ex, with the following code (username and password removed)

defmodule Example do

def main(args) do
IO.puts “V 1.1.5”
IO.puts “Searching for Irish Reg Number: #{List.first(args)}”
response = HTTPotion.get “https://www.regcheck.org.uk/api/json.aspx/CheckIreland/#{List.first(args)}“, [basic_auth: {“username”, “password”}]
json = Poison.Parser.parse!(response.body)
IO.puts json[“Description”]
end

end

Where I am calling a URL with basic authentication, receiving JSON back, then parsing that JSON to print it’s Description property to screen.

To run this application type:

$ mix deps.get

$ mix escript.build

$ ./example 05-D83975

where mix.deps.get gets the dependencies for the project, including Poison and Httpotion, and only needs to be run once.

mix escript.build compiles the application, and running ./example followed by an Irish car registration number builds it.

The car registration API not only runs in ireland, but also the UK, USA, Australia, India, South Africa and many other countries, you can check out RegCheck.org.uk for more details on this.

Cloudflare, one of the largest CDN / DDOS protection networks in the world launched a $100M developer fund, so I thought I should take the time to learn a bit about it.

Cloudflare apps, are effectively HTML widgets that you can embed in your webpages, I guess to try and make it easier for developers to drag and drop code that was developed by third parties.

The demo video showed how to use Cloudflare apps to embed a Youtube video into a webpage. Obviously a contrived example, since it would be just as easy to embed the youtube video, than to embed a cloudflare app pointing to a youtube video, but it gets you started.

I wanted to create a cloudflare app that implements the functionality of Avatar API (http://www.avatarapi.com) – a service that returns profile pictures from email addresses.

Effectively, the app has two component parts, an install.json file that defines the properties of the app, and app.js a javascript file that implements the app.

Here’s my install.json

{
“resources”: {
“body”: [
{
“type”: “script”,
“src”: “./app.js”
}
]
},
“options”: {
“properties”: {
“location”: {
“type”: “object”,
“format”: “element”,
“title”: “location”
},
“email”: {
“type”: “string”,
“title”: “Email Address”
}
}
}
}

And here’s my app.js

(function() {
if (INSTALL_OPTIONS.email.indexOf(“@”) == -1) {
INSTALL_OPTIONS.email = “peter.smith@gmail.com”;
}
var el = CloudflareApps.createElement(INSTALL_OPTIONS.location);
el.innerHTML = “https://www.avatarapi.com/iframe.aspx?email=%20+%20INSTALL_OPTIONS.email%20+%20&size=128“;
})()

The weakest point of security on a network can often be its users. If a disgruntled employee emails your server passwords to a competitor, there is no firewall or anti-virus that can detect this.

Systems like Firewalls and Antivirus software stop unauthorised users access your network, but authorised users being either careless or malicious with your sensitive data is not something that would be detected or prevented by standard network security.

What this software does, is allow you define a set of “Red Flags”, which can be either password fragments, or other sensitive data, and then it will listen silently to network traffic until such time as the user tries to send this sensitive data insecurely over the network.

If an insecure transmission of sensitive data is detected, then immediately an email is sent to the network administrator, who can take action by resetting the passwords on any compromised systems, and track down the perpetrator of the leak via the user’s computer name and IP address.

Although this system does not prevent the transmission of sensitive data over the network, it does detect when such transmission has occurred, and allows prompt action to limit the damage caused by such a leak.

Want to learn more ? head on on over to https://www.activeintrusiondetection.info and install the software – It’s free, please spread the word.

A recently released software package, named “Active Intrusion Detection”, or “AID” for short has been developed by an Irish software development company named Infinite Loop, which aims at addressing this significant security hole in modern data networks.
What this software does, is allow the network administrator to define a set of “Red Flags”, which can be either password fragments, or other sensitive data, and then set the software to listen silently to network traffic until such time as the user tries to send this sensitive data insecurely over the network.

If an insecure transmission of sensitive data is detected, then immediately an email is sent to the network administrator, who can take action by resetting the passwords on any compromised systems, and track down the perpetrator of the leak via the user’s computer name and IP address. Although this system does not prevent the transmission of sensitive data over the network, it does detect when such transmission has occurred, and allows prompt action to limit the damage caused by such a leak.

Understanding Red Flags
The concept behind the Active Intrusion Detection system is the idea of “Red Flags”. These are network-administrator defined pieces of text that indicate a data breach has occurred. A sample “Red Flag” could be a password fragment to your production servers. It would be a network admin’s worst nightmare to think that a junior developer in a company decided to post the production server’s administrator password onto a public forum. Even if there was no malicious intent, the security risk would be considerable.
The “Red Flag” itself should be long enough so that it would not randomly occur in a stream of network traffic that could be completely unrelated, such as within a video or audio data, but at the same time, should not itself be identifiable enough to become an attack vector in of itself. So a long fragment would be ideal.
Other possible triggers could include a password for a “dummy” user in a database. This particular user would not be normally accessible to regular users of a system, but if the password were to be detected in network traffic, then it would be an indication that a hacker or careless employee was creating an insecure dump of the users database.
Installation At present, the software is available for 64 bit Windows, but a Linux and Mac OS version is in the pipeline, it can be downloaded from https://www.activeintrusiondetection.info/ for free, and it installs as a Windows Service on the local machine. Once installed, the website will detect a local installation, and allow the administrator define configuration settings such as selecting the network
adaptor to monitor, and the “Red Flags”, or snippets of sensitive data that would indicate an imminent data breach.

After downloading the ZIP file from the download link on the website, there will be a readme file, the WinPCap driver installation executable, and the Active Intrusion Detection Monitor installation file contained within the ZIP.

The core functionality of the monitoring software is provided by WinPCap, which is a network packet capture driver, which is used by software packages such as WireShark – a popular network packet sniffing tool. This driver should be installed prior to the installation of the Windows service. You can install using the bundled WinPCap installer, or download the latest version from https://www.winpcap.org
After WinPCap is installed, then the Active Intrusion Detection software can then be installed, this is done by clicking on the MSI, or setup.exe, and following the on-screen instructions. Once this is installed, a new Windows service named &quot;Active Intrusion Detection&quot; will be installed on the local system, and begin running. On first run, this will await configuration via the website https://www.activeintrusiondetection.info/ Once installed, the user should visit the website https://www.activeintrusiondetection.info, from the same PC that you have installed the Windows service, where the website should detect a local installation, and ask you to configure the service. You then press the configure button to continue.
On Filling out the form, including an email address, a password, selecting the network adaptor connected to the Internet, and add a Red Flag (a piece of text that represents some sensitive data that you don’t want to be sent insecurely). Then press Save.
Within 30 seconds the Windows Service should detect the change and begin monitoring your Network, and the Windows service should transition between the “Starting” and “Running” states.

Limitations and caveats
Active Intrusion Detection does not prevent or block a hacker or careless employee from sharing company secrets with the outside world, but it can help notify network admins to that they can act swiftly to reset passwords, or otherwise nullify the effect of the breach. If the data being leaked is sent via secure means, such as over a VPN, or HTTPS, then the network monitor will not detect the breach – however, it would be most effective against accidental data leaks by careless employees, rather than hackers who are aware of all the security systems employed within a network.