Saying 👋 to Allo and Duo: new apps for smart messaging and video calling

Whether it’s welcoming a new baby, celebrating the winning shot in overtime, or discovering the best taco stand ever—we all want to share these moments with friends and family the instant they happen. Most of the time, this means picking up our phones and sending a message or starting a call. Today we’re sharing a preview of two new apps that take a fresh look at how people connect.

Allo, a smart messaging app
Allo is a smart messaging app that makes your conversations easier and more expressive. It’s based on your phone number, so you can get in touch with anyone in your phonebook. And with deeply integrated machine learning, Allo has smart features to keep your conversations flowing and help you get things done.

Emojis, stickers, Ink, and our Whisper Shout feature in Allo

Allo has Smart Reply built in (similar to Inbox), so you can respond to messages without typing a single word. Smart Reply learns over time and will show suggestions that are in your style. For example, it will learn whether you’re more of a “haha” vs. “lol” kind of person. The more you use Allo the more “you” the suggestions will become. Smart Reply also works with photos, providing intelligent suggestions related to the content of the photo. If your friend sends you a photo of tacos, for example, you may see Smart Reply suggestions like “yummy” or “I love tacos.”

Smart Reply suggestions in Allo

Allo also features the Google assistant, bringing the richness of Google directly into your chats—helping you find information, get things done, and have fun. You can chat one-on-one with the assistant, or call on Google in a group chat with friends. Either way, you no longer have to jump between apps to do things like book a dinner reservation with friends, get up-to-date sports scores, settle a bet, or play a game. The assistant in Allo lets you bring things like Search, Maps, YouTube and Translate to all your conversations, so that you and your friends can use Google together.

The Google assistant in Allo understands your world, so you can ask for things like your agenda for the day, details of your flight and hotel, or photos from your last trip. And since it understands natural language patterns, you can just chat like yourself and it’ll understand what you’re saying. For example, "Is my flight delayed?" will return information about your flight status.

Google assistant in Allo

Privacy and security are important in messaging, so following in the footsteps of Chrome, we created Incognito mode in Allo. Chats in Incognito mode will have end-to-end encryption and discreet notifications, and we’ll continue to add new features to this mode.

Duo, a video calling app for everyone
Duo is a simple, fast one-to-one video calling app for everyone—whether you’re on Android or iOS, a fast or slow connection, in New York or New Delhi. Like Allo, Duo is based on your phone number, allowing you to reach anyone in your phonebook. And its simple interface fades away when you’re in a call, so it’s just the two of you.

Video call in Duo

One of our favorite features of Duo is Knock Knock, which shows you a live video preview of the caller before you pick up. Knock Knock invites you into the moment, making calls feel spontaneous and fun. Once you answer, Duo seamlessly transitions you right into the call.

Duo calls are in crisp HD video (up to 720p) and audio. We’ve optimized Duo to work well even on spotty networks, so if bandwidth is limited it gracefully adjusts quality so you’re still able to connect. We also seamlessly transition calls between cellular and Wi-Fi, so you don’t need to worry about what network you’re on. Finally, we built Duo with privacy and security in mind and all calls on Duo are end-to-end encrypted.
Both apps will be available this summer on Android and iOS. Head over to Google Play and register to be notified when Allo and Duo are available. We can't wait for you to try them.

Password Cracking Techniques

5 MOST COMMON PASSWORD CRACKING TECHNIQUES AND THEIR COUNTER MEASURES

There are several methods out there by which a hacker can gain access to your mails or accounts by hacking them. This article will prove beneficial to you which will help you in safeguarding your online accounts from hacking.

• BRUTE FORCE ATTACK

Hackers can crack any sort of password by brute force attack. This attack involves any number of possible combinations of numbers, letters and special characters until the right password is match. Brute-force attacks can take very long time depending upon the complexity of the password. The cracking time is determined by the speed of computer and complexity of the password.

Countermeasure:

You should you long passwords which are a combination of uppercase lowercase special character and digits. Brute-force attack will take hundreds or even thousands of years to crack such complex and long passwords.

• SOCIAL ENGINEERING

With this method a person can gain access to your password by manipulating to trust him and then you grant your password yourself.  For example, if the hacker was trying to get the password of a co-workers or friends computer, he could call him pretending to be from the IT department and simply ask for his login details. Sometime hackers call the victim pretending to be from bank and ask for their credit cards details. Social Engineering can be used to get someone password, to get bank credentials or any personal information.

 Countermeasure:

If someone asks you for a password and pretends to be someone you must first confirm his/her identity by asking few questions. In this way you will not fall in a trap.

• KEYLOGGERS AND RATS

In this method the hacker send keylogger to the victim. With this the hacker has the power of monitoring everything that the victim does on his/her system. Every keystroke is logged including passwords. Moreover hacker can even control the victims computer.

Countermeasure:

If its important use on-screen or virtual keyboard while tying the login. Use latest anti-virus software and keep them updated. Check out below article to know more about Rats and Keyloggers.

• PHISHING

It is the most popular and easiest way to have someone’s account details. In this the hacker sends a fake page that looks just like the original one like of facebook or gmail to the victim.

When someone logins through that fake page the details will be sent to the hacker.

Countermeasure:

Its easy to avoid phishing attacks.  The url of this phishing pages are different from the real one. For example URL of phishing page of facebook might look like facbbook.com (As you can see There are two “b”). Always make sure that websites url is correct.

• RAINBOW TABLE

This table is a list of hashes that has been precomputed for possible combination of characters. Password hash is the password which has been gone through a mathematical algorithm like md5. It is a one way encryption technique in which if once a password is hashed you cannot get back to the original string.  It is almost similar to dictionary attack, the only difference is, in rainbow tables attack hashed characters are used as passwords whereas in dictionary attack normal characters are used as passwords.

Example: ‘hello’ in md5 is 5d41402abc4b2a76b9719d911017c592 and zero length string (“”) is d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e

Countermeasure:

Use long and complex passwords because creation of these table will require a longer time and hug resources.