What is the difference between desktop applications and web applications?

Today’s world is lot more dependent on the number of software applications which are involved with most of the tasks that we do. Application softwares are gaining popularity day by day by the name of “apps” and there are million application softwares available today and a lot others are in processing.

Many application softwares of different specifications and different designs under so many categories have been designed to enable the user to perform his/ her tasks efficient with ease and with reduced drudgery of performing many tasks that otherwise would have be carried out manually.

Some common examples of application softwares are:
1. Accounting softwares
2. Enterprise softwares
3. Graphics software
4. Media players
5. Office suites and so on.

There are so many types of application softwares like desktop application softwares, web application softwares, utilities and so on based on the field where they are used.

This article is focussed up on two main types of application softwares namely web application softwares and the desk top application softwares and the differences between them.

What are Desktop Applications

- A desktop application can be defined as an application that can run on a lap top or a desk top computer and does not requires any other software application for its functioning unlike web application softwares that do require web browsers to run.

- This definition of the desk top applications can be used to describe the applications that operate on the smart phones and tablets.

- When it comes to the terms of the security, the desk top application softwares are considered to more secure than the web applications since they are operated offline i.e., without internet connectivity and hence there is a lesser risk of them falling prey to some virus or Trojan horse or malware etc.

- It is a different thing that the desk top application softwares may get affected with virus because of the use of corrupted data but, usually they are safe to user as compared to the web applications.

- Most of the desk top applications come either as ports collection or as packages.

- When these applications come as ports collection, they have to be compiled from the source and often it takes up a very long time and depends on the processor of the system.

- Because of such large time consumption, the packages are considered.

- Most of the desk top applications were originally developed for the Linux operating system. These desk top application software apart from serving quick access and use, entertain the below mentioned features like:
1. Instant content synchronization
2. Quick file system access and
3. Management of the downloaded content etc

What are Web Applications?

- Web applications are open to all sorts of the malwares or viruses that are spread all over the whole cyber network and so these viruses can affect the web applications which in turn can have an adverse affect on your whole system.

- In contrast to the desk top applications, the web applications need an internet access to be used.

- The network can either be an intranet connection or an internet connection.

- Web application softwares are coded in the languages that are supported by the web browsers such as JavaScript, HTML etc unlike the desk top applications that are coded in ordinary programming languages like C, C++ etc.

- These web applications employ the web browser itself as their client called thin client.

- As compared to the desk top applications, the web applications are quite easy to be maintained and installed. Some examples are:
1. Online retail sales
2. Web mail
3. Wikis
4. Online auctions

What is meant by email spoofing in detail?

What is meant by Email or Electronic Mail?

- Email or electronic mail is the most popular and convenient means for exchange of digital messages and information in the modern world.

- E- Mail facility is harnessed through a computer network probably over an internet connection.

- Earlier the email can be used for sending messages only when both the sender and the recipient were online and such messages were called instant messages.

- But, today the email system is somewhat changed and is entirely based up on a store and forward model.

- When an email is sent, it is stored by the server and later is delivered accordingly.

- The sender and recipient do not require being online though they need to connect to the particular email server in order to send and receive the emails.

- The whole email system is today governed by the simple mail transfer protocol or SMTP rather than FTP or file transfer protocol that was used earlier.

Problems faced by Email Systems
These email system like any other system has too got many problems like:

1. Attachment size limitation
2. Overloading of information
3. Spamming
4. Computer viruses
5. Email spoofing
6. Email bombing
7. Tracking of sent and received emails
8. Privacy concerns

This article is dedicated to the worst problem being faced by the email today i.e., “email spoofing”.

Introduction to Email Spoofing

Most of us are aware about the content spoofing; the email spoofing is also somewhat same only with the only difference being that it affects emails rather than web sites or web applications.

"An email is said to have been spoofed when its sender’s address as well as its header part have been altered to make it seem as though it has been originated from a source different from the actual source."

What makes these emails so vulnerable to email spoofing?

- More and more emails fall victims to email spoofing since the simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) does not provide any techniques or methodologies for the authentication of these emails.

- It becomes comparatively easy for the attackers to forging and impersonating the emails.

- In some cases there might be legitimate causes for forging an email but in other cases the cause can be quite mischievous like phishing and spamming in order to hide the origination of the email.

- The attacker can easily change the email properties like its return path, reply to and from fields etc and make it appear as though somebody else had sent the email hiding the identity of the actual email sender.

- The recipient comes in to believing that the email has been received from the address as altered and stated in the “from” field when it is actually form a different source.

- Such emails are said to be spammed and bear the address of the spam email in the “reply to” field.

- Most of the spam emails are malicious in nature and may be infected with a Trojan, virus or worm and so on.

- Some might be just for the sake of advertisement of some cause.

- Earlier before the advent of the spam, the legitimately spoofed emails were used as a viable business model.

- Consequently the spam emails came to be recognized as an annoying problem. This problem called for the need of anti spam methodologies.

- Spoofing the IP address is somewhat difficult as compared to spoofing of the email content.

- This is so because of the great bit size of the IP address.

- To overcome such spoofing problems techniques such as following are used:
1. PGP cryptographic signatures technique
2. Using SSL or TLS in mail transfer software
3. Other encryption techniques.

Proper authentication is the only solution for preventing spoofing and bombing of emails.