Obama orders review of election hacks as Trump doubts Russia’s role

President Barack Obama has ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct a full review of the cyberattacks that allegedly tried to disrupt this year's election, as his successor Donald Trump casts doubt over Russia's possible involvement. Obama's homeland security advisor Lisa Monaco first mentioned the need for the review while speaking to reporters on Friday morning, according to Politico."We may be crossed into a new threshold, and it is incumbent upon us to take stock of that, to review, to conduct some after-action, to understand what this means, and to impart those lessons learned," Monaco reportedly said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Obama orders review of election hacks as Trump doubts Russia’s role

President Barack Obama has ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct a full review of the cyberattacks that allegedly tried to disrupt this year's election, as his successor Donald Trump casts doubt over Russia's possible involvement. Obama's homeland security advisor Lisa Monaco first mentioned the need for the review while speaking to reporters on Friday morning, according to Politico."We may be crossed into a new threshold, and it is incumbent upon us to take stock of that, to review, to conduct some after-action, to understand what this means, and to impart those lessons learned," Monaco reportedly said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Learn Docker with More Hands-On Labs

Docker Labs is a rich resource for technical folks from any background to learn Docker. Since the last update on the Docker Blog, three new labs have been published covering Ruby, SQL Server and running a Registry on Windows. The self-paced, hands-on labs are a popular way for people to learn how to use Docker for specific scenarios, and it’s a resource which is growing with the help of the community.

Docker hands-on labs

New Labs

  • Ruby FAQ. You can Dockerize Ruby and Ruby on Rails apps, but there are considerations around versioning, dependency management and the server runtimes. The Ruby FAQ walks through some of the challenges in moving Ruby apps to Docker and proposes solutions. This lab is just beginning, we would love to have your contributions.
  • SQL Server Lab. Microsoft maintain a SQL Server Express image on Docker Hub that runs in a Windows container. That image lets you attach an existing database to the container, but this lab walks you through a full development and deployment process, building a Docker image that packages your own database schema into an image.
  • Registry Windows Lab. Docker Registry is an open-source registry server for storing Docker images, which you can run Continue reading

Ransomware attacks against businesses increased threefold in 2016

The number of ransomware attacks targeting companies increased threefold from January to September, affecting one in every five businesses worldwide.According to a new report from security company Kaspersky Lab, the rate of ransomware attacks against businesses increased from one every two minutes to one every 40 seconds during that period. For consumers it was even worse, with the rate reaching one attack every 10 seconds in September.During the third quarter of the year, there were 32,091 new ransomware variations detected by Kaspersky Lab compared to only 2,900 during the first quarter. Overall, 62 new ransomware families appeared this year, the company said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ransomware attacks against businesses increased threefold in 2016

The number of ransomware attacks targeting companies increased threefold from January to September, affecting one in every five businesses worldwide.According to a new report from security company Kaspersky Lab, the rate of ransomware attacks against businesses increased from one every two minutes to one every 40 seconds during that period. For consumers it was even worse, with the rate reaching one attack every 10 seconds in September.During the third quarter of the year, there were 32,091 new ransomware variations detected by Kaspersky Lab compared to only 2,900 during the first quarter. Overall, 62 new ransomware families appeared this year, the company said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Digital transformation: Not your grandfather’s bank

Changes in the way we do business with banks are rarely initiated by banks themselves. Instead, banks are often forced to adapt because of technological advancements that are shifting social culture and customer expectations. Just as mobile technology made selfies the norm, the introduction of new technologies is changing banking as we know it; paying by a social media app or on-demand lending are just the start.Keeping up with customers Established banks have an array of touchpoints with their customers that generate valuable insights about who their customers are. Yet all too often, banks do not act on those insights and pass up the opportunity to create a great customer experience.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For December 9th, 2016

Hey, it's HighScalability time:

 

Here's a 1 TB hard drive in 1937. Twenty workers operated the largest vertical letter file in the world. 4000 SqFt. 3000 drawers, 10 feet long. (from @BrianRoemmele)

If you like this sort of Stuff then please support me on Patreon.

  • 98%~ savings in green house gases using Gmail versus local servers; 2x: time spent on-line compared to 5 years ago; 125 million: most hours of video streamed by Netflix in one day; 707.5 trillion: value of trade in one region of Eve Online; $1 billion: YouTube's advertisement pay-out to the music industry; 1 billion: Step Functions predecessor state machines run per week in AWS retail; 15.6 million: jobs added over last 81 months;

  • Quotable Quotes:
    • Gerry Sussman~ in the 80s and 90s, engineers built complex systems by combining simple and well-understood parts. The goal of SICP was to provide the abstraction language for reasoning about such systems...programming today is more like science. You grab this piece of library and you poke at it. You write programs that poke it and see what it does. And you say, ‘Can I tweak it to do the thing Continue reading

Petcube Play: An in-home camera for watching your pets do stuff

Most people enjoy pets. Some enjoy them enough where they want to do things with them when they’re away from their house. That’s the idea behind the Petcube Play, an in-home camera that connects to your Wi-Fi network so you can watch your pets while you’re at work or not at home. In addition to the live camera feed, it includes a two-way audio speaker for speaking to your pet (“Max! Get off the couch!”) and a red laser-pointer that you can move around by pointing to locations on your smartphone’s display and hope that the cat or dog starts to chase it – hilarity ensues.The Petcube itself is a cube – it’s about the size of a slightly larger Rubik’s Cube puzzle game. It doesn’t have a battery, so the first thing you need to figure out when placing the Petcube Play is to make sure it’s close enough to a power adapter. The instructions warn about making sure your pet doesn’t chew the power cable. It also comes with a small tripod attachment that you can screw into the bottom of the Petcube if you’re looking to place it higher than a table or desk. Continue reading

Latvian developers set record with Christmas tree-lighting Rube Goldberg machine

So you think untangling your Christmas tree lights is tedious?A group of programmers from an ecommerce development company called Scandiweb spent two months building and testing a 412-step Rube Goldberg machine – a World Guinness Record -- that when finished with its 15 minutes of wackiness electrified the capital city of Riga’s Christmas tree.Fear not, you don’t have to watch all 15 minutes, as this slick video boils it all down to about three: The most complicated way to light Christmas tree from Scandiweb on Vimeo.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Looking to 2017: It’s not just enterprise security

IoT, rotten home AP firmware, freaking Wi-Fi cameras: They’re all eating your lunch. Here’s an Advanced Persistent Threat notice: EVERYTHING AROUND YOU can give you a miserable day. It’s now entirely myopic, and hence irresponsible, to think there is such a topic as enterprise security because sadly video cams in Macedonia can give your hosting environment a DDoS headache. Poor TLS handshakes crack browsers open like an egg. Your router vendor had all of the hardening of a “fairy tap.” Remember those when you were a kid? A fairy tap was a gentle touch, designed to invade your space but do no damage. Now the damage is pOwn1ng your infrastructure. Or you business partner’s infrastructure. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Looking to 2017: It’s not just enterprise security

IoT, rotten home AP firmware, freaking Wi-Fi cameras: They’re all eating your lunch. Here’s an Advanced Persistent Threat notice: EVERYTHING AROUND YOU can give you a miserable day. It’s now entirely myopic, and hence irresponsible, to think there is such a topic as enterprise security because sadly video cams in Macedonia can give your hosting environment a DDoS headache. Poor TLS handshakes crack browsers open like an egg. Your router vendor had all of the hardening of a “fairy tap.” Remember those when you were a kid? A fairy tap was a gentle touch, designed to invade your space but do no damage. Now the damage is pOwn1ng your infrastructure. Or you business partner’s infrastructure. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft and LinkedIn aim for ‘logical’ integrations

Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn has officially closed, and the CEOs at both companies are sharing some of the early plans for integration across product lines.The largest deal in Microsoft’s 41-year history will combine the “world’s leading professional cloud and the world’s leading professional network,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in a blog post. Both companies share a common mission to “help professionals transform how they work, realize new career opportunities and connect in new ways,” he added.During the coming months, LinkedIn and Microsoft say they will be integrating products, especially in areas where Microsoft’s scale can be an asset. Nadella and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner spotlighted eight areas the companies are going to pursue immediately:●    LinkedIn identity and network in Microsoft Outlook and the Office suite●    LinkedIn notifications within the Windows action center●    Enabling members drafting resumes in Word to update their profiles, and discover and apply to jobs on LinkedIn●    Extending the reach of Sponsored Content across Microsoft properties●    Enterprise LinkedIn Lookup powered by Active Directory and Office 365●    LinkedIn Learning available across the Office 365 and Windows ecosystem●    Developing a business news desk across our content Continue reading

Connected Classrooms: The Future of Education Technology

As a parent to two kids in elementary school, I’m continually amazed at how quickly teachers and students are using technology to effectively teach and gain new 21st Century skills. Instead of being bombarded with handouts every week, I receive only the ones that require my attention and acknowledgment; all other communication is through email or educational apps. For example, my kindergartener’s teacher uses Seesaw to share my son’s work in the classroom with me. Changing from asking “What did you do at school today?” to saying “I love what you did at school this week!” always brings a smile to his face.

All Flash No Longer Has To Compete With Disk

All-flash arrays are still new enough to be somewhat exotic but are – finally – becoming mainstream. As we have been saying for years, there will come a point where enterprises, which have much more complex and unpredictable workloads than hyperscalers and do not need the exabytes of capacity of cloud builders, just throw in the towel with disk drives and move to all flash and be done with it.

To be sure, disk drives will persist for many years to come, but perhaps not for as long as many as disk drive makers and flash naysayers had expected –

All Flash No Longer Has To Compete With Disk was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Attackers use hacked home routers to hit Russia’s 5 largest banks

Botnets made up of hacked home routers were used to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks against the five largest financial organizations in Russia.The attacks occurred on Monday, Dec. 5, and were detected and mitigated by Rostelecom, Russia's state-owned telecommunications company. The attacks peaked at 3.2 million packets per second (Mpps) and the longest attack lasted for over two hours, Rostelecom reported Friday.The company did not provide a bandwidth measurement for the attacks, but 3.2Mpps is not that much. DDoS mitigation providers regularly see attacks that exceed 100 Mpps and a very large September attack against the website of cybersecurity blogger Brian Krebs peaked at 665Gbps and 143Mpps.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here