Researchers warn that many 1024-bit keys used to secure communications on the internet today might be based on prime numbers that have been intentionally backdoored in an undetectable way.Many public-key cryptography algorithms that are used to secure web, email, VPN, SSH and other types of connections on the internet derive their strength from the mathematical complexity of discrete logarithms -- computing discrete logarithms for groups of large prime numbers cannot be efficiently done using classical methods. This is what makes cracking strong encryption computationally impractical.Most key-generation algorithms rely on prime parameters whose generation is supposed to be verifiably random. However, many parameters have been standardized and are being used in popular crypto algorithms like Diffie-Hellman and DSA without the seeds that were used to generate them ever being published. That makes it impossible to tell whether, for example, the primes were intentionally "backdoored" -- selected to simplify the computation that would normally be required to crack the encryption.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Last week Datadog was in the news trying to attack the market share of monitoring vendor New Relic. While that may seem like industry shenanigans, it marked a very interesting point in time when two vendors, who had previously been happy to compete in a friendly manner, announced all-out warfare and a race for each other’s customer base.New Relic moved strongly into the infrastructure monitoring space, one that it didn’t previously cover, while Datadog made a corresponding move into application monitoring.+ Also on Network World: Infrastructure monitoring products: Users pinpoint the best and worst features +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It’s arguable that Juniper Networks has been the most successful competitor to Cisco over the past 20 years, and co-founder and CTO Pradeep Sindhu’s vision is the main reason why. Included in that vision is Pradeep’s Principle, which is based on the thesis that we are seeing the end of Moore’s Law. If you’re not familiar with that law, in 1965 Intel co-founder Gordon Moore surmised that the number of transistors per square inch on an integrated circuit would double every year, effectively giving us twice the processing capacity in the same time frame. Sindhu isn’t the only person to say Moore’s Law is coming to an end. Earlier this year, a post on ARS Technica UK made a similar observation. Sindhu extended this thesis to storage and packet switching and stated that the rate of growth for all of these elements has slowed down.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hot on the heels of Elon Musk and his SpaceX company’s grand plan to inhabit Mars, President Obama and NASA reminded the scientific world it too has a designs to inhabit the red planet – though at perhaps a far more deliberate pace than Musk wants.“We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America's story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time. Getting to Mars will require continued cooperation between government and private innovators, and we're already well on our way. Within the next two years, private companies will for the first time send astronauts to the International Space Station,” Obama wrote in an editorial for CNN this week. “The next step is to reach beyond the bounds of Earth's orbit. I'm excited to announce that we are working with our commercial partners to build new habitats that can sustain and transport astronauts on long-duration missions in deep space. These missions will teach us how humans can live far from Earth -- something we'll need for the long journey to Mars.”To read Continue reading
Facebook at Work, the company's social network for business, has a new name, but it features many of the same tools that 1.71 billion people use every month — without all the ads. Now called simply "Workplace," the service is now publicly available to any organization. Facebook is a dominant force among consumers and marketers, and now it is setting its sights on the enterprise market.
Workplace is free for the first three months, and then Facebook will charge a range of monthly prices, per active user: $3 each for up to 1,000 users, $2 for up to 10,000 users and $1 each for enterprises with more than 10,000 users. Nonprofit organizations and academic institutions will get Workplace at no cost, according to Facebook. In comparison, the popular collaboration service Slack, now a Workplace rival, offers a free app with limited features, and it currently charges $15 per month per active user for its premium offering. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Netgear is updating its Arlo wireless and wire-free home security camera systems with a professional version that takes the ‘wire-free’ and flexibility angle even further. Coming to retail shelves on October 23, the Arlo Pro system (small cameras that connect via a low-power, proprietary Wi-Fi to a router-connected base station) will now include two-way audio, a 100+ decibel siren, rechargeable batteries that can last up to six months, and improved motion detection software functionality. The new system will work with older cameras in the Arlo line, and newer cameras can work with older base station (if so desired).In addition, NETGEAR is announcing a set of accessories to make the cameras more flexible for placement and charging. For example, users who don’t want to utilize the rechargeable batteries can recharge the unit through a micro-USB charger. The Arlo Pro Charging Station ($59.99) will let you charge up to two batteries simultaneously so you can swap out one quickly if the initial battery (extra batteries sold at $49.99 each) goes low.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft has spent the past few years engaged in massive expansions of its data centers in the U.S., adding the capacity needed as its Azure business grows. Now it's moving on to Europe, as is Amazon, in what looks to be the next big cloud battleground. At a company event in Dublin, Ireland, CEO Satya Nadella told an audience that the company is building out its data centers as "a global hyperscale cloud." Microsoft has over 30 regions across all parts of the globe, making sure customers worldwide have access to the cloud. Its next big push will be to open multiple cloud data centers in France, beginning next year. Amazon Web Services (AWS) last week said it plans to do the same. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
October marks a watershed in Microsoft patching practices for Windows 7 and 8.1, and confusion reigns supreme. With the majority of organizations still holding off upgrading their fleets to Window 10, this “patchocalpyse” may have significant impact if you’re not prepared for the sticky details.The upshot: Windows 7 and 8.1 will no longer receive individual patches. These will give way to two separate kinds of monthly updates: a security-only strain and a full collection of updates. The security strain isn’t cumulative; the full bundle is. Each has its own deployment method. KBs have been KO’d. Sounds simple, right?[ The essentials for Windows 10 installation: Download the Windows 10 Installation Superguide today. | Stay up on key Microsoft technologies with the Windows Report newsletter. ]
The devil, however, is in the details, and for many organizations, it may be quite a devil indeed. Here we break down what you need to know about Win7/8.1 updates going forward, in hopes of helping you avoid your own “patchocalypse.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Last month's news about the massive data breach at Yahoo, which affected at least 500 million user records, making it the largest data breach on record, might finally be what it takes to get the average internet user to take online security into their own hands — if only they knew how.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Amid reports of five replacement Galaxy Note7 models catching fire in the U.S. alone, Samsung says it is “temporarily adjusting” the production schedule of its beleaguered smartphone. It’s careful wording, and it follows a report from the Yonhap News Agency that Samsung has suspended production of the phone in cooperation with safety regulators from South Korea, China, and the U.S.MORE: 10 mobile startups to watch
The Yonhap News Agency reports production has been “temporarily suspended,” quoting a source at one of Samsung’s suppliers. But for its part, Samsung uses different language in its statement to the press: “We are temporarily adjusting the Galaxy Note7 production schedule in order to take further steps to ensure quality and safety matters.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft has elaborated on the new patching policy for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 that takes effect Tuesday.In a post to a company blog accompanied by graphics that resembled a periodic table, Michael Niehaus, a product marketing director for Windows 10, fleshed out the massive change in how Windows 7, the standard in business and the most popular OS on the planet, will be serviced starting with this month's Patch Tuesday.Microsoft announced the new plan two months ago, saying then that as of Oct. 11 it would offer only cumulative security updates for Windows 7 and 8.1, ending the decades-old practice of letting customers choose which patches they apply.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The age of shadow ITImage by ThinkstockIn 2015, 35 percent of IT spend was managed outside of IT departments, and by 2017, Gartner predicts that CMOs alone will spend more on IT services than CIOs. This includes both insecure and secure cloud apps and services that employees and business units are increasingly adopting without ITs knowledge or oversight – a movement known as Shadow IT. Today, every department from accounting to engineering is stealthily adopting these cloud services, causing serious problems for IT professionals who have to then quickly gain visibility and control over these services. What’s more, this process threatens to render IT irrelevant in critical IT purchasing and planning decisions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Much like the mainframe, tape still has its place. It’s a veteran technology that is heralded for being cheap, reliable and simple, and advancements continue. Even so, by the time you’ve invested in tape robots for automation and verification steps to make sure your backup actually captured your data, all that labor and infrastructure means tape isn’t as cheap as the per-megabyte costs make it look.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
To keep employees' unhappiness from reaching a tipping point, companies are turning to more frequent surveys to gauge the mood of their staffers, thanks to a slew of new survey and collaboration tools that make pulse-taking easier.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Mark Zuckerberg's infamous foot-in-mouth statement on the importance of being young and technical ("young people are just smarter") landed him in a lot of hot water. But regardless of whether you believe that technology's best left to the young generation or you think that it's wasted on the young, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, there's no question that it becomes ever more difficult to find a job in tech the older you get.But as Silicon Valley struggles with its exclusionary image, recruiters and hiring managers are including age -- in addition to gender, race, ethnicity, education and work history -- as an underrepresented group that deserves consideration.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In what can only be called awfully suspicious timing, Yahoo has turned off automatic email forwarding—a crucial feature when changing email accounts—for Yahoo Mail users. Anyone who has already enabled the feature is not affected, but others cannot activate it.On its help pages, Yahoo says mail forwarding is currently under development. “While we work to improve it, we’ve temporarily disabled the ability to turn on Mail Forwarding for new forwarding addresses,” the help page says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Even as we increase data rates and network capacity in Wi-Fi with 802.11ac, 11ad and then 11ax, it’s worth keeping an eye on other communication technologies that may become useful in the enterprise.
Visible light communication (VLC) is making progress in the background, and while it is barely out of the lab, it may take off in a few years. The startups working with enterprise VLC are adopting the term “LiFi” (although it has—today—no connection with Wi-Fi).
Like all new technologies, there are many possibilities—and the number of potential uses is impressive. Applications include vehicle-to-vehicle, underwater communications, streetlamps, aircraft cabins, and industrial uses where Wi-Fi cannot be used due to RF interference.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Supreme Court is to hear arguments Tuesday in a closely-watched dispute between Samsung Electronics and Apple on the procedure for calculation of damages for the infringement of design patents.In general terms, a design patent protects the way an article looks, while utility patents address the way an article is used and works, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Some older Samsung smartphones were found by a jury in 2012 to have infringed three design patents related to the look of the iPhone, including its face and rounded bezel design, and the icon layout on the home screen.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
At the end of the trading day on Monday, shares of Apple were up nearly 1.75% before ultimately closing at $116.05 per share. All told, Apple stock is now trading at levels not seen since December of 2015.Part of the recent upswing in Apple shares can of course be attributed to better than anticipated iPhone 7 demand. Though the iPhone 7 was initially pegged as a lackluster upgrade, consumers on the whole appear to be impressed with the device's new camera and blazing fast hardware. Recall, pre-orders for the iPhone 7 set new records at both Sprint and T-Mobile.Additionally, analyst reports in recent weeks have suggested that many iPhone buyers are opting for the more margin-friendly iPhone 7 Plus, further padding Apple's bottom line in the process.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Network monitoring systems typically look for slow, overloaded, failing or crashed servers, routers, switches and network connections – and alert network administrators to the problem. According to the IT Central Station user community, the most important criteria to consider when choosing network monitoring software are scalability, flexibility and multi-tenancy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)