Want access to a government server? An online black market is selling access to thousands of hacked servers for as little as US$6.Known as xDedic, the market has a catalog of over 70,000 compromised servers for sale, Kaspersky Lab said Wednesday.The servers are in 173 countries and used by governments, businesses and universities. The owners likely have no idea they’ve been hacked, the security firm said.Hackers at xDedic breached many of the servers through trial-and-error using different passwords. They catalogued the servers' software, browsing history and other details buyers might like to know. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) this week said the scourge it calls the Business Email Compromise continues to rack-up victims and money – over $3 billion in losses so far.+More on Network World: FBI/FTC: Watch those e-mails from your “CEO”+The BEC scam is typically carried out by compromising legitimate business e-mail accounts through social engineering or computer intrusion to conduct unauthorized transfers of funds, the IC3 stated.The impact of the scam is detailed I the IC3 stats released this week including:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Previously, I discussed the benefits of using regional performance hubs to support new data patterns associated with the increasing use of cloud applications such as Salesforce.com and Office365.Just as business applications have transitioned to an “as a service” model, so will many network-based functions such as firewalls, IPS, IDS, etc. using network function virtualization (NFV). Although there hasn’t much been public discourse yet on WAN Optimization as a service, it is ideally suited for being “NFV-ed.”+ Also on Network World: Reinventing the WAN +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I'm a big fan of Mirantis, the pure-play OpenStack vendor. It is one company that has no problem at all being contentious. Where other vendors tend to think deeply about the impacts of what they say and process their messages through multiple levels of communication staffers, Mirantis has an "ask forgiveness, not permission" approach. This must cause serious headaches for its long-suffering press staff, but it certainly provides serious fodder for the commentators out there.Looking back over the years, Mirantis has been the source of many high-profile cloud stories. Of course, high-profile is a relative term, and it is, admittedly, a small number of people who watch the space that Mirantis plays in.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Having provided the option for iPhone users looking to make such international calls back in March, AT&T today announced that owners of certain Android devices will now also have access to Wi-Fi calling.So if you’re stuck in a spot with lousy to non-existent cell coverage – my kids’ school, for example – you’ll be able to call and text without stepping outside.The Android option is limited for starters to LG G4 but AT&T indicated that others will follow “soon.”From an AT&T blog post:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A Pandora’s box (pardon the pun) will open when Microsoft closes on its recently announced acquisition of LinkedIn. Make no mistake; this is about a huge resource pool of both data and client prospects. It’s also many eggs in one basket.LinkedIn is underdeveloped. It has not been mined, nor has it been very creative. Yes, there are many vanity things one can do: list accomplishments, rally the troops, promote business and prospect—actual B2B can start there. But there’s no mechanism for fulfillment at LinkedIn that doesn’t include LinkedIn in terms of promotion.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A Pandora’s box (pardon the pun) will open when Microsoft closes on its recently announced acquisition of LinkedIn. Make no mistake; this is about a huge resource pool of both data and client prospects. It’s also many eggs in one basket.
LinkedIn is underdeveloped. It has not been mined, nor has it been very creative. Yes, there are many vanity things one can do: list accomplishments, rally the troops, promote business and prospect—actual B2B can start there. But there’s no mechanism for fulfillment at LinkedIn that doesn’t include LinkedIn in terms of promotion.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Chef, a company that has made a name for itself developing infrastructure automation software products, released a new open source project named Habitat this week that it says is defining a new category: Application automation.
Habitat is a way of packaging an application in a way that lets the app provision the infrastructure it needs to run. This process gives Habitat the ability to run on any type of infrastructure, from physical to virtualized servers, in data centers or in the cloud.
+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Cisco unearths its inner startup culture via companywide innovation contest | This startup may have the world’s fastest networking switch chip +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Where do millennials most want to work? 3M, according to a survey of 13,000 high school students, college students and young professionals. Last year’s top-ranked company, Google, is second on the 2016 list of most desirable employers.This year’s Millennial Career Survey is the ninth annual report from the National Society of High School Scholars (NSHSS), an international honors organization that aims to advance the goals of high achieving students. The full report digs into employment preferences, career planning, educational goals and life choices of the millennial generation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
After two years of being in stealth mode, 128 Technology came out of hiding this week and is making a bold claim—that they can fix the way the internet works.128 Technology is led by Andy Ory, former CEO of Acme Packet, another Massachusetts-based company that was headquartered only a few miles from where 128 Technology is located. Also, many of the current employees of 128 Technology are former Acme Packet employees.Other than physical location, there are a couple of other similarities between 128 Technology and Acme Packet. First, the names of the companies are equally non-descriptive of what they do. Second, and more important, Acme was one a pioneer in the session border control (SBC) market, which redefined how multimedia traffic moved across networks. 128 Technology is trying to do something similar with all network traffic.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When you see a virtual reality game being advertised on a box of Froot Loops, you know the VR trend has hit the mainstream. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
SugarCRM has put AI at the core of its product plans and is working on a new intelligence service along with a Siri-like agent named Candace.Tapping the company's recent acquisitions of Stitch and Contastic, the new technology will be designed to help businesses spend less time entering data into their customer relationship management software and more time learning from and acting upon it.SugarCRM is scheduled to demonstrate the new capabilities Wednesday at its SugarCon conference in San Francisco.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Bluetooth SIG will formally introduce Bluetooth 5 on Thursday, offering a significant upgrade in speed and range, and hopefully security as well.Bluetooth 5 will have double the speed and four times the range of the current version, 4.2, which was more focused on power savings than performance. Technical improvements in Bluetooth 5 include new functionality for connectionless services, such as navigation and location-based services, and possibly set up beacons around the world to transmit information.All of these details are spelled out in an update from Mark Powell, executive director of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two different reports reveal details about three government-backed hacker groups, two from Russia and one from China.Russian government hacker groups Cozy Bear and Fancy BearNot one, but two groups of Russian government hackers broke into the computer network of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), spying on internal communications and stealing opposition research on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.CrowdStrike said it kicked out the adversary groups “Cozy Bear” and “Fancy Bear” over the weekend.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple's Safari is driving another nail in the coffin of Adobe Flash by no longer telling websites that offer both Flash and HTML5 that the plug-in is installed on users' Macs.The Mac maker is planning similar measures with other plug-ins like Java, Silverlight and QuickTime. This move will force websites with both plug-in and HTML5-based media implementations to use their HTML5, it said.When Safari 10, the new version of its browser, ships this fall, it will by default behave as though common legacy plug-ins on users’ Macs are not installed, wrote Apple software engineer Ricky Mondello in a post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft is hurtling towards the consumer release of its big Windows 10 Anniversary Update with the latest beta build for its operating system that launched on Tuesday. The launch of build 14366 signals a temporary end to Microsoft releasing new features for Windows 10, according to a blog post by Dona Sarkar, the voice of the Windows Insider Program. The focus of this update is on a "Bug Bash" event this week that's supposed to help beta testers find bugs so Microsoft can fix them before broadly releasing its big Anniversary Update. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft wants you to spend less time thinking about Office and more time getting things done.An executive who helped design one of Office's most iconic features outlined a plan for its future on Tuesday, one that calls for smarter software assisted by AI and "decomposable" documents that are easier to find."No one wants to necessarily learn about the ins and outs of the tool; they have something that they're trying to get done," said Julie Larson-Green, chief experience officer for Microsoft Office, when asked about the future of the software at a Bloomberg conference.Microsoft has already added AI-powered features to the latest versions of Office that help people find functions they're looking for, and more AI is coming. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A key manufacturer of the Raspberry Pi is being acquired for US$867 million, but the foundation that develops the ultra-cheap computers says it hopes that business will continue as usual.Premier Farnell of the U.K. has manufactured the Raspberry Pi under contract to the Raspberry Pi Foundation since the product first shipped about four years ago. The boards start for as low as $5, and more than 8 million have been sold. They're particularly popular among hobbyists, who use them to build cheap gaming consoles, laptops and smart glasses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A key manufacturer of the Raspberry Pi is being acquired for $867 million, but the foundation that develops the ultra-cheap computers says it hopes that business will continue as usual.Premier Farnell of the U.K. has manufactured the Raspberry Pi under contract to the Raspberry Pi Foundation since the product first shipped about four years ago. The boards start for as low as $5, and more than 8 million have been sold. They're particularly popular among hobbyists, who use them to build cheap gaming consoles, laptops and smart glasses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
National Harbor, Md. -- Former Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged using insecure email during his tenure at the State Department – but as a way to create more immediate communication among those within and outside the department.During his keynote address at Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit he told the 3,400 in attendance that he had two computers on his desk, one the official secure computer – “clunky and difficult to use” – and the other a laptop with a phone line and modem that he used exclusively for his AOL account.+More on Network World: Gartner: ‘Insider threat is alive and well on the dark Web’+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here