Serverless computing is one of today’s hottest technology topics. Now that Amazon has announced AWS Lambda and Microsoft is previewing Azure Functions, the concept is becoming real.Serverless is billed as a solution that dynamically creates cloud services to process events in an ephemeral container that are executed on your behalf as a backend-as-a-service. Instead of leasing a virtual machine, then writing and deploying your code, you get to use a new “pay-per-event” pricing model while leveraging a catalogue of executable functions (building blocks) to construct your own service. It is a DIY cloud deployment model that promises to allow clouds to be used the same way we have become accustomed to using mobile applications on our smartphones: simply access the app (“function”) you need at any moment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Back when Salesforce and its ilk invented software as a service (SaaS), there was much wailing and gnashing of the teeth about the security around these new, as-yet-unproven approaches to delivering software. Many people suggested that these vendors were fly-by-nighters—that they would fail and customers’ data would be lost forever.A decade or so later, and apart from some high-profile cases (who remembers Magnol.ia?), that doomsday scenario hasn’t occurred. SaaS vendors are safely doing their job and keeping customers’ data safe.+ Also on Network World: Why it takes a cloud service to manage cloud services +
Given this fact, you could be forgiven for assuming that there would be no opportunity for a vendor whose core mission is to help users backup their SaaS data. For one thing, SaaS vendors hardly ever fail and for another, even if short-term outages and small-scale losses occur, SaaS vendors can be relied upon to do their own backup and recovery. Right?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The massive DDoS attack that disrupted the internet address-lookup service Dyn last week was perhaps pulled off by a script kiddie targeting PlayStation Network and using Mirai malware to assemble a massive IoT botnet, according to research by Flashpoint.“Flashpoint assesses with moderate confidence that the most recent Mirai attacks are likely connected to the English-language hacking forum community, specifically uses and reads of the forum “hackforums.net,” according to a blog by Allison Nixon, director of security research at Flashpoint.She says the company has discovered the infrastructure used in the Dyn attack also targeted “a well-known video game company” that she doesn’t name. A post on hackforums.net seems to agree with this possibility. It indicates the target was PlayStation Network and that Dyn was hit because it provides DNS services to PSN. Going after the name servers (NS) that provide lookups for PSN would prevent traffic from reaching PSN.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The security around the development of Internet of Things products is weak and U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) today sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to ask why and what can be done to fix the problem.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA)
In the letter Warner, who is member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and co-founder of the bipartisan Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, asked questions such as: What types of network management practices are available for internet service providers to respond to DDoS threats? And would it be a reasonable network management practice for ISPs to designate insecure network devices as “insecure” and thereby deny them connections to their networks, including by refraining from assigning devices IP addresses?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
At home, a dorm, or in the office, the Snowball iCE USB microphone delivers crystal clear high quality audio for vocals, podcasts, narrations, Skype calls, and everything else in between. Simply mount Snowball iCE on the included adjustable stand, plug the USB cable into your Mac or PC and that’s it. You’re ready to sit back and start recording crystal-clear audio for any project. The Snowball iCE mic currently averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 1,700 people (read reviews). Its typical list price of $59.99 has been reduced 18% to $49.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple recorded its third consecutive quarter of lower revenue as it fought lower demand for the iPhone and tough competition from lower-priced competitors.Revenue in the quarter, between July and September, was US $46.9 billion, down 9 percent on the same period last year and exactly in line with analyst estimates. Net income came in at $9 billion, down 19 percent, the company said Tuesday.Apple CEO Tim Cook called the results "strong" and said he was "thrilled with the customer response to iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, and Apple Watch Series 2, as well as the incredible momentum of our Services business."+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Why is Apple letting Macs rot on the tree? +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon is trying to simplify the process of moving legacy applications to the cloud with a new service that it quietly launched this week. The aptly named Server Migration Service is designed to help IT teams set up the incremental replication of virtual machines from their on-premises infrastructure to Amazon's cloud.More companies are adopting the public cloud to take advantage of performance benefits and cost savings. But getting legacy apps into the cloud can be a pain, especially for those applications that require high uptime but take time to migrate. Server Migration Service helps simplify that process and may lead to additional cloud adoption.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Rolling out the internet of things means using devices as our eyes and ears and even asking them to make decisions for us. The chips at the heart of those devices play critical roles, and on Tuesday some of them got better at their jobs.While ARM introduced two minuscule processor architectures with security features borrowed from larger chips, Intel unveiled its Atom E3900 chips with improved computer vision and industrial-grade timing.The E3900s are designed for a wide range of applications, including manufacturing and surveillance, and they’ll soon be joined by a version specifically for vehicles, called the A3900.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
My previous series of posts talked about a present problem for anyone deploying on the internet: what do you need to measure when deploying into the cloud and how do you measure cloud performance?But planning and deployment issues are not restricted to just the immediate-term questions I was tackling there. Anyone in charge of a network has to think about how that network will evolve. The next articles in this series will be about the internet of the future and will suggest ways in which the internet seems likely to develop.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Nothing is safeImage by Shardayyy With the recent take down of DYN and Brian Krebs’ web site, cybercriminals have found a way to use your own devices to bring the Internet to its knees. Portnox’s CEO Ofer Amitai provides some ways to keep those devices safe from these attacks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
LAS VEGAS -- In the past five years, IBM's artificial-intelligence-fueled Watson has gone from being a game show champion to operating in such industries as finance, retail, health care and pure research.In another five years, Watson will be helping a doctor diagnose a patient's symptoms and a company CEO calculate whether to buy a competitor.That's the word coming from IBM executives speaking Tuesday at the opening of the IBM World of Watson conference here."The technology is not even moving fast. It's accelerating. It's moving faster and faster every day," said John Kelly III, senior vice president of Cognitive Solutions and IBM Research. "Honestly, it blows my mind and I'm an optimist."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Later today Apple will once again announce a sales decline for its biggest product lines, including the iPhone, the company's financial powerhouse, according to more than two dozen analysts.The September quarter results will be highlighted by a 6% year-over-year reduction in iPhone sales, making the third consecutive quarter of smartphone slump. The good news? The contraction will be less than half of the two previous quarters.Apple's continued problems were spelled out by Philip Elmer-DeWitt, who runs the subscription-based Apple 3.0 website. Elmer-DeWitt has been collecting data from financial analysts for years -- starting when he blogged for Fortune -- and the seven independent and 21 institutional experts he queried forecast a drop in unit sales of the iPhone, iPad and Mac, and another decline in total revenue.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Friday’s distributed denial-of-service attack on domain name service provider Dyn may have seemed like the end of the world for millions of Netflix, Twitter and Spotify users, but security professionals say the service disruption was merely a nuisance attack – although an eye opening one – compared to the potential damage that can be unleashed by billions of unsecure IoT devices.“It’s really just the tip of the iceberg,” says Nicholas Evans, vice president and general manager within the Office of the CTO at Unisys, where he leads its worldwide applied innovation program. “You can grade the threat intensity as the IoT devices become more autonomous, like self-driving cars, or more controllable, like some of factory-type devices that actually manipulate the physical environment. That’s where the real threat is.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Perhaps Microsoft smells blood in the water because it's getting more aggressive with its laptop trade-in program. A while back it launched a program to trade in old laptops incapable of being upgraded to Windows 10. Now it has a new program, this time targeting old MacBooks.According to the trade-in page, users can send in almost any type of MacBook Air or MacBook Pro and they will be eligible for the discount. You might not get very much, and you might be better off selling the thing yourself on Craigslist. Then again, a lot of people are nervous about doing sales like that.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The need for vigorous criminal enforcement of cybercrime laws will only become more important as networked computers and the criminals who target them grow.That was how the Department of Justice started a blog post this week that defined how it decides whether or not to prosecute a federal computer-related crime.+More on Network World: Gartner: Artificial intelligence, algorithms and smart software at the heart of big network changes+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The infamous “admin” user ID and hackable, weak passwords are prevalent on large numbers of home routers, says a security firm. That’s despite the public's increasing awareness of vulnerabilities and associated hacking.Researchers at ESET recently tested more than 12,000 home routers and found that many of the devices are insecure. Firmware was flawed in some cases.+ Also on Network World: Answers to ‘Is the internet broken?’ and other Dyn DDoS questions +“Approximately 7 percent of the routers tested show vulnerabilities of high or medium severity,” ESET says in an article on its Welivesecurity editorial website. “Fifteen percent of the tested routers used weak passwords, with ‘admin’ left as the username in most cases.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Two months after accepting its marching orders, the federal Robocall Strike Force chaired by AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson and featuring industry heavyweights such as Verizon, Google and Apple, will tomorrow make public its plan for dramatically reducing the torrent of automated phone calls.“The Robocall Strike Force is an industry-led group which has been working to develop comprehensive solutions to prevent, detect, and filter unwanted robocalls,” says the FCC. “Robocalls and telemarketing calls are the number one source of consumer complaints received by the FCC. However, giving consumers meaningful control over the calls and texts they receive requires collective action by the industry.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The software used to program and deploy code to various Schneider Electric industrial controllers has a weakness that could allow hackers to remotely take over engineering workstations.The software, known as Unity Pro, runs on PCs used by engineers and includes a simulator for testing code before deploying it to programmable logic controllers (PLCs). These are the specialized hardware devices that monitor and control mechanical processes -- spinning motors, opening and closing valves, etc. -- inside factories, power stations, gas refineries, public utilities and other industrial installations.Researchers from industrial cybersecurity firm Indegy found that unauthenticated attackers could execute malicious code on Windows computers where the Unity Pro PLC simulator is installed. That code would run with debug privileges leading to a complete system compromise.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The Joomla developers are warning website administrators to apply an update for the popular content management system that fixes two critical vulnerabilities.The flaws are serious enough that the Joomla project released a prenotification about the planned update on Friday, urging everyone to be prepared to install it as soon as possible. This suggests that attacks targeting these vulnerabilities are expected to follow shortly.Joomla 3.6.4, released Tuesday, fixes a high-priority flaw in the account creation component that could be exploited to create accounts on a Joomla-based website even if user registration has been disabled on it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft just released the open-source licensed beta release of the Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit on Github. This announcement represents a shift in Microsoft’s customer focus from research to implementation. It is an update to the Computational Network Toolkit (CNTK). The toolkit is a supervised machine learning system in the same category of other open-source projects such as Tensorflow, Caffe and Torch.
Microsoft is one of the leading investors in and contributors to the open machine learning software and research community. A glance at the Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference reveals that there are just four major technology companies committed to moving the field of neural networks forward: Microsoft, Google, Facebook and IBM.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here