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Category Archives for "Network World Wireless"

IDG Contributor Network: Are microservices killing the API conversation?

In a couple of weeks, I will be attending the API Strategy and Practice conference in Boston. As program chair of the 2015 edition (held in Austin last October), I am excited to see this year’s schedule, led by 2016 program chair (and senior product manager at Capital One DevExchange) Lorinda Brandon. When I attend, and as I talk with participants across the two and a half days, there is one question I will be asking speakers and participants alike: Are microservices killing the API conversation?Let’s look back quickly at what has happened in the last two years:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bots may be trumping online polls

Politicians are fond of saying that the only poll that matters is the one on election day.That may be especially true this year, especially when it comes to online polls that, like anything in the digital, connected world, are vulnerable to mischief.The mischief is enabled by bots – hundreds to many thousands of computers under the control of an attacker that are more typically used to send out spam, create Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and commit various kinds of fraud – but in this case are used to skew poll results. They can make it look like public opinion views one candidate as the winner of a debate when the real vote would show the other candidate did.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Better safe than sorry: 5 apps for encrypting and shredding files

While safeguarding personal and business data has always been important, the necessity for maintaining digital privacy has become even more vital as more of our records are digitized.People are starting to realize that passwords alone aren't enough. Even with password protection, anything on your computer can potentially be viewed by an enterprising hacker. And if your computer is lost or stolen, its hard drive can be removed and connected to a new computer, revealing its secrets. To be safer, encryption is the way to go. These days, the accepted standard for encryption is the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm with a 256-bit key.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 must-have Android apps for Halloween

Turn your phone into a Spooktacular Halloween companionImage by Derek WalterYou’ve probably decorated your house with cobwebs, spiders, skeletons, and carved some pumpkins.But what about your phone? Yes, that ever-present companion of yours needs some attention as well when it comes to getting ready for All Hallow’s Eve. Your smartphone can keep track of where the kids are, zombify yourself, and keep the party going with some dark and delightful tunes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Chinese firm admits its hacked products were behind Friday’s massive DDOS attack

A Chinese electronics component manufacturer says its products inadvertently played a role in a massive cyberattack that disrupted major internet sites in the U.S. on Friday.Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology, a vendor behind DVRs and internet-connected cameras, said on Sunday that security vulnerabilities involving weak default passwords in its products were partly to blame.According to security researchers, malware known as Mirai has been taking advantage of these vulnerabilities by infecting the devices and using them to launch huge distributed denial-of service attacks, including Friday’s outage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IoT botnets used in unprecedented DDoS against Dyn DNS; FBI, DHS investigating

Infected IoT devices turned into botnets, at least some controlled by Mirai, were used in multiple DDoS attacks against New Hampshire-based internet infrastructure company Dyn. The attacks against Dyn DNS were similar to some thugs shredding an internet address book, since addresses of thousands of websites couldn’t be looked up and users couldn’t be connected to the right servers; by the third wave of attacks, users across the globe had been affected by the massive disruptions.The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are investigating the attack on Dyn, one provider of DNS services. A spokeswoman told The New York Times that the FBI and DHS “were looking into the incident and all potential causes, including criminal activity and a nation-state attack.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Float Shelf: An elegant way for Apple users to clean up their desktops

I love my iMac. There’s something so elegant and practical about the design and, as a result, many companies have attempted to come up with products that fit the Apple aesthetic but, sadly, most fail. Now, way back in 2012 in a roundup of Kickstarter projects I wanted to get my hands on, I covered the Hand Stylus, a beautifully designed pen-style stylus for tablets that is still my favorite tool for drawing on an iPad. Designed by Steve King, the Hand Stylus was the first of a series of products from his company, Prism Designs, and the company’s latest product, the Float Shelf, echoes the whole Apple look and feel as well as being really useful. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

dweet.io: A simple, effective messaging service for the Internet of Things

In my last post I discussed Freeboard, a powerful, polished, open source Web dashboard and mentioned that Bug Labs, the creators of Freeboard, also offer a very interesting Internet of Things messaging service called dweet which we’ll look at today.Now, there are many messaging services (for example MQTT) that can be used by IoT applications but few that are really simple and free as well; dweet is, indeed, simple and free though there is also an inexpensive enhanced level of dweet service we’ll get to later.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

U.S. indicts Russian for hacking LinkedIn, Dropbox, Formspring

The U.S. has charged a suspected Russian hacker with breaking into computers at LinkedIn, Dropbox and a question-and-answer site formerly known as Formspring.On Thursday, a federal grand jury indicted 29-year-old Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Nikulin following his arrest by Czech police in Prague on Oct. 5.LinkedIn has said that Nikulin was involved in the 2012 breach of the company that stole details from over 167 million accounts. However, a U.S. court filing unsealed on Friday only gave limited details on Nikulin's alleged crimes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How the Dyn DDoS attack unfolded

Today's attacks that overwhelmed the internet-address lookup service provided by Dyn were well coordinated and carefully plotted to take down data centers all over the globe, preventing customers from reaching more than 1,200 domains Dyn was in charge of.The attacks were still going on at 7 p.m. Eastern time, according to ThousandEye, a network monitoring service.Dyn’s service takes human-language internet addresses such as www.networkworld.com and delivers the IP addresses associated with them so routers can direct the traffic to the right locations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

An IoT botnet is partly behind Friday’s massive DDOS attack

Malware that can build botnets out of IoT devices is at least partly responsible for a massive distributed denial-of-service attack that disrupted U.S. internet traffic on Friday, according to network security companies.Since Friday morning, the assault has been disrupting access to popular websites by flooding a DNS service provider called Dyn with an overwhelming amount of internet traffic.Some of that traffic has been observed coming from botnets created with the Mirai malware that is estimated to have infected over 500,000 devices, according to Level 3 Communications, a provider of internet backbone services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bankers plan to give Corda blockchain code to Hyperledger project

Corda, a distributed ledger platform developed by a finance industry consortium, will go open source next month when its developers donate the code to the Linux Foundation's Hyperledger Project.The move was reported by Reuters on Thursday and the story subsequently reposted to the websites of Corda backer R3 and the Hyperledger Project.A distributed ledger, sometimes referred to as a blockchain, is a database shared across a number of servers and that relies on a consensus among those servers to guarantee its integrity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

75% off DKnight MagicBox II Bluetooth 4.0 Portable Wireless speaker, 10W Output Power with Enhanced Bass – Deal Alert

The DKnightMagicBox II Bluetooth speaker offers great quality sound with the latest Bluetooth 4.0 technology. It features two highly powerful 40mm total 10W acoustic drivers for excellent sound. With the ultra-compact size and the soft touch rubber design, it can be easily fitted into a backpack, suitcase, or a travel bag. The built-in 2000 mAh rechargeable battery enables an 10-12 hours of playtime on a single charge. This speaker is strong enough to fill up a kitchen, living room, or classroom. It is ideal for personal usage, indoor party or outdoor BBQ or picnic with friends and family. This portable speaker averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 8,700 people (read reviews). With a typical list price of $129.99, this 75% off deal is just $32.99. Check out buying options now at Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Easy-to-exploit rooting flaw puts Linux computers at risk

The maintainers of Linux distributions are rushing to patch a privilege escalation vulnerability that's already being exploited in the wild and poses a serious risk to servers, desktops and other devices that run the OS.The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2016-5195, has existed in the Linux kernel for the past nine years. This means that many kernel versions that are used in a variety of computers, servers, routers, embedded devices and hardware appliances are affected.The Red Hat security team describes the flaw as a "race" condition, "in the way the Linux kernel's memory subsystem handles the copy-on-write (COW) breakage of private read-only memory mappings." This allows an attacker who gains access to a limited user account to obtain root privileges and therefore take complete control over the system.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DNS provider Dyn gets DDoSed, takes out Twitter, GitHub and plenty others

Some of the biggest names on the internet – including Twitter, GitHub, Etsy, Shopify, the New York Times and the Boston Globe, among many others – were temporarily knocked offline by a DDoS attack that targeted DNS provider Dyn early Friday morning.DNS is the mechanism by which computers turn human-readable web addresses like www.networkworld.com into a numerical format that can be used to retrieve the actual web page. Dyn is a managed DNS provider – essentially, a phone book that computers use to correlate IP addresses to web page names.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Apple sues Amazon supplier over fake iPhone chargers + Technology confirms election ballot error is less than .001%To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple sues Amazon supplier over fake iPhone chargers

In a federal lawsuit filed this week, Apple asserted that nearly all the iPhones, chargers and cables it surreptitiously purchased from online retailer Amazon were fakes."As part of its ongoing brand protection efforts, [Apple] has purchased well over 100 iPhone devices, Apple power products, and Lightning cables sold as genuine by sellers on Amazon.com and delivered through Amazon's 'Fulfillment by Amazon' program," Apple's complaint said of a nine-month operation. "Apple's internal examination and testing for these products revealed almost 90% of these products are counterfeit."Although Apple did not target Amazon in the lawsuit -- instead, Apple sued Mobile Star, a New York-based former supplier to Amazon -- the retailer came off poorly in the complaint.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM says Macs save up to $543 per user

By the end of 2016, roughly one in four IBM employees will use a Macintosh computer. The tech giant, which employs 400,000 people, bought and provisioned 90,000 Macs since it started to support Apple laptops in June 2015. It expects to have at least 100,000 Macs deployed by 2017.IBM now has the largest enterprise Mac deployment in the world, and it is Apple's biggest business customer for Macs, according to Mac maker. Apple declined to provide details on the other leading enterprise Mac customers, but SAP, Kelly Services and Intuit are among the company's most recognizable clients. In total, IBM says it manages 217,000 Apple devices for its employees today, including those 90,000 Macs, 81,000 iPhones and 48,000 iPads. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Deep dive: The Apple Watch Series 2 delivers on last year’s promise

When Apple jumped into the wearables market last year with the first Apple Watch, it delivered a device that offered a lot of promise, while at the same confusing and confounding many early adopters.App loading times were sluggish; the UI was wholly unfamiliar to longtime Apple buyers; connectivity was sometimes an issue; and fitness tracking didn't always work as it should. That didn't stop millions of buyers from plunging ahead, making the Apple Watch a modest success in a crowded wearables market.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: 7 steps to proactive security

Data breaches are increasingly becoming an expensive problem for more and more companies. According to the most recent Ponemon Institute Data Breach report, insecure data cost companies an average of $221 per compromised record in 2016, an increase of 7 percent from the previous year and an all-time high.+ Also on Network World: A breach alone means liability + The key to securing against this threat lies in a common metaphor—if a ship has a hole, it is better to patch the breach than bail the water. Effective cybersecurity means being proactive, getting ahead of the problem and addressing the issue at its core rather than operating in a reactive fashion, constantly fixing the symptoms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft Surface isn’t the culprit in Patriots coach’s blowup

When the New England Patriots' normally taciturn head coach Bill Belichick goes on a five-minute tirade, you know it must be a bad situation. But that's what happened during a press conference with Belichick last week's drubbing of the Cincinnati Bengals.Belichick went off on the Microsoft Surface tablets as being unreliable, and that came weeks after he was seen throwing one on the ground in frustration.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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