Google Fiber won a victory in Nashville as the city's Metro Council approved an ordinance called “One Touch Make Ready,” that would speed up the company's fiber-optic cable installations.The ordinance, passed Wednesday night by a voice vote, gives Google Fiber and other ISPs quicker access to utility poles for deploying fast broadband with fiber-optic cable.Without the measure, each ISP has had to send out a separate crew to a utility pole to move its own line to make room for a new one. The ordinance would permit a single company to make the wire adjustments on a pole instead of waiting for existing providers — competitors like Comcast or AT&T-- to make the changes, which could take months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A massive breach at Yahoo compromised account details from at least 500 million users, and the company is blaming the attack on state-sponsored hackers.Names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and hashed passwords may have been stolen as part of the hack, which occurred in late 2014, Yahoo said.The company reported the breach on Thursday, after a stolen database from the company went on sale on the black market last month.However, the hacker behind the sale claimed that the stolen database involved only 200 million users and was likely obtained in 2012.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Robert Silvers says his purpose in speaking at the Security of Things Forum in Cambridge on Thursday wasn’t to scare anyone, but then he went ahead and called on everyone in the room to “accelerate everything you’re doing” to secure the internet of things. As the Assistant Secretary for Cyber Policy at DHS says, IoT security is a public safety issue that involves protecting both the nation’s physical and cyber infrastructures.Acknowledging a growing national dependency on the internet of things, be it in the medical, utility or transportation fields, Silvers says IoT has his department’s full attention. And a straightforward undertaking it is not, he says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
That’s one amazingly scary number: Since 2006 cyber incidents involving the Federal government have grown 1,300%.Another Government Accountability Office report on Federal cybersecurity out this week offers little in the way of optimism for the cyber-safeguard of the massive resources the government has control over.+More on Network World: Network security weaknesses plague federal agencies+“Federal information systems and networks are inherently at risk. They are highly complex and dynamic, technologically diverse, and often geographically dispersed. This complexity increases the difficulty in identifying, managing, and protecting the myriad of operating systems, applications, and devices comprising the systems and networks. Compounding the risk, systems used by federal agencies are often riddled with security vulnerabilities—both known and unknown. For example, the national vulnerability database maintained by the Mitre Corporation has identified 78,907 publicly known cybersecurity vulnerabilities and exposures as of September 15, 2016, with more being added each day,” the GAO wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The site that leaked Colin Powell's stolen emails has also allegedly obtained a scan of Michelle Obama's passport. On Thursday, the site DCLeaks began circulating the passport image on Twitter and leaking it to the press. The image includes the U.S. First Lady's alleged passport number. The site tweeted out the scan after obtaining stolen emails it claims are from a White House aide named Ian Mellul. The files, which are posted on DCLeaks, appear to come from Mellul's Gmail account and date back to February 2015.Although DCLeaks claims to be the work of "American hacktivists," some security experts suspect that the site is a front for Russian state-sponsored hackers. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Spam is back in a big way – levels that have not been seen since 201o in fact. That’s according to a blog post today form Cisco Talos that stated the main culprit of the increase is largely the handiwork of the Necurs botnet, stated the blog’s author Jaeson Schultz.+More on Network World: The weirdest, wackiest and coolest sci/tech stories of 2016 (so far!)+“Many of the host IPs sending Necurs' spam have been infected for more than two years. To help keep the full scope of the botnet hidden, Necurs will only send spam from a subset of its minions. An infected host might be used for two to three days, and then sometimes not again for two to three weeks. This greatly complicates the job of security personnel who respond to spam attacks, because while they may believe the offending host was subsequently found and cleaned up, the reality is that the miscreants behind Necurs are just biding their time, and suddenly the spam starts all over again. At Talos, we see this pattern over, and over again for many Necurs-affiliated IPs,” he wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Virtualization has dramatically transformed data center infrastructure and now it’s time for wide area networking (WAN) to undergo a similar transformation.Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) heralds a new era of networking in which WANs are software-centric, rather than tied to proprietary, inflexible hardware devices.“NFV eliminates the need for proprietary hardware; and enables routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, content delivery systems, end-user devices, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) nodes, and almost any other network function to run as software on virtual machines,” according to Roopashree Honnachari, industry director of business communications services with Frost & Sullivan.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Many Raspberry Pi-like developer boards are available, but most can't run Microsoft's Windows 10 desktop operating system. OS versatility is a strong suit of the new SolidRun Q4 board.SolidRun can run multiple versions of Windows 10. It has the flexibility to be a PC or a board to use to create cool gadgets.The SolidPC Q4 is packed with fast processors, memory, storage, and ports that make it a viable Windows 10 PC. It's cheap at US$139, but here's the bad news: You'll need to buy the Windows 10 desktop OS separately, and its price starts at $119.99.The board computer will need to be configured to meet the minimum requirements of Windows 10, which is 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage for a 64-bit version of the OS. SolidRun Q4 supports up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM and has up to 128GB of internal flash storage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For the second time in a row, I find myself unmotivated to upgrade my iPhone. The 6S had nothing that appealed to me, and the 7 is a downright turn-off with its lack of a headset jack. Five years after Steve Jobs' death, and this is what passes for innovation at Apple. The only thing preventing a defection on my part is all the apps I've invested in won't transfer to Android, and I don't feel like repurchasing all of them.+ Also on Network World: Settings in iOS 10: Every notable change you need to know +In addition to the decidedly unappealing phone, iOS 10 made a baffling move that has left me wondering what Jony Ive, Apple’s chief designer officer, and Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, are thinking. One of the more welcomed features in previous versions of iOS was the Trash All feature in Apple Mail. Prior to that you had to manually select every email for deletion.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
ZeroLemon describes their ToughJuice power bank as the world's toughest external battery pack, with 30000mAh capacity and a rugged anti-shock exterior. With enough juice to get you up and running again and again on a single charge, ToughJuice provides up to ten charges to a smartphone, two charges to a tablet or multiple charges to nearly any other device. It features four USB ports (1 QuickCharge 2.0 port, with legacy 5V/2A support and 3 Ports for 1A charging) but more importantly it features USB-C/Type-C Compatibility: the USB-C/Type-C port makes the battery pack compatible with the new MacBook, charging at 5V/2.5A and other USB-C powered devices. The device averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 200 people (read reviews), and its list price is currently discounted to $79.99. See the discounted ZeroLemon ToughJuice power bank now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
More than 840,000 Cisco networking devices from around the world are exposed to a vulnerability that's similar to one exploited by a hacking group believed to be linked to the U.S. National Security Agency.The vulnerability was announced by Cisco last week and it affects the IOS, IOS XE, and IOS XR software that powers many of its networking devices. The flaw allows hackers to remotely extract the contents of a device's memory, which can lead to the exposure of sensitive information.The vulnerability stems from how the OS processes IKEv1 (Internet Key Exchange version 1) requests. This key exchange protocol is used for VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) and other features that are popular in enterprise environments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Be careful with what you torrent. A new tool on the black market is helping hackers distribute malware through torrent files in exchange for a fee.On Tuesday, security researchers at InfoArmor said they discovered the so-called "RAUM" tool in underground forums.It leverages torrenting -- a popular file-sharing method associated with piracy -- to spread the malware. Popular torrent files, especially games, are packaged with malicious coding and then uploaded for unsuspecting users to download.Using torrents to infect computers is nothing new. But the makers of the RAUM tool have streamlined the whole process with a "Pay-Per-Install" model, according to InfoArmor.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It looks like Linux lovers have another roadbump to watch out for beyond Microsoft’s slow tightening of the UEFI Secure Boot screws.Lenovo’s forums and the Linux subreddit are ablaze amidst reports of failed Linux installs on the Lenovo Yoga 900 13ISK2 and Ideapad 710S, as Tech Republic first reported. The howls intensified when an unverified person identifying herself as a “Lenovo Product Expert” answered a question about the issue on the Best Buy website with, “The system has a Signature Edition of Windows 10 Home installed. It is locked per our agreement with Microsoft.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Samsung has announced it has just finished a shipment of 500,000 units of the Galaxy Note7 to carrier and retail outlets.The devices are to be available on Wednesday, September 21, meaning you can finally get a non-exploding model in exchange for the one you own. Those who were issued a temporary device by their carrier should also be eligible to swap it for a Note7.Those who have been forced to wait to buy a new Note7 also may be in luck. The Note7 is available on the online store for Verizon and Sprint right now. Other carriers like T-Mobile and AT&T still redirecting Note7 information on their site to a dedicated page with recall details, but they may very well resume sales soon. If you were thinking of buying a Note7 but got stuck waiting because of the battery fiasco, your best bet is to contact your carrier.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Given the vast and increasing volumes of data within organizations today, securing your data can seem an insurmountable task. But you can get your arms around it if you assess the value of your data and focus your attention on protecting your mission-critical information assets — the crown jewels.Yesterday, the nonprofit Information Security Forum (ISF) announced the availability of Protecting the Crown Jewels: How to Secure Mission-Critical Information Assets, the latest in a series of reports geared to helping organizations do just that."Businesses must prioritize the protection of mission-critical information assets," says Steve Durbin, managing director of the ISF. "Far too often, organizations consider the value of these assets, but fail to recognize the extent to which they are exposed to global security threats."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A Cisco bug report addressing “partial data traffic loss” on the company’s ASR 9000 Series routers contends that a “possible trigger is cosmic radiation causing SEU soft errors.”Cosmic radiation? While we all know that cosmic radiation can wreak havoc on electronic devices, there’s far less agreement as to the likelihood of it being the culprit in this case. Or that Cisco could know one way or the other.A reader of Reddit’s section devoted to networking asks the question: “Has anyone ever seen ‘cosmic radiation’ as a cause for software errors in a bug report before? The ‘fix’ is to reload the line card. This did resolve the issue in our case. Anybody else experience this?”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A smartphone’s built-in sensors can be used to swipe important intellectual property, such as product models and prototypes, by reading a combination of acoustic traces and electromagnetic energy as a 3D printer’s print head moves across a platen.New research discovered that it’s not just the sounds that the nozzle makes as it prints the model that gives the game away, as was previously thought. A new study indicates that by combining the collection of sounds with electromagnetic readings, hackers can obtain a powerful facsimile of what’s being made.+ Also on Network World: 3D printers wide-open to hacking +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Amazon has discounts on many popular Chromebook models, and the discounts continue through September 26th. Below is a sample of the savings, and you can click through to this page on Amazon for the full list.
ASUS C201 11.6 Inch Chromebook (Rockchip, 4 GB, 16GB SSD, Lotus Gold/Red) $487.35 $199.00
HP Chromebook 14-ak010nr 14-Inch (Intel Celeron, 2 GB RAM, 16 GB SSD) $249.99 $215.98
Samsung Chromebook 3 XE500C13-K02US 4 GB RAM 11.6" Laptop (Black) $229.99 $209.98
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Cloudways is a cloud platform offering support for organizations that need to run web-applications. Competing with other web-application hosting services like Pantheon and Pressable, Cloudways offers applications such as ecommerce, content management systems and blogging platforms.Basically the idea is that if you’re a content producer, you can rely on Cloudways to ensure that your site stays up regardless of traffic spikes, application updates or security issues. Instead of picking a standard cloud or hosting provider and doing the heavy lifting of the application-specific stuff yourself, you rely on Cloudways to do that for you.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As my family acquires more gadgets and devices that require recharging, I find myself experiencing a lot more drama when one of their devices goes dead and needs to be plugged in. This turns into a battle of “cable swapping”, in which one family member removes a cable from a device being recharged and plugs it into their own device, with the hope that family member #2 doesn’t notice the swap. Buying more cable chargers can help, but then the issue becomes the availability and location of power outlets.
Nowhere is this more evident than in our vehicle (a 7-year-old minivan with a recharger port only in the front), which requires a bunch of different power recharging options for occupants in the van. The driver and passenger have priority, of course, as we utilize charging for our smartphones for GPS and music streaming purposes. It's good to be the parents.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here