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Category Archives for "Networking"

Carrier services help expand healthcare, with 5G in the offing

There are connectivity options aplenty for most types of IoT deployment, but the idea of simply handing the networking part of the equation off to a national licensed wireless carrier could be the best one for certain kinds of deployments in the medical field.Telehealth systems, for example, are still a relatively new facet of modern medicine, but they’re already among the most important applications that use carrier networks to deliver care. One such system is operated by the University of Mississippi Medical Center, for the treatment and education of diabetes patients.To read this article in full, please click here

Several deals solidify the hybrid cloud’s status as the cloud of choice

The hybrid cloud market is expected to grow from $38.27 billion in 2017 to $97.64 billion by 2023, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17.0% during the forecast period, according to Markets and Markets.The research firm said the hybrid cloud is rapidly becoming a leading cloud solution, as it provides various benefits, such as cost, efficiency, agility, mobility, and elasticity. One of the many reasons is the need for interoperability standards between cloud services and existing systems.Unless you are a startup company and can be born in the cloud, you have legacy data systems that need to be bridged, which is where the hybrid cloud comes in.To read this article in full, please click here

Several deals solidify the hybrid cloud’s status as the cloud of choice

The hybrid cloud market is expected to grow from $38.27 billion in 2017 to $97.64 billion by 2023, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17.0% during the forecast period, according to Markets and Markets.The research firm said the hybrid cloud is rapidly becoming a leading cloud solution, as it provides various benefits, such as cost, efficiency, agility, mobility, and elasticity. One of the many reasons is the need for interoperability standards between cloud services and existing systems.Unless you are a startup company and can be born in the cloud, you have legacy data systems that need to be bridged, which is where the hybrid cloud comes in.To read this article in full, please click here

Helium – Venture Capital Con Job or Viable Business ?

The company 'Helium' appears to be attempting to build a national Low Power WAN (LPWAN) carrier network by asking normal people to buy and operate network nodes for them. The hotspot may be purchased directly or bundled with 3rd party IOT products and become nodes in a proprietary LPWAN that mines tokens in a blockchain.

The post Helium – Venture Capital Con Job or Viable Business ? appeared first on EtherealMind.

Disposable $100 IoT satellites could swarm Earth’s orbit

Tiny cheap satellites, self-organizing and communicating as a group, could shift the internet of things (IoT) to space. The postage-stamp-sized devices, acting as sensors, just like the ones we see in traditional IoT networks could perform tasks such as mapping or studying Earth, say scientists involved in a recent successful launch of the disposable nanosatellites.The test satellites, essentially just sensors, were deployed in a batch in March. They captured data, communicated with one another, and then after a couple of days in orbit, as was planned, burned up as they reentered the atmosphere.[ IoT in the enterprise: Download a PDF bundle of five essential articles about IoT in the enterprise ] “This is like the PC revolution for space,” says Zac Manchester, an assistant professor at Stanford University, in an article on the school’s website. Manchester invented the ChipSats 10 years ago. It has taken until now, and after a failed attempt in 2014, to get the constellation operational—if just for those few days.To read this article in full, please click here

Cranky Old Network Engineer Complains About The Youth Of Today

If you’re very old (like me) you’ll likely remember the halcyon days when IP routing was not enabled by default on Cisco routers. Younger gamers may find this hard to believe, which makes it even stranger when I keep bumping into an apparently common misconception about how routers work. Let’s take a look at what I’m beefing about.

No IP Routing?

To put this in context for the younger gamers, it’s worth noting that at the time, a typical “enterprise” might be running IP, but was equally likely to run IPX, AppleTalk, DECnet or some other protocol which may – or may not – support routing. Yes, there was life before the Internet Protocol became ubiquitous. If you’re curious, the command to enable IP routing is, well:

ip routing

Guess how IPX routing was enabled:

ipx routing

Appletalk?

appletalk routing

DECnet Phase IV?

decnet [network-number] routing <decnet-address>

Ok, so the pattern isn’t entirely consistent, but it’s close enough. In one way things are much simpler now because routers tend to handle IP (and IPv6) and nothing else. On the other hand there are so many more IP-related features available, I think we should just be grateful that there’s only one Continue reading

The Quantum Menace

The Quantum Menace
The Quantum Menace

Over the last few decades, the word ‘quantum’ has become increasingly popular. It is common to find articles, reports, and many people interested in quantum mechanics and the new capabilities and improvements it brings to the scientific community. This topic not only concerns physics, since the development of quantum mechanics impacts on several other fields such as chemistry, economics, artificial intelligence, operations research, and undoubtedly, cryptography.

This post begins a trio of blogs describing the impact of quantum computing on cryptography, and how to use stronger algorithms resistant to the power of quantum computing.

  • This post introduces quantum computing and describes the main aspects of this new computing model and its devastating impact on security standards; it summarizes some approaches to securing information using quantum-resistant algorithms.
  • Due to the relevance of this matter, we present our experiments on a large-scale deployment of quantum-resistant algorithms.
  • Our third post introduces CIRCL, open-source Go library featuring optimized implementations of quantum-resistant algorithms and elliptic curve-based primitives.

All of this is part of Cloudflare’s Crypto Week 2019, now fasten your seatbelt and get ready to make a quantum leap.

What is Quantum Computing?

Back in 1981, Richard Feynman raised the question about what Continue reading

The Quantum Menace

The Quantum Menace
The Quantum Menace

Over the last few decades, the word ‘quantum’ has become increasingly popular. It is common to find articles, reports, and many people interested in quantum mechanics and the new capabilities and improvements it brings to the scientific community. This topic not only concerns physics, since the development of quantum mechanics impacts on several other fields such as chemistry, economics, artificial intelligence, operations research, and undoubtedly, cryptography.

This post begins a trio of blogs describing the impact of quantum computing on cryptography, and how to use stronger algorithms resistant to the power of quantum computing.

  • This post introduces quantum computing and describes the main aspects of this new computing model and its devastating impact on security standards; it summarizes some approaches to securing information using quantum-resistant algorithms.
  • Due to the relevance of this matter, we present our experiments on a large-scale deployment of quantum-resistant algorithms.
  • Our third post introduces CIRCL, open-source Go library featuring optimized implementations of quantum-resistant algorithms and elliptic curve-based primitives.

All of this is part of Cloudflare’s Crypto Week 2019, now fasten your seatbelt and get ready to make a quantum leap.

What is Quantum Computing?

Back in 1981, Richard Feynman raised the question about what Continue reading

Towards Post-Quantum Cryptography in TLS

Towards Post-Quantum Cryptography in TLS
Towards Post-Quantum Cryptography in TLS

We live in a completely connected society. A society connected by a variety of devices: laptops, mobile phones, wearables, self-driving or self-flying things. We have standards for a common language that allows these devices to communicate with each other. This is critical for wide-scale deployment – especially in cryptography where the smallest detail has great importance.

One of the most important standards-setting organizations is the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is hugely influential in determining which standardized cryptographic systems see worldwide adoption. At the end of 2016, NIST announced it would hold a multi-year open project with the goal of standardizing new post-quantum (PQ) cryptographic algorithms secure against both quantum and classical computers.

Many of our devices have very different requirements and capabilities, so it may not be possible to select a “one-size-fits-all” algorithm during the process. NIST mathematician, Dustin Moody, indicated that institute will likely select more than one algorithm:

“There are several systems in use that could be broken by a quantum computer - public-key encryption and digital signatures, to take two examples - and we will need different solutions for each of those systems.”

Initially, NIST selected 82 candidates for further consideration from Continue reading

Towards Post-Quantum Cryptography in TLS

Towards Post-Quantum Cryptography in TLS
Towards Post-Quantum Cryptography in TLS

We live in a completely connected society. A society connected by a variety of devices: laptops, mobile phones, wearables, self-driving or self-flying things. We have standards for a common language that allows these devices to communicate with each other. This is critical for wide-scale deployment – especially in cryptography where the smallest detail has great importance.

One of the most important standards-setting organizations is the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is hugely influential in determining which standardized cryptographic systems see worldwide adoption. At the end of 2016, NIST announced it would hold a multi-year open project with the goal of standardizing new post-quantum (PQ) cryptographic algorithms secure against both quantum and classical computers.

Many of our devices have very different requirements and capabilities, so it may not be possible to select a “one-size-fits-all” algorithm during the process. NIST mathematician, Dustin Moody, indicated that institute will likely select more than one algorithm:

“There are several systems in use that could be broken by a quantum computer - public-key encryption and digital signatures, to take two examples - and we will need different solutions for each of those systems.”

Initially, NIST selected 82 candidates for further consideration from Continue reading

Introducing CIRCL: An Advanced Cryptographic Library

Introducing CIRCL: An Advanced Cryptographic Library
Introducing CIRCL: An Advanced Cryptographic Library

As part of Crypto Week 2019, today we are proud to release the source code of a cryptographic library we’ve been working on: a collection of cryptographic primitives written in Go, called CIRCL. This library includes a set of packages that target cryptographic algorithms for post-quantum (PQ), elliptic curve cryptography, and hash functions for prime groups. Our hope is that it’s useful for a broad audience. Get ready to discover how we made CIRCL unique.

Cryptography in Go

We use Go a lot at Cloudflare. It offers a good balance between ease of use and performance; the learning curve is very light, and after a short time, any programmer can get good at writing fast, lightweight backend services. And thanks to the possibility of implementing performance critical parts in Go assembly, we can try to ‘squeeze the machine’ and get every bit of performance.

Cloudflare’s cryptography team designs and maintains security-critical projects. It's not a secret that security is hard. That's why, we are introducing the Cloudflare Interoperable Reusable Cryptographic Library - CIRCL. There are multiple goals behind CIRCL. First, we want to concentrate our efforts to implement cryptographic primitives in a single place. This makes it easier Continue reading

Introducing CIRCL: An Advanced Cryptographic Library

Introducing CIRCL: An Advanced Cryptographic Library
Introducing CIRCL: An Advanced Cryptographic Library

As part of Crypto Week 2019, today we are proud to release the source code of a cryptographic library we’ve been working on: a collection of cryptographic primitives written in Go, called CIRCL. This library includes a set of packages that target cryptographic algorithms for post-quantum (PQ), elliptic curve cryptography, and hash functions for prime groups. Our hope is that it’s useful for a broad audience. Get ready to discover how we made CIRCL unique.

Cryptography in Go

We use Go a lot at Cloudflare. It offers a good balance between ease of use and performance; the learning curve is very light, and after a short time, any programmer can get good at writing fast, lightweight backend services. And thanks to the possibility of implementing performance critical parts in Go assembly, we can try to ‘squeeze the machine’ and get every bit of performance.

Cloudflare’s cryptography team designs and maintains security-critical projects. It's not a secret that security is hard. That's why, we are introducing the Cloudflare Interoperable Reusable Cryptographic Library - CIRCL. There are multiple goals behind CIRCL. First, we want to concentrate our efforts to implement cryptographic primitives in a single place. This makes it easier Continue reading