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Category Archives for "Networking"

Help Make the Internet Open to All: Join SIG Women!

When we talk about women and technology, we need to talk data. In the United States, a recent report by the National Center for Women and Information Technology highlighted that only 26% of the workforce in the computer field is made up of women. In addition, a survey by Silicon Valley Bank revealed that 68% of startups do not have women on their board. In India, women make up just 30% of the workforce in the technology industry. In many European countries, the wage gap between men and women is present in technological positions. In Latin America, the proportion of women studying in computer careers is low. In addition, shortcomings in Internet access makes it difficult for women of all ages to use the technology in Africa.

Increasing access, skills, and leadership of women and girls in ICT has enormous potential for improving their health and emancipating them through access to information, education and trade opportunities, strengthening not only families and communities, but also national economies and global society as a whole.

In order to speak on a daily basis and to make the problem visible, we considered it necessary to create a Special Interest Group to help change those statistics Continue reading

Inside the infamous Mirai IoT Botnet: A Retrospective Analysis

Inside the infamous Mirai IoT Botnet: A Retrospective Analysis

Inside the infamous Mirai IoT Botnet: A Retrospective Analysis

This is a guest post by Elie Bursztein who writes about security and anti-abuse research. It was first published on his blog and has been lightly edited.

This post provides a retrospective analysis of Mirai — the infamous Internet-of-Things botnet that took down major websites via massive distributed denial-of-service using hundreds of thousands of compromised Internet-Of-Things devices. This research was conducted by a team of researchers from Cloudflare, Georgia Tech, Google, Akamai, the University of Illinois, the University of Michigan, and Merit Network and resulted in a paper published at USENIX Security 2017.

Inside the infamous Mirai IoT Botnet: A Retrospective Analysis

At its peak in September 2016, Mirai temporarily crippled several high-profile services such as OVH, Dyn, and Krebs on Security via massive distributed Denial of service attacks (DDoS). OVH reported that these attacks exceeded 1 Tbps—the largest on public record.

What’s remarkable about these record-breaking attacks is they were carried out via small, innocuous Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices like home routers, air-quality monitors, and personal surveillance cameras. At its peak, Mirai infected over 600,000 vulnerable IoT devices, according to our measurements.

Inside the infamous Mirai IoT Botnet: A Retrospective Analysis This blog post follows the timeline above

Inside the infamous Mirai IoT Botnet: A Retrospective Analysis

Inside the infamous Mirai IoT Botnet: A Retrospective Analysis

Inside the infamous Mirai IoT Botnet: A Retrospective Analysis

This is a guest post by Elie Bursztein who writes about security and anti-abuse research. It was first published on his blog and has been lightly edited.

This post provides a retrospective analysis of Mirai — the infamous Internet-of-Things botnet that took down major websites via massive distributed denial-of-service using hundreds of thousands of compromised Internet-Of-Things devices. This research was conducted by a team of researchers from Cloudflare (Jaime Cochran, Nick Sullivan), Georgia Tech, Google, Akamai, the University of Illinois, the University of Michigan, and Merit Network and resulted in a paper published at USENIX Security 2017.

Inside the infamous Mirai IoT Botnet: A Retrospective Analysis

At its peak in September 2016, Mirai temporarily crippled several high-profile services such as OVH, Dyn, and Krebs on Security via massive distributed Denial of service attacks (DDoS). OVH reported that these attacks exceeded 1 Tbps—the largest on public record.

What’s remarkable about these record-breaking attacks is they were carried out via small, innocuous Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices like home routers, air-quality monitors, and personal surveillance cameras. At its peak, Mirai infected over 600,000 vulnerable IoT devices, according to our measurements.

Inside the infamous Mirai IoT Botnet: A Retrospective Analysis
This blog post follows the timeline above

IDG Contributor Network: Leveraging reconfigurable computing for smarter cybersecurity

The reality for security teams today is that they are facing challenges on multiple fronts. The number of security breaches is increasing, which means the number of security alerts to be examined each day is increasing. The attacks are becoming more sophisticated and multi-dimensional. The number of cybersecurity solutions available continues to grow, which requires time and effort to understand. The amount of data in the network is snowballing, which means the cybersecurity infrastructure needs to be constantly updated to keep up. What’s worse is that all this is happening in the midst of new networking paradigms related to cloud, virtualization and software-defined data centers.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Leveraging reconfigurable computing for smarter cybersecurity

The reality for security teams today is that they are facing challenges on multiple fronts. The number of security breaches is increasing, which means the number of security alerts to be examined each day is increasing. The attacks are becoming more sophisticated and multi-dimensional. The number of cybersecurity solutions available continues to grow, which requires time and effort to understand. The amount of data in the network is snowballing, which means the cybersecurity infrastructure needs to be constantly updated to keep up. What’s worse is that all this is happening in the midst of new networking paradigms related to cloud, virtualization and software-defined data centers.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Leveraging reconfigurable computing for smarter cybersecurity

The reality for security teams today is that they are facing challenges on multiple fronts. The number of security breaches is increasing, which means the number of security alerts to be examined each day is increasing. The attacks are becoming more sophisticated and multi-dimensional. The number of cybersecurity solutions available continues to grow, which requires time and effort to understand. The amount of data in the network is snowballing, which means the cybersecurity infrastructure needs to be constantly updated to keep up. What’s worse is that all this is happening in the midst of new networking paradigms related to cloud, virtualization and software-defined data centers.To read this article in full, please click here

‘net Neutrality Collection

I’ve run across a lot of interesting perspectives on ‘net Neutrality; to make things easier, I’ve pulled them onto a single page. For anyone who’s interested in hearing every side of the issue, this is a good collection of articles to read through.

The page is here.

Together We Can Reduce Barriers

Accessibility is human right.

People with disabilities want and need to use the Internet just like everyone else, but what can we do to reduce barriers? Especially when one billion people globally have a disability, with 80% living in developing countries.

But accessibility doesn’t just happen. Policymakers, program managers, and technical experts need to incorporate it into their work right from the start – and we need champions for accessibility to make it happen.

Everyone in the Internet community can contribute to reducing barriers! People working with policy, programs, communications, and education can incorporate accessibility.

 

It doesn’t just start with websites. While this type of access is crucial, we can go even further – accessible interfaces for the Internet of Things or phone apps are just two examples.

In addition, organizations can offer a more inclusive approach with:

  • Learning programs and packages (content and delivery)
  • Communications programs – websites, online conferencing, discussion forums, printed material
  • Policy development – has a policy position been considered in terms of its effects on people with disability?

Want to learn more about what you can do to make the Internet accessible for all? Read the W3C Introduction to Web Accessibility, and learn about the  Continue reading

There’s Always Cache in the Banana Stand

There’s Always Cache in the Banana Stand

There’s Always Cache in the Banana Stand
We’re happy to announce that we now support all HTTP Cache-Control response directives. This puts powerful control in the hands of you, the people running origin servers around the world. We believe we have the strongest support for Internet standard cache-control directives of any large scale cache on the Internet.

Documentation on Cache-Control is available here.

Cloudflare runs a Content Distribution Network (CDN) across our globally distributed network edge. Our CDN works by caching our customers’ web content at over 119 data centers around the world and serving that content to the visitors nearest to each of our network locations. In turn, our customers’ websites and applications are much faster, more
available, and more secure for their end users.

A CDN’s fundamental working principle is simple: storing stuff closer to where it’s needed means it will get to its ultimate destination faster. And, serving something from more places means it’s more reliably available.

There’s Always Cache in the Banana Stand

To use a simple banana analogy: say you want a banana. You go to your local fruit stand to pick up a bunch to feed your inner monkey. You expect the store to have bananas in stock, which would satisfy your request instantly. But, what if Continue reading

There’s Always Cache in the Banana Stand

There’s Always Cache in the Banana Stand

There’s Always Cache in the Banana Stand

We’re happy to announce that we now support all HTTP Cache-Control response directives. This puts powerful control in the hands of you, the people running origin servers around the world. We believe we have the strongest support for Internet standard cache-control directives of any large scale cache on the Internet.

Documentation on Cache-Control is available here.

Cloudflare runs a Content Distribution Network (CDN) across our globally distributed network edge. Our CDN works by caching our customers’ web content at over 119 data centers around the world and serving that content to the visitors nearest to each of our network locations. In turn, our customers’ websites and applications are much faster, more
available, and more secure for their end users.

A CDN’s fundamental working principle is simple: storing stuff closer to where it’s needed means it will get to its ultimate destination faster. And, serving something from more places means it’s more reliably available.

There’s Always Cache in the Banana Stand

To use a simple banana analogy: say you want a banana. You go to your local fruit stand to pick up a bunch to feed your inner monkey. You expect the store to have bananas in stock, which would satisfy your request instantly. But, what if Continue reading

IoT and the cloud: A match made in Seattle?

The recent AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas was all about the cloud, but another hot technology also played a leading role: the Internet of Things. In multiple keynotes, top Amazon Web Services (AWS) executives, including CEO Andy Jassy and CTO Werner Vogels, went out of their way to extol the virtues of IoT. The company also used the occasion to announce a slew of new IoT-related products.AWS’ IoT strategy Jassy spent time on IoT during the closing of his massive keynote speech (to be honest, though, he focused on just about everything at one point or another during his epic 2.5-hour presentation). But Jassy also addressed IoT during his relatively short segment of the earlier AWS Partner Summit keynote with Terry Wise, AWS Vice President of Global Alliances, Ecosystem and Channels. And Vogels talked IoT during his own keynote address.To read this article in full, please click here

Save 50% on the TP-LINK Wi-Fi Smart Plug, Works with Amazon Alexa – Deal Alert

The TP-LINK HS100 smart plug is quite simply a power outlet that you can control from anywhere. Using your smartphone, you can turn devices on & off, set programs to turn them on & off at set times while you're away, or engage a "countdown timer" which powers the switch off after a set amount of time. Installation is simple -- just plug a device into your smart plug and connect to your wifi network. The HS100 is also compatible with Amazon Alexa, for voice control. Buy multiple plugs and get creative.To read this article in full, please click here