Cloudflare acquires Kivera to add simple, preventive cloud security to Cloudflare One
We’re excited to announce that Kivera, a cloud security, data protection, and compliance company, has joined Cloudflare. This acquisition extends our SASE portfolio to incorporate inline cloud app controls, empowering Cloudflare One customers with preventative security controls for all their cloud services.
In today’s digital landscape, cloud services and SaaS (software as a service) apps have become indispensable for the daily operation of organizations. At the same time, the amount of data flowing between organizations and their cloud providers has ballooned, increasing the chances of data leakage, compliance issues, and worse, opportunities for attackers. Additionally, many companies — especially at enterprise scale — are working directly with multiple cloud providers for flexibility based on the strengths, resiliency against outages or errors, and cost efficiencies of different clouds.
Security teams that rely on Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) or similar tools for monitoring cloud configurations and permissions and Infrastructure as code (IaC) scanning are falling short due to detecting issues only after misconfigurations occur with an overwhelming volume of alerts. The combination of Kivera and Cloudflare One puts preventive controls directly into the deployment process, or ‘inline’, blocking errors before they happen. This offers a proactive approach essential to Continue reading
EVPN Designs: EBGP Everywhere
In the previous blog posts, we explored the simplest possible IBGP-based EVPN design and made it scalable with BGP route reflectors.
Now, imagine someone persuaded you that EBGP is better than any IGP (OSPF or IS-IS) when building a data center fabric. You’re running EBGP sessions between the leaf- and the spine switches and exchanging IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes over those EBGP sessions. Can you use the same EBGP sessions for EVPN?
TL&DR: It depends™.
N4N000: Announcing N is For Networking – A New Podcast for the New Network Engineer
Welcome to N Is For Networking, the newest podcast on the Packet Pushers network, where we explain the jargon, acronyms, and concepts of the networking industry in plain language. Your hosts are Holly Metlitzky, an industrial engineer and now a network sales engineer; and Ethan Banks, a veteran network engineer. Together, they’ll educate and help... Read more »Vector Packet Processor (VPP)
The main conclusions based on testing described in the two VPP blog posts are:
- If sFlow is not enabled on a given interface, there is no regression on other interfaces.
- If sFlow is enabled, copying packets costs 11 CPU cycles on average
- If sFlow takes a sample, it takes only marginally more CPU time to enqueue.
- No sampling gets 9.88Mpps of IPv4 and 14.3Mpps of L2XC throughput,
- 1:1000 sampling reduces to 9.77Mpps of L3 and 14.05Mpps of L2XC throughput,
- and an overly harsh 1:100 reduces to 9.69Mpps and 13.97Mpps only.
The VPP sFlow plugin provides a lightweight method of exporting real-time sFlow telemetry from a VPP based router. Including the plugin with VPP distributions has no impact on performance. Enabling the plugin provides real-time visibility that opens up additional use cases for VPPs programmable dataplane. For example, VPP is well suited to packet filtering use cases where the number of Continue reading
NB498: BlueCat Flows Into Network Performance With LiveAction Buy; T-Mobile Ordered to Appoint a CISO
Take a Network Break! DDI specialist BlueCat is getting into network performance monitoring with its LiveAction acquisition, T-Mobile is ordered to spend almost $16 million to improve its infosec practices and get a CISO, and Cisco announced the end of life for its LoRaWAN IoT product line. Verizon recovers from a US-wide outage, security researchers... Read more »Thermal design supporting Gen 12 hardware: cool, efficient and reliable
In the dynamic evolution of AI and cloud computing, the deployment of efficient and reliable hardware is critical. As we roll out our Gen 12 hardware across hundreds of cities worldwide, the challenge of maintaining optimal thermal performance becomes essential. This blog post provides a deep dive into the robust thermal design that supports our newest Gen 12 server hardware, ensuring it remains reliable, efficient, and cool (pun very much intended).
Generally speaking, a server has five core resources: CPU (computing power), RAM (short term memory), SSD (long term storage), NIC (Network Interface Controller, connectivity beyond the server), and GPU (for AI/ML computations). Each of these components can withstand different temperature limits based on their design, materials, location within the server, and most importantly, the power they are designed to work at. This final criteria is known as thermal design power (TDP).
The reason why TDP is so important is closely related to the first law of thermodynamics, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. In semiconductors, electrical energy is converted into heat, and TDP measures the maximum heat output that needs to be managed to ensure Continue reading
Egress Peer Engineering: building blocks
Since exploring the EPE basics, now it’s time to understand the building blocks of the solution.
Summary
Overall, there are 3 elements of the EPE solution:
- Egress routers allocate MPLS labels per egress peer and advertise them
- Ingress routers or
netlab 1.9.1: Packet Capture, Routing Improvements
netlab release 1.9.1 brings packet capture capabilities and numerous routing features:
- IS-IS route redistribution and IS-IS VRF instances
- RIPv2/Ripng route redistribution and VRF instances
- Configurable RIPv2/RIPng protocol timers
We also added support for Cisco IOSv layer-2 image. You’ll find more details in the release notes.
Enhance your website’s security with Cloudflare’s free security.txt generator
Meet Georgia, a diligent website administrator at a growing e-commerce company. Every day, Georgia juggles multiple tasks, from managing server uptime to ensuring customer data security. One morning, Georgia receives an email from a security researcher who discovered a potential vulnerability on the website. The researcher struggled to find the right contact information, leading to delays in reporting the issue. Georgia realizes the need for a standardized way to communicate with security researchers, ensuring that vulnerabilities are reported swiftly and efficiently. This is where security.txt comes in.
Security.txt is becoming a widely adopted standard among security-conscious organizations. By providing a common location and format for vulnerability disclosure information, it helps bridge the gap between security researchers and organizations. This initiative is supported by major companies and aligns with global security best practices. By offering an automated security.txt generator for free, we aim to empower all of our users to enhance their security measures without additional costs.
In 2020, Cloudflare published the Cloudflare Worker for the security.txt generator as an open-source project on GitHub, demonstrating our commitment to enhancing web security. This tool is actively used Continue reading
Auto Scaling Palo Alto VM-Series Firewalls in AWS
In this blog post, we're going to explore how to Auto-Scale Palo Alto VM-Series Firewalls in AWS. It's a known fact that running heavy instances in AWS can be costly, and it's not wise to have more firewalls running than necessary. But what happens when demand spikes unexpectedly? If we're not prepared, things can get messy quickly.
Auto-scaling these firewalls isn't as simple as pressing a button. There are several components to consider, but don't worry - once you grasp the basics, it's as straightforward as any other topic in the cloud and network world.
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Before we dive deeper into auto-scaling Palo Alto VM-Series firewalls, it's worth mentioning that Palo Alto also has a fully managed Cloud Native firewall service called 'Cloud NGFW'. If the idea of handling auto-scaling yourself seems complex, this service might be a great alternative to consider. It's managed entirely by Palo Alto, taking the complexity out of your hands.
This blog post is based on the ideas from the Palo Alto Github repo - https://github.com/PaloAltoNetworks/terraform-aws-vmseries-modules/tree/main/examples/centralized_design_autoscale
Assumptions
As we get into the specifics of auto-scaling Palo Alto VM-Series firewalls in AWS, there are a few assumptions I'd like to lay out. This Continue reading
Adding Palo Alto PA-440 to My Home Lab
When I started my home lab, I used a Raspberry Pi 4 that functioned as a router/firewall, and I was pretty happy with it. Then, I needed something solid and cost-effective. There were multiple options like VyOS, PfSense, UniFi, etc, but MikroTik, specifically the hAP ax2, stood out for me. I've been using this for almost a year now, and I absolutely love it. It works as a switch, and firewall and runs my WireGuard VPN, and it has never let me down even once.
Why Palo Alto?
Fast forward to today, I started adding more and more devices to the lab, so I was looking for an upgrade. After debating between FortiGate and Palo Alto, I finally settled on buying a Palo Alto PA-440 firewall.
But I would say the main reason behind this decision is that I write a lot of content on Palo Alto, and not having a dedicated device was such a pain. Every time I wanted to write a post, I had to start the lab, and try things out, and not having licenses was preventing me from trying new features and sharing them via a post. Now, with a dedicated unit and Continue reading
HN752: How Digital Twins Enable Smarter Network Ops, Troubleshooting (Sponsored)
Our topic today is digital twins. Sponsor Forward Networks offers software that creates a “mathematically accurate” copy of your network, be it on prem or in the cloud. We talk about what “mathematically accurate” actually means, and how a digital twin can support network operations including change control, network automation, visibility, and troubleshooting. We also... Read more »TNO004: DevOps, NetOps, and Batman – Part 2
Guest Tom McGonagle, the creator of GitNops, is back with host Scott Robohn for part two of their GitNops discussion. They continue their conversation about the principles and applications of GitNops in network operations, including automated testing, the collaborative role of GitHub, and the challenges of ensuring accurate configurations before deployment. Finally, they explore the... Read more »BGP Labs: Improvements (September 2024)
I spent a few days in a beautiful place with suboptimal Internet connectivity. The only thing I could do whenever I got bored (without waiting for the Internet gnomes to hand-carry the packets across the mountain passes) was to fix the BGP labs on a Ubuntu VM running on my MacBook Air (hint: it all works).
Big things first. I added validation to these labs:
Managing Palo Alto App-ID Changes Using Threat Signature Indicators (TSID)
If you rely heavily on Palo Alto App-IDs, you know the challenge of managing new and modified App-IDs. Palo Alto regularly updates its App-ID database, introducing new App-IDs every month (typically on the third Tuesday) and modifying existing ones more often.
Each release can include hundreds of new and updated App-IDs. It's almost impossible to understand each of them and decide whether or not we are affected by the change. In this blog post, we will look at using Threat Signature Indicators (TSID) to help you get an advanced indication of any impact on your traffic as a result of upcoming App-ID changes.
The Problem with App-ID Changes
Let’s imagine for a moment that currently, Palo Alto doesn’t have a specific App-ID for ‘chatgpt’ (although they do, let’s assume they don’t for this example). If there isn’t an App-ID, the traffic would be identified as ‘ssl’. If Palo Alto decides to introduce a new App-ID for ‘chatgpt’, they will announce this in the new App-ID release notes. However, the challenge is that hundreds of other new App-IDs could be introduced at the same time that we might never have heard of.
So, when I go to Continue reading
IPB161: Compressing the IPv6 Deployment Timeline
In this episode we discuss the complexities of deploying IPv6 on a compressed timeline. We cover the need for careful planning, training, and understanding the protocol’s nuances. The conversation looks at the risks of delaying deployment, the benefits of incremental implementation, and the global momentum towards IPv6 adoption. Misconceptions about IPv6 are addressed, stressing that... Read more »Hedge 245: RADIUS and Authentication
RADIUS is one of those protocols we tend to forget about because it is ubiquitous–but authentication protocols are very large attack surfaces network engineers should pay more attention to. Alan DeKok joins Tom Ammon and Russ White to discuss the RADIUS protocol.
D2DO252: (Re)Building Cloudflare’s Millions-of-Logs-Per-Second Logging Pipeline
Cloudflare’s transition from SysLog-NG to OpenTelemetry is the topic of discussion on this episode of Day Two DevOps. Guests Colin Douch and Jayson Cena from Cloudflare explain the reasons behind the migration, including the need for better scalability, memory safety, and maintainability. They delve into challenges such as ensuring uninterrupted customer traffic and optimizing performance.... Read more »How Cloudflare auto-mitigated world record 3.8 Tbps DDoS attack
Since early September, Cloudflare's DDoS protection systems have been combating a month-long campaign of hyper-volumetric L3/4 DDoS attacks. Cloudflare’s defenses mitigated over one hundred hyper-volumetric L3/4 DDoS attacks throughout the month, with many exceeding 2 billion packets per second (Bpps) and 3 terabits per second (Tbps). The largest attack peaked 3.8 Tbps — the largest ever disclosed publicly by any organization. Detection and mitigation was fully autonomous. The graphs below represent two separate attack events that targeted the same Cloudflare customer and were mitigated autonomously.
A mitigated 3.8 Terabits per second DDoS attack that lasted 65 seconds
A mitigated 2.14 billion packet per second DDoS attack that lasted 60 seconds
Cloudflare customers are protected
Cloudflare customers using Cloudflare’s HTTP reverse proxy services (e.g. Cloudflare WAF and Cloudflare CDN) are automatically protected.
Cloudflare customers using Spectrum and Magic Transit are also automatically protected. Magic Transit customers can further optimize their protection by deploying Magic Firewall rules to enforce a strict positive and negative security model at the packet layer.
Other Internet properties may not be safe
The scale and frequency of these attacks are unprecedented. Due to their sheer size and bits/packets per second rates, these Continue reading