Packet Blast: Top Tech Blogs, March 3

Pence used private mail for state work as governor, account was hacked

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence reportedly used a private email account to transact state business when he was governor of Indiana, and his AOL account was hacked once, according to a news report. Emails released to the Indianapolis Star following a public records request are said to show that Pence used his personal AOL account to communicate with his top advisers on issues ranging from security gates at the governor’s residence to the state’s response to terror attacks across the globe. A hacker seems to have got access to his email account in June last year and sent a fake mail to people on the former governor’s contact list, claiming  that Pence and his wife had been attacked on their way back to their hotel in the Philippines, according to the report. Pence subsequently changed his AOL account.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Pence used private mail for state work as governor, account was hacked

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence reportedly used a private email account to transact state business when he was governor of Indiana, and his AOL account was hacked once, according to a news report. Emails released to the Indianapolis Star following a public records request are said to show that Pence used his personal AOL account to communicate with his top advisers on issues ranging from security gates at the governor’s residence to the state’s response to terror attacks across the globe. A hacker seems to have got access to his email account in June last year and sent a fake mail to people on the former governor’s contact list, claiming  that Pence and his wife had been attacked on their way back to their hotel in the Philippines, according to the report. Pence subsequently changed his AOL account.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Chevrolet joins unlimited data party with new 4G LTE plan for its vehicles

All of the big U.S. wireless carriers have rolled out new or updated unlimited data plans in recent weeks, and now Chevrolet is introducing one of its own for customers of its entire line of vehicles.The $20 per month unlimited prepaid plan, for owners of Chevys with in-vehicle OnStar 4G LTE Wi-Fi hotspots, is being offered in conjunction with exclusive partner AT&T.MORE: 10 cool connected car featuresWhile that advertised $20 price will of course be higher once you get nailed with fees and taxes, it will still be a better deal than the $20 for 4GB and $40 for 10GB per month deals that Chevrolet is phasing out when the unlimited plan goes into effect on March 3. A $10 monthly plan for 1GB of data, as well as a $5 daily data pass for 250MB and $150 12-month pass for 20GB will still be offered.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Technology Short Take #79

Welcome to Technology Short Take #79! There’s lots of interesting links for you this time around.

Networking

• I was sure I had mentioned Skydive before, but apparently not (a grep of all my blog posts found nothing), so let me rectify that first. Skydive is (in the project’s own words) an “open source real-time network topology and protocols analyzer.” The project’s GitHub repository is here, and documentation for Skydive is here.
• OK, now that I’ve mentioned Skydive, I can talk about this article that provides an example of functional SDN testing with Terraform and Skydive. Terraform is used to turn up OpenStack infrastructure, and Skydive (via connections into Neutron and OpenContrail, in this example) is used to validate SDN functionality.
• Tony Sangha took PowerNSX (a set of PowerShell cmdlets for interacting with NSX) and created a tool to help document the NSX Distributed Firewall configuration. This tool exports the DFW configuration and then converts it into Excel format, and is available on GitHub. (What’s that? You haven’t heard of PowerNSX before? See here.)

Servers/Hardware

Nothing this time around. Should I keep this section, or ditch it? Feel free to give me your feedback on Twitter.

Security

• I Continue reading

Cisco-Docker Partnership Involves UCS, Flexpod and Contiv

Cisco servers get integrated with the biggest name in containers.

Microsoft starts selling 6 more years of Windows Server support

Microsoft yesterday started selling extended support for its Windows Server software, letting corporate customers add up to six years to the lifespan of Windows Server 2008 and later, and SQL Server 2008 and later.The company had announced this "Premium Assurance" in December, saying then that the extended support would be available for purchase this month.[ Further reading: SharePoint 2013 cheat sheet ] Under Premium Assurance, only vulnerabilities graded as "Critical" and "Important" will be patched. The extended support costs between 5% and 12% of the current licensing cost for each year of coverage, depending on when a customer commits. The sooner a plan is bought, the lower the price.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Classic smartphone brands get a spring in their step at MWC (+video)

BARCELONA -- Venerable smartphone brands Motorola, Nokia and BlackBerry got new life at Mobile World Congress 2017, but that was primarily due to the influence of Chinese and Finnish manufacturers that have licensed the names.One new Android smartphone, the BlackBerry KEYone, was launched by TCL Communication, based in Huizhou, China. The phone has both a touchscreen and a physical keyboard, with 52 keys that can be used as shortcuts to find apps and functions. It goes on sale in April for $549.HMD Global of Espoo, Finland, launched three budget Android phones under the Nokia brand — the Nokia 3, 5 and 6, starting at $147 with screens ranging from 5 inches to 5.5 inches in size. A 2000 classic handset was revised — the Nokia 3310 — but with a slimmer size and a color screen.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hottest iPad & Surface alternatives from Mobile World Congress 2017

While the traditional tablet market has had a tough go of it lately, some industry watchers do see growth ahead particularly in the 2-in-1 detachables sector, and the batch of new devices shown at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week could play a big role in any such revival.While most of the new smartphones demoed at MWC were of the Android variety, tablet makers gave Windows some love as well with possible Microsoft Surface alternatives. (Apple, as usual, didn’t display at MWC, but is said to have new iPads in the works.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: The data deletion landscape

Delete is a word built into the vocabulary of users from the beginning of personal computing. When commanded to “del,” an operating system appeared to erase a file completely. However, right from the start, a users’ commonsense understanding of the command to “delete” differed from companies’ practices; rather than erasing a file, “delete” meant “put in the recycle bin.” “Deleted” files were not really gone but rather out of sight, available to be recovered if necessary. The rise of cloud computing, where files live remotely from their owners’ devices and are frequently accessible from multiple devices, has further muddied the concept of deletion by saving all of a user’s files in an ambiguous location until called upon. While this change may seem trivial, it represents a larger truth about our digital files: they are almost never really “deleted.” —CDT

The post Worth Reading: The data deletion landscape appeared first on 'net work.

AWS says a typo caused the massive S3 failure this week

Everyone makes mistakes. But working at Amazon Web Services means an incorrectly entered input can lead to a massive outage that cripples popular websites and services. That's apparently what happened earlier this week, when the AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) in the provider's Northern Virginia region experienced an 11-hour system failure.Other Amazon services in the US-EAST-1 region that rely on S3, like Elastic Block Store, Lambda, and the new instance launch for the Elastic Compute Cloud infrastructure-as-a-service offering were all impacted by the outage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Slack bug paved the way for a hack that can steal user access

One bug in Slack, the popular work chat application, was enough for a security researcher to design a hack that could trick users into handing over access to their accounts.Bug bounty hunter Frans Rosen noticed he could steal Slack access tokens to user accounts due to a flaw in the way the application communicates data in an internet browser.“Slack missed an important step when using a technology called postMessage,” Rosen said on Wednesday in an email.  PostMessage is a kind of command that can let separate browser windows communicate with each other. In Slack, it’s used whenever the chat application opens a new window to enable a voice call.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Slack bug paved the way for a hack that can steal user access

One bug in Slack, the popular work chat application, was enough for a security researcher to design a hack that could trick users into handing over access to their accounts.Bug bounty hunter Frans Rosen noticed he could steal Slack access tokens to user accounts due to a flaw in the way the application communicates data in an internet browser.“Slack missed an important step when using a technology called postMessage,” Rosen said on Wednesday in an email.  PostMessage is a kind of command that can let separate browser windows communicate with each other. In Slack, it’s used whenever the chat application opens a new window to enable a voice call.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Free decryption tools now available for Dharma ransomware

Computer users who have been affected by the Dharma ransomware and have held onto their encrypted files can now restore them for free. Researchers have created decryption tools for this ransomware strain after someone recently leaked the decryption keys.Dharma first appeared in November and is based on an older ransomware program known as Crysis. It's easy to recognize files affected by it because they will have the extension: .[email_address].dharma, where the email address is the one used by the attacker as a point of contact.On Wednesday, a user named gektar published a link to a Pastebin post on the BleepingComputer.com technical support forum. The post, he claimed, contained the decryption keys for all Dharma variants.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Free decryption tools now available for Dharma ransomware

Computer users who have been affected by the Dharma ransomware and have held onto their encrypted files can now restore them for free. Researchers have created decryption tools for this ransomware strain after someone recently leaked the decryption keys.Dharma first appeared in November and is based on an older ransomware program known as Crysis. It's easy to recognize files affected by it because they will have the extension: .[email_address].dharma, where the email address is the one used by the attacker as a point of contact.On Wednesday, a user named gektar published a link to a Pastebin post on the BleepingComputer.com technical support forum. The post, he claimed, contained the decryption keys for all Dharma variants.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

These IoT devices shown at MWC mean business

IoT goes to workImage by Stephen LawsonAlong with all the hype about phones and 5G networks, Mobile World Congress 2017 was also a showcase for the internet of things, including IoT gear for enterprise and government use.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The contact center and CRM collision leads to a new dominant species

Some weeks ago I wrote that CRM and contact center are on a collision course. I argued that as the technologies used in CRM and the contact center will naturally mash up, the vendors of these traditionally distinct technologies will collide.In this post, I will expand upon that idea and talk about the future and a key aspect that will be important to successful synergies: how each domain leverages behaviors.CRM/contact center collision The first post argued that a co-mingling of the technologies used in CRM and the contact center worlds have occurred. This has been more of a lending of functionality. Seldom has true synergy emerged.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Data Center Efficiency Key to Outsourcing Cost

52% off Logitech Bluetooth Multi-Device Keyboard – Deal Alert

Here's a Bluetooth keyboard for your computer that you can also use with your tablet and smartphone -- switch between all three effortlessly by just turning the dial. And unlike other Bluetooth keyboards, Logitech has integrated a cradle so your device stays propped up at just the right angle as you type. Works with Windows or Mac, Android or iOS, and features a key layout you'll be familiar with on any of those platforms. Logitech's multi-device keyboard currently averages 4 out of 5 stars from over 1,350 people (read reviews) on Amazon, where its typical list price of $49.99 has been recently dropped 52% to just $23.99.  See this deal now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Full text of Amazon’s post-mortem from its S3 cloud brownout

As is customary after a major service disruption, Amazon Web Services today released a post-mortem explaining why its Simple Storage Service experienced elevated error rates, causing many sites across the Internet to slow down or stop working on Tuesday.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: 5 Lessons from the AWS S3 outage and how to insulate yourself from the next one | Half of the top 100 retail websites had slow load times during the S3 outage, vendor finds +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here