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Category Archives for "Networking"

Armies of hacked IoT devices launch unprecedented DDoS attacks

Security researchers have been warning for years that poor security for internet of things devices could have serious consequences. We're now seeing those warnings come true, with botnets made up of compromised IoT devices  capable of launching distributed denial-of-service attacks of unprecedented scale. Octave Klaba, the founder and CTO of French hosting firm OVH, sounded the alarm on Twitter last week when his company was hit with two concurrent DDoS attacks whose combined bandwidth reached almost 1 terabit per second. One of the two attacks peaked at 799Gbps alone, making it the largest ever reported.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Armies of hacked IoT devices launch unprecedented DDoS attacks

Security researchers have been warning for years that poor security for internet of things devices could have serious consequences. We're now seeing those warnings come true, with botnets made up of compromised IoT devices  capable of launching distributed denial-of-service attacks of unprecedented scale. Octave Klaba, the founder and CTO of French hosting firm OVH, sounded the alarm on Twitter last week when his company was hit with two concurrent DDoS attacks whose combined bandwidth reached almost 1 terabit per second. One of the two attacks peaked at 799Gbps alone, making it the largest ever reported.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Illusive Networks seeks to slow Swift attackers through deception

Today's savvy bank robbers don't break into vaults looking for gold or diamonds: They're more likely to be hacking networks looking for access to the Swift payment system. Illusive Networks wants to catch them in the act.In February, hackers exploited Bangladesh Bank's access to the Swift fund transfer network to steal US$81 million -- and almost got away with $951 million.They had infiltrated the bank's network, installing malware on the Swift Alliance Access server that exchanged messages with the gateway to Swift's secure fund transfer system. They used the bank's Swift credentials to order payments, while their malware interfered with the printing of confirmation messages, delaying the bank's discovery of the electronic heist.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Illusive Networks seeks to slow Swift attackers through deception

Today's savvy bank robbers don't break into vaults looking for gold or diamonds: They're more likely to be hacking networks looking for access to the Swift payment system. Illusive Networks wants to catch them in the act.In February, hackers exploited Bangladesh Bank's access to the Swift fund transfer network to steal US$81 million -- and almost got away with $951 million.They had infiltrated the bank's network, installing malware on the Swift Alliance Access server that exchanged messages with the gateway to Swift's secure fund transfer system. They used the bank's Swift credentials to order payments, while their malware interfered with the printing of confirmation messages, delaying the bank's discovery of the electronic heist.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Asynchronous Docker metrics

Docker allows large numbers of lightweight containers can be started and stopped within seconds, creating an agile infrastructure that can rapidly adapt to changing requirements. However, the rapidly changing populating of containers poses a challenge to traditional methods of monitoring which struggle to keep pace with the changes. For example, periodic polling methods take time to detect new containers and can miss short lived containers entirely.

This article describes how the latest version of the Host sFlow agent is able to track the performance of a rapidly changing population of Docker containers and export a real-time stream of standard sFlow metrics.
The diagram above shows the life cycle status events associated with a container. The Docker Remote API provides a set of methods that allow the Host sFlow agent to communicate with the Docker to list containers and receive asynchronous container status events. The Host sFlow agent uses the events to keep track of running containers and periodically exports cpu, memory, network and disk performance counters for each container.

The diagram at the beginning of this article shows the sequence of messages, going from top to bottom, required to track a container. The Host sFlow agent first registers for container Continue reading

The U.S. presidential candidates on technology, privacy issues

With the general election creeping ever closer here in the United States, now seemed like a good time to get an official stance from the four presidential candidates who will be on the ballot about critical issues around technology and privacy.

I narrowed my list of questions for them down to just four (my original list was around 12) in order to make this easy for each campaign to answer. And each campaign was asked the exact same questions—with no variation whatsoever.

Even so, the only campaign to respond to me in any real way was Jill Stein’s. The Hillary Clinton, Gary Johnson and Donald Trump campaigns declined to provide concrete stances or clarifications—though I did get some helpful links from a Johnson surrogate.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The U.S. presidential candidates on technology, privacy issues

With the general election creeping ever closer here in the United States, now seemed like a good time to get an official stance from the four presidential candidates who will be on the ballot about critical issues around technology and privacy.I narrowed my list of questions for them down to just four (my original list was around 12) in order to make this easy for each campaign to answer. And each campaign was asked the exact same questions—with no variation whatsoever.Even so, the only campaign to respond to me in any real way was Jill Stein’s. The Hillary Clinton, Gary Johnson and Donald Trump campaigns declined to provide concrete stances or clarifications—though I did get some helpful links from a Johnson surrogate.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Docker containers are coming to Windows

When most people think of application containers – one of the most popular new trends in how software is built and run by developers – they associate the technology very closely with Linux.Now, Docker Inc. – perhaps the most well-known container startup - is teaming up with Microsoft to integrate Docker Engine in Windows Server.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Review: Windows Server 2016 steps up security, cloud support +Microsoft announced the news at its Ignite event in Atlanta this week, along with the general availability of Windows Server and Windows Systems Center 2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft continues pushing hybrid cloud with new launches

Microsoft continued its push to get companies on the hybrid cloud train on Monday, with the launch of several products all tailored at helping bridge on-premises datacenters and the public cloud.The company announced that Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016 will be available for purchase on October 1, and generally available in mid-October. On top of that, it unveiled new Azure functionality that makes it easier to monitor both public cloud infrastructure and on-premises datacenters in one control plane.The second technical preview of Azure Stack is now also broadly available, after Microsoft launched it in private beta last month.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Clonezilla Server Edition Installation on Ubuntu

clonezilla-logo

The tutorial describes installation steps for Clonezilla Server Edition (SE) on Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS using a Bash script. Clonezilla is OpenSource Cloning System (OCS) and it is a partition and disk imaging/cloning program . It helps you to do system deployment, bare metal backup and recovery. Two types of Clonezilla are available, Clonezilla live and Clonezilla SE (server edition).

Clonezilla live is suitable for single machine backup and restore. Clonezilla SE is for massive deployment because it can clone many computers simultaneously. Clonezilla saves and restores only used blocks in the hard disk. It decreases time and saves the hard disk space and increases the clone efficiency.

Clonezilla is a part of DRBL (Diskless Remote Boot in Linux) which provides a diskless environment for client machines. Therefore we need to install and configure DRBL server first. I created DRBL deployment script deploy_drbl.sh that helps you to install DRBL and configure server on Ubuntu with a single Ethernet card. You have to provide only the name of Ethernet interface and the script creates virtual interface for you based on your physical interface. It also downloads a DRBL project public key, download and install drbl package from repository. The script starts interactive Bash and Perl scripts that come with Continue reading

Meet MailSniper, a tool to search Microsoft Exchange emails for sensitive info

Meet MailSniper, a new pen tester tool that may be of interest to you if you need to find sensitive data such as passwords, credit card numbers and healthcare data, or need to access databases, or even to discover insider and network architecture information.MailSniper is a penetration testing tool, written in PowerShell, to allow for mass searching through email across every mailbox of an organization’s Microsoft Exchange environment.Beau Bullock, from the penetration testing firm Black Hills Information Security, cited a 2016 Mandiant M-Trends Report (pdf) which claimed organizations are compromised an average of 146 days before detecting a breach. That long of a window gives attackers plenty of time to locate, compromise and exfiltrate sensitive data; pen testers, however, may only have a window of five days or less to do the same thing in order to prove risk to an organization.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Meet MailSniper, a tool to search Microsoft Exchange emails for sensitive info

Meet MailSniper, a new pen tester tool that may be of interest to you if you need to find sensitive data such as passwords, credit card numbers and healthcare data, or need to access databases, or even to discover insider and network architecture information.MailSniper is a penetration testing tool, written in PowerShell, to allow for mass searching through email across every mailbox of an organization’s Microsoft Exchange environment.Beau Bullock, from the penetration testing firm Black Hills Information Security, cited a 2016 Mandiant M-Trends Report (pdf) which claimed organizations are compromised an average of 146 days before detecting a breach. That long of a window gives attackers plenty of time to locate, compromise and exfiltrate sensitive data; pen testers, however, may only have a window of five days or less to do the same thing in order to prove risk to an organization.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to implement an effective BYOD policy

Concerns around BYOD once revolved around security with third-party services, but that's getting easier to manage, says Fred Ouawad, founder and CEO of TaskWorld, a company focused on employee performance and management. Now businesses are finding it more difficult to govern BYOD policies internally.Businesses are more focused on internal security. For example, if an employee doesn't perform regular updates on their smartphone, it can pose a risk to the business says Mouawad."At the moment, pushback mostly comes from highly regulated industries like banking and government agencies. But even they are slowly realizing that BYOD is something that can't be resisted," he says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The Emergency Alert System: Failure IS an option

Even a failed result can be a successful test If you live in the United States, it's likely that you've fallen asleep with the television on only to be woken in the middle of the night by shrill tones blaring from your television set, followed by a deep baritone voice letting you know that there is no active nuclear attack or alert and what you experienced was only a test. The Emergency Alert System (EAS) was designed as a tiered distribution mechanism, very much like a pyramid, with the President of the United States positioned at the pinnacle. As you move down the tiers of the pyramid, you become more regionalized and localized in the coverage area that is served. Using this logic, any participating station in the chain can initiate an emergency alert message, and by default, the information will trickle down to the lower tiers as stations monitor the tier above them. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here