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Category Archives for "Networking"

Verizon buys Sensity and launches farm pilot with sensor tech

Verizon has been busy building a diverse Internet of Things (IoT) portfolio that includes sensors used on farms as well as on city streets.On Monday, the wireless carrier announced it is buying Sensity Systems for an undisclosed sum.Sensity, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., has focused on using energy-efficient LED lighting to help cities build an IoT platform on city streetlights. The platform can include the use of various sensors on a streetlight pole to monitor weather and city services ranging from parking to public safety.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How Jefferson County’s IT Department Improved Their Security Posture with VMware NSX

Jefferson County, Colorado (“Jeffco”) is a local jurisdiction located against the beautiful Rocky Mountains and adjacent to the state capital in Denver.  Jeffco’s IT jefferson-county-colorado-squarelogo-2organization is charged with meeting the needs not only of the various internal departments of the county, but also of serving its half million residents.

As with most IT departments, Jeffco’s IT team has some key priorities to address, including modernizing application infrastructures and bringing more efficiency to business processes — all while fundamentally enhancing security.  It was these needs that led Jeffco to VMware NSX. “We’re doing as much as we can to simplify our infrastructure, yet provide more security, higher up time, and better performance,” says Matt Alexander, Senior Systems Administrator.

Like many other organizations, Jeffco first considered VMware NSX for micro-segmentation.  Their network had followed the traditional model of data center security: perimeter firewalls, DMZ, internal security zone.  But this legacy security model wasn’t enough.  Jeffco recognized the need to treat all network traffic — regardless of whether it originated inside or outside the data center — as potentially insecure.  “From a micro-segmentation and east-west firewalling perspective, we may have had the ability [in the past] but it was exceptionally expensive with physical Continue reading

25% off Black Diamond Spot Headlamp – Deal Alert

If you're camping, hunting, cycling, or even starting a generator in a power outage at night, a headlamp gives you a convenient hands-free light source, and this one from Black Diamond is capable of emitting a powerful 130 lumens of light, with several modes of operation -- low, high, strobe and a red LED mode for preservation of night vision. Power Tap technology allows you to quickly cycle through light modes with just a tap on the light housing vs. a switch or button press. The unit is also IPX4 splash resistant. Averaging 4.5 out of 5 stars from nearly 900 people (read reviews), its typical list price of $39.95 has been reduced to $29.88. See the discounted Black Diamond headlamp now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft gets support for its fight against government gag orders

Microsoft has secured some big allies in a fight against the federal government, including three of its chief rivals, plus a hometown airline. 

Microsoft is fighting the government over its right to tell customers when federal agents request their data and emails. The company filed a lawsuit in April against the federal government, charging such gag orders violate the Constitution and threaten the future of cloud computing. 

+ Also on Network World: Microsoft says tech companies ‘whipsawed’ by conflicting laws on global data transfer +

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MySQL zero-day exploit puts some servers at risk of hacking

A publicly disclosed vulnerability in the MySQL database could allow attackers to completely compromise some servers.The vulnerability affects "all MySQL servers in default configuration in all version branches (5.7, 5.6, and 5.5) including the latest versions," as well as the MySQL-derived databases MariaDB and Percona DB, according to Dawid Golunski, the researcher who found it.The flaw, tracked as CVE-2016-6662, can be exploited to modify the MySQL configuration file (my.cnf) and cause an attacker-controlled library to be executed with root privileges if the MySQL process is started with the mysqld_safe wrapper script.The exploit can be executed if the attacker has an authenticated connection to the MySQL service, which is common in shared hosting environments, or through an SQL injection flaw, a common type of vulnerability in websites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

snaproute Go BGP Code Dive (10): Moving to Established

In the last post on this topic, we traced how snaproute’s BGP code moved to the open state. At the end of that post, the speaker encodes an open message using packet, _ := bgpOpenMsg.Encode(), and then sends it. What we should be expecting next is for an open message from the new peer to be received and processed. Receiving this open message will be an event, so what we’re going to need to look for is someplace in the code that processes the receipt of an open message. All the way back in the fifth post of this series, we actually unraveled this chain, and found this is the call chain we’re looking for—

  • func (st *OpenSentState) processEvent()
  • st.fsm.StopConnectRetryTimer()
  • bgpMsg := data.(*packet.BGPMessage)
  • if st.fsm.ProcessOpenMessage(bgpMsg) {
    • st.fsm.sendKeepAliveMessage()
    • st.fsm.StartHoldTimer()
    • st.fsm.ChangeState(NewOpenConfirmState(st.fsm)) }

I don’t want to retrace all those steps here, but the call to func (st *OpenSentState) processEvent() (around line 444 in fsm.go) looks correct. The call in question must be a call to a function that processes an event while the peer is in the open state. This call seems to satisfy both Continue reading

40% off First Alert Dual Photoelectric and Ionization Sensor Smoke Alarm – Deal Alert

The BRK 3120B smoke detector from First Alert contains technology that many experts are now recommending -- dual sensors. A photoelectric sensor detects slow and smoldering fires, while an ionization sensor can detect often fast moving open flames. Your current detectors may have only one or the other, so if you're due (or overdue) for new ones, it might be something to consider. This model is hardwired with a battery backup (see below for non-hardwired model), so all units interconnect. When an alarm is triggered, indicator lights let you know which detector was the initiator, so there's no guessing. If being used in a public area, the BRK 3120B also has locking features that prevent theft of the battery or the unit itself. It averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 220 people (read reviews) and you can buy it now on Amazon for $29.97.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Debian Stable 8.5: Like Ubuntu’s early days

I spend a significant portion of my life installing and testing distributions of Linux-based systems. It’s really rather ridiculous.Even obscure ones—ones that never stand a chance of being listed on the likes of DistroWatch—find their way onto my drives. I can’t help it. It’s an addiction.But you know which one I haven’t installed in a long, long while? Debian. Not some Debian-derived system, like the ones that get a lion’s share of the media attention, but pure Debian. I haven’t loaded it in eons. I know, weird, right?So, I installed it. Debian Stable. Code-name “Jessie.” Originally released as version 8.0 in April 2015—then given the ole’ “point-5” update to 8.5 in June 2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

OpenText to buy Dell EMC’s enterprise content division

Canadian enterprise information management vendor OpenText has agreed to buy Dell Technologies' EMC enterprise content division for US$1.62 billion in a deal that, the companies say, will allow them to focus on their core missions.The acquisition of the "highly profitable" Dell EMC Enterprise Content Division will allow OpenText to expand its related services to Asia and Africa and across a larger customer base, including the healthcare and oil production industries, said OpenText CEO and CTO Mark Barrenechea. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Does the NSA have a duty to disclose zero-day exploits?

To say the National Security Agency (NSA) prefers to lay low and shuns the limelight is an understatement. One joke said about the secretive group, widely regarded as the most skilled state-sponsored hackers in the world, is NSA actually stands for “No Such Agency.”But now a recent leak has put the group right where it loathes to be—squarely in the headlines. Last month, a group called “The Shadow Brokers” published what it claimed were a set of NSA “cyber weapons,” a combination of exploits, both zero day and long past, designed to target routers and firewalls from American manufacturers, including Cisco, Juniper and Fortinet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Does the NSA have a duty to disclose zero-day exploits?

To say the National Security Agency (NSA) prefers to lay low and shuns the limelight is an understatement. One joke said about the secretive group, widely regarded as the most skilled state-sponsored hackers in the world, is NSA actually stands for “No Such Agency.”But now a recent leak has put the group right where it loathes to be—squarely in the headlines. Last month, a group called “The Shadow Brokers” published what it claimed were a set of NSA “cyber weapons,” a combination of exploits, both zero day and long past, designed to target routers and firewalls from American manufacturers, including Cisco, Juniper and Fortinet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Aruba pushes new network tools, cloud pricing model

Aruba, a division of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, announced software today that's designed to help companies speed up secure integration of mobile devices and Internet of Things objects into their networks.Called Aruba Mobile First Platform, the software is based on application programming interfaces (APIs) for use by third-party developers and developer teams inside companies to help them boost automation with IoT devices and allow mobile workers to be more efficient.Mobile First is built on Aruba OS 8.0, the company's new operating system, which is deployed as a virtual machine on a server appliance.Also, Aruba announced enhancements to its existing Aruba ClearPass software for Mobile First to make it easier for IT security teams to integrate cloud-hosted services into ClearPass. This means customers can more easily build software workflows for Enterprise Mobility Management packages.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Aruba pushes new network tools, cloud pricing model

Aruba, a division of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, announced software today that's designed to help companies speed up secure integration of mobile devices and Internet of Things objects into their networks.Called Aruba Mobile First Platform, the software is based on application programming interfaces (APIs) for use by third-party developers and developer teams inside companies to help them boost automation with IoT devices and allow mobile workers to be more efficient.Mobile First is built on Aruba OS 8.0, the company's new operating system, which is deployed as a virtual machine on a server appliance.Also, Aruba announced enhancements to its existing Aruba ClearPass software for Mobile First to make it easier for IT security teams to integrate cloud-hosted services into ClearPass. This means customers can more easily build software workflows for Enterprise Mobility Management packages.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here