Activists fighting expansion of government powers to hack private computers

Rights activists led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Tor Project are rallying similar organizations and their constituents to step up opposition to a rules change backed by the U.S. Justice Department that would grant law enforcement vast new surveillance authorities and undermine anonymity online.Website operators are  being asked to join the effort today by posting banners on their sites.From an EFF press release: EFF and over 40 partner organizations are holding a day of action for a new campaign—noglobalwarrants.org—to engage citizens about the dangers of Rule 41 and push U.S. lawmakers to oppose it. The process for updating these rules—which govern federal criminal court processes—was intended to deal exclusively with procedural issues. But this year a U.S. judicial committee approved changes in the rule that will expand judicial authority to grant warrants for government hacking. …To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FireEye: China still spies on U.S. companies, but maybe less

The United States and China forged an agreement last year not to conduct cyber espionage against corporations, but it seems pretty likely that groups based in China have continued to do so. However, it might not all be the fault of the government there, according to a report from security company FireEye. Of 72 groups that FireEye suspects of operating in China or in China’s interests, 13 of them compromised corporate networks in the U.S., Europe and Japan between last fall - when the agreement was reached - and this month, according the report, “Redline Drawn: China Recalculates Its Use of Cyber Espionage”.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FireEye: China still spies on U.S. companies, but maybe less

The United States and China forged an agreement last year not to conduct cyber espionage against corporations, but it seems pretty likely that groups based in China have continued to do so. However, it might not all be the fault of the government there, according to a report from security company FireEye. Of 72 groups that FireEye suspects of operating in China or in China’s interests, 13 of them compromised corporate networks in the U.S., Europe and Japan between last fall - when the agreement was reached - and this month, according the report, “Redline Drawn: China Recalculates Its Use of Cyber Espionage”.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Owning The Internet Isn’t Cheating, Which Will Make The Iraqi Government Happy

Before students around the world can embrace summer vacation, they must first endure final exams. This time-tested tradition brings late night cram sessions, the regurgitation of facts and figures, nail biting and sweaty palms. For those who work hard, final exams can build character. And for those who started their summer break too early, there’s an easier option: cheating.

As the spouse of a teacher, I know cheating is a major concern in classrooms around the world. Teachers have a variety of tricks to prevent this including watching their students like hawks, giving out different tests, not allowing labeled bottled drinks or even requiring an ID before entering the room.

Of course, some countries take their prevention measures to the extreme. Iraq literally shut off the internet and Algeria blocked Twitter and Facebook. All of this in an effort to prevent cheating. Yikes!

This is a great reminder of a couple of things:

The internet is a tool. A tool is only as valuable as the hands it is in. It can be used for bad purposes. It can also be used to transform the world. I look at stories like how Land O’Lakes is leveraging data to help their Continue reading

First Steps from CCNA R&S SDN to APIs and Programming

On the same day I posted this post, I’m also speaking in a webinar about the new CCNA R&S exams, hosted by the folks at the Cisco Learning Network (CLN).  The new exams have some SDN content. And it always seems like when you talk to networkers about anything that sounds like SDN, the question comes up: should I learn programming?

Today’s question answers a similar question, one that I hope is useful for the specific audience for the webinar. If you assume that programming is a skill you should learn, and you’re currently studying for CCNA R&S, what’s a good path from CCNA learning to then learning programming? That is, what are some good steps to bridge between those Cisco CCNA R&S SDN exam topics and then learning programming?

Continue reading

Microsoft’s new tactic to promote Edge is power efficiency

Microsoft has been anxious to goose interest in Edge, its replacement browser for Internet Explorer that ships with Windows 10. Thus far, while Windows 10 has piled up 300 million installs, it's offered no coattails for Edge. The latest numbers from Net Applications put Edge at just 4.99 percent share.So, the company's newest tactic? Battery power. In a series of its own power consumption tests "in a controlled lab environment," combined with "the real-world energy telemetry from millions of Windows 10 devices," Microsoft claims you can "simply browse longer with Microsoft Edge" than with Chrome, Firefox or Opera on a Windows 10 device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top US states and cities with unsecured security cameras

In 2014, Insecam listed over 73,000 unsecured security cameras worldwide, with 11,046 of those open security cameras in the U.S. That number is constantly fluctuating; Today, for example, there are 5,064 unsecured cameras in the U.S. In December 2015 over a span of two days, the unprotected cameras in the U.S. changed from 4,104 to 5,604. A fact that does not change is that the U.S. is still number one for unsecured security cameras – having more than any other nation in the world.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top U.S. states and cities with unsecured security cameras

In 2014, Insecam listed over 73,000 unsecured security cameras worldwide, with 11,046 of those open security cameras in the U.S. That number is constantly fluctuating. Today, for example, there are 5,064 unsecured cameras in the U.S. In December 2015, over a span of two days, the unprotected cameras in the U.S. changed from 4,104 to 5,604. A fact that does not change is that the U.S. is still number one for unsecured security cameras – having more than any other nation in the world.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top US states and cities with unsecured security cameras

In 2014, Insecam listed over 73,000 unsecured security cameras worldwide, with 11,046 of those open security cameras in the U.S. That number is constantly fluctuating; Today, for example, there are 5,064 unsecured cameras in the U.S. In December 2015 over a span of two days, the unprotected cameras in the U.S. changed from 4,104 to 5,604. A fact that does not change is that the U.S. is still number one for unsecured security cameras – having more than any other nation in the world.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Top U.S. states and cities with unsecured security cameras

In 2014, Insecam listed over 73,000 unsecured security cameras worldwide, with 11,046 of those open security cameras in the U.S. That number is constantly fluctuating. Today, for example, there are 5,064 unsecured cameras in the U.S. In December 2015, over a span of two days, the unprotected cameras in the U.S. changed from 4,104 to 5,604. A fact that does not change is that the U.S. is still number one for unsecured security cameras – having more than any other nation in the world.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Mobile network operators must offer unlimited data, says vendor

Reinforcing a suspicion that wireless subscribers aren’t offering unlimited data because of monetization reasons, not technical limitations or limited bandwidth available, the head of a bandwidth-optimization firm says mobile network operators should stop quibbling and open the pipes—wide.The worry about revenue loss when offering unlimited data is unfounded, says John Giere, president and CEO of Openwave Mobility.Generous data allowance offerings are doable with Quality of Experience (QoE)-based video optimization “to reduce video stalling, matched with innovative data plans to attract subscribers,” he says in a press release on his website.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s Sharepoint app for iOS is here

Microsoft announced earlier this year that its popular SharePoint collaboration software was getting a full-featured mobile app. Starting Tuesday, iPhone users can take a crack at it.  The SharePoint mobile app brings the key features from the popular enterprise collaboration software to users' smartphones, so they have an easier time of accessing things like company bulletins, SharePoint applications and shared workspaces while on the go.  That's important for Microsoft, since launching a mobile app makes SharePoint more relevant for a workforce that is increasingly trying to access work data on their smartphones. It's facing competition from multiple angles, with different companies coming in to challenge Microsoft's dominance of the productivity software space. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: It’s all go in solid state world. Pure Storage ups the ante

There has been an interesting change in the enterprise storage world as the increasingly affordable and high-performance world of solid state drives has gradually but inexorably increased penetration into an area formerly the domain of spinning disk drives.Of course, the value proposition for solid state drives is obvious: the fact that almost everyone is toting a mobile device that has its entire storage made up of flash has increased the awareness of the approach. That and the rapidly improving economics of actually delivering flash storage into enterprise customers has meant that vendors such as Solidfire and Pure Storage have managed to grow rapidly.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: It’s all go in solid state world. Pure Storage ups the ante

There has been an interesting change in the enterprise storage world as the increasingly affordable and high-performance world of solid state drives has gradually but inexorably increased penetration into an area formerly the domain of spinning disk drives.Of course, the value proposition for solid state drives is obvious: the fact that almost everyone is toting a mobile device that has its entire storage made up of flash has increased the awareness of the approach. That and the rapidly improving economics of actually delivering flash storage into enterprise customers has meant that vendors such as Solidfire and Pure Storage have managed to grow rapidly.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tech expectations for 2036: pizza delivery drones and avatar dating

In 20 years, there will be more robots than humans, people will date through their avatars and drones will deliver pizzas.That's the vision many Americans have of the future, according to a study from the Imperial College of London, which surveyed more than 2,000 Americans about how they believe technology will transform their lives.The study, was released today to mark the beginning of Technology Week in London, shows that one in four adult Americans expect there will be more robots than people by 2036. It also found that 35% expect people to date via avatars instead of in person and 69% says cashless technologies will replace paper money and coins.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Software-defined storage: Users reveal the best (and worst) features

There is no standard definition of software-defined storage, but it typically involves decoupling the management software from the storage hardware (vs. the tight integration of traditional storage products). The goal is to make it easier for administrators to flexibly manage a variety of storage devices via software and automated policies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Software-defined storage: Users reveal the best (and worst) features

There is no standard definition of software-defined storage, but it typically involves decoupling the management software from the storage hardware (vs. the tight integration of traditional storage products). The goal is to make it easier for administrators to flexibly manage a variety of storage devices via software and automated policies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

U.S. to have 200-petaflop supercomputer by early 2018

The U.S. plans to have a supercomputer by early 2018 with roughly double the performance of China's newest and most powerful system. The Chinese system, Sunway TaihuLight, was announced Monday in the latest release of the Top500, the biannual ranking of publicly known supercomputers.Sunway TaihuLight can reach a theoretical peak speed of 124.5 petaflops, and has achieved 93 petaflops on the Linpack benchmark, used by the Top500 to assess the performance of supercomputers. The latest ranking of the world's publicly disclosed supercomputers was released Monday at a supercomputing conference in Germany.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

U.S. to have 200-petaflop supercomputer by early 2018

The U.S. plans to have a supercomputer by early 2018 with roughly double the performance of China's newest and most powerful system. The Chinese system, Sunway TaihuLight, was announced Monday in the latest release of the Top500, the biannual ranking of publicly known supercomputers.Sunway TaihuLight can reach a theoretical peak speed of 124.5 petaflops, and has achieved 93 petaflops on the Linpack benchmark, used by the Top500 to assess the performance of supercomputers. The latest ranking of the world's publicly disclosed supercomputers was released Monday at a supercomputing conference in Germany.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple fixes serious flaw in AirPort wireless routers

Apple has released firmware updates for its AirPort wireless base stations in order to fix a vulnerability that could put the devices at risk of hacking.According to Apple security, the flaw is a memory corruption issue stemming from DNS (Domain Name System) data parsing that could lead to arbitrary code execution.The company released firmware updates 7.6.7 and 7.7.7 for AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme and AirPort Time Capsule base stations with 802.11n Wi-Fi, as well as AirPort Extreme and AirPort Time Capsule base stations with 802.11ac Wi-Fi.The AirPort Utility 6.3.1 or later on OS X or AirPort Utility 1.3.1 or later on iOS can be used to install the new firmware versions on AirPort devices, the company said in an advisory.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here