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Microservices Network Architecture 101

A new god is rising in the world of application development – Microservices

The new god promises if not happiness in the next life, scalability, agility and fault tolerance in this life. At the heart of all this, is a simple, age-old axiom that is a key design goal of Unix: do one thing, and do it well. In the evolution of application architectures, single monolithic applications made way for client-server applications, which in turn made the way for microservices. The upending of the old world continues in data centers.

Communication is at the heart of this new religion (one popular theory of the etymology of the word religion is the word “religio” which means “to reconnect”). Every religion and every new technology introduces its own new vocabulary.

Microservices are no different!

In the domain of communications, the new lingo involves things such as MacVlan, IPVlan, Weave, Flannel and Swarm, to just name a few. What are they ? How are they connected ? Is IPVlan a new encapsulation format ? If it’s not a new encapsulation format, what is it ? If it is a new encapsulation format, how is it related to VxLAN ? Why were they invented ? Which one should I use ? What Continue reading

Replacement Verizon worker charged with running over striker, hitting officer

Yesterday we noted the light sentence given a Westborough, Mass., man who entombed a Verizon worker in an underground utility shed in 2013. Today comes news that another Verizon worker picketing in that same small town was struck by a pickup truck operated by a replacement worker who police say was driving on a suspended Florida license … allegedly while intoxicated … at just past 8 o’clock Thursday morning.From an entry on the Westborough Police Department’s Facebook page:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMware NSX Fundamentals Live is Coming to a City Near You

Sometimes a webcast isn’t enough – that’s why when VMware brings an NSX seminar to your hometown, you say “yes.” VMware is kicking off the NSX Fundamentals Live U.S. tour, so register now to secure your spot in one of these seminars when it gets to your town.

VMware experts will start off with a business overview of NSX use cases and IT outcomes. Want to know about the future of the software-defined data center and what role network virtualization will play in helping you face new business challenges? Here’s your chance. Want to discover how to bring the operational model of a virtual machine to your data center network, so you can transform the economics of network and security operations? Again, now’s your chance.

Following this business overview, experts will walk you through an in-depth technical overview of NSX architecture and key components. After this session, you’ll fully understand how networking functions and services are implemented within the NSX platform, and how to analyze key workflows for configuring virtual network & security services.

Digital business transformation is creating new opportunities and risks for businesses across every industry. VMware NSX helps you overcome challenges, such as increased risk Continue reading

Securing BGP: A Case Study

What would it take to secure BGP? Let’s begin where any engineering problem should begin: what problem are we trying to solve? This series of posts walks through a wide range of technical and business problems to create a solid set of requirements against which to measure proposed solutions for securing BGP in the global Internet, and then works through several proposed solutions to see how they stack up.

Post 1: An introduction to the problem space
Post 2: What can I prove in a routing system?
Post 3: What I can prove in a routing system?
Post 4: Centralized or decentralized?
Post 5: Centralized or decentralized?
Post 6: Business issues with centralization
Post 7: Technical issues with centralization
Post 8: A full requirements list
Post 9: BGPSEC (S-BGP) compared to the requirements
Post 10: RPKI compared to the requirements

I will continue updating this post as I work through the remaining segments of this series.

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The post Securing BGP: A Case Study appeared first on 'net work.

Senators will introduce a bill to limit government hacking warrants

A U.S. senator will introduce legislation to roll back new court rules that allow judges to give law enforcement agencies the authority to remotely hack computers.Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, will introduce a bill that would reverse a court procedure rules change, approved by the U.S. Supreme Court last month, that would allow lower judges to issue remote hacking warrants.The rules change, requested by the Department of Justice, expands the geographical reach of police hacking powers beyond local court jurisdictions now allowed through court-ordered warrants. Previously, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure prohibited a federal judge from issuing a search warrant outside his or her district.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Petya ransomware is now double the trouble

The Petya ransomware now bundles a second file-encrypting program for cases where it cannot replace a computer's master boot record to encrypt its file table.Petya is an unusual ransomware threat that first popped up on security researchers' radar in March. Instead of encrypting a user's files directly, it encrypts the master file table (MFT) used by NTFS disk partitions to hold information about file names, sizes and location on the physical disk.Before encrypting the MFT, Petya replaces the computer's master boot record (MBR), which contains code that initiates the operating system's bootloader. Petya replaces it with its own malicious code that displays the ransom note and leaves computers unable to boot.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Malware attacks on two banks have links with 2014 Sony Pictures hack

Bangladesh Bank, a commercial bank in Vietnam and ... Sony Pictures are the unlikely bedfellows in a tale of cyber intrigue uncovered by security researchers at BAE Systems.Researchers Sergei Shevchenko and Adrian Nish have found some links between malware involved in the 2014 attack on Sony Pictures and attacks on two banks involving the theft of credentials for the SWIFT financial transfer network.The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said North Korea was to blame for the Sony attack (although security experts are divided on the matter).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Terrorists opt for consumer tools

Although cybercriminals have been turning out specialized hacking and attack tools at a rapid pace, terrorists are often using legitimate, consumer-focused technologies, according to a new Trend Micro report."They're abusing legitimate technology for their own gain," said Ed Cabrera, vice president of cybersecurity strategy at Trend Micro.Sometimes, the vendors involved shut down accounts that are being used by terrorists, he said."As accounts become not usable, they pivot to other applications," he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Terrorists opt for consumer tools

Although cybercriminals have been turning out specialized hacking and attack tools at a rapid pace, terrorists are often using legitimate, consumer-focused technologies, according to a new Trend Micro report."They're abusing legitimate technology for their own gain," said Ed Cabrera, vice president of cybersecurity strategy at Trend Micro.Sometimes, the vendors involved shut down accounts that are being used by terrorists, he said."As accounts become not usable, they pivot to other applications," he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Going agile requires a culture shift

“When it comes to agile development ... it is less about technology. It is more about mindset, more about culture, more about people and their passion,” says Sudhakar Gorti, CIO at Environmental Data Resources.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Using HTTP/2 Server Push with PHP

Two weeks ago CloudFlare announced that it was supporting HTTP/2 Server Push for all our customers. By simply adding a Link header to an HTTP response specifying preload CloudFlare would automatically push items to web browsers that support Server Push.

To illustrate how easy this is I create a small PHP page that uses the PHP header function to insert appropriate Link headers to push images to the web browser via CloudFlare. The web page looks like this when loaded:

There are two images loaded from the same server both of which are pushed if the web browser supports Server Push. This is achieved by inserting two Link headers in the HTTP response. The response looks like:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/1.9.15
Date: Fri, 13 May 2016 10:52:13 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
Link: </images/drucken.jpg>; rel=preload; as=image
Link: </images/empire.jpg>; rel=preload; as=image

At the bottom are the two Link headers corresponding to the two images on the page with the rel=preload directive as specified in W3C preload draft.

The complete code can be found in this gist but the core of the code looks like this:

    <?php
    function pushImage($uri) {
        header("Link: <{$uri}>; rel=preload;  Continue reading

Next-generation Endpoint Security Market Bifurcation

My colleagues Doug Cahill, Kyle Prigmore, and I just completed a research project on next-generation endpoint security.  Just what the heck is next-generation endpoint security?  Cybersecurity professionals remain pretty confused around the answer to this question.  For the purposes of its research project, ESG defined next-generation endpoint security as (note: I am an ESG employee):Endpoint security software controls designed to prevent, detect, and respond to previously unseen exploits and malware.As part of this project, ESG interviewed dozens of organizations that were either supplementing or replacing traditional antivirus software on PCs of all kinds.  I’ve written a few blogs about why these organizations were moving beyond AV alone, how they selected new endpoint security products, and some details about their testing and deployment methodologies.  Aside from this technology overview however, I did come away with some strong theories about the next-generation endpoint security market in general. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Next-generation Endpoint Security Market Bifurcation

My colleagues Doug Cahill, Kyle Prigmore, and I just completed a research project on next-generation endpoint security.  Just what the heck is next-generation endpoint security?  Cybersecurity professionals remain pretty confused around the answer to this question.  For the purposes of its research project, ESG defined next-generation endpoint security as (note: I am an ESG employee):Endpoint security software controls designed to prevent, detect, and respond to previously unseen exploits and malware.As part of this project, ESG interviewed dozens of organizations that were either supplementing or replacing traditional antivirus software on PCs of all kinds.  I’ve written a few blogs about why these organizations were moving beyond AV alone, how they selected new endpoint security products, and some details about their testing and deployment methodologies.  Aside from this technology overview however, I did come away with some strong theories about the next-generation endpoint security market in general. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here