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Category Archives for "Networking"

Linkerd Goes on a Diet with Opt-In Extensions

Buoyant has released version 2.10 of William Morgan, CEO of Linkerd, in an interview. “An extension is basically a Kubernetes controller or operator. We’re relying as much as possible on Kubernetes primitives, but what we are doing is, there’s a little bit of wrapper magic that happens that makes those extensions feel like the rest of Linkerd.” Among those formerly-default features now being offered as extensions are the multicluster extension, which contains cross-cluster communications tools, the

Deconstructing Defray777 Ransomware

Contributors: Sebastiano Mariani • Stefano Ortolani • Baibhav Singh • Giovanni Vigna • Jason Zhang • Brian Baskin • George Allen • Scott Knight  

Recently, reports surfaced describing ransomware attacks targeting VMware ESXi servers. While many of these attacks were initially based upon credential theft, the goal was to unleash one of a series of ransomware families, including Defray777 and Darkside, to encrypt the files associated with virtualized hosts.

These families of ransomware are related to examples that the VMware Threat Research teams had seen previously in the wild. Specifically, based upon their ransom notes and file extensions, they appeared to be variants of the RansomEXX ransomware family. In the second half of 2020 these variants of ransomware, including Defray777, have been witnessed targeting both Windows and Linux systems.

These attacks also leveraged several ancillary tools such as downloaders, RATs, and exploitation tools to obtain initial access to a system and spread within the target network.

In the following, we provide a technical description of the Defray777 ransomware and a brief discussion of the other components that have been observed in combination with this malware sample.

What is Defray777?

The version of Defray777 analyzed here is a Linux-based, command-line driven ransomware attack that employs Continue reading

SuzieQ with Dinesh Dutt and Justin Pietsch

In this episode, we talk with Dinesh Dutt, former Cisco Fellow & Cumulus Chief Scientist, and Justin Pietsch, former AWS veteran, about SuzieQ. SuzieQ is an open source network observability platform they launched last year. We talk about the general problem space of network monitoring and how the industry needs better tools to understand operational state data.

Reference Links:

Dinesh Dutt
Guest
Justin Pietsch
Guest
Jason Edelman
Host

Outro Music:
Danger Storm Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The post SuzieQ with Dinesh Dutt and Justin Pietsch appeared first on Network Collective.

ARMs Race: Ampere Altra takes on the AWS Graviton2

ARMs Race: Ampere Altra takes on the AWS Graviton2

Over three years ago, we embraced the ARM ecosystem after evaluating the Qualcomm Centriq. The Centriq and its Falkor cores delivered a significant reduction in power consumption while maintaining a comparable performance against the processor that was powering our server fleet at the time. By the time we completed porting our software stack to be compatible with ARM, Qualcomm decided to exit the server business. Since then, we have been waiting for another server-grade ARM processor with hopes to improve our power efficiencies across our global network, which now spans more than 200 cities in over 100 countries.

ARM has introduced the Neoverse N1 platform, the blueprint for creating power-efficient processors licensed to institutions that can customize the original design to meet their specific requirements. Ampere licensed the Neoverse N1 platform to create the Ampere Altra, a processor that allows companies that own and manage their own fleet of servers, like ourselves, to take advantage of the expanding ARM ecosystem. We have been working with Ampere to determine whether Altra is the right processor to power our first generation of ARM edge servers.

The AWS Graviton2 is the only other Neoverse N1-based processor publicly accessible, but only made Continue reading

Basic scripting on Unix and Linux

Creating a script on a Unix or Linux system can be dead easy or surprisingly complex; it all depends on how much you’re trying to get the script to do. In this post, we look at scripting basics—at how to get started if you have never built a script before.Identifying the shell Unix and Linux systems today have a number of shells that you can use. Each shell is a command interpreter. It reads commands and sends them to the kernel for processing.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] Bash is one of the most popular, but there’s also zsh, csh, tcsh and korn. There’s even one called fish that can be especially nice for Linux beginners because of its helpful command auto-completion options. To determine which shell you are using, use this command:To read this article in full, please click here

Basic scripting on Unix and Linux

Creating a script on a Unix or Linux system can be dead easy or surprisingly complex; it all depends on how much you’re trying to get the script to do. In this post, we look at scripting basics—at how to get started if you have never built a script before.Identifying the shell Unix and Linux systems today have a number of shells that you can use. Each shell is a command interpreter. It reads commands and sends them to the kernel for processing.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.] Bash is one of the most popular, but there’s also zsh, csh, tcsh and korn. There’s even one called fish that can be especially nice for Linux beginners because of its helpful command auto-completion options. To determine which shell you are using, use this command:To read this article in full, please click here

About the March 8 & 9, 2021 Verkada camera hack

About the March 8 & 9, 2021 Verkada camera hack

Cloudflare uses a vendor called Verkada for cameras in our offices in San Francisco, Austin, New York, London and Singapore. These cameras are used at the entrances, exits and main thoroughfares of our offices and have been part of maintaining the security of offices that have been closed for almost a year.

Yesterday, we were notified of a breach of Verkada that allowed a hacker to access Verkada’s internal support tools to manage those cameras remotely, as well as access them through a remote root shell. As soon as we were notified of the breach, we proceeded to shut down the cameras in all our office locations to prevent further access.

To be clear: this hack affected the cameras and nothing else. No customer data was accessed, no production systems, no databases, no encryption keys, nothing. Some press reports indicate that we use a facial recognition feature available in Verkada. This is not true. We do not.

Our internal systems follow the same Zero Trust model that we provide to our customers, and as such our corporate office networks are not implicitly trusted by our other locations or data centers. From a security point of view connecting from one of Continue reading

80/20 Rule For SaaS and IaaS

In this episode we discuss the 80/20 rule for SaaS and IaaS, what it is according to Vince, and why you should care. Is this a temporary phenomenon due to the pandemic and WFH or is it how we should view WAN traffic from now on?  We’ll answer that question and more in this episode.

Reference Links:

Brandon Carroll
Host
Phil Gervasi
Host
Vince Berk
Host

The post 80/20 Rule For SaaS and IaaS appeared first on Network Collective.

Day Two Cloud 088: The Tech Recruiter – Friend Or Foe?

Our guest is Taylor Desseyn, Sr. Recruiter Advocate at Vaco. Taylor knows tech recruiting forwards and backwards. He gives us an insider's view of how recruiters look at you and how you should look at them to maximize the benefit of the relationship. Because it IS a relationship. And like any relationship, you need to work at it.

The post Day Two Cloud 088: The Tech Recruiter – Friend Or Foe? appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Internet Society Joins Leading Internet Advocates to Call on ISPs to Commit to Basic User Privacy Protections

By Electronic Frontier FoundationMozilla, and The Internet Society

As people learn more about how companies like Google and Facebook track them online, they are taking steps to protect themselves. But there is one relatively unknown way that companies and bad actors can collect troves of data.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T are your gateway to the Internet. These companies have complete, unfettered, and unregulated access to a constant stream of your browsing history that can build a profile that they can sell or otherwise use without your consent.

Last year, Comcast committed to a broad range of DNS privacy standards. Companies like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, which have a major market share of mobile broadband customers in the U.S., haven’t committed to the same basic protections, such as not tracking website traffic, deleting DNS logs, or refusing to sell users’ information. What’s more, these companies have a history of abusing customer data. AT&T,  Sprint, and T-Mobile, sold customer location data to bounty hunters, and Verizon injected trackers bypassing user control.

Every single ISP should have a responsibility to protect the privacy of its users – and as mobile internet access continues Continue reading

Next-gen wireless options: Wi-Fi 6, 5G or private 5G?

One of the great debates in networking has been whether to use wired connectivity—which brings speed—or wireless—which delivers mobility. Recent versions of Wi-Fi deliver speeds comparable to wired, removing this debate. Wired connections are still faster, but for most user applications, including video, there is no experience difference. Looking ahead, next-generation wireless will be well North of 1Gbps, making it a no-brainer to use wireless.The next big decision: What kind of wireless?In the past, there was only one option, and that was Wi-Fi. Now there is another option coming into play, and that’s 5G. Not 5G like the kind one has attached to your mobile phone, but private 5G used within enterprise environments.To read this article in full, please click here

Storage startup Pliops aims to boost flash performance

Rivals Intel and Nvidia are on the same side when it comes to the funding of a startup that promises to make flash storage orders of magnitude faster.The two are among numerous investors in Pliops, which is developing a specialized storage processor that it says allows applications to access data kept in flash storage up to 100 times faster than with traditional approaches while using a fraction of the electricity required by traditional hardware. Read more: NVMe over Fabrics creates data-center storage disruptionTo read this article in full, please click here

Storage startup Pliops aims to boost flash performance

Rivals Intel and Nvidia are on the same side when it comes to the funding of a startup that promises to make flash storage orders of magnitude faster.The two are among numerous investors in Pliops, which is developing a specialized storage processor that it says allows applications to access data kept in flash storage up to 100 times faster than with traditional approaches while using a fraction of the electricity required by traditional hardware. Read more: NVMe over Fabrics creates data-center storage disruptionTo read this article in full, please click here

Azure Route Server: The Challenge

Imagine you decided to deploy an SD-WAN (or DMVPN) network and make an Azure region one of the sites in the new network because you already deployed some workloads in that region and would like to replace the VPN connectivity you’re using today with the new shiny expensive gadget.

Everyone told you to deploy two SD-WAN instances in the public cloud virtual network to be redundant, so this is what you deploy:

5 free network-vulnerability scanners

Though you may know and follow basic security measures on your own when installing and managing your network and websites, you'll never be able to keep up with and catch all the vulnerabilities by yourself.Vulnerability scanners can help you automate security auditing and can play a crucial part in your IT security. They can scan your network and websites for up to thousands of different security risks, producing a prioritized list of those you should patch, describe the vulnerabilities, and give steps on how to remediate them. Some can even automate the patching process.Though vulnerability scanners and security auditing tools can cost a fortune, there are free options as well. Some only look at specific vulnerabilities or limit how many hosts can be scanned but there are also those that offer broad IT security scanning.To read this article in full, please click here