The Week in Internet News: CIA Had Encryption Backdoor for Decades

We’re watching you: The U.S. CIA secretly had an ownership stake in Swiss encryption company Crypto AG for decades and was able to read encrypted messages sent using the company’s technology, the Washington Post reports. West German intelligence agencies worked with the CIA. Forbes columnist Jody Westby called for a congressional investigation.

We’re watching you, part two: Meanwhile, Russia’s Federal Security Service has ordered some large Internet companies in the country to give it continuous access to their systems, the New York Times reports. The FSB has targeted more than 200 companies, including popular messenger service Telegram, social network VK. and classified advertisement website Avito.ru.

Big bucks for space-based Internet: Astranis, a satellite Internet startup focused on bringing service to underserved areas, has raised $90 million in new funding, Fortune says. The new funding will help Astranis deploy its first satellite, focused on providing Internet service in Alaska.

Not so fast: Satellites, however, have some downsides, according to a story on TheConversation.com. Satellites are vulnerable to cyberattacks, with hackers potentially able to shut them down or even turn them into weapons, the story suggests.

New privacy push: U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, has Continue reading

Tech Bytes: Engineering Firm Builds Better End-User Experience With SD-WAN (Sponsored)

On today's Tech Bytes we talk with J-U-B Engineering about how the company boosted employee productivity with an SD-WAN from Silver Peak. Silver Peak is our sponsor. Our guest is Tory Adams, Director of Information Technology at J-U-B Engineering.

The post Tech Bytes: Engineering Firm Builds Better End-User Experience With SD-WAN (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Automation Story: Building a Network Inventory Database

What’s the next logical automation step after you cleaned up device configurations and started using configuration templates? It obviously depends on your pain points; for Anne Baretta it was a network inventory database stored in SQL tables (and thus readily accessible from his other projects).

Keep reading

Notes

  • I’m always amazed that we have to solve simple problems decades after the glitzy slide decks from network management vendors proclaimed them solved;
  • I’m also saddened that it’s often really hard to get data out of a network management product;
  • Check out our network automation course when you’re ready to start your own automation journey.

Automation Story: Building a Network Inventory Database

What’s the next logical automation step after you cleaned up device configurations and started using configuration templates? It obviously depends on your pain points; for Anne Baretta it was a network inventory database stored in SQL tables (and thus readily accessible from his other projects).

Keep reading

Notes

  • I’m always amazed that we have to solve simple problems decades after the glitzy slide decks from network management vendors proclaimed them solved;
  • I’m also saddened that it’s often really hard to get data out of a network management product;
  • Check out our network automation course when you’re ready to start your own automation journey.

Migrating a privacy-safe information extraction system to a Software 2.0 design

Migrating a privacy-safe information extraction system to a software 2.0 design, Sheng, CIDR’20

This is a comparatively short (7 pages) but very interesting paper detailing the migration of a software system to a ‘Software 2.0’ design. Software 2.0, in case you missed it, is a term coined by Andrej Karpathy to describe software in which key components are implemented by neural networks. Since we’ve recently spent quite a bit of time looking at the situations where interpretable models and simple rules are highly desirable, this case study makes a nice counterpoint: it describes a system that started out with hand-written rules, which then over time grew complex and hard to maintain until meaningful progress had pretty much slowed to a halt. (A set of rules that complex wouldn’t have been great from the perspective of interpretability either). Replacing these rules with a machine learned component dramatically simplified the code base (45 Kloc deleted) and set the system back onto a growth and improvement trajectory.

A really interesting thing happens when you go from developing a Software 1.0 (i.e., traditional software) to a Software 2.0 system. In Software 1.0 we spend Continue reading

CEX (Code EXpress) 03. Variable is better than fixed.

Hello my friend,

We are slowly but surely start talking about more and more useful and interesting topics staying yet at a basic level. Today you will learn about variables in Python, as variables are obviously the basic building block of any tool.

Network automation training – boost your career

Don’t wait to be kicked out of IT business. Join our network automation training to secure your job in future. Come to NetDevOps side.

How does the training differ from this blog post series? Here you get the basics and learn some programming concepts in general, whereas in the training you get comprehensive set of knowledge with the detailed examples how to use Python for the network and IT automation. You need both.

What are we going to do today?

We will learn how to create and use in Python 3.8 several types of the variables such as:

  1. Numbers
  2. Strings
  3. Boolean

The different types of variables are used for the different purposes, that’s why the more variables’ type you know, the better code you can write. We must admit that this list of the variables isn’t complete. That is why in the next couple of blogposts you will see Continue reading

MikroTik – RouterOSv7 first look – VxLAN

VxLAN support added in 7.0beta5

MikroTik announced VxLAN support on Valentine’s Day (Feb 14th) of 2020.

This is a significant feature addition for RouterOSv7 as it will pave the way for a number of other additions like EVPN in BGP.

It will also give MikroTik the ability to appeal to enterprises and data centers that might need cost-effective VxLAN capable devices.

Service Providers are also moving towards VxLAN as a future replacement for VPLS so this is helpful for that market as well.

Download the OVA here:
https://download.mikrotik.com/routeros/7.0beta5/chr-7.0beta5.ova

Implementation

The initial release of VxLAN is based on unicast and multicast to deliver Layer 2 frames.

As there is no EVPN support, the VTEPs must be manually configured for each endpoint in a full mesh configuration.

The VxLAN interface can then be bridged to a physical ethernet port or VLAN interface to deliver the traffic to the end host.

Lab Example

Here is an overview lab in EVE-NG with a basic setup using 3 linux servers on the same 10.1.1.0/24 subnet which is carried as an overlay by VxLAN.

VxLAN reachability for VTEPs is acheived with OSPFv2 and loopback addresses.

VNI: 100
Continue reading

Real-time DDoS mitigation using BGP RTBH and FlowSpec

DDoS Protect is a recently released open source application running on the sFlow-RT real-time analytics engine. The software uses streaming analytics to rapidly detect and characterize DDoS flood attacks and automatically applies BGP remote triggered black hole (RTBH) and/or FlowSpec controls to mitigate their impact. The total time to detect and mitigate an attack is in the order of a second.

The combination of multi-vendor standard telemetry (sFlow) and control (BGP FlowSpec) provide the real-time visibility and control needed to quickly and automatically adapt the network to address a range of challenging problems, including: DDoS, traffic engineering, and security.

Solutions are deployable today: Arista BGP FlowSpec describes the recent addition of BGP FlowSpec support to Arista EOS (EOS has long supported sFlow), and sFlow available on Juniper MX series routers describes the release of sFlow support on Juniper MX routers (which have long had BGP FlowSpec support). This article demonstrates DDoS mitigation using Arista EOS. Similar configurations should work with any router that supports sFlow and BGP FlowSpec.
The diagram shows a typical deployment scenario in which an instance of sFlow-RT (running the DDoS Protect application) receives sFlow from the site router (ce-router). A  Continue reading

Daily Roundup: Cloud Titans Tank Arista’s Q4

Cloud titans tanked Arista’s Q4; US charged Huawei with theft and espionage; and Microsoft JEDI...

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The Softer Side Of Exascale

When talking about high-end HPC systems in the world, much of the attention often is paid to the massive supercomputers that are being developed by the likes of system makers Cray (now part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the main contractor on two exascale systems), Fujitsu, Atos, IBM, and others along with component makers Intel (which is a primary contractor on one exascale system), AMD, and Nvidia. …

The Softer Side Of Exascale was written by Jeffrey Burt at The Next Platform.

Is SD-Branch Worth the Hype?

As the SD-WAN market explodes, some service providers are pushing SD-branch as a way to build an...

Read More »

© SDxCentral, LLC. Use of this feed is limited to personal, non-commercial use and is governed by SDxCentral's Terms of Use (https://www.sdxcentral.com/legal/terms-of-service/). Publishing this feed for public or commercial use and/or misrepresentation by a third party is prohibited.

Heavy Networking 502: Get Off My VLAN! Old Network Engineers On What New Engineers Should Know

As more abstractions and automation layers creep into the network, are network engineers losing their grasp on core fundamentals? Three grumpy old network engineers ponder this question, talk about how we got here, and what can be done about it. Our guests are Chris Young and Ivan Pepelnjak.

The post Heavy Networking 502: Get Off My VLAN! Old Network Engineers On What New Engineers Should Know appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Member News: Internet Society Chapters Focus on Security

Security on your mind: The Internet Society’s Chapter in Benin recently hosted a conference focused on online security and on connectivity issues. Much of the discussion focused on instability of connections in the country, with participants concerned about degraded connections. Participants also talked about limited coverage for mobile services. On the topic of security, speakers urged Internet users to regularly change their passwords, avoid default passwords, and prevent third-party apps from connecting to the services they use.

Secure messages: The Israeli Chapter has focused on the security of messaging and social media apps recently. The Chapter recently posted a guide on how to prevent Instagram accounts from being hacked and a guide on how users can protect their privacy on the Tik Tok messaging app.

Privacy for the young ones: Meanwhile, the Chapter in Portugal, working with the Kids Safe on the Net project, has launched an initiative to improve awareness among Portuguese youth about the importance of online privacy and how they can maintain their privacy.

Good privacy: The Netherlands Chapter recently gave its support to the Good ID initiative, an approach to identity management that prioritizes data privacy and security. Good ID aims to give Internet users Continue reading

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