Celebrating 10 years of Project Galileo

One of the great benefits of the Internet has been its ability to empower activists and journalists in repressive societies to organize, communicate, and simply find each other. Ten years ago today, Cloudflare launched Project Galileo, a program which today provides security services, at no cost, to more than 2,600 independent journalists and nonprofit organizations around the world supporting human rights, democracy, and local communities. You can read last week’s blog and Radar dashboard that provide a snapshot of what public interest organizations experience on a daily basis when it comes to keeping their websites online.

Origins of Project Galileo

We’ve admitted before that Project Galileo was born out of a mistake, but it's worth reminding ourselves. In 2014, when Cloudflare was a much smaller company with a smaller network, our free service did not include DDoS mitigation. If a free customer came under a withering attack, we would stop proxying traffic to protect our own network. It just made sense.

One evening, a site that was using us came under a significant DDoS attack, exhausting Cloudflare resources. After pulling up the site and seeing Cyrillic writing and pictures of men with guns, the young engineer on call followed the Continue reading

Network Observability with SuzieQ: Part Two

Network Observability with SuzieQ: Part Two

In part One of this multipart series, we covered the introduction to SuzieQ and some of the features of SuzieQ. In this part, we will cover how to set up SuzieQ using Docker Compose. If you have not read Part One yet, I recommend you read it first before proceeding with this part.

Setting up SuzieQ using Docker Compose

Setting up SuzieQ with Docker Compose simplifies deployment and management. Docker Compose is a tool for defining and running multi-container docker applications using a single YAML file. We’ll use a pre-built SuzieQ Docker image from Docker Hub, maintained and regularly updated by the SuzieQ team, to ensure you have the latest features and improvements.

Prerequisites

Before we start, make sure you have the following installed on your machine:

  1. Docker
  2. Docker Compose
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The SuzieQ Docker image runs as a non-root user (suzieq). This means that you might encounter permission issues when running the docker compose file, particularly with file and directory permissions. We will address this in our setup.

Initiate Your Suzieq Setup

We'll begin with creating necessary files and directories. This will include:

  1. suzieq/: Directory to store configuration files for SuzieQ
  2. parquet/: Directory to store the Parquet database Continue reading

Network Observability with SuzieQ: Part One

Network Observability with SuzieQ: Part One

Fresh out of attending Autocon1 (Network Automation Forum) in Amsterdam, I was excited to try out SuzieQ, a network observability tool that I heard a lot about. Though I had heard about SuzieQ before, and even tried it out in a lab environment before, I wanted to dive deeper into it and see how it could help me in my day-to-day work now that i was in a 100% network automation role.

What we will cover in the multipart series

In this multipart series, we will cover the following topics:

  1. Introduction to SuzieQ - Part 1
  2. Setting up SuzieQ using Docker Compose - Part 2
  3. Interacting with SuzieQ data - Part 3

Introduction to SuzieQ

SuzieQ is a network observability tool that provides a snapshot of the network at a given point in time. It collects data from network devices and stores it in a database at specified intervals. This data can then be queried to get insights into the network. It allows for us to have a historical view of the network and help us answer questions like What changed in the network between 2 points in time? or What is the state of the network at a given Continue reading

HW029: COWs, COLTs, and WOWs

Natural disaster responders, large event planners, and rural kids trying to do their homework all have something in common: they need a little extra help to get connected. COWs, COLTs, and WOWs can do just that. Mark Houtz joins Keith Parsons to explain how and why COW operators do what they do. First, he explains... Read more »

VyOS – A Great Open-Source Router and Firewall

VyOS - A Great Open-Source Router and Firewall

As a Network Engineer or someone working in IT, I always needed a firewall for my home network. Whether it's for learning purposes or using a VPN to connect back home while working remotely, having a reliable firewall is essential. If you are a small company, you might also need a free or cost-effective firewall for various experiments. The use cases can be anything.

There are numerous paid and free options out there, but VyOS stands out with its powerful enterprise-level features. In this blog post, I'll show you how easy it is to get started with the VyOS router/firewall. We'll cover how to download it, installation options, and some basic configurations. So, let's get started.

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Disclaimer - Please note that VyOS sponsors my blog, but the content and opinions are my own. I used their product long before they sponsored me. Everything you see here reflects my own views, and VyOS has no control over the content.

Why VyOS?

There are numerous free and paid firewalls out there. Of course, I would love to have the latest and greatest firewalls like Palo Alto or FortiGate, but they are way over my budget. Even if I could afford the Continue reading

How to Address Kubernetes Risks and Vulnerabilities Head-on

Misconfigurations and container image vulnerabilities are major causes of Kubernetes threats and risks. According to Gartner, more than 90% of global organizations will be running containerized applications in production by 2027. This is a significant increase from fewer than 40% in 2021. As container adoption soars, Kubernetes remains the dominant container orchestration platform.

Realizing the full benefits of Kubernetes requires implementing processes and solutions to fight vulnerabilities, threats and risks, including issues stemming from human error such as misconfigurations, and inherent vulnerabilities like those from container images. DevOps and security teams need the right solutions to mitigate the risks and enjoy the full benefits of Kubernetes.

Mitigating the Impact of Misconfigurations

While container adoption has taken off, the industry still lacks skilled Kubernetes experts. Kubernetes is a complex platform, and personnel without the right skillset inadvertently — and frequently—make mistakes that create misconfigurations.

In the Red Hat State of Kubernetes Security Report 2023, more than 50% of respondents said they were concerned about misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. And with good reason: The simplest way for attackers to get to a company’s data, applications or code is through a misconfigured Kubernetes cluster. A bad actor needs just one small misconfiguration Continue reading

The Mythical Use Cases: Traffic Engineering for Data Center Backups

Vendor product managers love discussing mythical use cases to warrant complex functionality in their gear. Long-distance VM mobility was one of those (using it for disaster avoidance was Mission Impossible under any real-world assumptions), and high-volume network-based backups seems to be another. Here’s what someone had to say about that particular unicorn in a LinkedIn comment when discussing whether we need traffic engineering in a data center fabric.

When you’re dealing with a large cluster on a fabric, you will see things like inband backup. The most common one I’ve seen is VEEAM. Those inband backups can flood a single link, and no amount of link scheduling really solves that; depending on the source, they can saturate 100G. There are a couple of solutions; IPv6 or eBGP SID has been used to avoid these links or schedule avoidance for other traffic.

It is true that (A) in-band backups can be bandwidth intensive and that (B) well-written applications can saturate 100G server links. However:

Read more …

The Mythical Use Cases: Traffic Engineering for Data Center Backups

Vendor product managers love discussing mythical use cases to warrant complex functionality in their gear. Long-distance VM mobility was one of those (using it for disaster avoidance was Mission Impossible under any real-world assumptions), and high-volume network-based backups seems to be another. Here’s what someone had to say about that particular unicorn in a LinkedIn comment when discussing whether we need traffic engineering in a data center fabric.

When you’re dealing with a large cluster on a fabric, you will see things like inband backup. The most common one I’ve seen is VEEAM. Those inband backups can flood a single link, and no amount of link scheduling really solves that; depending on the source, they can saturate 100G. There are a couple of solutions; IPv6 or eBGP SID has been used to avoid these links or schedule avoidance for other traffic.

It is true that (A) in-band backups can be bandwidth intensive and that (B) well-written applications can saturate 100G server links. However:

Read more …

Cisco Live 2024 Wrap-Up

Last week, I attended my 11th Cisco Live in person, in the fabulous Las Vegas. This post is my Cisco Live 2024 Wrap-up. I can already tell you that the next edition of Cisco Live US will be held June 8-12, 2025 in San Diego, California. If my company agrees to send me there, I’m already looking forward to it, because San Diego is a wonderful city. If you’d like to be notified when the registration opens, you can subscribe here: https://www.ciscolive.com/global/cisco-live-2025.html But that’s not the main purpose of this…

The post Cisco Live 2024 Wrap-Up appeared first on AboutNetworks.net.

Heeding the call to support Australia’s most at-risk entities

When Australia unveiled its 2023-2030 Australian Cyber Security Strategy in November 2023, we enthusiastically announced Cloudflare’s support, especially for the call for the private sector to work together to protect Australia’s smaller, at-risk entities. Today, we are extremely pleased to announce that Cloudflare and the Critical Infrastructure - Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (CI-ISAC), a member-driven organization helping to defend Australia's critical infrastructure from cyber attacks, are teaming up to protect some of Australia’s most at-risk organizations – General Practitioner (GP) clinics.

Cloudflare helps a broad range of organizations -– from multinational organizations, to entrepreneurs and small businesses, to nonprofits, humanitarian groups, and governments across the globe — to secure their employees, applications and networks. We support a multitude of organizations in Australia, including some of Australia’s largest banks and digital natives, with our world-leading security products and services.

When it comes to protecting entities at high risk of cyber attack who might not have significant resources, we at Cloudflare believe we have a lot to offer. Our mission is to help build a better Internet. A key part of that mission is democratizing cybersecurity – making a range of tools readily available for all, including small and medium enterprises Continue reading

Exploring the 2024 EU Election: Internet traffic trends and cybersecurity insights

The 2024 European Parliament election took place June 6-9, 2024, with hundreds of millions of Europeans from the 27 countries of the European Union electing 720 members of the European Parliament. This was the first election after Brexit and without the UK, and it had an impact on the Internet. In this post, we will review some of the Internet traffic trends observed during the election days, as well as providing insight into cyberattack activity.

Elections matter, and as we have mentioned before (1, 2), 2024 is considered “the year of elections”, with voters going to the polls in at least 60 countries, as well as the 27 EU member states. That’s why we’re publishing a regularly updated election report on Cloudflare Radar. We’ve already included our analysis of recent elections in South Africa, India, Iceland, and Mexico, and provided a policy view on the EU elections.

The European Parliament election coincided with several other national or local elections in European Union member states, leading to direct consequences. For example, in Belgium, the prime minister announced his resignation, resulting in a drop in Internet traffic during the speech followed by a clear increase after the speech was Continue reading

The Legacy of Cisco Live

Legacy: Something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past. — Merriam-Webster

Cisco Live 2024 is in the books. I could recap all the announcements but that would take forever. You can find an AI that can summarize them for you much faster. That’s because AI was the largest aspect of what was discussed. Love it or hate it, AI has taken over the IT industry for the time being. More importantly it has also focused companies on the need to integrate AI functions into their product lines to avoid being left behind by upstarts.

That’s what you see in the headlines. Something I noticed while I was there was how the march of time has affected us all. After eighteen years I finally realized the sessions today have less in common with the ones I was attending back in 2010 than ever before. Development and advanced features configuration have replaced the tuning of routing protocols and CallManager deployment tips. It’s a game for younger engineers that have less to unlearn from the legacy technologies I’ve spent my career working on.

Leaving a Legacy

But legacy is a word with more than one definition. It’s Continue reading

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