Security Is Bananas

I think we’ve reached peak bombshell report discussion at this point. It all started this time around with the big news from Bloomberg that China implanted spy chips into SuperMicro boards in the assembly phase. Then came the denials from Amazon and Apple and event SuperMicro. Then started the armchair quarterbacking from everyone, including TechCrunch. From bad sources to lack of technical details all the way up to the crazy conspiracy theories that someone at Bloomberg was trying to goose their quarterly bonus with a short sale or that the Chinese planted the story to cover up future hacking incidents, I think we’ve covered the entire gamut of everything that the SuperMicro story could and couldn’t be.

So what more could there be to say about this? Well, nothing about SuperMicro specifically. But there’s a lot to say about the fact that we were both oblivious and completely unsurprised about an attack on the supply chain of a manufacturer. While the story moved the stock markets pretty effectively for a few days, none of the security people I’ve talked to were shocked by the idea of someone with the power of a nation state inserting themselves into the supply chain Continue reading

Optimizing HTTP/2 prioritization with BBR and tcp_notsent_lowat

Getting the best end-user performance from HTTP/2 requires good support for resource prioritization. While most web servers support HTTP/2 prioritization, getting it to work well all the way to the browser requires a fair bit of coordination across the networking stack. This article will expose some of the interactions between the web server, Operating System and network and how to tune a server to optimize performance for end users.

tl;dr

On Linux 4.9 kernels and later, enable BBR congestion control and set tcp_notsent_lowat to 16KB for HTTP/2 prioritization to work reliably. This can be done in /etc/sysctl.conf:

    net.core.default_qdisc = fq
    net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control = bbr
    net.ipv4.tcp_notsent_lowat = 16384

Browsers and Request Prioritization

A single web page is made up of dozens to hundreds of separate pieces of content that a web browser pulls together to create and present to the user. The main content (HTML) for the page you are visiting is a list of instructions on how to construct the page and the browser goes through the instructions from beginning to end to figure out everything it needs to load and how to put it all together. Each piece of content requires a Continue reading

Internet Society submits comments for the revision of the Ethiopian Cybercrime law

Imagine how much the Internet has changed our lives in the last few decades. Today, thanks to the Internet, we can communicate with anyone around the world, instantaneously, reliably and cheaply. This enables us not only to be close to our friends and family that may be far away but also to bridge the knowledge gap that we have with the developed world. It also opens many work opportunities that we wouldn’t even imagine just a few years back and democratize media, allowing anyone to reach instantaneously millions of people at almost no cost, forcing transparency in governance more than ever before.

At national level, our economies are benefiting from the economic opportunities, directly and indirectly related to the Internet. Experts say that this is just the tip of the iceberg and that there are many more opportunities that are yet to be discovered.

However, we cannot deny that the Internet also comes with increasing challenges. Cybercrime is endangering Internet users, organizations and even countries. Our privacies are threatened every day. And more …  It is therefore appropriate that governments act to protect its citizens from the negatives impacts of the Internet by enacting laws and regulations. It was therefore Continue reading

4 Tips for Safeguarding Your SD-WAN

Recursive Lookup in BGP

The post Recursive Lookup in BGP appeared first on Noction.

GIT – Version Control for Network Engineers

Is GIT any way related to Network Guys ?  What is GIT and how a network engineers can benefit from It. Most of the network engineer might have not came across GIT and even not used in their work environment,But as mentioned in  earlier posts that inclusion of DevOps in Networking has made network engineer to learn about automation and related technologies.

GIT is a distributed version control software that keeps track of every modification to the code. If any change or mistake is made , we can look back and compare with  earlier version of code and find for any mistake.

So how GIT can be useful for Network Engineers ? Network Engineer can use GIT to see the config,how and when it got changed and who made the change ,all the changes in a file  can be  tracked easily.

Git can be easily installed by following the steps provided in link https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-Installing-Git

What is Git Version Control , Lets understand it in more simple way .. As per https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1408450/why-should-i-use-version-control/1408464#1408464

Have you ever:

• Made a change to code, realized it was a mistake and wanted to revert back?
• Lost code or had a backup that was too old?
• Had Continue reading

Making Sense of Software-Defined World

In mid-September I was invited to present at the vNIC 2018 event in Frankfurt, Germany. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get there, but Zoom did a great job … and enabled me to record the talk.

Regulating the IoT: A conversation with Bruce Schneier | Salted Hash Ep 49

Security expert and author Bruce Schneier talks with senior writer J.M. Porup about that widespread use of connected chips -- allowing hackers to access cars, refrigerators, toys and soon, even more home consumer items.

How secure are electronic voting machines? | Salted Hash Ep 48

With the midterm elections looming, electronic voting machines are getting increased scrutiny. J.M. Porup, senior writer at CSO, sits in the hosts chair this episode, breaking down the security risk with content producer Juliet Beauchamp.

Talking DerbyCon, spy chip whispers and Google’s data breach | Salted Hash Ep 47

Steve Ragan and J.M. Porup catch up post-DerbyCon conference to discuss psychological issues in the infosec community, supply chain security and whether it's time to make China the boogeyman again, as well as Google's recent data breach.

Automatic discovery of tactics in spatio-temporal soccer match data

Automatic discovery of tactics in spatio-temporal soccer match data Decroos et al., KDD’18

Here’s a fun paper to end the week. Data collection from sporting events is now widespread. This fuels an endless thirst for team and player statistics. In terms of football (which shall refer to the game of soccer throughout this write-up) that leads to metrics such as completed passes, distance covered, intercepts, shots-on-goal, and so on. Decroos et al. want to go one level deeper though, and use the data to uncover team tactics. The state of the art today for tactical analysis still involves watching hours of video footage.

This paper focuses on the problem of detecting tactics from professional soccer matches based on spatio-temporal data.

Now when I think of tactics, a key component in my mind is the team shape and movement of players off the ball. Unfortunately Decroos et al., don’t have the data available to analyse that. So they have to do what they can based on more limited information.

Our dataset consists of event data for the English Premier League for the 2015/2016 season. This event data was manually collected by humans who watch video feeds of the matches Continue reading

Telco Systems’ Arm-Based uCPE Costs Less Than Its x86 uCPE

The NFV vendor says it can demonstrate more than 30 percent cost savings on Arm-based hardware. Telco Systems now has three different manufacturers for Arm boxes.

Happy National Coming Out Day: Stories from Proudflare

Today is the 30th Anniversary of National Coming Out Day. We wanted to share some coming out stories from members of Proudflare and draw attention to resources the Human Rights Campaign provides to those who are thinking about coming out or wish to be supportive of those who come out to them.

About National Coming Out Day

On October 11, 1987, about 500,000 people marched on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. This was the second demonstration of this type in the capital and it resulted in the formation of several LGBTQ organizations.

In the late 1980s, the LGBTQ community recognized that they often reacted defensively to anti LGBTQIA+ actions and the community came up with the idea of a national day for celebrating coming out. The anniversary of the 1987 march was chosen as that national day.

Each year on October 11th, National Coming Out Day continues to promote a safe world for LGBTQ individuals to live truthfully and openly.

Source: https://www.hrc.org/resources/the-history-of-coming-out

Coming out stories from Proudflare

Here are seven examples of the coming out stories that surfaced from a company-wide awareness campaign. I hope you’ll enjoy reading these and will find inspiration in them. Let’s Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Introducing Named Data Networking

While computing, storage and programming have dramatically changed and become simpler and cheaper over the last 20 years, however, IP networking has not. IP networking is still stuck in the era of mid-1990s.Realistically, when I look at ways to upgrade or improve a network, the approach falls into two separate buckets. One is the tactical move and the other is strategic. For example, when I look at IPv6, I see this as a tactical move. There aren’t many business value-adds.In fact, there are opposites such as additional overheads and minimal internetworking QoS between IPv4 & v6 with zero application awareness and still a lack of security. Here, I do not intend to say that one should not upgrade to IPv6, it does give you more IP addresses (if you need them) and better multicast capabilities but it’s a tactical move.To read this article in full, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Introducing Named Data Networking

While computing, storage and programming have dramatically changed and become simpler and cheaper over the last 20 years, however, IP networking has not. IP networking is still stuck in the era of mid-1990s.Realistically, when I look at ways to upgrade or improve a network, the approach falls into two separate buckets. One is the tactical move and the other is strategic. For example, when I look at IPv6, I see this as a tactical move. There aren’t many business value-adds.In fact, there are opposites such as additional overheads and minimal internetworking QoS between IPv4 & v6 with zero application awareness and still a lack of security. Here, I do not intend to say that one should not upgrade to IPv6, it does give you more IP addresses (if you need them) and better multicast capabilities but it’s a tactical move.To read this article in full, please click here

IBM Protests Pentagon’s JEDI, Still Plans to Bid for the $10B Deal

“No business in the world would build a cloud the way JEDI would and then lock in to it for a decade,” IBM's Sam Gordy says.

Snowflake Snags $450M VC Round, Targets Data Warehouse Expansion

Dow Jones VentureSource ranked the company as No. 4 in value among privately held U.S.-based business software and services company.

Worth Reading: Upstream visibility

The most common approach for displaying BGP data collected is to use an animated graph, for example, BGPlay. In this type of visualization, each node of the graph is an AS and each link is a peering session among ASes. Every time a BGP update is applied, the links in the graph change according to the new status. —Massimo Candela @APNIC

Private cloud spending is increasing, not decreasing

Once again, IDC has thrown cold water on the notion that enterprises are looking to shut down their data centers and instead are looking to grow them. And a new form of IT spending is taking place.The latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC) found revenue from sales of IT infrastructure equipment grew 48.4 percent year over year in the second quarter of 2018 to $15.4 billion.Quarterly spending on public cloud IT infrastructure was $10.9 billion in the second quarter of 2018, a 58.9 percent year-over-year growth, while private cloud spending reached $4.6 billion, an increase of 28.2 percent year over year.[ Check out What is hybrid cloud computing and learn what you need to know about multi-cloud. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] By end of the year, IDC projects public cloud spending will account for 68.2 percent of total IT equipment spending, growing at an annual rate of 36.9 percent. That’s not surprising, though, as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc., buy servers in the tens of thousands of units.To read this article in full, please click here

Private cloud spending is increasing, not decreasing

Once again, IDC has thrown cold water on the notion that enterprises are looking to shut down their data centers and instead are looking to grow them. And a new form of IT spending is taking place.The latest worldwide market study by International Data Corporation (IDC) found revenue from sales of IT infrastructure equipment grew 48.4 percent year over year in the second quarter of 2018 to $15.4 billion.Quarterly spending on public cloud IT infrastructure was $10.9 billion in the second quarter of 2018, a 58.9 percent year-over-year growth, while private cloud spending reached $4.6 billion, an increase of 28.2 percent year over year.[ Check out What is hybrid cloud computing and learn what you need to know about multi-cloud. | Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ] By end of the year, IDC projects public cloud spending will account for 68.2 percent of total IT equipment spending, growing at an annual rate of 36.9 percent. That’s not surprising, though, as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc., buy servers in the tens of thousands of units.To read this article in full, please click here