VMworld 2017 Prayer Time

At VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas, I’m organizing—as I have in previous years—a gathering of Christians for a brief time of prayer while at the conference. If you’re interested in joining us, here are the details.

What: A brief time of prayer

Where: Mandalay Bay Convention Center, level 1 (same level as the food court), at the bottom of the escalators heading upstairs (over near the business center)

When: Monday 8/28 through Thursday 8/31 at 7:45am (this should give everyone enough time to grab breakfast before the keynotes start at 9am)

Who: All courteous attendees are welcome, but please note that this will be a distinctly Christian-focused and Christ-centric activity (I encourage believers of other faiths/religions to organize equivalent activities)

Why: To spend a few minutes in prayer over the day, the conference, the attendees, and each other

You don’t need to RSVP or anything like that, although you’re welcome to if you’d like (just hit me up on Twitter). There’s also no need to bring anything other than an open heart, your faith, and your willingness to display that faith in front of others. This is quite casual—we’ll gather together, share a few prayer requests and needs, and Continue reading

Slowloris all the things

At DEFCON, some researchers are going to announce a Slowloris-type exploit for SMB -- SMBloris. I thought I'd write up some comments.


The original Slowloris from several years creates a ton of connections to a web server, but only sends partial headers. The server allocates a large amount of memory to handle the requests, expecting to free that memory soon when the requests are completed. But the requests are never completed, so the memory remains tied up indefinitely. Moreover, this also consumes a lot of CPU resources -- every time Slowloris dribbles a few more bytes on the TCP connection is forces the CPU to walk through a lot of data structures to handle those bytes.

The thing about Slowloris is that it's not specific to HTTP. It's a principle that affects pretty much every service that listens on the Internet. For example, on Linux servers running NFS, you can exploit the RPC fragmentation feature in order to force the server to allocate all the memory in a box waiting for fragments that never arrive.

SMBloris does the same thing for SMB. It's an easy attack to carry out in general, the only question is how much resources are required Continue reading

Worth Reading: Internet Resource Course

Following the success of the first course ‘Introduction to Cybersecurity’, the APNIC Academy has launched its second course: ‘Internet Resource Management’. The course is for anyone interested in managing their Internet number resources more effectively, familiarising themselves with the Internet ecosystem, and finding out new ways to engage with the Internet community. —APNIC

The post Worth Reading: Internet Resource Course appeared first on rule 11 reader.

5 Wi-Fi analyzer and survey apps for Android

Wi-Fi networks have many variables and points of frustration. Different types of walls, materials and objects can impact the Wi-Fi signal in varying ways. Visualizing how the signals move about the area is difficult without the right tools. A simple Wi-Fi stumbler is great for quickly checking signal levels, but a map-based surveying tool helps you visualize the coverage, interference and performance much more easily. They allow you to load your floor plan map, walk the building to take measurements and then give you heatmaps of the signals and other data.Most Windows-based Wi-Fi surveying tools offer more features and functionality than Android-based tools provide, such as detecting noise levels and providing more heatmap visualizations. However, if you don’t require all the bells and whistles, using an app on an Android-based smartphone or tablet can lighten your load. (And in case you’re wondering why we're not discussing iOS apps, it’s because Apple won’t allow developers access to the Wi-Fi data, thus there can’t be any legit Wi-Fi surveying apps without jailbreaking the device.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Moving to a private cloud tips and considerations

There are a lot of reasons you may be thinking about moving to a private cloud environment. Perhaps you need more security, or maybe you feel the risks of public cloud have outweighed the benefits. But you’re still not certain that this version of web-scale networking is right for your company, and you’re wondering what’s involved in moving from a public cloud to a private one. Not surprisingly, there are several factors to consider when making the move from public to private clouds. Public clouds have their place, but there are many good reasons to switch. In this post we’ll covers some private cloud tips and considerations.

For an even deeper look at reasons you may want to switch to a private cloud, check out our education page, Private Cloud vs. Public Cloud.

Level set: Defining public, private and hybrid clouds

Private clouds take several different forms: semi-private cloud, virtual private cloud (hybrid), and fully private cloud. Each one has their advantages and disadvantages.

Semi-private clouds are similar to public clouds where the cloud is being hosted by a provider, but the access to the cloud is through private channels and not over the Internet. This reduces the problem of lag Continue reading

LoRaWAN key to building full-stack production IoT networks

Outside of the consumer market, real examples of the Internet of Things (IoT) often disappoint because in the end, they are limited by one or more of the IoT’s constraints: tens of billions of devices, cheap to acquire, cheap to deploy, security and ubiquitous connections.I spoke with Dave Kjendal, Senet’s vice president of engineering and CTO, because he has built products and networks that meet these constraints. It was insightful because Senet has produced products using the entire IoT stack. Senet’s evolution began in 2009 with low-cost fuel oil tank sensors communicating over the unlicensed airwaves to optimize delivery routes. The company now operates a general purpose LoRaWAN IoT network that covers one-fortieth of the United States. LoRaWAN is an implementation of low-power, wide-area networks designed to transmit small messages at a frequency of about one an hour. It serves about 55 percent of IoT WAN connectivity. It is a different technical approach than what the mobile carriers promise with 3GPP, which is yet to be standardized.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Contrarian Reading on Net Neutrality

‘net neturality has been much in the news recently; a while back I did a piece for Tech Target on some of the complexities here, and I ran across three other articles that provide a contrarian view—not what you are likely to hear from the major edge providers. Since I am always trying to understand both sides of an issue, I am always looking for solid, well written views on both sides. It is hard to dig behind the hype in our 140 character world, but it is also important.

Hence this post, with pointers to my older post and three other articles of interest. Warning: some of these are more trenchant and contrarian than others.

The primary foundation of net neutrality explained is this: Providers should not be able to give services they offer any advantage over a competing service running over their network. The perfect example might seem to be voice services. Suppose you purchase access to the internet from a company that not only sells internet access, but also voice services. Now, suppose the provider decides to sell its voice service as superior in quality to any other available voice service — and guarantee its service is Continue reading

IoT in the office: Plantronics service blocks annoying noises

The Internet of Things (IoT) is creating interesting, new business opportunities. This week, Plantronics announced a new noise-as-a-service portfolio called Habitat Soundscaping. The solution set is designed to counteract the productivity-killing side effects of open offices.Habitat Soundscaping sounds a bit crazy, so let’s hear them out.Plantronics has been around since the early 1960s when it launched lightweight aviation headsets. Its business opportunities expanded from pilots to include astronauts, call center agents, knowledge workers and mobile professionals. Headsets evolved from big clunky proprietary interfaces through 2.5 and 3.5 mm jacks to USB to Bluetooth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: The Great Ethereum HAck

Around 12:00 PST, an unknown attacker exploited a critical flaw in the Parity multi-signature wallet on the Ethereum network, draining three massive wallets of over $31,000,000 worth of Ether in a matter of minutes. Given a couple more hours, the hacker could’ve made off with over $180,000,000 from vulnerable wallets. —Haseeb Qureshi @ Free Code Camp

The post Worth Reading: The Great Ethereum HAck appeared first on rule 11 reader.

IDG Contributor Network: Can SD-WANs meet standards requirements?

Any innovative technology faces a battle of doubt. When Amazon first rolled out AWS, few could imagine servers running in the cloud. Before Salesforce, many thought CRM to be too critical to run as SaaS. I find SD-WANs to be facing a similar battle. It’s inconceivable to many that an SD-WAN could replace MPLS. This is particularly true for security teams.At one recent client, a chemical company, the team was looking to transition from MPLS to SD-WAN. The security group, though, could not accept the fact that SD-WANs met the requirements stipulated by CFATS (Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards) guiding the chemical industry.It was a classic example of professionals getting hooked into the implementation and failing to consider alternative approaches to addressing the same need. CFATS professionals assume MPLS and firewalls to be mandated by the standard. MPLS being the de facto transport. As for firewalls, “Organizations understand and feel safe with firewalls,” says Nirvik Nandy, my partner and the president and CEO, of Red Lantern, a security and compliance consultancy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Can SD-WANs meet standards requirements?

Any innovative technology faces a battle of doubt. When Amazon first rolled out AWS, few could imagine servers running in the cloud. Before Salesforce, many thought CRM to be too critical to run as SaaS. I find SD-WANs to be facing a similar battle. It’s inconceivable to many that an SD-WAN could replace MPLS. This is particularly true for security teams.At one recent client, a chemical company, the team was looking to transition from MPLS to SD-WAN. The security group, though, could not accept the fact that SD-WANs met the requirements stipulated by CFATS (Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards) guiding the chemical industry.It was a classic example of professionals getting hooked into the implementation and failing to consider alternative approaches to addressing the same need. CFATS professionals assume MPLS and firewalls to be mandated by the standard. MPLS being the de facto transport. As for firewalls, “Organizations understand and feel safe with firewalls,” says Nirvik Nandy, my partner and the president and CEO, of Red Lantern, a security and compliance consultancy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Can SD-WANs meet standards requirements?

Any innovative technology faces a battle of doubt. When Amazon first rolled out AWS, few could imagine servers running in the cloud. Before Salesforce, many thought CRM to be too critical to run as SaaS. I find SD-WANs to be facing a similar battle. It’s inconceivable to many that an SD-WAN could replace MPLS. This is particularly true for security teams.At one recent client, a chemical company, the team was looking to transition from MPLS to SD-WAN. The security group, though, could not accept the fact that SD-WANs met the requirements stipulated by CFATS (Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards) guiding the chemical industry.It was a classic example of professionals getting hooked into the implementation and failing to consider alternative approaches to addressing the same need. CFATS professionals assume MPLS and firewalls to be mandated by the standard. MPLS being the de facto transport. As for firewalls, “Organizations understand and feel safe with firewalls,” says Nirvik Nandy, my partner and the president and CEO, of Red Lantern, a security and compliance consultancy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

13% off Zeiss Pre-Moistened Lens Cleaning Wipes – Deal Alert

Zeiss provides an effective way to clean and preserve valuable optics. Whether used with camera lenses, eyeglasses, sunglasses, telescopes, or spotting scopes, these non-abrasive pre-moistened wipes are safe and effective. These ammonia-free wipes are appropriate for anti-reflective coatings and may also be used to clean laptop, GPS, tablet, or cell phone screens without leaving streaks. Designed for a single use, these wipes come in individual disposable packets.  The wipes are highly rated on Amazon, where it currently averages 4.7 out of 5 stars (read reviews). Its typical list price of $29.99 has been reduced 13% to $25.99 for a pack of 400. See the discounted Lens Cleaning Wipes now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Telecom Heroics in Somalia

Internet service in and around Mogadishu, Somalia suffered a crippling blow recently as the East African Submarine System (EASSy) cable, which provides service to the area, was cut by the anchor of a passing ship.  The government of Somalia estimated that the impact of the submarine cable cut was US$10 million per day and detained the MSC Alice, the cargo vessel that reportedly caused the damage.

The cable was repaired on 17 July. The incident is the latest in a series of recent submarine cable breaks (see Nigeria, Ecuador, Congo-Brazzaville and Vietnam) that remind us how dependent much of the world remains on a limited set of physical connections which maintain connectivity to the global Internet.

Internet in Mogadishu

 

The story of how high-speed Internet service came to Mogadishu is nothing short of remarkable.  It involved Somali telecommunications personnel staring down the threat of a local terrorist group (Al-Shabaab) in order to establish Somalia’s first submarine cable connection.  This submarine cable link would be vital if Mogadishu were to have any hope of improving its local economy and ending decades of violence and hunger.  However, in January 2014, Al-Shabaab Continue reading

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