Failure to communicate helps ransomware prosper

At least one of the major reasons for the ongoing exponential increase in ransomware as a criminal business model could be summed up with the iconic line from the prison boss in 1967’s “Cool Hand Luke”: “What we got here is a failure to communicate.”That was a recurring theme from those on a “Ransomware Panel” Thursday at SOURCE Boston 2017, moderated by Paul Roberts, founder and editor in chief of The Security Ledger.The communication breakdown occurs at all levels, the panelists said, starting with victims. ■ MORE FROM SOURCE Boston: Cyber infrastructure: Too big to fail, and failing Frank McLaughlin, a Boston Police detective, said when a business gets hit with ransomware, “the police are the last people they want to call, for obvious reasons. It becomes a public record.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mapping Intel’s Tick Tock Clock Onto Xeon Processors

Chip maker Intel takes Moore’s Law very seriously, and not just because one of its founders observed the consistent rate at which the price of a transistor scales down with each tweak in manufacturing. Moore’s Law is not just personal with Intel. It is business because Intel is a chip maker first and a chip designer second, and that is how it has been able to take over the desktops and datacenters of the world.

Last month, the top brass in Intel’s chip manufacturing operations vigorously defended Moore’s Law, contending that not only was the two year cadence of

Mapping Intel’s Tick Tock Clock Onto Xeon Processors was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

13% off Seagate Backup Plus Slim 2TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0 – Deal Alert

The Backup Plus Slim Portable Drive is the simple, one-click way to protect and share your entire digital life. At 12.1 millimeters thin and a generous 2TB of storage, it’s ready to take with you and go. All your photos, movies, and videos can be backed up using the downloadable Seagate Dashboard software, including the ones you’ve shared on Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube. Run a one-click backup or schedule an automatic backup plan to protect your files on your Backup Plus Slim Portable Drive at your convenience. High-speed USB 3.0 and 2.0 connectivity offers plug-and-play functionality without the need of an external power supply. Compatible with both PC and Mac systems. The drive averages 4 out of 5 stars from over 11,600 people on Amazon (read reviews). The typical list price has been reduced 13% to just $69.99 for the 2TB model. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

U.S. military wants white-hat hackers to target its cyber security systems

The U.S. military, which continues its interest in bug bounty programs as a way to improve cybersecurity, is launching a new contest next month.Called “Hack the Air Force,” the new program will put certain of the branch’s Web sites up as targets for a set of international hackers who have been vetted by HackerOne, which is running the program.+More on Network World: IBM: Financial services industry bombarded by malware, security threats+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

U.S. military wants white-hat hackers to target its cyber security systems

The U.S. military, which continues its interest in bug bounty programs as a way to improve cybersecurity, is launching a new contest next month.Called “Hack the Air Force,” the new program will put certain of the branch’s Web sites up as targets for a set of international hackers who have been vetted by HackerOne, which is running the program.+More on Network World: IBM: Financial services industry bombarded by malware, security threats+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple fanboys cited as Merriam-Webster herds ‘sheeple’ into dictionary

“Wake up!” the good folks a Merriam-Webster just tweeted. “Sheeple is in the dictionary now.” Merriam-Webster via Twitter And while the induction of such casual slang is sure to offend some, none will likely take great umbrage than Apple zealots, whose zealotry is cited by the dictionary as an example of the proper use of the word.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple fanboys cited as Merriam-Webster herds ‘sheeple’ into dictionary

“Wake up!” the good folks a Merriam-Webster just tweeted. “Sheeple is in the dictionary now.” Merriam-Webster via Twitter And while the induction of such casual slang is sure to offend some, none will likely take great umbrage than Apple zealots, whose zealotry is cited by the dictionary as an example of the proper use of the word.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

60% off SanDisk Extreme PRO 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive, Speeds Up To 260MB/s – Deal Alert

The SanDisk Extreme PRO USB 3.0 Flash Drive features a sizable 128GB of storage, and read speeds of up to 260MB/s lets you easily transfer a full-length movie in seconds. The sophisticated design and durable aluminum metal casing help to protect against every day wear and tear on the outside, while the included SanDisk SecureAccess software provides 128-bit AES file encryption and password protection on the inside for your private files. The SanDisk Extreme PRO USB 3.0 Flash Drive is backed with a lifetime limited warranty. It currently averages 4.6 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 530 people (80% rate the full 5 stars: see reviews here), and its typical list price has been reduced generously to just $52.10. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A Trillion Edge Graph on a Single Commodity Node

Efficiently and quickly chewing through one trillion edges of a complex graph is no longer in itself a standalone achievement, but doing so on a single node, albeit with some acceleration and ultra-fast storage, is definitely worth noting.

There are many paths to processing trillions of edges efficiently and with high performance as demonstrated by companies like Facebook with its distributed trillion-edge scaling effort across 200 nodes in 2015 and Microsoft with a similar feat as well.

However, these approaches all required larger clusters; something that comes with obvious cost but over the course of scaling across nodes, latency as

A Trillion Edge Graph on a Single Commodity Node was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Don’t Be My Guest

I’m interrupting my regularly scheduled musing about technology and networking to talk today about something that I’m increasingly seeing come across my communications channels. The growing market for people to “guest post” on blogs. Rather than continually point folks to my policies on this, I thought it might be good to break down why I choose to do what I do.

The Archive Of Tom

First and foremost, let me reiterate for the record: I do not accept guest posts on my site.

Note that this has nothing to do with your skills as a writer, your ability to create “compelling, fresh, and exciting content”, or your particular celebrity status as the CTO/CIO/COMGWTFBBQO of some hot, fresh, exciting new company. I’m sure if Kurt Vonnegut’s ghost or J.K. Rowling wanted to make a guest post on my blog, the answer would still be the same.

Why? Because this site is the archive of my thoughts. Because I want this to be an archive of my viewpoints on technology. I want people to know how I’ve grown and changed and come to love things like SDN over the years. What I don’t want is for people to need to Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Folks are fantasizing about Amazon’s Alexa

Humans are developing extreme emotional connections with their virtual assistants—so much so that about a quarter of regular users say they have sexual fantasies about those digital voice assistants.That’s according to new research by J. Walter Thompson and Mindshare (pdf).The virtual assistants include devices such as Amazon’s Alexa and Echo brands and Apple’s Siri smartphone virtual assistant. They’re used for giving verbal instructions to and consequently operating residential Internet of Things applications, playing music and reading the news out loud, among other things.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

PQ Show 113: All About DNS At IETF 98

Todays Priority Queue is all about DNS, including scale, security, privacy, and DDoS protection. Well also get into mechanisms for DNS authentication and operational issues. This episode was recorded live at IETF 98 with guest Tim Wicinski. The post PQ Show 113: All About DNS At IETF 98 appeared first on Packet Pushers.