Reckless abuse (again) of surveillance spyware that was sold to governments

We keep seeing a common theme when it comes to spyware sold exclusively to governments, surveillance spyware which is marketed as lawful tools to help governments fight crime and terrorism; those remote intrusion solutions are increasingly used to spy on people who the governments consider to be a threat because those people are revealing the truth to the public. The latest example comes from Mexico, showing how powerful spyware was used to target journalists investigating high-level official corruption and human rights defenders investigating government-sponsored human rights abuses.The surveillance spyware Pegasus (pdf), sold by the Israel-based NSO Group, is meant to remotely take complete control of mobile phones. While this isn’t the first time the stealthy Pegasus has been abused by governments for purposes other than preventing and investigating crimes, Citizen Lab said it is the first time a minor has been targeted with infection attempts using governmental spyware. Why target a kid? To spy on his mother.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Reckless abuse of surveillance spyware sold to governments (again)

We keep seeing a common theme when it comes to spyware sold exclusively to governments, surveillance spyware which is marketed as lawful tools to help governments fight crime and terrorism; those remote intrusion solutions are increasingly used to spy on people who the governments consider to be a threat because those people are revealing the truth to the public. The latest example comes from Mexico, showing how powerful spyware was used to target journalists investigating high-level official corruption and human rights defenders investigating government-sponsored human rights abuses.The surveillance spyware Pegasus (pdf), sold by the Israel-based NSO Group, is meant to remotely take complete control of mobile phones. While this isn’t the first time the stealthy Pegasus has been abused by governments for purposes other than preventing and investigating crimes, Citizen Lab said it is the first time a minor has been targeted with infection attempts using governmental spyware. Why target a kid? To spy on his mother.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

My Cisco Live 2017 Schedule

It is that time once again.  CiscoLive 2017 – Summer Camp for Geeks!  This will be my 15th CiscoLive/Networkers. What is my absolute #1 suggestion to anyone going to a CiscoLive event?  Easy – “Begin with the End in Mind“.  Know what your priorities are and then schedule your week accordingly.

So… here you go.  My CiscoLive (CLUS) priorities and schedule for the week.

  • Teach
  • Recharge
  • Learn
  • Play and Have Fun

 

64% off Anker Astro E1 Ultra Compact High Speed Portable Charger – Deal Alert

This inexpensive smartphone charger from Anker is the size of a candy bar, and has enough juice to recharge any smartphone, including the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, at least 1-2 times over. It's discounted 64% to just $18. The Astro E1 currently averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 8,200 people on Amazon (81% rate 5 stars: See reviews), and it's listed there as a #1 best-seller. See the attractively priced Anker Astro E1 charger now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

30% off Lexar Professional USB 3.0 Dual-Slot Reader – Deal Alert

While the high-speed Professional USB 3.0 Dual-Slot Reader supports the latest high-speed CF and SD formats, it’s also backwards compatible with standard CF and SD cards, as well as USB 2.0. The Lexar Professional USB 3.0 Dual-Slot Reader has the ability to read from both card slots simultaneously, and it also allows for easy file transfer from one card to another. Leverages SuperSpeed USB 3.0 technology for high-speed file transfers, with USB interface speed up to 500MB/s. The reader averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 770 people on Amazon (read reviews), where the typical list price has been reduced 30% to just $24.45. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network engineering is key to meeting IoT expectations

The devil is in the details – best describes IoT. Computing will vanish says Walt Mossberg. And the public and data scientists gush with optimism at the thought of 20 billion to 50 billion connected IoT devices emitting an endless stream of data.Getting the billions of devices connected will be no small task. The thought of all the IoT applications of all that data is nothing less than seductive. Cities will self-regulate motor vehicle and public transportation saving commuters hours of travel time. Sensors will alert us and doctors when mom is not keeping to her pharmaceutical regimen.And, all these IoT devices will give context to people’s daily lives. Lights dimming or illuminating to match our mood or actions, refrigerators will warn that we have either eaten too much or not exercised enough before opening the door. Our designer glasses with integrated Microsoft Hololens technology will project the most salient context of the moment at that location.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mid-range models ring the changes in Top500 supercomputer ranking

With no change at the top of the latest Top500.org supercomputer list, you need to look further down the rankings to see the real story.Top500.org published the 49th edition of its twice-yearly supercomputer league table on Monday, and once again the Chinese computers 93-petaflop Sunway TaihuLight and 33.9-petaflop Tianhe 2 lead the pack.An upgrade has doubled the performance of Switzerland's GPU-based Piz Daint to 19.6 petaflops (19.6 quadrillion floating-point operations per second), boosting it from eighth to third place and nudging five other computers down a place. The top U.S. computer, Titan, is now in fourth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mid-range models ring the changes in Top500 supercomputer ranking

With no change at the top of the latest Top500.org supercomputer list, you need to look further down the rankings to see the real story.Top500.org published the 49th edition of its twice-yearly supercomputer league table on Monday, and once again the Chinese computers 93-petaflop Sunway TaihuLight and 33.9-petaflop Tianhe 2 lead the pack.An upgrade has doubled the performance of Switzerland's GPU-based Piz Daint to 19.6 petaflops (19.6 quadrillion floating-point operations per second), boosting it from eighth to third place and nudging five other computers down a place. The top U.S. computer, Titan, is now in fourth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mid-range supercomputers surge on the Top500 list of fastest machines

With no change at the top of the latest Top500.org supercomputer list, you need to look further down the rankings to see the real story.Top500.org published the 49th edition of its twice-yearly supercomputer league table on Monday, and once again the Chinese computers 93-petaflop Sunway TaihuLight and 33.9-petaflop Tianhe 2 lead the pack.An upgrade has doubled the performance of Switzerland's GPU-based Piz Daint to 19.6 petaflops (19.6 quadrillion floating-point operations per second), boosting it from eighth to third place and nudging five other computers down a place. The top U.S. computer, Titan, is now in fourth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mid-range supercomputers surge on the Top500 list of fastest machines

With no change at the top of the latest Top500.org supercomputer list, you need to look further down the rankings to see the real story.Top500.org published the 49th edition of its twice-yearly supercomputer league table on Monday, and once again the Chinese computers 93-petaflop Sunway TaihuLight and 33.9-petaflop Tianhe 2 lead the pack.An upgrade has doubled the performance of Switzerland's GPU-based Piz Daint to 19.6 petaflops (19.6 quadrillion floating-point operations per second), boosting it from eighth to third place and nudging five other computers down a place. The top U.S. computer, Titan, is now in fourth.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

VMware NSX Achieves Common Criteria EAL 2+ Certification

VMware NSX 6.3 for vSphere has achieved Common Criteria certification at the Evaluation Assurance  Level (EAL) 2+ (view the certification report)(view the press release). This marks yet another milestone of our commitment to providing industry leading certified solutions for customers from federal departments and agencies, international governments and agencies, and other highly regulated industries and sectors. Along with FIPS, DISA-STIG, ICSA Labs firewall certification, and several other independent evaluations, the Common Criteria compliance accreditation validates NSX as a reliable network virtualization platform that satisfies stringent government security standards.

Common Criteria is an international set of guidelines (ISO-15408) that provides a methodology framework for evaluating security features and capabilities of Information Technology (IT) security products. It is mutually recognized by 26 member nations.

Regulatory compliance is one of the challenges faced by government IT departments in their efforts to modernize legacy systems, and Common Criteria is often required for procurement sales. The Common Criteria accreditation affirms that NSX for vSphere complies with the security requirements specified within the designated level and simplifies the introduction of NSX into government and highly regulated environments. NSX enables customers in the public sector to implement network Continue reading

Moving to Summer Schedule

The inevitable summer decline of visitors has started, so I'm switching (like every summer) to a lower publishing frequency. Given my current focus (here and here) expect one network automation post and one other in-depth post every week… and maybe an occasional this-is-worth-reading link.


Working in the summer office ;)

Take some time off, enjoy the vacations, and I hope to meet you in the September online course ;)

Cray CTO On The Cambrian Compute Explosion

What goes around comes around. After fighting so hard to drive volume economics in the HPC arena with relatively inexpensive X86 clusters in the past twenty years, those economies of scale are running out of gas. That is why we are seeing an explosion in the diversity of compute, not just on the processor, but in adjunct computing elements that make a processor look smarter than it really is.

The desire of system architects to try everything because it is fun has to be counterbalanced by a desire to make systems that can be manufactured at a price that is …

Cray CTO On The Cambrian Compute Explosion was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Knights Landing Can Stand Alone—But Often Won’t

It is a time of interesting architectural shifts in the world of supercomputing but one would be hard-pressed to prove that using the mid-year list of the top 500 HPC systems in the world. We are still very much in an X86 dominated world with the relatively stable number of accelerated systems to spice the numbers, but there are big changes afoot—as we described in depth when the rankings were released this morning.

This year, the list began to lose one of its designees in the list of “accelerator/offload” architectures as the Xeon Phi moves from offload model to host …

Knights Landing Can Stand Alone—But Often Won’t was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

HPC Poised For Big Changes, Top To Bottom

There is a lot of change coming down the pike in the high performance computing arena, but it has not happened as yet and that is reflected in the current Top 500 rankings of supercomputers in the world. But the June 2017 list gives us a glimpse into the future, which we think will be as diverse and contentious from an architectural standpoint as in the past.

No one architecture is winning and taking all, and many different architectures are getting a piece of the budget action. This means HPC is a healthy and vibrant ecosystem and not, like enterprise …

HPC Poised For Big Changes, Top To Bottom was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

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