Your security mirages

Yes, I was hit last week. Forensics are in progress. I got doxxed, too.It has made me realize that most of systems security is an illusion. Here are my favorite alternate realities:1. Everything is safe behind the firewall.Ever heard of UBFWI—as in User’s Been Fooling With It? While IPD/IPS and firewall networked-technology has improved so vastly, there’s nothing like a user with an infected laptop to bring in a lulu.2. Obscure operating systems never get hit. Hackers only go for the gold with Windows.Here, let me laugh out loud and roll on the floor. Mine was an obscure server version on an obscure branch of an obscure BSD limb. Listen to the sound of lunch getting eaten: mine. Chomp, chomp, burp.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Your security mirages

Yes, I was hit last week. Forensics are in progress. I got doxxed, too.It has made me realize that most of systems security is an illusion. Here are my favorite alternate realities:1. Everything is safe behind the firewall.Ever heard of UBFWI—as in User’s Been Fooling With It? While IPD/IPS and firewall networked-technology has improved so vastly, there’s nothing like a user with an infected laptop to bring in a lulu.2. Obscure operating systems never get hit. Hackers only go for the gold with Windows.Here, let me laugh out loud and roll on the floor. Mine was an obscure server version on an obscure branch of an obscure BSD limb. Listen to the sound of lunch getting eaten: mine. Chomp, chomp, burp.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Best Black Friday 2016 deals on Apple iPhones, iPads, watches and more

Apple appetiteApple traditionally gives retailers little leeway on iPhone, iPad and Mac promotions, even around Black Friday, but retailers do find ways around these restrictions by bundling phones with gift cards and other goodies. Apple typically slips a few Black Friday deals out close to the Thanksgiving holiday. But here are deals we know about already on iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches and more. (Black Friday watchers such as BFads and Best Black Friday have been a big help in keeping tabs on deals.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

6 tips for buying or selling a smart home

Recently, one of our neighbors sold their home and they had a Google Nest thermostat. This became an issue during the sale process. The prospective buyers wanted the Nest to remain, but current owners wanted to take it with them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

BGP Tools for the DFZ (2)

In the last post in this series, I looked at the whois database to make certain the registration information for a particular domain name is correct. Now it’s time to dig a little deeper into the DFZ to see what we can find. To put this series in the widest context possible, we will begin by assuming we don’t actually know the Autonomous System number associated with the domain name we’re looking for—which means we will need to somehow find out which AS number belongs to the organization who’s routes we are trying to understand better. The best place to start in our quest for an AS number that matches a domain name is peeringdb. The front page of peeringdb looks like this—

peering-db-01

As the front page says, peeringdb primarily exists to facilitate peering among providers. Assume you find you are a large college, and you find you have a lot of traffic heading to LinkedIn—that, in fact, this traffic is consuming a large amount of your transit traffic through your upstream provider. You would really like to offload this traffic in some way directly to LinkedIn, so you can stop paying the transit costs to this particular network. But Continue reading

19% off Motorola MR350R 35-Mile Range FRS/GMRS Two-Way Radio – Deal Alert

Motorola Talkabout MR350 is the ultimate communication tool for the outdoor enthusiast. It boasts a range of up to 35 miles (actual mileage will vary based on a variety of conditions) and is loaded with every possible radio feature. It's also both lightweight and rugged, with extra large buttons to help you operate even with gloves on. The MR350 features 11 weather channels (7 NOAA) with alert features, 22 channels each with 121 privacy codes for superior interference protection, iVOX hands-free communication, and a built-in flashlight. Currently averaging 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 1,300 people (read reviews), its list price of $79.99 has been discounted to $64.99 for a pair of two radios. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Why you need a digital workplace

In February of 2013, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer banned working from home across the entire company. Even employees who were hired on as fulltime remote workers were asked to relocate their desks to the Yahoo offices or lose their jobs.The reasoning?According to Mayer's memo: “To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. … Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Kaspersky: Windows-bundled Defender is anticompetitive, Russia opens antitrust probe

After Eugene Kaspersky, the founder of Kaspersky Lab, ripped into Microsoft for anticompetitive behavior in Windows 10, the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) opened a case against Microsoft for “abusing dominance.”Microsoft claimed to have a “long history of cooperation” with Kaspersky and that it is “committed to work in full compliance with Russian law.”Yet, Russia has already decided to block Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, since the law requires Russian citizens’ personal data to be stored on servers within its country. In the past, Microsoft made LinkedIn censorship changes to cater to China, as opposed to being blocked like Google and Facebook. It remains to be seen if Microsoft will localize Russian users’ data as the country’s law demands. The New York Times added that it was unclear why LinkedIn was targeted, “rather than any other major social networking site,” but that is a “sign of growing tensions for American tech companies operating” in Russia.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Kaspersky: Windows-bundled Defender is anticompetitive, Russia opens antitrust probe

After Eugene Kaspersky, the founder of Kaspersky Lab, ripped into Microsoft for anticompetitive behavior in Windows 10, the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) opened a case against Microsoft for “abusing dominance.”Microsoft claimed to have a “long history of cooperation” with Kaspersky and that it is “committed to work in full compliance with Russian law.”Yet, Russia has already decided to block Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, since the law requires Russian citizens’ personal data to be stored on servers within its country. In the past, Microsoft made LinkedIn censorship changes to cater to China, as opposed to being blocked like Google and Facebook. It remains to be seen if Microsoft will localize Russian users’ data as the country’s law demands. The New York Times added that it was unclear why LinkedIn was targeted, “rather than any other major social networking site,” but that is a “sign of growing tensions for American tech companies operating” in Russia.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Kaspersky: Windows bundled Defender is anti-competitive, Russia opens antitrust probe

After Eugene Kaspersky, the founder of Kaspersky Lab, ripped into Microsoft for anti-competitive behavior in Windows 10, the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) opened a case against Microsoft for “abusing dominance.”Microsoft claimed to have a “long history of cooperation” with Kaspersky and that it is “committed to work in full compliance with Russian law.”Yet, Russia has already decided to block Microsoft-owned LinkedIn since the law requires Russian citizens’ personal data to be stored on servers within its country. In the past, Microsoft made LinkedIn censorship changes to cater to China, as opposed to being blocked like Google and Facebook. It remains to be seen if Microsoft will localize Russian users’ data as the country’s law demands. The New York Times added that it was unclear why LinkedIn was targeted, “rather than any other major social networking site,” but that is a “sign of growing tensions for American tech companies operating” in Russia.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Kaspersky: Windows bundled Defender is anti-competitive, Russia opens antitrust probe

After Eugene Kaspersky, the founder of Kaspersky Lab, ripped into Microsoft for anti-competitive behavior in Windows 10, the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) opened a case against Microsoft for “abusing dominance.”Microsoft claimed to have a “long history of cooperation” with Kaspersky and that it is “committed to work in full compliance with Russian law.”Yet, Russia has already decided to block Microsoft-owned LinkedIn since the law requires Russian citizens’ personal data to be stored on servers within its country. In the past, Microsoft made LinkedIn censorship changes to cater to China, as opposed to being blocked like Google and Facebook. It remains to be seen if Microsoft will localize Russian users’ data as the country’s law demands. The New York Times added that it was unclear why LinkedIn was targeted, “rather than any other major social networking site,” but that is a “sign of growing tensions for American tech companies operating” in Russia.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cloud traffic set to quadruple: Looks like those pipes are going to run hot

Every year Cisco produces a Global Cloud Index, a report that was developed to estimate (and it is just an estimate) global data center traffic growth and general trends. The report is a complementary resource to Cisco’s more general IP network studies, but it provides more meat for which cloud-specific pundits can chew on.+ Also on Network World: Enterprise IT pros see most workloads in cloud by 2018 +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cloud traffic set to quadruple: Looks like those pipes are going to run hot

Every year Cisco produces a Global Cloud Index, a report that was developed to estimate (and it is just an estimate) global data center traffic growth and general trends. The report is a complementary resource to Cisco’s more general IP network studies, but it provides more meat for which cloud-specific pundits can chew on.+ Also on Network World: Enterprise IT pros see most workloads in cloud by 2018 +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Startup Forward Networks helps search, protect and predict network behavior

A team founded by PhD researchers who studied some of the first instantiations of software defined networking at Stanford University have a new startup named Forward Networks that help users understand network behavior while protecting and predicting how changes will impact the system.The key to Forward Networks' technology is an algorithm developed at Stanford that allows a software copy of a network to be created. Using this copy, users can run tests on it before implementing changes into production and identify the cause of a problem when something is wrong, says CEO David Erickson.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: What you need to know about Microservices +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Startup Forward Networks helps search, protect and predict network behavior

A team founded by PhD researchers who studied some of the first instantiations of software defined networking at Stanford University have a new startup named Forward Networks that help users understand network behavior while protecting and predicting how changes will impact the system.The key to Forward Networks' technology is an algorithm developed at Stanford that allows a software copy of a network to be created. Using this copy, users can run tests on it before implementing changes into production and identify the cause of a problem when something is wrong, says CEO David Erickson.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: What you need to know about Microservices +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

UK approves extradition of British hacker to the US

A U.K. official has ordered the extradition of a British man to the U.S. on charges of hacking government computers belonging to NASA and the Department of Defense. Lauri Love, a 31-year-old hacktivist, has been fighting his extradition, but on Monday, U.K. Home Secretary Amber Rudd signed the order. "Mr. Love has been charged with various computer hacking offences which included targeting U.S. military and federal government agencies," the U.K. Home Office said in a statement. The U.S. originally charged Love in 2013 for allegedly stealing confidential data from thousands of government employees, including Social Security numbers and credit card details. U.S. investigators accuse Love and his accomplices of causing millions of dollars in damages.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

UK approves extradition of British hacker to the US

A U.K. official has ordered the extradition of a British man to the U.S. on charges of hacking government computers belonging to NASA and the Department of Defense. Lauri Love, a 31-year-old hacktivist, has been fighting his extradition, but on Monday, U.K. Home Secretary Amber Rudd signed the order. "Mr. Love has been charged with various computer hacking offences which included targeting U.S. military and federal government agencies," the U.K. Home Office said in a statement. The U.S. originally charged Love in 2013 for allegedly stealing confidential data from thousands of government employees, including Social Security numbers and credit card details. U.S. investigators accuse Love and his accomplices of causing millions of dollars in damages.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Small businesses now get CRM tool with their Office subscription

Small businesses that need a tool to track their relationships with customers now have a new weapon from Microsoft in their arsenal.On Monday, the company launched Outlook Customer Manager, a lightweight customer relationship management (CRM) system. It allows users to track their customers, manage deals in progress, track tasks and more, all from their Outlook email client.The launch builds on Microsoft's ongoing push to capture the small business market. Earlier this year, the company launched Bookings, a service designed to help service-focused businesses manage customer appointments.It's a move by Microsoft to further compete with Salesforce and other players in the cloud CRM space. Companies that already have an Office 365 Business Premium subscription may not want to choose one of the competing CRM systems, if they can get OCM for free.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here