Snowden allowed to stay in Russia longer

U.S. National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden will be allowed to stay in Russia for "another couple of years," according to a spokeswoman for the government there. The Russian government has extended the residence permit for Snowden, the former NSA contractor charged with espionage for leaking details of U.S. surveillance operations, said Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia's Foreign Ministry. Zakharova announced the extension on her Facebook page late Tuesday. Zakharova's post came in response to a column by Michael Morell, the former deputy director of the U.S. CIA, who said Russia can return Snowden to the U.S. as a "perfect inauguration gift" to President-elect Donald Trump.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Snowden allowed to stay in Russia longer

U.S. National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden will be allowed to stay in Russia for "another couple of years," according to a spokeswoman for the government there. The Russian government has extended the residence permit for Snowden, the former NSA contractor charged with espionage for leaking details of U.S. surveillance operations, said Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia's Foreign Ministry. Zakharova announced the extension on her Facebook page late Tuesday. Zakharova's post came in response to a column by Michael Morell, the former deputy director of the U.S. CIA, who said Russia can return Snowden to the U.S. as a "perfect inauguration gift" to President-elect Donald Trump.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Here come the Super Bowl 2017 techie ads

As one of those Super Bowl watchers who prefers the football over the commercials, I try my best to get the ads out of the way before the big game, which this year will be played in Houston on Sunday, Feb. 6.Here's a running list of Super Bowl 51 commercials from technology companies -- I'll leave it up to you to decide whether brands are getting their $5 million worth. So far, it looks like tech companies will take a back seat to beer, candy and other brands, in terms of the number of advertisers, on Super Bowl Sunday.MORE: Techiest commercials from Super Bowl 50, in 2016To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What The Cloud Model Means For Enterprise Tech

Musing: ITC rejects de facto standard defense (337-TA-944, Cisco v. Arista) | Essential Patent Blog

Detailed but accessible legal review of Cisco vs Arista case. Dated July 2016 so it doesn’t cover the latest developments but provides a lot of insight into the legal.

My current view on this issue:

1. Cisco is validating Arista as a serious, viable competitor. On balance, Arista gets more out of this than Cisco does and doing a nice job of being the under dog.
2. Rumours suggest that its personal matter to attack Arsita for some executives and not a business matter.
3. Customers perceive Cisco as wasting time and energy on legal matters instead of innovating new products or improving product quality.
4. Customers money is being wasted on lawyers instead of solutions.

In December 2015, Cisco Systems, Inc. (Cisco) filed a complaint alleging that certain network devices (switches) imported by Arista Networks, Inc. (Arista) infringed several Cisco patents directed to computer networks.  Arista raised several equitable defenses based, in part, on allegations that Cisco submitted a request for comments document RFC 5517 to IETF and promoted RFC 5517 to the public generally as an “informal standard” for private virtual local area networks (PVLANs) for which Cisco would not assert its patents or would license on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) Continue reading

Cyber scum suckers hit cancer agency with ransomware, threaten to contact families

Some cyber scum suckers sunk to an all-time low, hitting an Indiana Cancer Services agency with ransomware before threatening “to contact family members of living and deceased cancer clients, donors and community partners” if the $43,000 ransom was not paid.Cancer Services of East Central Indiana-Little Red Door, an independent, non-profit agency based in Muncie, Indiana, became a victim of a ransomware attack a week ago. This is an organization whose goals include helping to “reduce the financial and emotional burdens of those dealing with a cancer diagnosis.”The attackers did not leave the traditional ransom demand note, oh no, but chose to personally reach out to the agency’s executive director, president and vice president to make the extortion demands clear. This makes it seem more like a targeted attack and less of one that was a result of opportunity. It was also at least the second time that week that attackers attempted to ransom sensitive patient information.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows 10 peeping: Microsoft fails to understand the uproar

I’ve been covering Microsoft Windows since the 1980s. There have been several regime changes, each with its own distinct ego. Some regimes listened eagerly, some didn’t. This one is failing, but I believe the current fingers-in-the-ears stance are related more to revenue than to ideology. Microsoft wants data about you. To do so, Windows 10 is riddled with phone-home messaging. Some sites document dozens of IP addresses and add even more DNS calls for your machine’s data. We’re told that the data isn’t personally identifiable and that it’s used to improve QA. No one said Microsoft didn’t need QA. New versions of Windows have always had holes big enough to fly airliners through, but Microsoft finally got some sense when in Windows XP SP2 and Vista, they demoted user space. Finally. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cyber scum suckers hit cancer agency with ransomware, threaten to contact families

Some cyber scum suckers sunk to an all-time low, hitting an Indiana Cancer Services agency with ransomware before threatening “to contact family members of living and deceased cancer clients, donors and community partners” if the $43,000 ransom was not paid.Cancer Services of East Central Indiana-Little Red Door, an independent, non-profit agency based in Muncie, Indiana, became a victim of a ransomware attack a week ago. This is an organization whose goals include helping to “reduce the financial and emotional burdens of those dealing with a cancer diagnosis.”The attackers did not leave the traditional ransom demand note, oh no, but chose to personally reach out to the agency’s executive director, president and vice president to make the extortion demands clear. This makes it seem more like a targeted attack and less of one that was a result of opportunity. It is also at least the second time that week that attackers attempted to ransom sensitive patient information.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DARPA wants to simulate how social media spreads info like wildfire

When it comes to understanding which, what and how popular information travels the Internet, we have a lot to learn.That seems to be the idea behind a new program that the researchers at The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will unravel next month that aims to simulate the spread and evolution of online information.+More on Network World: DARPA: Show us how to weaponize benign technologies+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DARPA wants to simulate how social media spreads info like wildfire

When it comes to understanding which, what and how popular information travels the Internet, we have a lot to learn.That seems to be the idea behind a new program that the researchers at The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will unravel next month that aims to simulate the spread and evolution of online information.+More on Network World: DARPA: Show us how to weaponize benign technologies+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: Linksys Velop a solid choice in wireless mesh space

It’s been interesting to see how longtime home wireless vendors have been approaching the new wireless mesh market, in which startup products like Eero, Luma, AmpliFi and Almond have hit the scene – in addition to Google, which doesn’t qualify as a startup, but is new to the Wi-Fi market.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: IoT security principles from Homeland Security

Power grids were bombed in World War II to cripple industrial output. Today, attacks against Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure causes even broader disruptions—without bombs.The danger is real. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently published guidelines to “provide a strategic focus on security and enhance the trust framework that underpins the IoT ecosystem.” The report explains why security has to be a combined effort.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: IoT security principles from Homeland Security

Power grids were bombed in World War II to cripple industrial output. Today, attacks against Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure causes even broader disruptions—without bombs.The danger is real. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently published guidelines to “provide a strategic focus on security and enhance the trust framework that underpins the IoT ecosystem.” The report explains why security has to be a combined effort.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Oracle patches raft of vulnerabilities in business applications

Oracle released its first batch of security patches this year, fixing 270 vulnerabilities, mostly in business-critical applications. Many of the flaws can be exploited remotely without authentication.The majority of the fixes are for flaws in business products such as Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle PeopleSoft, Oracle Retail Applications, Oracle JD Edwards, Oracle Supply Chain Products and Oracle Database Server.E-Business Suite, which is used by companies to store key data and manage a wide range of business processes, accounts for more than 40 percent of the patched vulnerabilities -- 121. Out of these, 118 are remotely exploitable and the highest rated one has a score of 9.2 (critical) in the Common Vulnerability Scoring System.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Oracle patches raft of vulnerabilities in business applications

Oracle released its first batch of security patches this year, fixing 270 vulnerabilities, mostly in business-critical applications. Many of the flaws can be exploited remotely without authentication.The majority of the fixes are for flaws in business products such as Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle PeopleSoft, Oracle Retail Applications, Oracle JD Edwards, Oracle Supply Chain Products and Oracle Database Server.E-Business Suite, which is used by companies to store key data and manage a wide range of business processes, accounts for more than 40 percent of the patched vulnerabilities -- 121. Out of these, 118 are remotely exploitable and the highest rated one has a score of 9.2 (critical) in the Common Vulnerability Scoring System.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Automatically identifying bottlenecks

One common question we need to answer when trying to decrease page load time is: where is the performance bottleneck? In other words, where should the engineers focus their efforts? Usually, to answer this question, a performance engineer will look into performance metrics and check some samples captured by Resource Timing API and Call Graph and locate the hotspots. This approach can be very useful, but had the drawback of “trial and error.” Also, many sample waterfalls have to be clicked and analyzed manually to find bottlenecks. We wanted a systematic way that a tool could automatically provide bottleneck details quickly based on existing, large amounts of data. —LinkedIn Engineering Blog

The post Worth Reading: Automatically identifying bottlenecks appeared first on 'net work.

Big Switch brings agility, scale to network packet brokers

Complexity in data centers has grown exponentially with the introduction of new technologies to scale IT infrastructure to keep pace with business demands. This dynamic has caused IT departments to seek out new tools to help manage and secure complex IT environments in modern data centers. The broad adoption of these tools has created new, arduous challenges, including the difficulty of managing various network connections and monitoring specific traffic flows at scale. Leading-edge IT organizations have started adopting software-based network packet broker (NPB) solutions to solve these complex IT challenges with increased agility and flexibility. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Big Switch brings agility, scale to network packet brokers

Complexity in data centers has grown exponentially with the introduction of new technologies to scale IT infrastructure to keep pace with business demands. This dynamic has caused IT departments to seek out new tools to help manage and secure complex IT environments in modern data centers. The broad adoption of these tools has created new, arduous challenges, including the difficulty of managing various network connections and monitoring specific traffic flows at scale. Leading-edge IT organizations have started adopting software-based network packet broker (NPB) solutions to solve these complex IT challenges with increased agility and flexibility. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BlueData Attributes Surge in Sales to Docker Containers and Cloud Computing

BlueData’s BDaaS platform is helping one client scale its compute and storage resources separately.

Lack of NFV Interoperability Threatens Adoption

NFV interoperability is stalled and may be causing operators to forego deploying NFV.