IDG Contributor Network: The silver lining on a ransomware attack

I wouldn’t wish a ransomware attack on anyone. A particularly destructive form of malware, ransomware has made a name for itself this year as one of the internet’s top threats. A recent survey revealed that half of companies had responded to a ransomware attack, with 85 percent reporting three or more. If it locks down your personal computer, it’s a royal pain. But if it gets onto a network drive at your work, that pain is multiplied by the number of employees and more.Systematically locking down every computer on the network, ransomware puts your entire workforce out of work and sends your IT guys to the mats trying to find the money to pay the ransom or the backups to bring the network back online. Long story short: Ransomware is bad news!To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The silver lining on a ransomware attack

I wouldn’t wish a ransomware attack on anyone. A particularly destructive form of malware, ransomware has made a name for itself this year as one of the internet’s top threats. A recent survey revealed that half of companies had responded to a ransomware attack, with 85 percent reporting three or more. If it locks down your personal computer, it’s a royal pain. But if it gets onto a network drive at your work, that pain is multiplied by the number of employees and more.Systematically locking down every computer on the network, ransomware puts your entire workforce out of work and sends your IT guys to the mats trying to find the money to pay the ransom or the backups to bring the network back online. Long story short: Ransomware is bad news!To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Beyond Scale to Flexible Cloud Networking

Beyond Scale to Flexible Cloud Networking

In the early 2000’s a new generation of smartphones revolutionized the cell phone industry, eliminating the market for “flip phones,” introducing new tools and completely redefining “phones” to universal internet devices. New companies rose and old ones adapted or failed. In 2015, a new generation of electric cars (Tesla being the most well-known), were introduced and drove the next wave of technology transitions, replacing gas-guzzling cars in many households. Consumers and traditional car companies worldwide are now embracing the new technology.

Python Loops – Basics

  The if, while and for statements implement traditional control flow and provide the output depending upon the condition.   IF /ELSE   An if statement consists of a  condition followed by one or more statements.An if statement can be followed by an optional else statement. Else statments is used with for loop to give […]

Worth Reading: Social Media is Entertainment

Like TV it now increasingly entertains us, and even more so than television it amplifies our existing beliefs and habits. It makes us feel more than think, and it comforts more than challenges. The result is a deeply fragmented society, driven by emotions, and radicalized by lack of contact and challenge from outside. This is why Oxford Dictionaries designated “post-truth” as the word of 2016: an adjective “relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals.” —MIT Technology Review

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Doing More with Less: The Hotel Technology Challenge

Throughout my many years supporting the hospitality industry - several of them while at Ruckus - I have always been amazed at the technology demands in hotels. The push for more cost-effective services that positively impact guest satisfaction with proven ROI for the hotelier is a huge challenge. Plus, hoteliers have to do this across a range of brands, properties and budgets. The tech-savvy traveler has higher expectations that start with hotel IP Edge Networking, it is the on-ramp to the hotel technology services and the Internet. Ruckus Wireless has been a leader in hospitality due to our superior Wi-Fi (Beamflex+ antenna system providing coverage and performance in guest rooms), next-gen purpose build wallplate APs, first/fast to market 11ac W2 portfolio, flexible WLAN Controller options and now powerful ICX Switch Line from Brocade. We are excited about our support of the industry and our continued role in technology for hotel.

Latest Android security update fixes Dirty COW, GPS vulnerabilities

The monthly Android security update released this week fixes the serious Dirty COW privilege escalation attack that can allow malicious apps to take full control of devices.Dirty COW (copy-on-write) is a privilege escalation vulnerability that has existed in the Linux kernel for the past nine years and is already being exploited in the wild. It affects Android because the mobile OS is based on Linux, but it was initially believed that the SELinux security policies enforced by default in Android provided some mitigation against the attack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Latest Android security update fixes Dirty COW, GPS vulnerabilities

The monthly Android security update released this week fixes the serious Dirty COW privilege escalation attack that can allow malicious apps to take full control of devices.Dirty COW (copy-on-write) is a privilege escalation vulnerability that has existed in the Linux kernel for the past nine years and is already being exploited in the wild. It affects Android because the mobile OS is based on Linux, but it was initially believed that the SELinux security policies enforced by default in Android provided some mitigation against the attack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Just one autonomous car will use 4,000 GB of data/day

Two real-life, practical, semi-autonomous vehicle launches next year are an indication that the self-driving car is really happening.Audi is expected to make its up-to-35-mph hands-free driving system available late next year in some 2018 vehicles.And Volvo will start testing Drive Me, an autopilot that will introduce 100 Swedish XC90 owners to autonomous driving, according to an Automotive News supplement produced for the Los Angeles Auto Show last month.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Qualcomm Fires ARM Server Salvo, Broadcom Silences Guns

Depending on how you want to look at it, the half dozen companies that have aspired to bring ARM architecture to the datacenter through chips designed specifically to run server workloads are either very late to market or very early. The opportunity to take on Intel was arguably many years ago, when the world’s largest chip maker was weaker, and yet despite all of the excitement and hype, no one could get an ARM chip into the field that clearly and cleanly competed against Intel’s Xeons and did so publicly with design wins that generated real volumes that took a …

Qualcomm Fires ARM Server Salvo, Broadcom Silences Guns was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

17 for ’17: Microsoft researchers’ predictions for 2017 and 2027

Microsoft researchers have shared their annual predictions of what they believe will be the big advancements in technology within the next 10 years. The predictions were made by 17 different researchers at the company, covering 10 different areas.Predictions are always a dicey thing. Stewart Alsop will never live down his prediction that "the last mainframe will be unplugged on March 15, 1996." Twenty years later, IBM still sells its z Series mainframe. Oops. Still, the Microsoft wizards have some interesting predictions. And for this year's list, Microsoft's prognosticators are all women. Microsoft is celebrating Computer Science Education Week around the globe, with special emphasis on women and girls, given the fact women account for only 20 percent of computer science graduates in 34 of the countries which are members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) yet are half the population. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

17 for ’17: Microsoft researchers’ predictions for 2017 and 2027

Microsoft researchers have shared their annual predictions of what they believe will be the big advancements in technology within the next 10 years. The predictions were made by 17 different researchers at the company, covering 10 different areas.Predictions are always a dicey thing. Stewart Alsop will never live down his prediction that "the last mainframe will be unplugged on March 15, 1996." Twenty years later, IBM still sells its z Series mainframe. Oops. Still, the Microsoft wizards have some interesting predictions. And for this year's list, Microsoft's prognosticators are all women. Microsoft is celebrating Computer Science Education Week around the globe, with special emphasis on women and girls, given the fact women account for only 20 percent of computer science graduates in 34 of the countries which are members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) yet are half the population. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Aruba flexes some IoT muscle

The Internet of Things (IoT) is heating up and will be a hot trend in 2017. And Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, plans to be a part of it. The company has been active in the IoT industry by providing Wi-Fi connectivity to IoT endpoints and security through its ClearPass product. However, it has never put together a comprehensive IoT story that spans its portfolio.Last week at the HPE Discover Conference, though, Aruba announced several new products to position itself as a strong IoT enabler. The new solutions include security tools, wired switches and new partnerships.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Aruba flexes some IoT muscle

The Internet of Things (IoT) is heating up and will be a hot trend in 2017. And Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, plans to be a part of it. The company has been active in the IoT industry by providing Wi-Fi connectivity to IoT endpoints and security through its ClearPass product. However, it has never put together a comprehensive IoT story that spans its portfolio.Last week at the HPE Discover Conference, though, Aruba announced several new products to position itself as a strong IoT enabler. The new solutions include security tools, wired switches and new partnerships.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Debugging war story: the mystery of NXDOMAIN

The following blog post describes a debugging adventure on Cloudflare's Mesos-based cluster. This internal cluster is primarily used to process log file information so that Cloudflare customers have analytics, and for our systems that detect and respond to attacks.

The problem encountered didn't have any effect on our customers, but did have engineers scratching their heads...

The Problem

At some point in one of our cluster we started seeing errors like this (an NXDOMAIN for an existing domain on our internal DNS):

lookup some.existing.internal.host on 10.36.0.9:53: no such host

This seemed very weird, since the domain did indeed exist. It was one of our internal domains! Engineers had mentioned that they'd seen this behaviour, so we decided to investigate deeper. Queries triggering this error were varied and ranged from dynamic SRV records managed by mesos-dns to external domains looked up from inside the cluster.

Our first naive attempt was to run the following in a loop:

while true; do dig some.existing.internal.host > /tmp/dig.txt || break; done

Running this for a while on one server did not reproduce the problem: all the lookups were successful. Then we took our service Continue reading

Trump’s plan for protecting IT jobs raises hopes, fears

President-elect Donald Trump is showing a willingness to wage an economic battle with firms that move jobs offshore. He's threatening tariffs and promising H-1B visa reform, but may be offering carrots as well, namely tax incentives.These actions may be raising hopes among some IT employees who have lost jobs, or are losing them, that the incoming Trump administration is serious about keeping IT jobs in the U.S. But Trump's proposals -- particularly the tariff -- are also raising much uncertainty.Trump, in a series of tweets this weekend, reaffirmed plans to impose a 35% import tariff on "cars, A.C. units etc," on goods made by offshore U.S. firms but sold in the U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EU approves LinkedIn deal after Microsoft makes concessions

The European Union's regulators on Tuersday approved Microsoft's acquisition of social network LinkedIn on the condition that the U.S. company abide by several minor concessions it made to secure the deal.The conditions were reminiscent of those forced on Microsoft in past antitrust actions, including the settlement between the firm and the U.S. Justice Department early in the century, and a later judgment against Microsoft in the European Union (EU).Microsoft promised it would not require PC makers to install a LinkedIn app or Windows 10 tile on machines sold in the European Economic Area (EEA), the region consisting of EU member states as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Users will be able to remove any LinkedIn app or tile in Windows, Microsoft said, and pledged that it would not use Windows to nag customers to install a LinkedIn app.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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