IDG Contributor Network: The day the 911 network stood still

In the early morning hours of Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2016, an apparent Telephony Denial of Service (TDoS) attack was brought against several cities that brought 911 to a grinding halt.The incident triggered a response from the Department of Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center National Coordinating Center for Communications (NCIC/NCC) and a Watch Advisory for a TDoS attack on public-safety answering points (PSAP) was issued just after lunch.Investigators were led to a web page created by 18-year-old, Phoenix-based Meetkumar Hiteshbhai Desai. Desai said he was merely looking for bugs in Apple's iOS in an attempt to capture a reward from Apple as part of its bug bounty program. Apple launched this long-awaited program in September, and the company is offering five different categories of reward prizes:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Uber faces lawsuit from courier claiming employee status

Taking a cue from Uber drivers, a ‘foot and bike’ courier has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against the ride-hailing company and a subsidiary, demanding minimum wages, and reimbursement of tools-of-the-trade expenses and gratuities as would be typically provided to regular employees.Uber has introduced its delivery services, called UberEats and UberRush, in some cities in the U.S. and other countries.In a proposed class action lawsuit on behalf of himself and other Uber couriers in New York, Matthew B. Burgos, claims that among other things, Uber circumvents its duty of supplying safety gear by misclassifying its couriers as independent contractors. Couriers are also required to purchase their own ‘tools of the trade’ including their own bicycles, helmets and reflectors in making deliveries for Uber.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Running a standalone OpenStack Neutron server

One of the great advantage for an OpenStack developer is the ease with which a dev environment can be created. I cannot say enough good things about devstack. Devstack is a tool that provides a very flexible way of creating development environment for OpenStack. Devstack is very flexible and can be configured using simple config … Continue reading Running a standalone OpenStack Neutron server

In which I have to debunk a second time

So Slate is doubling-down on their discredited story of a secret Trump server. Tip for journalists: if you are going to argue against an expert debunking your story, try to contact that expert first, so they don't have to do what I'm going to do here, showing obvious flaws. Also, pay attention to the data.


The experts didn't find anything

The story claims:
"I spoke with many DNS experts. They found the evidence strongly suggestive of a relationship between the Trump Organization and the bank".
No, he didn't. He gave experts limited information and asked them whether it's consistent with a conspiracy theory. He didn't ask if it was "suggestive" of the conspiracy theory, or that this was the best theory that fit the data.

This is why "experts" quoted in the press need to go through "media training", to avoid getting your reputation harmed by bad journalists who try their best to put words in your mouth. You'll be trained to recognize bad journalists like this, and how not to get sucked into their fabrications.


Jean Camp isn't an expert

On the other hand, Jean Camp isn't an expert. I've never heard of her before. She gets details wrong. Continue reading

Samsung Galaxy Note7 fiasco hits Qualcomm’s revenue

Samsung's cancellation of the Galaxy Note7 hurt Qualcomm's chip sales, but the company expects other smartphones to fill that void.The impact of the Note7 fiasco on the company's chip revenue is small, but will ride into the first financial quarter next year, Qualcomm executives said during an earnings call on Wednesday.Some models of Note7 used Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 chip. But sales of Note7 aren't as big as that of Samsung's Galaxy S7 or S7 edge, which have sold in large volumes.Other device makers could release high-end devices with Snapdragon chips to replace Note7, which could fill the void in chip sales, said Steve Mollenkopf, CEO of Qualcomm, during the earnings call.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM engineer says AR will trump VR for data visualization

When it comes to enterprise data visualization, IBM Software Engineer Rosstin Murphy thinks augmented reality trumps virtual reality. In his view, VR's "transportational" nature makes it less suited to business applications."It takes you and it sends you to the moon, or to outer space or to or an alien planet," he said. "But augmented reality is transformational. It will transform the world you're already in, and for a business context, that's exactly what you want."Murphy pointed out during a talk at the Virtual Reality Developers Conference in San Francisco that AR headsets let users continue to interact with the objects on their desks, like keyboards and phones. That's important for people who want to get work done while reaping the benefits of new hardware like the Microsoft HoloLens.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cloudflare Crypto Meetup #4: November 22

Come join us on Cloudflare HQ in San Francisco on Tuesday, November 22 for another cryptography meetup. We had such a great time at the last one, we decided to host another.

We’ll start the evening at 6:00p.m. with time for networking, followed up with short talks by leading experts starting at 6:30p.m. Pizza and beer are provided! RSVP here.

Here are the confirmed speakers:

Emily Stark

Emily Stark is a software engineer on the Google Chrome security team, where she focuses on making TLS more usable and secure. She spends lots of time analyzing field data about the HTTPS ecosystem and improving web platform features like Referrer Policy and Content Security Policy that help developers migrate their sites to HTTPS. She has also worked on the DevTools security panel and the browser plumbing that supports other security UI surfaces like the omnibox. (That green lock icon is more complicated than you'd think!)

Previously, she was a core developer at Meteor Development Group, where she worked on web framework security and internal infrastructure, and a graduate student researching client-side cryptography in web browsers. Emily has a master's degree from MIT and a bachelor's degree from Stanford, Continue reading

Cisco positions Spark at the heart of enterprise work

The closely watched launch on Wednesday of Microsoft's Teams, a rival to chat platforms Slack and HipChat, shows how important this kind of collaboration is for any company that wants to dominate workday life. Cisco Systems is no exception.On Tuesday at Cisco’s conference for channel partners, the company laid out an ambitious goal for its Spark chat platform and announced two moves to make it more attractive to enterprises.Spark is now the centerpiece of Cisco’s collaboration portfolio, which spans voice calling, videoconferencing, document sharing, and other capabilities. Like Slack or Microsoft Teams, the messaging platform is designed to be the virtual home base for teams of employees, from which they branch out into other collaboration tools and productivity applications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Broadcom doesn’t want all of Brocade, so what will happen to the leftover Ethernet business?

News of Broadcom buying Brocade for an estimated $5.5 billion comes with some caveats: Most notably, chipmaker Broadcom isn’t planning to keep Brocade’s Ethernet business. So what will happen to it?When announcing the deal, Broadcom made its plans to sell Brocade’s IP networking business clear. “Broadcom, with the support of Brocade, plans to divest Brocade’s IP Networking business, consisting of wireless and campus networking, data center switching and routing, and software networking solutions,” the press release states.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Broadcom doesn’t want all of Brocade, so what will happen to the leftover Ethernet business?

News of Broadcom buying Brocade for an estimated $5.5 billion comes with some caveats: Most notably, chipmaker Broadcom isn’t planning to keep Brocade’s Ethernet business. So what will happen to it?When announcing the deal, Broadcom made its plans to sell Brocade’s IP networking business clear. “Broadcom, with the support of Brocade, plans to divest Brocade’s IP Networking business, consisting of wireless and campus networking, data center switching and routing, and software networking solutions,” the press release states.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Black Hat Europe: IoT devices can hack phones

The Internet of things (IoT) has already been used to launch the biggest DDoS attacks ever, but now it represents a potential path for attackers to compromise cell phones.Flaws in Belkin WeMo devices - electrical switches, cameras, light bulbs, coffee makers, air purifiers, etc. – enabled Invincea Labs researchers to not only hack into the devices, but to use that access to attack an Android phone running the app that controls the WeMo devices.“This is the first instance we’ve seen of IoT hacking something else,” says researcher Scott Tenaglia, who pledges to look for other vulnerable devices that might be abused to carry out similar attacks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Black Hat Europe: IoT devices can hack phones

The Internet of things (IoT) has already been used to launch the biggest DDoS attacks ever, but now it represents a potential path for attackers to compromise cell phones.Flaws in Belkin WeMo devices - electrical switches, cameras, light bulbs, coffee makers, air purifiers, etc. – enabled Invincea Labs researchers to not only hack into the devices, but to use that access to attack an Android phone running the app that controls the WeMo devices.“This is the first instance we’ve seen of IoT hacking something else,” says researcher Scott Tenaglia, who pledges to look for other vulnerable devices that might be abused to carry out similar attacks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

29% off Litom Solar Outdoor Motion Sensor Security Lights, 2 Pack – Deal Alert

This Amazon #1 best selling solar security light is super bright and easy to install wherever you need it. It features 3 modes: (1) Always on, (2) Dim until motion is detected, and (3) Off until motion is detected. It's designed with a large sensor that will detect motion over a larger distance, and 20 LED lights that the company claims are larger and more powerful than the competition offers. Being weatherproof, this is a light you can mount anywhere you need it outdoors. The Liton outdoor motion sensing light averages 4 out of 5 stars from over 1,100 people (see reviews), and a 2-pack is currently being offered at $35.29, a 29% discount over its typical list price of $50. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

29% off Litom Solar Outdoor Motion Sensor Security Lights, 2 Pack – Deal Alert

This Amazon #1 best selling solar security light is super bright and easy to install wherever you need it. It features 3 modes: (1) Always on, (2) Dim until motion is detected, and (3) Off until motion is detected. It's designed with a large sensor that will detect motion over a larger distance, and 20 LED lights that the company claims are larger and more powerful than the competition offers. Being weatherproof, this is a light you can mount anywhere you need it outdoors. The Liton outdoor motion sensing light averages 4 out of 5 stars from over 1,100 people (see reviews), and a 2-pack is currently being offered at $35.29, a 29% discount over its typical list price of $50. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows 10, Edge growth both flatline in October

What happens when you stop giving away an OS for free in a weak PC market? Growth flattens. Imagine that.New data from NetMarketShare, from the analytics firm Net Applications, shows no growth in use for Windows 10 between August and October, the period after Microsoft ended its free offer for the operating system. In Q3, Gartner reported a 5.7 percent decline in PC sales vs. the same period the year before. So, with no giveaway and poor PC sales, this is hardly a surprise. + Also on Network World: Microsoft confirms Windows 10 adoption slowdown + It has to be remembered that Net Applications measures usage and not actual market share. It has sensors all over the internet that detect the OS and browser of users it encounters. So, if a lot of people using Windows XP machines are active while Windows 10 machines are not, it looks like XP is doing better. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Go Teams! – Microsoft introduces new way to connect people and conversations

October was a big month for Microsoft with lots of exciting updates to software and hardware, but today brings the official announcement of Microsoft Teams – the much anticipated group chat workspace for Office 365 users. Microsoft Teams is a new experience that brings together people, conversations, and content in Office 365. Microsoft Teams is (are?) Microsoft’s answer to Slack. The cool thing about Microsoft Teams, however, is that while Microsoft may be a little late to the group chat party, it’s got all the elements needed to deliver a best-in-class solution – and these tools are the ones we already use every day.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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