Day Two Cloud 188: Out-Of-Band Management And Infrastructure Automation With ZPE Systems (Sponsored)

On today's Day Two Cloud podcast we talk through out-of-band management network design with sponsor ZPE Systems. If your idea of OOB management is a jump box and some terminal servers, there’s a lot more to the story when you bring automation tooling into the picture. We'll learn how ZPE gear works and talk with customer Vapor IO about using ZPE gear in its edge compute sites.

Day Two Cloud 188: Out-Of-Band Management And Infrastructure Automation With ZPE Systems (Sponsored)

On today's Day Two Cloud podcast we talk through out-of-band management network design with sponsor ZPE Systems. If your idea of OOB management is a jump box and some terminal servers, there’s a lot more to the story when you bring automation tooling into the picture. We'll learn how ZPE gear works and talk with customer Vapor IO about using ZPE gear in its edge compute sites.

The post Day Two Cloud 188: Out-Of-Band Management And Infrastructure Automation With ZPE Systems (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Killnet and AnonymousSudan DDoS attack Australian university websites, and threaten more attacks — here’s what to do about it

Killnet and AnonymousSudan DDoS attack Australian university websites, and threaten more attacks — here’s what to do about it
Killnet and AnonymousSudan DDoS attack Australian university websites, and threaten more attacks — here’s what to do about it

Over the past 24 hours, Cloudflare has observed HTTP DDoS attacks targeting university websites in Australia. Universities were the first of several groups publicly targeted by the pro-Russian hacker group Killnet and their affiliate AnonymousSudan, as revealed in a recent Telegram post. The threat actors called for additional attacks against 8 universities, 10 airports, and 8 hospital websites in Australia beginning on Tuesday, March 28.

Killnet is a loosely formed group of individuals who collaborate via Telegram. Their Telegram channels provide a space for pro-Russian sympathizers to volunteer their expertise by participating in cyberattacks against western interests.

Killnet and AnonymousSudan DDoS attack Australian university websites, and threaten more attacks — here’s what to do about it
Figure: % of traffic constituting DDoS attacks for organizations in Australia

This is not the first time Cloudflare has reported on Killnet activity. On February 2,  2023 we noted in a blog that a pro-Russian hacktivist group — claiming to be part of Killnet — was targeting multiple healthcare organizations in the US. In October 2022, Killnet called to attack US airport websites, and attacked the US Treasury the following month.

As seen with past attacks from this group, these most recent attacks do not seem to be originating from a single botnet, and the attack methods and sources seem to vary, suggesting Continue reading

Studying EVPN to Prepare for a Job Interview

An ipSpace.net subscriber sent me this question:

I am on job hunting. I have secured an interview and they will probably ask me about VxLAN BGP EVPN fabrics. If you have some time, it would be a great help for me if you could tell me 1 or 2 questions that you would ask in such interviews.

TL&DR: He got the job. Congratulations!

Studying EVPN to Prepare for a Job Interview

An ipSpace.net subscriber sent me this question:

I am on job hunting. I have secured an interview and they will probably ask me about VxLAN BGP EVPN fabrics. If you have some time, it would be a great help for me if you could tell me 1 or 2 questions that you would ask in such interviews.

TL&DR: He got the job. Congratulations!

BrandPost: Speeding the Migration of IoT Workloads to the Cloud

By: Michael Tennefoss, VP of IoT and Strategic Partnerships, Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.Moving IoT workloads to the cloud, and securely exchanging data between cloud IoT services and both legacy and new IoT devices, can entail months of custom engineering. Most IoT vendors send sensor and actuator data in non-interoperable or proprietary formats that must be reformatted to make them usable by cloud applications. Additionally, legacy IoT devices lack modern cybersecurity mechanisms and cloud-compatible software stacks. Replacing legacy devices with new ones is cost prohibitive, while the engineering work to make IoT data payloads usable can be significant. And these expenses may be recurring, e.g., when new IoT devices from different vendors are added over time, post-acquisition of a new company, or following a site refresh.To read this article in full, please click here

10-year server lifespan? That’s what one cloud service provider plans

A trend to extend the lifespan of servers beyond the typical three- to five-year range has companies such as Microsoft looking to add a few years of use to hardware that would otherwise be retired.The latest company to adopt this strategy is Paris-based Scaleway, a European cloud services provider that's sharing details about how it plans to get a decade of use out of its servers through a mix of reuse and repair.Scaleway decided the carbon footprint of new servers is just too large – server manufacturing alone accounts for 15% to 30% of each machine’s carbon impact. Reusing existing machines, rather than buying new ones, could significantly reduce e-waste.To read this article in full, please click here

10-year server lifespan? That’s what one cloud service provider plans

A trend to extend the lifespan of servers beyond the typical three- to five-year range has companies such as Microsoft looking to add a few years of use to hardware that would otherwise be retired.The latest company to adopt this strategy is Paris-based Scaleway, a European cloud services provider that's sharing details about how it plans to get a decade of use out of its servers through a mix of reuse and repair.Scaleway decided the carbon footprint of new servers is just too large – server manufacturing alone accounts for 15% to 30% of each machine’s carbon impact. Reusing existing machines, rather than buying new ones, could significantly reduce e-waste.To read this article in full, please click here

Cloudflare’s commitment to the 2023 Summit for Democracy

Cloudflare’s commitment to the 2023 Summit for Democracy
Cloudflare’s commitment to the 2023 Summit for Democracy

On Tuesday, March 28, 2023, the US Government will launch the Summit for Democracy 2023, following up on the inaugural Summit for Democracy 2021. The Summit is co-hosted by the United States, Costa Rica, Zambia, the Netherlands, and South Korea. Cloudflare is proud to participate in and contribute commitments to the Summit because we believe that everyone should have access to an Internet that is faster, more reliable, more private, and more secure.  We work to ensure that the responsibility to respect human rights is embedded throughout our business functions. Cloudflare’s mission — to help build a better Internet — reflects a long-standing belief that we can help make the Internet better for everyone.

Our mission and core values dovetail with the Summit’s goals of strengthening democratic governance, respect for human rights and human rights defenders, and working in partnership to strengthen respect for these values. As we have written about before, access to the Internet allows activists and human rights defenders to expose abuses across the globe, allows collective causes to grow into global movements, and provides the foundation for large-scale organizing for political and social change in ways that have never been possible before.

Cloudflare’s commitment to the 2023 Summit for Democracy

What is Continue reading

Wireshark Celebrates 25th Anniversary with a New Foundation

No doubt, countless engineers and hackers remember the first time they used newly-developed microscope to view cells for the first time ever: What was once just an inscrutable package had opened up to reveal a treasure trove of useful information. This year, the venerable Wireshark has turned 25, and its creators are taking a step back from this massively successful open source project, to let additional parties to help govern. This month, Sysdig, the current sponsor of Wireshark, launched a new foundation that will serve as the long-term custodian of the project. The

What Happened to Leaf Switches with Four Uplinks?

The last time I spent days poring over vendor datasheets collecting information for the overview part of Data Center Fabrics webinar a lot of 1RU data center leaf switches came in two form factors:

  • 48 low-speed server-facing ports and 4 high-speed uplinks
  • 32 high-speed ports that you could break out into four times as many low-speed ports (but not all of them)

I expected the ratios to stay the same when the industry moved from 10/40 GE to 25/100 GE switches. I was wrong – most 1RU leaf data center switches based on recent Broadcom silicon (Trident-3 or Trident-4) have between eight and twelve uplinks.

What Happened to Leaf Switches with Four Uplinks?

The last time I spent days poring over vendor datasheets collecting information for the overview part of Data Center Fabrics webinar a lot of 1RU data center leaf switches came in two form factors:

  • 48 low-speed server-facing ports and 4 high-speed uplinks
  • 32 high-speed ports that you could break out into four times as many low-speed ports (but not all of them)

I expected the ratios to stay the same when the industry moved from 10/40 GE to 25/100 GE switches. I was wrong – most 1RU leaf data center switches based on recent Broadcom silicon (Trident-3 or Trident-4) have between eight and twelve uplinks.