Yahoo uncovered breach after probing a black market sale

A hacker's attempt to sell user data he claimed was stolen from Yahoo actually led the company to uncover a far more severe breach.Yahoo confirmed Thursday a data breach, which affects at least 500 million users, but it could be unrelated to the black market sale of alleged Yahoo accounts, according to a source familiar with the matter.The information comes even as security experts have been questioning why Yahoo took so long to warn the public when it was known that a hacker was claiming to be selling the data online around early August.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Pushing Database Scalability Up And Out With GPUs

What is good for the simulation and the machine learning is, as it turns out, also good for the database. The performance and thermal limits of traditional CPUs have made GPUs the go-to accelerator for these workloads at extreme scale, and now databases, which are thread monsters in their own right, are also turning to GPUs to get a performance and scale boost.

Commercializing GPU databases takes time, and Kinetica, formerly known as GPUdb, is making a bit of a splash ahead of the Strata+Hadoop World conference next week as it brags about the performance and scale of the parallel …

Pushing Database Scalability Up And Out With GPUs was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Hackers have a treasure trove of data with the Yahoo breach

The massive breach at Yahoo means that a treasure trove of stolen data is in the hands of hackers -- putting millions of internet users at risk.At least half a billion Yahoo accounts have been affected in one of the biggest data breaches in history. Information including names, email addresses, telephone numbers and hashed passwords may have been stolen.Yahoo has blamed the attack on a "state-sponsored actor," but it's far from clear who hacked the internet company and how the culprits pulled off the attack.Blaming it on a state-sponsored actor, however, indicates that Yahoo may have found evidence that the hackers were targeting the company over a long period of time, said Vitali Kremez, a cybercrime analyst at security firm Flashpoint.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hackers have a treasure trove of data with the Yahoo breach

The massive breach at Yahoo means that a treasure trove of stolen data is in the hands of hackers -- putting millions of internet users at risk.At least half a billion Yahoo accounts have been affected in one of the biggest data breaches in history. Information including names, email addresses, telephone numbers and hashed passwords may have been stolen.Yahoo has blamed the attack on a "state-sponsored actor," but it's far from clear who hacked the internet company and how the culprits pulled off the attack.Blaming it on a state-sponsored actor, however, indicates that Yahoo may have found evidence that the hackers were targeting the company over a long period of time, said Vitali Kremez, a cybercrime analyst at security firm Flashpoint.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple Car rumors resurface amid new buyout rumors

One of the more fascinating rumors surrounding Apple these days rests on whether or not the company will ever roll out an Apple branded electric car. Undoubtedly, Apple has been spending lots of R&D resources on its electric car initiative, but whether or not that research will actually result in a car remains to be seen.That said, there were some interesting rumors in the news this week. First and foremost, a report surfaced indicating that Apple was potentially interested in acquiring McLaren, a company that most people know as a purveyor of expensive sports cars and incredibly fast Formula 1 race cars. That rumor naturally got the Apple blogosphere going but it wasn’t long before a McLaren spokesperson came forward and denied the report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Installing a Specific Version of Docker Engine

In this post, I’m going to show you how to install a specific version of the Docker Engine package on Ubuntu. While working on a side project (one that will hopefully bear fruit soon), I found myself in need of installing a slightly older version of Docker Engine (1.11 instead of 1.12, to be specific). While this task isn’t hard, it also wasn’t clearly spelled out anywhere, and this post aims to help address that shortcoming.

If you’ve followed the instructions to add the Docker Apt repos to your system as outlined here, then installing the Docker Engine (latest version) would be done something like this:

apt-get install docker-engine

If you do an apt-cache search docker-engine, though, you’ll find that the “docker-engine” package is a metapackage that refers to a variety of different versions of the Docker Engine. To install a specific version of the Docker Engine, then, simply append the version (as described by the results of the apt-cache search docker-engine command) to the end, like this:

apt-get install docker-engine=1.11.2-0~trusty

This will install version 1.11.2 of the Docker Engine.

You’ll use the same syntax when you need to install a specific Continue reading

Here are the 2016 Ig Nobel Prize ‘winners’

“Congratulations”Let’s say you’re a scientist, and you’ve worked your entire adult life at your discipline. You do a sort of offbeat study, for valid scientific reasons, and figure, hey, this’ll get a laugh in whatever journal is relevant to your field, and then somebody calls you from Cambridge, Mass., and tells you you’ve won science’s equivalent of a Razzie. These are this year’s Ig Nobel Prize winners. Enjoy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Here are the 2016 Ig Nobel Prize ‘winners’

“Congratulations”Let’s say you’re a scientist, and you’ve worked your entire adult life at your discipline. You do a sort of offbeat study, for valid scientific reasons, and figure, hey, this’ll get a laugh in whatever journal is relevant to your field, and then somebody calls you from Cambridge, Mass., and tells you you’ve won science’s equivalent of a Razzie. These are this year’s Ig Nobel Prize winners. Enjoy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 Minutes with the Docker Captains

Docker Captain is a distinction that Docker awards select members of the community that are both experts in their field and are passionate about sharing their Docker knowledge with others.

This week we are highlighting 3 of our outstanding Captains who are making September one filled with Docker learnings and events. Read on to learn more about how they got started, what they love most about Docker, and why Docker.

Alex Ellis

Alex is a Principal Application Developer with expertise in the full Microsoft .NET stack, Node.js and Ruby. He enjoys making robots and IoT-connected projects with Linux and the Raspberry PI microcomputer. He is a writer for Linux User and Developer magazine and also produces tutorials on Docker, coding and IoT for his tech blog at alexellis.io.

As a Docker Captain, how do you share that learning with the community?

I started out by sharing tutorials and code on my blog alexellis.io and on Github. More recently I’ve attended local meet-up groups, conferences and tech events to speak and tell a story about Docker and cool hacks. I joined Twitter in March and it’s definitely a must-have for reaching people.

Why do you like Docker?

Docker Continue reading

IBM shows how fast its brain-like chip can learn

Developing a computer that can be as decisive and intelligent as humans is on IBM's mind, and it's making progress toward achieving that goal.IBM's computer chip called TrueNorth is designed to emulate the functions of a human brain. The company is now running tests and benchmarking TrueNorth to demonstrate how fast and power efficient the chips can be compared to today's computers.The results of the head-to-head contest are impressive. IBM says TrueNorth can engage in deep learning and make decisions based on associations and probabilities, much like human brains. It can do so while consuming a fraction of the power used by chips in other computers for the same purpose.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The massive Yahoo hack ranks as the world’s biggest — so far

When Yahoo said on Thursday that data from at least 500 million user accounts had been hacked, it wasn't just admitting to a huge failing in data security -- it was admitting to the biggest hack the world has ever seen.Until Thursday, the previous largest known hack was the 2008 breach that hit almost 360 million MySpace accounts, according to a ranking by the "Have I been pwned" website. Like the Yahoo breach, the hack was only publicly disclosed this year after data was offered on a hacker forum.And only three breaches had ranked above the 100 million level:LinkedIn reported a loss of 167 million email addresses and passwords. They were originally stolen in 2012 but not publicly disclosed until 2016, again after the data was offered on an underground "dark market" site.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The massive Yahoo hack ranks as the world’s biggest — so far

When Yahoo said on Thursday that data from at least 500 million user accounts had been hacked, it wasn't just admitting to a huge failing in data security -- it was admitting to the biggest hack the world has ever seen.Until Thursday, the previous largest known hack was the 2008 breach that hit almost 360 million MySpace accounts, according to a ranking by the "Have I been pwned" website. Like the Yahoo breach, the hack was only publicly disclosed this year after data was offered on a hacker forum.And only three breaches had ranked above the 100 million level:LinkedIn reported a loss of 167 million email addresses and passwords. They were originally stolen in 2012 but not publicly disclosed until 2016, again after the data was offered on an underground "dark market" site.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google Fiber push advances in Nashville

Google Fiber won a victory in Nashville as the city's Metro Council approved an ordinance called “One Touch Make Ready,” that would speed up the company's fiber-optic cable installations.The ordinance, passed Wednesday night by a voice vote, gives Google Fiber and other ISPs quicker access to utility poles for deploying fast broadband with fiber-optic cable.Without the measure, each ISP has had to send out a separate crew to a utility pole to move its own line to make room for a new one. The ordinance would permit a single company to make the wire adjustments on a pole instead of waiting for existing providers — competitors like Comcast or AT&T-- to make the changes, which could take months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google Fiber push advances in Nashville

Google Fiber won a victory in Nashville as the city's Metro Council approved an ordinance called “One Touch Make Ready,” that would speed up the company's fiber-optic cable installations.The ordinance, passed Wednesday night by a voice vote, gives Google Fiber and other ISPs quicker access to utility poles for deploying fast broadband with fiber-optic cable.Without the measure, each ISP has had to send out a separate crew to a utility pole to move its own line to make room for a new one. The ordinance would permit a single company to make the wire adjustments on a pole instead of waiting for existing providers — competitors like Comcast or AT&T-- to make the changes, which could take months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Slack is less bad than the rest

A topic I complain about with some regularity is my inability to keep up with incoming messages. I’m too busy creating something for someone else to consume to bother trying to keep up. That’s the way of things. If I successfully keep up with all the input, I never achieve useful output. In this world of message misery, Slack is my friend. I find that Slack is better at managing input than most other forms of communication. —Ethan Banks

The post Worth Reading: Slack is less bad than the rest appeared first on 'net work.

Yahoo data breach affects at least 500 million users

A massive breach at Yahoo compromised account details from at least 500 million users, and the company is blaming the attack on state-sponsored hackers.Names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and hashed passwords may have been stolen as part of the hack, which occurred in late 2014, Yahoo said.The company reported the breach on Thursday, after a stolen database from the company went on sale on the black market last month.However, the hacker behind the sale claimed that the stolen database involved only 200 million users and was likely obtained in 2012.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Yahoo data breach affects at least 500 million users

A massive breach at Yahoo compromised account details from at least 500 million users, and the company is blaming the attack on state-sponsored hackers. Names, email addresses, telephone numbers, and hashed passwords may have been stolen as part of the hack, which occurred in late 2014, Yahoo said. The company reported the breach on Thursday, after a stolen database from the company went on sale on the black market last month. However, the hacker behind the sale claimed that the stolen database involved only 200 million users and was likely obtained in 2012.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Homeland Security issues call to action on IoT security

U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Robert Silvers says his purpose in speaking at the Security of Things Forum in Cambridge on Thursday wasn’t to scare anyone, but then he went ahead and called on everyone in the room to “accelerate everything you’re doing” to secure the internet of things. As the Assistant Secretary for Cyber Policy at DHS says, IoT security is a public safety issue that involves protecting both the nation’s physical and cyber infrastructures.Acknowledging a growing national dependency on the internet of things, be it in the medical, utility or transportation fields, Silvers says IoT has his department’s full attention. And a straightforward undertaking it is not, he says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Homeland Security issues call to action on IoT security

U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Robert Silvers says his purpose in speaking at the Security of Things Forum in Cambridge on Thursday wasn’t to scare anyone, but then he went ahead and called on everyone in the room to “accelerate everything you’re doing” to secure the internet of things. As the Assistant Secretary for Cyber Policy at DHS says, IoT security is a public safety issue that involves protecting both the nation’s physical and cyber infrastructures.Acknowledging a growing national dependency on the internet of things, be it in the medical, utility or transportation fields, Silvers says IoT has his department’s full attention. And a straightforward undertaking it is not, he says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Federal cyber incidents grew an astounding 1,300% between 2006 and 2015

That’s one amazingly scary number: Since 2006 cyber incidents involving the Federal government have grown 1,300%.Another Government Accountability Office report on Federal cybersecurity out this week offers little in the way of optimism for the cyber-safeguard of the massive resources the government has control over.+More on Network World: Network security weaknesses plague federal agencies+“Federal information systems and networks are inherently at risk. They are highly complex and dynamic, technologically diverse, and often geographically dispersed. This complexity increases the difficulty in identifying, managing, and protecting the myriad of operating systems, applications, and devices comprising the systems and networks. Compounding the risk, systems used by federal agencies are often riddled with security vulnerabilities—both known and unknown. For example, the national vulnerability database maintained by the Mitre Corporation has identified 78,907 publicly known cybersecurity vulnerabilities and exposures as of September 15, 2016, with more being added each day,” the GAO wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here