Worth Reading: The venerable, vulnerable firewall

There is no network security technology more ubiquitous than the firewall. With nearly three decades of deployment history and a growing myriad of corporate and industrial compliance policies mandating its use, no matter how irrelevant you may think a firewall is in preventing today’s spectrum of cyber threats, any breached corporation found without the technology can expect to be hung, drawn, and quartered by both shareholders and industry experts alike. … From a hacker’s perspective, with most targeted systems providing HTTP or HTTPS services, firewalls have rarely been a hindrance to breaching a network and siphoning data. What many people fail to realize is that the firewall is itself a target of particular interest — especially to sophisticated adversaries. Sitting at the very edge of the network and rarely configured or monitored for active compromise, the firewall represents a safe and valuable beachhead for persistent and targeted attacks. —CircleID

The post Worth Reading: The venerable, vulnerable firewall appeared first on 'net work.

What’s New in Tower 3: User Interface

In July, we released Ansible Tower 3. In this blog series, we will take a deeper dive into Tower changes that were all designed to make our product simpler and easier to scale Ansible automation across your environments. In our last post, our Senior Software Engineer Chris Meyers highlights what's new in the Tower 3 installer.

If you’d like to learn more about the release, our Director of Product Bill Nottingham for wrote a complete overview of the Ansible Tower 3 updates.

Simplifying the UX

The most common feedback we have received from existing Tower users concerns usability and the need to improve it. The Ansible Tower UI team was tasked to address this, along with new workflows and features, during the development of Tower 3. This was no small task as the team had to change every single page served to the user. 

Tower 2.4.5 and earlier versions offered many ways of doing the same thing, often resulting in inconsistent flows and context switching. The team wanted the new interface to reflect how simple Ansible is. So the goal became offering a common flow for interacting with objects in the app and providing more context where possible.

Continue reading

AT&T Brands ‘FlexWare’ Service & Offers Smaller VNF Device

Palo Alto Networks joins the carrier's VNF options.

Hackers find little demand for their stolen NSA hacking tools

The hackers who are auctioning off cyberweapons allegedly stolen from the National Security Agency are growing annoyed and want cash.The ShadowBrokers' sale of the stolen tools has so far generated little interest, and over the weekend, the hackers complained in a message posted online, using broken English."TheShadowBrokers is not being interested in fame. TheShadowBrokers is selling to be making money," the hackers said.As of Monday, their auction only had one substantial bid at 1.5 bitcoins, or US $918. Many of the other bids were valued at less than $1. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hackers find little demand for their stolen NSA hacking tools

The hackers who are auctioning off cyberweapons allegedly stolen from the National Security Agency are growing annoyed and want cash.The ShadowBrokers' sale of the stolen tools has so far generated little interest, and over the weekend, the hackers complained in a message posted online, using broken English."TheShadowBrokers is not being interested in fame. TheShadowBrokers is selling to be making money," the hackers said.As of Monday, their auction only had one substantial bid at 1.5 bitcoins, or US $918. Many of the other bids were valued at less than $1. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Where’s the bottom for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer?

Millions more deserted Microsoft's browsers last month, adding to what can only be described as a collapse of the company's place in the browser world.According to analytics vendor Net Applications, the combined user share of Internet Explorer and Edge fell 1.9 percentage points in September, ending the month at 30.6%.The string of losses showed no sign of letting up: September's decline was the sixth in a row of 1.9 percentage points or more. IE and Edge have shed 18 percentage points so far this year, a 39% decline in just eight months. Simply put, no other browser has bled user share this quickly, with the possible exception of Netscape Navigator in the 1990s.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tim Cook: Augmented reality will be an essential part of your daily life, like the iPhone

Apple CEO Tim Cook has a hunch about the future of augmented reality, and whether it will ever become mainstream.This weekend, Cook said that it will take some time for AR to become “acceptable.” But once that happens, AR experiences will be an integral part of our daily lives, comparing the emerging technology to the iPhone and eating three meals a day.“I do think that a significant portion of the population of developed countries, and eventually all countries, will have AR experiences every day, almost like eating three meals a day. It will become that much a part of you,” Cook said during his panel at a tech conference in Utah. Cook then admitted that there are technical challenges preventing AR from becoming a reality.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft Azure Making Its Presence Known in Europe

The company spent $3 billion to expand its cloud services to Europe.

Microsoft points to a transition of Windows 10 Mobile to 64-bit

There's a lot to like in Microsoft's Windows 10 Mobile for smartphones, but it has one glaring weakness: It still is a 32-bit OS.But a transition to 64-bit for the OS was inevitable as memory capacity in smartphones goes up, Microsoft said during a presentation at the Ignite conference last week. Windows 10 Mobile lags behind Apple's iOS and Google's Android, which transitioned to 64 bits a few years ago. Many new Windows phones already have 64-bit ARM-based Qualcomm processors, but the OS still runs as 32 bit.Thirty-two bits is "not really a limitation for us since the devices are all 4GB [of RAM] or less. But that will change over the next couple of years," said Jason Whitehorn, partner software engineer manager of the Windows and Devices Group at Microsoft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SDxCentral’s Top 10 Articles — September 2016

Huawei's SDN controller, biggest layoffs, AWS-Killing bare metal cloud, and more.

Elephant Flows, Fabrics, and I2RS

The last post in this series on I2RS argues that this interface is designed to augment, rather than replace, the normal, distributed routing protocol. What sort of use case could we construct that would use I2RS in this way? What about elephant flows in data center fabrics? An earlier post considers how to solve the elephant flow using segment routing (SR); can elephant flows also be guided using I2RS? The network below will be used to consider this question.

Assume that A hashes a long lived elephant flow representing some 50% of the total bandwidth available on any single link in the fabric towards F. At the same time, A will hash other flows, represented by the red flow lines, onto each of the three links towards the core of the fabric in pretty much equal proportion. Smaller flows that are hashed onto the A->F link will likely suffer, while flows hashed onto the other two links will not.

This is a particularly bad problem in applications that have been decomposed into microservices, as the various components of the application tend to rely on fairly fixed delay and jitter budgets over the network to keep everything synchronized and running quickly. Continue reading

Your Docker agenda for the month of October

From webinars to workshops, meetups to conference talks, check out our list of events that are coming up in October!

Online

Oct 13: Docker for Windows Server 2016 by Michael Friis

Oct 18: Docker Datacenter Demo by Moni Sallama and Chris Hines.

Official Docker Training Course

View the full schedule of instructor led training courses here!

Introduction to Docker: This is a two-day, on-site or classroom-based training course which introduces you to the Docker platform and takes you through installing, integrating, and running it in your working environment.

Oct 11-12: Introduction to Docker with Xebia – Paris, France

Oct 19-20: Introduction to Docker with Contino – London, United Kingdom

Oct 24-25: Introduction to Docker with AKRA – Krakow, Germany

Docker Administration and Operations: The Docker Administration and Operations course consists of both the Introduction to Docker course, followed by the Advanced Docker Topics course, held over four consecutive days.

Oct 3-6: Docker Administration and Operations with Azca – Madrid, Spain

Oct 11-15: Docker Administration and Operations with TREEPTIK – Paris, France

Oct 18-21: Docker Administration and Operations with Vizuri – Raleigh, NC

Oct 18-22: Docker Administration and Operations with TREEPTIK – Aix en Provence, France

Oct 24-27: Continue reading

The craziest stories of the tech sector

Network World started its Wider Net stories in 2003 in an effort to lighten up our news pages, acknowledging that there is a lot more to the world of enterprise networking and IT other than speeds and feeds of switches and routers and WAN links. The story approach was modeled somewhat after the Wall Street Journal's famed and quirky front page A-Hed articles (i.e., the middle column), but tended more to networking topics, from "When animals attack…networks" to the story of networking's most famous couple, Alice and Bob of security lesson fame. While Network World did away with its formal weekly Wider Net articles when the publication switched over to publishing twice a month, we've tried to continue mixing in lighthearted pieces through our blogs and in other places on our website and print magazine. Here are some of our favorites:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The craziest stories of the tech sector

Network World started its Wider Net stories in 2003 in an effort to lighten up our news pages, acknowledging that there is a lot more to the world of enterprise networking and IT other than speeds and feeds of switches and routers and WAN links. The story approach was modeled somewhat after the Wall Street Journal's famed and quirky front page A-Hed articles (i.e., the middle column), but tended more to networking topics, from "When animals attack…networks" to the story of networking's most famous couple, Alice and Bob of security lesson fame. While Network World did away with its formal weekly Wider Net articles when the publication switched over to publishing twice a month, we've tried to continue mixing in lighthearted pieces through our blogs and in other places on our website and print magazine. Here are some of our favorites:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The craziest stories of the tech sector

Network World started its Wider Net stories in 2003 in an effort to lighten up our news pages, acknowledging that there is a lot more to the world of enterprise networking and IT other than speeds and feeds of switches and routers and WAN links. The story approach was modeled somewhat after the Wall Street Journal's famed and quirky front page A-Hed articles (i.e., the middle column), but tended more to networking topics, from "When animals attack…networks" to the story of networking's most famous couple, Alice and Bob of security lesson fame. While Network World did away with its formal weekly Wider Net articles when the publication switched over to publishing twice a month, we've tried to continue mixing in lighthearted pieces through our blogs and in other places on our website and print magazine. Here are some of our favorites:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft follows AWS into France with plan for new Azure data center

Microsoft is adding to its European cloud infrastructure, with plans to open new data centers in France next year, CEO Satya Nadella said Monday.The company has already spent US$3 billion growing its European cloud capabilities. These include data centers in the U.K. hosting Azure and Office 365 services, and in Germany hosting Azure.The French data centers will host Dynamics 365, Microsoft's new ERP and CRM offering, in addition to Azure and Office 365.The company has already won over the the U.K.'s Ministry of Defence and German auto parts manufacturer ZF to its cloud services. Ireland's Health Service Executive and the Franco-Japanese car-making partnership Renault-Nissan Alliance are also customers, it said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

37% off Elite Tactical Waterproof Flashlight 1200 Lumen Cree LED with Zoom For Self Defense – Deal Alert

The Elite Tactical Pro 300 Series Tactical Flashlight is constructed from heavy-duty, military grade material, and claims to be the best and brightest flashlight on the market with a powerful 1200 lumen intensity. It's built with Cree LED technology and is complete with a zoomable feature that allows you to concentrate light into specific areas, something they've indicated could be useful in situations requiring self-defense. The design is waterproof and shockproof making it ideal for rainy nights, emergency use during a flood or storm, or while camping, hunting, or hiking. Keep it in your kitchen cupboard, your car or an emergency kit. The Pro 300 comes with rechargeable batteries for extra convenience. The Elite Pro 300 averages 5 out of 5 stars on Amazon and its typical list price of $30 has been discounted 37% to $19. Tired of your flashlight breaking whenever it's run over by an airplane? Check out the discounted Elite Pro 300 on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

U.S. cellular carriers charge too much, and here’s proof

If you think your mobile phone bill is too damn high, you’re absolutely right. Like many people, I’ve always felt I was overpaying for mobile service. (Talk to IT departments at companies large and small, and many will tell you that despite significant corporate discounts, they also feel they pay too much. )And there’s no doubt we’re all paying a lot. According to a J.D. Power report, the average U.S. monthly cell phone bill was a whopping $73 in 2014. Those are the most recent averages I could find, but if you look at data plans from the big four U.S. carriers, data plans start at around $50 a month, depending on how much data you’re buying, and head straight up from there. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trump calls for US to use offensive cyberweapons

The U.S. government needs to be ready to use its offensive cyberweapons in response to attacks from other nations, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Monday.The U.S. has significant offensive cybercapabilities, but it has been shy about deploying them, Trump said during a speech in Herdon, Virginia. "This is the warfare of the future," he said. The U.S. should also increase its use of cyberweapons to attack terrorists, Trump said. President Barack Obama has failed to protect the nation's cybersecurity and a new focus is needed, added Trump, who has largely avoided technology issues in his campaign. Trump said he will create an international cybersecurity task force to battle hackers, and he will ask U.S. military leaders for suggestions on how to improve the nation's cyberdefenses. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Trump calls for US to use offensive cyberweapons

The U.S. government needs to be ready to use its offensive cyberweapons in response to attacks from other nations, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Monday.The U.S. has significant offensive cybercapabilities, but it has been shy about deploying them, Trump said during a speech in Herdon, Virginia. "This is the warfare of the future," he said. The U.S. should also increase its use of cyberweapons to attack terrorists, Trump said. President Barack Obama has failed to protect the nation's cybersecurity and a new focus is needed, added Trump, who has largely avoided technology issues in his campaign. Trump said he will create an international cybersecurity task force to battle hackers, and he will ask U.S. military leaders for suggestions on how to improve the nation's cyberdefenses. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here