MIT Twitter dashboard muffles election news echo chamber

The Twitter dashboard Electome project at MIT, which charts Twitter in unique detail for journalists, announced its collaboration with the Commission on Presidential Debates. Electome will give journalists covering the debates near real-time feedback about the sentiments of people in the Twitter-sphere. It is a feedback loop for journalists to measure public sentiment to balance the attention given to subjects that sometimes receive copy-cat coverage of a lead story by a major news outlet in which the public has little interest.Electome was produced by Deb Roy, director and chief scientist at the MIT Media Lab, Laboratory for Social Machines; William Powers, longtime journalist and author turned Media Lab Electome research scientist; and Russell Stevens, project leader. Roy is also Twitter’s chief media scientist. He came to Twitter through the acquisition of Bluefin Labs, a social TV analytics company he co-founded.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Forget the robocalypse — ‘Homo connecticus’ may be what’s coming

Robots' potential to take over the world is a commonly expressed fear in the world of AI, but at least one Turing Award winner doesn't see it happening that way. Rather than replacing mankind, technology will create a new kind of human that will coexist with its predecessors while taking advantage of new tech-enabled tools.So argued Raj Reddy, former founding director of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute and 1994 winner of the Turing Award, at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany last week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

39% off iClever Backlight Bluetooth Folding Keyboard for Smartphone, PC, or Tablet – Deal Alert

This lightweight and super portable keyboard from iClever features a compact design with full standard-size keys, but folds down into ⅓ of the size. This model has a convenient backlight feature with red, blue, or green selectable at two brightness levels, so you can type in every environment from a dimly-lit classroom to a dark airplane cabin. Its Broadcom Bluetooth module has a generous operating range of 30 feet, and connects quickly with your devices when you simply unfold the keyboard. The iClever backlit folding keyboard averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from nearly 150 people (read reviews) and its typical list price of $89.99 has been reduced 39% to $54.99. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Build and run your first Docker Windows Server container

Today, Microsoft announced the general availability of Windows Server 2016, and with it, Docker engine running containers natively on Windows. This blog post describes how to get setup to run Docker Windows Containers on Windows 10 or using a Windows Server 2016 VM. Check out the companion blog posts on the technical improvements that have made Docker containers on Windows possible and the post announcing the Docker Inc. and Microsoft partnership.

Before getting started, It’s important to understand that Windows Containers run Windows executables compiled for the Windows Server kernel and userland (either windowsservercore or nanoserver). To build and run Windows containers, you have to have a Windows system with container support.

Windows 10 with Anniversary Update

For developers, Windows 10 is a great place to run Docker Windows containers and containerization support was added to the the Windows 10 kernel with the Anniversary Update (note that container images can only be based on Windows Server Core and Nanoserver, not Windows 10). All that’s missing is the Windows-native Docker Engine and some image base layers.

The simplest way to get a Windows Docker Engine is by installing the Docker for Windows public beta (direct download link). Docker for Continue reading

A shout out to Akamai for candor in IoT botnet attack

Akamai deserves credit for the way it disclosed why it stopped protecting the Krebs on Security Web site last week after defending it for three days from the largest botnet it had ever encountered.It must have been embarrassing for the company to acknowledge that it was a business decision it was forced to make because of the expense and consumption of resources to keep the site up was too great.But the company did so and addressed a more important issue, namely that the attack was generated by a botnet of Internet of Things devices, mainly cameras, routers and DVRs, according to Krebs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A shout out to Akamai for candor in IoT botnet attack

Akamai deserves credit for the way it disclosed why it stopped protecting the Krebs on Security Web site last week after defending it for three days from the largest botnet it had ever encountered.It must have been embarrassing for the company to acknowledge that it was a business decision it was forced to make because of the expense and consumption of resources to keep the site up was too great.But the company did so and addressed a more important issue, namely that the attack was generated by a botnet of Internet of Things devices, mainly cameras, routers and DVRs, according to Krebs.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The IoT is uranium

Does the thought of 600 Gbps-plus of traffic hitting your URLs excite you? Do you get tingles up and down your spine thinking about watching your line of business apps frying? Perhaps that wonderful text, where an alert from you financial processor says “We’ve gone black, again, and expect to be back online perhaps maybe possibly tonight” thrills you.The Internet of Thingies (IoT) is actually nuclear, and we’ve witnessed the first use of a nuclear internet weapon. Brian Krebs’ Krebs on Security site was smashed. It could happen to you. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The IoT is uranium

Does the thought of 600 Gbps-plus of traffic hitting your URLs excite you? Do you get tingles up and down your spine thinking about watching your line of business apps frying? Perhaps that wonderful text, where an alert from you financial processor says “We’ve gone black, again, and expect to be back online perhaps maybe possibly tonight” thrills you.The Internet of Thingies (IoT) is actually nuclear, and we’ve witnessed the first use of a nuclear internet weapon. Brian Krebs’ Krebs on Security site was smashed. It could happen to you. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

snaproute Go BGP Code Dive (11): Moving to Open Confirm

In the last post in this series, we began considering the bgp code that handles the open message that begins moving a new peer to open confirmed state. This is the particular bit of code of interest—

case BGPEventBGPOpen:
  st.fsm.StopConnectRetryTimer()
  bgpMsg := data.(*packet.BGPMessage)
  if st.fsm.ProcessOpenMessage(bgpMsg) {
    st.fsm.sendKeepAliveMessage()
    st.fsm.StartHoldTimer()
    st.fsm.ChangeState(NewOpenConfirmState(st.fsm))
  }

We looked at how this code assigns the contents of the received packet to bgpMsg; now we need to look at how this information is actually processed. bgpMsg is passed to st.fsm.ProcessOpenMessage() in the next line. This call is preceded by the st.fsm, which means this function is going to be found in the FSM, which means fsm.go. Indeed, func (fsm *FSM) ProcessOpenMessage... is around line 1172 in fsm.go—

func (fsm *FSM) ProcessOpenMessage(pkt *packet.BGPMessage) bool {
 body := pkt.Body.(*packet.BGPOpen)

 if uint32(body.HoldTime) < fsm.holdTime {
  fsm.SetHoldTime(uint32(body.HoldTime), uint32(body.HoldTime/3))
 }

 if body.MyAS == fsm.Manager.gConf.AS {
  fsm.peerType = config.PeerTypeInternal—
 } else {
  fsm.peerType = config.PeerTypeExternal
 }

 afiSafiMap := packet.GetProtocolFromOpenMsg(body)
 for protoFamily, _ := range afiSafiMap {
  if fsm. Continue reading

IDG Contributor Network: Sensors come home

For hundreds of years, engineers have built sensors into systems and devices to gather information from the physical world. Sensors have done much to automate systems, make the world smarter and advance our way of life, but only recently have consumers engaged with sensor information in personal ways.+ Also on Network World: Homeland Security issues call to action on IoT security +The sensor industry is growing at a very healthy pace. “The IoT (Internet of Things) is impacting growth across many market sectors, including sensors, where the number of units produced and employed will exceed 35 billion units by 2018,” according to Semico Research & Consulting Group. Vendors are shipping discrete sensors, as well as combo sensors that incorporate more than one function.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

22% off ThermaCELL Mosquito Repellent Pest Control Outdoor and Camping Lantern – Deal Alert

The Thermacell Mosquito Repellent Lantern effectively repels mosquitoes and other biting insects in a 15 x 15-foot zone. It has no open flames, operates on a single butane cartridge, and is perfect for a deck, porch or campsite. It averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon and is currently discounted to $31.02. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Armies of hacked IoT devices launch unprecedented DDoS attacks

Security researchers have been warning for years that poor security for internet of things devices could have serious consequences. We're now seeing those warnings come true, with botnets made up of compromised IoT devices  capable of launching distributed denial-of-service attacks of unprecedented scale. Octave Klaba, the founder and CTO of French hosting firm OVH, sounded the alarm on Twitter last week when his company was hit with two concurrent DDoS attacks whose combined bandwidth reached almost 1 terabit per second. One of the two attacks peaked at 799Gbps alone, making it the largest ever reported.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Armies of hacked IoT devices launch unprecedented DDoS attacks

Security researchers have been warning for years that poor security for internet of things devices could have serious consequences. We're now seeing those warnings come true, with botnets made up of compromised IoT devices  capable of launching distributed denial-of-service attacks of unprecedented scale. Octave Klaba, the founder and CTO of French hosting firm OVH, sounded the alarm on Twitter last week when his company was hit with two concurrent DDoS attacks whose combined bandwidth reached almost 1 terabit per second. One of the two attacks peaked at 799Gbps alone, making it the largest ever reported.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Illusive Networks seeks to slow Swift attackers through deception

Today's savvy bank robbers don't break into vaults looking for gold or diamonds: They're more likely to be hacking networks looking for access to the Swift payment system. Illusive Networks wants to catch them in the act.In February, hackers exploited Bangladesh Bank's access to the Swift fund transfer network to steal US$81 million -- and almost got away with $951 million.They had infiltrated the bank's network, installing malware on the Swift Alliance Access server that exchanged messages with the gateway to Swift's secure fund transfer system. They used the bank's Swift credentials to order payments, while their malware interfered with the printing of confirmation messages, delaying the bank's discovery of the electronic heist.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Illusive Networks seeks to slow Swift attackers through deception

Today's savvy bank robbers don't break into vaults looking for gold or diamonds: They're more likely to be hacking networks looking for access to the Swift payment system. Illusive Networks wants to catch them in the act.In February, hackers exploited Bangladesh Bank's access to the Swift fund transfer network to steal US$81 million -- and almost got away with $951 million.They had infiltrated the bank's network, installing malware on the Swift Alliance Access server that exchanged messages with the gateway to Swift's secure fund transfer system. They used the bank's Swift credentials to order payments, while their malware interfered with the printing of confirmation messages, delaying the bank's discovery of the electronic heist.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Asynchronous Docker metrics

Docker allows large numbers of lightweight containers can be started and stopped within seconds, creating an agile infrastructure that can rapidly adapt to changing requirements. However, the rapidly changing populating of containers poses a challenge to traditional methods of monitoring which struggle to keep pace with the changes. For example, periodic polling methods take time to detect new containers and can miss short lived containers entirely.

This article describes how the latest version of the Host sFlow agent is able to track the performance of a rapidly changing population of Docker containers and export a real-time stream of standard sFlow metrics.
The diagram above shows the life cycle status events associated with a container. The Docker Remote API provides a set of methods that allow the Host sFlow agent to communicate with the Docker to list containers and receive asynchronous container status events. The Host sFlow agent uses the events to keep track of running containers and periodically exports cpu, memory, network and disk performance counters for each container.

The diagram at the beginning of this article shows the sequence of messages, going from top to bottom, required to track a container. The Host sFlow agent first registers for container Continue reading
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