A Few Thoughts from Black Hat 2016

Last week’s Black Hat 2016 conference was a whirlwind of activity.  Here’s a few of my takeaways:1.      I kind of like Black Hat better than the RSA Conference.  At Black Hat, you talk about the real challenges facing our industry and discuss intellectual ways to overcome them.  At RSA, everyone throws buzz words at you and tells you how they solve all your problems.  And maybe it’s because RSA is in San Francisco, but you can always count on the Sand Hill Rd. crowd to show up at RSA and let you know how rich they’ve become protecting all of our sensitive data.  Black Hat is whiskey and grit, RSA is Merlot and PR messaging.  In other words, the folks who really know, live, and fight for cybersecurity are in Vegas while those looking to make money on cybersecurity are at RSA.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

SDN Security Researchers State Their Case at Black Hat

When Seungwon Shin was a grad student, few people wanted to talk about software-defined networking (SDN) security. So say two of his grad students, Seungsoo Lee and Changhoon Yoon (left and right, respectively, in the photo above). But along with Shin, who’s now an assistant professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology... Read more →

Worth Reading: The languages that almost became CSS

When HTML was announced by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991 there was no method of styling pages. How given HTML tags were rendered was determined by the browser, often with significant input from the user’s preferences. It seemed, however, like a good idea to create a standard way for pages to ‘suggest’ how they might prefer to be rendered stylistically. —Eager

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Three “Telco Catastrophes” Hackers are Able to Cause

Privacy catastrophe, financial catastrophe, and performance catastrophe are three vulnerabilities hackers might take advantage of.

Qualcomm-powered Android devices plagued by four rooting flaws

Hundreds of millions of Android devices based on Qualcomm chipsets are likely exposed to at least one of four critical vulnerabilities that allow non-privileged apps to take them over.The four flaws were presented by security researcher Adam Donenfeld from Check Point Software Technologies on Sunday at the DEF CON security conference in Las Vegas. They were reported to Qualcomm between February and April, and the chipset maker has since released fixes for the vulnerabilities after classifying them as high severity.Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that all devices are yet protected. Due to the fragmentation of the Android ecosystem, many devices run older Android versions and no longer receive firmware updates, or they receive the fixes with months-long delays.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Qualcomm-powered Android devices plagued by four rooting flaws

Hundreds of millions of Android devices based on Qualcomm chipsets are likely exposed to at least one of four critical vulnerabilities that allow non-privileged apps to take them over.The four flaws were presented by security researcher Adam Donenfeld from Check Point Software Technologies on Sunday at the DEF CON security conference in Las Vegas. They were reported to Qualcomm between February and April, and the chipset maker has since released fixes for the vulnerabilities after classifying them as high severity.Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that all devices are yet protected. Due to the fragmentation of the Android ecosystem, many devices run older Android versions and no longer receive firmware updates, or they receive the fixes with months-long delays.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FTC seeks research help from DEF CON hackers

The Federal Trade Commission made an appeal at DEF CON in Las Vegas this past week in hopes of getting hackers to help them crack down on manufacturers and service providers that leave customers vulnerable.Top of the list: ransomware, malvertising, networked cars and security for the internet of things.Of particular interest in the case of IoT is preventing one device from compromising a consumer’s entire private network, says Lorrie Cranor, the FTC’s chief technologist.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FTC seeks research help from DEF CON hackers

The Federal Trade Commission made an appeal at DEF CON in Las Vegas this past week in hopes of getting hackers to help them crack down on manufacturers and service providers that leave customers vulnerable.Top of the list: ransomware, malvertising, networked cars and security for the internet of things.Of particular interest in the case of IoT is preventing one device from compromising a consumer’s entire private network, says Lorrie Cranor, the FTC’s chief technologist.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

One Rack To Stack Them All

Stacking up electronics equipment in precise form factors that slide into standard racks is not a new idea, and in fact it is one that predates the modern era of computing. As is the case with any standard, the constraints it imposes brings order to the market while at the same time restricting it, and making any substantial change in something as fundamental as the datacenter rack requires a pretty significant payback.

Any standard also requires volume manufacturing to really take off and yield benefits, and this has certainly not happened with rack-scale architectures to date. The time is perhaps …

One Rack To Stack Them All was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

60% off SOWTECH HDMI Splitter, Full HD 1080P and 3D Support – Deal Alert

This splitter from SOWTECH takes one HDMI full HD 1080P signal and outputs two duplicate signals, full strength with no signal degradation. Amazon indicates that this is a #1 best seller in its category, is rated 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 120 customers (read reviews), and right now its list price of $36.99 is discounted by 60% to just $14.87. See the discounted SOWTECH HDMI splitter now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple—and America—have lost the mobile platform wars

It may be about time to finally declare a winner in the long and sometimes bitter battle for mobile dominance between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. According to a recent survey of thousands of developers around the world, Android is increasing its lead for developer mindshare, eroding the long-standing maxim of creating apps for “iPhone first.”Android sets a record In Developer Economics: State of the Developer Nation Q3 2016, released last week, VisionMobile reports Android now has a whopping 79 percent "mindshare" among mobile developers, the highest for any platform the company has measured since it began its quarterly surveys back in 2010. The record comes as the mindshare for iOS has consistently tracked at 51 percent to 55 percent since 2013 (although that figure rises to 61 percent for professional developers). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 8.8.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Open Threat Exchange (OTX)Key features: AlienVault OTX is an open threat intelligence community where security practitioners research and share emerging threat data. Members can create private discussion groups related to specific industries, regions and threats. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New products of the week 8.8.16

New products of the weekOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Open Threat Exchange (OTX)Key features: AlienVault OTX is an open threat intelligence community where security practitioners research and share emerging threat data. Members can create private discussion groups related to specific industries, regions and threats. More info.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Wearables at the Rio 2016 Olympics

See the gadgets athletes are using at the Rio OlympicsImage by IOC/David Burnett/ContactThe 2016 Rio Olympics is finally getting underway and there'll be no shortage of tech at this year's event. Athletes use all kinds of gadgets to help them train and stay fit, from heads-up displays used by cyclists to jump trackers worn by the volleyball team. Here's the a few of the gadgets that have made it to Rio. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft reduces Windows 10 roll-back grace period

Microsoft has reduced the I-changed-my-mind period in Windows 10 by two-thirds, cutting it from 30 days to 10, the company confirmed.Users who upgraded to Windows 10 were able to roll back to the preceding Windows as long as they did so within 30 days. To make that possible, Microsoft stored the older operating system in a special folder on the device's drive, consuming up to 5GB of storage space. After the grace period expired, the folder's contents were deleted.With last week's Anniversary Update, aka version 1607, the 30 days were reduced to 10. (Microsoft identifies its major upgrades using numerals representing year and month of the release.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A gentler way to hack back

The quickest way to launch the cyber equivalent of a nuclear war is for the targets of cyberattacks to try to “hack back” against their tormentors.Or, maybe not.The debate over that has raged for decades, with a majority of security experts arguing that the difficulties of attribution and the dangers of escalating retaliatory counterattacks make hacking back a losing proposition.But what if it didn’t involve trying to corrupt or destroy an attacker’s network? What if it wasn’t exactly “kinder,” but was a bit “gentler,” involving intermediate-level responses like so-called “naming and shaming” of perpetrators, or blocking access to U.S. markets of foreign companies that benefit from cyber espionage?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

5 types of toxic team members and how to handle them

How to handle toxic coworkersImage by ThinkstockThey slow you down, irritate you and sometimes they're just plain useless. You know who they are -- those toxic team members who never seem to actually contribute anything to projects or to your work environment but who have an uncanny ability to stay employed and come out of every situation smelling like the proverbial rose. "While 75 percent of employers rate team work and collaboration as "very important," most employees hate working together in teams because there's inevitably at least one person who make the experience horrible. It may not be deliberate; it may be that these folks are brilliant but just lack social skills. Whatever the case, it's detrimental to the rest of the team and the company," according to Alexander Maasik, communications specialist with workplace productivity solutions company Weekdone. Here, Maasik offers the five most common enemies of teamwork, and the best way to handle them as a leader or as a co-worker. 1. False promises Image by ThinkstockTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How can you detect a fake ransom letter?

Pay up?Image by Flickr/Nick O’NeilIn the 2016 Executive Application & Network Security Survey, among those who have not experienced a ransom situation, the majority say they would not pay a ransom. But among the few who have experienced a ransom attack, more than half in the U.S. did not pay. One respondent indicated that paying did not guarantee that the attacker would do their part.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How can you detect a fake ransom letter?

Pay up?Image by Flickr/Nick O’NeilIn the 2016 Executive Application & Network Security Survey, among those who have not experienced a ransom situation, the majority say they would not pay a ransom. But among the few who have experienced a ransom attack, more than half in the U.S. did not pay. One respondent indicated that paying did not guarantee that the attacker would do their part.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tips for scaling up a data analytics project

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's new chief data scientist likens the adoption of big data analytics at the agency to the early adoption of the iPhone in 2007. Those early adopters "didn't know exactly what it was, but they wanted to use it because they perceived the value," says Robin Thottungal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)