Anticipating Black Hat

I was at CiscoLive a few weeks ago in the 100 degree+ heat of Las Vegas and like other cybersecurity professionals I am off to Sin City again next week for Black Hat.Now Black Hat has become a technically-focused little brother of the RSA Security Conference, chock full of cybersecurity geeks at the beginning of the week and forensic investigators, researchers, analysts, and hackers as Black Hat turns to Defcon.  Given this focus, I’m looking forward to hearing about a number of things including:1.      Anti-ransomware fact and hyperbole.  Last December, I predicted a rise in ransomware in my blog, even going so far to talk about enterprise ransomware that impacted multiple systems on the network simultaneously.  Unfortunately, I was right about this one as ransomware has become a cybersecurity scourge of 2016.  Nasty stuff and once you’re hit, there is little you can do except replace the hard drive, reimage systems and hope you’ve done a recent full backup.  Alternatively, you can pony up a bunch of rubles to Vladimir in Odessa.  Nevertheless, there are in fact ways to prevent ransomware before it bricks your system.  New types of Continue reading

Anticipating Black Hat

I was at CiscoLive a few weeks ago in the 100 degree+ heat of Las Vegas and like other cybersecurity professionals I am off to Sin City again next week for Black Hat.Now Black Hat has become a technically-focused little brother of the RSA Security Conference, chock full of cybersecurity geeks at the beginning of the week and forensic investigators, researchers, analysts, and hackers as Black Hat turns to Defcon.  Given this focus, I’m looking forward to hearing about a number of things including:1.      Anti-ransomware fact and hyperbole.  Last December, I predicted a rise in ransomware in my blog, even going so far to talk about enterprise ransomware that impacted multiple systems on the network simultaneously.  Unfortunately, I was right about this one as ransomware has become a cybersecurity scourge of 2016.  Nasty stuff and once you’re hit, there is little you can do except replace the hard drive, reimage systems and hope you’ve done a recent full backup.  Alternatively, you can pony up a bunch of rubles to Vladimir in Odessa.  Nevertheless, there are in fact ways to prevent ransomware before it bricks your system.  New types of Continue reading

Changing the Exascale Efficiency Narrative at Memory Start Point

With this summer’s announcement of China’s dramatic shattering of top supercomputing performance numbers using ten million relatively simple cores, there is a slight shift in how some are considering the future of the world’s fastest, largest systems.

While one approach, which will be seeing with the pre-exascale machines at the national labs in the United States, is to build complex systems based on sophisticated cores (with a focus on balance in terms of memory) the Chinese approach with the top Sunway TaihuLight machine, which is based on lighter weight, simple, and cheap components and using those in volume, has …

Changing the Exascale Efficiency Narrative at Memory Start Point was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Long-running malvertising campaign infected thousands of computers per day

Security researchers have shut down a large-scale malvertising operation that used sophisticated techniques to remain undetected for months and served exploits to millions of computers.The operation, dubbed AdGholas, has been running since at least October 2015. According to security vendor Proofpoint, the gang behind it managed to distribute malicious advertisements through more than 100 ad exchanges, attracting between 1 million and 5 million page hits per day.The Proofpoint researchers estimate that 10 to 20 percent of computers that loaded the rogue ads were redirected to servers hosting exploit kits -- web-based attack tools that attempt to silently exploit vulnerabilities in popular applications in order to install malware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Long-running malvertising campaign infected thousands of computers per day

Security researchers have shut down a large-scale malvertising operation that used sophisticated techniques to remain undetected for months and served exploits to millions of computers.The operation, dubbed AdGholas, has been running since at least October 2015. According to security vendor Proofpoint, the gang behind it managed to distribute malicious advertisements through more than 100 ad exchanges, attracting between 1 million and 5 million page hits per day.The Proofpoint researchers estimate that 10 to 20 percent of computers that loaded the rogue ads were redirected to servers hosting exploit kits -- web-based attack tools that attempt to silently exploit vulnerabilities in popular applications in order to install malware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft brings Edge JavaScript engine to Linux, Mac OS X

If you ever needed a sign that a new era has dawned at Microsoft, this is it: The company announced it is bringing ChakraCore to Linux and OS X. ChakraCore is the main element of the Chakra JavaScript engine used in both the Microsoft Edge browser and the company's Universal Windows Platform. So, the company whose not-invented-here mentality was so iron-clad in the 1990s is now developing a JavaScript browser and app engine for its two competitor desktop operating systems. + Also on Network World: Microsoft cozies up to Linux containers +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Florida men sue Microsoft over ‘coerced’ upgrades to Windows 10

Three Florida men have filed a lawsuit in a Florida federal court against Microsoft, charging that the company "coerced" them into upgrading to Windows 10 and that the "unintentional" upgrades damaged their PCs, resulting in lost time and money.The three -- Al Khafaji, Ahmad Abdulreda and Robert Stahl -- were the first to sue Microsoft at the federal level for running a campaign to get Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users to accept the free upgrade to Windows 10. That offer expires Friday.INSIDER Review: Enterprise guide to Windows 10 "Microsoft engaged in a reckless and negligent premise with catastrophic consequences for some of Defendant's customers whose devices were rendered useless and incapable of normal recovery operations," the complaint stated. "Plaintiffs were coerced into adopting Windows 10 or had Windows 10 installed in various unintentional manners with subsequent damage to their computers after which Plaintiffs sustained unnecessary and avoidable stress, confusion, loss of time and significant monetary damage all at the hands of Defendant."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: $1 trillion in IT spending to be ‘affected’ by the cloud

IT is moving to the cloud big time, says research and consulting firm Gartner. And while we’ve been aware of that for a while, the firm has also been coming up with some staggering corroborating numbers.It says that by 2020, $1 trillion in IT spending will be “affected” by the shift to cloud. That’s roughly a little under a third of all IT spending, which in 2015 was $3.41 trillion globally and is projected to be $3.79 trillion in 2020, according to Gartner’s Q2 2016 forecast, published earlier this month.+ Also on Network World: Spending on public cloud IT infrastructure to hit $23.3 billion +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: $1 trillion in IT spending to be ‘affected’ by the cloud

IT is moving to the cloud big time, says research and consulting firm Gartner. And while we’ve been aware of that for a while, the firm has also been coming up with some staggering corroborating numbers.It says that by 2020, $1 trillion in IT spending will be “affected” by the shift to cloud. That’s roughly a little under a third of all IT spending, which in 2015 was $3.41 trillion globally and is projected to be $3.79 trillion in 2020, according to Gartner’s Q2 2016 forecast, published earlier this month.+ Also on Network World: Spending on public cloud IT infrastructure to hit $23.3 billion +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DC Fabric Segment Routing Use Case (2)

In the first post we covered a bit of the basics around segment routing in the data center. Let’s return to the first use case to see if we can figure out how we’d actually implement the type of traffic steering needed to segregate mouse and elephant flows. Let’s return to our fabric and traffic flows and think about how we could shape traffic using segment routing.

There are two obvious ways to shape traffic in this way—

IGP-Prefix segments

The first way would be to impose a label stack that forces traffic along a path that touches, or passes through, each of the devices along the path. In this case, that would mean imposing a path on the traffic originating behind the ToR at A so it must pass through [F,G,D,E]. The flow of traffic through the data center will look something like—

• Somehow classify the traffic as belonging to the flow that should be shaped to follow only the [F,G,D,E] path
• Impose the path as a label stack, so the SR header (really just a label stack in this situation, remember?) will contain [F,G,D,E]
• Forward the packet, with the label, to the next hop in the stack, Continue reading

Baguette vending machine is the greatest invention since sliced bread

I can’t believe this exists. I certainly can’t believe it works well. But, heck, I’d pay good money to find out that I’m wrong. And San Franciscans now have the opportunity.From a report on SFGate: Shut down the tech industry because San Francisco now has the only new piece of innovation it ever needs: a vending machine that dispenses hot baguettes.The Le Bread Xpress vending machine is up and running on Market and 15th at the new Myriad market hall. The baguettes are part-baked at a bakery and finished in the vending machine after you place your order. Bet the name came to them in less time than it takes to bake bread.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google beefs Linux up kernel defenses in Android

Future versions of Android will be more resilient to exploits thanks to developers' efforts to integrate the latest Linux kernel defenses into the operating system. Android's security model relies heavily on the Linux kernel that sits at its core. As such, Android developers have always been interested in adding new security features that are intended to prevent potentially malicious code from reaching the kernel, which is the most privileged area of the operating system. One older example is Security Enhancements for Android (SEAndroid), a set of kernel add-ons and tools that make exploitation of certain vulnerabilities harder by enforcing access controls.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google beefs Linux up kernel defenses in Android

Future versions of Android will be more resilient to exploits thanks to developers' efforts to integrate the latest Linux kernel defenses into the operating system. Android's security model relies heavily on the Linux kernel that sits at its core. As such, Android developers have always been interested in adding new security features that are intended to prevent potentially malicious code from reaching the kernel, which is the most privileged area of the operating system. One older example is Security Enhancements for Android (SEAndroid), a set of kernel add-ons and tools that make exploitation of certain vulnerabilities harder by enforcing access controls.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Asana’s new feature lets users mark what tasks are holding them up

One of the biggest issues with collaborative work is sitting around twiddling your thumbs while waiting for someone else to get their work done. Asana announced a new feature on Thursday that's aimed at cutting down on emails asking when a particular task will be finished. Users of the collaboration and tracking software will be able to mark that a task they're assigned to is waiting for someone else to complete their work, using the new Dependencies feature. That way, for example, a designer can say her final layout of a web page is waiting on a marketer to put the finishing touches on the copy and on images that are supposed to be included. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Oracle and NetSuite: Longtime ‘sweethearts’ united at last

Oracle's US$9.3 billion purchase of NetSuite may be the most anticipated acquisition in the history of enterprise software."It’s like the high school sweethearts you always knew would get married but they had to get through four years of college first," said analyst Frank Scavo, president of Strativa.There's no denying the two companies share a long history. Not only was Oracle chairman and chief technology officer Larry Ellison an early backer of NetSuite, but both NetSuite founder Evan Goldberg and CEO Zach Nelson spent time at Oracle.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Gartner: Amazon’s cloud storage is 1.6x bigger than all other competitors combined

Gartner this week released its Magic Quadrant for public cloud storage and Amazon Web Services is the clear market leader, while Microsoft Azure comes in a close second place.+MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: Mega cloud M&A: Oracle buys NetSuite for $9.3B | Dropbox aims for the enterprise with new team, IT admin features | 25 Surprising facts about Google that you didn't know +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cloud computing and the ‘last mile’

What does food and beverage production have to do with cloud and the last mile?  There are several interesting parallels.Unknown to most people, the food and beverage industry operates on razor-thin margins. As a result, producers look for any advantage they can get through automation, scale and supply chain optimization. Water is both bulky and heavy while also plentiful and cheap. As the percentage content of water increases in a food or beverage, producers are incented to remove the water during production in a way that it can be reintroduced at the point of consumption. From soups to sodas, this model keeps transportation costs low while expanding profit margins.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Worth Reading: Developing the Internet of Things

The Internet is undergoing an evolutionary transformation resulting from the explosive growth of things that are interconnected. From humble beginnings connecting single institutions, and then multiple institutions, to the first major computer-networking explosion in the 90’s, we are now in a period of many connected things, not just a traditional server or computing device. From single purpose sensors through wearable technologies to sophisticated computing devices, we are creating, exchanging, and consuming data at rates that would have been inconceivable just a decade ago. —CircleID

The post Worth Reading: Developing the Internet of Things appeared first on 'net work.

Docker for Mac and Windows is Now Generally Available and Ready for Production

Today, we are excited to announce that Docker for Mac and Docker for Windows are graduating from beta and are now stable and ready for production.

GE Will Let Developers Run Predix Off-Cloud

Another bauble to dangle in front of developers.