FBI expansion of surveillance powers meets obstacle

A move in the Senate to provide enhanced surveillance powers to the FBI through the use of National Security Letters met a hurdle Monday after Senator Ron Wyden placed a hold on the 2017 Intelligence Authorization bill over the controversial provisions.Wyden’s hold is a a measure by which a senator or group of senators can prevent a motion from reaching a vote.Tech companies and industry and civil rights groups are opposed to what is seen as a wider push by the Senate to increase the scope of the NSLs, which would allow the government to collect Internet records such as browsing history, email metadata, and location information through administrative orders and without court approval.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tensions rise over LTE using Wi-Fi channels

The fight over LTE networks sharing channels with Wi-Fi appears to be heating up.The Wi-Fi Alliance says that by September there will be a way to test whether an LTE device can get along with Wi-Fi. But Qualcomm, one of the biggest backers of LTE-U (LTE-Unlicensed), is demanding those tests immediately.The latest disagreement arose after a workshop held last Wednesday, the latest in a series aimed at crafting a test plan for coexistence between the two technologies. That test plan, which is designed for new products that use LTE in unlicensed bands, will be finished and verified by late September, WFA said.That's at least a month later than some earlier forecasts. Test development has taken a long time because it's an unprecedented project and the tests still need to be validated, WFA marketing vice president Kevin Robinson said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tensions rise over LTE using Wi-Fi channels

The fight over LTE networks sharing channels with Wi-Fi appears to be heating up.The Wi-Fi Alliance says that by September there will be a way to test whether an LTE device can get along with Wi-Fi. But Qualcomm, one of the biggest backers of LTE-U (LTE-Unlicensed), is demanding those tests immediately.The latest disagreement arose after a workshop held last Wednesday, the latest in a series aimed at crafting a test plan for coexistence between the two technologies. That test plan, which is designed for new products that use LTE in unlicensed bands, will be finished and verified by late September, WFA said.That's at least a month later than some earlier forecasts. Test development has taken a long time because it's an unprecedented project and the tests still need to be validated, WFA marketing vice president Kevin Robinson said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Manual URL Filtering in Firepower

A few days ago, someone asked me the following two questions–

1. Is a URL filtering license required to manually filter sites in Firepower?
2. Are wildcards supported as filtering criteria?

The short answer to the first question is simply no. There is no requirement for a term-based URL filtering license to do manual filtering. The URL license enables filtering AND logging based on web categories and risks levels. If this license is not installed and attached to a Firepower device, any policy containing those elements cannot be deployed. However, URL filtering rules that contain only manual URLs can be applied and do function properly.

The second question requires a slightly longer answer. With URL filtering, Firepower considers the protocol, fqdn, path and filename. For example, the following is a URL for the article I wrote last Thursday.

http://www.packetu.com/2016/06/23/accessing-asa-cli-firepower-threat-defence/

For filtering purposes, any substring of the URL will match. So any of the following will block the above page.

packetu
www.packetu.com
6
http
w.packetu.com/2016/06/23/accessing

Obviously, care must be taken to make sure a rule isn’t overly broad. Very few people want to just filter “http” or “6”. Also worth noting, the URLs appear to be case desensitized and logged in lower case. Continue reading

DockerCon videos: Moby’s cool hack session

Those of you who have attended previous DockerCons or watched the videos already know that with the help of the community, the Docker team tries it’s best to end each conference with a bang!

From Docker running on small IoT hardware devices (Raspberry Pi) to the biggest iron (IBM mainframes) to live migrating a Quake container around the world or running unikernels in Docker, DockerCon closing keynotes, also known as Moby’s Cool Hacks, aim to give everyone a sneak peak into what’s next for the Docker community. Check out the videos from the previous DockerCons to see the cool hacks and demos that stood out of the Docker team and Community.

Continue reading

Read Arista’s CEO customer letter on Cisco patent infringement verdict

Arista’s President & CEO Jayshree Ullal issued a letter to customers who may have been worried over the impact of last week’s US International Trade Commission ruling that the company had infringed on three Cisco patents.The ITC on June 23rd issued a limited exclusion order and cease and desist order that will forbid Arista from importing products (with these specific infringed features) into the U.S., Ullal wrote.“We recently released a new version of EOS (4.16.6M) that we believe addresses the ITC’s infringement findings in this case. This new version of EOS is now available for download and will be shipped as the default image on all of new products in the near future. Consistent with the standard practice in the ITC, we plan to request regulatory approvals of our new software to clarify that our products fully comply with the ITC’s orders,” Ullal wroteTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Read Arista’s CEO customer letter on Cisco patent infringement verdict

Arista’s President & CEO Jayshree Ullal issued a letter to customers who may have been worried over the impact of last week’s US International Trade Commission ruling that the company had infringed on three Cisco patents.The ITC on June 23rd issued a limited exclusion order and cease and desist order that will forbid Arista from importing products (with these specific infringed features) into the U.S., Ullal wrote.“We recently released a new version of EOS (4.16.6M) that we believe addresses the ITC’s infringement findings in this case. This new version of EOS is now available for download and will be shipped as the default image on all of new products in the near future. Consistent with the standard practice in the ITC, we plan to request regulatory approvals of our new software to clarify that our products fully comply with the ITC’s orders,” Ullal wroteTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Read Arista’s CEO customer letter on Cisco patent infringement verdict

Arista’s President & CEO Jayshree Ullal issued a letter to customers who may have been worried over the impact of last week’s US International Trade Commission ruling that the company had infringed on three Cisco patents.The ITC on June 23rd issued a limited exclusion order and cease and desist order that will forbid Arista from importing products (with these specific infringed features) into the U.S., Ullal wrote.“We recently released a new version of EOS (4.16.6M) that we believe addresses the ITC’s infringement findings in this case. This new version of EOS is now available for download and will be shipped as the default image on all of new products in the near future. Consistent with the standard practice in the ITC, we plan to request regulatory approvals of our new software to clarify that our products fully comply with the ITC’s orders,” Ullal wroteTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

First 5G Radio Spec Will be Available in June 2018, 3GPP says

5G RAN standard will include full control plane capability for the standalone version.

54% off Toshiba Canvio Connect II 1TB Portable Hard Drive – Deal Alert

Toshiba's Canvio Connect II is an all-in-one portable storage solution, able to back up files and folders, or an entire system. This model stores 1TB of data, with an additional 10GB of cloud storage included for free. When connected to your computer, files can be accessed remotely from any of your other devices. The unit is equipped with backup and recovery software. Password protection can be enabled as well for added peace of mind. The ultra portable and super fast Canvio Connect II averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 1,400 customers (read reviews). It has a regular list price of $120, but with the current 54% off deal you can buy it now for just $55.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NASA’s hot Juno Jupiter mission

The big missionImage by NASANASA’s Juno spacecraft, once described as a flying armored tank, has almost reached its destination: Jupiter. Once arriving July 4 the spacecraft will spend a year surveying Jupiter to find out, among other things whether there is a solid core beneath its multi-colored clouds, how much water is in its atmosphere and map Jupiter's magnetic and gravity fields. Underneath its dense cloud cover, Jupiter holds secrets to the fundamental processes and conditions that governed our solar system during its formation, NASA said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NASA’s hot Juno Jupiter mission

The big missionImage by NASANASA’s Juno spacecraft, once described as a flying armored tank, has almost reached its destination: Jupiter. Once arriving July 4 the spacecraft will spend a year surveying Jupiter to find out, among other things whether there is a solid core beneath its multi-colored clouds, how much water is in its atmosphere and map Jupiter's magnetic and gravity fields. Underneath its dense cloud cover, Jupiter holds secrets to the fundamental processes and conditions that governed our solar system during its formation, NASA said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NASA’s hot Juno Juniper mission

The big missionImage by NASANASA’s Juno spacecraft, once described as a flying armored tank, has almost reached its destination: Juniper. Once arriving July 4 the spacecraft will spend a year surveying Jupiter to find out, among other things whether there is a solid core beneath its multi-colored clouds, how much water is in its atmosphere and map Jupiter's magnetic and gravity fields. Underneath its dense cloud cover, Jupiter holds secrets to the fundamental processes and conditions that governed our solar system during its formation, NASA said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NASA’s hot Juno Juniper mission

The big missionImage by NASANASA’s Juno spacecraft, once described as a flying armored tank, has almost reached its destination: Juniper. Once arriving July 4 the spacecraft will spend a year surveying Jupiter to find out, among other things whether there is a solid core beneath its multi-colored clouds, how much water is in its atmosphere and map Jupiter's magnetic and gravity fields. Underneath its dense cloud cover, Jupiter holds secrets to the fundamental processes and conditions that governed our solar system during its formation, NASA said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A hacker wants to sell 10 million patient records on a black market

A hacker claims to have stolen close to 10 million patient records and is selling them for about US$820,000.Over the weekend, the hacker, called thedarkoverlord, began posting the sale of the records on TheRealDeal, a black market found on the deep Web. (It can be visited through a Tor browser.)The data includes names, addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers – all of which could be used to commit identity theft or access the patient’s bank accounts.These records are being sold in four separate batches. The biggest batch includes 9.3 million patient records stolen from a U.S. health insurance provider, and it went up for sale on Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A hacker wants to sell 10 million patient records on the black market

A hacker claims to have stolen close to 10 million patient records and is selling them for about US$820,000. Over the weekend, the hacker, called thedarkoverlord, began posting the sale of the records on TheRealDeal, a black market found on the deep Web. (It can be visited through a Tor browser.) The data includes names, addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers – all of which could be used to commit identity theft or access the patient’s bank accounts. These records are being sold in four separate batches. The biggest batch includes 9.3 million patient records stolen from a U.S. health insurance provider, and it went up for sale on Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A hacker wants to sell 10 million patient records on the black market

A hacker claims to have stolen close to 10 million patient records and is selling them for about US$820,000. Over the weekend, the hacker, called thedarkoverlord, began posting the sale of the records on TheRealDeal, a black market found on the deep Web. (It can be visited through a Tor browser.) The data includes names, addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers – all of which could be used to commit identity theft or access the patient’s bank accounts. These records are being sold in four separate batches. The biggest batch includes 9.3 million patient records stolen from a U.S. health insurance provider, and it went up for sale on Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s open sourcing of .NET hits a major milestone

Microsoft's open source programming language push reached a new milestone Monday, with the company announcing the general availability of .NET Core and ASP.NET Core 1.0.Those two projects are an attempt by Microsoft to make the core elements of its programming language available for use on Linux and OS X, operating systems that previously didn't support it. To reach this milestone, more than 18,000 developers, representing 1,300 companies, contributed to .NET Core.It's all part of Microsoft's push to make .NET into a development platform that developers can use across platforms, whether on the desktop, on servers, or on mobile. To that end, the tech giant earlier this year acquired Xamarin, which makes a set of tools allowing developers to build mobile apps across iOS and Android using .NET, too.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Sources: Microsoft Tried To Buy Docker for $4B

Deal never came to fruition but shows value of container startups.

The Hype About Converged Systems

Converged systems are a hot commodity in the IT sector these days. But it looks to us like the hype over various kinds of integrated systems that weld servers and storage together into preconfigured stacks  including hyperconverged stacks that literally merge the compute and storage layers on the same servers – is just a bit bigger than the appetite for such iron in the datacenters of the world.

According to the latest statistics from IDC, the market for converged systems, which is a broader definition of such machines that includes integrated systems, certified reference systems, and hyperconverged systems, the market …

The Hype About Converged Systems was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.