IDG Contributor Network: Blockchain to revolutionize elections?

Shell-shocked from the startling Brexit vote, followed by back-to-back political convention diatribes coddling Twitter streams and big screens, one could ask—surfacing briefly from a media device—have elections changed all that much over the years?The answer must be yes, and that’s partly because of the speed at which public opinion gets spread by social media. We all knew the Brits regretted Brexit within moments of the result being called. And we haven’t needed journalists to tell us what some, collectively, think of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.+ Also on Network World: Google wants you to be able to vote online +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Russian involvement in DNC WikiLeaks email heist unproven

Almost 20,000 emails were stolen from the Democratic National Committee’s Microsoft Exchange server. Not enough information has been made public, however, to determine if only the Russian state penetrated the DNC’s network and were the actor that stole the email files.I spent two days digging through WikiLeaks, monitoring the news, talking to security analysts and reading English and Russian message boards. The picture is incomplete because the DNC has not released enough data to conclude that the Russians stole the email files.  + Also on Network World: U.S. cyber incident directive follows DNC hack +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Rival gang leaks decryption keys for Chimera ransomware

Aside from the efforts of security researchers and antivirus companies, malware victims can sometimes also benefit from the fighting between rival cybercriminal groups.That happened this week when the creators of the Petya and Mischa ransomware programs leaked about 3,500 RSA private keys allegedly corresponding to systems infected with Chimera, another ransomware application.In a post Tuesday on Pastebin, Mischa's developers claimed that earlier this year they got access to big parts of the development system used by Chimera's creators.As a result of that hack, they obtained the source code for Chimera and integrated some of it into their own ransomware project, according to the Pastebin message.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Rival gang leaks decryption keys for Chimera ransomware

Aside from the efforts of security researchers and antivirus companies, malware victims can sometimes also benefit from the fighting between rival cybercriminal groups.That happened this week when the creators of the Petya and Mischa ransomware programs leaked about 3,500 RSA private keys allegedly corresponding to systems infected with Chimera, another ransomware application.In a post Tuesday on Pastebin, Mischa's developers claimed that earlier this year they got access to big parts of the development system used by Chimera's creators.As a result of that hack, they obtained the source code for Chimera and integrated some of it into their own ransomware project, according to the Pastebin message.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Pakistan cybercrime bill: Misuse the internet, go to prison for 3 years

“Misusing the internet”—precisely what might that mean? Unfortunately, people in Pakistan may be about to find out, as the vague “misusing the internet” would be punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of one million Pakistani rupees (currently equal to about $9,550). That's according to an overview of the cybercrime bill written by the newspaper Dawn.That was just one example of what is in the controversial Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill (PECB) [pdf] that was approved by the Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunications. The country’s National Assembly previously approved the bill, and it will move on to the Pakistan senate for approval before it is signed into law by President Mamnoon Hussian.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Pakistan cybercrime bill: Misuse the internet, go to prison for three years

“Misusing the internet”. . . precisely what might that mean? Unfortunately, people in Pakistan may be about to find out as the vague “misusing the internet” would be punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of one million Pakistani rupees (currently equal to about $9,550); that's according to an overview of the cybercrime bill written by the newspaper Dawn.That was just one example of what is in the controversial Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill (PECB) [pdf] which was approved by the Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunications. The country’s National Assembly previously approved the bill and it will move on to the Pakistan senate for approval before it is signed into law by President Mamnoon Hussian.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Pakistan cybercrime bill: Misuse the internet, go to prison for three years

“Misusing the internet”. . . precisely what might that mean? Unfortunately, people in Pakistan may be about to find out as the vague “misusing the internet” would be punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of one million Pakistani rupees (currently equal to about $9,550); that's according to an overview of the cybercrime bill written by the newspaper Dawn.That was just one example of what is in the controversial Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill (PECB) [pdf] which was approved by the Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunications. The country’s National Assembly previously approved the bill and it will move on to the Pakistan senate for approval before it is signed into law by President Mamnoon Hussian.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mesos Reaches Milestone, Adds Native Docker

The battle between the Mesos and Kubernetes tools for managing applications on modern clusters continues to heat up, with the former reaching its milestone 1.0 with a “universal containerizer” feature that supports native Docker container formats and a shiny new API stack that is a lot more friendly and flexible than the manner in which APIs are implemented in systems management software these days.

Ultimately, something has to be in control of the clusters and divvy up scarce resources to hungry applications, and there has been an epic battle shaping up between Mesos, Kubernetes, and OpenStack.

Mesos is the …

Mesos Reaches Milestone, Adds Native Docker was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

Russian DNC hack – A cybersecurity microcosm

According to ESG research, 31 percent of cybersecurity professionals working at enterprise organizations (i.e. more than 1,000 employees) believe the threat landscape is much worse today than it was two years ago. While another 36 percent say the threat landscape is somewhat worse today than it was two years ago.Why the cynicism? Look no further than the Russian hack of the DNC as this particular data breach is a microcosm of cybersecurity at large. This one incident illustrates a few important points: All data is at risk. Way back when, state-sponsored cyber attacks were government-on-government affairs, typically focused on military and intelligence.  The cyber theft of design documents for the F-22 and F-35 are perfect examples here. Unfortunately, state-sponsored attacks have gone beyond spooks and soldiers. China went after The New York Times, North Korea breached Sony Pictures, and Russia blew the lid off the DNC. When matched against sophisticated state-sponsored actors, pedestrian cybersecurity defenders are simply fighting out of their weight class. The list of adversaries continues to grow. Beyond China, North Korea and Russia, it’s fair to add Iran, the Syrian Electronic Army, and dozens of other countries investing in offensive cyber operations. There are Continue reading

Russian DNC Hack – A Cybersecurity Microcosm

According to ESG research, 31% of cybersecurity professionals working at enterprise organizations (i.e. more than 1,000 employees) believe the threat landscape is much worse today than it was 2 years ago while another 36% say the threat landscape is somewhat worse today than it was 2 years ago (note: I am an ESG employee).Why the cynicism?  Look no further than the Russian hack of the DNC as this particular data breach is a microcosm of cybersecurity at large.  This one incident illustrates a few important points:1.      All data is at risk.  Way back when, state-sponsored cyber-attacks were government-on-government affairs, typically focused on military and intelligence.  The cyber-theft of design documents for the F-22 and F-35 are perfect examples here.  Unfortunately, state-sponsored attacks have gone beyond spooks and soldiers.  China went after the NY Times, North Korea breached Sony Pictures, and Russia blew the lid off the DNC.  When matched against sophisticated state-sponsored actors, pedestrian cybersecurity defenders are simply fighting out of their weight class.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Fun in the Lab: DMVPN: Per-Tunnel QoS and High Availability

Went on an customer “ride-along” with Advanced Services this week.  Customer’s requirement was that the DMVPN headend have 2 physical interfaces for High Availability.  These 2 interfaces need to be the same subnet because they are going into 2 firewalls: one active/one standby.  So now what?

2fws

Tom Kunath (Advanced Services) thought “Well…. what about using backup interface command?”  Hmmmm that does seem to be the perfect tool in the Cisco CLI toolbox for this very situation.

Time to play in the lab!!!  ?

backup

interfaces

So now let’s try it and see how per-tunnel QoS will work with it.

Class-Maps and Policy-Maps

policy

policy1

NOTE: Snuck these configs from the QoS Chapter of the upcoming CiscoPress IWAN book a super dear friend of mine (David Prall) is co-authoring.

Apply to Tunnels

hote17_tunnel100_qos

hotel16_tunnel100

pt_qos

Okay…. so far so good.  Now let’s run some traffic.  I’ll send EF and AF41.

Send Traffic

hotel17_basic

Kay… so far so good.  I also have both being sent at the same bps from the traffic generator so I wanted to check this also.

Time to Fail Primary Link! 

fail_primary

Before I congest and see if the applied PerTunnel QoS can also drop.  Let’s make sure Continue reading

U.S. cyber incident directive follows DNC hack

One wonders if it took social media to finally motivate the White House to act on cyber incidents.The Democratic National Committee (DNC) was hacked, and the emails, many quite damning of the governance of the DNC, were released by WikiLeaks. Reports link the hack to the Russian government. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, head of the DNC, resigned—one in any number of political and government officials to fall on their swords after security breach exposés.Then on Tuesday morning, President Barack Obama announced a U.S. Cyber Incident Coordination Directive. If the directive is actually followed, expect several agencies to drown in complaints, even though private citizen complaints aren’t included. Commercial and governmental complaints appear to be the only complaints covered by the directive.  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco: Potent ransomware is targeting the enterprise at a scary rate

Enterprise-targeting cyber enemies are deploying vast amounts of potent ransomware to generate revenue and huge profits – nearly $34 million annually according to Cisco’s Mid-Year Cybersecurity Report out this week.Ransomware, Cisco wrote, has become a particularly effective moneymaker, and enterprise users appear to be the preferred target.+More on Network World: Security was the HOT topic at Cisco Live+“Defenders are not protecting systems in a way that matches how attackers do their work. Although defenders have evolved their strategies and tools for fighting online criminals, attackers are still permitted far too much unconstrained time to operate,” Cisco wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Unregenerate – 20160727

Looking backward at last week or forward into next week. Ir Whatever. unregenerate – adj. not reformed, unreconstructed, obstinate, stubborn   A Better Sound System I’ve been “pining” for a better audio solution for my office and around the house for quite some time. I’ve been eyeing off Sonos product for quite some time but […]

The post Unregenerate – 20160727 appeared first on EtherealMind.

Economics May Drive Serverless

We've been following an increasing ephemerality curve to get more and more utilization out of our big brawny boxes. VMs, VMs in the cloud, containers, containers in the cloud, and now serverless, which looks to be our first native cloud infrastructure.

Serverless is said to be about functions, but you really need a zip file of code to do much of anything useful, which is basically a container.

So serverless isn't so much about packaging as it is about not standing up your own chunky persistent services. Those services, like storage, like the database, etc, have moved to the environment.

Your code orchestrates the dance and implements specific behaviours. Serverless is nothing if not a framework writ large.

Serverless also intensifies the developer friendly disintermediation of infrastructure that the cloud started.

Upload your code and charge it on your credit card. All the developer has to worry about their function. Oh, and linking everything together (events, DNS, credentials, backups, etc) through a Byzantine patch panel of a UI; uploading each of your zillions of "functions" on every change; managing versions so you can separate out test, development, and production. But hey, nothing is perfect.

What may drive serverless more Continue reading

Worth Reading: The Cyber Security market mid-life crisis

There are now several hundred security vendors vying for advanced threat “spend” and there continues to be good demand side indicators of investment in these newer areas. There is yet more security spend overall allocated within IT budgets for reallocation from “legacy” Web filtering, AV and firewall renewals to advanced threat technologies as well as increased funding from federal and national governments worldwide on cyber. Yet the cold winds from investors have firmly set in over the past year and with good reason. Many newer security vendors who have IPO’d are having trouble building their businesses to be profitable and set for a firm foundation of growth. The exit paths are less clear and this glut of new security entrants is going to be challenged to cross the chasm from a base of known early adopter verticals and customer segments to a sustainable set of larger organizations. —Arbor Networks

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The post Worth Reading: The Cyber Security market mid-life crisis appeared first on 'net work.

Why Belgium leads the world in IPv6 adoption

Yes, Belgium. Every time you read a story or visit a website devoted to worldwide IPv6 adoption rates, sitting atop the list of highest achievers is Belgium, otherwise better known for chocolate, waffles, beer and diamonds. Google, for example, has worldwide IPv6 adoption at about 12%, Belgium leading at 45%.For an explanation I turned to Eric Vyncke, co-chair of Belgium’s IPv6 Council. I emailed him a half-dozen questions about technology and culture and such that essentially could have been boiled down to one: Why Belgium? Here is his reply:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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