A requiem for Facebook Paper

You’ve probably never used Facebook Paper, the social networking giant’s beautiful and innovative newsreader for iOS. And now you’ll never get the chance because Facebook has removed Paper from the App Store and will shutter it completely on July 29.That’s not surprising because even after debuting to well-deserved critical acclaim in 2014, Paper never got a big promotional push and never achieved widespread popularity. It didn’t help that Facebook’s Creative Labs, the team behind Paper, was shut down late last year. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BGP Code Dive (2)

Now that you have a copy of BGP in Go on your machine—it’s tempting to jump right in to asking the code questions, but it’s important to get a sense of how things are structured. In essence, you need to build a mental map of how the functionality of the protocol you already know is related to specific files and structure, so you can start in the right place when finding out how things work. Interacting with an implementation from the initial stages of process bringup, building data structures, and the like isn’t all that profitable. Rather, asking questions of the code is an iterative/interactive process.

Take what you know, form an impression of where you might look to find the answer to a particular question, and, in the process of finding the answer, learn more about the protocol, which will help you find answers more quickly in the future.

So let’s poke around the directory structure a little, think about how BGP works, and think about what might be where. To begin, what might we call the basic functions of BGP? Let me take a shot at a list (if you see things you think should be on here, Continue reading

FBI faults Clinton’s personal email system, but doesn’t recommend prosecution

Hillary Clinton was "extremely careless" in her use of a private email server while she was U.S. secretary of state, but the FBI isn't recommending any charges be brought against her for mishandling classified information.Speaking to reporters on Tuesday morning, days after the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed the presidential candidate, FBI Director James Comey said his investigation had uncovered numerous instances of the system being improperly used for classified information. He also said it was impossible to rule out the possibility that the system could have been hacked.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 26 crazy and scary things the TSA has found on travelers The controversy was thought to revolve around a single server, but Comey disclosed that over the years Clinton was secretary of state, she relied on a string of email servers. When new ones were installed, the older ones were removed but data was not always deleted.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FBI faults Clinton’s personal email system, but doesn’t recommend prosecution

Hillary Clinton was "extremely careless" in her use of a private email server while she was U.S. secretary of state, but the FBI isn't recommending any charges be brought against her for mishandling classified information.Speaking to reporters on Tuesday morning, days after the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed the presidential candidate, FBI Director James Comey said his investigation had uncovered numerous instances of the system being improperly used for classified information. He also said it was impossible to rule out the possibility that the system could have been hacked.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 26 crazy and scary things the TSA has found on travelers The controversy was thought to revolve around a single server, but Comey disclosed that over the years Clinton was secretary of state, she relied on a string of email servers. When new ones were installed, the older ones were removed but data was not always deleted.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google is working to make every website viewable in VR

Reading your favorite website may be a whole new experience in the near future. As part of its Chromium project Google is apparently working at bringing virtual reality support to its browser.According to Google’s François Beaufort, the Chrome Beta and Chrome Dev channels have a setting that “allows users to browse the web while using Cardboard or Daydream-ready viewers.”There’s an an experimental flag found at chrome://flags/#enable-vr-shell that enables a browser shell for VR. He offered a peak at how this could look with 360-degree videos. Virtual reality is likely to gain wider traction with Google’s browser.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The new internet domains are a wasteland

The many new DNS top-level domains (TLDs) were heralded as a way to take pressure off the older DNS TLDs. It seems, however, the new TLDs are almost uniformly the source of spammers and malware launchers.There might be valid web resources in the new TLDs. They seem rarely referenced beyond a handful of sites, though, as .com, .org, .net and even .co have common usage aside from country-specific addresses such as .us, .uk, .de, .jp, etc.But .xyz? Spam. I get about four dozen spam emails from that domain most days. The .click TLD? I’ve gotten about 400 embedded malware emails from there so far this year. Then there’s .xxx, .website and dozens of other new TLDs that are nothing more than difficult-to-block and nearly-impossible-to-kill spam/malware sources. It’s frustrating, and admins don’t have much chance to stanch the spam.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The new internet domains are a wasteland

The many new DNS top-level domains (TLDs) were heralded as a way to take pressure off the older DNS TLDs. It seems, however, the new TLDs are almost uniformly the source of spammers and malware launchers.There might be valid web resources in the new TLDs. They seem rarely referenced beyond a handful of sites, though, as .com, .org, .net and even .co have common usage aside from country-specific addresses such as .us, .uk, .de, .jp, etc.But .xyz? Spam. I get about four dozen spam emails from that domain most days. The .click TLD? I’ve gotten about 400 embedded malware emails from there so far this year. Then there’s .xxx, .website and dozens of other new TLDs that are nothing more than difficult-to-block and nearly-impossible-to-kill spam/malware sources. It’s frustrating, and admins don’t have much chance to stanch the spam.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

So you want to be a better network engineer? …

Then you need to read the book Daniel Dib and I just published on LeanPub. It’s called Unintended Features.. From the Introduction:

So you’ve decided you want to be a network engineer—or you’re already you a network engineer, and you want to be a better engineer, to rise to the top, to be among the best, to… Well, you get the idea. The question is, how do you get from where you are now to where you want to be? This short volume is designed to answer just that question. If you’re expecting a book on technology, then you’re in the wrong place. Instead, this is a book about how to build a career in networking technology, including topics such engineering culture, being intentional about your education, thinking skills, and some basic skills you’ll want to develop.

cover-01

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  • IT Security Engineering. At Gusto we are on a mission to create a world where work empowers a better life. As Gusto's IT Security Engineer you'll shape the future of IT security and compliance. We're looking for a strong IT technical lead to manage security audits and write and implement controls. You'll also focus on our employee, network, and endpoint posture. As Gusto's first IT Security Engineer, you will be able to build the security organization with direct impact to protecting PII and ePHI. Read more and apply here.

  • Awake Networks is an early stage network security and analytics startup that processes, analyzes, and stores billions of events at network speed. We help security teams respond to intrusions with super-human  efficiency and provide macroscopic and microscopic insight into the networks they defend. We're looking for folks that are excited about building systems that handle scale in a constrained environment. We have many open-ended problems to solve around stream-processing, distributed systems, machine learning, query processing, data modeling, and much more! Please check out our jobs page to learn more.

  • Software Engineer (DevOps). You are one of those rare engineers who loves to tinker with distributed systems at high Continue reading

How auto repair chain accelerates networking with SD-WAN

Businesses needing broadband connectivity while rapidly expanding are finding an alternative to traditional wide area network infrastructure. Service King Collision Repair Centers, for example, is using software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) to support new auto repair centers, a move that has helped reduce the company's operational costs even as it grows its footprint across 23 states. Service King's CIO Derek Kramer. Service King's store locations have grown to more than 300 todayfrom 100 in 2012, necessitating rapid adoption of new network connectivity, says CIO Derek Kramer. Service King had relied on MPLS for several years but this no longer proving efficient as the chain expanded. "MPLS [Multiprotocol Label Switching] has done well, but can it grow as quickly as we're growing?" Kramer says. "We found more times than not that was a challenge."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How auto repair chain accelerates networking with SD-WAN

Businesses needing broadband connectivity while rapidly expanding are finding an alternative to traditional wide area network infrastructure. Service King Collision Repair Centers, for example, is using software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) to support new auto repair centers, a move that has helped reduce the company's operational costs even as it grows its footprint across 23 states. Service King's CIO Derek Kramer. Service King's store locations have grown to more than 300 todayfrom 100 in 2012, necessitating rapid adoption of new network connectivity, says CIO Derek Kramer. Service King had relied on MPLS for several years but this no longer proving efficient as the chain expanded. "MPLS [Multiprotocol Label Switching] has done well, but can it grow as quickly as we're growing?" Kramer says. "We found more times than not that was a challenge."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to decide when to buy software and when to build it

The appeal of the cloud has long been that you don’t need to do everything yourself, leaving you more time and resources to concentrate on what makes your company stand out. A classic example is that you buy electricity from the grid rather than running your own fleet of generators because having electricity doesn’t make you unique. The same is true of internal software, which you need to be efficient and reliable, but in most cases you don’t need it to set you apart from your competitors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Ex-Secret Service agent who investigated Silk Road may have stolen another $700,000

"Plead guilty, then steal more" seems to have been the motto of a former corrupt federal agent involved in the Silk Road investigation.Ex-U.S. Secret Service Special Agent Shawn Bridges, who was part of Baltimore’s Silk Road Task Force and stole $820,000 in bitcoins during the investigation that led to Ross Ulbricht’s conviction, eventually pled guilty to money laundering and obstruction of justice. Bridges, who had served as the forensics and technical expert on the task force, was sentenced to nearly five years, 71 months, in prison. Yet newly unsealed court documents show that Bridges is suspected of stealing another $700,000 in bitcoins after he pled guilty about two months before he was sentenced.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ex-Secret Service agent who investigated Silk Road may have stolen another $700,000

Plead guilty, then steal more seems to have been the motto of a former corrupt federal agent involved in the Silk Road investigation.Ex-U.S. Secret Service Special Agent Shawn Bridges, who was part of Baltimore’s Silk Road Task Force and stole $820,000 in bitcoins during the investigation that led to Ross Ulbricht’s conviction, eventually pled guilty to money laundering and obstruction of justice. Bridges, who had served as the forensics and technical expert on the task force, was sentenced to nearly five years, 71 months, in prison. Yet newly unsealed court documents show that Bridges is suspected of stealing another $700,000 in bitcoins after he pled guilty but about two months before he was sentenced.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cities Get Super with Ruckus

By: Wendy Stanton, Marketing Manager What happened to the days of pay phone booths where Superman used to change his clothes, manual cash registers with the comforting “brrrring!” and parking lots where employees collected cash instead of automated pay machines?...

Lenovo ThinkPwn UEFI exploit also affects products from other vendors

A critical vulnerability that was recently found in the low-level firmware of Lenovo ThinkPad systems also reportedly exists in products from other vendors, including HP and Gigabyte Technology.An exploit for the vulnerability was published last week and can be used to execute rogue code in the CPU's privileged SMM (System Management Mode).This level of access can then be used to install a stealthy rootkit inside the computer's Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) -- the modern BIOS -- or to disable Windows security features such as Secure Boot, Virtual Secure Mode and Credential Guard that depend on the firmware being locked down.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lenovo ThinkPwn UEFI exploit also affects products from other vendors

A critical vulnerability that was recently found in the low-level firmware of Lenovo ThinkPad systems also reportedly exists in products from other vendors, including HP and Gigabyte Technology.An exploit for the vulnerability was published last week and can be used to execute rogue code in the CPU's privileged SMM (System Management Mode).This level of access can then be used to install a stealthy rootkit inside the computer's Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) -- the modern BIOS -- or to disable Windows security features such as Secure Boot, Virtual Secure Mode and Credential Guard that depend on the firmware being locked down.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here