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Wave 2 Wi-Fi may be a sleeper, but it’s great for some

As the Wi-Fi Alliance starts certifying the latest gigabit-speed products to work together, users may not get as excited as they did for some earlier standards.On Wednesday, the industry group launched its certification program for IEEE 802.11ac Wave 2, a technology that’s been on the market for more than a year.Wave 2 can deliver up to 6.8Gbps (bits per second) and lets an access point talk to more than one device at a time. But due to issues like timing and wired backhaul, Wave 2 adoption has been relatively slow.The new technology builds on the first wave of 802.11ac, which started to emerge in 2013 and now makes up nearly three-quarters of the Wi-Fi market in terms of revenue. The new wave adds a few features with real advantages, at least for some users.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Wave 2 Wi-Fi may be a sleeper, but it’s great for some

As the Wi-Fi Alliance starts certifying the latest gigabit-speed products to work together, users may not get as excited as they did for some earlier standards.On Wednesday, the industry group launched its certification program for IEEE 802.11ac Wave 2, a technology that’s been on the market for more than a year.Wave 2 can deliver up to 6.8Gbps (bits per second) and lets an access point talk to more than one device at a time. But due to issues like timing and wired backhaul, Wave 2 adoption has been relatively slow.The new technology builds on the first wave of 802.11ac, which started to emerge in 2013 and now makes up nearly three-quarters of the Wi-Fi market in terms of revenue. The new wave adds a few features with real advantages, at least for some users.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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5 hidden iOS 10 features that are instant game changers

Apple’s latest version of iOS is only available for developers right now, but we’ve already found plenty of reasons to get excited about iOS 10. The big features in iOS 10 are impressive: Photos has facial recognition, Messages gets an emoji overload, and Siri will be able to hail you a Lyft.MORE: 10 mobile startups to watch But iOS 10 is exciting not only because of the major makeovers. Apple’s upcoming mobile OS also has a lot of small, dare-we-say hidden surprises, too. Here are five of the best-kept secret features coming to your iPhone this fall.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Apple sued for $10 billion for ‘stealing’ his iPhone invention from 1992

A Florida man has accused Apple of infringing a 1992 patent on an “electronic reading device” that, in our view, looks nothing like the iPhone. He’s asking for $10 billion in damages. No, this isn’t an article from The Onion. It’s real life.MORE: 10 mobile startups to watch Thomas Ross included drawings of his device, a boxy rectangle with a screen and physical keyboard, in his court filing in Florida Southern District Court, which was obtained by The Telegraph. As you may recall, the original iPhone was the first smartphone without a physical keyboard. No matter, Ross says he was the first person “to have created a novel combination of media and communication tools.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Why CIOs should care about click fraud

The ancient Chinese military strategy guide The Art of War says that if you want to have a chance of prevailing in battle, you need to know your enemy. It’s good advice for the battlefield, and it's also good advice if you want to beat hackers in their constant attempts to take over your network.But in order to know these hackers you need to understand their motivations, and in many cases those motivations may not be what you expect. That's according to Dan Kaminski, the security expert who discovered a fundamental flaw in the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) protocol in 2008 and who discovered flaws in the widely used SSL protocol a year later. Kaminski is a frequent speaker at Black Hat Briefings, and now works as Chief Scientist at White Ops, a security firm specializing in detecting bot and malware fraud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Why CIOs should care about click fraud

The ancient Chinese military strategy guide The Art of War says that if you want to have a chance of prevailing in battle, you need to know your enemy. It’s good advice for the battlefield, and it's also good advice if you want to beat hackers in their constant attempts to take over your network.But in order to know these hackers you need to understand their motivations, and in many cases those motivations may not be what you expect. That's according to Dan Kaminski, the security expert who discovered a fundamental flaw in the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) protocol in 2008 and who discovered flaws in the widely used SSL protocol a year later. Kaminski is a frequent speaker at Black Hat Briefings, and now works as Chief Scientist at White Ops, a security firm specializing in detecting bot and malware fraud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Rio’s airport preps for Olympics with new Wi-Fi network and mobile app

The 2016 Olympics Games are already off to a rough start -- and we haven’t even seen opening ceremonies yet. Worries about the Zika virus, polluted competition waters, doping scandals and Rio’s precarious finances could mean a complicated time in August for the Summer Games.[ Related: Jumping hurdles on the road to Rio 2016: AOC's head of IT Anthony Soulsby ]One thing thing poised to go well: communication at Rio de Janeiro–Galeão International Airport, Brazil’s biggest airport and how most people will get into the country for the games.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Rio’s airport preps for Olympics with new Wi-Fi network and mobile app

The 2016 Olympics Games are already off to a rough start -- and we haven’t even seen opening ceremonies yet. Worries about the Zika virus, polluted competition waters, doping scandals and Rio’s precarious finances could mean a complicated time in August for the Summer Games.[ Related: Jumping hurdles on the road to Rio 2016: AOC's head of IT Anthony Soulsby ]One thing thing poised to go well: communication at Rio de Janeiro–Galeão International Airport, Brazil’s biggest airport and how most people will get into the country for the games.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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The Lizard Brain of LizardStresser

LizardStresser is a botnet originally written by the infamous Lizard Squad DDoS group. The source code was released publicly in early 2015, an act that encouraged aspiring DDoS actors to build their own botnets. Arbor Networks’ ASERT group has been tracking LizardStresser activity and observed two disturbing trends: The number of unique LizardStresser command-and-control (C2) […]

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Researchers dismantle decade-long Iranian cyberespionage operation

The infrastructure used by an Iranian cyberespionage group to control infected computers around the world has been hijacked by security researchers.Researchers from Palo Alto Networks came across the group's activities earlier this year, but found evidence that it has been operating since at least 2007. Its main tool is a custom malware program dubbed Infy, which was repeatedly improved over the years.The researchers have worked with domain registrars to seize the domains used by the attackers to control Infy-infected computers and to direct victims' traffic to a sinkhole server -- a server the researchers controlled.Control of the server was then transferred to the Shadowserver Foundation, an industry group that tracks botnets and works with ISPs and other parties to notify victims.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Researchers dismantle decade-long Iranian cyberespionage operation

The infrastructure used by an Iranian cyberespionage group to control infected computers around the world has been hijacked by security researchers.Researchers from Palo Alto Networks came across the group's activities earlier this year, but found evidence that it has been operating since at least 2007. Its main tool is a custom malware program dubbed Infy, which was repeatedly improved over the years.The researchers have worked with domain registrars to seize the domains used by the attackers to control Infy-infected computers and to direct victims' traffic to a sinkhole server -- a server the researchers controlled.Control of the server was then transferred to the Shadowserver Foundation, an industry group that tracks botnets and works with ISPs and other parties to notify victims.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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IDG Contributor Network: The allure of free storage with FormationOne

Interesting news from Formation Data Systems, an enterprise storage vendor, around the launch of a new technology that should help IT departments eke out greater efficiencies from their existing storage assets. The new feature allows enterprises to recapture unused storage in their virtualized server environments.Fetchingly called Virtual Storage Recapture (VSR) this technology allows Formation customers to extend their FormationOne deployments beyond standard software-defined storage implementations to be able to utilize storage capacity that is “stranded” within most virtual servers and hypervisor clusters. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Split Tunnel Insecurities

I really dislike corporate VPNs that don’t allow split tunneling—disconnecting from the VPN to print on a local printer, or access a local network attached drive, puts a real crimp in productivity. In the case of services reachable over both IPv6 and IPv4, particularly if the IPv6 path is preferred, split tunneling can be quite dangerous, as explained in RFC7359. Let’s use the network below to illustrate.

In this network, host A is communicating with server B through a VPN, terminated by the VPN concentrator marked as “VPN.” Assume the host is reachable on both 192.0.2.1 and 2001:fb8:0:1::1. The host, the upstream router, the network in the cloud, and the server are all IPv6 reachable. When the host first connects, it will attempt both the IPv6 and IPv4 connections, and choose to use the IPv6 connection (this is what most current operating systems will do).

The problem is: the VPN connection doesn’t support IPv6 at all—it only supports IPv4. Because IPv6 is preferred, the traffic between the host and the server will take the local IPv6 connection, which is not encrypted—the blue dash/dot line—rather than the encrypted IPv4 tunnel—the red dashed line. The user, host, and Continue reading

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IDG Contributor Network: Chime: A lifeguard for vulnerable IoT devices

Smart appliances are supposed to be the next big thing. Analysts predict that it’s a multi-billion dollar market. Why aren’t we there yet? Security. It’s a challenge for both manufacturers and users.Once connected to the internet, IoT devices can do amazing things, but they also become vulnerable to hackers. There are two main reasons for this: Limited resources: Low-cost IoT toolkits simplify the task of developing new smart devices. The downside of these devices is that they’re often too underpowered to run security software or communicate securely. Lack of standards: Connected devices vary greatly in their security safeguards by manufacturer. If one device is hacked, it potentially compromises other devices on the same network. Cloud-enabled security Chime from Innovation Labs by AVG (the antivirus and online security company) protects smart appliances by ensuring network traffic is authorized only to approved websites and mobile apps. Chime is installed on Wi-Fi routers and uses an online directory to stay current with new malware and hacking threats. It applies security techniques originally developed for enterprise security to also protect connected devices:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Amazon’s Elastic File System is now open for business

Following an extended preview period, Amazon's Elastic File System is now generally available in three geographical regions, with more on the way.Originally announced last year, EFS is a fully managed elastic file storage service for deploying and scaling durable file systems in the Amazon Web Services cloud. It's currently available in the U.S. East (northern Virginia), U.S. West (Oregon) and EU (Ireland) regions, the company announced Wednesday.Customers can use EFS to create file systems that are accessible to multiple Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances via the Network File System (NFS) protocol. They can also scale those systems up or down without needing to provision storage or throughput.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Juniper addresses both sides of the branch networking problem

The numerous struggles businesses must go through to address the network needs of a branch have been well documented on this site and many others. The importance of the branch can’t be understated either. The branch is where the majority of workers reside today—81 percent of employees, according to a recent ZK Research survey. For many businesses, such as retailers and banks, the branch is the business, so curing branch woes needs to be a top priority for business and IT leaders.+ Also on Network World: Annual State of the Network survey results +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Juniper addresses both sides of the branch networking problem

The numerous struggles businesses must go through to address the network needs of a branch have been well documented on this site and many others. The importance of the branch can’t be understated either. The branch is where the majority of workers reside today—81 percent of employees, according to a recent ZK Research survey. For many businesses, such as retailers and banks, the branch is the business, so curing branch woes needs to be a top priority for business and IT leaders.+ Also on Network World: Annual State of the Network survey results +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Scaling Hotjar’s Architecture: 9 Lessons Learned

Hotjar offers free website analytics so they have a challenging mission: handle hundreds of millions of requests per day from mostly free users. Marc von Brockdorff, Co-Founder & Director of Engineering at Hotjar, summarized the lessons they've learned in: 9 Lessons Learned Scaling Hotjar's Tech Architecture To Handle 21,875,000 Requests Per Hour.

In response to the criticism their architecture looks like a hot mess, Erik Näslund, Chief Architect at Hotjar, gives the highlights of their architecture:

• We use nginx + lua for the really hot code paths where python doesn't quite cut it. No language is perfect and you might have to break out of your comfort zone and use something different every now and then.
• Redis, Memcached, Postgres, Elasticsearch and S3 are all suitable for different kinds of data storage and we eventually needed them all to be able to query and store data in a cost effective way. We didn't start out using 5 different data-stores though...it's something that we "grew into".
• Each application server is a (majestic) monolith. Micro-services are one way of architecting things, monoliths are another - I'm still waiting to be convinced that one way is superior to the other when it comes Continue reading

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ACLU lawsuit challenges US computer hacking law

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit challenging a 30-year-old hacking-crimes law, with the civil liberties group saying the law inhibits research about online discrimination.The ACLU on Wednesday filed a lawsuit challenging the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act on behalf of a group of academic researchers, computer scientists, and journalists. The CFAA limits online research because of its "overbroad criminal prohibitions," the ACLU said.The group of plaintiffs in the lawsuit want to investigate online discrimination in areas like housing and employment, "but they often can't," the ACLU said in a blog post. Courts have interpreted a provision of the CFAA prohibiting people from exceeding authorized access to a computer to include violations of website terms of service, the ACLU said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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ACLU lawsuit challenges US computer hacking law

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit challenging a 30-year-old hacking-crimes law, with the civil liberties group saying the law inhibits research about online discrimination.The ACLU on Wednesday filed a lawsuit challenging the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act on behalf of a group of academic researchers, computer scientists, and journalists. The CFAA limits online research because of its "overbroad criminal prohibitions," the ACLU said.The group of plaintiffs in the lawsuit want to investigate online discrimination in areas like housing and employment, "but they often can't," the ACLU said in a blog post. Courts have interpreted a provision of the CFAA prohibiting people from exceeding authorized access to a computer to include violations of website terms of service, the ACLU said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here