HTTP compression continues to put encrypted communications at risk

Security researchers have expanded and improved a three-year-old attack that exploits the compression mechanism used to speed up browsing in order to recover sensitive information from encrypted Web traffic.The attack, known as BREACH, takes advantage of the gzip/DEFLATE algorithm used by many Web servers to reduce latency when responding to HTTP requests. This compression mechanism leaks information about encrypted connections and allows man-in-the-middle attackers to recover authentication cookies and other sensitive information.The BREACH (Browser Reconnaissance and Exfiltration via Adaptive Compression of Hypertext) attack was first presented at the Black Hat USA security conference in August 2013 by security researchers Angelo Prado, Neal Harris and Yoel Gluck. While it theoretically affects all SSL/TLS ciphers, their version of the attack was most effective against connections encrypted with stream ciphers, such as RC4.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to Remove Duplicates in a Large Dataset Reducing Memory Requirements by 99%

This is a guest repost by Suresh Kondamudi from CleverTap.

Dealing with large datasets is often daunting. With limited computing resources, particularly memory, it can be challenging to perform even basic tasks like counting distinct elements, membership check, filtering duplicate elements, finding minimum, maximum, top-n elements, or set operations like union, intersection, similarity and so on

Probabilistic Data Structures to the Rescue

Probabilistic data structures can come in pretty handy in these cases, in that they dramatically reduce memory requirements, while still providing acceptable accuracy. Moreover, you get time efficiencies, as lookups (and adds) rely on multiple independent hash functions, which can be parallelized. We use structures like Bloom filtersMinHashCount-min sketchHyperLogLog extensively to solve a variety of problems. One fairly straightforward example is presented below.

The Problem

We at CleverTap manage mobile push notifications for our customers, and one of the things we need to guard against is sending multiple notifications to the same user for the same campaign. Push notifications are routed to individual devices/users based on push notification tokens generated by the mobile platforms. Because of their size (anywhere from 32b to 4kb), it’s non-performant for us to index Continue reading

The Network of 2020, what should CxOs expect?

Being an analyst I’m often asked to look ahead and predict what markets will look like in three to five years. Recently, I’ve been asked that if I were to design a next-generation network, which would be fully operational by 2020, what would it look like? The network industry has gone through more change in the past two years than it had gone through in the previous two decades so a network in 2020 will look significantly different than the networks of today.Predicting the future is obviously challenging but sometimes it’s better to look back to understand what the future will look like. In networking, there are many lessons we can learn from the last 20+ years where networks have evolved to be able to meet ongoing application and business needs. The innovation was obviously necessary but each time something new was bolted on to the network, there was a price to be paid. For example, WiFi being deployed as an overlay means having to manage two separate networks. Below are the top lessons learned from legacy networks over the past two decades.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Network of 2020, what should CxOs expect?

Being an analyst I’m often asked to look ahead and predict what markets will look like in three to five years. Recently, I’ve been asked that if I were to design a next-generation network, which would be fully operational by 2020, what would it look like? The network industry has gone through more change in the past two years than it had gone through in the previous two decades so a network in 2020 will look significantly different than the networks of today.Predicting the future is obviously challenging but sometimes it’s better to look back to understand what the future will look like. In networking, there are many lessons we can learn from the last 20+ years where networks have evolved to be able to meet ongoing application and business needs. The innovation was obviously necessary but each time something new was bolted on to the network, there was a price to be paid. For example, WiFi being deployed as an overlay means having to manage two separate networks. Below are the top lessons learned from legacy networks over the past two decades.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Most powerful Internet of Things companies

Billions of devices, lots of opportunityThe Internet of Things (IoT) is still nascent, but growing quickly. Research firm IDC predicts it will become a $1.46 trillion international market by 2020, up from $700 billion last year. A trillion-dollar market means a lot of companies will want a slice. So who are the leaders of the IoT? We consulted with some of the leading analysts to find out. (Note: Companies are listed in alphabetical order.) To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WiFi security 4 dummies

Customer site, their security policy for WiFi is an SSID with a secret PSK: the IT manager type the password on my PC to allow me to access the network. Maybe he’s not aware of my keylogger or that the password con be easily retrieved in cleartext. Let’s see how. Windows 10: retrieve the WiFi […]

Data and Identity: Two New Security Perimeters

CISOs tend to spend the bulk of their cybersecurity technology budgets on endpoint, server, and network security controls.  Okay, this makes sense from a historical perspective but these IT assets are in a state of flux today.  Endpoints are often mobile devices rather than Windows PCs while servers are virtual or cloud-based workloads.  Meanwhile, networks are also moving to a virtual model composed of public and private network segments.It’s clear that organizations embracing new cloud and mobile infrastructure have less control of some IT assets than they did in the past.  What does this mean for security?  One CISO I spoke with a while ago gave me a very succinct answer to this question: “As I lose control over IT infrastructure, I better make sure I have tight control over two other areas – sensitive data and user identity.”  In this security executive’s mind, data security and identity and access management (IAM) are rapidly becoming new security perimeters.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Creating a Pure Play Networking Company for the Digital Transformation Era

Today Brocade and Ruckus Wireless have taken an important step toward our joint vision of creating a new type of networking company - a company with the strategy, products, talent, and focus needed to deliver the solutions that customers need in order to thrive in today’s era of digital transformation. We’re very excited to let you know that this morning we announced Brocade’s intention to acquire Ruckus, a pioneer in the wireless infrastructure market.

The combination of Brocade and Ruckus will create a pure-play networking company that has market-leading solutions spanning from the most critical part of the data center to the wireless network edge. Wireless technology is a critical element in modern, New IP network architectures. Ruckus’ wireless networking solutions will add a high-growth and highly complementary product category to Brocade’s current storage, data center, campus and mobility networking solutions. The combined company will be better positioned to deliver networks that are platforms for innovation for our customers.

The new company will start with an impressive leadership position in highly strategic areas that we plan to build from:

  • #1 in storage area networking
  • #1 in service provider Wi-Fi
  • #1 in hospitality Wi-Fi
  • #2 in data center networking
  • #3 in Continue reading

Ethernet Roadmap 2016 – Ethernet Alliance

The IEEE 802.3 committee isn’t very good at getting standards work completed so there is a pre-standards body called the Ethernet Alliance. Its like a “pre-meeting meeting” (yes, we have all had those) for Ethernet standards where vendors thrash out most of the obvious stuff so that the committee has less work to consider and, theoretically, should […]

The post Ethernet Roadmap 2016 – Ethernet Alliance appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Ethernet Roadmap 2016 – Ethernet Alliance

The IEEE 802.3 committee isn’t very good at getting standards work completed so there is a pre-standards body called the Ethernet Alliance. Its like a “pre-meeting meeting” (yes, we have all had those) for Ethernet standards where vendors thrash out most of the obvious stuff so that the committee has less work to consider and, theoretically, should […]

The post Ethernet Roadmap 2016 – Ethernet Alliance appeared first on Packet Pushers.

White House IT overhaul an antique roadshow

The New York Times yesterday had an account of an ongoing effort to modernize the IT infrastructure and end-user equipment relied upon by those whose workplace address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In a sense, the story was rather alarming, as it turns out the White House was in sore need of just about new everything.There were a couple of networking nuggets worth noting in the story.First was the matter of old cabling … lots and lots of the stuff. One of his first tasks was trying to map the miles of Ethernet cables and phone wires inside the walls of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The team of technicians eventually discovered and removed 13,000 pounds of abandoned cables that no longer served any purpose.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here