Are the Panama Papers a problem for you?

On May 9th, The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists will release a searchable database that will detail over 200,000 entities that are part of the Panama Papers investigation.  While this will be intriguing for most of us, if you’re in a financial organization of any kind and there’s the remotest chance that you might have dealings with any of these entities, or with parties who might be fronting for or involved with them, May 9th will be (or depending on when you read this, is or has been), shall we say, “a bad day” for you.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Contiv Networking policy Hands-on

Contiv is an Open source project driven primarily by Cisco for policy based networking, storage and cluster management for containerized applications. In this blog, I will cover some of the hands-on stuff that I tried with Contiv Networking. I used the sample examples provided in Contiv documentation as starting point. For Contiv networking basics, you can refer … Continue reading Contiv Networking policy Hands-on

Contiv – Policy based networking for Containers

Contiv is an Open source project driven primarily by Cisco for policy based networking, storage and cluster management for containerized applications. In this blog, I will focus on how Contiv does policy based Container networking. In the next blog, I will cover some hands-on stuff that I tried with Contiv. Container Policy Policies have become critical … Continue reading Contiv – Policy based networking for Containers

Openstack Deployment using Containers

I recently saw the Openstack self-healing demo from CoreOS team using Tectonic(Stackanetes project) and I kind of felt that the boundary between Containers and VMs are blurring. In this blog, I discuss the usecase of deploying Openstack using Containers. We typically think of Openstack as a VM Orchestration tool. Openstack is composed of numerous services … Continue reading Openstack Deployment using Containers

Freaking out over the DBIR

Many in the community are upset over the recent "Verizon DBIR" because it claims widespread exploitation of the "FREAK" vulnerability. They know this is impossible, because of the vulnerability details. But really, the problem lies in misconceptions about how "intrusion detection" (IDS) works. As a sort of expert in intrusion detection (by which, I mean the expert), I thought I'd describe what really went wrong.

First let's talk FREAK. It's a man-in-the-middle attack. In other words, you can't attack a web server remotely by sending bad data at it. Instead, you have to break into a network somewhere and install a man-in-the-middle computer. This fact alone means it cannot be the most widely exploited attack.

Second, let's talk FREAK. It works by downgrading RSA to 512-bit keys, which can be cracked by supercomputers. This fact alone means it cannot be the most widely exploited attack -- even the NSA does not have sufficient compute power to crack as many keys as the Verizon DBIR claim were cracked.

Now let's talk about how Verizon calculates when a vulnerability is responsible for an attack. They use this methodology:
  1. look at a compromised system (identified by AV scanning, IoCs, etc.)
  2. look at Continue reading

29% off Seagate 4TB Portable External Hard Drive with 200GB of Cloud Storage – Deal Alert

The Seagate Backup Plus portable drive offers the mobility of a portable drive with the high capacity of a desktop drive. With this 29% off deal you get a staggering 4TB physical storage + 200GB cloud storage for just $127 (list price $179.99). The unit averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from over 7,500 people (read reviews).  To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Take a look at Boston’s runaway train barreling through two stops without a driver

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) has released surveillance camera video of an unintentionally driverless Red Line train zipping through two commuter stops in December, a potential catastrophe triggered by the operator’s decision to wrap a rubber cord around the vehicle’s accelerator before stepping out to address a signal problem. The train left without him and travelled through a total of four stations before stopping after power was cut to the third rail.While the episode itself was dramatic, to say to the least, the video – even this edited version from WCVB Channel 5 TV -- is underwhelming. Even the people on the platforms didn’t seem to realize anything was wrong.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Take a look at Boston’s runaway train barreling through two stops without a driver

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) has released surveillance camera video of an unintentionally driverless Red Line train zipping through two commuter stops in December, a potential catastrophe triggered by the operator’s decision to wrap a rubber cord around the vehicle’s accelerator before stepping out to address a signal problem. The train left without him and travelled through a total of four stations before stopping after power was cut to the third rail.While the episode itself was dramatic, to say to the least, the video – even this edited version from WCVB Channel 5 TV -- is underwhelming. Even the people on the platforms didn’t seem to realize anything was wrong.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How Microsoft keeps the bad guys out of Azure

Microsoft has published its latest Security Intelligence Report (SIR), which it does twice a year, covering security issues for the prior six months. This latest edition covers the second half of 2015, analyzing the threat landscape of exploits, vulnerabilities and malware using data from Internet services and over 600 million computers worldwide.It is a massive effort, with dozens of Microsoft staff from different groups contributing. For the first time, they looked at not only PC malware but threats to its Azure cloud service as well, which the company says "reveals how we are leveraging an intelligent security graph to inform how we protect endpoints, better detect attacks and accelerate our response, to help protect our customers."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How Microsoft keeps the bad guys out of Azure

Microsoft has published its latest Security Intelligence Report (SIR), which it does twice a year, covering security issues for the prior six months. This latest edition covers the second half of 2015, analyzing the threat landscape of exploits, vulnerabilities and malware using data from Internet services and over 600 million computers worldwide.It is a massive effort, with dozens of Microsoft staff from different groups contributing. For the first time, they looked at not only PC malware but threats to its Azure cloud service as well, which the company says "reveals how we are leveraging an intelligent security graph to inform how we protect endpoints, better detect attacks and accelerate our response, to help protect our customers."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

That massive reported ‘data breach’ was just hype, Mail.ru says

Hold Security made quite a splash in the security world on Wednesday when it claimed to have recovered 272 million stolen email credentials from a much larger trove, but on Friday the email provider most strongly affected called the report an effort to create media hype.Hold suggested that nearly 57 million of the stolen email accounts uncovered were from the popular Russian service Mail.ru. But more than 99.9 percent of the Mail.ru account credentials in a sample examined by the provider are invalid, the Russian company said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

That massive reported ‘data breach’ was just hype, Mail.ru says

Hold Security made quite a splash in the security world on Wednesday when it claimed to have recovered 272 million stolen email credentials from a much larger trove, but on Friday the email provider most strongly affected called the report an effort to create media hype.Hold suggested that nearly 57 million of the stolen email accounts uncovered were from the popular Russian service Mail.ru. But more than 99.9 percent of the Mail.ru account credentials in a sample examined by the provider are invalid, the Russian company said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EMC Shoots For Explosive Performance With Isilon Nitro

Storage giant EMC, soon to be part of the Dell Technologies conglomerate, declared that this would be the year of all flash for the company when it launched its DSSD D5 arrays back in February. It was not kidding, and as a surprise at this weeks EMC World 2016 conference, the company gave a sneak peek at a future all-flash version of its Isilon storage arrays, which are also aimed at high performance jobs but which are designed to scale capacity well beyond that of the DSSD.

The DSSD D5 is an impressive beast, packing 100 TB of usable

EMC Shoots For Explosive Performance With Isilon Nitro was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

What does the future of the Apache Software Foundation hold?

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) will hold its second annual Apache: Big Data North America conference in Vancouver, BC, starting Monday next week. Alongside keynotes from companies like Netflix and IBM, and panels on a huge range of topics — from security and storage to managing distributed systems and machine learning — the foundation will also host a forum that looks to cut to the heart of its community model and how private companies should be involved in its work. On Wednesday afternoon, Jim Jagielski, senior director in the Tech Fellows program at Capital One and one of the developers and founders of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF),  and John Mertic director of Program Management for ODPi and Open Mainframe Project at The Linux Foundation, will host a panel dubbed ODPi and ASF Collaboration: Ask Us Anything!.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here