The most momentous tech events of the past 30 years

The spectacular and the burn-outThe tech industry mirrors what goes on in regular society – people and companies rise in power one year only to fade away the next. That kind of change is the one constant in the high-tech industry. We have seen some spectacular successes and some incredible flame-outs. In 30 years the tech industry has seen many such transformations from companies such as IBM and Cisco to Nortel (remember them?) to technologies like SNA and Token Ring to Ethernet. Here we try to focus on the most important happenings since our own inception in 1986. Enjoy the ride.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The networked world

What would happen if you switched the enterprise to Airplane Mode?The simple answer: Nothing. Literally. Virtually every corporate process would grind to a halt, which is a simple testament to how reliant the modern organization is on the complex, interwoven, interdependent systems that pervade every fiber of business and society today.From the key enabler of business agility and transformation to tactical new answers in cloud, mobile computing and analytics, intelligent connectivity has never been a more essential part of business, government and the consumer experience.“All of these new trends we talk about -- Internet of things, mobility, cloud computing, mesh computing -- are network-centric compute paradigms," says Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst with ZK Research.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network World celebrates 30 years

Thirty years ago today we published the first issue of Network World and, needless to say, a lot has happened since then. To take you back, consider that 1986 was the year the space shuttle Challenger blew up, Chernobyl melted down, President Ronald Reagan was in office and the cold war was grinding down thanks to Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies pushing the Soviet Union toward glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring).” The U.S. gross domestic product was $8 trillion ($16 trillion today), the national debt was $2 trillion (about $20 trillion today), and $7,500 could buy you a new Ford Mustang (about $28,000 today).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Networking then and now: 1986 vs 2016

As Network World celebrates its 30th anniversary, we took a look back at the scene in 1986 ... and had a chuckle. NETWORK WORLD/STEPHEN SAUER NETWORK WORLD TURNS 30: The networked world |9 ways technology will change within the next 10 years | The most momentous tech events of the past 30 years | 30 years of gadgets, computers and video games from my fabulous life | Network World celebrates 30 years | Thumbing through issue No.1 of Network World To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Thumbing through issue No. 1 of Network World

Where it all began, 30 years agoNetwork world is turning 30. Don’t be fooled by the “Volume 3, Number 3” printed under the masthead, this was indeed the front page of the very first edition of Network World, dated March 24, 1986. Pre-Internet, of course, it was print-only. The featured front-page story – “Users force LU 6.2 issue” – was written by John Dix, then a senior editor, today our editor-in-chief. We’ve plucked a few other highlights from that issue, including ads, so enjoy the walk down Memory Lane.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Firmware bug in CCTV software may have given POS hackers a foothold

A researcher with RSA says faulty firmware found in security cameras sold by at least 70 vendors may be a contributor to many of the credit card breaches that have proved costly to retailers.Rotem Kerner based his research on a paper RSA published in December 2014 into a malware nicknamed Backoff, which steals payment card details processed by point-of-sale systems.The U.S. Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security warned in August 2014 that upwards of 1,000 U.S. businesses may have been infected with Backoff.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Learning Tools Updates

One of the projects that I started last year was my GitHub “learning-tools” repository, in which I store tools (of various sorts) to help with learning new technologies. Many of these tools are Vagrant environments, but some are sample templates for other tools like Terraform. I recently made some updates to a couple of the tools in this repo, so I wanted to briefly update my readers.

Docker with IPVLAN L2 Interfaces

This area of the repository was already present, but I had a note in the repo’s main README.md noting that it wasn’t fully functional. After having to work through some other issues (issues that resulted in this blog post), I was finally able to create the tools and assets to make this environment easily repeatable. So, if you’d like to work with Docker using IPVLAN interfaces in L2 mode, then have a look in the docker-ipvlan folder of the repository. The folder-specific README.md is pretty self-explanatory, but if you run into any problems or issues feel free to open a GitHub issue.

Docker with IPVLAN L3 Interfaces

This is an entirely new area of the repo. Thanks in part to being able to complete Continue reading

DOJ knew of possible iPhone-cracking method before Apple case

Weeks before the FBI sought a court order forcing Apple to help it break into an iPhone used by one of the the San Bernardino gunmen, a sister agency in the Department of Justice was already using an Israeli security firm's technology to attempt to crack a similar device.The FBI and the DOJ have repeatedly insisted that they had no other option but to force Apple to help them crack an iPhone used by the gunman Syed Rizwan Farook, at least until an outside party offered assistance earlier this week.“We have engaged all parts of the U.S. government” to find a way to access the device without Apple’s help, FBI Director James Comey told lawmakers in early March. “If we could have done this quietly and privately, we would have done it.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

ISPs have built huge data systems to track you with, report says

Web users face an even greater threat to their privacy as large ISPs align themselves more closely with data brokers to track their customers, an advocacy group said.Several large ISPs have either formed partnerships with, or acquired, data tracking and analytics firms in recent years, giving them a "vast storehouse of consumer data," according to a report Wednesday from the Center for Digital Democracy."ISPs have been on a shopping spree to help build their data-targeting system across devices and platforms," the report says. "Superfast computers analyze our information ... to decide in milliseconds whether to target us for marketing and more."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FBI to hack into locked iPhone with help from Israeli company

Apple's saga with the FBI isn't over just yet, but it appears that the two entities are no longer on a collision course, legally speaking of course. Earlier this week, the DOJ filed a motion with the court overseeing the matter to postpone an upcoming hearing which was scheduled to take place on Tuesday. The reason? The DOJ relayed that the FBI may have found a way to access the locked iPhone of one of the San Bernardino terrorists with out Apple's assistance..As has been recounted before, the iPhone in question was equipped with a passcode and may have been set up to erase itself after 10 failed passcode entries. As a result, the FBI wanted Apple to create an entirely new and modified version of iOS that would have bypassed this security mechanism. In turn, the FBI would have been able to implement a brute force attack to access the device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Take a 4K VR tour around Google’s Oregon data center

Data centers are typically high-security locations and operators don't like you snooping around, but Google is giving users a look at one of its latest and most advanced data centers using virtual reality.The tour of Google's data center in The Dalles, Oregon, was published to coincide with the company's Google Compute Summit which starts Wednesday in San Francisco.Google is trying to entice more customers to its cloud services, to compete better with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, and showing off its advanced facilities might help with that goal.The tour is best viewed in a virtual reality headset, like Google Cardboard, but you can also see it on a plan old smartphone or desktop. On a phone you can look around by moving the handset. On a desktop, you use the mouse.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Social engineering 101: 18 ways to hack a human [Infographic]

What will the cause of your next security breach? Will it be your firewall? Will it be your VPN? Will it be your website? Nope. Chances are, your next security breach will be caused by hackers exploiting someone within your organization. In just the last two months, a single, simple phishing scam targeted seven organizations, gaining access to W2 information. And business email compromise attacks, in particular, are growing fast and hard to defend against.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Here’s how the FBI plans to crack terrorist’s iPhone

An outside contractor with established ties to the FBI has most likely shown investigators how to circumvent the iPhone's security measures by copying the contents of the device's flash storage, a forensics expert said today.Called "NAND mirroring," the technique relies on using numerous copies of the iPhone storage to input possible passcodes until the correct one is found."The other ideas, I've kind of ruled out," said Jonathan Zdziarski in an interview. Zdziarski is a noted iPhone forensics and security expert. "None of them seemed to fit."+ MORE Let's hope the FBI can really crack the iPhone +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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