Introducing CloudFlare Origin CA

Free and performant encryption to the origin for CloudFlare customers

Introducing CloudFlare Origin CA

Introducing CloudFlare Origin CA

In the fall of 2014 CloudFlare launched Universal SSL and doubled the number of sites on the Internet accessible via HTTPS. In just a few days we issued certificates protecting millions of our customers’ domains and became the easiest way to secure your website with SSL/TLS.

At the time, we "strongly recommend[ed] that site owners install a certificate on their web servers so we can encrypt traffic to the origin." This recommendation was followed by a blog post describing two readily-available options for doing so—creating a self-signed certificate and purchasing a publicly trusted certificate—and a third, still-in-beta option: using our private CA. Even though out-of-pocket costs of acquiring public CA certificates have since fallen to $0 since that post, we have continued to receive requests from our customers for an even easier (and more performant) option.

Operating a public certificate authority is difficult because you don't directly control either endpoint of the HTTPS connection (browser or web server). As a result, public CAs are limited both in their ability to issue certificates optimized for inter-server communication, as well as in their ability to revoke certificates if they are compromised. Continue reading

The IoT company behind the curtain

Greenwave Systems is sort of the BASF of Internet of Things: It doesn’t make the IoT products you buy, it makes them better. Greenwave (one of Network World’s recently named IoT Companies to Watch) provides software and services that help consumer-facing companies like Verizon deliver IoT features to their customers. IDG US Media Chief Content Officer John Gallant talked recently to Greenwave’s Chief Scientist, Jim Hunter, about how the company is empowering IoT applications and how new voice and social-media-driven capabilities will change the market. Hunter also explored the evolving IoT market and offered a candid assessment of how data ownership and security issues could hamper the IoT revolution.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Response: Are Open-Source Controllers Ready for Carrier-Grade Services?

My beloved source of meaningless marketing messages led me to a blog post with a catchy headline: are open-source SDN controllers ready for carrier-grade services?

It turned out the whole thing was a simple marketing gig for Ixia testers, but supposedly “the response of the attendees of an SDN event was overwhelming”, which worries me… or makes me happy, because it’s easy to see plenty of fix-and-redesign work in the future.

Read more ...

Hot products at Interop 2016

Interop 2016The 30th version running this week in Las Vegas features a trade show with more than 160 vendors displaying their wares and where its interoperability mission ventures far outside the show’s signature InteropNet Demo Lab. This year it is focused on promoting interoperability among Internet of Things devices, a category of gear unheard of that first year. (See Network World's preview story of the show.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hot products at Interop 2016

Interop 2016The 30th version running this week in Las Vegas features a trade show with more than 160 vendors displaying their wares and where its interoperability mission ventures far outside the show’s signature InteropNet Demo Lab. This year it is focused on promoting interoperability among Internet of Things devices, a category of gear unheard of that first year. (See Network World's preview story of the show.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Satoshi: how Craig Wright’s deception worked

My previous post shows how anybody can verify Satoshi using a GUI. In this post, I'll do the same, with command-line tools (openssl). It's just a simple application of crypto (hashes, public-keys) to the problem.

I go through this step-by-step discussion in order to demonstrate Craig Wright's scam. Dan Kaminsky's post and the redditors comes to the same point through a different sequence, but I think my way is clearer.

Step #1: the Bitcoin address


We know certain Bitcoin addresses correspond to Satoshi Nakamoto him/her self. For the sake of discussion, we'll use the address 15fszyyM95UANiEeVa4H5L6va7Z7UFZCYP. It's actually my address, but we'll pretend it's Satoshi's. In this post, I'm going to prove that this address belongs to me.

The address isn't the public-key, as you'd expect, but the hash of the public-key. Hashes are a lot shorter, and easier to pass around. We only pull out the public-key when we need to do a transaction. The hashing algorithm is explained on this website [http://gobittest.appspot.com/Address]. It's basically base58(ripemd(sha256(public-key)).

Step #2: You get the public-key


Hashes are one-way, so given a Bitcoin address, we can't immediately convert it into a public-key. Instead, we have to look it Continue reading

China’s booming middle class augurs well for Apple, says Tim Cook

Apple CEO Tim Cook still sees great potential in the Chinese market despite a drop in its revenue from the country in the first quarter.In an interview to Jim Cramer of CNBC's Mad Money program, Cook said Monday that the middle class in China is expected to boom from 50 million people five years ago to almost 500 million in the next five years. “This is an unprecedented growth of the middle class,” said Cook, adding that he “could not be more optimistic about China.”To a question from Cramer, Cook said it was an error by him not to to mention the figures about the burgeoning Chinese middle class during the company’s recent earnings call.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CiscoLive 2016: ‘Summer Camp for Geeks’

The other day I was talking with a friend about my summer plans. As we were talking about July….. my face apparently lit up and my voice got all excited and happy when I mentioned CiscoLive.

“What exactly is CiscoLive?” she asked.

I answered, “CiscoLive is my absolute favorite work week of the entire year. Has been since my first one back in 2006.”

“What do you like so much about it?” she asked.  ……

My answer to her?  ?

“It’s like a week long Summer Camp for Geeks”

july

Why I Love Cisco Live US

  1. Learning & Sharing Knowledge
    1. Breakouts, Technical Seminars, and Labs
    2. Meet the Expert
    3. Lunch and Learn (Formerly Table Topics)
  2. Social Media Fun

Learning & Sharing Knowledge

Learning… learning… learning ….. learning.   I just love learning!  For me… learning from others and passing that on is one of my passions in life.

And WOW is there knowledge to learn at CiscoLive!

Of course, I have never been to a CiscoLive as a non Cisco employee.  Nor have I ever gone and not been a speaker.  So, for me, CiscoLive has always involved me prioritizing technical knowledge sharing/teaching with CiscoLive Continue reading

Microsoft’s CEO explains why his company sued the U.S. government

Microsoft surprised the world last month when it filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice, alleging that the frequent practice of attaching gag orders to search warrants for customer data violates the U.S. Constitution.On Monday, CEO Satya Nadella told a group of tech luminaries why the company did so: Microsoft has a strong view on its privacy promises to users, and the company will fight to prevent government overreach that, in its view, compromises the principles of privacy. Governments have a compelling need to help preserve public safety, but Microsoft wants to make sure that users' privacy is also preserved, Nadella said. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s CEO explains why his company sued the U.S. government

Microsoft surprised the world last month when it filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice, alleging that the frequent practice of attaching gag orders to search warrants for customer data violates the U.S. Constitution.On Monday, CEO Satya Nadella told a group of tech luminaries why the company did so: Microsoft has a strong view on its privacy promises to users, and the company will fight to prevent government overreach that, in its view, compromises the principles of privacy. Governments have a compelling need to help preserve public safety, but Microsoft wants to make sure that users' privacy is also preserved, Nadella said. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Satoshi: That’s not how any of this works

In this WIRED article, Gaven Andresen says why he believes Craig Wright's claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto:
“It’s certainly possible I was bamboozled,” Andresen says. “I could spin stories of how they hacked the hotel Wi-fi so that the insecure connection gave us a bad version of the software. But that just seems incredibly unlikely. It seems the simpler explanation is that this person is Satoshi.”
That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.

The entire point of Bitcoin is that it's decentralized. We don't need to take Andresen's word for it. We don't need to take anybody's word for it. Nobody needs to fly to London and check it out on a private computer. Instead, you can just send somebody the signature, and they can verify it themselves. That the story was embargoed means nothing -- either way, Andresen was constrained by an NDA. Since they didn't do it the correct way, and were doing it the roundabout way, the simpler explanation is that he was being bamboozled.

Below is an example of this, using the Electrum Bitcoin wallet software:


This proves that the owner of the Bitcoin Address has signed the Message Continue reading

Label Switched Multicast — Packet Walk

This post is going to follow a multicast packet as it moves through a sample MPLS network using Label Switched Multicast (LSM). I'll show how the packet moves through the network by looking at the forwarding tables on different routers and also by doing some packet captures.

This post is part of a series I'm writing on LSM and if you're not already familiar with LSM, I recommend you go back and read the previous posts.

After reading this post you will be able to precisely describe how LSM forwarding works in the data plane and will be able to do some basic troubleshooting.

Let's get into the lab!

Can Oracle buy its way into the cloud?

It wasn't so long ago that Oracle dismissed cloud computing as "gibberish." Today, it's singing a different tune.Through a string of acquisitions, the database giant has been buying a presence in the cloud in much the same way it built up its on-premises portfolio decades ago. What remains to be seen is whether that strategy can work as well in this new setting.Acquisitions of companies such as PeopleSoft and Siebel played a key role in fleshing out Oracle's traditional applications portfolio back in the mid-2000s, helping the company become a major player in enterprise software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Want to be a better engineer? Learn to troubleshoot

Want to be a better engineer? Learn to troubleshoot Since I have been working in IT for many years there are a few traits that generally separate a good engineer from a great engineer. One of those traits is troubleshooting. For those of you out there who have been doing this a long time would […]

The post Want to be a better engineer? Learn to troubleshoot appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Want to be a better engineer? Learn to troubleshoot

Want to be a better engineer? Learn to troubleshoot Since I have been working in IT for many years there are a few traits that generally separate a good engineer from a great engineer. One of those traits is troubleshooting. For those of you out there who have been doing this a long time would […]

The post Want to be a better engineer? Learn to troubleshoot appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Boston Globe publishes pictures taken by lawyer of suspect in famous art heist

The Boston Globe, whose Pulitzer-winning work behind the Oscar-honored movie “Spotlight” earned it a shout-out from President Obama this weekend, today is relying upon the photographic skills of a mobster’s attorney to illustrate a breaking news story about the FBI’s latest attempt to solve the famous Gardner Museum art heist.The photos, credited to attorney A. Ryan McGuigan, show FBI vehicles and work tents in front of the Connecticut home of McGuigan’s client. And while it is my opinion that a screen capture would represent fair use in this instance … did I mention that the photos were taken by an attorney?From the Globe story, which is behind a pay wall:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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