Apple’s fight with the FBI could go all the way to the US Supreme Court

Apple may have taken on the fight of its life in standing up to the FBI, which is demanding that it help break into an iPhone used by one of the perpetrators in December's San Bernardino mass shooting. Apple has promised to fight a U.S. magistrate judge's order Tuesday requiring it to assist the FBI, and legal experts say the case could go all the way up to the Supreme Court. Apple needs to tread carefully, however. A divisive presidential election has further polarized the country around issues including how to respond to terrorists, and Apple needs to be careful the public doesn't turn against it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Discount Codes for 2/17. Tech Deals Happening Right Now.

ZOTAC GeForce GTX 970 DirectX 12P 4GB PCI Express 3.0 x16 SLI Support G-SYNC Support Video Card - $287.99 w/4% off code AFMN0164 at Newegg.com, exp. 02/19 G.SKILL RIPJAWS MX780 USB Wired RGB Laser Gaming Mouse + $5 off w/ promo code AFMN0167, limited offer Naim Mu-so Reference All-in-One Wireless Music System - Black Grille + $20 off w/ promo code AFMN0170, limited offer InFocus SP1080 1920 x 1080 DLP Projector 3000 (Eco) / 3500 (Normal) + Additional savings with promo code AFMN0165, ends 2/19 GoPro HERO4 Silver CHDHY-401 Silver 12MP Action Camera - $354.99 w/$45 off code AFMN0171 at Newegg.com, exp. 02/19 Garmin Vivosmart Wireless Activity Wristband with heart rate monitor $79.99 shipped (List Price $199) Use code SMARTHEALTH, Exp. 02/19 Rosewill RCDC-14034 DisplayPort Male to DVI Female Adapter + $3 off w/ promo code AFMN0161, limited offer Mobile Exclusive: $51 OFF SAMSUNG 850 PRO 2.5" 512GB SATA III 3-D Vertical Internal SSD - $198.99 w/ code MBL160217A at m.newegg.com or Newegg Mobile app. 2/17 Only. Mobile Exclusive: $180 OFF LG 25UM57-P Black 25" 5ms GTG HDMI Widescreen LED Backlight LCD Monitor IPS - $169. Continue reading

Faux phishing scheme shows how hacks unfold

Many CIOs have implemented software that dupes employees into clicking on links and attachments that simulate phishing scams, an increasingly common educational tool to warn workers about the dangers of suspicious email messages. Security software maker Bitglass has reversed the shenanigans by leaking faked Google Apps credentials on the Dark Web, a hacker's playground for trafficking in stolen data. Then it tracked the activity, watching the many ways in which hackers wreaked havoc with supposed stolen online identities. Rich Campagna, vice president of products and marketing at Bitglass,To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Emerging Networking Technologies You Must Know

In this episode of Network Matters with Ethan Banks, learn about the two major trends happening in network technology that are bound to affect your business. Ethan discusses network disaggregation and converged technology stacks, what they are, and why you need to know about them.

Ethan is the co-host of the Future of Networking Summit at Interop Las Vegas. Learn more about the conference program or register for Interop, May 2-6 in Las Vegas.

Yahoo heads in new research direction

The latest move in the topsy-turvy world of Yahoo is to ditch its Labs organization and squeeze its researchers into its product teams to help bring new ideas to market more quickly.Yahoo VP of Research Yoelle Maarek spun the development this way in a blog post this week: Recently we announced our efforts to make Yahoo a more focused company. This focus will let us accelerate the pace of innovation to make our products even better. We saw these changes as an opportunity to better align our research efforts, while preserving Yahoo’s culture of exploration and inquiry. As a result, we are reorganizing Yahoo Labs and moving forward with a new approach to research at Yahoo.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hard-coded password exposes up to 46,000 video surveillance DVRs to hacking

Up to 46,000 Internet-accessible digital video recorders (DVRs) that are used to monitor and record video streams from surveillance cameras in homes and businesses can easily be taken over by hackers.According to security researchers from vulnerability intelligence firm Risk Based Security (RBS), all the devices share the same basic vulnerability: They accept a hard-coded, unchangeable password for the highest-privileged user in their software -- the root account.Using hard-coded passwords and hidden support accounts was a common practice a decade ago, when security did not play a large role in product design and development. That mentality has changed in recent years and many vendors, including large networking and security appliance makers, are frequently issuing firmware updates to fix such basic flaws when they are discovered by internal and external security audits.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hard-coded password exposes up to 46,000 video surveillance DVRs to hacking

Up to 46,000 Internet-accessible digital video recorders (DVRs) that are used to monitor and record video streams from surveillance cameras in homes and businesses can easily be taken over by hackers.According to security researchers from vulnerability intelligence firm Risk Based Security (RBS), all the devices share the same basic vulnerability: They accept a hard-coded, unchangeable password for the highest-privileged user in their software -- the root account.Using hard-coded passwords and hidden support accounts was a common practice a decade ago, when security did not play a large role in product design and development. That mentality has changed in recent years and many vendors, including large networking and security appliance makers, are frequently issuing firmware updates to fix such basic flaws when they are discovered by internal and external security audits.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Building nginx and Tarantool based services

Are you familiar with this architecture? A bunch of daemons are dancing between a web-server, cache and storage.

What are the cons of such architecture? While working with it we come across a number of questions: which language (-s) should we use? Which I/O framework to choose? How to synchronize cache and storage? Lots of infrastructure issues. And why should we solve the infrastructure issues when we need to solve a task? Sure, we can say that we like some X and Y technologies and treat these cons as ideological. But we can’t ignore the fact that the data is located some distance away from the code (see the picture above), which adds latency that could decrease RPS.

The main idea of this article is to describe an alternative, built on nginx as a web-server, load balancer and Tarantool as app server, cache, storage.

Improving cache and storage

Want to sell your brand to a developer? Laptop stickers could be yet another way!

© Arun Sriraman
A sign of pride and fun for some but chaos for others; laptop stickers as I recently figured out is yet another way of marketing and branding. I'm sure a lot of people have wondered why a company gives away goodies in conferences and exhibitions. It's for direct+indirect marketing. When you see people walking around wearing a company printed T-Shirt or a cap, that company reaches people it never spoke to directly. It can be thought about as "flooding" in networking terms.

If its known that stickers are a marketing technique, why would someone want to mutilate their laptop with them?

Good question indeed.  I have seen people fret at the sight of my laptop and come at me with the expression of - "Oh my god! What has he done to the poor laptop".. The picture you see above is my work laptop. I like stickers and I put them on my laptop because I agree with a product or the company that makes a product and would want to share this with others (i.m.o. it also makes it look cool).

Laptop stickers though a smaller marketing channel, are nevertheless effective. Continue reading