Do You Really Want to Write that Book?

It’s amazing how interesting questions come in batches: within 24 hours two friends asked me what I think about writing books. Here’s a summary of my replies (as always, full of opinions and heavily biased), and if you’re a fellow book author with strong opinions, please leave them in the comments.

How Cloud Must Change To Meet Customer Requirements

FBI already using its iPhone hack to assist other criminal investigations

Apple's widely publicized battle with the FBI came to an unceremonious end this week when the DOJ filed a motion seeking to vacate a previous court order that would have forced Apple to help the FBI hack into the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists.The impetus for the DOJ dropping its legal suit against Apple was that the FBI, with the assistance of a third party, finally managed to access the aforementioned iPhone's data without Apple's assistance. While the identity of the third party has never been confirmed, it's believed that an Israeli software forensics company called Cellebrite provided the FBI with a way in.And with not even a week having gone by, the FBI has reportedly begun using its recently acquired iPhone hacking solution in other criminal investigations. According to a report from the Associated Press, the FBI recently agreed to access a locked iPhone and iPod where were subject to a warrant as part of a homicide investigation in Little Rock, Arkansas. Officials involved in the case indicated that they have reason to believe that the devices contain evidence of the duo's pre-meditated murder plans.To read this article in full or Continue reading

MedStar Health partially restores services after suspected ransomware attack

MedStar Health said Wednesday it is restoring computer systems following a cyberattack that reportedly involved file-encrypting malware.The not-for-profit organization, which runs 10 hospitals in the Washington, D.C., area, was hit with ransomware, the Baltimore Sun reported on Wednesday, citing two anonymous sources.MedStar Health officials could not be immediately reached for comment. The organization issued two statements Wednesday, but did not describe what type of malware infected its systems.It said in one statement that its IT team has worked continuously to restore access to three main clinical systems. It said no patient data or associate data was compromised.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Docker Machine, OpenStack, and SSH Keys

I wanted to provide readers a quick “heads up” about some unexpected behavior regarding Docker Machine and OpenStack. It’s not a huge deal, but it could catch someone off-guard if they aren’t aware of what’s happening.

This post builds on the earlier post I published on using Docker Machine with OpenStack; specifically, the section about using Docker Machine’s native OpenStack driver to provision instances on an OpenStack cloud. As a quick recap, recall that you can provision instances on an OpenStack cloud (and have Docker Engine installed and configured on those instances) with a command like this:

docker-machine create -d openstack 
--openstack-flavor-id 3 
--openstack-image-name "Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS x64" 
--openstack-net-name lab-net-5 
--openstack-floatingip-pool ext-net-5 
--openstack-sec-groups docker,basic-services
instance-name

(Note that I didn’t include all of the optional parameters; refer to either my earlier blog post or the Docker Machine OpenStack driver reference for more details).

One of the optional parameters for Docker Machine’s OpenStack driver is the --openstack-keypair-name parameter, which allows you to specify the name of an existing keypair to use with instances created by Docker Machine. If you omit this parameter, as I have above, then Docker Machine will auto-generate a new SSH Continue reading

Perceptions of NFV Hype and Reality

“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception," wrote Aldous Huxley. That could be a description of the evolving tension between the perceptions of hype and reality of the NFV market as it enters its important phase of commercialization.

Datanauts 029: The Evil Behind Long-Distance vMotion & Stretched L2 Domains

The Datanauts explore the network and application issues that make moving VMs from one data center to another dangerous, and share ways to enable it safely.

The post Datanauts 029: The Evil Behind Long-Distance vMotion & Stretched L2 Domains appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Datanauts 029: The Evil Behind Long-Distance vMotion & Stretched L2 Domains

The Datanauts explore the network and application issues that make moving VMs from one data center to another dangerous, and share ways to enable it safely.

The post Datanauts 029: The Evil Behind Long-Distance vMotion & Stretched L2 Domains appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Worth Reading: The end of Moore’s Law?

Moore’s Law may be nearing its end, however. Tom Simonite at the MIT Technology Review writes that Intel has declared in a regulatory filing what insiders have suspected: The company is slowing the release of new chips in a manner that doesn’t keep pace with the law. The reason is simply that fabricating small transistors, which now are at about 14 nanometers, is increasingly difficult and costly. The insiders suspect that the end is near because the next generation, which aims at 10 nm, has already been delayed. -via IT Business Edge

The post Worth Reading: The end of Moore’s Law? appeared first on 'net work.

HyTrust Intel Compliant SDDC Webinar Q&A: Five Key Questions For a Secure & Compliant SDDC

Your questions from the HyTrust Intel webinar on a secure & compliant SDDC are answered here in this Q&A post. Take a peek!

IDG Contributor Network: Add more antennas to base stations for 5G efficiencies, say researchers

Samsung, Huawei and others maybe barking up the wrong tree, or wrong cell tower, when it comes to 5G, if researchers at two universities in Europe are correct.The scientist there think that it might not be necessary to shift mobile networks up the frequency spectrum and into the millimeter bands to gain efficiencies, and thus serve more users with increasing speeds and bandwidth.+ MORE ON 5G 5G: A look at radios and spectrum +All you need do is create bigger antenna arrays, the scientists from the University of Bristol and Lund University believe. With a “massive antenna system,” existing microwave frequencies would work just fine for 5G, they surmise.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Humidity, not heat, is a hard drive’s biggest threat

Having been to Orlando in August, I know the meaning of the term "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." That was the first and only time I had my glasses fog up for just stepping outside.And it turns out humidity is a greater threat to hard drive reliability than high temperatures, according to a study from Rutgers University in partnership with GoDaddy and Microsoft. In their paper titled "Environmental Conditions and Disk Reliability in Free-cooled Datacenters" (PDF), the team said the most notable result was that all other conditions aside, the effects on controllers and adapters were felt most as humidity levels rose.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Creating a Dynamic Lab Environment with vEOS and GNS3 – Part II

SETTING UP A DHCP AND FILE SERVER FOR USE WITH ZTP

Creating a Dynamic Lab Environment with vEOS and GNS3 – Part I

GETTING STARTED

Preliminary Installation Setup

Creating the Management Network

SETTING UP vEOS

Creating a Base Image

Sometimes techy details matter

Rules, smules, classified, smashified: Those things don’t seem to apply to Clinton

Rules, smules...they don't seem to apply to Hillary Clinton. The Washington Post has an excellent piece about the Clinton email scandal.For “personal comfort” reasons, she wanted to use her personal unencrypted BlackBerry for all her email, despite warnings that it could be vulnerable. She even took it overseas, although she supposedly said she “gets it” being a security risk. Don’t be silly and expect her to use a PC; oh no, she was seemingly a CrackBerry fanboy. She also didn’t bother to tell officials that her BlackBerry was tied to her infamous private email server. That server was supposedly also for her comfort – for her “convenience.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Former NSA deputy director says Edward Snowden lacks courage

In the first segment of an interview with Chris Inglis, former deputy director of NSA, the Irari Report talks with him about his perceptions of Edward Snowden’s motivations and intentions in committing his acts of espionage. In the video segment, Inglis discusses his impressions of Snowden, and theorizes as to why Snowden left for China, and to where he intended to defect.Edward Snowden's defection occurred during Inglis' tenure as Deputy Director of NSA, and as such, Inglis was extremely involved in overseeing the investigation incident and mitigation of the resulting damage. Inglis states that Snowden was indiscriminate in his release of information, and is full of rage. When asked to comment on why Snowden has not released any documents about Russian or Chinese domestic surveillance efforts, which are plentiful throughout NSA, and would have been readily available to Snowden while he was at NSA, Inglis stated that Snowden lacks any courage to speak up about any concerns while he might be held accountable.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Survey: With all eyes on security, talent shortage sends salaries sky high

Jason Hoffman started his career as an internal auditor, but after 7 years he was ready to leave the job he was "really good at" and try something different. The transition to security more than 18 years ago "was probably the best decision I made in my career," says Hoffman, who is now CSO at marketing automation software vendor Marketo. "I don’t think anyone in 1998 could have predicted how important security would be today." "Company executives and their boards are more acutely aware that security is not just an IT problem but it’s a business problem," says Hoffman. "As a result, security is getting more emphasis across all companies regardless of sector."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Merging firms appealing targets for attackers

Companies going through a merger or acquisition, as well as their lawyers, financial advisers, and other associated firms are all tempting targets for cyberattackers, according to a new report from Digital Shadows.The attackers use public sources for the first round of information gathering, then spearphishing and malware campaigns against targeted individuals. They are often undetected because many companies still ignore cybersecurity when doing due diligence, the report said.ALSO ON CSO: How to respond to ransomware threats The attackers are "apex predators" said Rick Holland, the company's vice president of strategy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The CORD Architecture

Edge provider networks, supporting DSL, voice, and other services to consumers and small businesses, tend to be more heavily bound by vendor specific equipment and hardware centric standards. These networks are built around the more closed telephone standards, rather than the more open internetworking standards, and hence they tend to be more expensive to operate and manage. As one friend said about a company that supplies this equipment, “they just print money.” The large edge providers, such as AT&T and Verizon, however, are not endless pools of money. These providers are in a squeeze between the content providers, who are taking large shares of revenue, and consumers, who are always looking for a lower price option for communications and new and interesting services.

If this seems like an area that’s ripe for virtualization to you, you’re not alone. AT&T has been working on a project called CORD for a few years in this area; they published a series of papers on the topic that make for interesting reading:

• A set of slides covering the concept can be found here
• A recording of a talk on this topic can be found here
• A shorter white paper on the topic can Continue reading