How much at risk is the U.S.’s critical infrastructure?

There is universal agreement that modern warfare or crime fighting is not just about bullets, bombs and missiles in physical space. It’s also about hacking in cyber space.But over the past decade there has been much less agreement over how much of a threat hackers are.On one side are those – some of them top government officials – who have warned that a cyber attack on the nation’s critical infrastructure could be catastrophic, amounting to a “cyber Pearl Harbor.”Those warnings prompted the recent book by retired ABC TV “Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel titled, “Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Data breach numbers still high in 2015

New year, new leakImage by Eli ChristmanThe number of U.S. data breaches tracked in 2014 hit a record high of 783 in 2014, according to a recent report released by the Identity Theft Resource Center. 2015 fell just two breaches short of tying that record. Here is a list of those breaches that compromised more than 1 million records (see the full report).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cybersecurity much more than a compliance exercise

Even as an overwhelming majority of large global enterprises feel vulnerable to data breaches and other security threats, too many organizations continue to approach cybersecurity as a compliance exercise, according to a new survey from the security vendor Vormetric.In a poll of more than 1,100 security executives around the world, 91 percent of respondents consider their organization to be vulnerable to internal or external data threats.And yet, 64 percent of respondents express the view that compliance is a "very" or "extremely" effective strategy in staving off data breaches, up six percentage points from last year's survey.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

PQ Show 71: Kentik & Real-Time Network Visibility (Sponsored)

Startup Kentik offers real-time network visibility for service providers, Web companies, and enterprises. CEO and co-founder Avi Freedman joins the Packet Pushers to talk about how Kentik works, how it extracts and presents valuable information from flow data, customer use cases, and more.

The post PQ Show 71: Kentik & Real-Time Network Visibility (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

PQ Show 71: Kentik & Real-Time Network Visibility (Sponsored)

Startup Kentik offers real-time network visibility for service providers, Web companies, and enterprises. CEO and co-founder Avi Freedman joins the Packet Pushers to talk about how Kentik works, how it extracts and presents valuable information from flow data, customer use cases, and more.

The post PQ Show 71: Kentik & Real-Time Network Visibility (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.

26 of the craziest and scariest things the TSA has found on travelers

More guns and ammo foundGuns and ammo continue to be the scourge of the TSA. Week after week of the agency’s own blog report on what its agents find on people looking to travel through the country’s airports are inundated with stories of loaded guns and ammunition. We won’t go into the ridiculous gun situation but will look at the weirder stuff the TSA has found folks traveling with, like meat slicers and Chihuahuas. Take a look (all entries are from the TSA Blog site).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

OpenSwitch in an OVA

 

First, disclaimer: I’m an HPE employee. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is a major contributor to the OpenSwitch project. Just thought you should know in case you think that affects my opinion here.

If you need more info on the OpenSwitch project, you can check out the other post in this series here and here

Network Engineers Don’t Like Learning New Things

Got your attention, didn’t I?  After the first couple of posts on OpenSwitch and a lot of discussions about this cool new project at some recent events, there was one piece of feedback that came back fairly consistently from the traditional engineers. OpenSwitch is hard to get running because there’s so many new things to learn.

When released in November of last year, the initial demonstration environment was actually pretty simple and streamlined to get up and running, as long as you’re a developer.  

The process involved the standard set of dev tools:

  • Virtual Box
  • Vagrant
  • DockerToolbox
  • Docker

 For anyone involved in a development environment, these tools are like an old hoody on a cold winter day. Welcome and familiar. 

But for the majority of network engineers who are far more comfortable with a console cable and Continue reading

Hottest Enterprise Networking & IT Startups of 2016

The billions of dollars invested in cloud, wireless, big data, security and other networking startups in 2015 means that enterprise IT shops will have plenty of new products and services from which to choose.On the heels of that year of the megadeal ($100M or more) and Unicorn (private companies valued at $1B or more), it will be interesting to see how funding for network and IT startups shakes out in 2016. We'll keep track of 2016 funding announcements of possible interest to enterprise IT pros here, so bookmark this page and check back for updates. As we spot trends, we'll roll up collections of like companies and highlight them as well, as we did here for big data and analytics firms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hottest Enterprise Networking & IT Startups of 2016

The billions of dollars invested in cloud, wireless, big data, security and other networking startups in 2015 means that enterprise IT shops will have plenty of new products and services from which to choose.On the heels of that year of the megadeal ($100M or more) and Unicorn (private companies valued at $1B or more), it will be interesting to see how funding for network and IT startups shakes out in 2016. We'll keep track of 2016 funding announcements of possible interest to enterprise IT pros here, so bookmark this page and check back for updates. As we spot trends, we'll roll up collections of like companies and highlight them as well, as we did here for big data and analytics firms.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Preventing Malicious Request Loops

The web is an collaborative ecosystem. Web standards exist to ensure that participants of the network behave in a predictable way. If network participants deviate from the established standards then there can be unintended consequences. This blog post is about one of these unintended consequences.

A group of researchers recently published a paper "Forwarding Loop Attacks in the Content Delivery Networks" describing what can happen when web services interact in a non-compliant way. They describe an attack where a malicious user can force multiple service providers to send each other an unending stream of requests in a loop. This request loop can result in resource exhaustion and denial of service at the service provider. This paper also demonstrated that the attack is practical, and can be performed using a large list of service providers.

CloudFlare's service has been modified to be standards-compliant with respect to HTTP proxying. However, fixing the vulnerability that enables this attack requires all proxy services to conform to the same standards. If even one service provider is non-compliant, the attack can still be carried out against compliant services. In this post, we will describe the attack and explain how a proxy services can go from being Continue reading

Unikernel Systems Joins Docker

I’m happy to announce today that Unikernel Systems is part of Docker! Unikernels compile your source code into a custom operating system that includes only the functionality required by the application logic. That makes them small, fast, and improves efficiency. … Continued

Unikernel Systems joins Docker

Today, Unikernel Systems announced that it is joining Docker. Please read the main notice posted at unikernel.com and the Docker blog post at http://blog.docker.com/2016/01/unikernel/.

An important part of the work of Unikernel Systems is to support the growing unikernel movement, which includes contributing to a number of open source projects as well as supporting this community website, unikernel.org. The Unikernel Systems team will continue this work.

Through further interaction with the Docker project and community, the open source unikernel community will receive increased visibility and contributions which will accelerate the adoption of unikernels.

Links:

Discuss this on devel.unikernel.org

Ukranian hacker who tried to frame security expert now facing jail time

Brian Krebs, author of the Krebs on Security blog, has made a name for himself by exposing some of the most dangerous characters in the cybercrime underworld. And he has paid a price for doing so, including being the target of a SWAT attack.Several years ago, Krebs also incurred the wrath of a Ukrainian hacker, Sergey Vovnenko, who responded to the unwanted publicity Krebs provided him by trying to frame the journalist for heroin possession. Krebs writes on his blog:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4

In November, Microsoft released Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4. With the final release due out in the second half of this year, TP4 gives us the latest look at where Microsoft's flagship operating system is heading. There are several interesting spots to look at and some licensing news that is controversial. I put the release through its paces for around a month; here are my observations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Google creates fix for zero-day kernel flaw, says effect on Android is greatly exaggerated

After being caught off guard by the disclosure of a serious flaw in the Linux kernel this week, Google has quickly developed a patch for Android and shared it with device manufacturers.It might take weeks for device makers to start releasing firmware updates that include the fix, but that's not a huge problem since, according to Google's assessment, the flaw doesn't affect many Android devices to begin with.The privilege escalation vulnerability allows attackers to gain full control over Linux-based systems if they have access to a limited account or trick users into running a malicious application. It was found by researchers from Israeli threat defense start-up Perception Point.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Healthcare IT execs fear loss of life due to hacked medical devices or networks

Today, Veracode released "The State of Web and Mobile Application Security in Healthcare," made possible after Veracode, along with the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), surveyed 200 healthcare IT executives. The exploitation of vulnerabilities in apps was the greatest concern among those healthcare IT execs.Veracode reported, "Survey respondents cited the potential for loss of life due to compromised networks or medical devices, brand damage due to theft of patient information and regulatory enforcement as their top fears related to such security breaches."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

1 … 3,127 3,128 3,129 3,130 3,131 … 3,794