The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Wednesday, July 1

Court says NSA can keep collecting phone records even after Congress told it to stopThe National Security Agency just doesn’t want to stop collecting records of U.S. telephone calls. Congress told it to stop—but left a loophole in the USA Freedom Act so the courts could let it carry on. Now a U.S. surveillance court has approved a request from the FBI to extend the telephone records dragnet until Nov. 29. As the judge noted in his order: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”Vandal cuts cable after opening manhole: FBI looks into itTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

China tightens grip over the Internet with new security law

China has adopted a new security law that gives the government control over its Internet infrastructure, along with any critical data.On Wednesday, China’s legislature passed the national security law, which covers a wide range of areas including military defense, food safety, and the technology sector.A full text of the law’s final draft has yet to be released, but it calls for better cybersecurity, according to a report from China’s state-controlled Xinhua News Agency. The country’s key information systems and data will also be made “secure and controllable” under the law.Previous drafts of the legislation don’t state in detail what that control might mean, exactly. But U.S. trade groups have expressed ongoing concern that China’s security policies are going too far, and could push foreign businesses out of the country.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Xiaomi break outs of Asia, introduces phones to Brazil

Chinese smartphone vendor Xiaomi will finally begin selling product in Brazil, marking the first time it has sold handsets outside of Asia.On Tuesday, Xiaomi unveiled its Redmi 2 phone for Brazil, which will cost BRL499 (US$160) when it goes on sale later this month.The company hopes to repeat the success it has had in China selling feature-packed Android handsets at low prices. In just a matter of a few years, Xiaomi has become the country’s largest smartphone vendor. Some in the media have called it “the Apple of China” due to its rising popularity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The battle for the wireless networking crown is heating up

The IT world has been buzzing recently with partnerships and acquisitions on the wireless networking front. HP announced its decision to acquire Aruba Networks and will reportedly focus its efforts on new software that allows customers to manage entire networks with a single app. We also learned about the newly formed partnership between Juniper Networks and Ruckus Wireless, demonstrating Juniper's continued effort to become a real player in the wireless space. All interesting revelations, but will these changes pose a real threat to Cisco, the reigning networking champ?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CyberUL is a dumb idea

Peiter “mudge” Zatko is leaving Google, asked by the White House to create a sort of a cyber “Underwriter Laboratories” (UL) for the government. UL is the organization that certifies electrical devices, so that they don’t short out and zap you to death. But here’s the thing: a CyberUL is a dumb idea. It’s the Vogon approach to the problem. It imagines that security comes from a moral weakness that could be solved by getting “serious” about the problem.

It’s not the hacking problem

According to data-breach reports, 95% of all attacks are simple things, like phishing, SQL injection, and bad passwords – nothing related to software quality. The other 5% is because victims are using old, unpatched software. When exploits are used, it’s overwhelmingly for software that has remained unpatched for a year.

In other words, CyberUL addresses less than 0.1% of real-world attacks.

It’s not the same quality problem

UL is about accidental failures in electronics. CyberUL would be about intentional attacks against software. These are unrelated issues. Stopping accidental failures is a solved problem in many fields. Stopping attacks is something nobody has solved in any field.

In other words, the UL model of accidents is Continue reading

Preparing for the CCIE Wireless v3 Diagnostic Section

I had the pleasure of attending the CCIE Wireless tectorial at Cisco Live in San Diego this year. One of the topics discussed was the new diagnostic section of the lab. Jerome Henry gave us insights into what the section would look like as well as some examples of the types of things that we can expect in the section. I wanted to pass on some of that information along with a few insights about how you should prepare for this section since it’s quite different than what we’ve seen before in the lab.

What is the Diagnostic section?

Starting in v3 of the wireless lab, each lab will begin with a 1-hour diagnostic section. This section has no configuration task associated with it. Instead, you will be playing the role of TAC, or a senior level engineer. Your job is to look at information gathered from a client by a first-level engineer and analyze it so that you can answer questions related to troubleshooting an issue.

It sounds like you can expect maybe 3-4 separate troubleshooting scenarios with approximately 10 questions to answer across those 3-4 scenarios. So that means there will probably be 2-4 questions per scenario. All Continue reading

16 facts about our slowly mutating energy consumption

Electricity consumption has slowed while the use of natural gas, wind, and solar have become larger portions-- with coal and nuclear becoming less -- of the nation's electricity generation between 2001-2013.That was one observation of an interesting  report issued by the Government Accountability Office this week that looked at the changing ways in which the US generates and uses electricity.+More on Network World: World’s hot alternative energy projects+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Surveillance court extends NSA’s phone records collection

A U.S. surveillance court has extended a controversial telephone records dragnet while the National Security Agency works to wind down the program on orders from Congress.Congress voted in June to rein in the NSA’s mass collection of U.S. telephone records, but the USA Freedom Act allowed for a six-month transition away from the program. On Monday, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved an FBI application to continue the records collection program until December.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Surveillance court extends NSA’s phone records collection

A U.S. surveillance court has extended a controversial telephone records dragnet while the National Security Agency works to wind down the program on orders from Congress.Congress voted in June to rein in the NSA’s mass collection of U.S. telephone records, but the USA Freedom Act allowed for a six-month transition away from the program. On Monday, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved an FBI application to continue the records collection program until December.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HP enterprise chief Bill Veghte to depart before company split

The head of Hewlett-Packard’s enterprise division will leave the company ahead of HP’s planned split later this year.Bill Veghte, a former Microsoft executive who joined HP five years ago, will leave the company later this summer to “pursue a new opportunity,” HP said in a statement on Tuesday. It’s not clear what he’ll do next and Veghte couldn’t be reached for comment.Veghte is executive vice president of the HP Enterprise Group, a $28 billion division that sells the company’s servers, network and storage gear. He’s been leading the effort to separate the group into a new company.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple loses e-book antitrust appeal

An appeals court ruled against Apple’s challenge of a lower court’s decision which found the company liable for illegally conspiring with ebook publishers to jack up prices.A 3-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit voted 2 to 1 against Apple. Writing for the majority, Judge Debra Ann Livingston said that Apple illegally orchestrated a conspiracy between book publishers, upholding a district court ruling from 2013. The lawsuit was filed by the U.S. Department of Justice.Additionally, she said that the injunction imposed by District Court Judge Denise Cote was appropriate and left it in place. It’s the latest strike against Apple in this long-running case, which stems from agreements the company set up with publishers around the launch of its online ebook marketplace.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Failing to the Cloud – and Back!

I attended Virtualization Field Day 5 last week! The usual Field Day disclaimers apply.

This network guy found himself way outside his comfort zone at a Virtualization event, but I had a fantastic time, and I learned a lot.

One of the things that really struck me was just how much virtualization platforms depend on mucking around with block storage in use by VMs. Half or more of the presentations hinged on it. Frankly, this notion terrifies the UNIX admin in me. I realize that we're not talking about UFS filesystems on SunOS4, but it seems those fragile old systems have really imprinted on me!

One of the VFD presenters was OneCloud Software, which presented a DR-via-Public-Cloud offering. The following bullets describing their solution came from here:

  • Auto discovers your on-premise assets; data and applications
  • Provides you with a simple policy engine to set RPO and RTO
  • Automatically provisions a fully functioning virtual data center in the cloud that mirrors your on-premise data center
  • Optimizes the economics of your data center in the cloud by eliminating unneeded compute costs and using the most cost-effective storage
  • Executes on-going data replication to keep the virtual data center in sync with the Continue reading

Robot apocalypse unlikely, but researchers need to understand AI risks

Recent concerns from tech luminaries about a robot apocalypse may be overblown, but artificial intelligence researchers need to start thinking about security measures as they build ever more intelligent machines, according to a group of AI experts.The fields of AI and robotics can bring huge potential benefits to the human race, but many AI researchers don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the societal implications of super intelligent machines, Ronald Arkin, an associate dean in the Georgia Tech College of Computing, said Tuesday during a debate on the future of AI.“Not all our colleagues are concerned with safety,” Arkin said during the debate, which was hosted by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) in Washington, D.C. “You cannot leave this up to the AI researchers. You cannot leave this up to the roboticists. We are an arrogant crew, and we think we know what’s best.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A Fix for Ubuntu Apparently Caching Network Configuration

I’ve been wrestling with an Ubuntu network configuration issue over the last couple of weeks (off and on between working on other projects), and today I finally found a fix for the problem. The issue was that Ubuntu wouldn’t pick up changes to network interfaces. The fix is so simple I’m almost embarrassed to talk about it (it seems like something that I should have known), but I’m posting it here in case others run into the same issue.

Here’s a bit more context: I was switching some of the network interfaces in my Ubuntu 14.04.2 servers from a “standard” network configuration to using VLAN interfaces (after all, it seemed like such a shame to not more fully utilize the 10GbE and 40GbE interfaces in these servers). Before the reconfiguration, the servers had a network interface configuration file (located in /etc/network/interfaces.d and sourced in /etc/network/interfaces) that looked something like this:

auto p55p1
iface p55p1 inet static
address 172.16.3.201
netmask 255.255.255.0

This interface was connected to a port on a Cumulus Linux-powered Dell S6000-ON that was configured as an access port on a particular VLAN. Everything seemed to work just Continue reading

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