IDG Contributor Network: Fiber map sheds light on infrastructure trends and weaknesses

If you've ever wondered just where the fiber conduits that carry our Internet traffic run, wonder no more. Researchers have created a map.Four years in the making, the map, sourced in part from public records, shows the long-haul fiber that carries Internet data around the country. Additionally, locations where multiple cables connect are shown.This kind of map has never existed before.Internet infrastructure Not much is known about "today's physical Internet infrastructure," the researchers say.So they delved in and, through a collection of Tier-1 ISP and cable company maps combined with public records, started to construct a map of the long-haul fiber network (PDF).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Looking back 30 years as a sysadmin

Looking back after spending more than 30 years as a Unix systems administrator, I have to say that's it's been quite a ride.It certainly wasn't 30+ years of doing the same thing. Instead, the technology and the job have gone through incredible changes along the way. There were dramatic improvements in the hardware that I managed and always plenty of new tools to learn and use.[See also: 18 cardinal rules of systems administration ]Over the years, I went from reveling in how much work I could get done on the command line to grappling with some big issues -- troubleshooting some very complicated problems and figuring out how to best protect my employers' information assets. Along the way, I worked with some amazing individuals, got laid off (once), and learned a lot about what works and doesn't work both from a technical and a career perspective.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Looking back 30 years as a sysadmin

Looking back after spending more than 30 years as a Unix systems administrator, I have to say that's it's been quite a ride.It certainly wasn't 30+ years of doing the same thing. Instead, the technology and the job have gone through incredible changes along the way. There were dramatic improvements in the hardware that I managed and always plenty of new tools to learn and use.[See also: 18 cardinal rules of systems administration ]Over the years, I went from reveling in how much work I could get done on the command line to grappling with some big issues -- troubleshooting some very complicated problems and figuring out how to best protect my employers' information assets. Along the way, I worked with some amazing individuals, got laid off (once), and learned a lot about what works and doesn't work both from a technical and a career perspective.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s antivirus software sees massive improvement in tests

For the longest time, Microsoft's antivirus programs have brought up the rear in tests, usually ranking near or in dead last. But recent tests from two respected antivirus testers show Microsoft has greatly improved its antivirus product and in a very short time.Germany's AV-Test Institute is something like Consumer Reports for antivirus software. It is the gold standard for AV software testing, and a good review from them can make your product a success. And for quite some time, Microsoft Security Essentials has been a laggard. But for the August tests, the scores improved.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to identify and thwart insider threats

It is often cited that an enterprise’s employees are its biggest vulnerability. What are company’s doing about it? In a significant number of cases, companies are perhaps doing nothing.According to the SANS Institute and SpectorSoft, 74 percent of the 772 IT security professionals they recently surveyed are “concerned about malicious employees.” The survey pool spans 10 industries including financial, government, and technology and IT services. The survey data also shows that 32 percent of respondents “have no technology or process in place to prevent an insider attack”.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Former Autonomy CEO Lynch sues HP for $150 million

Making good on the promise he made earlier this year, former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch on Thursday filed a $150 million lawsuit against HP over what he called a public smear campaign against him and other Autonomy executives.“Over the past three years, HP has made many statements that were highly damaging to me and misleading to the stock market," Lynch said. "HP knew, or should have known, these statements were false."HP's ill-fated 2011 acquisition of the British software maker for $11.7 billion -- which later resulted in an $8.8 billion impairment charge -- was "doomed from the very beginning," Lynch said. "HP’s own documents, which the court will see, make clear that HP was simply incompetent in its operation of Autonomy."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NASA targets Venus, asteroids with potential missions

NASA this week picked five possible contenders for a relatively low-cost robotic mission to space.The five candidates from a batch of 27 –include Venus, near-Earth object and asteroid operations – will ultimately be whittled down to one or two that will cost approximately $500 million, not including launch vehicle or post-launch operations, NASA stated.+More on Network World: 13 awesome and scary things in near Earth space+Each investigation team will receive $3 million to conduct concept design studies and analyses for NASA’s Discovery Program. After a detailed review and evaluation of each experiment, NASA will make the final selections by September 2016 for continued development leading up to launch possibly by 2020, NASA stated.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Report: Target failed to execute security basics

Verizon consultants probed Target’s network for weaknesses in the immediate aftermath of the company’s 2013 breach and came back with results that point to one overriding – if not dramatic - lesson: be sure to implement basic security best practices.In a recent KrebsOnSecurity post, Brian Krebs details Verizon’s findings as set down in a Target corporate report.The findings demonstrate that it really is important to put in place all the mundane security best practices widely talked about, and that without them even the best new security platforms can’t defend against breaches.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco fixes privilege escalation flaws in AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client

The Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client has been updated to fix vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to gain system or root privileges on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X computers. The AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client allows employees to work remotely by securely connecting back to their company's network. It provides virtual private networking over SSL and additional features like identity services, network access control and Web security. The vulnerability in the Linux and Mac OS X version of the client was discovered and reported by researchers from Dutch security firm Securify. It can be exploited to execute arbitrary files with the highest system privileges, also known as root.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Using VirtualBox linked clones in the GNS3 network simulator

GNS3 1.3 will create and manage VirtualBox virtual machine linked clones from within the GNS3 user interface. This simplifies the process of setting up VirtualBox virtual machines in GNS3 makes GNS3 easier to use for studying the operation of open-source routers, switches, and hosts in network simulation scenarios.

LC-090

In this post, I will show how to set up and use VirtualBox linked clones in your GNS3 simulation scenarios and work through a detailed tutorial.

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PQ Show 57 – Improve Your Home Internet Performance Using CoDel

Rich Brown chats with Ethan Banks about CoDel, an algorithm specifically designed to minimize the impact of bufferbloat. Rich and Ethan explain how CoDel works, and discuss the head-drop principle, sojourn times, TCP ECN, and more. This is a nerdy look at how your modem handles buffering, and how you can improve your home networking experience.

The post PQ Show 57 – Improve Your Home Internet Performance Using CoDel appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Imprisoned and censored voices around the world

The number of individuals in prison around the world for raising their voices online is on the rise. In 2014, the Committee to Protect Journalists found that over half of imprisoned journalists were arrested for activities conducted on the Internet. In a 2015 report, Reporters Without Borders cited 178 incidents of imprisoned “netizens” in just a selection of twelve countries. Now that individuals can speak up without the need for institutions or gatekeepers, states choose the most direct way to take away their power: incarcerating them, and taking them offline. via the offline project

This is something every engineer, every blogger, and everyone who has a passion for free speech can help with. We live in a world that increasingly sees free speech as some sort of monstrously abnormal concept (even in the US); this is a fight we need to take up if any of us expect to be able to have a conversation about anything other than whether you should use EIGRP or IS-IS on a particular network.

We need to stand up for everyone who speaks, even if we don’t agree with them.

This is important.

The post Imprisoned and censored voices around the world appeared first Continue reading

Nest aims for central role in connected homes, enticing developers to integrate

The big winners in connected homes will be vendors of whole platforms, not individual products, and Google's Nest division is pushing hard to play that role. After pioneering Thread, a low-power networking protocol, Nest is now introducing an application layer that device and appliance makers can use to integrate their products tightly with Nest's. The new tool, called Weave, is for direct interactions between devices without resorting to processing in the cloud. That's good for in-home connections that are fast, don't require much energy and work even if the home's Wi-Fi network is down, said Greg Hu, senior manager of the Nest platform. Nest already uses Weave in its own products.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The price of free: how Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Google sell you to advertisers

Jumping from Windows 7 directly to Windows 10 has to be something like a farmer visiting Times Square. Live Tiles flash and move. A nice assistant named Cortana always hovers nearby. Click on the wrong spot and you could be whisked away elsewhere on the Web. And there are always people asking who you are, where you live, what you like...Because the latest version of Windows is always asking for information in the guise of being helpful, it’s easy to think that Microsoft’s the poster child for the collective attack on your digital privacy. But it’s not.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 26 crazy and scary things the TSA has found on travelers In fact, there are plenty of other companies who feel perfectly entitled to require you to hand over your personal info before they open their doors. On a day where Microsoft clarified what it does with your data to try and soothe your fears, a Bloomberg feature profiled Facebook’s “unblockable” ads, while a new Google program revealed that advertisers can now tune ads to who you are just by knowing your email address. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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