DNSSEC is Open for Beta

DNSSEC logo

Since January, CloudFlare has been running a small, private beta for DNSSEC. Starting today, the DNSSEC beta is open for everyone. To request access, email [email protected].

A Background on DNS and DNSSEC

DNS is the system that lets your browser know which web server to connect to when you request to visit a website. It’s the underlying backbone of the usable internet, and yet, is vulnerable to man in the middle attacks.

In DNS, an attacker sitting in the middle of your connection to the internet can tell your browser to connect to any web server they’d like. Browsers trust any DNS records they receive as a response to a DNS query, because DNS, invented in 1983 before the public consumption of the Internet, does not perform any authentication.

There is a solution. It’s called DNSSEC and it adds cryptographic hashes and signatures for authenticating DNS records. You can read more about DNSSEC and how it works in a previous blog post.

The DNSSEC beta is open to all websites that use CloudFlare for DNS. If you want to be a part of our beta and be one of the first CloudFlare websites with DNSSEC, email us for beta Continue reading

Dell targets hyperscale wannabes with new line of bare-bones servers

Dell has released a new family of servers aimed at companies that want some of the cost savings of using custom-built hardware but without having to do as much of the engineering work.The servers are aimed at what Dell calls the second tier of hyper-scale customers -- those big enough to buy hundreds or even thousands of servers at a time, but who aren't as massive as a Google or a Facebook. That includes smaller Web-scale companies as well as telcos, financial services firms, cloud software companies and others.The Googles of the world design their own hardware to make it as energy- and space-efficient as possible. That means stripping out management software and redundant components, and building resiliency into their software stack rather than the hardware itself.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Former Cisco CTO taking a seat at Microsoft?

Is Padmasree Warrior in line to take a seat on Microsoft’s board? She’s been nominated, along with Sandra Peterson, group worldwide chairman of health products giant Johnson & Johnson. Cisco Padmasree Warrior, Cisco's former chief technology and strategy officer. Warrior was Cisco’s CTO and chief strategy officer and was one of the executives swept out shortly after new CEO Chuck Robbins was tapped to succeed John Chambers. Warrior was highly visible, always keynoting a Cisco or industry trade show and conference, and is omnipresent on Twitter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Western Digital self-encrypting external hard disk drives have flaws that can expose data

The hardware-based encryption built into popular Western Digital external hard disk drives has flaws that could allow attackers to recover data without knowing the user password.A team of three security researchers investigated how the self-encryption feature was implemented in several popular Western Digital My Passport and My Book models. Depending on the type of microchip used for the encryption operation, they found design flaws and backdoor-like features that enable brute-force password guessing attacks or even decryption of the data without knowing the password.In some cases they found that the encryption is performed by the chip that bridges the USB and SATA interfaces. In other cases the encryption is done by the HDD's own SATA controller, with the USB bridge handling only the password validation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Automating Adding New Networks to a Data Center with UCS Director

Introduction Working as an Cloud Architect with Cisco means I get the chance to talk to many different customers and discuss their challenges and pain points.  One that continually comes up is what should be fairly simple, adding a new network segment to their data center network. It used to be that a network team […]

The post Automating Adding New Networks to a Data Center with UCS Director appeared first on Packet Pushers.

What’s hot in driverless cars?

Who's drivingImage by REUTERS/Edgar SuThe development of self-driving and autonomous cars seems to be all the rage in the automotive community these days. Certainly lots of work remains to be done around safety and communications technologies but there is a heavy push to make car drones a reality. Here we take a look at some of the most recent developments.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IRS, tax industry players detail identity theft, fraud combat plans

As tax identity theft and fraud continue to spiral upwards, the IRS and key industry players are trying to develop new technolgies and techniques to slow the swindle juggernaught down.The IRS this week updated the community about what work has been done by its collarborative group of chief executive officers and private sector firms such as H&R Block and Intuit since March when it formed the group to bolster protections against identity theft refund fraud for the 2016 tax season.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

MPAA shuts down BrowserPopcorn

Well that was crazy fast.A browser-based version of Popcorn Time, which is often referred to as a 'Netflix for pirates,' was recently launched and picking up steam. BrowserPopcorn was created by a 15-year-old and didn't require anything to be downloaded or for users to login before streaming movies or TV shows. If you had visited browserpopcorn.xyz this morning to partake in an illegal movie streaming fest, you would have seen this: BrowserPopcorn But now you see this:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Spousetivities in Tokyo

Regular readers of this site know that my wife, Crystal, organizes spouse activities (aka “Spousetivities”, like the combination of “spouse” and “activities”) at conferences. This year she’s adding activities in Tokyo, Japan, in conjunction with the Fall OpenStack Summit!

Here’s a quick look at what is planned:

  • Tokyo city tour w/ tea ceremony (very cool!)
  • Tour of Tokyo Tower, Meiji Jingu, and Odaiba
  • A visit to Mt. Fuji and Hakone
  • Nikko tour

More details on these activities is available on the Spousetivities site.

The activities are funded in part by VMware NSX and Blue Box (their sponsorship helps reduce the cost of activities for participants). If you have a loved one (spouse, domestic partner, family member, friend, whatever!) traveling with you to Tokyo, head on over to the registration page to get them signed up for some great activities while you’re at the Summit.

Google makes full-disk encryption and secure boot mandatory for some Android 6.0 devices

Google's plan to encrypt user data on Android devices by default will get a new push with Android 6.0, also known as Marshmallow.The company requires Android devices capable of decent cryptographic performance to have full-disk encryption enabled in order to be declared compatible with the latest version of the mobile OS.Google's first attempt to make default full-disk encryption mandatory for phone manufacturers was with Android 5.0 (Lollipop), but it had to abandon that plan because of performance issues on some devices.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FCC to probe Verizon, AT&T over contract lock-in

The FCC announced late last week that it would investigate Verizon, AT&T, CenturyLink and Frontier over highly strict service terms in wireline business service contracts, which critics say lock customers into their deals unfairly.The commission is particularly focused on the special access market, which encompasses the legacy copper links that make up part of the fabric of U.S. Internet service. The large incumbent providers under investigation control a lot of these special access links, and their competitors have been claiming for years that they’ve leveraged these localized monopolies to keep customers from jumping ship.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: IoT standards groups get ready to rumble at CES + Google to enterprises: Ditch your Microsoft contract early for us +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Open Networking Needs to Be Interchangeable

OpenBuildingBlocks

We’re coming up quickly on the fall meeting of the Open Networking User Group, which is a time for many of the members of the financial community to debate the needs of modern networking and provide a roadmap and use case set for networking vendors to follow for in the coming months. ONUG provides what some technology desperately needs – a solution to which it can be applied.

Open Or Something Like It

We’ve already started to see the same kind of non-open solution building that plagued the early network years creeping into some aspects of our new “open” systems. Rather than building on what we consider to be tried-and-true building blocks, we instead come to proprietary solutions that promise “magic” when it comes to configuration and maintenance. Should your network provide the magic? Or is that your job?

Magical is what the network should look like to a user, not to the admins. Think about the networking in cloud providers like AWS and MS Azure. The networking there is a very simple model that hides complexity. The average consumer of AWS services doesn’t need to know the specifics of configuration in the underlay of Amazon’s labyrinth of the Continue reading

Irish privacy watchdog to investigate Facebook over spying allegations

The Irish Data Protection Commissioner has agreed to investigate allegations that Facebook exposes its users' personal data to mass snooping by U.S. intelligence services, following a ruling of the High Court of Ireland on Tuesday.Austrian Facebook user Maximilian Schrems filed a complaint with the DPC in 2013, in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations about the U.S. National Security Agency's PRISM surveillance system.The DPC initially dismissed the complaint as "frivolous," a decision Schrems went on to challenge in the Irish high court.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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