Zero-day flaw in Google Admin app allows malicious apps to read its files

An unpatched vulnerability in the Google Admin application for Android can allow rogue applications to steal credentials that could be used to access Google for Work acccounts.One of the main aspects of the Android security model is that apps run in their own sandboxes and cannot read each other’s sensitive data through the file system. There are APIs for applications to interact with each other and exchange data, but this requires mutual agreement.But researchers from security consultancy firm MWR InfoSecurity in the U.K. discovered a flaw in the Google Admin app that could be exploited by potentially malicious applications to break into the app’s sandbox and read its files.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Free Windows 10 upgrade will have ‘no financial impact’ on Microsoft

When Microsoft announced that it would be offering consumers a free upgrade to Windows 10, it got a lot of people talking. After all, the company charged $199 per license for consumers to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional just six years ago. So clearly, a free upgrade to a new OS would have to have a big impact on Microsoft’s business, right?Not so much, according to Katherine Egbert, a managing director and senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray. She said in an email that because most people get a new version of Windows when they buy a new computer, the decision to offer free upgrades will have “no financial impact” on Microsoft. The company will still make money from PC manufacturers who have to license Windows 10 for the new hardware that they sell.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

3 Emerging Requirements for Monitoring Modern Networks

What's on your network monitoring agenda?

Network Break 48: Apple Smugness, ONIE Pwned

This episode of Network Break looks at ONIE security risks, a sensible car hack lawsuit, missing millions at Ubiquiti, EMC and VMware going all the way, a potential Apple win at IBM, and other tech news.

The post Network Break 48: Apple Smugness, ONIE Pwned appeared first on Packet Pushers.

Spousetivities at VMworld 2015

It’s that time of year again—time for VMworld! And along with VMworld comes another highly-anticipated event: Spousetivities! That’s right, Spousetivities is back again this year for another set of outstanding activities organized for spouses traveling with conference attendees. If your spouse is traveling with you to San Francisco for VMworld, this is a great opportunity for him (or her) to meet up with other spouses and attend some exclusive activities.

So what’s on tap for Spousetivities this year? Here’s a quick look at some of what’s planned:

• The week will start out with the ever-popular “Getting to Know You” breakfast, held again this year at Jillian’s (right next door to Moscone North). Meet some new folks, eat some great food, and win some great prizes. (Low-fat and gluten-free breakfast options will be available.)
• Following the breakfast is a cooking class at Sur La Table
• Not interested in a cooking class? No worries—Monday afternoon also offers a walking city tour that includes an exclusive opportunity to shop at the San Francisco Jewelry Mart and Gift Exchange (not open for regular retail customers!) as well as a stop at the Ferry Building.
• On Tuesday will the first of two wine Continue reading

Stuff The Internet Says On Scalability For August 14th, 2015

Hey, it's HighScalability time:

Being Google CEO: Nice. Becoming Tony Stark: Priceless (Alphabet)

• $7: WeChat's revenue per user and there are 549 million of them; 60%: Etsy users using mobile; 10: times per second a self-driving car makes a decision; 900: calories in a litre of blood, vampires have very efficient metabolisms; 5 billion: the largest feature in the universe in light years


• Quotable Quotes:
  • @sbeam: they finally had the Enigma machine. They opened the case. A card fell out. Turing picked it up. "Damn. They included a EULA." #oraclefanfic
  • kordless: compute and storage continue to track with Moore's Law but bandwidth doesn't. I keep wondering if this isn't some sort of universal limitation on this reality that will force high decentralization.
  • @SciencePorn: If you were to remove all of the empty space from the atoms that make up every human on earth, all humans would fit into an apple.
  • @adrianco: Commodity server with 1.4TB of RAM running a mix of 16GB regular DRAM and 128GB Memory1 modules.
  • @JudithNursalim: "One of the most scalable structure in history was the Roman army. Its unit: eight guys; the number of guys that Continue reading

A10 is Changing the Advanced Security Arena — Find Out How

Enter the advanced security arena with the A10 DemoFriday on September 11, 2015.

Worth Reading: Another Salvo in the Crypto War

For most of human history, surveillance has been expensive. Over the last couple of decades, it has become incredibly cheap and almost ubiquitous. That a few bits and pieces are becoming expensive again isn’t a cause for alarm. via Bruce Schneier

The post Worth Reading: Another Salvo in the Crypto War appeared first on 'net work.

Worth Reading: Knowledge and Power

For centuries we have all known that knowledge is power. … Over the past couple of decades we’ve begun to see this premise evolve. It’s now not as much that knowledge is power, but the speed of knowledge is power. via fistful of talent

The post Worth Reading: Knowledge and Power appeared first on 'net work.

Engineering Lessons, IPv6 Edition

Yes, we really are going to reach a point where the RIRs will run out of IPv4 addresses. As this chart from Geoff’s blog shows —

Why am I thinking about this? Because I ran across a really good article by Geoff Huston over at potaroo about the state of the IPv4 address pool at APNIC. The article is a must read, so stop right here, right click on this link, open it in a new tab, read it, and then come back. I promise this blog isn’t going anyplace while you’re over on Geoff’s site. But my point isn’t to ring the alarm bells on the IPv4 situation. Rather, I’m more interested in how we got here in the first place. Specifically, why has it taken so long for the networking industry to adopt IPv6?

Inertia is a tempting answer, but I’m not certain I buy this as the sole reason for lack of deployment. IPv6 was developed some fifteen years ago; since then we’ve deployed tons of new protocols, tons of new networking gear, and lots of other things. Remember what a cell phone looked like fifteen years ago? In fact, if we’d have started fifteen years ago Continue reading

Worth Reading: Vagrant and Cumulus

Cumulus recently announced their CumulusVX platform, which is a virtualized instance of their operating system typically found on network switches. They’ve provided a few options to run this, and in this blog post, I’ll be exploring the use of Vagrant to set up a topology with Cumulus virtual devices. via keeping it classless

Matt has a greater starter up on running Cumulus IX on a Vagrant installation — since Vagrant is available on a few widely deployed machines, this is a great tool for learning the environment. As soon as I can get one of my Ubuntu machines local, or figure out how to get enough drive space on one of my laptops to install this, I’ll be getting Vagrant set up to use on a few different things.

The post Worth Reading: Vagrant and Cumulus appeared first on 'net work.

Video: What Is Cumulus Linux All About?

In May 2015 I invited Dinesh Dutt to talk about Cumulus Linux and its typical use cases on an update session of the Data Center Fabrics Architecture webinar.

As expected, he started with the big picture: what is Cumulus Networks and Cumulus Linux all about?

Atom editor – high CPU usage

Just downloaded Atom – a ‘hackable’ editor that has a really slick user interface on the Mac.   It’s really nice application, but weighs in at 200MB!

I was doing some work on a few router config files – about 2MB each file – when I noticed the fan spin up on the computer.  Looking at the process list, ‘Atom Helper’ and Apple’s spell-check processes were both running very high.  There’s not much point in having spell-check on a router config I guess, so I disabled it – problem fixed…

Atom editor – high CPU usage

Just downloaded Atom – a ‘hackable’ editor that has a really slick user interface on the Mac.   It’s really nice application, but weighs in at 200MB!

I was doing some work on a few router config files – about 2MB each file – when I noticed the fan spin up on the computer.  Looking at the process list, ‘Atom Helper’ and Apple’s spell-check processes were both running very high.  There’s not much point in having spell-check on a router config I guess, so I disabled it – problem fixed…

5 things you need to know about Google and Alphabet

With Google restructuring its business and moving under the umbrella of new parent company Alphabet, executives may be trying to get back some of their old start-up swagger.The restructuring will bring a lot of changes to what is easily one of the world's most well-known companies. But company officials haven't offered any information about the move since co-founder Larry Page offered up a blog post Monday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tianjin explosion shuts down Chinese supercomputer

The deadly explosion that rocked the Chinese city of Tianjin has caused the country to shut down a nearby supercomputer, also one of the fastest in the world.The supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A, was housed in a facility just a kilometer away from Wednesday’s explosion. The warehouse blast was so massive it killed 50 people and sent 701 people to the hospital, according to China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency.The Tianhe-1A, however, managed to continue running smoothly, following the blast, Xinhua said on Thursday. The machine is housed in a protected room, and its database also remains unharmed.As a security precaution, staff at the facility decided to manually shut down Tianhe-1A thirty minutes after the blast had occurred, according to Xinhua.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Google has another try at patching Stagefright flaw

Google has released another patch for the Stagefright vulnerability after a security firm said the first one didn’t fix it.Hundreds of millions of Android devices are vulnerable to Stagefright. A device can be compromised merely through the receipt of a specially crafted multimedia message (MMS), so an attacker needs only the victim’s phone number.The flaw was found by Joshua Drake at mobile security firm Zimperium, which submitted a set of patches along with its big report. Google released its first patch for Stagefright last week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple, Intel cite gains in hiring women and minorities

Apple and Intel are both making progress in their efforts to hire more women and minorities, according to figures released by the companies this week.In the first six months of the year, more than 43 percent of Intel’s hires in the U.S. were women and minorities, up from 32 percent at the end of 2014, the company reported in its first mid-year diversity report.At 43 percent, Intel said it was surpassing the 40 percent diversity hiring goal it set for itself for the full year.Apple, meanwhile, boosted its hiring of women by 65 percent globally over the past year, to 11,000, the company said in its second annual report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple, Intel cite gains in hiring women and minorities

Apple and Intel are both making progress in their efforts to hire more women and minorities, according to figures released by the companies this week.In the first six months of the year, more than 43 percent of Intel’s hires in the U.S. were women and minorities, up from 32 percent at the end of 2014, the company reported in its first mid-year diversity report.At 43 percent, Intel said it was surpassing the 40 percent diversity hiring goal it set for itself for the full year.Apple, meanwhile, boosted its hiring of women by 65 percent globally over the past year, to 11,000, the company said in its second annual report.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Getting Structured Data Back from CLI Devices

About 6 months ago, I wrote a post titled Programmatic Access to CLI Devices with TextFSM that talked about what was possible with TextFSM and even some things that could be possible with Ansible.

The overall feedback about the Ansible module (aka netget) shown in that post was great — it was ultimately taking input parameters such as the template file along with the CLI command to execute on the devices in order to return structured JSON data back using Ansible. In other words, the module used Ansible and TextFSM to create a pseudo-API for accessing data in traditional (no API support) devices.

Since then, we have been using TextFSM for a few customer projects and found out there was another capability within TextFSM to create what’s called an “index” or a mapping between CLI commands, vendors, and TextFSM templates. By integrating this functionality, instead of users needing to know what template to call, they can simply just send in the show command, while the index maps the command to the proper template! Pretty sweet!

Needless to say, the Ansible module is officially online and is now called ntc_show_command.

With the right amount of community support, it shouldn’t be Continue reading