With ransomware on the rise, cryptographers take it personally

Some of the world’s leading cryptographers are concerned about the increasing number of malicious programs that hold computers and mobile phones to ransom, in many cases by abusing the encryption algorithms they designed.Despite law enforcement efforts to disrupt ransomware operations, the prevalence of such programs continued to grow last year, according to a report published Thursday by antivirus vendor F-Secure.A family of ransomware programs known as Browlock, which impersonates police agencies and asks users to pay fictitious fines in order to regain control of their computers, was one of the top 10 PC threats during the second half of 2014, according to F-Secure’s statistics. An increase was also observed among the ransomware threats for Android phones.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Project Fi’s winners and losers

Project Fi, Google's Wi-Fi and cellular network service announced Wednesday, can variously be described as low-cost, disruptive, cutting edge, tantalizing, confusing, even awesome.Google is offering the lowest entry-level wireless price plan in the U.S. at $30 a month. That sum includes $20 for talk, text, Wi-Fi tethering and international coverage in 120 countries plus $10 for 1 GB of data. The plan adds $10 a month for each additional 1 GB of data thereafter. Google is partnering with Sprint and T-Mobile for the cellular service.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Infosys invests in cloud, health monitoring market

Indian outsourcer Infosys has made an acquisition in the area of cloud computing and invested in a personal health monitoring company as it tries to move into high value products and services.The transition is, however, taking time and in the financial results the company reported Friday its revenue and profit grew only slightly. The company said it faced pricing pressure in its core outsourcing business, which still largely prices its services around the number of people deployed on a customer’s project.As it expands into other markets, Infosys has agreed to pay US$120 million to buy Kallidus, a cloud-hosted platform for retailers to provide apps and other mobile content. The company also invested $2 million from its Innovation Fund in Airviz, a spinout from Carnegie Mellon University that is focused on personal air quality monitoring.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WAN Virtualization – Is it something that you should consider?

In this article I will try to explain the basics of WAN Virtualization technology (sometimes referred as SD – WAN too), and how much it is relevant to Turkish Enterprises, considering existing architectures, and offerings from Service Providers. Although IP Networking is an area that we see myriad of changes, new applications, architectures etc…; somethings […]

Author information

Zafer Polat

Zafer Polat
Country Director at Verso

About Zafer Polat. Zafer is a network professional, consultant, and CCIE #11988. He has over 15 years experience of Telecom & Service Provider industry, system integration, and international business development. He is also a active member of Turkey IT Foundation, and trying develop ideas into projects that could help society in general.
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The post WAN Virtualization – Is it something that you should consider? appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Zafer Polat.

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Friday, April 24

Comcast: Let’s call the whole thing offJust one day after a U.S. regulator was said to be calling for hearings on the proposed $45 billion merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable come reports that Comcast is ready to abandon the tie-up, and may make an announcement on Friday. The combined companies would control more than half of the broadband Internet access market in the U.S.—a market where customers already grumble about their lack of choice, and pay more for less than people in virtually every other developed country. The omens for gaining regulatory approval have been darkening: not only did the Federal Communications Commission want hearings on the matter, but the Department of Justice, which monitors antitrust issues, was also apparently not a fan of the deal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Friday, April 24

Comcast: Let’s call the whole thing offJust one day after a U.S. regulator was said to be calling for hearings on the proposed $45 billion merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable come reports that Comcast is ready to abandon the tie-up, and may make an announcement on Friday. The combined companies would control more than half of the broadband Internet access market in the U.S.—a market where customers already grumble about their lack of choice, and pay more for less than people in virtually every other developed country. The omens for gaining regulatory approval have been darkening: not only did the Federal Communications Commission want hearings on the matter, but the Department of Justice, which monitors antitrust issues, was also apparently not a fan of the deal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Zensors app lets you crowdsource live camera monitoring

If you feel like you need eyes in the back of your head, there’s a crowdsourcing app for that.Zensors is a smartphone application that can monitor an area of interest by using a camera, crowdsourced workers and artificial intelligence.Developed by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and University of Rochester, the idea behind Zensors is to use any camera in a fixed location to detect changes in what’s being monitored—for instance whether a pet’s food bowl is empty—and automatically notify users.The developers say it’s a cheap, accessible way to add sensors to the environment, part of the move toward building smart homes and smart cities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network Dictionary: Homoglyphs

A homoglyph is a text characters with shapes that identical or similar to each other. Common examples are zero/O and one/l . More complex Homoglyphs are derived from characters used in other languages that are a part of Unicode. In the following, this website converts english text “EtherealMind” into characters that looks similar but use completely different HTML […]


The post Network Dictionary: Homoglyphs appeared first on EtherealMind.

Cisco VIRL NXOSv NXAPI Update

Cisco's VIRL latest update now supports NXAPI in it's NXOSv image. This is great for developing against it, for those (like me) that don't have full access all the time to Nexus...

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SAP patches login flaw in ASE database

SAP patched a flaw on Thursday that could allow an attacker to take complete control over a database, according to security vendor Trustwave.The flaw (CVE-2014-6284) affects SAP’s Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE), a relational database for Unix, Linux and Windows systems, designed for high volumes of data-rich transactions. Vulnerable versions are 12.5, 15, 15.5, 15.7 and 16.TrustWave’s Martin Rakhmanov, a senior security researcher, found an error in the challenge and response mechanism used to access ASE. The account access gained is not a privileged account, but TrustWave said other flaws allow the privileges to be escalated to that of a database administrator.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hackers exploit Magento e-commerce vulnerability

Those using Magento’s e-commerce platform should ensure they’re using its latest software, as attackers are increasingly exploiting a flaw patched two months ago, security companies warned.The vulnerability can allow an attacker to gain complete control over a store with administrator access, potentially allowing credit card theft, wrote Netanel Rubin of Check Point’s Malware and Vulnerability Research Group. As many as 200,000 websites use Magento, which is owned by eBay.Check Point, which found the flaw, reported it to Magento, which issued a patch (SUPEE-5344) on Feb. 9. Since Check Point revealed the flaw earlier this week, it appears attackers have picked up on it and are trying to find unpatched applications.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Of Phishing Attacks and WordPress 0days

Proxying around 5% of the Internet’s requests gives us an interesting vantage point from which to observe malicious behavior. It also make us a target. Aside from the many, varied denial of service attacks that break against our defenses we also see huge number of phishing campaigns. In this blog post I will dissect a recent phishing attack that we detected and neutralized with the help of our friends at Bluehost.

An attack that is particularly interesting as it appears to be using a brand new WordPress 0day.

A Day Out Phishing

The first sign we typically see that shows a new phishing campaign is underway are the phishing emails themselves. There's general a constant background noise of a few of these emails targeting individual customers every day. However when a larger campaign starts up, typically that trickle turns into a flood of very similar messages.

Messages like this one:
Example Phish Note — We will never send you an email like this. If you see one, its fake and should be reported to our abuse team by forwarding it to [email protected].

In terms of the phishing campaign timeline, these emails aren’t the first event. Much like a spider looking to Continue reading

Acer Aspire Switch 10 saved by the dock

Acer’s new Aspire Switch 10 seems like just another low-cost Windows tablet, but its detachable keyboard dock turns the device into a shape-shifter that can stand in multiple angles.The Switch 10 is first a tablet, and it can become a laptop when attached to a keyboard dock. Acer announced two Switch 10 models at a lavish press event in New York, with the entry-level Switch 10 E SW3-013 starting at US$279 and the higher-resolution Switch 10 SW5-015 starting at $399.A brief hands-on with the Switch 10 revealed what’s most interesting about the device. Its biggest attraction is the detachable keyboard dock, which comes alongside the tablet. The tablet can be securely snapped on the dock, which has a 360-degree hinge that allows the device to be placed in multiple positions.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft results get a lift from Office 365 and Azure

Microsoft has reported better-than-expected financial results for the quarter just ended, helped by strong sales of cloud services like Office 365 and Azure.Commercial cloud revenue more than doubled from a year earlier, the company announced Thursday, and online services like Bing and Xbox Live performed well.The results were hurt by the weak PC market, however, with sales of Microsoft’s Windows and Office software both declining. That meant that while sales were strong, profits declined from last year.In a statement, CEO Satya Nadella talked of “incredible growth across our cloud services.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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