Microsoft lets EU governments inspect source code for security issues

European governments will be able to review the source code of Microsoft products to confirm they don’t contain security backdoors, at a transparency center the company opened in Brussels on Wednesday.The center will give governments the chance to review and assess the source code of Microsoft enterprise products and to access important security information about threats and vulnerabilities in a secure environment, said Matt Thomlinson, Vice President of Microsoft Security in a blog post. By opening the center, Microsoft wants to continue building trust with governments around the world, he added.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EU, US officials close in on broad privacy accords

After years of thorny negotiations, top EU and U.S. officials say they are close to agreement on two privacy accords that would regulate the transfer of personal data of European citizens to the U.S.At stake is the ability of U.S. and European companies and governments to share data about private citizens for commercial and law enforcement purposes.A version of one of the two privacy deals being discussed, the Safe Harbor accord, has been in force for years but is being renegotiated. Failure to reach agreement on how to change the accord would spell serious trouble for companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter, which have relied on it to transmit data on EU citizens to the U.S. for processing and storage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Users with weak SSH keys had access to GitHub repositories for popular projects

A number of high-profile source-code repositories hosted on GitHub could have been modified using weak SSH authentication keys, a security researcher has warned.The potentially vulnerable repositories include those of music streaming service Spotify, the Russian Internet company Yandex, the U.K. government and the Django Web application framework.Earlier this year, researcher Ben Cox collected the public SSH (Secure Shell) keys of users with access to GitHub-hosted repositories by using one of the platform’s features. After an analysis, he found that the corresponding private keys could be easily recovered for many of them.The SSH protocol uses public-key cryptography, which means that authenticating users and encrypting their connections requires a private-public key pair. The server configured to accept SSH connections from users needs to know their respective public keys and the users need to have the corresponding private keys.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

More of Google’s Project Loon internet balloons will crash into U.S. backyards soon

The Washington Post pointed out this week that the head of Google's Project Loon, the initiative that sends large balloons flying around the world to beam internet signals to people on the ground, admitted in an MIT Review interview published earlier this week that the company is planning to launch the project in the U.S.From the MIT Review article:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network Documentation Series: Physical Diagram

Introduction to the Physical Diagram This article is a quick tutorial for creating and maintaining a physical network diagram. I prefer to use the term “physical” instead of “L1″ because it is more easily understood by somebody unfamiliar with the OSI model. It also removes the assumption (made by many non-technical people) that “L1″ and […]

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John W Kerns

John is a network and systems engineer based in the Los Angeles/San Diego area. His background is in two traditionally stovepiped skill sets; systems administration and switching/routing/security. Most of his time is spent as an implementation engineer for a medium sized SoCal VAR. You can visit his blog at blog.packetsar.com or follow him on Twitter @PackeTsar
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The post Network Documentation Series: Physical Diagram appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by John W Kerns.

IBM muscles up on OpenStack with Blue Box buy

Betting that demand for hybrid clouds will grow strongly, IBM has acquired Blue Box, which specializes in offering OpenStack open source cloud hosting services.IBM will use Blue Box’s technology and infrastructure to help its customers adopt hybrid cloud computing, so that their workloads can be easily moved between a public cloud and their own data centers.A private company, Blue Box gives organizations an alternative to setting up and deploying the OpenStack internally, offering the software stack as a service instead. This allows an organization to control workloads from a single console whether they run on Blue Box’s private cloud or on internal infrastructure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network Documentation Series: Preamble

This post is the first in a series of articles tackling the topic of creating and maintaining proper network documentation. Each article will include a file which can be downloaded and used as a template for creating the document covered. Below you will find a few generic documentation best practices which apply to all documents […]

Author information

John W Kerns

John is a network and systems engineer based in the Los Angeles/San Diego area. His background is in two traditionally stovepiped skill sets; systems administration and switching/routing/security. Most of his time is spent as an implementation engineer for a medium sized SoCal VAR. You can visit his blog at blog.packetsar.com or follow him on Twitter @PackeTsar
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The post Network Documentation Series: Preamble appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by John W Kerns.

HP, Arista team to take on Cisco, IBM, EMC in converged infrastructure

HP has entered into an arrangement with Arista Networks to market Arista’s data center switches along with HP converged IT infrastructure products.In accounts where Arista is the preferred networking supplier, HP will offer the switches along with its Converged Architecture portfolio, which includes HP servers and storage, including HP 3PAR StoreServ flash storage and the HP OneView management system.Speculation has it that HP will also offer Arista’s EOS operating system on its merchant silicon-based switching hardware as part of a disaggregated offering similar to HP’s arrangement with Cumulus Networks. HP is offering Cumulus Linux as an operating system option on some new Accton-based branded white box switches, which through support of the Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) can run various third-party operating systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HP, Arista team to take on Cisco, IBM, EMC in converged infrastructure

HP has entered into an arrangement with Arista Networks to market Arista’s data center switches along with HP converged IT infrastructure products.In accounts where Arista is the preferred networking supplier, HP will offer the switches along with its Converged Architecture portfolio, which includes HP servers and storage, including HP 3PAR StoreServ flash storage and the HP OneView management system.Speculation has it that HP will also offer Arista’s EOS operating system on its merchant silicon-based switching hardware as part of a disaggregated offering similar to HP’s arrangement with Cumulus Networks. HP is offering Cumulus Linux as an operating system option on some new Accton-based branded white box switches, which through support of the Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) can run various third-party operating systems.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Fraud campaign installs rogue app on non-jailbroken iPhones

Cybercriminals in Japan are targeting iPhone users with an online scam that tricks them into installing a malicious application when they attempt to view porn videos.This type of attack, known as one-click fraud, is not new and has been used for years against Windows, Mac and Android users. However, what’s interesting in this particular case is that it works even against non-jailbroken iPhones.Apple tightly controls how iOS apps are distributed to users by forcing developers to publish them on the official App Store where they are subject to Apple’s review procedures. However, there are exceptions to this rule in the form of special development programs for which participants have to pay extra.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IT/IT: Resume Building

It’s a discussion in meeting rooms, boardrooms, hotel conference rooms, and post-conference cocktail parties: Why isn’t IT working? Ask anyone in a corporate or government job and you’ll get an earful. As I was writing this book, I’d occasionally throw the question out to friends, clients, and beleaguered airplane seatmates. The responses come fast and furious. They don’t speak our language. They’re too focused on resume building and tinkering, not on driving business value.
The New IT

This single quote describes much of the circuit of the world for an engineer. If I spend my time on driving business value, then I’m appreciated by my current employer — at least until they change systems, anyway, and throw me out on my ear because my skills aren’t “current.” If I spend my time keeping my skills current, so I can add business value, well, I’m not driving current business value, and hence I’m “isolated,” a “tinker in the corner,” who doesn’t understand nor care about the “real problems facing the business.”

What’s the solution? A little “bump in the training budget” isn’t going to fix this. Rather, this is going to take restructuring the way IT thinks about business, Continue reading

WWDC 2015 preview: 5 huge announcements we expect from Apple on June 8

Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference is always chock full of announcements. We’re guaranteed to see previews of the next versions of iOS and OS X—after all, that’s why developers flock to San Francisco for the event. But this year, substantiated rumors are swirling around a new streaming music service, a refreshed Apple TV, and truly game-changing new iOS features.And now that Apple Watch is finally here, we might even catch a glimpse of the future of Apple’s most personal device.MORE: 10 mobile startups to watch Here are the five big reveals we expect at WWDC, which kicks off June 8 at 10 a.m. Pacific.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How CIOs can reduce shadow IT in government

If government CIOs want to bring IT out of the shadows, they need to start by understanding what kind of tools agency personnel need to do their jobs.That's one of the chief takeaways from a new study looking at shadow IT in the government -- those unauthorized applications and services that employees use without the permission of the CIO and the tech team.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 26 crazy and scary things the TSA has found on travelers The new analysis, conducted by cloud security vendor Skyhigh Networks, identifies a startling amount of applications in use in public-sector organizations. According to an analysis of log data tracking the activities of some 200,000 government workers in the United States and Canada, the average agency uses 742 cloud services, on the order of 10 to 20 times more than the IT department manages.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Asus mini-PCs pack Skylake chips, 4K video capabilities

There is a lot to look forward to in Skylake PCs, if mini-PCs from Asus showed on the Computex show floor are an indicator.Lying in one corner of the Asus booth were two mini-desktops based on Intel’s upcoming sixth-generation Core processor. With the powerful processors, a host of port options and support for 4K video, the tiny computing powerhouses could be full-fledged desktop replacements.Skylake has been described by Intel as its most significant chip release in a decade. It will succeed a family of chips code-named Broadwell, which is in PCs now. Tablets, laptops and desktops based on the new chip architecture are expected in the second half of this year.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Wednesday, June 3

Senate finally reforms NSA surveillanceNearly two years after former NSA contracter Edward Snowden went public with revelations that the agency was collecting Americans’ phone records in bulk so that it could trawl through them at leisure, the U.S. Senate has finally acted to rein in what at least one court ruled was illegal surveillance. The Senate’s 67-32 vote Tuesday on the USA Freedom Act will allow a limited telephone records program at the NSA, and give it six months to transition its phone records database to U.S. telecom carriers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft isn’t giving up on basic phones, upgrades the Nokia 105

Microsoft has launched an upgraded version of the Nokia 105 phone, but a growing interest in smartphones will make it difficult for the company to repeat the success of the original version.The US$20 Nokia 105 is aimed at first-time mobile phone buyers and people looking for a long-lasting backup device for their smartphone, according to Microsoft, which decided to keep the Nokia brand for its most basic phones.The new model has a bigger phonebook, better voice quality and longer talk time. Users can choose between models that have one or two SIM slots. It still has a 1.45-inch screen and an FM radio.The original model was introduced in 2013, and has sold more than 80 million units to date. Repeating that will be hard for Microsoft, since consumers all over the world are increasingly choosing smartphones. Microsoft’s overall phone sales dropped by about 30 percent during the first quarter year-on-year, even though Windows smartphone sales increased slightly, according to Gartner. At the same time smartphones represented 73 percent of total phone sales, up from about 63 percent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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