Verizon and Sprint to pay a total of $158M for unauthorized text billing

Mobile carriers Verizon Wireless and Sprint will pay a combined US$158 million[m] to settle complaints by two U.S. government agencies that they billed millions[m] of customers for unauthorized, third-pay text messaging services.Verizon will pay $90 million[m] and Sprint $68 million[m] to settle the so-called bill cramming complaints brought by the Federal Communications Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Along with other recent federal and state actions targeting bill cramming, the nation’s four largest mobile phone carriers have agreed to pay $353 million[m] in penalties and restitution in recent months, with more than $267 million[m] set aside to be returned to affected customers, the FCC said on Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to Become an Internet Supervillain in Three Easy Steps

One of the truisms of comic books and graphic novels is that nothing is immutable – both heroes and villains are rebooted, retconned, featured as radically (or subtly) different versions in alternate timelines, etc. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, which so far includes the Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, and Avengers films, is a good example. DC are doing the same with The Flash and Green Arrow, and the latest cinematic incarnations of Batman and Superman are set to do battle with one another in a projected summer blockbuster movie next year.

And these new variants on old stories proliferate throughout the various versions of each character arc – variations on the same themes, but instantly recognizable to long-time fans and easily remembered by new ones. Tony Stark’s updated Iron Man origin story in the first Iron Man movie is one such example; the supervillain Mystique’s origin in the X-Men series of films (not part of the MCU) is another.

That isn’t to say that there’s no innovation taking place – Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns radically migrated the general public perception of Batman away from the 1960s comedy paradigm Continue reading

CoxHealth finds relief in a network overhaul that pushes Layer 3 to the edge

The network at CoxHealth, a healthcare organization in Springfield, Missouri, with five hospitals, 83 clinics and 10,000 employees, was running out of gas just as new demands were ratcheting up, so Senior Manager for IT Dan Brewer started to rethink everything. Here’s the story he shared with Network World Editor in Chief John Dix.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Software detects fake mobile, Wi-Fi networks

An Israeli company has developed a product it says can detect if a mobile device connects to a fake cellular base station or Wi-Fi access point, potentially protecting critical data from falling into the hands of hackers.Two large European carriers are testing the product, which is expected to come to market in early 2016, said Dror Liwer, chief security officer and co-founder of CoroNet, based in Be’er Sheva, Israel.CoroNet’s software addresses one type of attack that was long thought to be too expensive to conduct. It involves creating a fake base station that has a stronger signal than a real one. Mobile devices are designed to connect to the station with the strongest signal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Ravello – a Networking & Security Smart Lab on AWS & Google Cloud

Ravello’s Network & Security Smart Lab provides an easy and cost-effective way to set up lab environments for sales demo, customer PoCs, training, network design, development testing and upgrade testing on AWS & Google.

Author information

Ethan Banks

Co-host at Packet Pushers

Ethan Banks, CCIE #20655, has been managing networks for higher ed, government, financials and high tech since 1995. Ethan co-hosts the Packet Pushers Podcast, which has seen over 3M downloads and reaches over 10K listeners. With whatever time is left, Ethan writes for fun & profit, studies for certifications, and enjoys science fiction. @ecbanks
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The post Ravello – a Networking & Security Smart Lab on AWS & Google Cloud appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Ethan Banks.

Uber starts experimenting with cash payments in India

Uber, known for its no-hassle, no-cash payment system for rides, will start testing cash payments in India in the coming week.The experiment will take place in the city of Hyderabad and marks a change from the credit card payment strategy that it has favored so far. It is the first time Uber will accept cash payments, the company said on Tuesday.Hyderabad was chosen because Uber has many drivers and riders in the city, whose population was estimated at about 8.6 million people by the U.S. government in 2014. People can select the cash option up front in the Uber app and pay the amount shown at the end of the ride, it said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Anonymous-tied DDoS botnet shows insecure routers are legion

Tens of thousands of home routers have been infected with malware, and are being used by hackers to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, including by the hacktivist group Anonymous.The router-based botnet was discovered by Web security firm Incapsula while investigating a series of DDoS attacks against dozens of its customers that have been going on since late December.Incapsula’s researchers traced the malicious traffic back to routers made by Ubiquiti Networks and distributed by ISPs around the world to their customers.The devices had DDoS malware programs installed on them—usually more than one—including some that reported back to an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network and channel called AnonOps, the researchers said in a report published Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Light On The Fiber Mountain

MountainRoad

Fabric switching systems have been a popular solution for many companies in the past few years. Juniper has QFabric and Brocade has VCS. For those not invested in fabrics, the trend has been to collapse the traditional three tier network model down into a spine-leaf architecture to optimize east-west traffic flows. One must wonder how much more optimized that solution can be. As it turns out, there is a bit more that can be coaxed out of it.

Shine A Light On Me

During Interop, I had a chance to speak with the folks over at Fiber Mountain (@FiberMountain) about what they’ve been up to in their solution space. I had heard about their revolutionary SDN offering for fiber. At first, I was a bit doubtful. SDN gets thrown around a lot on new technology as a way to sell it to people that buy buzzwords. I wondered how a fiber networking solution could even take advantage of software.

My chat with M. H. Raza started out with a prop. He showed me one of the new Multifiber Push On (MPO) connectors that represent the new wave of high-density fiber. Each cable, which is roughly the size and Continue reading

Big Switch SDN update aids VMware integration, bare metal monitoring

Big Switch Networks rolled out new versions of its SDN-based cloud fabric and monitoring applications which feature tighter integration with VMware, among other enhancements.Big Cloud Fabric is a leaf/spine Clos fabric providing physical and virtual workload connectivity in data centers. Version 2.6 provides fabric automation and analytics for VMware vSphere environments.+ MORE ON NETWORK WORLD:SDN start-up Big Switch bullish on new course +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Big Switch SDN update aids VMware integration, bare metal monitoring

Big Switch Networks rolled out new versions of its SDN-based cloud fabric and monitoring applications which feature tighter integration with VMware, among other enhancements.Big Cloud Fabric is a leaf/spine Clos fabric providing physical and virtual workload connectivity in data centers. Version 2.6 provides fabric automation and analytics for VMware vSphere environments.+ MORE ON NETWORK WORLD:SDN start-up Big Switch bullish on new course +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

NASA details bleeding edge communications ideas

Some of the “revolutionary concepts” NASA detailed this week in its 2015 Technology Roadmaps sound like they are straight out of James Bond’s Q Branch – the research division that creates all of the super-agent’s really cool technology.Amongst the myriad concepts outlined in the Roadmaps – which lay out the new technologies and directions NASA hopes will steer its aeronautics, science and human exploration missions for the next 20 years -- were six high-risk high-reward technologies the space agency says are so “far out” that exactly how they would be developed is a not clear yet, NASA said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

MediaTek unveils 10-core chip that promises better battery life

Not satisfied with offering eight-core chips, Taiwan’s MediaTek has unveiled a mobile processor with 10 cores.On Tuesday, the vendor announced its Helios X20, a “deca-core” chip that it claims can offer better power efficiency and improved performance over competing processors.The cores of the Helios X20 are in three clusters, essentially packing together a dual-core chip with a pair of quad-cores. The dual-core cluster, which uses two ARM Cortex-A72 2.5 GHz processors, is meant to handle the most intensive tasks. The pair of quad-core clusters are designed for medium and lower-scale computing.MediaTek claims this configuration can help save 30 percent on battery life over traditional chips, while keeping the phone’s software running smoothly.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

MediaTek unveils 10-core chip that promises better battery life

Not satisfied with offering eight-core chips, Taiwan’s MediaTek has unveiled a mobile processor with 10 cores.On Tuesday, the vendor announced its Helios X20, a “deca-core” chip that it claims can offer better power efficiency and improved performance over competing processors.The cores of the Helios X20 are in three clusters, essentially packing together a dual-core chip with a pair of quad-cores. The dual-core cluster, which uses two ARM Cortex-A72 2.5 GHz processors, is meant to handle the most intensive tasks. The pair of quad-core clusters are designed for medium and lower-scale computing.MediaTek claims this configuration can help save 30 percent on battery life over traditional chips, while keeping the phone’s software running smoothly.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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