Using Vagrant to Help Learn Ansible

I’ve been spending some time with Ansible recently, and I have to say that it’s really growing on me. While Ansible doesn’t have a steep learning curve, there is still a learning curve—albeit a smaller/less steep curve—so I wanted to share here a “trick” that I found for using Vagrant to help with learning Ansible. (I say “trick” here because it isn’t that this is complicated or undocumented, but rather that it may not be immediately obvious how to combine these two.)

Note that this is not to be confused with using Ansible from within Vagrant as a provisioner; that’s something different (see the Vagrant docs for more information on that use case). What I’m talking about is having a setup where you can easily explore how Ansible works and iterate through your playbooks using a Vagrant-managed VM.

Here are the key components:

  1. You’ll need a Vagrant environment (you know, a working Vagrantfile and any associated support files).
  2. You’ll need Ansible installed on the system where you’ll be running Vagrant and the appropriate back-end virtualization platform (I tested this with VMware Fusion, but there’s nothing VMware-specific here).
  3. In the same directory as the Vagrantfile, you’ll need an Continue reading

What’s the state of iPhone PIN guessing

I think even some experts have gotten this wrong, so I want to ask everyone: what's the current state-of-the-art for trying to crack Apple PIN codes?

This is how I think it works currently (in iOS 8).

To start with, there is a special "crypto-chip" inside the iPhone that holds your secrets (like a TPM or ARM TrustZone). I think originally it was ARM's TrustZone, but now that Apple designs its own chips, that they've customized it. I think they needed to add stuff to make Touch ID work.

All the data (on the internal flash drive) is encrypted with a random AES key that nobody, not even the NSA, can crack. This random AES key is stored on the crypto-chip. Thus, if your phone is stolen, the robbers cannot steal the data from it -- as long as your phone is locked properly.

To unlock your phone, you type in a 4 digit passcode. This passcode gets sent to the crypto-chip, which verifies the code, then gives you the AES key needed to decrypt the flash drive. This is all invisible, of course, but that's what's going on underneath the scenes. Since the NSA can't crack the AES key Continue reading

How virtual reality could change your business

Virtual reality has been anticipated with feverish excitement by gaming enthusiasts, but it could be just as transformative for businesses.So says Bob Berry, cofounder and CEO of Envelop VR, which is developing productivity software that will tap VR to offer business users new ways of working. The company was founded last year, and on Monday it said it had secured $2 million in seed funding.Virtual reality is a technology that has been “10 years away for 40 years,” Berry said. Today, it has finally reached a level of maturity whereby it can deliver “presence”—where your brain really thinks you’re somewhere else—without the motion sickness hampering earlier versions, according to Berry.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco plans to embed security everywhere

SAN DIEGO -- Cisco this week announced a plan to embed security throughout the network – from the data center out to endpoints, branch offices, and the cloud – in an effort to avoid pervasive threats.Cisco says the strategy, announced at this week’s Cisco Live conference, will give customers the ability to gain threat-centric security required for the digitized business and the Internet of Everything. The company sees IoE as a $19 trillion opportunity over the next decade while cybercrime is itself a $450 billion to $1 trillion business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BRKSEC-3005 – An IoT Security Model for Securing IT-OT Assets

Presenter: Jeff Schutt – Cybersecurity Solutions Architect (Jeff works in Adv Services in the IoT team)

Full Title: An IoT Security Model & Architecture for Securing Cyber-Physical and IT-OT Converged Assets

Mix of IT/OT folks in the room. 

How do we do physical security?

  • Protect the perimeter
  • Detect breaches
  • Situational awareness (<< THIS!)
  • Forensics

How do we do cybersecurity?

  • Same principles!
  • Just different tools

IT landscape

  • Systems approach
  • Requirements dominated by business data focus
  • Time horizon: driven by Moore’s law and high tech product cycles
  • Scale: 1000s
  • Security: built into protocols (IPsec, TLS)

OT landscape

  • Requirements dominated by needs of physical systems
  • Time horizon driven by capital equipment life; complete lifecycle determined and managed by engineers
  • Scale: few; 10s – 100s
  • Security: No access to outside systems; insecure protocols

With IT and OT convergence, ther’s no way people are going to lose their jobs. We all have too much to do for anyone to be redundant. Additionally, there is a well-known shortage of skilled workers in this area.

Security awareness and training: a combination of people, process, and technology.

“Airgap security” does not address “people, process and technology”. Airgap is NOT security (on its own). Airgap is not Continue reading

Facebook letting more stores ping your phone when you’re inside

You might find yourself browsing more than the shelves at your local store, if Facebook knows you’re there. It’s expanding a location-aware program that will let businesses pop information into the top of your news feed.Place Tips lets brick-and-mortar stores send information to people’s News Feeds, by sensing where customers are through Bluetooth beacons. Facebook began piloting the program earlier this year among just a handful of businesses in New York; now the social network is opening it to small and midsize businesses across the U.S.The program publishes content from the business’s Facebook page, and posts from users’ friends about the business, to the top of people’s News Feeds while they’re at the company’s location. The goal is to give customers more information about the place, or see what their friends think of it, while giving the business increased prominence in the popular app.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple replaces Passbook with Wallet as Apple Pay expands to U.K.

Apple Pay was designed to replace your physical wallet, and with iOS 9, Apple is uniting Apple Pay and Passbook under a new umbrella called, appropriately, Wallet. Announced during Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote Monday, the new app will replace Passbook, but function in the same way: You’ll still store your concert tickets in Wallet alongside your Apple Pay card information. Your rewards cards for stores like Kohl’s and JCPenney will also hang out in Wallet, because Apple Pay will start supporting retail loyalty programs this fall.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple Music turns iTunes into a streaming service

Apple to Spotify: We’ll take it from here. Apple’s long-awaited new streaming-music service, Apple Music, isn’t just a shot at the dominant player, which has 60 million active users. The new app challenges the way people get songs from Apple itself, which has long placed a high premium on its iTunes digital download storefront and emphasized how that platform revolutionized the music industry. Apple’s new service, unveiled during Monday’s keynote at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, takes iTunes to the next level by making 30 million of the expansive catalog’s songs streamable. That’s millions of songs on demand, right alongside the music you already own. You can comb through the iTunes catalog to find tracks you like or want to save for later.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BRKIOT-2109 – Connecting Oil & Gas Pipelines

Presenter: Konrad Reszka, IoT Vertical Solutions Group Engineering Lead

Given a chance, how many people in this room would volunteer to be a meteorologies in San Diego?


Inflection point between 2009 and 2010 where the number of connected devices began to out number the connected people. 50 billion “things” by 2020. And this doesn’t include phones and tablets. It’s other smart devices.

Shift in dominant endpoints: from consumers (people) to devices (like sensors and such). This shift demands changes in the network to support this growth.

Cisco + Schneider Electric joint functional reference model for connected pipelines.

  • Modular approach
  • Pick the pieces you want
  • ISA99 model
  • Modern approach, such as virtualization
  • Forthcoming reference model with Cisco + Rockwell

Isolate your enterprise network from the operations network.

  • Industrial DMZ at level 3.5 (in the ISA99 model)
  • “Pull the plug” if need be and airgap the OT network from the enterprise network
  • Makes compliance/audits esier

In the erm… pipeline:

  • Connected Pipelines Cisco Validated Design
  • Schneider Electric TVDA (their version of a CVD)
  • Both docs are being co-written by Cisco and Schneider

Had to leave session halfway through due to an overlapping MtE session.

Copyright Joel Knight. All Rights Reserved.
www.packetmischief.ca

Apple to open source Swift programming language

Apple Apple brought out the big guns, from CEO Tim Cook to musical performer Drake, but perhaps the loudest reaction at the company's Worldwide Developers' Conference Monday in San Francisco resulted from news that the Swift programming language is being open sourced."We think Swift is the next big programming language, the one that we'll all be doing application and system programming on for 20 years to come," said Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering who in addition to discussing Swift introduced Apple's iOS 9 developments. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple shows iOS 9’s major upgrades, from multitasking to picture-in-picture

Major changes are coming to our iPads, from the way we select text, to the way we interact with our favorite apps and play videos.Speaking at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday, Senior Vice President Craig Federighi showcased an updated version of iOS 9 that included a few new features designed specifically with tablet users in mind.MORE FROM WWDC: Apple's El Capitan OS X 10.11 to bring natural language search, other enhancementsLet’s start with QuickType, an enhancement to the iPad’s onscreen keyboard that includes new shortcuts and turns into a trackpad when you place two fingers on it. The trackpad can be used to select text, move objects around, and generally combine the convenience of touch controls and the precision of a mouse.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple shows iOS 9’s major upgrades, from multitasking to picture-in-picture

Major changes are coming to our iPads, from the way we select text, to the way we interact with our favorite apps and play videos.Speaking at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday, Senior Vice President Craig Federighi showcased an updated version of iOS 9 that included a few new features designed specifically with tablet users in mind.MORE FROM WWDC: Apple's El Capitan OS X 10.11 to bring natural language search, other enhancementsLet’s start with QuickType, an enhancement to the iPad’s onscreen keyboard that includes new shortcuts and turns into a trackpad when you place two fingers on it. The trackpad can be used to select text, move objects around, and generally combine the convenience of touch controls and the precision of a mouse.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Most SDN OpEx benefits can be realized by automating existing use cases, Cisco says

As Senior Director of Technical Marketing and Solutions Engineering at Cisco, Frank D’Agostino leads the development and technical go-to-market strategy for Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), the company’s portfolio of Software Defined Networking tools. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently spoke with D’Agostino about what the company is learning as customers adopt SDN. (D’Agostino was formerly VP of WW Technical Operations for Nicira Networks, the company VMware bought to drive its SDN strategy.) Is there a profile emerging of what a typical ACI customer looks like in terms of the types of challenges they’re trying to address?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple will let developers build native apps for its Watch with new update

Developers will be able to create applications that run natively on the Apple watch using a new version of the wearable device’s operating system announced Monday. CEO Tim Cook gave the announcement a brief mention during his introduction to Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote at San Francisco’s Moscone West conference center. His proclamation drew cheers from the audience of developers, who will be able to do more with the Apple Watch than they could at the time of the device’s launch in April. It’s an improvement to the current state of Apple’s Watch OS, which currently requires users have their iPhones on and within range in order to work with third party apps. That limitation has been criticized by both developers and reviewers alike, since it reduces the Watch’s utility.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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