Thieves stole data on 100,000 taxpayers through IRS app

Criminals stole sensitive information about roughly 100,000 taxpayers through the Internal Revenue Service’s “Get Transcript” application, a major data breach at the U.S.’s national tax agency. The thieves first stole information including Social Security details, dates of birth and street addresses from an outside, non-IRS source, the government agency said Tuesday. They then used that information to clear a multistep authentication process and access the IRS site, along with all the personal tax details stored there. The matter is now under review by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and the IRS’ Criminal Investigation unit. The Get Transcript application has also been temporarily shut down.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EFF and intrusion software regulation

To its credit, the EFF is better than a lot of other privacy groups like the ACLU or Privacy International. It at least acknowledges that regulating "evil" software can have unintended consequences on "good" software, that preventing corrupt governments from buying software also means blocking their dissidents from buying software to protect themselves. An example is this piece from several years ago that says:
"First and foremost, we want to make sure we do not leave activists with fewer tools than they already have. Parliament must be mindful of legislation just based on types of technology because broadly written regulations could have a net negative effect on the availability of many general-purpose technologies and could easily harm very people that the regulations are trying to protect."
But that does not stop the EFF from proposing such regulations.

In that same piece, the EFF first proposes rules for transparency. This will not stop the bad companies, but will be a burden on the legitimate companies that have no interesting in dealing with corrupt governments anyway. Most of this stuff is sold by small companies, like FinFisher, who focus on the "corrupt regime" market. They would not be embarrassed by transparency -- Continue reading

Power problems disrupt Africa’s telecom sector

Rampant power outages are hitting Africa’s telecom sector hard, and are likely to cause aftershocks in related industries.Southern African Development Community (SADC) and West African countries including Zambia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Malawi face an increasing number of power shortages, affecting the ability of businesses to run base stations, data centers, computers and other IT equipment.Fuel shortages in Nigeria Monday, for example, curtailed MTN and Etisalat services. The shortages also disrupted services in the banking and travel industries.Persistent power shortages have added to the high cost of doing business in Africa, as most mobile phone service providers and business process outsourcing facilities are forced to use generators to power installations. This has led operators including MTN to increase investments in renewable energy technologies in order to avoid reliance on the national grid.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: The connected car gets its own app store

Apple's App Store was launched on July 10, 2008 with 552 apps. The first weekend saw 10 million downloads."Stunning," was Apple CEO Steve Jobs comment at the time, according to Macworld.Well, as we know, apps have since taken off and app stores have spread to different devices. The latest of which is the connected car's first app gallery, just announced.Dongle It comes from Automatic, a company that makes a proprietary dongle for the car that grabs data from the vehicle's On-board Diagnostics II System (OBD-II). Automatic merges that data with other sensors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network Break 38

Take a Network Break! Grab a coffee, a doughnut and then join us for an analysis of the latest IT news, vendor moves and new product announcements. We’ll separate the signal from the noise--or at least make some noise of our own.

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Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus.

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The post Network Break 38 appeared first on Packet Pushers Podcast and was written by Greg Ferro.

HP buying SDN company for NFV

HP this week signed a definitive agreement to acquire ConteXtream, a provider of OpenDaylight-based SDNs for service providers.Terms of the deal were not disclosed.ConteXtream develops an SDN controller for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), software-based services that replace hardware-dependent Layer 4-7 functions, like load balancing and firewalls. ConteXtream’s products enable carriers to use existing standard server hardware to virtualize functions and services for subscribers, and to chain services across servers and subscribers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HP buying SDN company for NFV

HP this week signed a definitive agreement to acquire ConteXtream, a provider of OpenDaylight-based SDNs for service providers.Terms of the deal were not disclosed.ConteXtream develops an SDN controller for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), software-based services that replace hardware-dependent Layer 4-7 functions, like load balancing and firewalls. ConteXtream’s products enable carriers to use existing standard server hardware to virtualize functions and services for subscribers, and to chain services across servers and subscribers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Researchers claim to boost cell-phone battery life with radio signals

Cell phones are constantly transmitting radio signals, whose energy can also be used to boost the battery life of mobile devices.Researchers at Ohio State University have developed circuitry that converts radio signals from a handset into energy, which is then fed back to the device’s battery. The researchers say the technology can increase the battery life of mobile devices by up to 30 percent.The OSU researchers are working with startup Nikola Labs to commercialize the technology, which they say can be easily implemented in cell-phone cases, and in June will launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund its continued development.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Charter-Time Warner deal would get tough regulatory scrutiny

Charter Communications' planned acquisition of Time Warner Cable faces a regulatory review by the same federal officials who were widely blamed for nixing the recent proposed merger of Time Warner with Comcast.The $55 billion deal (plus $23 billion in debt) between TWC and Charter, announced Tuesday, led immediately to an unusual three-sentence challenge by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler that succinctly stated: "The Commission will look to see how American consumers will benefit if the deal were to be approved."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Rubrik and Converged Data Management

Rubrik today announced a new Series B investment (of $41 million) and introduced their r300 Series Hybrid Cloud Appliance, powered by what they’re touting as a “Converged Data Management” platform. Wow—that’s a mouthful, isn’t it? It sounds a bit like buzzword bingo, but after having spent a bit of time talking to Rubrik last week, there are some interesting (in my opinion) things going on here.

So what exactly is Rubrik doing? Here’s the “TL;DR” for those of you that don’t have the patience (or the time) for anything more in-depth: Rubrik is targeting the secondary storage and backup/recovery market with a solution that combines a distributed file system, a distributed metadata service, clustering, and a distributed task scheduler to provide a scale-out backup/recovery solution that also seamlessly integrates cloud storage platforms for long-term retention. The catch-phrase they’re using is “Time Machine for cloud infrastructure” (I wonder how our good friends in Cupertino will react to the use of that phrase?).

Here’s a bit more detail on the various components of the solution:

  • Rubrik has its own distributed file system (imaginatively named the Rubrik Cloud-Scale File System) that was designed from scratch to store and manage versioned data. The Continue reading

Here’s how Android apps can track you without asking permission

Researchers in Denmark say that it’s child’s play to track your Android phone via Wi-Fi even if the Wi-Fi is nominally turned off – and even if you didn’t let an app track your location.Apps distributed via Google Play have to enumerate the precise permissions they require in order to function – something simple like a flashlight doesn’t (or shouldn’t, anyway) require anything more than access to the camera, so that it can use the flash. More complicated apps with deeper features might need more extensive permissions, including access to the phone’s location data, whether that’s obtained via GPS or Wi-Fi.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Seven best practices for cloud security | Richard Stallman: Windows OS is malware +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Italian court bans UberPop, threatens fine

A judge in Milan banned UberPop in Italy on Tuesday, ruling that the car-hailing service constitutes unfair competition for taxi drivers.Judge Claudio Marangoni said a complaint lodged by taxi drivers’ associations and trade unions was well-founded and the UberPop smartphone app linking private drivers with passengers is provoking a rapid growth in illegal taxi services.Marangoni gave San Francisco-based Uber, which controls a global business estimated to be worth around US$40 billion, 15 weeks to comply with his order or face a fine of €20,000 (US$22,000) per day.Uber had indicated it would appeal a negative ruling and seek to change Italian and European regulations that affect its operations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Building a CCIE Wireless v3 Home Lab on the “Cheap”

With the new version of the CCIE Wireless lab coming in September, many people will be looking to start preparing for their lab attempts. But one look at the hardware list for the exam shows that fully replicating the lab will be out of reach for just about everyone, unless your work already has a spectacular lab. But as with most every track, you can typically practice most things on a home lab without breaking the bank if you look at alternative options.

Before I list out my recommendations for a home lab, know that it will have some significant limitations. It’s not something that you could become fully lab ready on. Also, you will have a hard time following along with the workbooks that I’ll be putting out due to the restricted number of devices and the restricted feature sets available to them. But for self-directed study, this will allow you to practice a large portion of the v3 blueprint.

Recommended Hardware

These recommendations assume that you are starting a lab from scratch and don’t have existing equipment to pull from. If you have better stuff than what I recommend, use them.

WLCs

You will probably want to use Continue reading

Over 4 billion people still have no Internet connection

The number of people using the Internet is growing at a steady rate, but 4.2 billion out of 7.4 billion will still be offline by the end of the year.Overall, 35.3 percent of people in developing countries will use the Internet, compared to 82.2 percent in developed countries, according to data from the ITU (International Telecommunication Union). People who live in the so-called least developed countries will the worst off by far: In those nations only 9.5 percent will be connected by the end of December.This digital divide has resulted in projects such as the Facebook-led Internet.org. Earlier this month, Facebook sought to address some of the criticism directed at the project, including charges that it is a so-called walled garden, putting a limit on the types of services that are available.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Over 4 billion people still have no Internet connection

The number of people using the Internet is growing at a steady rate, but 4.2 billion out of 7.4 billion will still be offline by the end of the year.Overall, 35.3 percent of people in developing countries will use the Internet, compared to 82.2 percent in developed countries, according to data from the ITU (International Telecommunication Union). People who live in the so-called least developed countries will the worst off by far: In those nations only 9.5 percent will be connected by the end of December.This digital divide has resulted in projects such as the Facebook-led Internet.org. Earlier this month, Facebook sought to address some of the criticism directed at the project, including charges that it is a so-called walled garden, putting a limit on the types of services that are available.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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