Hackers exploit router flaws in unusual pharming attack

An email-based attack spotted in Brazil recently employed an unusual but potent technique to spy on a victim’s Web traffic.The technique exploited security flaws in home routers to gain access to the administrator console. Once there, the hackers changed the routers’ DNS (Domain Name System) settings, a type of attack known as pharming.Pharming is tricky to pull off because it requires access to an ISP’s or an organization’s DNS servers, which translate domain names into the IP addresses of websites. Those DNS systems are typically well-protected, but home routers often are not.Security firm Proofpoint wrote in a blog post Thursday that launching the attack via email was a novel approach since pharming is normally a network-based attack.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Programmatic Access to CLI Driven Devices with TextFSM

One of the harder things to do when it comes to network automation is work with the majority of the install base that exists out there. This is true even if we focus purely on data extraction, i.e. issuing show commands and getting the results in an automated fashion. The reason for this is that most devices do not support returning structured data in formats such as JSON or XML, and this often times makes automation a non-starter for network engineers. 
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Thoughts on Network Neutrality, the FCC, and the Future of Internet Governance

FCC Logo

Today the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to extend the rules that previously regulated the telephone industry to now regulate Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The Commission did this in order to preserve the principle of network neutrality. Broadly stated, this principle is that networks should not discriminate against content that passes through them.

At CloudFlare, we are strong proponents of network neutrality. My co-founder, Michelle Zatlyn, sat on the FCC's Open Internet Advisory Committee. The work of that committee played a role in guiding today's vote. So there is a large part of us that is celebrating today.

At the same time, I have deep concerns that proponents of a free and open Internet may look back on today not as a great victory, but as the first step in what may turn out to be a devastating loss. The Internet has largely been governed from the bottom up by technologists seeking rough consensus and running code. Today's action by the FCC may mark the beginning of a new era where the Internet is regulated by lawyers from the top down. As a technologist and recovering lawyer, that worries me.

The Threat to the Network

If you think Continue reading

Twitter adds more reporting tools to curb abuse and improve safety

Twitter has added new reporting tools to help it fight abuse and protect users on its site.The company took some steps in this direction late last year, when it made it easier to report harassment in tweets. Now it’s making it easier to report other behaviors including impersonation, self-harm and the sharing of private or confidential information. The changes will begin rolling out Thursday and should reach all users in the coming weeks.As a result of the changes it made already, Twitter now reviews five times as many user reports as it did previously, the company said, and it has tripled the number of people who handle such reports at the company. It has also reduced its response time to a fraction of what it once was, the company says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

LTE can mooch off of Wi-Fi spectrum with new Qualcomm chipset

A chipset Qualcomm is introducing at Mobile World Congress next week is likely to make mobile operators happy and some Wi-Fi fans nervous.Amid a scramble for spectrum among cellular carriers, Qualcomm will demonstrate a chipset that lets LTE cells operate in a radio band used by Wi-Fi networks. The new silicon could double the amount of spectrum subscribers can use in certain areas, and it’s just the first in a family of chipsets that may eventually tap into five times as much.The FSM 99xx chipset for small cells, along with a matching transceiver that will go into mobile devices, are among the first products coming for so-called Licensed Assisted Access. LAA, sometimes called LTE-Unlicensed, is one of several emerging techniques to take advantage of the large amount of spectrum available in unlicensed bands used by Wi-Fi. Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA and SK Telecom all have shown interest in using LAA. Combining unlicensed spectrum with traditional carrier frequencies will be a major trend on display at MWC.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Republican bill would overturn FCC municipal broadband decision

It didn’t take long for congressional Republicans to attack the Federal Communications Commission’s vote to strike down two state laws that prevent municipal broadband networks from expanding.Seven Republican lawmakers introduced a bill on Thursday, just hours after the FCC vote, that would prohibit the agency from preempting state laws that limit municipal broadband networks. The main sponsors of the bill are Representative Marsha Blackburn, of Tennessee, and Senator Thom Tillis, of North Carolina.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Broadcom ASIC table utilization metrics, DevOps, and SDN

Figure 1: Two-Level Folded CLOS Network Topology Example
Figure 1 from the Broadcom white paper, Engineered Elephant Flows for Boosting Application Performance in Large-Scale CLOS Networks, shows a data center leaf and spine topology. Leaf and spine networks are seeing rapid adoption since they provide the scaleability needed to cost effectively deliver the low latency, high bandwidth interconnect for cloud, big data, and high performance computing workloads.

Broadcom Trident ASICs are popular in white box, brite-box and branded data center switches from a wide range of vendors, including: Accton, Agema, Alcatel-Lucent, Arista, Cisco, Dell, Edge-Core, Extreme, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Juniper, Penguin Computing, and Quanta.
Figure 2: OF-DPA Programming Pipeline for ECMP
Figure 2 shows the packet processing pipeline of a Broadcom ASIC. The pipeline consists of a number of linked hardware tables providing bridging, routing, access control list (ACL), and ECMP forwarding group functions. Operations teams need to be able to proactively monitor table utilizations in order to avoid performance problems associated with table exhaustion.

Broadcom's recently released sFlow specification, sFlow Broadcom Switch ASIC Table Utilization Structures, leverages the industry standard sFlow protocol to offer scaleable, multi-vendor, network wide visibility into the utilization of these hardware tables.

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CIOs report that spending is on the rise

IT leaders will see bigger technology budgets in the coming year, according to CIO’s most recent Tech Poll, which is conducted regularly to gauge IT spending and stages of implementation in key technology categories.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

Apple slates March 9 event, hints at Watch wearable

Apple today invited reporters and analysts to an event scheduled for March 9, when it will probably talk up the Apple Watch and perhaps unveil other hardware. The presentation will be live-streamed. The venue, San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, has frequently been used by Apple, most recently for the October 2013 unveiling of the iPad Air. Apple may have chosen Yerba Buena for space reasons, as it seats 755, considerably more than the Cupertino, Calif. company's on-campus theater. As is Apple's practice, the invitation teased the presentation with a coy reference, in this case, "Spring forward." The phrase tipped the Apple Watch; Sunday, March 8, is the day most of the U.S. changes to Daylight Savings Time. The phrase "Spring forward, Fall back" is an oft-called memory aid for which way to move clocks, watches and other time-keepers when changing from Standard Time to Daylight Savings Time or vice versa.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

What it means: The FCC’s net neutrality vote

Net neutrality has been debated for a decade, but the Federal Communications Commission's historic vote on Thursday signals only the beginning of further battles and likely lawsuits. At issue is how best to keep the Internet open and neutral to all while still giving Internet service providers sufficient incentive to expand their networks to serve more customers and to support an exploding array of data-hungry applications as futuristic as holographic videoconferencing used for home-based medical exams. The FCC voted 3-to-2 to create a series of sweeping changes, including three open Internet conduct rules that block broadband providers, both wired and wireless, from blocking or throttling Internet traffic. The rules also ban broadband providers from taking payments to prioritize content and services over their networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FCC approves net neutrality rules, reclassifies broadband as a utility

Net NeutralityToday is a good day. By a 3-2 vote, the FCC has voted to adopt net neutrality rules to protect the open Internet. This plan will reclassify internet access as a Title II public utility, which in turn gives the agency more regulatory power. While many will say that any power grab by the government is a bad thing, this is certainly good news for consumers. The Internet as a whole has become far too important to be controlled by a few private corporations which are more interested in lining their own pockets rather than listening to public interest. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler was quoted saying, “This is no more a plan to regulate the Internet than the First Amendment is a plan to regulate free speech.” I couldn’t of said it any better myself.

This plan will put a stop to paid prioritization (see Comcast / Verizon forcing Netflix to pay for bandwidth usage, which is the complete opposite of most peering agreements. ) — It also prevents ISPs from creating Internet slow lanes for traffic as they see fit. Until now, Verizon wireless has been allowed to charge it’s customers monthly fees for access to “business email” Continue reading

Spring forward: Apple will take the wraps off Apple Watch at March 9 event

Daylight Saving Time begins Sunday, March 8. The following day, Apple is inviting us to “spring forward” at a “special event” in San Francisco. Hmm…could Apple be showing off a device that has something to do with setting the clock? Macworld will be in the audience to bring you the details at 10 a.m. Pacific.As is standard for Apple, the invite gave no details other than time, date, and location (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, a larger venue than Town Hall in Cupertino, where Apple held its last event). But given the tag line and the timing, it’s a given that the company is finally launching Apple Watch after months of build-up.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Samsung mass produces 128GB smartphone memory with 2X-plus performance

Samsung is mass producing the industry's first 128GB embedded flash memory based on the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.0 standard.The memory will be targeted for use in next-generation flagship smartphones and will offer 2.7 times the performance of today's embedded MultiMediaCard (eMMC) flash memory.Samsung is touting the new memory's ability to offer smoother ultra-high definition video streaming, more efficient multitasking and reduced power use.The UFS 2.0 specification, released in 2013, offers a multi-lane, serial bus versus the single-lane, parallel bus used in today's eMMC flash.The UFS 2.0 specification boasts up to 600MBps (megabytes per second) of throughput, but because it can use two serial lanes, it has a total of 1,200MBps, or 12Gbps, Samsung stated. That compares with the eMMC 5.0 spec, which has a 400MBps maximum performance over a single parallel bus.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Samsung mass produces 128GB smartphone memory with 2X-plus performance

Samsung is mass producing the industry's first 128GB embedded flash memory based on the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.0 standard.The memory will be targeted for use in next-generation flagship smartphones and will offer 2.7 times the performance of today's embedded MultiMediaCard (eMMC) flash memory.Samsung is touting the new memory's ability to offer smoother ultra-high definition video streaming, more efficient multitasking and reduced power use.The UFS 2.0 specification, released in 2013, offers a multi-lane, serial bus versus the single-lane, parallel bus used in today's eMMC flash.The UFS 2.0 specification boasts up to 600MBps (megabytes per second) of throughput, but because it can use two serial lanes, it has a total of 1,200MBps, or 12Gbps, Samsung stated. That compares with the eMMC 5.0 spec, which has a 400MBps maximum performance over a single parallel bus.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Some Bitdefender products break HTTPS certificate revocation

Aggressive adware applications that break the trust between HTTPS (HTTP Secure) websites and users have been at the center of controversy lately. But over the past week, HTTPS interception flaws of varying severity were also found in security programs, with products from antivirus vendor Bitdefender being the latest example.Carsten Eiram, the chief research officer of vulnerability intelligence firm Risk Based Security, found that the latest versions of several Bitdefender products, namely Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, Bitdefender Internet Security and Bitdefender Total Security, do not check the revocation status of SSL certificates before replacing them with new ones that are signed using a root certificate installed locally. The products use this technique in order to scan encrypted HTTPS traffic for potential threats.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FCC passes net neutrality rules, reclassifies broadband as utility

The Federal Communications Commission has voted to approve new net neutrality rules by reclassifying broadband as a regulated public utility, over the objections of the commission's Republican members and large broadband providers.The commission voted 3-2 Thursday to approve net neutrality rules that prohibit broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing Web traffic and from offering paid traffic prioritization services. The commission's vote on the new rules prompted loud applause from the audience at the FCC meeting.INSIDER: 5 tricks to improve poor TCP performance The new regulations will almost certainly face a court challenge from broadband providers, and a court case could drag out for years. Verizon Communications, AT&T and Comcast have all opposed reclassification of broadband.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Docker introduces orchestration tools for large scale deployments

As adoption of the Docker virtualization container grows, the namesake company behind the open source technology has released three tools for managing large scale deployments.Docker Machine, Swarm and Compose are collectively designed to make containers more portable and scalable, so they can be deployed and managed more easily en masse. Machine and Swarm are in a beta stage of development.Debuting in 2013, Docker has become popular with developers and organizations, having been downloaded over 100 million times. The software provides a way to package an application along with its dependent libraries so it can be easily and quickly run on any Linux platform. All the major cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, Joyent, and Microsoft, can host Docker containers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CCNP Voice is Extinct, The CCNP Collaboration is Taking Over!

Just as was recently announced for the CCNA Voice and CCNA Video, the CCNP Voice has now gone the way of the dinosaur. It’s replacement? The highly-anticipated CCNP Collaboration certification, which of course will now be adding video to its laundry list of topics.

To attain the CCNP Collaboration certification, you must now pass four different exams. This is actually a nice bit of news, since we had to pass five separate exams to achieve the CCNP Voice certification. Don’t get too excited though; Cisco is sure to have packed each of these four exams full of enough content to account for the loss! On that note, Cisco has not yet released the exact details regarding the topics for each exam. So we must wait a little while to let the full picture develop.

The first of the four exams is called “Implementing Cisco IP Telephony and Video, Part 1” and corresponds to exam number 300-070 CIPTV1. This exam will mostly likely introduce the majority of the necessary Cisco IPT concepts while laying a solid foundation to build upon. The second is called “Implementing Cisco IP Telephony and Video, Part 2” which corresponds to exam number 300-075 CIPTV2. For this Continue reading

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