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The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Wednesday, March 4

Alibaba opens its cloud for business in U.S.Alibaba is set to compete for cloud services with Amazon Web Services, Google Compute Engine and Microsoft Azure with a new data center in California, the first outside China for the Aliyun subsidiary. It is initially targeting low-hanging fruit: the U.S. operations of Chinese companies. But its use of proprietary technology may be a turnoff for prospective customers who are wary of cloud lock-in.IBM plugs its OpenPower servers into the cloudIBM wants to show that its Power processors are a good alternative to Intel’s x86 chips in the cloud market, so it’s rolling out an infrastructure-as-a-service using OpenPower servers. The SoftLayer division is starting the Power move with a data center in Texas but will later roll out the service worldwide.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Budget smartphones shine at Mobile World Congress

Budget smartphones from the likes of Sony, Microsoft and up-and-comer Alcatel OneTouch have improved to such an extent that the question whether or not to buy one of the latest high-end smartphones is tougher than ever before. The launches of the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge from Samsung Electronics and the One M9 from HTC didn’t disappoint. However, it wasn’t expensive flagship smartphones like those that dominated in Barcelona, but smartphones that cost US$300 or less unlocked. Even with such cheaper phones, manufacturers are increasingly focusing on looks. A company that has succeeded in this regard is Sony, with its Xperia M4 Aqua. The product has a plastic frame and back, instead of glass and metal, but Sony has chosen materials that still look good.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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China says new cybersurveillance proposal follows US security practices

China is scratching its head over why the U.S. is opposing a new anti-terror law relating to cybersurveillance when the U.S. and other countries have also requested that tech companies hand over data to help stop terrorists.On Wednesday, China’s parliamentary spokeswoman tried to play down the impact the proposed legislation might have on foreign tech businesses, in the face of U.S. fears it would require companies to hand over sensitive data to the country’s government.The anti-terror law is still under review, but if passed, it would require tech companies to give encryption keys to the authorities, and create “back doors” into their systems for government surveillance access.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Free Online Introduction to SDN and Network Automation Training

Want to know more about SDN and network automation/programmability, but don’t know where to start? Why don’t you try the free Introduction to SDN and Network Automation training available on ipSpace.net – you’ll get seven hours of high-quality content that will help you understand where it might make sense to use SDN technologies in your network and what SDN, OpenFlow, NFV, NETCONF, Ansible, YAML, Jinja and a few other acronyms are all about.

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Alibaba enters US cloud market, signaling global ambitions

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group is making a push into the U.S. cloud computing market, where it’s expected to run into competition from Amazon.com, Google and Microsoft.Alibaba subsidiary Aliyun is already the biggest cloud player in its home market, and on Wednesday, it opened a data center in California, its first data center outside of China.The U.S. business will first focus on attracting Chinese enterprises based in the country, before it expands to international customers in this year’s second half, Alibaba said in a statement.No doubt Alibaba will face intense competition in the U.S., where Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are major players. But opening the data center in Silicon Valley sends another message that it wants to be a global company, said Charlie Dai, an analyst with Forrester Research.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Introducing Redistribute Neighbor

The existing landscape

Are we feeding an L2 addiction?

One of the fundamental challenges in any network is placement and management of the boundary between switched (L2) and routed (L3) fabrics. Very large L2 environments tend to be brittle, difficult to troubleshoot and difficult to scale. With the availability of modern commodity switching ASICs that can switch or route at similar speeds/latency, smaller L3 domains become easier to justify.

There is a recent strong trend towards reducing the scale of L2 in the data center and instead using routed fabrics, especially in very large scale environments.

However, L2 environments are typically well understood by network/server operations staff and application developers, which has slowed adoption of pure L3-based fabrics. L3 designs also have some other usability challenges that need to be mitigated.

This is why the L2 over L3 (AKA “overlay” SDN) techniques are drawing interest; they allow admins to keep provisioning how they’re used to. But maybe we’re just feeding an addiction?

Mark Burgess recently wrote a blog post exploring in depth how we got here and offering some longer term strategic visions. It’s a great read, I highly encourage taking a look.

But taking a step back, let’s explore Continue reading

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Apple, like Google, to hire full-time security guards in Silicon Valley

Apple will replace a number of contract security positions with direct hires for its Silicon Valley operations, amid widespread demands from contract workers like drivers and security guards for better working conditions at tech companies.The move by Apple comes in the wake of growing concerns about inequality in Silicon Valley, arising largely from the gentrification and high-costs in the area driven by the influx of hi-tech employees.In October, Google said it would employ on its payroll security guards, rather than have them placed by a contractor, shortly after a report in August by community labor organization Working Partnerships USA that highlighted the poor working conditions of janitors, security guards and other contract staff, supplied by third-party companies, that are used extensively by tech companies in the valley.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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IBM plugs OpenPower servers into SoftLayer cloud

IBM will roll out a cloud computing service next quarter using OpenPower-based servers, continuing an effort to expand the market for Power processors and challenge Intel in hyperscale data centers.The company’s SoftLayer division will provide an infrastructure-as-a-service offering using OpenPower systems in the second quarter, initially from a data center in Dallas, Texas, it said Wednesday. It will roll out the service worldwide at a later date.IBM kicked off its OpenPower initiative about two years ago. Its goal is to license its Power architecture to other server makers, who can use it to design systems targeted at online service providers like Google and cloud providers like Amazon Web Services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Emerging Use Cases for SDN (Part II)

Hey all, here is Part II from last week, Emerging Use Cases for SDN.   Comments welcome!   SDN at the Routed Edge –

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Drive-by attack relies on hacked GoDaddy accounts

Hundreds of hacked domain name accounts registered through GoDaddy are being used as part of a highly effective campaign using the Angler exploit kit to infect computers with malware.The attackers are using the accounts to create subdomains that shuttle Web surfers to websites hosting Angler, wrote Nick Biasini, an outreach engineer with Cisco Systems.The owners of the accounts are usually unaware of the activity, which Cisco calls “domain shadowing,” since they may rarely log into their accounts. Hundreds of GoDaddy accounts that have several thousand domain names assigned to them have been compromised, Biasini wrote.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Uber buys deCarta to improve mapping and arrival estimates

Uber is acquiring deCarta, a mapping and location company that could help Uber to develop new types of services and also ensure its drivers show up on time.DeCarta, headquartered in San Jose, California, holds a variety of data pertaining to mapping, local search and turn-by-turn navigation. Location services in cars from GM and Ford have been powered by deCarta’s technology, as well as devices from Samsung and Blackberry.Now, Uber is buying the company for an undisclosed sum. It will allow Uber to improve services like UberPool and also give its users more accurate estimated times of arrival.UberPool lets several people share the same ride, with multiple pick up and drop off points, so it involves more complex routing data than a regular Uber ride. But regular rides could benefit too, if deCarta’s technology can help Uber drivers know exactly where they’re supposed to pick you up.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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No upgrade needed: CloudFlare sites already protected from FREAK

The newly announced FREAK vulnerability is not a concern for CloudFlare's SSL customers. We do not support 'export grade' cryptography (which, by its nature, is weak) and we upgraded to the non-vulnerable version of OpenSSL the day it was released in early January.

CC BY 2.0 image by Stuart Heath

Our OpenSSL configuration is freely available on our Github account here as are our patches to OpenSSL 1.0.2.

We strive to stay on top of vulnerabilities as they are announced; in this case no action was necessary as we were already protected by decisions to eliminate cipher suites and upgrade software.

We are also pro-active about disabling protocols and ciphers that are outdated (such as SSLv3, RC4) and keep up to date with the latest and most secure ciphers (such as ChaCha-Poly, forward secrecy and elliptic curves).

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FREAK is another serious flaw in the web’s encryption

Experts are warning of a serious security flaw that has apparently gone undetected for years and can weaken encrypted connections between computers and websites, potentially undermining security across the Internet.The flaw, which has been dubbed FREAK, affects the widely used Secure Sockets Layer protocol and its successor, Transport Layer Security, and can allow an attacker to intercept supposedly encrypted traffic as it moves between clients and servers.The flaw affects many popular websites, as well as programs including Apple’s Safari browser and Google’s Android mobile OS, security experts say. Applications that use a version of OpenSSL prior to 1.0.1k are also vulnerable to the bug, detailed in this advisory.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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What the auto industry thinks about the rumored Apple Car

Over the past few days, a number of auto executives have chimed on reports that Apple is not-so-secretly working on developing an electric car.Seeing as how there is no shortage of detractors who think Apple has no business entering the auto industry, perhaps it's appropriate to begin with some of the more positive takes on Apple's rumored jump into an entirely different industry.First up, we have Volkswagon CEO Martin Winterkorn who reportedly is fully on board with both Google and Apple dipping their toes into automotive waters. *VW CEO 'WELCOMES' APPLE, GOOGLE CAR PROJECTS— Jay Yarow (@jyarow) March 2, 2015 Winterkorn added that Volkswagon would be more than happy to work alongside either Apple or Google in the electric car space.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Box snaps up Subspace for heightened BYOD security

Hard on the heels of debuting a cloud storage service for financial services firms, Box announced Tuesday that it has acquired Subspace, a startup focused on cross-device collaboration security.“The Subspace team will let us go even deeper with our security and data policies, enabling reliable corporate security policies, even when content leaves the Box platform to be accessed on a customer or partner’s device,” Box cofounder and CEO Aaron Levie said in a blog post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Snowden willing to face trial in US, if it’s fair

Edward Snowden, the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor who leaked details of the agency’s surveillance programs, is willing to return to the U.S. and face criminal charges, if he’s assured of a fair trial, according to a Russian news report.Snowden, now living in Russia, is ready to return to the U.S. on the condition that he’s guaranteed a fair trial, Snowden lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told journalists Tuesday, according to a report from Russian news agency TASS.Several Snowden lawyers are negotiating his return to the U.S., Kucherena said. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has promised in a letter to Snowden’s lawyers that he would not face a death sentence, Kucherena added.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Twitter CFO floats idea of newspaper-like ‘daily edition’

Here’s an idea for the next version of Twitter that might crystallize the service’s value: The Twitter Daily Favorite.Okay, perhaps that won’t be the exact title. But a newspaper-themed form of Twitter that curates an assortment of newsy tweets to provide a summary of the goings-on could come as a future feature or as a separate app.People already check Twitter to see what’s happening. But news junkies who follow lots of accounts may have dozens if not hundreds of tweets to comb through every morning. Twitter thinks it can address this, partly by better organizing the content posted to its site and presenting it in new ways.“We’ve only scratched the surface here,” Anthony Noto, Twitter’s chief financial officer, said regarding how Twitter might evolve its service. A “Twitter Daily Edition” might be one such service that packages select tweets in a new way, he said during the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Network Infrastructure at Faithlife

The network infrastructure powering Faithlife has seen a massive transformation in the last eighteen months. We’re really excited about all the cool new changes, and the measurable impact they’ve had on our employees, customers, and the products / features we’re able to offer. Given that, we thought that sharing our solution was a fun way to live our values and showcase what we think is pretty cool.

Philosophy

At Faithlife we value smart, versatile learners and automation over expensive vendor solutions. Smart, versatile learners don’t lose value when technology changes or the company changes direction, as vendor solutions often do. If we can use commodity hardware and open source software to replace expensive vendor solutions, we do.

Commodity hardware is generally re-configurable and reusable, and lets us treat our hardware like Lego bricks. Open source software allows us to see behind the curtain, and more easily work with other existing tools. We’re empowered to fix our own issues by utilizing the talent we already employ, not just sit on our hands waiting for a vendor support engineer to help us out (though we do like to keep that option available when possible). Additionally, combining commodity hardware with automation tools like Continue reading

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Privacy advocates find Obama proposal lacking

A consumer privacy proposal from U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration gives people too little control over their personal data and companies too much latitude to use that information, a coalition of 14 privacy and digital rights groups said.The Obama administration’s consumer privacy bill of rights, released late Friday, allows companies holding personal data to determine whether consumers should be able to demand changes to the information, the groups said in a letter to Obama, sent Tuesday.The White House proposal contains several “shortcomings,” said the groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, Consumer Watchdog, Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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Privacy advocates find Obama proposal lacking

A consumer privacy proposal from U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration gives people too little control over their personal data and companies too much latitude to use that information, a coalition of 14 privacy and digital rights groups said.The Obama administration’s consumer privacy bill of rights, released late Friday, allows companies holding personal data to determine whether consumers should be able to demand changes to the information, the groups said in a letter to Obama, sent Tuesday.The White House proposal contains several “shortcomings,” said the groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, Consumer Watchdog, Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here