Cloudflare Zero Trust for Project Galileo and the Athenian Project

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The organizations served by Projects Galileo and Athenian face the same security challenges as some of the world’s largest companies, but lack the budget to protect themselves. Sophisticated phishing campaigns attempt to compromise user credentials. Bad actors find ways to disrupt connectivity to critical resources. However, the tools to defend against these threats have historically only been available to the largest enterprises.

We’re excited to help fix that. Starting today, we are making the Cloudflare One Zero Trust suite available to teams that qualify for Project Galileo or Athenian at no cost. Cloudflare One includes the same Zero Trust security and connectivity solutions used by over 10,000 customers today to connect their users and safeguard their data.

Same problem, different missions

Athenian Project candidates work to safeguard elections in the United States. Project Galileo applicants launched their causes to support journalists, encourage artistic expression, or protect persecuted groups. They each set out to fix difficult and painful problems. None of the applications to our programs wrote their mission statement to deal with phishing attacks or internal data loss.

However, security problems plague these teams. Instead of being Continue reading

From instability to predictability: transforming network communication to and from China

China accounts for nearly 20% of global manufacturing trade and holds a large share of many global value chain inputs. While communication to and from China is always a challenge, large enterprises can work with the local telcos to create a stable communications network. However, small and medium size companies must choose between two evils: a cumbersome process with large local telcos, or an unstable, unpredictable network that prevents uninterrupted communications with apps, cloud workloads and teams across the border. If your company suffers from communication issues in China, you’re not alone. Teridion experts see that about 90% of global businesses face these issues, which result in costly extra workloads and provisioning. We’ve identified several main challenges:To read this article in full, please click here

vagrant-libvirt Dependency Hell

One of the tiny details Open Networking preachers conveniently forget to mention is the tendency of open-source software to use a gazillion small packages from numerous independent sources to get the job done. Vendors selling commercial products (for example, Cumulus Linux) try their best to select the correct version of every package involved in their product; open-source projects could quickly end in dependency hell.

netlab tries to solve the dependency conundrum with well-defined installation scripts. We recommend you start with a brand new Ubuntu server (or VM) and follow the four lines of instructions¹. In that case, you usually get a working system unless something unexpected breaks behind the scenes, like what we experienced a few days ago.

vagrant-libvirt Dependency Hell

One of the tiny details Open Networking preachers conveniently forget to mention is the tendency of open-source software to use a gazillion small packages from numerous independent sources to get the job done. Vendors selling commercial products (for example, Cumulus Linux) try their best to select the correct version of every package involved in their product; open-source projects could quickly end in dependency hell.

netlab tries to solve the dependency conundrum with well-defined installation scripts. We recommend you start with a brand new Ubuntu server (or VM) and follow the four lines of instructions¹. In that case, you usually get a working system unless something unexpected breaks behind the scenes, like what we experienced a few days ago.

What is SASE? A cloud service that marries SD-WAN with security

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is a network architecture that combines software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) and security functionality into a unified cloud service that promises simplified WAN deployments, improved efficiency and security, and application-specific bandwidth policies.First outlined by Gartner in 2019, SASE (pronounced “sassy”) has quickly evolved from a niche, security-first SD-WAN alternative into a popular WAN sector that analysts project will grow to become a $10-billion-plus market within the next couple of years.To read this article in full, please click here

What is SASE? A cloud service that marries SD-WAN with security

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is a network architecture that combines software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) and security functionality into a unified cloud service that promises simplified WAN deployments, improved efficiency and security, and application-specific bandwidth policies.First outlined by Gartner in 2019, SASE (pronounced “sassy”) has quickly evolved from a niche, security-first SD-WAN alternative into a popular WAN sector that analysts project will grow to become a $10-billion-plus market within the next couple of years.To read this article in full, please click here

What is SASE? A cloud service that marries SD-WAN with security

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is a network architecture that combines software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) and security functionality into a unified cloud service that promises simplified WAN deployments, improved efficiency and security, and application-specific bandwidth policies.First outlined by Gartner in 2019, SASE (pronounced “sassy”) has quickly evolved from a niche, security-first SD-WAN alternative into a popular WAN sector that analysts project will grow to become a $10-billion-plus market within the next couple of years.To read this article in full, please click here

Welcome to Cloudflare’s Impact Week

In the early days of Cloudflare, we made it a policy that every new hire had to interview with either me or my co-founder Michelle. It’s still the case today, though we now have more than 3,000 employees, continue to hire great people as we find them, and, because there are only so many hours in the day, have had to enlist a few more senior executives to help with these final calls.

At first, these calls were about helping screen for new members of our small team. But, as our team grew, the purpose of these calls changed. Today, by the time I do the final call with someone we’ve made the decision to hire them, so it’s rarely about screening. Instead, the primary purpose is to make sure everyone joining has had a positive conversation with a senior member of our team, so if in the future they ever see something going wrong they’ll hopefully feel a bit more comfortable letting one of us know. I think because of that these calls are some of the most important work I do.

But, for me, there’s another purpose. I get to hear first-hand why people chose to apply. That’s Continue reading

Querying Netbox with Pynetbox

You should be using Netbox or something equivalent. I’m serious. Stop documenting your network with Word docs and Wiki pages and use something where the information can be queried. I’ve been using Netbox for a couple years, and it’s where I keep all that important information about my network. I use it to store hardware inventory, circuit inventory, contact information, site information…all sorts of stuff. Since all this information is already recorded there, I can just query it for the information I need. That includes any time I need to write some Python code to do something on the gear. I use the pynetbox module to do that.

To use pynetbox (or anything that uses API calls to Netbox), you’ll need to set up an API token. I am not qualified to tell you what the best way to manage these are, so we’re just going to assume you have an appropriate token configured already.

The Python Code

We’re going to write a short script to get all the devices from the Netbox instance…and here it is!¹

import pynetbox
import urllib3

NETBOX_SERVER = "*.*.*.*"
NETBOX_API_KEY = "742*****"

nb_conn = pynetbox.api(url=f"https://{NETBOX_SERVER}", token=NETBOX_API_KEY)
nb_conn.http_session.verify =  Continue reading

Querying Netbox with Pynetbox

You should be using Netbox or something equivalent. I’m serious. Stop documenting your network with Word docs and Wiki pages and use something where the information can be queried. I’ve been using Netbox for a couple years, and it’s where I keep all that important information about my network. I use it to store hardware inventory, circuit inventory, contact information, site information…all sorts of stuff. Since all this information is already recorded there, I can just query it for the information I need. That includes any time I need to write some Python code to do something on the gear. I use the pynetbox module to do that.

To use pynetbox (or anything that uses API calls to Netbox), you’ll need to set up an API token. I am not qualified to tell you what the best way to manage these are, so we’re just going to assume you have an appropriate token configured already.

The Python Code

We’re going to write a short script to get all the devices from the Netbox instance…and here it is!¹

import pynetbox
import urllib3

NETBOX_SERVER = "*.*.*.*"
NETBOX_API_KEY = "742*****"

nb_conn = pynetbox.api(url=f"https://{NETBOX_SERVER}", token=NETBOX_API_KEY)
nb_conn.http_session.verify =  Continue reading

Akvorado: a flow collector, enricher, and visualizer

Earlier this year, we released Akvorado, a flow collector, enricher, and visualizer. It receives network flows from your routers using either NetFlow v9, IPFIX, or sFlow. Several pieces of information are added, like GeoIP and interface names. The flows are exported to Apache Kafka, a distributed queue, then stored inside ClickHouse, a column-oriented database. A web frontend is provided to run queries. A live version is available for you to play.

Several alternatives exist:

• Kentik, a popular cloud-based solution,
• ElastiFlow, a self-hosted proprietary solution, or
• your own assembly of open source solutions by picking a flow collector (pmacct, GoFlow2, or vFlow), a distributed queue¹ (Apache Kafka or RabbitMQ), a database (ClickHouse, Elasticsearch, or Apache Pinot), and a web frontend (Grafana, Kibana, or Apache Superset).

Akvorado differentiates itself from these solutions because:

• it is open source (licensed under the AGPLv3 license), and
• it bundles flow collection, storage, and a web interface into a single “product.”

The proposed deployment solution relies on Docker Compose to set up Akvorado, Zookeeper, Kafka, and ClickHouse. Continue reading

Worth Reading: NetOps Requires AI/ML and Rules

Here’s some common-sense view on hard-coded rules versus machine learning in network operations by Mark Seery – quite often we can specify our response to an event as a simple set of rules, but if we want to identify deviation from “normal” behavior, machine learning might not be a bad idea.

For more details, watch the Event-Driven Network Automation part of Building Network Automation Solutions online course.

Worth Reading: NetOps Requires AI/ML and Rules

Here’s some common-sense view on hard-coded rules versus machine learning in network operations by Mark Seery – quite often we can specify our response to an event as a simple set of rules, but if we want to identify deviation from “normal” behavior, machine learning might not be a bad idea.

For more details, watch the Event-Driven Network Automation part of Building Network Automation Solutions online course.

Controversial Reads 121022

Simply put, we have been right all along, and we now have the conflicting circuit court precedent to prove it. The Supreme Court needs to consider the Fourth Circuitâ€s arguments and address this split between circuits.

Do we let Big Tech have access to our private communications and free email accounts because itâ€s so easy? Once youâ€ve said yes — and who among us has not? — itâ€s not a stretch to think that Big Data already has almost all your information, so why get picky at the next juncture?

Internet infrastructure services—the heart of a secure and resilient internet where free speech and expression flows—should continue to focus their energy on making the web an essential resource for users and, with rare exceptions, avoid content policing.

Then Elon announced Apple, the most powerful company in the world, threatened to remove Twitter from the app store.

A California judge has cleared the way for a potentially massive class-action lawsuit against Google, which stands accused – again – of anticompetitive practices surrounding its Play store.

There is a growing trend in American culture of what the literary theorist Peter Brooks calls “storification.”

Targeted advertisingâ€s days Continue reading

Weekend Reads 120922

In this article, I will explain how SSHFP DNS records can help mitigate such risks and share the results of our large-scale analysis.

A vulnerability in IBM Cloud databases for PostgreSQL could have allowed attackers to launch a supply chain attack on cloud customers by breaching internal IBM Cloud services and disrupting the hosted system’s internal image-building process.

Amazon Web Services has signaled that the future of cloud computing cannot rely alone on general-purpose chips with its new Graviton3E silicon, joining AMD and Intel in introducing specialized central processing units that are meant to perform certain applications faster and more efficiently.

A recent statement from Italyâ€s data protection authority, the Garante, opens a new chapter in the never-ending story of profiling cookies.

While analyzing its capabilities, Akamai researchers have accidentally taken down a cryptomining botnet that was also used for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

Biometrics is supposed to be one of the underpinnings of a modern authentication system. But many biometric implementations (whether that be fingerprint scanes or face recognition) can be wildly inaccurate, and the only universally positive thing to say about them is they’re better than nothing.

Geolocation providers usually focus on locating end user devices at Continue reading

Worth Reading: Fail-Slow at Scale

Did you ever wonder why everything in IT becomes slower over time? Our changed expectations and accumulated cruft definitely play a major role.. but it could also be hardware. For more details (and fun reading), explore Fail-Slow at Scale: Evidence of Hardware Performance Faults in Large Production Systems.

Worth Reading: Fail-Slow at Scale

Did you ever wonder why everything in IT becomes slower over time? Our changed expectations and accumulated cruft definitely play a major role.. but it could also be hardware. For more details (and fun reading), explore Fail-Slow at Scale: Evidence of Hardware Performance Faults in Large Production Systems.

Ubiquiti Wireless Access Point Adoption Failed

https://codingpackets.com/blog/ubiquiti-wireless-access-point-adoption-failed

Heavy Networking 659: Securing Cloud Metro With Zero Trust (Sponsored)

Heavy Networking 659: Securing Cloud Metro With Zero Trust (Sponsored)

On today's Heavy Networking podcast, sponsored by Juniper Networks, we discuss how metro networks are evolving to Cloud Metro, how to apply cloud principles and automation to these locations, and how the attack surface changes when you transition to Cloud Metro. We also talk about how Juniper supports active assurance and zero trust security in these environments.

The post Heavy Networking 659: Securing Cloud Metro With Zero Trust (Sponsored) appeared first on Packet Pushers.