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A new trojan-horse that specifically targets iOS and OS X users has emerged out of China.
Security firm Palo Alto Networks has warned of a new malware threat to Apple customers that can infect iPhones and iPads via USB.
WireLurker
is significant as it is the first to be able to infect iOS devices like
a traditional virus. Previous malware has required users to have
jailbroken their device, meaning less than one per cent of users were at
risk.
The point of origin appears to have been a third-party app store for Macs running OS X.
Self-replicating malware
WireLurker
is able to auto-generate infected software, meaning removing the app
that allowed the malware into the device isn’t enough to solve the
issue.
At the time of writing, some 467 apps are believed
to be infected, with more than 350,000 users downloading them. All are
hosted on Chinese third-party app store Maiyadi.
Infection through USB
Those
downloading apps via Maiyadi aren’t the only users at risk. Wirelurker
is also able to gain access to iOS devices through being connected via
USB to an infected Mac.
Once it has infected an iOS
device, Wirelurker copies your phonebook and will read through any
iMessages you have on your phone or tablet.
For the time
being, Palo Alto is saying the best way to avoid becoming infected is to
not connect your iOS devices into any unfamiliar devices and to avoid
using non-Apple chargers. That includes the public chargers you get at
airports.
“We are aware of malicious software available
from a download site aimed at users in China, and we’ve blocked the
identified apps to prevent them from launching,” an spokesperson for
Apple told Engadget. “As always, we recommend that users download and
install software from trusted sources.”
Nervous
home owners now have a new way to reduce their urban paranoia levels.
The Mydlink Home system lets you monitor your mansion AND switch things
on and off in it.
Hot on the heels of the Withings Home, here a slightly dowdier but no less high tech Home: the Mydlink Home from D-Link.
Comprising
of a brace of a security cameras - the tilt-and-pannable Home Monitor
360 and the immobile Home Monitor HD - the self-explanatory Wi-Fi Motion
Sensor, the Home Smart Plug and the Mydlink app, which receives Home
gear alerts and lets you monitor and activate/deactivate electricals in
your home.
Examples suggested by D-Link range from the
sensible - a lamp that turns on via the Smart Plug when motion is
detected by your Home Monitor camera - to the slightly mad - you can
tune in to a Home Monitor camera to see if the iron is still on, and
then deactivate it. Well, so long as you've put every square inch of
your pad under Mydlink surveillance, and plugged your iron into a Smart
Plug socket.
These products follow hot on the heels of
the same sub-brand's Home Music Everywhere streamer. It means D-Link
devices can now theoretically turn on just about everything in your
house, though not, by and large, control things beyond that - that's
where IFTTT will eventually come into its own, with kit springing into
life when it detects it's been turned on.
It's got to
be said, these are notably less attractive than Withings' devices.
Still, the proof is in the using with these things, really, and rest
assured we'll have a review as soon as D-Link comes up with the goods.
Pricing
is as follows: Home Monitor HD £91, Home Monitor 360 £95, Home Smart
Plug £41, Home Wi-Fi Motion Sensor £36.50, Home Music Everywhere $45.50
The early look at Windows Server 10 reveals many expected enhancements and nice surprises
Alongside Microsoft's Oct. 1 release of the Windows 10 Technical Preview,
the company offered early previews of the next iteration of Windows
Server and System Center. With final releases not expected until the
summer of 2015, these extremely early technical previews are a marked
departure from the norm for Microsoft. Far from being feature complete
or even stable, the Windows Server Technical Preview nevertheless
presents a way to become familiar with new features coming down the
pike, and to put the UI changes through their paces.
As you'd expect, Windows Server Technical Preview largely builds on
virtualization, storage, networking, and management capabilities
introduced with Windows Server 2012. But it also holds a few nice
surprises. Here is a quick tour of the highlights -- for now. We're sure
to see much more in the coming months.
Start menu and the UI
Debate over the switch from the Windows 7 Start menu to the Start screen
in Windows 8 has been nonstop since day one, but if the Start screen
proved to be a bad fit for laptops and workstations, it makes even less
sense for servers. Fortunately the new Start menu isn’t limited to the
Windows 10 client, but is also present in the Windows Server Technical
Preview. While server users won’t benefit much from Windows 8-style live
tiles, the new Start menu (accessed by clicking the Windows button) is
unobtrusive and familiar.
The other big changes in the UI are focused on multitasking. First is
support for virtual desktops (not to be confused with remote desktops),
which can be used to group like applications into separate desktop
instances. The ability to snap windows to the edges of the screen is
also enhanced in the technical preview. Instead of simply splitting the
screen in half like in Windows 7 and Windows 8, you can split the screen
into quarters. This feature is clearly more beneficial to desktop users
(hopefully most of your server management isn’t done from the console),
but anything that makes an admin’s workflow smoother and more efficient
is welcome.
Like the old Windows 7 Start menu, the new Start menu in Windows Server Technical Preview offers fast access to all apps and files.
The command line and PowerShell
Thanks to PowerShell, more and more admins are driving their Windows
servers from the command line. Microsoft is improving the experience
there too. In current versions of Windows, selecting text or doing a
simple copy and paste into the Windows command line is not only a pain,
but can introduce line breaks, tabs, and inconsistent or unexpected
characters. These inconsistencies are gone in the Windows Server
Technical Preview. Now when you paste incompatible special characters
such as slanted quotes into the command line, they are automatically
cleaned up and converted into their command-line-safe equivalents.
Microsoft is aware that PowerShell is a major selling point of the
Windows Server platform right now and is taking measures to ensure the
whole experience is optimized and pain free. The Windows Server
Technical Preview includes PowerShell 5, which is a significant release
offering critical new features, as well as updates to features that have
been around for a while. The biggest new feature in PowerShell 5 is
OneGet, which brings package management capabilities to Windows.
Another major new area of improvement is the ability to manage network
switches from within PowerShell, a nod to Microsoft’s efforts to
leverage automation throughout the data center. Other PowerShell
enhancements include updates to Desired State Configuration and the
ability to natively manage zip archive files.
Like the old Windows 7 Start menu, the new Start menu in Windows Server
Technical Preview offers fast access to all apps and files.
Windows Defender
Windows Defender, Microsoft’s free antimalware solution, was originally
licensed only for home use, then integrated into the OS with Windows 8.
The Windows Server Technical Preview includes Windows Defender natively,
though the UI element is optional. Many corporate customers will likely
prefer an enterprise antimalware solution, but there are clear benefits
to having Windows Defender enabled natively. Having antimalware
protection from the get-go is a big deal, and the ability to manage it
through PowerShell is another notable win for system administrators.
In Windows 10 and Windows Server Technical Preview, you can enable Command Prompt property settings that make life much easier on the
command line.
Hyper-V
Without a doubt, one of Microsoft’s most rapidly evolving platforms,
Hyper-V continues to receive major attention in the Windows Server
Technical Preview. The first new feature is the ability to perform a
rolling upgrade to a Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V cluster, upgrading
cluster nodes to the Windows Server Technical Preview one by one. Once
all nodes have been updated, the functional level of the entire cluster
can then be upgraded to support a number of new Hyper-V features.
For starters, virtual machines running on Windows Server Technical
Preview use a new configuration file format. The new format promises to
be both more efficient (when reading and writing the data) and safer,
preventing data corruption due to storage failure. Checkpoints for
point-in-time snapshots are now supported in production workloads, due
to the use of backup technology within the guest OS. Windows-based
virtual machines will use the Volume Snapshot Service, while Linux VMs
flush their file system buffers during checkpoint creation.
Hyper-V Manager receives some love in the Windows Server Technical
Preview, gaining the use of WS-MAN, and the ability to access a
different set of credentials to connect to a remote host. Additionally,
virtual network adapters and memory are now treated as hot-swap capable,
so it's easier to perform critical VM changes on the fly. Finally,
virtual machines hosted in the Windows Server Technical Preview now
support Connected Standby.
Storage enhancements
Windows Server 2012 introduced Storage Spaces, a method of pooling
physical storage devices (hard drives or SSDs) into logical volumes in
order to boost performance and reliability. Windows Server 2012 R2 added
automated tiering, with pools of SSDs being used for the most
frequently accessed data and spinning hard drives for less frequently
used data.
Two major features added in the Windows Server Technical Preview are
aimed at common use cases for Windows Server-based storage. The first,
Storage QoS (Quality of Service), leverages PowerShell and WMI (Windows
Management Instrumentation) to build policies managing prioritization
and performance of virtual hard disks. The second, Storage Replica,
brings block-level replication to Windows Server. Storage Replica
provides high availability and can even be used to build multisite,
fail-over clusters. Between Storage QoS and Storage Replica, the Windows
Server Technical Preview shows Microsoft is serious about making
Windows Server a viable option for all of your storage needs.
Virtual networking
Windows Server 2012 introduced several new capabilities for building
complex virtual networks and allowing clients to connect to their own
isolated virtual network through the use of multitenant site-to-site
VPN. This was pitched as a way for service providers to build their own
cloud service on the Windows Server platform, but the configuration was
complex and primarily handled within PowerShell. The Windows Server
Technical Preview brings this functionality into a new server role
called the Network Controller. The Network Controller role provides the
ability to automate the configuration of networks both physical and
virtual, as well as handle numerous other aspects of your networking
environment.
The Network Controller server role in Windows Server Technical Preview incorporates virtual networks, physical networks, and network services.
Identity and access management
Possibly one of the more exciting features coming to the next version of
Windows Server is more control over the permissions provided to users
with elevated rights. Microsoft has not said much publicly about the
additional level of security, only that time-based access and more
fine-grained permissions will be available. However, one could speculate
that this will be based on PowerShell’s JEA (Just Enough Admin) feature
set. JEA allows administrator access to be limited to specific
PowerShell cmdlets, specific modules, or even certain parameters within a
cmdlet.
Additionally, JEA is configured using a local administrator on the
server, preventing network-level permissions from being cached on the
server and potentially being used in a pass-the-hash attack. Regardless
of how these features look and feel in the final product, they will be a
welcome addition for IT shops.
MultiPoint Services
In conjunction with Remote Desktop Services, MultiPoint Services support
multiple users logging into the same computer. Rather than requiring a
thin client or additional hardware, MultiPoint Service clients are
connected directly to the server using standard USB and video devices.
This functionality was originally shipped as Windows MultiPoint Server
2012, a product aimed at schools that allows a teacher to manage what is
shown on student displays. Now it comes along for the ride in Windows
Server Technical Preview.
DNS Policies
An announced feature that is nowhere to be found in the current release
of the technical preview, DNS Policies will presumably allow you to
manage how and when your DNS server responds to client queries.
Microsoft states that DNS responses can be configured based on time, the
public IP of the DNS client performing the query, and other parameters.
There are several scenarios in which this type of functionality could
be useful, such as load balancing or custom responses based on
geography. I imagine this having a similar feel to the policy-based DHCP
functionality introduced in Windows Server 2012.
IP Address Management
IPAM (IP Address Management) was introduced in Windows Server 2012 as a
way to monitor and manage DHCP and DNS services. The focus in both
Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 was clearly on DHCP and
the IP address space. The Windows Server Technical Preview enhances
existing functionality for DNS servers and your IP address space, but
also allows you to manage DNS zones and resource records on both Active
Directory-integrated and file-backed DNS servers.
Web Application Proxy
First appearing as a core Windows service in Windows Server 2012 R2, Web
Application Proxy functions as a reverse proxy, allowing external
clients to access Web applications internal to the corporate network.
The Windows Server Technical Preview promises new capabilities in Web
Application Proxy, including the ability to handle HTTP-to-HTTPS
redirection and additional support for claims-based or integrated
Windows authentication.
Windows Server next
Where is Windows Server Technical Preview taking us? Microsoft pitched
Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 as the basis for our
private cloud. Major features introduced or substantially enhanced in
Windows Server 2012 -- such as Hyper-V, Storage Spaces, IP Address
Management, and multitenant site-to-site VPN -- were geared specifically
to companies looking to gain efficiency through consolidation and
automation.
The Windows Server Technical Preview is a clear progression of this
vision, as most of the features enumerated here bring something new to
the table when it comes to building and managing a hybrid or private
cloud.
From device discovery to visibility into
systems, networks, and traffic flows, these free open source monitoring
tools have you covered
In the real estate world, the mantra is location, location, location. In
the network and server administration world, the mantra is visibility,
visibility, visibility. If you don't know what your network and servers
are doing at every second of the day, you're flying blind. Sooner or
later, you're going to meet with disaster.
Fortunately, many good tools, both commercial and open source, are
available to shine much-needed light into your environment. Because good
and free always beat good and costly, I've compiled a list of my
favorite open source tools that prove their worth day in and day out in
networks of any size. From network and server monitoring to trending,
graphing, and even switch and router configuration backups, these
utilities will see you through.
1) Cacti
First, there was MRTG. Back in the heady 1990s, Tobi Oetiker saw fit to
write a simple graphing tool built on a round-robin database scheme that
was perfectly suited to displaying router throughput. MRTG begat
RRDTool, which is the self-contained round-robin database and graphing
solution in use in a staggering number of open source tools today. Cacti is the current standard-bearer of open source network graphing, and it takes the original goals of MRTG to whole new levels.
Cacti is a LAMP application that provides a complete graphing framework
for data of nearly every sort. In some of my more advanced installations
of Cacti, I collect data on everything from fluid return temperatures
in data center cooling units to free space on filer volumes to FLEXlm
license utilization. If a device or service returns numeric data, it can
probably be integrated into Cacti. There are templates to monitor a
wide variety of devices, from Linux and Windows servers to Cisco routers
and switches -- basically anything that speaks SNMP. There are also
collections of contributed templates for an even greater array of
hardware and software.
While Cacti's default collection method is SNMP, local Perl or PHP
scripts can be used as well. The framework deftly separates data
collection and graphing into discrete instances, so it's easy to rework
and reorganize existing data into different displays. In addition, you
can easily select specific timeframes and sections of graphs simply by
clicking and dragging. In some of my installations, I have data going
back several years, which proves invaluable when determining if current
behavior of a network device or server is truly anomalous or, in fact,
occurs regularly.
From disk utilization to fan speeds in a power supply, if it can be
monitored, Cacti can track it -- and make that data quickly available.
Using the PHP Network Weathermap
plug-in for Cacti, you can easily create live network maps showing link
utilization between network devices, complete with graphs that appear
when you hover over a depiction of a network link. In many places where
I've implemented Cacti, these maps wind up running 24/7 on 42-inch LCD
monitors mounted high on the wall, providing the IT staff with
at-a-glance updates on network utilization and link status.
Cacti is an extensive performance graphing and trending tool that can be
used to track nearly any monitored metric that can be plotted on a
graph. It's also infinitely customizable, which means it can get complex
in places.
2) Nagios
Nagios is a mature
network monitoring framework that's been in active development for many
years. Written in C, it's almost everything that system and network
administrators could ask for in a monitoring package. The Web GUI is
fast and intuitive, and the back end is extremely robust.
As with Cacti, a very active community supports Nagios, and plug-ins
exist for a massive array of hardware and software. From basic ping
tests to integration with plug-ins like WebInject, you can constantly
monitor the status of servers, services, network links, and basically
anything that speaks IP. I use Nagios to monitor server disk space, RAM
and CPU utilization, FLEXlm license utilization, server exhaust
temperatures, and WAN and Internet link latency. It can be used to
ensure that Web servers are not only answering HTTP queries, but that
they're returning the expected pages and haven't been hijacked, for
example.
Network and server monitoring is obviously incomplete without
notifications. Nagios has a full email/SMS notification engine and an
escalation layout that can be used to make intelligent decisions on who
and when to notify, which can save plenty of sleep if used correctly. In
addition, I’ve integrated Nagios notifications with Jabber, so the
instant an exception is thrown, I get an IM from Nagios detailing the
problem in addition to an SMS or email, depending on the escalation
settings for that object. The Web GUI can be used to quickly suspend
notifications or acknowledge problems when they occur, and it can even
record notes entered by admins.
Nagios can be a challenge for newcomers, but the rather complex
configuration is also its strength, as it can be adapted to almost any
monitoring task.
As if this wasn't enough, a mapping function displays all the monitored
devices in a logical representation of their placement on the network,
with color-coding to show problems as they occur.
The downside to Nagios is the configuration. The config is best done via
command line and can present a significant learning curve for newbies,
though folks who are comfortable with standard Linux/Unix config files
will feel right at home. As with many tools, the capabilities of Nagios
are immense, but the effort to take advantage of some of those
capabilities is equally significant.
Don't let the complexity discourage you -- Nagios has saved my bacon
more times than I can possibly recall. The benefits of the early-warning
systems provided by this tool for so many different aspects of the
network cannot be overstated. It's easily worth your time and effort.
3) Icinga
Icinga started out
as a fork of Nagios, but has recently been rewritten as Icinga 2. Both
versions are under active development and available today, and Icinga
1.x is backward-compatible with Nagios plug-ins and configurations.
Icinga 2 has been developed to be smaller and sleeker, and it offers
distributed monitoring and multithreading frameworks that aren’t present
in Nagios or Icinga 1. You can migrate from Nagios to Icinga 1 and from
Icinga 1 to Icinga 2.
Like Nagios, Icinga can be used to monitor anything that speaks IP, as
deep as you can go with SNMP and custom plug-ins and add-ons.
Icinga offers a thorough monitoring and alerting framework that’s
designed to be as open and extensible as Nagios is, but with several
different Web UI options.
There are several Web UIs for Icinga, and one major differentiator from
Nagios is the configuration, which can be done via the Web UI rather
than through configuration files. For those who'd rather manage their
configurations outside of the command line, this is a significant
benefit.
Icinga integrates with a variety of graphing and monitoring packages
such as PNP4Nagios, inGraph, and Graphite, providing solid performance
visualizations. Icinga also has extended reporting capabilities.
4) NeDi
If you've ever had to search for a device on your network by telnetting
into switches and doing MAC address lookups, or you simply wish you
could tell where a certain device is physically located (or, perhaps
more important, where it was located), then you should take a good look at NeDi.
NeDi is a LAMP application that regularly walks the MAC address and ARP
tables on your network switches, cataloging every device it discovers in
a local database. It’s not as well-known as some other projects, but it
can be a very handy tool in corporate networks where devices are moving
around constantly.
You can log into the NeDi Web GUI and conduct searches to determine the
switch, switch port, or wireless AP of any device by MAC address, IP
address, or DNS name. NeDi collects as much information as possible from
every network device it encounters, pulling serial numbers, firmware
and software versions, current temps, module configurations, and so
forth. You can even use NeDi to flag MAC addresses of devices that are
missing or stolen. If they appear on the network again, NeDi will let
you know.
NeDi continuously walks through a network infrastructure and catalogs devices, keeping track of everything it discovers.
Discovery runs from cron at set intervals. Configuration is
straightforward, with a single config file that allows for a significant
amount of customization, including the ability to skip devices based on
regular expressions or network-border definitions. You can even include
seed lists of devices to query if the network is separated by
undiscoverable boundaries, as in the case of an MPLS network. NeDi
usually uses Cisco Discovery Protocol or Link Layer Discovery Protocol,
discovering new switches and routers as it rolls through the network,
then connecting to them to collect their information. Once the initial
configuration has been set, running a discovery is fairly quick.
NeDi integrates with Cacti to some degree, and if provided with the
credentials to a functional Cacti installation, device discoveries will
link to the associated Cacti graphs for that device.
5) Ntop
The Ntop project -- now known as Ntopng,
for "next generation" -- has come a long way over the past decade. Call
it Ntop or Ntopng, what you get is a top-notch network traffic monitor
married to a fast and simple Web GUI. It's written in C and completely
self-contained. You run a single process configured to watch a specific
network interface, and that's about all there is to it.
Ntop provides easily digestible graphs and tables showing current and
past network traffic, including protocol, source, destination, and
history of specific transactions, as well as the hosts on either end.
You'll also find an impressive array of network utilization graphs, live
maps, and trends, along with a plug-in framework for an array of
add-ons such as NetFlow and sFlow monitors. There’s even the Nbox, a
hardware monitor that embeds Ntop.
Ntop even incorporates a lightweight Lua API framework that can be used
to support extensions via scripting languages. Ntop can also store host
data in RRD files for persistent data collection.
Ntop is a packet sniffing tool with a slick Web UI that displays live
data on network traffic. Host data flow and host communication pair
information is also available in real time.
One of the handiest uses of Ntopng is on-the-spot traffic checkups. When
one of my Cacti-driven PHP Weathermaps suddenly shows a collection of
network links running in the red, I know that those links exceed 85
percent utilization, but I don't know why. By switching to an Ntopng
process watching that network segment, I can pull a minute-by-minute
report of the top talkers and immediately know which hosts are
responsible and what traffic they're pushing.
That kind of visibility is invaluable, and it's very easy to come by.
Essentially, you can run Ntopng on any interface that's been configured
at the switch level to monitor another port or VLAN. That's it.
6) Zabbix
Zabbix is a
full-scale network- and system-monitoring tool that combines several
functions into a single Web-based console. It can be configured to
monitor and collect data from a wide variety of servers and network
gear, offering service and performance monitoring of each object.
Zabbix works with agents running on monitored systems, though it can
also run agentless using SNMP or other monitoring methods such as remote
checks on open services like SMTP and HTTP. It explicitly supports
VMware and other virtualization hypervisors, producing in-depth data on
hypervisor performance and activity. Special attention is also paid to
monitoring Java application servers, Web services, and databases.
Hosts can be added manually or through an autodiscovery process. An
extensive set of default templates apply to the most common use cases
such as Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows servers; well-known services such as
SMTP and HTTP, and ICMP and IPMI devices for in-depth hardware
monitoring. In addition, custom checks written in Perl, Python, or nearly any language can be integrated into Zabbix.
Zabbix monitors servers and networks with an extensive array of tools,
including tools for monitoring virtualization hypervisors and Web
application stacks.
Zabbix also offers customizable dashboards and Web UI displays to focus
attention on your most critical components. Notifications and
escalations can draw on customizable actions that can be applied to
hosts or groups of hosts. Actions can even be configured to trigger
remote commands, so a script can be run on a monitored host if certain
event criteria are observed.
Zabbix graphs performance data such as network throughput and CPU
utilization, as well as collects them in customizable displays. Further,
Zabbix supports customizable maps, screens, and even slideshows that
display the current status of monitored devices.
Zabbix can be daunting to implement initially, but prudent use of
templates and autodiscovery can ease the integration hassles. In
addition to an installable package, Zabbix is available as a virtual
appliance for several popular hypervisors.
7) Observium
Observium is a
network and host monitor that can scan ranges of addresses for systems
to monitor using common SNMP credentials. Packaged as a LAMP
application, Observium is relatively easy to set up and configure,
requiring the usual installations of Apache, PHP, and MySQL, database
creation, Apache configuration, and the like. It is designed to be
installed as its own server with a dedicated URL, rather than under a
larger Web tree.
From there, you can log into the GUI and start adding hosts and
networks, as well as autodiscovery ranges and SNMP data to have
Observium crawl around the network and gather data on each system
discovered. Observium can also discover network devices via CDP, LLDP,
or FDP, and host agents can be deployed to Linux systems to aid in data
collection.
Observium combines system and network monitoring with performance
trending. It can be configured to track almost any available metric.
All of this data is presented in an easily navigated user interface that
provides a multitude of statistics, charts, and graphs. This includes
everything from ping and SNMP response times to graphs of IP throughput,
fragmentation, packet counts, and so forth. Depending on the device,
this data will be available for every port discovered and include an
inventory of modular devices.
For servers, Observium will display CPU, RAM, storage, swap,
temperature, and event log status. You can incorporate data collection
and performance graphing on services as well, including Apache, MySQL,
BIND, Memcached, Postfix, and others.
Observium plays nice as a VM, so can quickly become a go-to tool for
server and network status information. It's a great way to bring
autodiscovery and charting to a network of any size.
Do-it-yourself
Too often, IT administrators think they can't color outside the lines.
Whether we're dealing with a custom application or an "unsupported"
piece of hardware, many of us believe that if a monitoring tool can't
handle it immediately, it can't be handled. That's simply not the case,
and with a little bit of elbow grease, almost anything can be monitored,
cataloged, and made more visible.
An example might be a custom application with a database back end, like a
Web store or an internal finance application. Management wants to see
pretty graphs and charts depicting usage data in some form or another.
If you're using, say, Cacti already, you have several ways to bring this
data into the fold, such as constructing a simple Perl or PHP script to
run queries on the database and pass counts back to Cacti or even an
SNMP call to the database server using private MIBs (management
information bases). It can be done, and it can generally be done easily.
If it's unsupported hardware, as long as it speaks SNMP, you can most
likely get at the data you need, though it may take a little research.
Once you have the right MIBs to query, you can then use that information
to write or adapt plug-ins to collect that data. In many cases, you can
even integrate your cloud services into this monitoring by using
standard SNMP on those instances, or by using an API provided by your
cloud vendor. Just because you have cloud services doesn’t mean you
should trust all your monitoring to your cloud provider. The provider
doesn’t know your application and service stack as well as you do.
Getting most of these tools running usually isn't much of a challenge.
They typically have packages available to download for most popular
Linux distributions, if they aren't already in the package list. In some
cases, they may come preconfigured as a virtual server. Configuring and
tweaking the tools can take quite a while depending on the size of the
infrastructure, but getting them going initially is usually a cinch. At
the very least, they’re worth a test-drive.
No matter which of these tools you use to keep tabs on your
infrastructure, it will essentially provide the equivalent of at least
one more IT admin -- one that can't necessarily fix anything, but one
that watches everything, 24/7/365. The up-front time investment is well
worth the effort, no matter which way you cut it. Be sure to run a small
set of autonomous monitoring tools on another server, watching the main
monitoring server. This is a case where it's always best to ensure the
watcher is being watched.
Motorola's Droid Turbo isn't sexy, but it
offers speed, helpful software extensions, and the ability to go two
days between charges
A common complaint of Android smartphone users is poor battery life.
Motorola Mobility, now a subsidiary of Lenovo, has targeted such gripes
with big-battery versions of some of its Droid smartphones. The new
Droid Turbo — which costs $600 for the 32GB model and $650 for the 64GB
model without a two-year contract and is currently available only from
Verizon Wireless — is essentially a Moto X with a bigger battery,
bringing more stamina to Motorola's current flagship phone.
You indeed get better battery life: about the same as a (smaller) iPhone
6, meaning you can count on a day's full use as long as you have a 3G
or better cellular connection. You'll get a couple of days between
charges if your usage is mainly data over Wi-Fi or LTE. (Motorola's
claims of two days of usage for high-volume callers is, well,
optimistic.)
Motorola includes what it calls a turbo charger for the Droid Turbo. It
claims the turbo charger can charge a depleted Turbo in only 15 minutes.
My experience is that it takes at least three times as long if the
phone is not turned off. The turbo charging also slows down if your
battery has more juice; it takes longer to charge a half-depleted Droid
than a fully depleted unit. Honestly, it's not appreciably faster than
other wall chargers.
A beefier smartphone with the hardware strength you'd expect
The big trade-off in the Droid Turbo is its heft: The phone is slightly
thicker and heavier than most other smartphones because of that extra
battery. That's not a problem — smartphones have become so light and
thin that a "heavy" phone today is still quite comfortable and easy to
grip and hold.
But for the record, at its thickest point, a Droid Turbo is 0.42 inch,
versus 0.39 inch for the Moto X and 0.27 inch for the iPhone 6. As for
weight, the Droid Turbo weighs 6.2 ounces, versus 5.1 ounces for the
Moto X and 4.6 ounces for the iPhone 6.
The Droid Turbo sports an old-fashioned design that was more common in
the 1990s: that executive style of shiny black with chrome highlights.
It's not ugly, but it's not sexy either.
I'm not a fan of the Kevlar back, which feels tacky and heats up
considerably while the device is charging or using its radios. On the
plus side, it helps with the grip. You can buy a Droid Turbo model with a
different back material— woven nylon — but I did not have such a device
to test.
As for the Droid Turbo's processor, internal storage, screen resolution,
and other hardware specs, the 5.2-inch-screen Droid Turbo is
well-equipped. It's a speedy, capable device that will handle any
serious mobile user's computing needs. These days, that's par for the
course in a high-end device. Don't get hung up on such specs.
Motorola's Moto Assist software helps set it apart
More interesting are the Motorola software extensions for the Droid
Turbo. Its status widget, for example, is a very convenient tool to see
weather, time, battery status, and calendar alerts in one place.
The Droid Turbo's status widget provides a lot of handy status
information in one place, such as time, weather, battery level, and
upcoming appointments.
Its Moto services — available for a couple years now on various Motorola
phones such as the Moto X and G — are interesting, too. Essentially,
they provide a collection of conveniences, such as a voice assistant in
the style of "OK, Google" or "Hey, Siri." (Unlike Apple's "Hey, Siri,"
Android's "OK, Google" and the Droid Turbo's voice assistant work even
if the phone is not plugged into a power outlet or powered USB port.)
But given that Android has this capability anyhow, I'm not sure why
Motorola has its own version, especially as it seems to work exactly
like Google's.
Another Moto service notices when you reach for the phone and displays
your current status, such as the lock icon if the phone is locked, an
icon saying you have new mail, and so on. But the feature would be more
useful if you could more easily act on what the screen shows.
Unfortunately, there's no direct interaction available as there is in,
say, the iOS or forthcoming Android Lollipop lock screen.
For example, when the Droid Turbo shows a lock icon as I reach for it,
it would be nice to unlock the device from that icon. But you can't —
you have to push the power button instead. (The normal Android lock icon
appears if you tap the screen, but disappears before you can swipe it.
The Moto service seems to override that Android feature.)
More useful are the Moto Assist features, such as automatically
silencing the ringer during hours you set (similar to iOS's Do Not
Disturb) or when the room is dark (a nice idea when you're in bed or in a
movie theater). Moto Assist can have the Droid Turbo notice when you're
driving (presumably by your speed) and automatically switch to
Bluetooth output for audio and speak aloud text messages and callers'
names while you drive.
The Moto Assist software that comes with the Droid Turbo offers useful
assistive capabilities, such as silencing your phone during meetings,
while asleep, and when in dark rooms.
My favorite Moto Assist feature is the one that silences your ringer and
can optionally autoreply to calls via text messages while you're in a
meeting — it checks your calendar to know when to go quiet. That's
great!
The Droid Turbo won't be many people's top choice for an Android
smartphone; the HTC One M8 has better visual appeal, for example. But
the Droid Turbo should be in your final cut, along with the HTC One,
Moto X, and Samsung Galaxy S5.
SQL injection bug threatens the websites of
enterprises, governments, and many other institutions using the open
source Drupal CMS
Word broke yesterday of a major-league security issue
involving Drupal, the open source content management system (CMS) used
widely in enterprises and government. Come to think of it, "major
league" doesn't begin to cover it: Drupal developers have admitted that if your installation wasn't patched before Oct. 15, 11 p.m. UTC, it's best to consider the entire site compromised.
How deep does the compromise run? Deep enough that simply upgrading to the latest version of Drupal won't help, and patching an affected website is only the first of many mitigation steps required.
Drupal
has long been a staple of enterprise CMSes, powering sites as diverse
as Whitehouse.gov and even InfoWorld.com itself at one point. Version 7,
unveiled in 2011, was built with features designed specifically to appeal to enterprise users.
Attackers
began making use of the vulnerability to launch automated SQL-injection
attacks against websites within hours of its original disclosure, according to Web security research film Sucuri. The bug wasn't detected by Drupal's development team, but by an independent researcher referencing a bug that had been known since November of last year.
Acquia, the company that provides professional services, support, and hosting for Drupal, unveiled cloud-hosted versions
of Drupal for business-grade deployments as another spur to adoption.
The company began providing commercial support for Drupal back in 2008 and soon found
around half of its customers were small businesses, with enterprises,
public-sector outfits, nonprofits, and education forming the rest.
After the attack hit, the company claims it took proactive steps
to protect customers running Drupal installations in its cloud -- the
kind of protection the company touts as one of the advantages of using a
hosted and managed installation of Drupal. According to Acquia, other
commercial Drupal vendors (mainly Platform.sh and Pantheon) "all
implemented different platform-wide protections for our respective
customers, " with the three companies collaborating together on possible
solutions.
One major takeaway is the speed at which attackers
were able to leverage information about the exploit as word of it
emerged. It shows today's cyber criminals are well-prepared to take
advantage of a known exploit, especially one that uses a widely
understood delivery method such as a SQL injection.
InfoWorld's
Roger Grimes expressed concern about the future of malware and the idea
that "a vendor releases a patch and every possible machine is exploited
before anyone even wakes up," as he put it in an email. "Does it
eventually become a race between the vendor and malware writer for
customer trust? ... Most bad guys don't want to exploit every computer
immediately because all that does is ramp up the patching speed, and
that's counterproductive to what they want."
Google has embraced the Docker container technology and expanded the Firebase mobile development platform
Continuing to keep pace with chief cloud rivals Amazon Web Services and
Microsoft Azure, Google has made a number of improvements to its Google
Cloud Platform services.
A series of announcements made to show the company
embracing the newest virtual technologies, such as Docker containers
and the Firebase platform to aid mobile developers, as it continues to
cut prices of its services.
In the realm of virtualization, the company has devised a way to make
it easy to use Docker containers, a new lightweight virtualization
technology. The company has devised the Google Container Engine service
for building and running Docker containers. The engine is based on the
open-source Kubernetes project.
The company also explained what it is doing with the mobile platform technology created by Firebase, which Google bought last month. Firebase offers a way to speed the process of connecting mobile applications to back-end data sources.
Google
has expanded the range of queries that can be made against the data
sets held by Firebase. Users can now sort the data by arbitrary fields,
as well as filter the data. The service also now offers triggers, in
which developers can define certain actions to take place if a set of
conditions are met.
Google has expanded the number of ways users can connect to the cloud service.
The
company now offers direct peering, in which corporate customers can
setup a network link directly into a Google data center. Google offers
70 points of presence in 33 countries. The company also can provide
dedicated connectivity through seven carriers: Verizon, Equinix, IX
Reach, Level 3, Tata Communications, Telx, and Zayo.
Expanding the
connectivity options even further, Google will start offering VPN
connections, which can provide a secure pipeline over the public
Internet.
Like rivals Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, Google continues to aggressively cut prices of its services, which it vowed to continue to do as the price of hardware decreases.
The cost of copying data from the Google Cloud has been cut by 47
percent. Many cuts have been made in storage space as well: the cost of
BigQuery storage has been cut by 23 percent, persistent disk snapshots
have been cut by 79 percent, solid-state storage has been cut by 48
percent, and Cloud SQL storage costs have been cut by 25 percent.
The company introduced a number of other features to its cloud, including:
Managed virtual machines, introduced earlier this year, is in full beta release.
A debugger, in beta form, that could provide users with more information when services don't operate as expected.
A type of compute engine based on solid-state disks. The "Local SSD"
compute engine can execute up to 680,000 read IOPS (input/output
operations per second) or 280,000 write IOPS.
An autoscaler has been released in beta that can automatically grow
or shrink a fleet of virtual machines based on customer needs.
Cisco predicts by 2018, a quarter of the world's population will use personal cloud storage
Over the next four years, data center traffic is expected to nearly
triple, largely thanks to a booming cloud computing industry.
That’s
according to Cisco’s fourth annual Global Cloud Index, which predicts
that the cloud will account for 76 percent of total data center traffic
by 2018. That’s up from the cloud's accounting for 54 percent of data
center traffic last year.
The report, released on Tuesday, also showed that by 2018, half of
the world's population will have residential Internet access, and 53
percent of those users will store content on personal cloud storage
services.
Cisco's study was released the same day that Google renewed its push to pick up momentum in the public cloud market by dropping prices and adding and updating features.
Google,
along with cloud rivals Amazon, IBM and Microsoft, are pushing their
cloud efforts because the market is growing so fast.
In the spring Forrester Research reported that the public cloud market is set for “hypergrowth,” and is expected to reach $191 billion by 2020. That’s a big jump from the $58 billion market at the end of 2013.
While the public cloud is showing a 50 percent growth rate, the growth rates of both hybrid and private clouds come in at a strong 40 percent and 45 percent, according to Synergy Research Group.
Cisco’s report echoes similar growth predictions.
The
study predicts that global data center traffic will nearly triple from
2013 to 2018, growing from 3.1 zettabytes per year in 2013 to 8.6
zettabytes per year. A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes.
Cisco
said 8.6 zettabytes of data center traffic is equivalent to streaming
all of the approximately 500,000 movies and 3 million television shows
ever made in ultra-high definition 250,000 times.
The company’s
report is calculated by using data from server shipments to data
centers, the installed base of workloads and the volume of bytes per
workload per month. The company said it used data from market research
firms Gartner, IDC, Synergy Research and Juniper Research.
This story, "Cloud expected to make up three-fourths of data center traffic by 2018" was originally published by
Computerworld.
(Reuters) - Japanese display maker Sharp Corp, a supplier to Apple
Inc, said its shipments of screens to Chinese smartphone makers may
exceed its target for the fiscal year to next March as it expands its
business to new models.
Norikazu Hohshi, head of Sharp s device business, said on Thursday
that the company would be shipping screens to 15 Chinese smartphone
manufacturers this fiscal year and that it was in talks to supply
screens for 25 new Chinese models, with shipments to begin as early as
the January-March quarter.
The recent rise of Chinese smartphone manufacturers such as Xiaomi
Technology Co Ltd [XTC.UL] helped to boost Sharp s shipments of small
and mid-sized liquid crystal displays by around 50 percent in the six
months to end-September, to $1 billion.
The company forecasts the business will bring in $2 billion in revenue for the full year to next March.
Worries have mounted about softening prices of LCD screens for
Chinese smartphones. Japan Display Inc, the world s largest maker of LCD
screens for smartphones, last month warned that it expected a 10
billion yen ($87 million) net loss for the year to March, reversing a
previous forecast for a net profit.
Hohshi acknowledged that there had been a sudden drop in LCD screen
prices for Chinese smartphones over the past six months but said this
had not affected the high-resolution screens that Sharp is supplying.
NEW YORK: Palo Alto Networks Inc has discovered a new family of malware
that can infect Apple Inc's desktop and mobile operating systems,
underscoring the increasing sophistication of attacks on iPhones and Mac
computers.
The "WireLurker" malware can install third-party
applications on regular, non-jailbroken iOS devices and hop from
infected Macs onto iPhones through USB connector-cables, said Ryan
Olson, intelligence director for the company's Unit 42 division.
Palo
Alto Networks said on Wednesday it had seen indications that the
attackers were Chinese. The malware originated from a Chinese
third-party apps store and appeared to have mostly affected users within
the country.
The malware spread through infected apps uploaded
to the apps store, that were in turn downloaded onto Mac computers.
According to the company, more than 400 such infected apps had been
downloaded over 350,000 times so far.
It's unclear what the
objective of the attacks was. There is no evidence that the attackers
had made off with anything more sensitive than messaging IDs and
contacts from users' address books, Olson added.
But "they could just as easily take your Apple ID or do something else that's bad news," he said in an interview.
Apple, which Olson said was notified a couple weeks ago, did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
Once
WireLurker gets on an iPhone, it can go on to infect existing apps on
the device, somewhat akin to how a traditional virus infects computer
software programs. Olson said it was the first time he had seen it in
action. "It's the first time we've seen anyone doing it in the wild," he
added. – Reuters
Surprise -- the underlying technology matters less to an attack's success than basic human determination
When a potentially major security flaw gets announced, à la SandWorm, Shellshock, and Heartbleed,
those of us in the computer security field can’t be sure it’s a “big
one” that would attack or compromise the majority of the computers in
the world or your enterprise. Whether the technical methods are familiar
or novel, most of the discovered attack methods don’t go big.
We’ve had lots of “big ones” in the past. The Robert Morris worm
of 1988 infected around 6,000 computers. That doesn’t sound like a lot
today, but back then, it represented about 10 percent of the computers
hooked to the Internet. Since then, far bigger and faster-spreading
worms appeared, most notably Michelangelo, Code Red, Melissa, SQL Slammer, ILoveYou, and Blaster.
In those heady days, a single infection would turn into a global
outbreak in a day or less. The record belongs to SQL Slammer, which
infected nearly every unpatched SQL server on the Internet and clients
running SQL in about 10 minutes.
Luckily, we haven’t seen a worm go global at such a pace in a while.
Gladly behind us are the days when we had to shut down the mail server,
get everyone off their computers so that we could clean them up, and
call everyone who received one of our infected emails. Then again, maybe
I shouldn’t be so confident. Now we have to worry about advanced human
attackers that steal intellectual property and money. I’d love to fret
about a simple, noncriminal malware program.
We are very bad at predicting what vulnerability will go global. As with
our real-life wars, no one can predict which conflict will turn into a
global world war until we are in it. As in the digital world, real-life
experts are constantly predicting the latest conflict will lead to
nuclear Armageddon. But it hasn’t happened.
In the digital world, for an infestation to quickly go global, it must
be “wormable,” meaning that a hacker can take advantage of the
vulnerability using roving malicious code that bounces from computer to
computer, instead of having to manually test each computer. If it can’t
be wormed, it probably won't go international.
That’s the conventional thinking today. Perhaps in the future a
malicious coder will mess with a big cloud service and create a new
malware propagation method. Viruses, which are malicious piece of code
that infect other code or documents to spread, can go global quickly,
too. But they aren’t as popular as worms anymore.
However, most worms and viruses don’t go big. Why? Because there is a
huge gap between ability and action, between capability and causation.
I don’t know why some malware programs go big and others don’t, but I
have noticed a few ways to categorize those that went global:
Vulnerabilities that we knew about, that we worried about, and that
still went big, such as Blaster and Michelangelo -- these are uncommon
Techniques that come out of the blue and surprise us all, such as SQL Slammer and Code Red
Techniques that we knew about for a while but for unknown reasons
take off later than when they were discovered, such as Melissa and
ILoveYou
Long-known public techniques used continuously by multiple attackers
over long periods of time, such as spearphishing and pass-the-hash
attacks (popular today)
Those broad classes don’t help identify what might be a “big one.” What
causes an attack to be a “big one” remains a mystery to the computer
defense industry. But I believe three nontechnical factors are often
involved:
Motivation and intent: A criminal agency, a spy organization, or another entity wants to use a method to achieve one or more goals.
Loss of control: The malware coder didn’t seem to
realize how quickly his creation would spread, such as with the Robert
Morris worm, SQL Slammer, and Melissa.
Placement and timing: The malware happened to
resonate with people. For example, I’ve always believed Melissa went
global because its creator promised free porn in a day when free porn
wasn’t the norm.
If I had to pick one reason a worm went global, I'd have to go with
motivation and intent. Many of the hacks we worried about didn’t happen
until a bad guy finally tried it, such as Kerberos ticket manipulation.
I’m sure there are other factors I’m not thinking about right now. But I
know that capability and potential are still poorly correlated with
actual damage. If we could better predict what will go big, our job
would be a lot easier.
You can think of cyber threats the same way the military thinks about
weapons of mass destruction: Many nations (even individuals) know how to
build weapons of mass destruction. The major entities won’t use them
unless absolutely necessary, if ever. But now more entities have access
to them than can possibly be controlled over the long term.
Someday a weapon of mass destruction will be used against a major
(unsuspecting) population. That day is coming, and we can’t possibly
predict when. The capability and potential have been there for a long
time; it’s a question of timing.
Even more unsettling, it doesn't matter if we make it harder or easier
to carry off the big attacks that will cause huge disruption. Plus, we
are so poor at computer security (in general) that we give attackers
dozens to hundreds of avenues to try when they get motivated.
A cyberespionage group has been using advanced spear-phishing techniques
to steal email log-in credentials from the employees of military
agencies, embassies, defense contractors and international media outlets
that use Office 365's Outlook Web App.
The group behind the attack campaign has been operating since at least
2007 according to researchers from Trend Micro, who published a research paper on Wednesday about the attacks they dubbed Operation Pawn Storm.
The Pawn Storm attackers have used a variety of techniques over the
years to compromise their targets, including spear-phishing emails with
malicious Microsoft Office attachments that installed a backdoor-type
malware program called SEDNIT or Sofacy, or selective exploits injected
into compromised legitimate websites.
The group used one
particularly interesting technique in email phishing attacks against
organizations that use the Outlook Web App (OWA), which is part of
Microsoft's Office 365 service.
For each phishing attack, the
group created two fake domains: one very similar to that of a
third-party website known to the victims -- like that of an upcoming
industry conference for example -- and one similar to the domain used by
the targeted organization's Outlook Web App deployment.
The
attackers then crafted phishing emails with a link to the fake
third-party site where they hosted non-malicious JavaScript code whose
purpose was twofold: to open the actual legitimate site in a new tab and
to redirect the already opened Outlook Web App browser tab to a
phishing page.
"The JavaScript made it appear that the victims'
OWA sessions ended while at the same time, tricked them into reentering
their credentials," the Trend Micro researchers wrote in their paper.
"To do this, the attackers redirected victims to fake OWA log-in pages
by setting their browsers' open windows property."
This technique
does not exploit any vulnerabilities and works in any popular browser,
including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Apple's
Safari, the researchers said. However, two conditions need to be met:
the victims need to use OWA and they need to click on the embedded links
from OWA's preview pane, they said.
This
can be a powerful attack, because the victims know they had a
legitimate OWA session opened in that browser tab and might not check if
the URL has changed before re-entering their credentials.
In
addition to using domain names that were very similar to those used by
the targeted organizations for their real OWA log-in pages, in some
cases the attackers even purchased legitimate SSL certificates so that
the victims' browsers display the HTTPS secure connection indicators for
the phishing sites, the Trend Micro researchers said.
Among those
targeted with this technique were employees of the U.S. private
military company ACADEMI, formerly known as Blackwater; the Organization
for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE); the U.S. Department of
State; U.S. government contractor SAIC; a multinational company based in
Germany; the Vatican Embassy in Iraq; broadcasting companies in several
countries; the defense ministries of France and Hungary, Pakistani
military officials; Polish government employees, and military attachés
from various countries.
The phishing baits used by the attackers included well-known events and conferences that their victims were interested in.
"Apart
from effective phishing tactics, the threat actors used a combination
of proven targeted attack staples to compromise systems and get in to
target networks -- exploits and data-stealing malware," the Trend Micro
researchers said. "SEDNIT variants particularly proved useful, as these
allowed the threat actors to steal all manners of sensitive information
from the victims' computers while effectively evading detection."
Expect a much higher cap on H-1B visas, no progress on Net neutrality, and a decent chance at patent reform
Early in his first term, President Obama told defeated Republicans that
“elections have consequences.” Now that the Republicans will control the
Senate and have an even bigger margin in the House, the proverbial shoe
is on the other foot, and there will be consequences for the tech
industry, some good, some bad, some too close to call.
You’ll likely see changes in immigration policy favoring companies that
want to raise the cap on H-1B visas, but the already slim chances of any
significant action to protect Net neutrality
will fade to zero. There may well be legislation to continue the reform
of the patent system, but more Congressional action to further curb
government spying and data vacuuming is uncertain at best.
The tech industry has become a serious player in Washington, D.C.,
learning how to use lobbyists and campaign contributions to push an
agenda. That won’t change, but tech companies like Apple, Google, and
Microsoft will get less clout per dollar, while telecom and cable giants
will live large.
There was one clear victory for tech: the re-election of Sen. Al Franken
(D-Minn.). Franken has been firm in support of Net neutrality and
against the NSA’s campaign of spying. He’s also on Comcast’s bad list --
a badge of honor -- because he opposes the dangerous merger of Comcast and Time-Warner Cable.
Net neutrality: No way, no how
No single tech-related issue will be more affected by Tuesday's U.S.
election results than Net neutrality. Blocking encroachments by carriers
and cable companies was already a long shot. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler
has proved to be a weak-kneed defender of the Internet, and facing a
unified Republican Congress will put no starch in his spine.
Even if Wheeler suddenly gets religion and reclassifies ISPs as common
carriers that can be regulated by the FCC, Congress will almost
certainly attempt to kill it. As the Washington Post noted,
“the Gingrich-era Congressional Review Act gives Congress the power to
erase specific agency rules. Indeed, after the FCC passed its first
round of open Internet rules in 2010, the Republican-led House passed a
Resolution of Disapproval, arguing that the agency should not weigh in
on the issue at all.”
However, it’s possible that President Obama would veto such a move, or
maybe Wheeler will move fast enough so that Republicans won’t be able to
pass it in the lame-duck session.
Making matters worse was the defeat of Sen. Mark Udall in Colorado – a
staunch advocate for Net neutrality and privacy -- by Rep. Cory Gardner,
who has been on the record against reclassification, and the easy
re-election of Sen. Fred Upton (R-S.D.), who will remain chairman of the
powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction
over Internet, telecommunications, and the media industries.
More H-1B visas
This is one the tech industry will likely win -- though as I’ve argued for years, it will be a defeat for IT workers.
Silicon Valley CEO after CEO has spoken, written op-eds, and spent money
in the pursuit of a higher cap on H-1B visas. There’s a fair amount of
support for it on both sides of the aisle, so the addition of six or
seven Republicans will make it easier to pass. Ironically, one of the
strongest opponents of H-1B abuse is Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), whose
term has a few years to run.
It’s not as if the flow of H-1B visa holders is a mere trickle. Last
year, tech companies snapped up all 65,000 H-1B slots in five -- count
'em -- days. This year, all 65,000 (plus 20,000 more for holders of
advanced degrees) were gone in, yes, five days, despite the marked
slowing in IT hiring in the early part of the year and the increased use of benefit-deprived contractors.
The tech barons want more. My guess is they’ll get it this time.
There is one caveat. While Republicans would like to raise the cap, they
have little or no interest in broader immigration reform. Obama would
certainly prefer a broader bill, so he might block a very narrow one.
But given his ties to the tech industry, I suspect he’d sign it.
Will the new Congress rein in the NSA?
This is interesting and not a foregone conclusion by any means, says
Mark Jaycox, legislative analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Two of the new Republican senators, Gardner in Utah and Joni Ernst in
Iowa, have decent records on government intrusion, he says.
In some ways this is not the most partisan issue in the Senate.
California’s Dianne Feinstein -- who chairs the Intelligence committee
-- is no friend of privacy, but libertarians like Kentucky’s Rand Paul
and some younger Republicans are at least wary of government intrusion.
EFF's Jaycox notes that much will depend on who the new majority leader
seats on the Intelligence and Judiciary committees. However that shakes
out, “it is a sad day when Sen. Udall lost; he’s been at forefront of
transparency issues and the right of the public to be informed,” he
said.
Another privacy advocate, Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) may also lose his
seat, though as I write this, the election is still too close to call.
Frankly, the tech industry will have to lead on this one. Apple and
other companies that are losing overseas business and customer
confidence are adding encryption and more security features to their products and pushing back against overarching demands for customer data.
Patent reform looking better
Because outgoing majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada and other Dems are
generally in bed with trial lawyers, they’ve hesitated to lean on the
patent trolls. Republicans are more likely to go ahead with legislation
that stops stupid litigation. Indeed, they helped pass an antitroll bill
in the House, but it died in the Senate. Still, there’s been progress.
It’s no slam dunk, though. Reform advocates, many of whom are close to
the Democrats, will have to reach out to the GOP and “credibly voice
small-business concerns as opposed to coming across as IP socialists,”
says Florian Mueller, a patent activist and consultant.
Tech has a good deal of influence in Washington, but it isn’t always
beloved, even on its home turf. Although Silicon Valley isn’t in the
throes of a San Francisco-style antitech rebellion, people in the Valley
don’t always trust the digerati. One example: The apparent loss of
tech-backed House candidate Ro Khanna to incumbent Mike Honda, an
old-line, pro-labor liberal.
How all this translates into actions that affect tech workers and the industry will take a little while to become clear.
Congress moves very slowly, and as we get closer to the next
presidential campaign, it will move even slower. There might be a window
of a year or so to get anything done in Washington, whether it's about
tech or other issues. We’ll see.
You already know that gobs of data about you are strewn across the Internet. The scary part is when they put it all together
Recently, I read a tweet from one of my favorite journalists and activists, Asher Wolf, about Samaritans Radar, an app that mines Twitter for keywords indicating someone might be suicidal or “struggling to cope.”
Concerns
have been raised about privacy issues with Samaritans Radar -- which
should be taken with a grain of salt, because it mostly mines public
tweets. You could say that being upset about this is the digital
equivalent of yelling in the town square, then grousing the next day
that someone quoted you in the paper.
More accurately, Samaritans Radar is like putting a recording device
in every town square and monitoring it for catchphrases, sort of like
what the NSA now does with ... everything. Samaritans Radar is a bit
creepy, but in the wrong hands, it could also be destructive.
What
if I’m a cretin and decide that rather than help those with
psychological issues, I’d like to urge them along? If you've ever read
Reddit or the comments on YouTube or 4chan, you know that beneath all
that great stuff brought to you by the Internet is a sewer teeming with
toxic trolls who revel in berating vulnerable naifs, racial minorities,
and women.
I'm
sure that Samaritans.org is a group of well-meaning people who happened
to lack a critical thinker at the helm. Which brings up an important
issue: Simply because we can, should we?
Consider this snippet
from a recent post by Joe Ferns, executive director of policy, research,
and development at Samaritans.org:
We condemn any
behavior which would constitute bullying or harassment of anyone using
social media. If people experience this kind of behavior as a result of
Radar or their support for the App, we would encourage them to report
this immediately to Twitter, who take this issue very seriously.
Nice
sentiment, and to be sure, what is yelled in the town square is public.
But with the technology to mine the data, correlate it, and republish
it, what are the ethical and liability concerns? Samaritans Radar
crosses local, provincial, and national boundaries. There must be laws
from copyright considerations to privacy and stalking laws. The
Samaritans organization may be partly protected, but what about your
company?
Hoovering everything for fun and profit
Mining
social networks is already commonplace. Say anything nasty about any
U.S. airline, and it will respond. The company still won’t fix its crap
service, but it'll respond to tweets with canned expressions of
sympathy. Some companies even sue people for trashing their brand (which inevitably backfires).
I
know how to create a social graph, track the original bad sentiment
back to the source, and intervene if necessary using open source tools
and technologies. It isn’t even hard. However, are their cases where I
should refuse? Are their situations where I’m both ethically and
potentially legally obligated to say, “I’m sorry, that is a bad idea”?
I bet most of you don’t even use Twitter. You probably do your capitalist rendition of Maoist self-reporting via Facebook -- and if you’re geek enough, maybe via Google Plus. But what about Verizon, AT&T, and their permacookies?
Every unencrypted request you send across the Web from your phone (or
possibly tethered from your phone) has an extra header added that
uniquely identifies you. All it takes is any piece of identifying
information anywhere on the Internet, and everything you do can be
tracked by Facebook, Google, and their affiliates.
I realize this
isn’t new. Browser cookies have been doing it for almost two decades,
but you can delete your browser cookie and start anew. You can go into
“incognito mode” or turn off cookies. Verizon is doing this further up
the chain.
What are the downsides of such constant exposure?
Recently, right after I had some dental work done, I announced I was
signing off Twitter for a bit and taking a Percocet. I did this to
inform family, friends, and casual followers that I wouldn’t be posting
-- or if I did, not to worry if I posted something strange. I didn’t
intend to be added to a government or corporate database of potential
drug offenders, possibly cataloged for risk, and potentially subjected
to ads for other pain medications or medical treatments. Do you have any
doubt that at least some of that happened?
When it comes to data
about you, which you didn’t directly intend to communicate, we only have
the “terms of service” -- which protects a company’s right to collect
your data and use however it pleases. Nothing really protects you.
Should any legal protections or regulations be put into place? Could they be enforced? Do we all have to start throwing CryptoParties using Tor and the various alternatives to CipherShed?
That seems like a lot more work than this Internet thing is worth.
The upcoming edition of the JavaScript library will come in two versions: one that supports IE8, and one that does not
jQuery is moving toward a 3.0 release anticipated in early 2015, the core developer of the JavaScript library said this week.
Key features planned for version 3.0 include support for the Promises/A+ specification, for interoperable JavaScript promises; use of the requestAnimationFrame
method to improve animation performance; and the end of support for the
Internet Explorer 6 and 7 browsers, said Dave Methvin, lead developer
of the jQuery core and president of the jQuery Foundation.
"jQuery simplifies Web development in three ways," Methvin said in an
email. "It eliminates quirks that arise in specific browsers, it
provides a simple API for manipulating Web document, and it has an
incredible community that creates useful plug-ins you can use on your
website."
Developers of jQuery 3.0 are not planning a lot of major architectural
chances, so it will be close to a drop-in replacement for older
versions, Methvin said. "The most important messages for Web developers
is that although it's a major change of numbers, it's nothing to fear.
We are happy with jQuery's API and most developers seem to agree. So the
changes we anticipate are incremental improvements."
Still, there will be a jQuery Compat 3.0 version, the successor to
jQuery 1.11.1, along with jQuery 3.0, the successor to jQuery 2.1.1.
Compat will offer compatibility with more browsers, albeit at the
expense of file size and possibly performance. "There is still quite a
bit of Internet Explorer 8 out there in the world, and we want jQuery to
support the Web developers who still need IE8 support," Methvin said.
"However, there are performance and size benefits to be had by not
supporting IE8 and some older browsers. So we have two packages that can
serve those different needs."
Newer technologies, such as Famo.us,
have emerged to boost the JavaScript realm. But Methvin sees Famo.us as
a complementary technology rather than as a competitor to jQuery. "For
example, you could use the Famo.us rendering engine inside a jQuery
plugin."
With LXD, Docker containers can emulate virtual machines while maintaining close-to-the-metal speed and high security
CoreOS was the first to demonstrate how Docker and containerization could remake Linux. Now Canonical is getting into the game, albeit from a different direction.
Canonical's new project, LXD, or the Linux Container Demon, lets users
work with Docker containers to deploy the functional equivalent of
full-blown isolated Linux VMs, not merely individual containerized apps.
In a video, Canonical product manager Dustin Kirkland described LXD as
a system for running "full-system containers with the performance you'd
expect from bare metal, but with the experience you expect from a
virtual machine."
LXD uses containers to virtualize the behavior of an entire system,
running as close to the metal as possible. Thus, users can launch new
machines in less than a second and have an unprecedented degree of
density for those LXD machines -- on the order of hundreds of
virtualized machines per physical host.
In an email, Kirkland noted that the project grew out of several
initiatives: Canonical's work with OpenStack, the company's efforts
submitting upstream changes for LXC (the technology Docker is based on),
and the needs of its customers. The company "found considerable
customer and market interest in running essentially general, full
operating system environments within containers," Kirkland explained,
"in the interest of greater security, improved performance, higher
density, and extensive portability."
Like many container-centric projects these days (Docker included), LXD is written in Go
and provides both a CLI and a RESTful API to its functions. It also
includes extensions to allow containers to access storage and networking
securely, with the security functions using the same technologies as
Linux containers: cgroups, user namespaces, and (when vendor support
exists for it) hardware-assisted containerization.
Aside from the high density of systems and native-speed performance on
the host hardware, LXD also features high-speed live migration. This
function, which allows the contents of active containers to move between
physical hosts, was built using another feature for which Canonical has
submitted work upstream: Checkpoint Restart (CRIU).
Kirkland described demos for the feature: "We were playing Doom in one
container and live migrated it back and forth between two different
hosts, with continuity."
The hardware-assisted containerization feature might raise the most
eyebrows. In its effort to make LXD a real hypervisor, Canonical says
it's "working with silicon companies to ensure hardware-assisted
security and isolation for these containers, just like virtual machines
today."
The big disadvantage is that LXD is strictly a Linux-on-Linux solution
and exploits functionality only available on Linux at this time. When
asked if a Windows port might be possible in the future, given recent
word that Microsoft is planning to add containerization support to Windows in some form,
Kirkland didn't provide a direct answer: "Due to the nature of
containers," he wrote, "LXD can only really ever be Linux on Linux.
That's our focus. Other versions of Linux user space (i.e., non-Ubuntu)
can run in LXD. But fundamentally, it will need to be Linux."
