Weekend Reads 090420

Running a bit late this week … 🙂

Researchers at University College London (UCL) have set a new bandwidth record for fiber optic bandwidth transmission. They’ve been able to communicate through a fiber optic cable at over 178 terabits per second, or 178,000 gigabits per second.

Having spent my career in various roles in IT security, Ivan and I always bounced thoughts on the overlap between networking and security (and, more recently, Cloud/Container) around. One of the hot challenges on that boundary that regularly comes up in network/security discussions is the topic of this blog post: microsegmentation and host-based firewalls (HBFs).

For engineers, instead of whodunit, the question is often “what failed and why?” When a problem occurs, we put on our detective hats and start our mystery-solving process by gathering evidence. The more complex a system, the more places to look for clues. An engineer can find herself digging through logs, poring over traces, and staring at dozens of dashboards.

A vast majority of IoT hardware in homes and offices is vulnerable to attacks that allow devices to be easily taken over and manipulated for malicious purposes.

That said, Intel over the past couple of years has expanded its GPU ambitions and has pushed those efforts further into the spotlight. At an Intel Architecture Day event two years ago, David Blythe, Intel Fellow and chief GPU architect, introduced the company’s Xe initiative to build integrated and discrete GPUs for a range of workloads, from laptops and gaming systems to datacenter and HPC systems. The plan is to become a complete GPU vendor that will rival Nvidia and AMD.

The Google Chrome Enterprise Upgrade unlocks the management capabilities that are innate in the cloud-native Chrome OS operating system. Chrome Enterprise mobile device management allows for the definition and enforcement of security controls plus user and device orchestration—all from a centralized cloud administration panel.

Today, Qualcomm announced a breakthrough in mmWave transmission range, successfully achieving a 5G data connection over a 3.8-kilometer (2.36-mile) distance — over twice the range originally promised by its long-range QTM527 antenna system last year.

The ‘Quality of Experience’ (QoE) level for an Internet service provider is the client’s level of satisfaction using the Internet for variety of applications. From a client point of view, this indicates the overall Internet quality, based on which the service provider is judged. Clients may decide to either renew or cancel service contracts based on the QoE they experience.

At the height of his cybercriminal career, the hacker known as “Hieupc” was earning $125,000 a month running a bustling identity theft service that siphoned consumer dossiers from some of the world’s top data brokers. That is, until his greed and ambition played straight into an elaborate snare set by the U.S. Secret Service. Now, after more than seven years in prison Hieupc is back in his home country and hoping to convince other would-be cybercrooks to use their computer skills for good.

According to Reuters, cash market trading on the floor of the New Zealand’s Exchange (NZX) came to a halt at 11:24 local time on August 26. Trading resumed several hours later at 15:00 local time, though additional disruptions occurred during the day’s final hour of trading.

If your web-server runs on Apache, you should immediately install the latest available version of the server application to prevent hackers from taking unauthorized control over it.

Dark patterns are user interfaces that benefit an online service by leading users into making decisions they might not otherwise make. Some dark patterns deceive users while others covertly manipulate or coerce them into choices that are not in their best interests.

But both privacy talk and privacy law in the U.S. have shifted sharply toward increased protection. U.S. companies now often must comply with both European and California regulations. State after state has enacted new privacy laws, and Congress has been making the most serious attempts at enacting a national privacy law in decades. Former U.S. Presidential candidate Andrew Yang even made data privacy a centerpiece of his campaign.

A recent survey of 3,200 people in 524 organizations that suffered data breaches is a bit of a mixed bag. Ponemon’s “Cost of a Data Breach Report 2020” (commissioned by IBM) reveals that despite an apparent decline in the average cost of a data breach — from $3.92 million in 2019 to $3.86 million this year — the price tag was much less for mature companies and industries and far higher for firms that had lackluster security automation and incident response processes. In the same vein, Ponemon’s examination of the average cost per record varied widely according to the kind of data that was exposed or stolen.