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RB | May 10, 2012
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What Happened to the Paperless Society?

The Economist wonders whatever happened to the “paperless office”? Thirty years ago the rise of computers was hailed as the beginning of the paperless-office era. In a 1980 briefing in The Economist, “Towards the paperless office”, they recommended that businesses trying to improve productivity should “reduce the flow of paper, ultimately aiming to abolish it”.

Unfortunately not many people listened to The Economist. Since they extolled the virtue of a paperless society, global paper consumption has increased by half.

Global paper consumption

The average American uses the paper equivalent of almost six 40-foot trees a year. Gizmodo says don’t feel too bad, the EU bureaucracy in Brussels pushed the Belgian paper consumption to a whopping 8.5 trees per person, which is like taking four Rockefeller Center Christmas trees and setting them on fire.

The trend is unlikely to change if a report from ITnewsLink is to be believed. More than half of Americans think the U.S. will never go paperless. Pollster Poll Position conducted a national scientific telephone survey to see if Americans think the U.S. could ever be a paperless society.

Poll Position’s research (PDF) found that 56% of Americans said they don’t think the U.S. would ever be a paperless society, while 20% said yes, one day we’ll all go paperless. Twenty-four percent of Americans were undecided or had no opinion on the question.

Other Poll Position finding

  • 63% of the 18-29 age group said the U.S. would never be a paperless society and 23% said we could be a paperless society.
  • 56% of men and women said we could never be a paperless society.

You can still vote in their online companion poll.

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I would think that in an era of computers, Amazon (AMZN) Kindle Fire and Apple (AAPL) iPad tablet computers, iPhones and Google (GOOG) Android smartphones that paper consumption would decrease. apparently it takes more than buzzwords like “paperless” and “green” to make a difference.

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RB | May 8, 2012
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Unknown Malware Rampant in Enterprise Networks

Cyber attackerUnknown malware plague enterprise networks according to network security company Palo Alto Networks. Help Net Security reports that Palo Alto Networks found hundreds of unique, previously unknown malware samples on live networks. Palo Alto Networks conducted the research with their new WildFire malware analysis engine.

Palo Alto NetworksDarkReading says that the cloud-based WildFire analysis engine found that seven percent of all unknown files analyzed contained malware. WildFire is a new service recently announced by Palo Alto Networks that integrates in-line firewalling with automated cloud-based malware analysis. Over a three-month period of analyzing unknown files from the Internet entering enterprise networks,the firm discovered more than 700 unique malware samples, 57 percent of which had no coverage by any antivirus service or were unknown by Virus Total at the time of discovery. Out of all the new malware identified, 15 percent also generated malicious or unknown outbound command and control traffic.

The firewalls identifies unknown and potentially malicious files by executing them in a virtual cloud-based environment to expose malicious behavior even if the malware has never been seen in the wild before. Wade Williamson, Senior Security Analyst at Palo Alto Networks says, “WildFire is taking sandbox technology out of the lab and applying it to a real product … customers can detect and protect themselves against malware using the hardware that they already have deployed today.”

For malicious files, Palo Alto Networks automatically Image representing Wildfire Interactive as dep...generates new signatures for both the file itself and for any traffic generated by the malicious file. These signatures are then distributed with regular signature updates, as well as providing the user with an actionable analysis of exactly how the malware behaves, who was targeted and what application delivered the threat.

 ”I think we were all a bit surprised by the volume and frequency with which we were finding unknown malware in live networks,” the Senior Security Analyst said. “Unknown malware often represents the leading edge of an organized attack, so this data really underscores the importance of getting new anti-malware technologies out of the lab and into the hands of IT teams who are on the front lines. The ability to detect, remediate and investigate unknown malware needs to become a practical part of a threat prevention strategy in the same way that IPS and URL filtering are used today.”

MalwarePalo Alto Networks found that a variety of web applications distriubted zero-day malware, in addition to the traditional HTTP web-browsing and email traffic commonly associated with malware distribution. WildFire was able to identify specific phishing campaigns based on their affinity for particular applications. One attacker used AOL Mail and another used the Hotfile file hosting service as the delivery vector.

“It’s important to note this, because many enterprises only inspect email or FTP traffic for malware but do not have the ability to scan other applications. Applications that tunnel within HTTP or other protocols can carry malware that will be invisible to a traditional anti-malware solution,” said Williamson. “These are examples of the big reasons why a lot of malware gets missed – most enterprises only focus on scanning their corporate email application. To control this problem we need to expand our view to other applications, pull the traffic apart and go a level deeper in to find out if there’s a file transfer happening.”

 

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RB | May 3, 2012
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DT Does 512 Gbps Data Transmission

Jaguar XFRDeutsche Telekom set a new data speed record by pumping 512 Gigabits per second over 456 miles through a single 100 GHz wavelength channel over optical fiber according to at GigaOm. The Berlin-based T-Labs OSIRIS (Optically Supported IP Router Interfaces) research project sent 512 Gbps down each channel of a production network from Berlin to Hannover and back again. The usable data rate was 400 Gbps, overhead takes up the rest.

Dense Wave Division MultiplexingSince each fiber strand can carry up to 48 in the case of the T-Labs system. T-Labs’ new tech should mean a staggering 24.6 Tbps (terabytes per second) max throughput for each optical fiber. “When using all of the channels of an optical fiber … the new process permits a throughput of up to 24.6 Tbit/s (24,600,000,000,000 bit/s) to be attained on the maximum of 48 available channels,”  T-Labs Manager Heinrich Arnold told TechWeek Europe. GigaOm says that “a collection of 3,696 CDs could thus be transferred over a single optical fiber at the same time” using the new technique.

T-Labs says existing networks don’t need cable replacements to take advantage of the new speeds The firm achieved the new bandwidth record by using new technologies developed with Alcatel-Lucent (ALU). The new AlcaLu gear was installed in the terminal stations at either end of the fiber.

Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM)The BBC says that much of the speed gain came through improvements to the software used for forward error correction (FEC). TechWeek Europe says DT also used other creative transmission technologies. They used two carrier frequencies, two polarisation planes, 16-QAM quadrature amplitude modulation. “You can imagine it as squeezing and tilting the entire set-up around to get more capacity out,” Mr. Arnold told the BBC.

But there are still an awful lot of copper-based networks in existence, Of course copper-based networks are increasingly vulnerable because of the high value of copper, which makes it an attractive target for theft. Also, despite advances in Copper such as ADSL2+ and VDSL2 (which I wrote about here and here) fiber is a much more “future proof” material.

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Ronnie Reagan thumbs up for high speed data

Yeah - a new data speed record

Do the screaming hot network happy dance, the usable per-channel bit-rate is 400 Gbps, 4x the maximum bit-rate in today’s 100 Gbps per channel state-of-the-art networks, which is a huge capacity boost. This is more than double the 186 Gbps record set by researchers in the US and Canada last year (Which I wrote about here). This tech will most likely be deployed by the Telco’s and Cableco’s who need to support a FTTx strategy, its gonna be a long time until these speeds reache most enterprises.

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RB | May 1, 2012
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Anti-Malware Best Practices

What are anti-malware “Best Practices”?

  • Install a reputable A/V package before putting your computer online for the first time. must include 2-way firewall
  • AdobeSet Microsoft (MSFT) updates to automatic
  • Make sure your A/V package receives regular updates
  • Check for Adobe (ADBE) updates at least once a week
  • Disable autorun feature for USB devices
  • Never accept “click here to get a program you need”
  • Dump all email unless you know the sender
  • Test your computer security with a resource such as Steve Gibson‘s Shields Up!
  • Spam emailSend spam to Spamcop, Knujon; ask your ISP what it is doing about spam.
  • Abuse from a website or domain – send an email to abuse@….. – ask the site administrator what they are doing about this…”
  • Malware / Spyware / Virus – Upload samples of anything found to your AV provider – Demand accountability from the anti-malware provider; “what are you doing about this, am I covered…”
  • Filtered DNSUse a filtered DNS service -  OpenDNS – it is a free home use service (Registration required), stops most phishing and for corporate infosecs you can set what users can gain access to, e.g. social networking sites, ad-networks…. Another free service is ScrubIt. According to their website, they block out any pornographic, phishing, and many other potentially harmful sites.
  • Use Google (GOOG) “Safe Browsing“- Despite some negativity, this will cut off some  drive by downloads & web-based infections
  • Report bad stuff on the web – tell law enforcement, tell the Feds; The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) or the Michigan State Police, Michigan Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force or send to Host Exploit.
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RB | April 26, 2012
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10-Year-Old Kid Got Lost Inside a Computer

Kid being dangerous The Next Web has a great little anecdote about a 10-year-old kid got lost inside a computer at Michigan State University in the 1950s. The story goes like this:

In 1950, I was 10 years old, visiting the Michigan State University campus. The computer was on the ground floor, turned off, with the door open. It was perhaps half the size of a gym, with many rows of cabinets taller than me. I wandered up and down the rows looking at the vacuum tubes until I got bored. By then I couldn’t see the door, and didn’t remember how to get back out. I was literally “lost in the computer”. So I continued wandering, eventually found the open door back out, and left.ILLIAC

That was the time when computers less powerful than your current phone were bigger than most homes.

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