Back in March, Seth Hanford wrote about a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack aimed at the SpamHaus organization. Since then, there have been some new developments in the aftermath of the DDoS attack, most notably the arrest of the attackers’ spokesperson, Sven Olaf Kamphuis.

Update

On April 26, Kamphuis, STOPhaus activist and possibly the person behind the large-scale SpamHaus DDoS attacks, was arrested in Spain. He had allegedly been operating out of his van, which he had transformed into a mobile computing office. Read More »

Tags: Cisco Security, distributed denial of service, Kamphuis, SpamHaus DDoS, STOPhaus, TRAC

It’s no secret that new technologies are changing the way students learn. The modern classroom is no longer confined to a physical space and students have access to greater educational opportunities than ever before.

Much like video has created new models for learning; mobile video collaboration is extending the boundaries of education even more. Imagine a school where students can instant message a professor from their tablet with an urgent question about tomorrow’s test and get an immediate response, or where a student athlete headed to a competition can join a lecture from their own personal mobile device. By overcoming space and time challenges, students and faculty can connect to the people and resources they need from wherever they are. No longer is education confined to the walls of the classroom. Read More »

Tags: distrance learning, education, flipped classroom, higher education, K-12, mobile collaboration, teaching, TelePresence, video conferencing

I am drafting this blog on my laptop, sitting in the Embassy Suites lounge in Raleigh, North Carolina, enjoying the complimentary breakfast buffet. I share this not to disclose my breakfast habits, nor my whereabouts but to illustrate that we are relying more and more on mobile devices to keep us connected, both professionally and personally. In fact analysts predict that by the end of 2013, 80 percent of companies will allow BYOD (bring your own device) for employees.

As today’s workers embrace mobility, they have expectations that their experience outside of the office should mirror their experience inside the office.  With mobility trends like telework and BYOD on the rise, it’s important that government organizations stay ahead of technology trends to better deliver their employees with the right tools that allow them to collaborate from anywhere at any time.   Read More »

Tags: byod, collaboration, COOP, government, jabber, mobile collaboration, Mobile workforce, mobility, TelePresence, telework, video conferencing, WebEX

It’s May 1st again, which means it’s time for our annual Open Source Conference, a time to celebrate the multitude of free and open source software developers world wide. Even more so than last May 1st, I’m very impressed to see the large turnout and the great feedback after the keynote and four tracks on Big Data, Cloud, Internet of Everything (IoE), and Software Defined Networking (SDN). Our keynote was from Dan Frye, a wonderful friend and partner at IBM. Wonderful to see Doug Cutting from Cloudera, Adrian Cockroft from Netflix, Troy Torman from Rackspace, Chris Wright from Red Hat, Juan Negron from Canonical, Mark Hinkle from Citrix and Vijoy Pandey from IBM and the great discussions that ensued. My thanks to Bhushan Kanekar who helped me put together the SDN track and also to our other tracks leaders, Mark Voelker for Big Data, Kyle Mestery and Brian Mullen for Cloud, and Fabio Maino and Laurent Philonenko for IoE and Collaboration — it’s great to see these guys come of age in open source, enjoying the moment and helping the open community grow. To all those of you who came, contributed and enjoyed this event, we salute you! Open at Cisco is proving it has indeed become a vibrant and fast growing community. Happy May Day!

Tags: Big Data, cloud, IoE, Open at Cisco, open source, SDN

Prologue

On April 10, 2013, a collective of politically motivated hacktivists announced a round of planned attacks called #OPUSA. These attacks, slated to begin May 7, 2013, are to be launched against U.S.-based targets. #OPUSA is a follow-up to #OPISRAEL, which were a series of attacks carried out on April 7 against Israeli-based targets. Our goal here is to summarize and inform readers of resources, recommendations, network mitigations, and best practices that are available to prevent, mitigate, respond to, or dilute the effectiveness of these attacks. This blog was a collaborative effort between myself, Kevin Timm, Joseph Karpenko, Panos Kampanakis, and the Cisco TRAC team.

Analysis

If the attackers follow the same patterns as previously witnessed during the #OPISRAEL attacks, then targets can expect a mixture of attacks. Major components of previous attacks consisted of denial of service attacks and web application exploits, ranging from advanced ad-hoc attempts to simple website defacements. In the past, attackers used such tools as LOIC, HOIC, and Slowloris.

Publicly announced attacks of this nature can have highly volatile credibility. In some cases, the announcements exist only for the purpose of gaining notoriety. In other cases, they are enhanced by increased publicity. Given the lack of specific details about participation or capabilities, the exact severity of the attack can’t be known until it (possibly) happens. Read More »

Tags: advisories, ASA, botnet, botnets, Cisco Security, Cloud Computing, cloud security, data center security, DDoS, exploits, firewall, incident response, IPS, IPS signatures, malware, mitigations, security, targeted attacks, TRAC, vulnerability