ITNews

eWeek is reporting ISPs Assailed at FCC Hearing.

Unfortunately none of the ISPs accused of wrongdoing showed up to hear the harangues by the Cristian Coalition, Raging Grannies, and other irate citizens complaining about IPSs mucking with packets.

You’ve got to hand it to ISPs like Comcast for doing about everything wrong to contain a public relations blowout.

…John

The Register Hardware posting DroboShare network storage ‘robot’ reviews the Data Robotics, Inc. dynamic duo Drobo and DroboShare.

Drobo is an external storage system designed with a high level of data resilience. DroboShare is an add-on that allows a couple of Drobos to be accessed over a network.

(Credit: Data Robotics, Inc.)

Read the posting for all the details.

Verdict

There’s no question that Drobo and DroboShare make data resilience and storage capacity expansion really easy. Both are smart-looking boxes packed with even smarter technology to keep your files safe from drive failures and provide you with scope to expand their storage capacity for as long as Seagate, Fujitsu and co. make SATA hard drives.

We liked the Drobo and DroboShare, and we think Data Robotics has come up with something special. But the company needs to get the price down if it’s to win over the kind of users who’ll benefit most from its technology.

I agree. Data Robotics, Inc. has a pricey winner.

…John

Some times banks just don’t get it. The CNET posting Windows-based cash machines ‘easily hacked’ is an example.

Up to 90 percent of the ATMs in the U.K. could be at risk from these attacks as they rely on desktop PC technology–usually Intel hardware and Windows operating systems–linked to other machines, some connected to the Internet, in the bank’s network, according to experts.

Beware when you next step up to an ATM machine.

(Credit: TechCrunch)

Here are a few things that may be lurking behind the facade.

… only the personal identification number was encrypted when information was sent from a U.S. ATM to networked bank computers. The card numbers, card expiration dates, transaction amounts, and account balances were clearly readable in plain text to anybody intercepting the data as it traveled through the network.

I can see it now. Microsoft’s patch Tuesday becomes a bank holiday.

“An ATM becomes like a PC with attached devices–it has to be kept up-to-date with hot fixes and patches. It is a much more complex beast, and the security aspects of that need to be at the forefront of a bank’s mind.”

De-evolution in action.

… the stability of Windows-based ATMs was worse than that of their OS/2-based predecessors, saying some ATMs suffered downtime of up to 30 percent.

Welcome script kiddies to the world of sloppy banking.

… the shift among ATMs to modern PC infrastructure means it now requires only minimal programming knowledge to hack ATM machines successfully once access has been gained to its system.

“If you are a programmer and you have some programming experience, then it is a cakewalk. If an exploit will work on a home or office computer then it will work on these ATMs,” …

Password, what password.

Researchers from IRM were even able to unlock and clear out the safes in two out of three U.K. cabinet ATMs, opening the safe using a default key code they obtained from a safe manual online. They also reset the cabinet ATMs’ software using a piece of wire jammed into the receipt slot, giving them access to the engineering mode where they could control the machine.

What part of basic network security 101 don’t bank technocrats get?

… the most effective way to protect against these new threats is to use a multifunction device with routing, firewall, intrusion detection system/intrusion prevention system and VPN (virtual private network) capabilities, positioned in front of, and protecting, the ATM network.

Well duh!

I don’t think ATM stupidity is unique to the U.K. So, beware when you next step up to an ATM machine, anywhere.

…John

Cringely thinks so. He explains why in the I, Cringely posting The Once and Future King: Multicast looks to (finally) be the future of television.

IP Multicast is the not-so-simple carriage of the same digital signal to thousands or millions of people at the same time. This is as opposed to unicast, which can also serve millions of people but requires millions of parallel video streams to do so. Multicast was built into the structure of the Internet from the very beginning but was generally not turned on because net admins hate it as a resource hog. But one man’s resource hog is another man’s chance to sell a lot of new equipment, so Cisco has long been a huge supporter of multicast because it requires ever bigger and more powerful routers to implement. Years ago Cisco bought Judy Estrin’s Precept Software and its IPTV product primarily to have an application that would drive the adoption of multicast in the enterprise and beyond. Only that didn’t happen because net admins weren’t giving in, there was no YouTube, and the x386 computers of the era really weren’t capable of handling much video anyway.

See, multicast IS a resource hog.

But to more and more ISPs multicast is looking like the best answer to a huge bandwidth problem, while also being a sneaky way to take back control of the Internet.

Both Comcast and Verizon are rapidly rolling out IP multicast, as I am sure most big cable and telephone ISPs are. Even Verizon’s fiber-to-the-home service, FiOS, is moving to multicast because it was architected in a dumb way that sorely limits what should be a lot of throughput.

There are only two ways for today’s ISPs to carry tomorrow’s Internet video traffic. They can embrace wide-open P2P or they can implement IP Multicast.

Cringely makes a case for IP Multicast in the article. If experience is any indicator, I don’t think the Comcasts and Verizons of the world get the IP TV thing yet.

…John

Some clients and I are using OpenDNS. The Network World posting Free DNS: Too good to be true? talks about using OpenDNS and NeuStar.

Both services claim they are longer, lower, wider, faster, and safer, than pedestrian ISP DNS services. I switched when my ISP DNS services proved to be slow and unreliable.

…John