The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods

DDoS attacks are tricky to detect and hard to defend against. But the chances are good that you’ll be a victim of a DDoS attack either directly or indirectly at some point in your IT career.

FastNetMon is DDoS detection software available both as open source and in commercial versions. On today’s Priority Queue we’ll explore the open-source version, look at how it works, examine its capabilities, and discuss hardware requirements.

We’ll also look at how it can use BGP black holes and BGP Flowspec to help mitigate DDoS attacks.

Our guest is Pavel Odintsov, FastNetMon’s project leader.

FastNetMon recently added IPv6 support in the Advanced (commercial) version.

Show Links:

FastNetMon

IPv6 support in FastNetMon

FastNetMon on GitHub

Firewalls are the linchpin of a traditional network security infrastructure. They guard the perimeter of the network and stand sentry at key locations within the campus and the data center.

But can you operate a secure infrastructure without firewalls? On today’s Datanauts show, we’ve brought on a pair of guests to make that case.

Our guests are Nick Buraglio, Lead face melter at Energy Sciences Network (that’s the title he put in the show notes); and Jon Zeolla, CTO at Seiso.

We start by defining firewalls and their core functions, and then examine arguments for not having them. We then examine other options for inspecting perimeter traffic and drill into options including Bro, Suricata, vulnerability assessment, and host-based tools.

We also look at the operation and compliance impacts of getting rid of firewalls. Last but not least, we talk about the importance of log and data analysis and ways to extract meaningful information and put it to use.

By the end of the show, you might just be running into the data center and unplugging your firewall cables.

Show Links:

Jon Zeolla on LinkedIn

ForwardingPlane.net – Nick Buraglio’s blog

Bro Network Security Monitor – bro.org

Best practices for Securing the Science DMZ by Nick Buraglio – YouTube

January Presentation Security Data Analysis for the masses – Jon Zeolla, YouTube

Today on the Priority Queue, OPNsense wants to be your next open source firewall.

The project’s trademark is “High-end security made easy.” Interested? Good, because I’ve got Franco Fichtner from the OPNsense core development team here to talk about it.

We discuss why OPNsense was forked from the pfSense and m0n0wall projects several years ago, and then jump into technical features including high availability, routing capabilities, traffic shaping, and more.

We also talk about monitoring and reporting capabilities, troubleshooting, and the project’s roadmap.

Show Links:

OPNsense.org

OPNsense on Twitter

Lastsummer.de – Franco Fichtner’s blog

Franco Fichtner on Twitter

Anuta Networks has announced ATOM, a software platform that can automate and orchestrate the operation of multi-vendor network infrastructure.

ATOM is an evolution of and replacement for its existing NCX platform.

New Features Include:

* Support for over 40 vendors, including Cisco, Juniper, F5, and others

* Scalability to orchestrate up to one million devices

* A new microservices architecture using Docker containers for resiliency and cloud deployment

* Telemetry and analysis for closed-loop automation

Get more details at anutanetworks.com.

On the Datanauts podcast today, we have a chat with VMware, this episode’s sponsor, about AppDefense.

According to VMware, AppDefense is “a new security solution for protecting applications running in virtualized and cloud environments. Rather than chasing after threats, AppDefense understands how applications are supposed to work and monitors for changes to that intended state that indicate a threat. When a threat is detected, AppDefense automatically responds.”

Our guest is Tom Corn, Senior VP, Security Products at VMware. We set the stage by examining the state of security, and then dive into how AppDefense works, including how it leverages the hypervisor.

We also review how security policies are described in AppDefense, where and how those policies are enforced, and what actions AppDefense can take.

In addition, we discuss the operational impacts of running AppDefense, including its use of system resources and how new applications are profiled.

Show Links:

VMware AppDefense

Understanding VMware AppDefense: A Tom Corn Perspective – YouTube

Tom Corn on LinkedIn

I had a briefing with ReSTNSX, and they demoed their VMware NSX-enhancing platform to me. Have a listen in the player above for my impressions of the demo.

Features Include…

* A different UI for NSX that makes it easier to leverage the NSX API.

* The ability to import lots of objects via CSV instead of clicking until your finger breaks.

* Creation of custom workflows.

* Dashboards for NSX tenants.

For More Information

* http://restnsx.com

In late 2017 AT&T released a white paper outlining the company’s vision for a “Disaggregated Network Operating System” or dNOS.

According to AT&T, dNOS aims:

* To be network OS separate from the underlying hardware that runs on multiple platforms including merchant networking silicon and x86

* To have standardized APIs and other interfaces for clean separation of the control plane and data plane

* To provide a platform to integrate with existing tools and applications and spur the development of new ones

On today’s Priority Queue, John Medamana, AT&T Fellow and Vice President, Packet & Optical Networks at AT&T, joins us to share more information about this project.

We talk about why AT&T is driving this effort, what the company hopes to achieve, and where they are in the process.

Note that after this podcast was recorded, AT&T announced it was moving the dNOS project to the Linux Foundation.

John is co-author of Building the Network of the Future: Getting Smarter, Faster, and More Flexible with a Software Centric Approach. You can also follow him on Twitter at @johnmedamana.

Today on the Datanauts podcast, we talk with Vivian Zhang, a Machine Learning (ML) expert.

If you’ve been hearing about ML from IT marketing folks and it all sounds like magic unicorn dust, this is your show. We’re cutting through the cruft to get to what’s real.

Vivian Zhang is CTO and Chief Data Scientist at the NYC Data Science Academy. We establish a baseline of what machine learning is, how it fits into the broader category of artificial intelligence, and how ML might move the needle in IT infrastructure.

We look at business problems that ML can be applied to, and explore real-world examples including anomaly detection.

Show Links:

NYC Data Science Academy

NYC Data Science Academy on Twitter

Amazon SageMaker

Today's Full Stack Journey dives into Istio, Envoy & service meshes with guest Shannon McFarland.

Today’s Priority Queue delves into Open vSwitch with guest Ben Pfaff, an Open vSwitch contributor for the past ten years.

As you might infer from the name, Open vSwitch is open source software that provides switching capabilities and can run in a hypervisor, on bare metal servers, in containers, and on NICs.

You can program OVS directly or via a controller such as OpenDaylight or a commercial controller.

Open vSwitch is a project within the Linux Foundation.

This podcast was recorded live during a meeting with Ben in which he recorded a podcast with me, which you can find at OVS Orbit.

We discuss an overview of OVS, explore key features, and examine how OVS applies to the enterprise. We also look at the relationship between SmartNICs and OVS, and discuss how OVS works with service meshes.

If you want to learn more about OVS, check out Ben’s podcast at OVS Orbit.

Show Links:

Open vSwitch.org

OvS Orbit

Ben Pfaff on Twitter