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An introduction to six types of VPN software

Credit to Author: Michael Horowitz| Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2017 15:44:00 -0700

A VPN is simply an encrypted connection between two computers, each side running VPN software. The two sides, however, are not equal.

The software that you, as the user of a VPN service deal with, is known as the VPN client. The software run by a VPN company is a VPN server. The encrypted connection always starts with a VPN client making a request to a VPN server.

There are many different flavors of VPN connections, each with its own corresponding client and server software. The most popular flavors are probably L2TP/IPsec, OpenVPN, IKEv2 and PPTP.

Some VPN providers support only one flavor, others are much more flexible. Astrill, for example, supports OpenWeb, OpenVPN, PPTP, L2TP, Cisco IPSec, IKEv2, SSTP, StealthVPN and RouterPro VPN. At the other extreme, OVPN, as their name implies, only supports OpenVPN.

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ComputerWorldIndependent
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Honesty is not the best privacy policy

Credit to Author: Mike Elgan| Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2017 04:00:00 -0700

Digital privacy invasion is more than a theoretical or actual threat to our freedoms. It’s also a huge distraction.

Take MIT genius Steven Smith. He’s recently taken time away from his specialties of radar, sonar, and signal processing at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory to automate the pollution of his family’s web traffic with thousands of arbitrary searches and sites.

His code essentially lies about internet activity to whomever is listening.

The software is an artful liar. According to a piece in The Atlantic, Smith’s algorithm uses web activity-spoofing software called PhantomJS to conduct searches in a way and on a timeline that mimics normal human online behavior.

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Microsoft begins denying updates to some Windows 7 users

Credit to Author: Gregg Keizer| Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2017 12:56:00 -0700

Microsoft this week began blocking Windows 7 and 8.1 PCs equipped with the very newest processors from receiving security updates, making good on a policy it announced but did not implement last year.

But the company also refused to provide security fixes to Windows 7 systems that were powered by AMD’s “Carrizo” CPUs, an architecture that was supposed to continue receiving patches.

The decree that led to the update bans, whether allowable or not under Microsoft’s new policy, was revealed in January 2016, when the company said making Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 run on the latest processors was “challenging.” Microsoft then ruled that Windows 10 would be the only supported edition on seventh-generation and later CPUs and simultaneously dictated a substantial shortening of support of both editions.

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Quantum computing advances toward the enterprise

Credit to Author: Sharon Gaudin| Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2017 12:19:00 -0700

 

Quantum computing may still sound like the stuff of science fiction, but within the next 10 years, it could be a reality. 

“Systems are still pretty rudimentary,” said Charles King, an analyst with Pund-IT.  “Though they perform some specific kinds of calculations faster than traditional computers, they are defined by their limitations. When true, fully operable quantum systems come online, they will force the IT industry, public and private sector organizations and individuals to fundamentally rethink certain kinds of problems and all but abandon some conventional solutions.”

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IndependentKrebs
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Shoney’s Hit By Apparent Credit Card Breach

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2017 16:01:04 +0000

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for another episode of “Which Restaurant Chain Got Hacked?” Multiple sources in the financial industry say they’ve traced a pattern of fraud on customer cards indicating that the latest victim may be Shoney’s, a 70-year-old restaurant chain that operates primarily in the southern United States.

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IDG Contributor Network: Massive change to a moderate Patch Tuesday

Credit to Author: Greg Lambert| Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2017 09:02:00 -0700

Last month, we had the largest ever release of patches and updates from Microsoft.

This month, we see the biggest change to Patch Tuesday since the first updates were released on the second Tuesday in October 2003, starting with MS03-041. Security bulletins with easy to follow formats like MSyy-xxx are no longer published by Microsoft as of April 2017.

Now, we have the Microsoft Security Update Guide which is defined by Microsoft as the “authoritative source of information on our security updates.” The MSUG is a searchable database of patches and updates that offers some basic queries and filtering. In addition to this database-driven approach, Microsoft has published summary release notes for April 2017 that can be found here. Helpfully, this summary outlines that the following technologies are updated for April:

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IDG Contributor Network: Improve your internet privacy, with or without help from the government

Credit to Author: Robert C. Covington| Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2017 08:39:00 -0700

President Trump, as part of his plan to roll back regulations put in place by President Obama, just signed legislation that eliminates the prohibition against internet service providers selling customer data without their written consent. Although the original restriction had not yet taken effect, its elimination ignited a firestorm of controversy among privacy organizations, including the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the American Civil Liberties Union (which tried to no avail to get Trump to veto the legislation at the last minute).

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