Table of contents for January/February 2025 in ADMIN Network & Security

One key difference between current IT setups and those of the past is that current setups are typically designed for scalability. Computing power, RAM, disk space – all can ideally be added or removed dynamically in a state-of-the-art setup. For ongoing operations, this results in a few challenges that administrators were unlikely to confront until the advent of OpenStack, Ceph, Kubernetes, and the like. They include, for example, the need to know when it’s the right time to add additional resources. “When they are needed” is the easy answer, because that directly prompts the next questions: When exactly are new resources needed, and how do admins work around bottlenecks and delays in delivery of the new equipment?” Trending software helps answer these questions early enough that you can plan in peace…

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have been on everyone’s lips for some time now. The more accessible the technology becomes, the more developers will realize they need to develop algorithms that pervade the everyday lives of the masses and make life easier. However, interested developers initially face a challenge that has nothing to do with AI and language models: providing the technical infrastructure. Kubeflow [1] is an open source machine learning platform that promises to offer all the tools you need for AI development, which means the components number well over 70, and they need to be rolled out and operated with the right configurations and in a correct and coordinated sequence. The enormity of this undertaking explains why more than a few developers feel they have been taken…

Julia [1] is a high-level, high-performance, general-purpose programming language. The “high level” refers to its expressive syntax, advanced data structures, and sophisticated type system, which are features that allow the programmer to solve complex problems with compact, readable programs [2]. High performance is achieved with a unique just-in-time compilation system that turns high-level code into native machine instructions on any of Julia’s many supported architectures, including GPUs. Julia is a general-purpose language because it’s convenient to use in any problem domain. The only areas in which Julia might not be an ideal choice, because of the overhead of compiling, are embedded and real-time applications (although even this may change [3] in the future). Julia was originally envisioned as a new language [4] for scientific and technical computing. Since its relatively…

Anyone looking for software that can be used to explore and check the hardware of a Windows computer could initially be overwhelmed by the sheer number of tools available. In this article, we look at a number of useful tools for this task, but we cannot claim this list is exhaustive because of the sheer number of tools on the market. Instead, we decided to test on-board resources and tools from the Windows environment, the open source community, and commercial programs that provide useful and practical support for controlling and managing hardware under Windows. Windows Offerings Both the older Windows versions from NT 4.0 and the current versions come with the msinfo32 command-line program, which reports a first look of the machine hardware. The program offers a good overview of…

Permanent monitoring of IT infrastructures is a routine task for every network admin. Depending on the scope and complexity of existing installations, several tools are used for this purpose. Bloonix is a modular monitoring tool that combines numerous services in a single interface, offering a quick overview of network components. The Idea Bloonix [1], written in JavaScript and Python 3, is a server-based application for monitoring complex, distributed IT infrastructures. The tool comprises five components: the Bloonix server, a webGUI for display purposes, field information from agents that need to be installed separately, plugins and a satellite. Satellites must be configured separately and enable the service to be checked from remote locations. You can install agents on the servers to be monitored or set them up on a central machine…

Microsoft Dev Box is a powerful Azure cloud-based service that offers self-service access to create preconfigured virtual environments. Developers, engineers, and technology-savvy professionals can quickly spin up virtual environments tailored to IT, developer, or business project needs with the use of project-specific templates and shared configurations. This service can eliminate the traditional challenges of provisioning and maintaining development or engineering environments, enabling teams to focus on innovation and productivity. Azure Dev Box leverages Azure’s virtual machine (VM) and imaging infrastructure to provide a secure, scalable, and flexible cloud platform service designed to accelerate the onboarding and provisioning of userdedicated virtual desktop environments for various technical users. Developers can access preconfigured, project-specific dev boxes, and the user-specific dev box environment can be further customized through YAML-based tasks, which can be shared…

Companies that provide web services for the outside world in their own infrastructure are exposed to a variety of threats. The developers of the open source mitmproxy tool describe it as the Swiss army knife for debugging, testing, data protection analysis, and penetration testing HTTP(S) connections. I show you how mitmproxy can be a useful addition to your security toolbox. Man in the Middle When most people hear the term “proxy,” they probably think of legacy proxy servers that act as gateways connecting local networks to the global network or as go-betweens protecting local clients against external access (e.g., NGINX, Squid, and WinGate come to mind). Given the name, mitmproxy [1] could be assumed to be in the same category. However, the tool takes a different approach by specializing in…

Identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities has been part of the attackers’ trade for thousands of years. Just think of Hagen von Tronje, for example, who snuck up behind Siegfried, took aim with his spear, and murdered the purportedly invulnerable hero. He knew about the weak point in Siegfried’s protective armor. Literary historians talk about Siegfried’s death as an intrigue or honor killing, but as security professionals know, it was yet another case of inadequate attack surface management. In this article, I shed light on what is important in terms of IT security when reducing the attack surface. ASM Security analysts and providers use the term “attack surface management” (ASM) to describe tools and software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings that are intended to enable enterprises – large corporations in particular – to identify their attack…

I wanted to start learning about artificial intelligence (AI) and writing code, but I wasn’t sure where to start. I didn’t want to write in C++ or use a directed acyclic graph (DAG) or some other computer-science-centric language. I wanted to be able to write something straightforward, without complication, that allowed me to define clearly what I wanted to do. The early years of AI saw the emergence of a wide range of frameworks. Most of them used Python, but all of them had their own language for reading the data, defining the model, and solving weights, which exposed my fears of learning a new “language.” Which framework should I select and why? Was one a clear leader? I didn’t see any pointers that said, “go this way,” and I…

Hetzner Announces S3-Compatible Object Storage Hosting and cloud provider Hetzner has announced Object Storage — a high-performance solution for storing unstructured data — which is suitable for backing up, restoring, and archiving data, as well as for other data-intensive workloads. The GDPR-compliant solution offers: • S3 compatibility • Scalability • Security • Cost-effectiveness Object Storage also allows seamless integration with backup software. According to the announcement (https://www.hetzner.com/press-release/object-storage/), “data cannot be deleted and is not susceptible to ransomware attacks, and backups cannot be read or restored by unauthorized users thanks to server-side encryption.” Hetzner’s Object Storage has a monthly base price of $5.99, which includes 1TB of storage and 1TB of egress traffic. Read more at Hetzner: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/object-storage/. Ongoing Cyberattack Prompts New CISA Guidance for Communications Infrastructure US and international security…

All of your systems seem to be working normally, but virtually nobody has placed an order in the online store since yesterday afternoon. A painstaking manual investigation reveals that the shopping cart takes an agonizingly long time to redirect to checkout – the problem is caused by a messed up cache. Nasty bugs like this can quickly cause expensive damage, but they often slip through the fingers of classic monitoring solutions because they only check whether the web server and PHP are running, not whether the web application being served to your customers is still working correctly and, above all, smoothly. For this problem, you need a special monitoring system. The right solution will check all of your real users as they fill the shopping cart and check out. Alternatively,…

Huge environments for automation and orchestration used to be standard – think Ansible, Puppet, and others; however, today’s buzzword is “reduction.” Logically, a system that only needs to run containers can easily do without a massive user space; you don’t need additional services on the system or extravagant configuration options. Strictly speaking, you don’t even need a package manager – at least if you don’t intend to update the system while it is running. Instead, you would remove all the containers and then reinstall more up-to-date software. A simple Linux kernel with a paired down set of drivers in combination with a runtime environment for containers – typically Docker Community Edition (CE) or Podman – is absolutely fine for this scenario. Proponents of immutable IT have developed and radicalized their…

Podman since version 4.4 has a native mechanism to start containers automatically by systemd unit files: Podman Quadlet. In this article, I guide you through preparing your system and configuring it to use Quadlets (as the container unit files are called) for your rootless Podman containers. As an example, I’ll show you how to set up a reverse proxy in one container and some web services behind the proxy in other containers. Docker and Podman If you want to configure which Docker containers should start automatically on your Linux server, Docker Compose [1] is a widely recognized solution. However, within enterprise Linux distributions, Podman [2] has been the preferred container engine for a while. Both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise have adopted Podman, as have their associated…

By way of an example of how digital transformation has fundamentally changed the way things are done, just consider how buildings are managed and operated. This development is particularly advanced in the area of facility management from the use of what is known as the “digital ceiling.” This technology integrates different building systems such as lighting, heating, cooling, and security on a single, intelligent network platform. The benefits offered by this kind of integration are huge: Besides significant efficiency boosts attributable to the automation of building services, the technology also improves cost efficiency in facility management. In this article, I focus on the challenges of the digital ceiling and of establishing the framework for a more in-depth discussion of the Purdue Model and its application in the context of modern…

Recently, I analyzed the performance of new storage options on Raspberry Pi 5 boards [1], focusing on the Pi 5’s USB bus improvements (the USB 3 ports are now independently capable of 5Gbps each) and testing the even faster new PCIe expansion hat with NVMe drives. Only hinted at is that the SD card interface itself has received some sophisticated upgrades for the fifth Pi series. Not only do USB and NVMe storage options outclass any benchmark that could be run on SD cards, they are also more reliable, with SD cards a notoriously finicky storage solution. Despite all this, the convenience of SD cards is not to be outdone, and the vast majority of users choose to use the format to power their single-board computers (SBCs), making any advance in…