Tech Pulse: Your Gateway to Innovation
Welcome back to Data Horizons, your compass in the vast sea of technology! We're thrilled to have you join us again as we journey through the ever-evolving landscape of technology. From groundbreaking innovations to emerging trends, we're here to keep you in the loop and excited about what's next.
Let's explore the possibilities together!
Toshiba and Orange demo quantum-secure fibre data transmission ????
Toshiba and Orange have made significant strides in quantum-secure data transmission. After conducting thorough evaluations, the two companies have proven the viability of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) technology in protecting data sent over fiber optic networks. These evaluations, conducted in controlled laboratory settings, have resulted in several key accomplishments.
Initially, tests showed QKD coexisting with high volumes of conventional DWDM data. Later, researchers achieved a breakthrough: transmitting quantum secure data at 400Gbit/s over a 184km fiber link, using three QKD links and two trusted nodes. This addresses the threat quantum computing poses to traditional encryption methods.
QKD, exploiting quantum mechanics for secure key generation, offers a solution. However, integrating it into existing fiber networks poses challenges. Toshiba and Orange's collaboration demonstrates seamless QKD integration, offering cost savings by leveraging existing infrastructure.
Microsoft's upcoming custom chip will be made by Intel?????
Intel's Foundry division, previously Intel Foundry Services, has secured a significant order from Microsoft. The tech giant will utilize Intel's latest 18A (1.8nm) fabrication process for an upcoming in-house chip design. However, due to Intel's process roadmap, the new chip from Microsoft is not expected until 2025.
Microsoft unveiled its custom Azure Maia AI Accelerator and Azure Cobalt 100 CPU server chips last November, aiming for an early rollout this year to enhance its AI services. The Cobalt 100, based on Arm architecture, aligns with Intel's optimization of its 18A process for Arm designs, potentially leading to the next-gen Cobalt CPU. Intel's 18A offers industry-first backside power solution, enhancing efficiency through improved voltage regulation and lower resistance, especially in 3D stacking.
In Intel's Q4 earnings call, CEO Pat Gelsinger confirmed that "18A is expected to achieve manufacturing readiness in the second half of '24." Considering Intel's 18A-based processors for servers and clients won't arrive until 2025, it's likely a similar timeframe for Microsoft's next chip.
Sora's New Realistic AI-Generated Videos Means We Can’t Trust Our Eyes Anymore?????
OpenAI's latest Sora AI model crafts lifelike videos from text prompts, yielding astonishing yet unsettling results. Following their successful ventures with Chat GPT and DALL-E, this text-to-video tool generates one-minute videos from textual instructions. Despite impressive outcomes, like other AI models, it occasionally exhibits noticeable glitches.
Don't Trust Your Eyes
Watch the strange salt-flats-astronaut video in the official Sora showreel or find the individual version on the Sora website. Unless you're experienced in analyzing this type of content, it appears remarkably convincing. The only giveaway is the vacant gaze of the virtual "actors," reminiscent of images from Stability AI's Stable Diffusion text-to-image generator. It resembles a trailer for an intriguing indie sci-fi film.
IPv4 address rentals to mint millions of dollars for AWS????
AWS could generate $400M to $1B annually by charging customers for public IPv4 addresses amid slow IPv6 migration. Last year, AWS announced plans to start charging for these addresses from February 1, citing scarcity and a 300% cost increase over the past few years.
With $0.005 (half a cent) per IP address per hour, this totals $43.80 per year for each public IPv4 address. By utilizing IPWAY’s IP Leasing service,? you can potentially save up to 80%. With rates starting at just $0.5 per IP monthly, seamlessly transfer your IPs to AWS via Amazon’s BYOIP (Bring Your Own IP) service.
A technologist estimated that AWS could earn between $400 million and $1 billion annually from this change, a significant turnaround from its previous free offering. Andree Toonk, founder of Border0, made the billion-dollar claim based on Amazon's IP address data, suggesting potential earnings of $4.6 billion if AWS decides to sell its IPv4 addresses.
Using a script, he pinged all IPv4 addresses in AWS, estimating about 6 million "alive," potentially doubled due to non-responsive instances. With even just 6 million addresses, AWS could earn $262.8 million annually. He projected the $400 million to $1 billion figure conservatively, assuming 10-30% of the 7.9 million published IPv4 addresses are used annually. When asked, AWS declined to confirm these figures, redirecting to their blog post on the charges.
Industry experts generally consider this move fair, suggesting customers should plan to transition to IPv6 if they disagree. Andrew Buss, IDC Senior Research Director, noted that while the new charge reduces the value of AWS services somewhat, it's realistic given the expense and scarcity of IPv4 addresses, which are provided as a service similar to infrastructure hardware.
"The annual cost, while not huge, is still significant, prompting companies to ensure efficient allocation and return unused addresses, or explore IPv6 migration," he stated, suggesting potential industry-wide changes. Omdia chief analyst Roy Illsley emphasized the push towards IPv6 due to the scarcity and rising cost of IPv4 addresses.
More context:
Hackers abuse Google Cloud Run in massive banking trojan campaign????
Security experts caution about hackers exploiting Google Cloud Run to disseminate large quantities of banking trojans such as Astaroth, Mekotio, and Ousaban.
Google Cloud Run allows users to deploy frontend and backend services, websites, or applications, managing workloads without the hassle of infrastructure management or scaling.
Since September 2023, Cisco Talos researchers have noted a significant increase in Google's service misuse for malware distribution. Brazilian actors initiated campaigns using MSI installer files to deploy malware payloads.
The attacks begin with phishing emails, mimicking authentic invoices, financial statements, or messages from local government and tax agencies. These emails primarily use Spanish but also occasionally employ Italian, targeting Latin American countries.
Apple promises to protect iMessage chats from quantum computers????
Apple plans to enhance the cryptographic protocol of iMessage to safeguard conversations from potential decryption by quantum computers, if they become a practical reality.
The PQ3 protocol aims to protect users' chats in anticipation of a future era of quantum computing, which could compromise current encryption methods. As developers adopt quantum-resistant algorithms to counter this threat, Apple introduces its PQ3 approach to secure iMessages against potential unauthorized decryption.
iMessage with PQ3 is currently available in developer previews and betas of iOS 17.4, iPadOS 17.4, macOS 14.4, and watchOS 10.4. These updates, which include support for the PQ3 protocol, are expected to be released to the public soon. Apple anticipates fully replacing its existing end-to-end messaging protocol with PQ3 by the year's end.
Feds remove Ubiquiti router botnet used by Russian intelligence?????
The FBI took down a botnet comprising hundreds of small office/home office (SOHO) routers, allegedly utilized in extensive credential-harvesting operations for Russia's intelligence service.
According to the Justice Department, the botnet was operated by Unit 26165, a military intelligence cyber group associated with Russia's General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). This group is also known as APT28, Fancy Bear, Sofacy, and Sednit.
Cybercriminals unaffiliated with the GRU constructed the botnet by installing Moobot malware on Ubiquiti Edge OS routers. These routers were susceptible to compromise due to their use of widely known default administrator passwords.
According to the statement, APT28 utilized the botnet to conduct extensive spear-phishing and credential-harvesting campaigns targeting entities of intelligence interest to the Russian government. These included U.S. and foreign governments, military, security, and corporate organizations.
250 million-plus reserved IPv4 addresses could be released – but the internet isn’t built to use them????
The unused addresses, referred to as the "240/4" block, include the IPv4 addresses from 240.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.254. This range encompasses over 268 million addresses, roughly six percent of the entire IPv4 number space. In terms of value, these addresses are estimated to be worth around $7 billion at market rates.
However, this potential remains untapped because during the early days of IPv4, they were reserved for future use or experimental purposes.
领英推荐
The early days of internetworking resembled the aftermath of the Big Bang: rapid developments occurred under peculiar conditions, resulting in the survival of some oddities like Pi and Pythagoras, alongside various remnants.
Decisions made during this era have stymied significant evolution. For instance, 16 million IP addresses were allocated to ham radio operators, and the reservation of the 240/4 block for future use remains intact.
Decades later, both decisions seem outdated, especially considering that ham radio operators recently earned over $100 million by selling some IPv4 assets to Amazon—a windfall that's particularly irksome given the world nearly exhausted its fresh IPv4 supply over a decade ago.
With IPv4 depletion, prices for a single address have surged to $30 or more on the private market, a few dollars each annually when leased from specialized providers, or $43.80 per year when rented from AWS.
The IPv4 scarcity and high acquisition costs have prompted discussions about reclassifying the 240/4 block and potentially allowing regional internet registries to administer it, distributing addresses to members at a reasonable cost.
Ancient enmity
Paul Wilson, director-general of the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), has advocated for changing the status of the 240/4 block.
In a 2008 IETF draft, Wilson and his co-authors proposed reclassifying 240/4 to accommodate private networks. Currently, IP ranges like 10/8, 172.16/12, and 192.168/16 are reserved for this purpose. Wilson and his colleagues suggested adding 240/4 to these ranges to support "large private Internets that require more address space than is available in the private use address space designated by [RFC1918] during the dual-stack transition to IPv6."
Big tech's 240/4 backdoor
Big Tech's use of the 240/4 block internally has reignited discussion around it. Google employs it for virtual cloud networks, and Amazon and Verizon Business also utilize it internally. Members of The IPv4 Unicast Extensions Project are pushing for a status change for 240/4, advocating for a gradual transition to prevent disruption to the wider internet. However, opposition arises from concerns about the cost and environmental impact of upgrading billions of networking devices, as well as the potential hindrance to migration to IPv6.
So you think you understand IP fragmentation?????
What is IP fragmentation, and why does it matter? Surprisingly, people might not understand it as well as they think. This article introduces fragquiz, a game that challenges players to predict IP packet behavior when exceeding network size limits. To showcase the confusion around IP fragmentation, networking experts played fragquiz and didn't achieve a perfect score. Additionally, I'll discuss a new fragmentation avoidance algorithm developed by myself and colleagues, which inspired fragquiz's creation.
Why care?
IP fragmentation occurs when an IP packet is divided into smaller pieces before being transmitted to another computer. Despite widespread knowledge among networking experts about when IP fragmentation might occur, implementing algorithms for technologies like VPNs can reveal surprises. Understanding IP fragmentation starts with grasping its essence.
Essentially, an IP packet serves as a foundational unit of the internet, containing application data and routing instructions. As packets traverse the network, routers modify their headers based on routing tables, potentially leading to fragmentation. Fragmentation arises when packets are split into smaller segments to fit the Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) of network paths. However, fragmentation often leads to performance issues, such as increased CPU usage, memory allocation, and network congestion, as well as potential packet loss and security vulnerabilities. Consequently, network programmers strive to minimize IP fragmentation to maintain optimal connection performance and reliability.
Prevention
To prevent IP fragmentation, it's crucial to determine the path Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) between two hosts. Path MTU discovery (PMTUD) methods vary based on networking protocols and network characteristics. One reliable PMTUD approach involves sending unfragmentable IP packets of a known size and confirming their arrival at the destination, indicating a minimum path MTU.
Understanding IP fragmentation entails predicting two key factors: the size of IP packets sent by the source host and whether intermediate routers are allowed to fragment them. This prediction relies on factors like local interface MTU, IP version (IPv4 or IPv6), packet header options, protocols, socket options, system-wide PMTUD settings, and PMTU-cache entries. Failure to adhere to the path MTU may result in the send() system call returning EMSGSIZE, packet fragmentation, or packet loss, requiring a comprehensive grasp of IP fragmentation dynamics.
Well-understood?
A year ago, I believed most networking experts could predict IP packet size and fragmentation status. However, implementing DPLPMTUD for a VPN revealed challenges. Despite initial confidence, fragmented packets emerged during path MTU discovery, leading to a search for solutions amid misleading information. Disabling IP fragmentation required navigating nuanced settings on Linux and macOS. Furthermore, sharing insights proved challenging due to the perception that IP fragmentation is widely understood.
Introducing fragquiz
The fragquiz game was developed to help users understand IP fragmentation by simulating packet transmission scenarios and testing users' predictions. It sends packets larger than the local network's MTU, varying IP version, transport-layer protocol, and socket fragmentation options, prompting users to guess the outcome. The game utilizes a traceroute-style method to read ICMP Time Exceeded messages, revealing packet size and fragmentation status. Unexpected challenges arose, such as routers reassembling packets with TTL of one and networks not generating Time Exceeded messages consistently. While the game proved insightful, even professional network engineers struggled to achieve a high score, highlighting the complexity of IP fragmentation comprehension.
Navigating Proxy Error Codes: Strategies for Resolution????
Encountered a "proxy error" message? These codes can be baffling, with various meanings and challenges. From server glitches to network issues, decoding them requires expertise. Without it, you risk feeling lost in the digital realm. Proxy servers act as intermediaries between your devices and the internet, often unnoticed until errors arise, resulting in confusing messages. These errors may originate from misconfigured networks, blocked content, or server issues. By analyzing error details, we pinpoint causes and strategize solutions. Our guide delves into common scenarios, deciphers error messages, explains HTTP status codes, and offers actionable steps for resolution. With this knowledge, you'll better grasp proxy operations, enabling you to tackle connectivity issues with confidence.
What is a Proxy Error?
Proxy servers act as intermediaries between your devices and the internet, often unnoticed until errors arise, resulting in confusing messages. These errors may originate from misconfigured networks, blocked content, or server issues. By analyzing error details, we pinpoint causes and strategize solutions. Our guide delves into common scenarios, deciphers error messages, explains HTTP status codes, and offers actionable steps for resolution. With this knowledge, you'll better grasp proxy operations, enabling you to tackle connectivity issues with confidence.
Why Does a Proxy Error Happen?
Proxy server failures can stem from:
Don’t Let Proxy Errors Keep You From Browsing
Understanding and analyzing proxy errors makes them manageable. By methodically dissecting error messages and status codes, we can effectively address connectivity issues. Documenting symptoms and testing mitigation strategies enables swift resolution, ensuring uninterrupted internet browsing. When facing a proxy error, remain calm, apply these strategies, and seek expert assistance if necessary. With the right approach, any proxy error can be overcome, allowing seamless browsing experiences.
Deceptive Revelations: Three Truths and a Lie ??
Answer: Looks like the AI hologram is getting hitched without revealing any prenup secrets! Get ready for a summer wedding extravaganza with bytes and vows
Stay tuned for more innovations, insights, and exciting updates. The future holds limitless possibilities, and we're thrilled to explore them with you. Until next time, stay curious, stay tech-savvy, and we'll catch you in the next edition! ????
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