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June 2013 Archives
TV Everywhere Authentication: Challenges & Opportuni ...
Authentication for TV Everywhere is a complex challenge to solve if consumers are to enjoy seamless, user-friendly experiences that enable high-quality, premium content to be viewed across devices. It's a challenge that Akamai is addressing through our Sola Vision Identity Services, which our partner, Brightcove, has integrated into its Video Cloud online video platform. Recently, Corey Halverson, Akamai's senior director of media products, joined Jeff Whatcott, Brightcove's CMO, and Phil
Identifying and mitigating unwanted bot traffic
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Opera Browser Hacked
A note of caution for Akamai customers and anyone else using the Opera web browser: Hackers have broken into Opera's internal network. As a result, thousands of users have been the unfortunate recipients of malware.According to a report on the E Hacking News site, the culprits were able to exploit an expired Opera code-signing certificate. "Cybercriminals used the certificate to send their malware and distributed the malicious software to thousands
Walking on a Wire
Discovery Channel's nerve-wracking "Skywire Live with Nik Wallenda" last Sunday brought new meaning to the term, "cable TV." The live television and online broadcast featured tightrope walker Nik Wallenda, a.k.a. "The King of the Highwire," traversing a 1,400-wide section of the Grand Canyon some 1,500 feet in the air on a two-inch cable. As pleased as Akamai was to help Discovery Channel deliver the live online video stream to
Experiencing Compliance From The Inside Out
One of the big educations I've been getting since joining Akamai's InfoSec group is what it's like to deal with the multiple tasks of compliance from within an organization. As a journalist, I always tackled the subject from the outside, where I'd ask a company which regulations they were bound by, and which security procedures they had adopted as a result.Now I'm inside a publicly-traded corporation that is on the
Akamai InfoSec Has Become More Social
Akamai InfoSec has some new social networking accounts designed to keep the focus squarely on what our team is up to while inviting customers and the wider industry in to share ideas and ask us questions.In the past week we've created new pages on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ -- and we ask you all to "like," "follow" and add the team to your online social circles.For now, these accounts
The Unforeseen Risk of Shared Services DDoS
A DDoS attack targeted at one web site is bad enough. But what happens when that single attack poses the distinct possibility of doing even more damage than originally intended. The kind of collateral damage I'm talking about is very real when you take into account IT architectures reliant on shared services. Shared services include anything that serves more than one application or set of users, for example:- Network infrastructure- Network bandwidth- Market
Blunting Attacks During Olympic-sized Events
InfoSec receives many questions from Akamai customers on a daily basis. Yesterday, someone asked if we had a case study on attack vectors against the 2012 London Olympics. The customer has a big event coming up, and wanted a picture of what they're up against -- and how they can defend against it all to keep their sites running smoothly. As it turns out, CSIRT Director Michael Smith wrote something on that
Blogs From Akamai's InfoSec Team (Updated)
Akamai's InfoSec team does a lot of blogging, both on the company site and in personal, security-oriented blogs where they offer opinions that are theirs and not always their employer's. What follows is a directory of who is blogging and where. I'll update the list as more examples come to my attention, but for now I hope you'll check out these sites. In a future post, I'll point you to
World IPv6 Launch Anniversary: Measuring Adoption On ...
It has been a year since I last wrote about World IPv6 Launch and our measurements of IPv6 adoption at the time. Since then, we've seen continued momentum around increased IPv6 adoption on multiple fronts, with more IPv6 end users as well as with more content becoming available over IPv6. The net result of this is that IPv6 traffic on Akamai's global platform has increased to be over 250% of
'InfoSec's Jerk Problem,' By Christian Ternus
I wanted to take a moment to flag a post from another blog that's well worth your time, especially if you want to get a better understanding of the security industry culture. It's from Akamai InfoSec's own Christian Ternus. The subject is something any industry can relate to -- the so-called "jerk problem."An excerpt:Put bluntly: to others, we're jerks.If you don't think this is a problem, you can stop reading here.The
Akamai at IRCE 2013
Two weeks ago, a large number of eCommerce professionals converged in Chicago for IRCE 2013. I was one of the presenters to talk about "Building m-commerce: Different approaches, different outcomes." There were plenty of instances throughout the conference where the growing mobile traffic and revenue numbers highlighted the importance of delivering fast, quality mobile experiences to consumers. As most of us know - fast, quality mobile experiences are better
Bug Bounty Programs A Turning Point For Microsoft
Here in Akamai's InfoSec department, we constantly remind employees and customers to keep up on all the latest security patchesin their environment. Since Windows is everywhere in the business world, it's particularly important to keep an eye on Microsoft's patching efforts. This week, the software giant made a big move in the name of vulnerability management, unleashing bug bounty programs that will likely lead to many more security patches in
On the Road with Aura Network Solutions
As previously posted here, Akamai's Frank Childs recently presented at the CDN Summit in NYC alongside Charter Communication's Kreig DuBose for a session titled "Deploying and Operator CDN to Enhance Customer Experience." Frank spoke about our Aura Network Solutions and Kreig explained his decision to select Aura, the results of the implementation and next steps. If you're interested in seeing the presentation, I've inluded the video below... After the CDN
DNS reflection defense
Recently, DDoS attacks have spiked up well past 100 Gbps several times. A common move used by adversaries is the DNS reflection attack, a category of Distributed, Reflected Denial of Service (DRDos) attack. To understand how to defend against it, it helps to understand how it works. How DNS works At the heart of the Domain Name System are two categories of name server: the authoritative name server, which is
Click Frenzy 2 goes off without a hitch with Akamai
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Who Is George Penguin?
One of the more challenging tasks as the new guy in Akamai's InfoSec department is getting to know George Penguin. He's our mascot and ambassador of good will. His likeness is everywhere in the office, most notably in the form of soft, stuffed toys that dominate the workspace like an invasion of the tribbles from "Star Trek." I met George long before starting this job, and I admit that I've
Lessons From Akamai InfoSec Training
Though I've written about InfoSec for the past decade, I've still had my moments of shame. There was the time last year when I fell for one of the oldest social engineering tricks in the book, clicking the link on a direct Twitter message where someone I worked with asked if I'd seen the nasty post someone wrote about me. The co-worker's Twitter account had been hijacked and similar messages
A History of Akamai InfoSec Storytelling
As part of my new role as Akamai's security storyteller, I've been digging around in search of all the press coverage this group has gotten over the years. I'm finding that many articles and blog posts came from me, particularly what I wrote in my last job as managing editor of CSO Magazine. You could say my coming here was destiny, based on how easily I focused on Akamai InfoSec
Microsoft's June Patch Load
A reminder to Akamai customers and the larger InfoSec community that Microsoft has released its security update for June. Below are the specific bulletins. Click the link on each to get full details. You'll want to get a fix on which of these are most important to your organization and install them as soon as possible. MS13-047 Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (critical) MS13-048 Vulnerability in Windows Kernel Could
Akamai Serves Record Traffic for France Télévisions ...
Rafael Nadal's unprecedented eighth French Open championship wasn't the only record set at Roland Garros last week. France Télévisions' live webcast of number one-seeded Nadal's semifinal victory over second-seed Novak Djokovic on Friday, June 8th, set new peak concurrent viewer and traffic records for the event on the Akamai Intelligent Platform. More than 126,000 viewers were simultaneously watching the four-hour match at one point, driving traffic to peak at 155 Gbps.
Let Me Tell You Some Akamai Security Stories
Allow me to introduce myself: My name is Bill Brenner, Akamai's newly-minted security storyteller (my title is actually senior program manager, but my role here will be quite different from that of other people with similar titles).I'm a journalist by trade, with two decades of newspaper reporting and editing behind me. I've spent the last decade writing about information security, a path that brought me here. I'm not a security