That mega-vulnerability Cisco dropped is now under exploit

Hackers are actively trying to use a very serious vulnerability in commonly used Cisco network software that can give full control over secure networks and access to all traffic that passes through it, the company warned.

When Cisco officials revealed the bug last week in a series of Adaptive Security Appliance products, they said they had no evidence that someone was actively using it. Earlier this week, the officials updated their advice to indicate that this was no longer the case.

"The Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) is aware of the public knowledge of the vulnerability described in this advisory report," wrote the officials. "Cisco PSIRT is aware of attempts to abuse the vulnerability described in this advisory report."

The update does not state how widespread the attacks are, whether one succeeds or who executes them. Craig Williams, a Cisco researcher and director of outreach for Cisco's Talos security team, wrote on Thursday about the vulnerability: "This is not an exercise ... Wait right away." Exploitation, albeit weak DoS to date, has been observed in the field. "

The tweet seemed to suggest that effective attacks with code execution still had to succeed in the active attacks. A separate tweet from independent researcher Kevin Beaumont on Friday shortly before this post said: "Someone has just tried the Cisco ASA vulnerability on my honeypot.

In a follow-up tweet, Beaumont also indicated that the attack had not performed the code successfully.

The warning for in-the-wild exploit attempts came around the same time that Cisco warned that the vulnerability - which already had the maximum severity score of 10 under the Common Vulnerability Scoring System - posed an even greater threat than originally thought. The revised review was based on a detailed survey conducted by Cisco researchers after the release of last week's original advice based on findings from external security company NCC Group. As a result of the new findings, Cisco has issued a new set of patches to replace the previously released patches.

"After broadening the survey, Cisco engineers encountered other attack vectors and features that were affected by this vulnerability, which were not originally identified by the NCC Group and then updated the security advisory that Cisco officials wrote on Monday." In addition, it has also been found that the original list of fixed releases published in the security advice later proved to be vulnerable to additional denial of service conditions. "

The maximum priority rating of the vulnerability results from the relative ease of use, combined with the extraordinary control if it produces successful attackers. Devices with Cisco ASA software are usually located on the edge of a secure network, making them easy to find by outsiders. Once they have been exploited, the devices allow remote hackers to seize the administrative control of networks and to monitor all traffic going through them. About Cisco products include:

1. Industrial safety equipment from the 3000 series (ISA)
2. Adaptive security equipment from the ASA 5500 series
3. ASA 5500-X series next generation firewalls
4. ASA Services Module for Cisco Catalyst 6500 series switches and Cisco 7600 series routers
5. ASA 1000V Cloud Firewall
6. Adaptive Security Virtual Appliance (ASAv)
7. Firepower 2100 series security device
8. Firepower 4110 Security device
9. Firepower 4120 Security device
10. Firepower 4140 Security device
11. Firepower 4150 Security device
12. Firepower 9300 ASA security module
13. Firepower Threat Defense Software (FTD)
14. FTD Virtual

People using one of these devices should ensure that they are protected with the latest patches as soon as possible .

Apple and Cisco Team Up on Cybersecurity

Apple and Cisco are now offering companies insurance policies to protect them financially against cyber attacks.

Insurance policies are part of a larger package that also contains business security assessments. As part of this offer, the Aon professional services firm will provide business security advice, while the Allianz insurance company will offer discounted cyber security coverage, provided that some customers use certain Apple devices and products. Cisco security.

"We are pleased that insurance executives recognize that Apple products (aapl, -2.75%) offer superior cybersecurity and that we have the opportunity to make cybersecurity more accessible to our customers," Tim said. Cook, Apple's CEO. in a statement.

Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cook and Cisco (csco, -4.47%), said in June that the two companies were considering a joint insurance policy for companies using their two products, but that they were their business partners. insurance at that time. have not made public.

This decision underscores Apple's desire to become a leading enterprise technology provider that sells its leading iPhones, iPads and Macs to businesses.

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Apple signed a partnership with Cisco in 2015, in which the two companies share technical teams that can better match their respective technologies. At the time, the two companies were striving to make Cisco's network, video and web conferencing services work better with Apple's iOS and MacOS devices, but it appears that they have since expanded Cisco security services.

In August, insurance giant American Insurance Group announced that it would sell cyberinsurance plans to US consumers who fear that their sensitive data, such as social security or credit card numbers, could be exposed to hackers. online.

Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify that Cisco and Apple do not sell direct insurance.

Cisco Accelerates Multicloud Journey with HyperFlex Platform Innovations

Cisco today announced platform innovations for Cisco® HyperFlex ™ with software version 3.0 that delivers performance and simplicity for every application, on every cloud, on every scale. Improvements include support for Microsoft Hyper-V, expandable clusters, containers, and new multicloud services that enable deployment, monitoring, and application management in any cloud. The result is a single platform that enables the development and implementation of traditional and native cloud applications on a common hyperconverged platform.

Cisco HyperFlex: the power to simplify more
Other hyperconverged solutions do not take into account the critical roles that distributed networks and file systems play in the performance and scalability of clustered servers. Cisco has redefined hyperconvergence with a comprehensive end-to-end approach that integrates high-performance server and network technology with a specially designed file system. The result is state-of-the-art performance that allows customers to effectively support a broader range of applications, including databases and critical ERP workloads.

"HyperFlex's approach enables high-quality Microsoft SQL and Oracle databases and critical applications with faster delivery of the environment, lower costs and more efficient management," says Edivaldo Rocha, CEO of HyperFlex. CorpFlex.

The latest version of HyperFlex builds on this superior architecture and increases the ability for customers to further simplify. "Customers tell us they need operational simplicity, effortless scalability and the ability to meet the unique needs of each of their applications," said Liz Centoni, vice president and general manager of the IT Product Group. from Cisco. "The new HyperFlex platform underscores our commitment to continuously simplifying and improving data center activities and helping organizations to thrive in a multicloud world."

Start an application
The HyperFlex 3.0 software release offers significant benefits for critical and native cloud workloads:

    Support for multiple hypervisors. In addition to VMware ESXi, HyperFlex adds hypervisor support for Microsoft Hyper-V.
    Container support. The expansions of the data platform include a FlexVolume driver to enable continued storage of containers managed by Kubernetes, enabling the development and deployment of cloud-based native applications on HyperFlex.
    Validations of business applications. HyperFlex is ready for a wide range of workloads with profiling and workload dimensioning tools available to support application migration applications. In addition to the design and implementation guides for Virtual Server Infrastructure (VSI) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), Cisco Design Guides are now available for critical databases, analysis and ERP applications (Oracle, SQL, SAP). , Microsoft Exchange and Splunk). .

On every cloud
Organizations nowadays require workload mobility and application monitoring on public and private clouds. HyperFlex is the multicloud era platform with new service integrations with Cisco's multicloud software portfolio:

    Control of application performance. AppDynamics with HyperFlex enables performance monitoring of hybrid applications running on HyperFlex and multiple clouds.
    Application placement. Cisco Workload Optimization Manager (CWOM) for HyperFlex helps clients with automated analysis and placement of workloads.
    Cloud Management Introduced last year, CloudCenter provides HyperFlex workload life cycle management for one or more private and public clouds.
    Private cloud. CloudCenter for HyperFlex simplifies the deployment and management of virtual machines, containers and applications, allowing developers and administrators to easily consume private clouds.

At any scale
Only Cisco enables customers to power fast-growing workloads with complete resiliency while taking advantage of the global reach of cloud-based systems management.

Greater scalability and resiliency On-prem. HyperFlex clusters, which support customers with higher virtual machine density, now reach 64 nodes with increased resiliency through fully automated availability zones.
Stretch Clusters across data centers. To meet data protection and high availability requirements, HyperFlex can now be configured into scalable clusters for critical campus and metro availability.
Cloud-based management across data centers. Cisco Intersight now supports HyperFlex Cloud Deployment, deploying simplified deployment and management to any remote location.

Applications are at the heart of digital transformation. Application landscape evolution requires support for traditional monolithic workloads and distributed microservice architectures. In addition, the ability to enable a multicloud operating environment is rapidly becoming a data center requirement. According to the July 2017 IDC CloudView survey, 85% of respondents rate or use the public cloud, while among current users, 87% have adopted a hybrid cloud strategy and 94% plan to use multiple clouds.

Organizations are rapidly adopting hyperconverged infrastructure (HMI) to simplify their environment. HCI is one of the fastest-growing segments in data center space with a 5-year CAGR (2016-2021) of 30.2% (Source: World IDC Quarterly Converged Systems Forecast, 3CQ17 ). Cisco HyperFlex is being adopted as the platform of choice for enterprise computing, accelerating this transition to the market with more than 2,000 customers worldwide.

Ex-Cisco CEO John Chambers jumps into venture capital

John Chambers, the former Cisco CEO who led the network giant for twenty years before retiring in 2015, turns to venture capital.

The self-financing company, JC2 Ventures, will support at least a dozen companies that have the potential to become public, according to a number of media reports. Rooms will focus on areas such as the internet of things, digital communication, security and agriculture.

So far, the company has eight companies in its portfolio, including drone software developer Airware and company for social media management Sprinklr.



As CEO and president of Cisco, Mr. Chambers led the company through the internet bubble and bankruptcy and recession. He left the role of president in December.

Chambers spoke openly about the problems Silicon Valley is facing, including how the lack of IPOs can hamper the growth of jobs. At the end of last year he said he wanted to "change the world" by investing in startups and that he wanted to see at least one interviewed woman for every opening in a startup.

Chambers told CNBC that he believed the tax reform and the reduction of the Republican party's regulations would help start-ups. According to him, changes to the tax code would allow companies to bring money back to the United States. at a tax rate, giving them a greater incentive to make acquisitions.

Hyundai and Cisco Build In-Car Gigabit Network

As autonomous cars on the road are used more often, they will soon become more advanced. Manufacturers will start adding more functions and sensors to vehicles to make them more reliable and predictable, while in general they are better connected. But all these extras have a cost bandwidth. For this reason, car manufacturer Hyundai together with the Cisco network company has developed a vehicle backbone capable of gigabit speeds.

Autonomous cars must be able to process a lot of information in a reliable way. In a fraction of a second the sensors and cameras have to send data from one end of the car to the other, so that the information can be processed by the vehicle's on-board computers. To avoid the complexity of designing a new network and a new standard for each platform, Cisco has decided to use a standard that has been in development since its foundation in 1973 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). . ): Ethernet.

This does not refer to the cable that passes between your computer and your home router, but to the stand behind the cable. Ethernet has achieved Gigabit speeds since 1998 via fiber optics and copper-turned pair since 1999, but the standard itself still needs to be fully integrated into a complete solution for a vehicle until the task is provided by both companies. Cisco has been working on a scalable end-to-end solution for use on the vehicle by choosing to use the Ethernet and IP protocols, meaning that data travels the same way through the car's internal network as at home. she.

"By setting up an open and very secure platform, companies have laid the foundation for a bright future, including exploring Hyundai's data center integration, which gives access to real-time data." Communicate "with lights and parking meters", says Seung-ho Hwang, director of Hyundai Auto Intelligence and former IT Director of the company. "Cisco and Hyundai remain committed to creating the next generation of platforms and vehicle services."

Hyundai expects that the use of this infrastructure will enable it to be extremely flexible with future integrations, easily facilitate future services and integrate with other connected devices without making major changes to its own platform. The technology is expected to soon be added to the 2019 Hyundai high-end line of vehicles.

Enterprise IT Infrastructure Spending Increased in 2017; Cisco Maintains a Big Lead

Synergy Research Group's new data shows that in six key segments of business infrastructure, vendor revenues for the last four quarters have increased by almost 3% per year. Total revenues for the last four quarters reached $ 113 billion, with revenues in each of the last twelve quarters typically in the range of $ 26-29 billion. Data center servers are the largest segment of the market, although revenues fell nearly 1% in 2017. Switches and routers are the second largest segment and have grown 4%. Hosted and cloud collaboration has made the most progress, while on-site collaboration has continued to be challenged by aggressive price competition and market disruption.

Cisco remains the dominant business provider. It is the market leader in four of the six segments, with the exception of cloud and hosted collaboration, where it ranks second, and data center servers, where it ranks fifth. Overall, in all six segments, Cisco's market share in the last four quarters was 26%, one percentage point lower than the previous four quarters. HPE is the second largest business provider with 11% market share in all six segments. It is the leader in data center servers, the second largest WLAN provider and the third largest switch and router. Hosted and cloud collaboration is where neither Cisco nor HPE are the primary providers; Microsoft is the leader in this segment. The top two vendors classified in the other segments are Dell EMC (Enterprise Data Center Servers), Huawei (Switches and Routers), Microsoft (Local Collaboration), and Check Point (Network Security). The main suppliers with particularly high growth rates in 2017 in these highly competitive markets are Super Micro, Arista Networks and RingCentral.

"Despite the booming market for public clouds, the company's IT infrastructure spending was still up in 2017 and will be over the next five years," said the founder and chief analyst at Synergy Research Group, Jeremy Duke. "The focus of this spending is changing, however, with growing interest in hosted solutions, subscription-based business models, and emerging technologies, which will continue to present challenges for established vendors and opportunities for vendors." new participants.

About the Synergy Research Group

Synergy provides quarterly market size and segmentation data for various business infrastructure markets, including vendor revenues by segment and region. Synergy Research Group  helps marketing and strategic decision-makers around the world through their unique insights and in-depth analysis.

Cisco: Most IoT projects are failing due to lack of experience and security

According to Kevin Bloch, Cisco's CTO, three-quarters of all Internet of Things ("IoT") projects fail, mainly because they have been designed to solve individual problems and, as a result, have been divided into silos and not into They were born.

"The inaugural phase of IoT is characterized by numerous point solutions offered by a multitude of new, often new, providers, usually designed to solve a particular social problem, such as lighting or parking. The computer stack must be built to support the solution, "said Bloch.

"Finally, customers encounter multiple silos from multiple vendors that do not interact, are not cybersecurity, use different protocols, and generate more complexity at a higher cost."

According to Bloch, this is why Cisco is building an "IoT Phase 2" foundation, which consists of a platform capable of managing multiple sensors, vendors, applications and different data exchanges.

The CTA added that IoT projects also fail due to lack of cybersecurity, qualified skills by those who execute them, project definition, governance and support.

 Launched with nine other axioms in the IoT landscape, Bloch said Cisco hopes to help other companies launch successful connected solutions by discussing both pitfalls and success stories.

The lack of cybersecurity was a second of his axioms, with Bloch saying that if something is not guaranteed, he should not be connected.

"Cybercrime is already at its highest level and has a negative impact on global economies of more than 1% of GDP," he said.

 "We are becoming more mobile, we are using more cloud services, and we are expanding the deployment of IoT to tens of billions of connected things, increasing the opportunities for exploitation and attack." Our situation will inevitably get worse if we do not take adequate precautions.

"If that does not protect him, do not connect him."

Once again, Bloch said that most of the new IoT solutions that are being introduced are developed by companies or new companies with no experience, including security.

 As a result, he said that Cisco continues to invest billions of dollars in cybersecurity solutions for IoT, mobility and the cloud. One of these products was Cisco's IoT Threat Defense solution, which was launched in June to mitigate and resolve common security issues that threaten the deployment and operation of connected devices. time stating that companies are removing the security mechanisms of devices to keep them at a low cost.

Cisco IoT technical director Shaun Cooley said in June that many devices also have the ability to protect, emphasize the safety side of the net, as well as improved processors, require better labeling of devices and require a notification process and approval before allowing connectivity.

The IoT Threat Defense suite is also enabled by the intuitive Cisco network, which combines technologies for which Cisco has been working in recent years: software-defined networks, software-defined access, network feature virtualization, API capabilities, and intelligent WAN.

 According to a third axiom, Bloch argues that IoT is about collecting data and processing the data itself, without connecting, with Cisco predicting that the connections will not cost anything in a decade.

Under this axiom, Bloch said that there are two main components needed to be able to "measure" the physical world and allow automation: detection by camera, sensor or processor; and connectivity, or the transfer of data measurements to a computer.

"Detection and connectivity provide data that allows a product to outsource its capabilities and provide a range of new opportunities and services," he said.

One of the axioms of IoT Bloch argued that the key is to have the right data, to know what to ask for data and to know how to find the answers, the CTO correlates with this other hypothesis: that by 2025 , 40 percent of all Data will never reach the cloud.

"While the accumulation of data may seem important, the key question is: what are the data for?", He said.

"Most organizations already have more data than they can handle, however, most of the time they do not have the correct data, if they did, would they know what to ask about the data? able to formulate the problem, how could they do it? About finding the necessary answers in the data? "

The key for organizations is to find the answers to these three questions using a combination of computation, artificial intelligence and machine learning, he argued.

Cisco has focused on providing IoT solutions globally, announced in June its IoT kinetic trading platform focusing on connection management, computer "fog" and data delivery, which "optimizes the ability of companies to put their IoT initiatives on the market".

"It's really a platform to unload their devices," he said at the time the senior vice president and general manager of IoT applications and Cisco Rowan Trollope, adding that complete the Cisco Jasper IoT platform.

"We are going from the periphery to the device to provide an incredible platform for more data."

According to Trollope, billions of terabytes of data are "stuck" in non-connected devices around the world, which Cisco Kinetic could help extract. This will also speed up the time between concept validation and implementation for customers.