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Volume 3, Issue 8 - August, 2008 - © 2009 by Moose Logic, All Rights Reserved
Cover Story: Virtualization Wars!
Be Careful Out There!
UV Safety in the Summertime
You Live Where?
This Month in History
Moose Logic Coming Events
(Moose Views is a monthly newsletter prepared by Moose Logic to bring you information and tips on maintaining a trouble-free network)
Virtualization Wars!
The big news out of Palo Alto this month is that VMware has decided to give away the ESX 3i hypervisor —thus
firing the latest salvo in the virtualization wars.
So what does this mean? What, exactly, is ESX 3i? What does this mean to Citrix and Microsoft? For that matter, what does it mean to VMware?
ESX 3i is the new-generation hypervisor that VMware originally developed for OEM partners (like HP, Dell, and IBM) that wanted to build it into server hardware. Like the Citrix Xen hypervisor, it requires the new-generation of processor chips that have hardware support for virtualization. So if you planned to put it on the same Pentium 4 Xeon-based servers that the traditional VI3 product could run on, that’s not an option.
After developing ESX 3i, VMware decided that they would make it available as a stand-alone product, and set the price at $495. Now they’ve decided that you can download it for free.
To anyone who has been watching this market for any length of time, this move should have come as no surprise. Since last year, industry pundits have been predicting that the hypervisor itself was going to become a commodity. (See Is VMware a Dead Duck? By Steven Vaughn-Nichols, eWeek.com, November 13, 2007.)
The Citrix XenServer Express Edition is free. Microsoft’s Hyper-V is, for all intents and purposes, free (it’s an extra $28 when you buy a Windows Server license), now ESX 3i is also free.
Like XenServer Express Edition and Hyper-V, you can’t do a lot with ESX 3i by itself. You can only manage one host server at a time. You have to attach directly to the host to manage it—it won’t talk to VirtualCenter. You don’t get any of the higher-end features like live motion or high-availability. If you want any of those things, you have to upgrade to a full license of VI3, and, since 3i is free, there’s no discount on the upgrade. You also get no support with ESX 3i unless you purchase a separate support agreement.
VMware is hoping, of course, that if you’re just starting to look at virtualization you’ll download 3i, play
with it, and decide to buy full VMware licenses. Just as Citrix is hoping that you’ll download XenServer Express
Edition, play with it, and decide to buy full XenServer licenses, and Microsoft hopes you’ll play with Hyper-V
and decide to invest in System Center and System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
Still, it’s an important development, because the battle now moves to where the true value is: the tools you use to manage your virtual environment. More on that later...
Be Careful Out There!
The Internet, as you probably know, can be a dangerous place. There really are bad guys out there, and they really do want to compromise your systems and steal your data, your identity, and your money. But how dangerous is it?Websense just released their State of Internet Security report for the first half of 2008, and it’s a pretty interesting read. You can download a copy from the Ziff Davis blog site, which I have thoughtfully condensed into the following “TinyURL” so you don’t have to type so many characters:
http://tinyurl.com/6cxlzd
(Side note—if you’re not familiar with TinyURL, it’s a great tool! You can go to http://www.tinyurl.com, enter just about any insanely long, complex URL, and they will generate a tiny shortcut like the one above—and handle the redirection to the original URL when you type in the tiny one.)
Here are a few highlights from the report—some may surprise you:
- 75% of Web sites that contain malicious code are legitimate sites that have been compromised.
- 60 of the top 100 most popular Web sites have either hosted or been involved in malicious activity in the first half of 2008.
- 87% of email messages are spam (so it isn’t just your imagination).
- Over 75% of all emails in circulation contained links to spam sites and/or malicious Web sites.
- Pornography is no longer the most popular topic for spam—it has actually decreased by 70%. The most popular are now shopping (20%), cosmetics (19%), and medical (11%).
- 9% of spam messages are phishing attacks (although, believe it or not, phishing attacks have been trending down over the last six months).
- The number of email messages containing viruses is quite low compared to the number of spam messages, but is increasing—by 5x in the last six months.
- Almost a third of malicious Web attacks included data-stealing code.
- Almost half of all data-stealing attacks are conducted over the Web.
It’s important to remember that, these days, it is very common for Web pages to pull together content from multiple other Web sites—so the URL in the address bar may not be an accurate indication of the actual source content.
Here are the top 10 Web attack vectors in the first half of 2008:
- Browser vulnerabilities
- Adobe Flash vulnerabilities
- ActiveX vulnerabilities
- SQL injection
- Adobe Acrobat Reader vulnerabilities
- Content Management Systems vulnerabilities
- Apple QuickTime vulnerabilities
- Malicious Web 2.0 components (such as Facebook applications, banner ads, third-party widgets/gadgets, etc.)
- RealPlayer vulnerabilities
- DNS Cache poisoning.
Incredibly, they also estimate that 3.5 million US households with broadband Internet access remain unprotected by a firewall, and 19% of the survey respondents reported that they didn’t have anti-virus software on their computers.
Still, there is some good news: the chances of becoming a cybervictim have declined to 1 in 6, down from 1 in 4 in 2007.
What can you do? Well, mostly common-sense things:
- You probably use a hardware firewall at work—you should use one at home as well.
- If you’ve got a wireless network at home, make sure that SSID broadcast is turned off, and encryption is turned on. It’s also a good idea to use the MAC address restriction list that most devices support to restrict access only to your own computers.
- Make sure your anti-malware protection is up to date, and critical security patches are applied to your OS and apps.
- Use strong passwords.
- Don’t just click on a link in an email message until you’re sure it will take you to a legitimate site. It’s easy to hide a malicious URL behind a legitimate company logo.
- Don’t open suspicious attachments.
UV Safety in the Summertime
It’s summertime in the Great Northwest, and everyone wants to catch all the rays they can! Here are a few tips
to help you do it safely…
Along with taking care to protect your skin from the damaging effects of the sun, don't forget to take care of your eyes too. Long-term exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun can lead to the development of various eye disorders, including macular degeneration and cataracts.
Acute damage to your eyes can occur even with just one outing on a very bright day. The effect is magnified if you are recreating on sand, snow, or reflective pavement, which can amplify the intensity of the light. The surface of your eye can be burned in a similar way that your skin burns. Although the effect generally disappears within a few days, it can have life-long repercussions.
So what should you do to protect your eyes? Your best line of defense is to wear sunglasses whenever you head outdoors. Sunglasses should be labeled as blocking 99 to 100 percent of UV-A and UV-B rays. Don't be fooled by the cost of the sunglasses. More expensive glasses do not necessarily block any more rays than their cheaper counterparts, and many inexpensive sunglasses are quite adequate for the task. You also cannot tell if sunglasses are effective by the darkness of the lens.
Just because the lens is very dark does not mean it is formulated to block the rays that are especially damaging. Be sure to check the label of any sunglasses you are considering purchasing.
If you spend time on the water or in the snow, consider getting sunglasses that wrap around your temples. These types of sunglasses will block the sun's rays that are reflected off these surfaces from hitting your eyes from below or from the side.
When you go swimming, wear goggles to protect your eyes from the sun's rays. Goggles will also protect your eyes from the irritating effects of chlorine and will keep any bacteria in the water out of your eyes.
Finally, the experts recommend that you wear a broad-brimmed hat when you go outdoors. This will keep the sun off your entire face.
You Live Where?
Some real place names:- Burnt Corn, AL
- Chicken, AK
- Why, AZ
- Okay, AR
- You Bet, CA
- Hygiene, CO
- Giants Neck, CT
- Hourglass, DE
- Christmas, FL
- Between, GA
- Oblong, IL
- Gnaw Bone, IN
- Gravity, IA
- Denmark, KS
- Typo, KY
- Uncle Sam, LA
- Beans Corner Bingo, ME
- Boring, MD
- Sandwich, MA
- Pigeon, MI
- Nimrod, MN
- Arm, MS
- Frankenstein, MO
- Two-dot, MT
- Worms, NE
- Searchlight, NV
- Bungy, NH
- Cheesequake, NJ
- Tingle, NM
- Cat Elbow Corner, NY
- Whynot, NC
- Zap, ND
- Knockemstiff, OH
- Bowlegs, OK
- Idiotville, OR
- Eighty Four, PA
- Quidnick, RI
- South of the Border, SC
- Hammer, SD
- Disco, TN
- Noodle, TX
- Hurricane, UT
- Mosquitoville, VT
- California, VA
- Humptulips, WA
- Odd, WV
- Embarrass, WI
- Camel Hump, WY
This Month in History
- August 1, 1779 - Francis Scott Key born in Maryland
- August 2, 1776 - Declaration of Independence signed
- August 3, 1492 - Christopher Columbus sets sail from Spain
- August 4, 1901 - Louis Armstrong born in New Orleans
- August 7, 1882 - The Hatfield and McCoy Feud began when a member of the Hatfield family was murdered by three McCoys
- August 9, 1974 - Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency of the United States. (Your humble correspondent was on a business trip. I watched the resignation speech, then went for a dip in the hotel pool. A few minutes later, I was struck by what I wasn’t hearing—no gunfire, no tanks in the streets, no soldiers marching—and I gained a new level of respect for what our Founding Fathers had created).
- August 11, 1841 - Frederick Douglass, a former slave, gave his first public speech at an antislavery convention on Nantucket Island
- August 12, 1981 - IBM introduced its first “Personal Computer”
- August 13, 1899 - Alfred Hitchcock born in London
- August 15, 1914 - Panama Canal officially opened
- August 16, 1896 - The Roller Coaster was patented
- August 17, 1786 - Davey Crockett was born on the Tennessee frontier.
