CTO-tribecaexpress

2011-12-29T08:58:00.001-08:00

US-CERT Warns Of Security Flaw In Wireless Routers
By Antone Gonsalves, CRN 5:40 PM EST Wed. Dec. 28, 2011
A vulnerability in millions of wireless home routers in use today makes it possible for hackers to crack a network's password, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has warned.

Security researcher Stefan Viehbock discovered the flaw in the Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), a computing standard developed by the Wi-Fi Alliance and used in the majority of wireless home routers sold today, according to US-CERT. Manufacturers affected include Belkin, Buffalo, D-Link Systems, Cisco division Linksys, Netgear, Technicolor, TP-Link and ZyXEL.

WPS provides an easy method for non-technical people to set up an eight-digit personal identification number that's needed to connect a device to a home network. The vulnerability makes the WPS susceptible to a brute-force attack, which is when a hacker systematically checks all possible number combinations to find the right one.

When the first attempt fails, the router sends back a response in such a way that the attacker will be able to determine the first half of the PIN. This greatly reduces the amount of time needed to complete the number sequence, US-CERT reported Tuesday.

Viehbock discovered the flaw after noticing "a few really bad design decisions" in the WPS. "As all of the more recent router models come with WPS enabled by default, this affects millions of devices worldwide," he said in his blog.

US-CERT said the only workaround for the flaw was to disable the WPS. The organization also recommended using WPA2 encryption with a strong password, disabling Universal Plug and Play, which lets any supporting device connect to a network, and enable Media Access Control address filtering, so only trusted devices can access the network.

US-CERT is part of the National Cyber Security Division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The organization is a partnership between Homeland Security and the private and public sectors.

2011-10-31T08:06:00.000-07:00

A short thought for you.
Apple once again has released a new phone. The iphone 4s today has shown issues with battery life. A blog with about 100,000 reads and 1300 comments points out this issue. This is the second time Apple has released a product with issues that if they had a "public beta" before release we would see the ablity to reduce these kind of events. Microsoft has learned this with the release of Windows 7 which has proved that the Public can give the best feedback and reduce costly mistakes.

2010-05-07T17:07:00.000-07:00

For those of you that know me from a Technical side you will know that I have been fascinated about the potential of Video and what it can do and will do to us for more than 15 years.
For me it started when Intel put 200 million dollars into a Video Conferencing product called Proshare. That was difficult to install and cost money to operate.
You also needed a community to use it.
Since then I have seen a number of products and idea that show how things will be.
The best to date I have ever seen was a Canon exhibit in 1998 at the Jacob Javitz that showed people use hand strokes to write , call and move from screen to phone to laptop.

Now this is an interesting link to two video presentations. The first relax sit back and just enjoy it. I wanted to show this to you as more Companies believe this is going to be a reality in the next 10 years. I have learned not to put a date on it. But I do know it will happen.
Cisco is also looking at how to do this but I think their vision is not fully cooked yet. Let’s see what new players are going to work on this. Sony, HP, Apple feel it guys,,, is it starting to gel that Video is a transformational event. Maybe:
Take a look at this:
http://business.motorola.com/video/IEoTV/videos/1.html

Now as a product set look a this section: This is targeted to Service providers, Verizon, ATT etc.
http://business.motorola.com/video/IEoTV/index.html

This is my small mark in the sand. Now the question is how to take the vision and monetize it. I know I can make it happen.
All the best
Gary

2006-04-03T14:34:00.000-07:00

My name is Gary Berzack I am the CTO of eTribeca, LLC. A number of people including staff, Vendors and Clients have asked me to put some thought sot Blog paper on what is happening in the Networking industry and WiFi. I have been in WiFi for about 10 years. Before it was called WiFi (For a while Called Wecca but that never took off ) or even 802.11. I have been involved in about 600 installations around the country and dealt with various business aspects of WiFi, Video and WAN Design. Let us know if you think we should carry it on our website and Engineering support. My hope is to write up on this blog as things come along and time permits. Lets hope we all can enjoy and gain from the eTribeca blog, All the best for now, Gary