Networking

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Japanese telco KDDI said on Monday it planned to use SpaceX Starlink as a backhaul provider for connecting 1,200 remote towers. Due to the low-Earth orbit of the satellite, KDDI claimed it would offer “an urban mobile connectivity experience” to those in the country. The backhaul is set to be operational some time in 2022. Starlink currently has an experimental licence in Japan for its ground station installed at KDDI’s Yamaguchi Satellite Communication Center, with both companies involved in conducting tests on the solution. Last month, Elon Musk announced that Starlink had shipped 100,000 terminals to customers. Under the project, beta services are currently operating in 11 different countries. SpaceX outlined as part of beta services that users can expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mbps to 150Mbps and latency from 20ms to 40ms in “most locations over the next several months” while the Starlink system continues to be enhanced. There will also be brief periods of no connectivity at all, the company added. Starlink previously said it expected its global satellite broadband service to be live this month. In May, it was announced that Google and SpaceX signed a deal to put Starlink ground stations in Google data centres. Related Coverage More

The most important program on your PC is your web browser. Oh sure, your bread and butter work may be on QuickBooks, Photoshop, or Premiere Pro, but where do you find information or exchange emails? Answer: Your web browser. Heck, Google has proven that all you really need to do most work is the Chrome web browser on a Chromebook.  And, Microsoft wants you to move to the web-based Windows 365 Cloud PC. And, what do you need to get the most from your web browser? Speed, speed, and still more speed. 

Web browser developers know this, so lately there’s been a lot of effort behind making them ever faster. So, who’s the fastest now?  I put the most popular Windows 10 browsers to the test. Here are our contenders in order of popularity. First comes Google Chrome 93. It’s easily the most popular web browser. Next up is Microsoft Edge 93, which recently switched to using Google’s open-source Chromium web browser. Today, except for Mozilla Firefox, all the web browsers that matter, such as Opera, Vivaldi and Brave, run on top of Chrome’s open-source base Chromium. Firefox, while declining in popularity, is the third-most popular Windows web browser.Believe it or not, Internet Explorer (IE) 11 is still hanging in there, coming in as the next-most popular Windows 10 web browser. However, even on my 2018 browser benchmarks, it was just awful. I took a quick look at it, and I decided that between Microsoft getting ready to retire it and its dreadful performance, I wouldn’t waste time benchmarking it. If you’re still using IE, just stop already. You’ll be better with anything else.Firefox was followed by Opera 78. This was originally a Norwegian-based browser, but it was acquired by a Chinese private-equity company in 2016. Next is Brave 1.29. This open-source browser’s owners claim to do the best job of protecting your privacy. Still, in 2020 they admitted to sharing default autocomplete answers with an affiliate cryptocurrency exchange. Finally, there’s Vivaldi 4.1. This was started by Opera expatriates, who missed the original Opera’s community and look-and-feel. Although all of these browsers, except Firefox, are clone brothers, they do not have the same performance. Each vendor has changed the Chromium code to make them quite different from each other. I benchmarked these browsers on my Windows 10 Beelink GTR7 Mini test PC. This runs Window 10 Pro May 2021 Update, version 21H1. It’s powered by a 4GHz AMD Ryzen 7 3750H processor. The CPU is backed by 16GB DDR4 RAM. For storage, it comes equipped with a 512GB NVMe SSD. It’s connected to the internet via my NETGEAR 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Unmanaged Switch (GS108) and a Spectrum Gigabit cable connection, which really delivers just over 900 Megabits per second (Mbps) speeds. 

With everything ready and the PC cleaned up of all non-essential software, it was time for testing.JetSteam 2First up was JetSteam 2.0, which is made up of 64 smaller tests. This JavaScript and WebAssembly benchmark suite focuses on advanced web applications. It rewards browsers that start up quickly, execute code quickly and run smoothly. Higher scores are better on this benchmark.Chrome won this competition easily with a score of 114.132. Opera, somewhat to my surprise, came in second with 105.95. Behind it was Edge with 103.774. Next was Vivaldi with 100.437, with a small lead over Brave’s 99.231. The real surprise, though, was Firefox with a dismal 73.208.Speedometer 2.0Speedometer is a newish web browser benchmark. Created by Apple’s WebKit team, it measures the responsiveness of JavaScript-based Web applications. To do this, it uses demo web applications to simulate user actions such as adding to-do items. Once more, higher scores are better on this test. Once more, Chrome comes out comfortably on top with a score of 124. Only Edge came relatively close to Chrome by scoring 109.1. Dropping way back, Chrome and Edge were followed by Opera at 99.3, and Firefox at 90.3. Then, there’s another considerable dropoff in performance to Vivaldi at 80.4 and Brave at 79.3.Kraken 1.1Next up: Kraken 1.1. This benchmark, which is based on the long-obsolete SunSpider, measures JavaScript performance. To this basic JavaScript testing, it added typical use-case scenarios. Mozilla, Firefox’s parent organization, created Kraken. With this benchmark, the lower the score in milliseconds (ms), the better the result.You would think that Firefox should ace this benchmark. It doesn’t. Chrome took first place here with 891.9 ms. Opera came in a distant second with 974.1 ms. Behind it came Edge at 1016.8ms Vivaldi at 1043.8 ms and Brave at 1059.2 ms in a logjam. Then, and only then, does Firefox make a last-place appearance with a pathetic 1279 ms.Octane 2.0Octane 2.0, Google’s JavaScript benchmark, is no longer supported, but it’s still a useful benchmark thanks to its scenario testing for interactive web applications. Octane is not Chrome-specific. For example, it tests how fast Microsoft’s TypeScript compiles itself. In this benchmark, the higher the score, the better.On this Google benchmark, Chrome took the blue ribbon with a score of 39,828. Behind it there’s a pile-up for second place with Opera at 37,789, Vivaldi at 36,417,  Brave with 37,072 and Edge with 37,019. Way, way back in last place, you’ll find Firefox with 20,014.WebXPRT 3.0The latest version of WebXPRT is the best browser benchmark available today. It’s produced by the benchmark professionals at Principled Technology This company’s senior staff were the founders of the Ziff Davis Benchmark Operation, the gold standard of PC benchmarking.WebXPRT uses scenarios created to mirror everyday tasks. These include Photo Enhancement, Organize Album, Stock Option Pricing, Local Notes, Sales Graphs, and DNA Sequencing. Here, the higher the score, the better the browser.On this benchmark, Firefox shines. It was an easy winner with a score of 213. Chrome took second place with 187. Then, there’s a pile-up from third through fifth place: Edge and Opera are in a dead tie for third with 178. They’re followed by Vivaldi at 170 and Brave at 165.HTML 5 web standardYou’d think by 2021, every browser would comply with the HTML 5 web standard, which became a standard in 2014. You’d be wrong. This “test” isn’t a benchmark. It just shows how close each browser comes to being in sync with the HTML 5 standard. A perfect score, which none got, would have been 550.For a real change of pace with web HTML compatibility, four of the browsers — Brave, Chrome, Vivaldi and Edge — scored 528. Opera, with 526, scored just below the quartet.  In last place was Firefox with 513.Final ResultsSo, which is really the fastest? It used to be a real mixed bag in my earlier browser tests, but these days Google Chrome has a solid lead over everyone else. The one exception was Firefox, which usually scored dead last, but did manage to snag a surprise win on the WebXPRT benchmark.I have other problems with Firefox, including both its management and its developers’ indifference to what Firefox users want from the browser. So for me, it’s an easy choice. The best, and largely the fastest, web browser is Chrome. If privacy is your top priority, however, keep looking.  Related Stories: More

Security software provider Fortinet and networking hardware maker Linksys have introduced a new joint security-connectivity package designed to give enterprises a smoother and more efficient way to enable work-from-home networks. The idea is to give remote workers the same level of enterprise-level security and connectivity as they would get from an office location.The companies claim that Linksys HomeWRK for Business | Secured by Fortinet, announced Sept. 13 and planned for release in Q4, is the first enterprise solution to provide continuous secure network connectivity for remote corporate work in a router pre-optimized for business applications and collaboration tools, including Zoom and others. The single device enables the operation of two separate, secure networks within the home, for both business and personal uses, Fortinet and Linksys told ZDNet. Fortinet is a leading global enterprise security software provider; Linksys sells about 70 percent of its routers to consumers and is trying to increase its presence in the B2B market, CEO Harry Dewhirst told ZDNet. “The two biggest issues in remote work are connectivity quality of service and security,” Dewhirst said. “Most homes don’t have high-quality networking (meaning seamless coverage, room-to-room roaming), and they may have VPNs and client software on their devices (for security), but they’re meant for occasional use. They’re not meant for days, weeks, months, years of use. “We see the collaboration between Linksys and Fortinet as something that brings together two best-of-breed solutions to solve the two issues that every company has experienced.”With the rapid increase in remote and hybrid work during the last 18 months, enterprise IT teams are reprovisioning their workforces to operate more effectively from outside the office while protecting their organizations from security threats that include ransomware, malware, and phishing attacks–many of which are introduced by home networks. 

A recent survey from Sungard Availability Services revealed that only about 20 percent of companies are fully confident their infrastructure security can support long-term remote work.”Our goal was two-fold: First, make it very simple for anyone to set up a fast and reliable home Wi-Fi network. Second, we wanted to provide enterprise IT with the ability to secure and manage the business aspects of that work-from-home Wi-Fi network, just as they do with any other device attached to the network,” John Maddison, EVP of products and CMO at Fortinet, said. “The Linksys and Fortinet joint venture is not just a simple OEM agreement of two distinct parties, it’s the start of a completely new market.”Key featuresThe new offering, expected to become available later in 2021, will feature the following:Secure Wi-Fi mesh connectivity: HomeWRK uses Wi-Fi 6 tri-band technology and Linksys’ Velop Intelligent Mesh software in a single router. Enterprise IT teams can distribute the provision-free hardware to employees to replace their existing home router to establish both corporate and personal networks that cover the entire physical location.Enterprise-grade security: Fortinet’s software guards against cyber threats introduced by home networks and automatically blocks suspicious malware, prevents intrusions, and filters harmful content.Zero-touch provisioning: Streamlines the employee onboarding experience with simple plug-and-connect devices that don’t require physical assistance from corporate IT teams to install. The solution also includes a guided app for best placement of nodes at home. Simple remote management: Management console enables enterprise IT managers to monitor and diagnose the performance of all devices connected to the corporate network in real-time via a single portal. The solution is natively integrated with Fortinet management systems to further streamline management for existing Fortinet customers. Employees are also able to manage their personal network via a separate console with visibility and control of all personal devices.Employee privacy protection: Remote employees’ privacy is protected with support for multiple networks. While the corporate network is managed by the IT team, employees maintain complete ownership of the personal network and security settings, allowing all household members to benefit from a fast and secure connection for non-corporate devices, such as laptops and gaming consoles. Corporate and personal networks are separated with no visibility or access to personal information granted to corporate IT teams, Fortinet said.Linksys-Fortinet HomeWRK will be available in the United States in Q4 2021 and globally beginning in Q1 2022 on hardware-as-a-service subscription plans that require no upfront investment for enterprise IT teams, the companies said. Two levels of service give enterprises flexibility in supporting their remote and hybrid workers: Standard includes two nodes with standard Fortinet security, and Advanced includes two nodes with advanced Fortinet security. Additional nodes to extend coverage will be available, the companies said. More

Of all the situations you might find yourself in when using a VPN, perhaps the one where your VPN is at its most mission critical is when you’re traveling. When you’re away from home, you’re dependent on whatever communication infrastructure exists where you are. That might be a solid, secure infrastructure, or it might be one that’s insecure, or even one designed by the host government where you’re located to siphon up every last bit of information about you that it can. Also: Air-gapping the planet: How to travel safely in digitally scary places VPNs create secure tunnels that should allow you to get back to your home network resources, whether that’s a public cloud in your home country or your corporate server. They protect your ability to conduct whatever financial transactions you need to make while traveling. They may even protect your identity from stalkers or local organized crime that might be looking for an executive to kidnap and ransom.  Keep in mind that VPNs are illegal in some countries, precisely because the host government wants to snoop on all traffic. Make sure you check into local laws before you do something that may be frownNed upon, possibly with quite serious consequences. Also: Take home along: How a VPN can help travelers connect wherever they go Sure, VPNs can also let you stream your movies from your home services while away, but they serve a much more serious purpose when on the road. Choose carefully.

Servers in 94 countries

Locations: 160Simultaneous Connections: 5 or unlimited with the router appKill Switch: YesPlatforms: A whole lot (see the full list here)Logging: No browsing logs, some connection logsTrial/MBG: 30 daysWith 160 server locations in 94 countries, ExpressVPN has a considerable VPN network across the internet. In CNET’s review of the service, staff writer Rae Hodge reported that ExpressVPN lost less than 2% of performance with the VPN enabled and using the OpenVPN protocol vs. a direct connection.When it comes to travel, a key advantage of ExpressVPN is the private DNS it runs on every VPN server. That means that when you’re trying to access Gmail, for example, ExpressVPN’s DNS will give you an actual IP address for Gmail. If you’re relying on your local host network’s DNS, you have no idea what actual IP address you’re being sent to. It looks like Gmail, but is it really? Or did you just give a hostile government or organized crime your Gmail credentials? Make use of ExpressVPN’s private DNS.Must read:ExpressVPN is one of the most popular VPN providers out there, offering a wide range of platforms and protocols. Platforms include Windows, Mac, Linux, routers, iOS, Android, Chromebook, Kindle Fire, and even the Nook device. There are also browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox. Plus, ExpressVPN works with PlayStation, Apple TV, Xbox, Amazon Fire TV, and the Nintendo Switch. There’s even a manual setup option for Chromecast, Roku, and Nvidia Switch. While you’re unlikely to use all these platforms while traveling, it’s nice to know ExpressVPN will be useful when you’re back home as well.While the company does not log browsing history or traffic destinations, it does log dates connected to the VPN service, amount transferred, and VPN server location. We do want to give ExpressVPN kudos for making this information very clear and easily accessible.Exclusive offer: Get 3 extra months free.

Servers in 65 countries

Servers: 3,200+Simultaneous Connections: UnlimitedKill Switch: YesPlatforms: Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, Fire TV, Firefox, ChromeLogging: None, except billing dataTrial/MBG: 30 dayAt two bucks a month for a two-year plan (billed in one chunk), Surfshark offers a good price for a solid offering. In CNET’s testing, no leaks were found (and given that much bigger names leaked connection information, that’s a big win). The leak protection can be a big deal when traveling, especially if you want to hide the fact that you’re using a VPN from either the local Internet service provider or the host government.The company seems to have a very strong security focus, offering AES-256-GCM, RSA-2048, and Perfect Forward Secrecy encryption. To prevent WebRTC leaks, Surfshark offers a special purpose browser plugin designed specifically to combat those leaks.Surfshark also offers a private DNS capabilities, as well as what they call NoBorders mode. This feature is designed to enable you to access sites regardless of restrictive border connections. Be careful, though. Countries restricting access tend to frown on your bypassing those restrictions.Must read:Surfshark’s performance was higher than NordVPN and Norton Secure VPN, but lower than ExpressVPN and IPVanish. That said, Surfshark also offers a multihop option that allows you to route connections through two VPN servers across the Surfshark private network. We also like that the company offers some inexpensive add-on features, including ad-blocking, anti-tracking, access to a non-logging search engine, and a tool that tracks your email address against data breach lists.

Servers in 59 countries

Servers: 5,517Simultaneous Connections: 6Kill Switch: YesPlatforms: Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, Android TV, Chrome, FirefoxLogging: None, except billing dataTrial/MBG: 30 dayAlso: How does NordVPN work? Plus how to set it up and use itNordVPN is one of the most popular consumer VPNs out there. We found that NordVPN performance was generally consistent across a wide range of test situations. This means that if you’re traveling, you’re likely to be able to count on NordVPN performing about as well, no matter where you’re connecting from and to.Also: My in-depth review of NordVPNIn our review, we liked that it offered capabilities beyond basic VPN, including support of P2P sharing, a service it calls Double VPN that does a second layer of encryption, Onion over VPN which allows for TOR capabilities over its VPN, and even a dedicated IP if you’re trying to run a VPN that also doubles as a server. It supports all the usual platforms and a bunch of home network platforms as well. The company also offers NordVPN Teams, which provides centralized management and billing for a mobile workforce.Also: My interview with NordVPN management on how they run their servicePerformance testing was adequate, although ping speeds were slow enough that I wouldn’t want to play a twitch video game over the VPN. To be fair, most VPNs have pretty terrible ping speeds, so this isn’t a weakness unique to Nord. Overall, a solid choice, and with a 30-day money-back guarantee, worth a try.

Servers in 52 countries

Servers: 1,900 Simultaneous Connections: UnlimitedKill Switch: YesPlatforms: Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, Chrome, plus routers, Fire Stick, and KodiLogging: None, except billing dataTrial/MBG: 30 dayIPVanish is a deep and highly configurable product that presents itself as a click-and-go solution. I think the company is selling itself short doing this. A quick visit to its website shows a relatively generic VPN service, but that’s not the whole truth.Also: My in-depth review of IPVanishIts UI provides a wide range of server selection options, including some great performance graphics. It also has a wide variety of protocols, so no matter what you’re connecting to, you can know what to expect. The company also provides an excellent server list with good current status information. This list can prove hugely helpful when on the road, because it will give you the option to tune which service and server you choose based on your current location.There’s also a raft of configuration options for the app itself. In terms of performance, connection speed was crazy fast. Overall transfer performance was good. However, from a security perspective, it wasn’t able to hide that I was connecting via a VPN — although the data transferred was secure. Inability to hide being on a VPN could be problematic for traveling, which is why this is the last choice in our list of recommendations. Overall, a solid product with a good user experience that’s fine for home connections as long as you’re not trying to hide the fact that you’re on a VPN. The company also has a partnership with SugarSync and provides 250GB of encrypted cloud storage with each plan.

How can I find out what the VPN rules are for the countries I’m visiting?

There are a number of sources. First, it’s always a good idea to reach out to your VPN vendor. They often have a good feel for the countries their services operate in. If you’re an American citizen, contact the US State Department. Foggy Bottom often lists travel advisories for US citizens, and they have foreign service officials who can provide general guidance. Check the travel advisories web page. If you’re outside the US, your nation’s foreign ministry may have a similar service.

Is a VPN all I need to be protected while traveling?

No. No way. VPNs can, generally, protect your data while it’s in motion. But if your computer or phone is seized (whether or not its encrypted), it’s possible governments can access your data. Some governments might simply hold your devices for whatever reason they deem useful. Online services you access in-country might have less protections than the very same services in your host country. And, of course, there’s all the normal travel security issues, like being careful what you spend, how you handle cash, who you trust, and so on that could cause risk while traveling.

If my hotel has a wired connection, do I still need to use a VPN?

Yes. Don’t assume any network endpoint is safe when traveling. Always make sure your connections are encrypted when communicating from any network connection.

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There are two areas when rolling out broadband that present issues: The most remote and the most dense areas. For the remote areas, the argument is based purely on economics, but for built-up areas where it makes absolute economic sense, other issues come to the fore. In the case of Australia, the national broadband wholesaler is busy ensuring that 75% of its fixed-line footprint is capable of hitting 1Gbps by 2023. The gaping hole in this plan are those living in apartments, who are unlucky enough to not have a fibre or cable connection and instead have to make do on twisted pair. Unlike many places in North America, Australia had the briefest flirtation with cable rollouts in the 1990s, which means that even with fairly modern apartment blocks, there is no guarantee anything other than twisted pair will be installed from the fibre connection in the comms room to your unit. NBN CEO Stephen Rue told ZDNet last year when the upgrade plans were announced that the company was looking at “ways that all our networks can have greater capability”. A year on, the company must still be looking because as it soldiers on upgrading houses, standalone businesses, and single-dwelling premises, apartment dwellers are being left behind. It is into this void, Australia’s telcos have entered, none more so than TPG Telecom, which has actively tried to get users interested in 12Mbps connections onto its LTE fixed wireless. The company recently said it saw its number of users on the service triple in the first six months of the year.

Speaking last week, CEO Iñaki Berroeta was buoyant about the telco’s prospects in replicating its success on 5G fixed wireless. “5G technology is enabling us to deliver much faster speeds on our new 5G home internet service than similarly priced NBN50 and NBN100 plans,” he said. “Consumers have different speed usage and budget requirements for their home broadband service, and we’re giving them choice.” Given NBN has less than 8% of its users on plans over 100Mbps, and the majority on 50Mbps, the addressable market is certainly there. Upgrading apartment blocks can be a tough problem to solve at the best of times. When an owners’ groups can struggle to agree on fixing and paying for waterproofing, and are thoroughly disturbed by the idea of laundry being visible from the street, raising the idea of retrofitting a piece of fibre up the inside of a building, or heaven forbid the outside, seems like a bridge too far — it’s much easier to fire electromagnetic waves into the building instead. This also works for the telcos because they can mount microcells on street lights to boost capacity and coverage when needed, and while guaranteeing to stick around 100Mbps on LTE could be touch and go, doing so on 5G is much less of a regulatory risk. Under its Vodafone moniker, TPG is offering a AU$75 plan capped at 100Mbps, and another for AU$10 a month more removes the speed cap. That’s all well and good, but the real ace up its sleeve could be its AU$85 a month all-you-can-eat-mobile plan. It is currently unknown at what sort of usage limit TPG will start to apply its fair use policies on the plan, but it looks extremely tempting if you can get a Vodafone 5G signal to drop the existing fixed connection, hotspot the phone, and go for broke. Vodafone has said there is a 30GB tethering quota on the plan, but unless it is doing active traffic sniffing and monitoring or assuming everyone is still on tethering-locked iPhones from last decade, the question of detecting tethering by users is unanswered. In the wake of Vodafone’s recent announcement, the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) slightly shifted its position on whether 5G is a substitute for fixed wireless. “For some households, a 5G home internet plan may better suit their needs than an NBN connection — for example if they move quite frequently, or there’s only one or two people in the household. However, for households that have multiple people trying to use the internet at once for things like streaming video, using video conferencing, and playing video games online, they will still likely be better serviced by an NBN connection,” ACCAN deputy CEO Andrew Williams said. “We also believe that at AU$85 per month, Vodafone’s plan may be too expensive for many households, especially those on low incomes, to consider making the switch.” Not for the last time, if a trend is to take off, it will first be seen when trendy inner city types take it up. ZDNET’S MONDAY MORNING OPENER  The Monday Morning Opener is our opening salvo for the week in tech. Since we run a global site, this editorial publishes on Monday at 8:00am AEST in Sydney, Australia, which is 6:00pm Eastern Time on Sunday in the US. A member writes it of ZDNet’s global editorial board, which is comprised of our lead editors across Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America.  PREVIOUSLY ON MONDAY MORNING OPENER: More

Ever left documents, images, or video on a laptop, tablet, or phone that isn’t close at hand and needed to obtain that content fast? Well, there’s a new-gen app for that.IDrive on Sept. 9 launched Remote Desktop, a new cloud service that enables users to remotely access their RDP-based Windows computers and servers from any PC, Mac, Android, or iOS device at any time from any location. The company claims that this is the first cloud app to perform these functions.Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a proprietary protocol originally developed by Microsoft in 1997 that provides a user with a graphical interface to connect to another computer over a network connection. Both the user and the other PC must employ RDP client software for this purpose.Using RDP can get complicated, especially in enterprises where one or more servers are used among multiple teams or individuals. But all this configuration involving a VPN (virtual private network), Microsoft RD Gateway, public servers/IP, or firewall changes isn’t necessary with Remote Desktop, which automatically makes all the connections necessary for a remote desktop session. All that’s needed is for each user to subscribe to Remote Desktop, download an iDrive RD agent onto a device, and then connect to the service.”Remote Desktop allows users to access their work, share files/folders, and manage their computer as if they are sitting in front of it, making it ideal for remote work, remote learning, and work-from-home,” CEO Raghu Kulkarni told ZDNet.”RDP requires complex configurations. If you use the Microsoft gateway, you have to have a domain controller and configure a specific device you had to buy licenses to, to be able to access from anywhere; if the servers are within a NAT (network address translation, a way to map multiple local private addresses to a public one before transferring the information); are outside of the public IP (internet protocol); or inside of a public IP in a local network; or use VPN solution,” Kulkarni said.”So what we bring to the table is account-based access to RDP servers; you can access from anywhere without any configuration–you just need a username, password and you connect. We have created a tunnel solution.”

Remote Desktop features end-to-end encryption from client to server. “It’s secure and it’s faster,” Kulkarni said. “When you try it, you will see that you can connect to the RDP-based host really fast, and so you have the best of both worlds. On one hand, you use a Microsoft RDP, which is a proven reliable platform for enterprise or even a small business, remote access and service; we piggyback on top of it and add our service to make it easily accessible from anywhere.”A summary of Remote Desktop features:User management: Users can be added to the Remote Desktop account and manage their remote access rights via the web application.File transfer and remote printing: Copy and paste multiple files and folders between local and remote computers, and print remotely stored documents, PDFs, images, and other files using local printers.Multi-access sessions: Establish simultaneous remote connections to one computer/server from multiple Remote Desktop viewers.Device redirection: Access local devices and resources such as drives, printers, smart cards, video-capturing devices, and PnP devices in remote sessions.Access via agent installation: Remotely access PCs via agent installation and skip configuring Microsoft RD Gateway, VPN tunneling, and firewall changes.Remote deployment: Deploy the Remote Desktop agent on multiple computers via Microsoft Group Policy using the MSI and MST files.Multi-monitor support: Work with multiple monitors of your remote desktop. View and switch between multiple monitors on a single screen.Remote Desktop also enables businesses to meet the mandates of government and industry regulations regarding digital data management, safekeeping, and privacy, Kulkarni said.Pricing for the service starts at $9.95/year per computer for unlimited users and unlimited remote access. Remote Desktop also offers a free seven-day trial for up to five users. More

Users of HAProxy 2.0 and earlier versions are being urged to push through updates after a vulnerability was found that could allow “an attacker to bypass the check for a duplicate HTTP Content-Length header, permitting a request smuggling attack or a response-splitting attack.””Our analysis confirmed that the duplication is achieved by making use of the memory layout of HAProxy’s internal representation of an HTTP message to slip a select character from the header’s name to its value,” HAProxy explained in a blog.”Due to the difficulty in executing such an attack, the risk is low.”HAProxy provided a list of affected versions and fixed versions while also providing a workaround for those who are not able to update right away.The vulnerability was announced earlier this week by researchers with JFrog, who released a report on the problem.JFrog researchers Ori Hollander and Or Peles wrote that CVE-2021-40346 is an Integer Overflow vulnerability that makes it possible to conduct an HTTP Request Smuggling attack, explaining that it has a CVSSv3 score of 8.6. “This attack allows an adversary to ‘smuggle’ HTTP requests to the backend server, without the proxy server being aware of it,” the researchers said, commending HAProxy CTO Willy Tarreau and their security team for “promptly and professionally handling this issue.”

Tarreau released his own note on the issue, thanking JFrog for their work.”Quite honestly they’ve done an excellent job at spotting this one because it’s not every day that you manage to turn a single-bit overflow into an extra request, and figuring this required to dig deeply into the layers,” Tarreau said. Vulcan Cyber CEO Yaniv Bar-Dayan said the HAProxy load balancing software is “one of the most commonly used components of our digital age,” calling it “plumbing used to build the infrastructure behind the Web.” Bar-Dayan explained that it is distributed with Linux operating systems and by cloud service providers, and is used in production by some of the largest web services and applications in the world. “This vulnerability has the potential to have a wide-spread impact, but fortunately there are plenty of ways to mitigate risk posed by this HAProxy vulnerability, and many users most likely have already taken the necessary steps to protect themselves,” Bar-Dayan told ZDNet. “CVE-2021-40346 is mitigated if HAProxy has been updated to one of the latest four versions of the software. Like with most vulnerabilities, CVE-2021-40346 can’t be exploited without severe user negligence. The HAProxy team has been responsible in their handling of the bug. Most likely the institutional cloud and application services that use HAProxy in their stack have either applied upgrades or made the requisite configuration changes by now. Now it is up to all HAProxy users to run an effective vulnerability remediation program to protect their businesses from this very real threat.”Michael Isbitski, technical evangelist at Salt Security, added that HAProxy is a multi-purpose, software-based infrastructure component that can fulfill a number of networking functions including load balancer, delivery controller, SSL/TLS termination, web server, proxy server and API mediator. “It’s a popular free open source choice along with F5 NGINX. HAProxy deployments are prominent in many organizational networks and the collective Internet,” Isbitski said. “Depending how a given HAProxy instance is deployed, potential risks include user session hijacking, authorization bypass, sensitive data exposure, unauthorized command execution and unauthorized data modification.”Other experts, like NTT Application Security vice president Setu Kulkarni, noted that HAProxy has over 500 million downloads from dockerhub and for an adversary, targeting such widely used critical components that are open source is a lucrative option, Kulkarni said. “With access to code, they can now pretty much run static application security tests to determine weaknesses and once they’ve found a potential vulnerability to exploit, they can execute large scale attacks. In the case of HAProxy, the key is to upgrade to the latest version of the software package where the vulnerability has been fixed — the burden of this task has to be shared equally by DevOps, SecOps and RunOps teams to ensure that the system continues to remain operational as a critical component as HAProxy is being upgraded,” Kulkarni said.  More

Google Cloud is reorganizing its technical management team as Brad Calder will take over product and engineering for the cloud unit and Urs Hölzle takes over technical infrastructure for Google overall. Hölzle had overseen parts of the day-to-day product engineering efforts for Google Cloud. The reorg, outlined internally by Google Cloud, comes as the company has scaled its revenue, focused on industry sales and landed large enterprise accounts under CEO Thomas Kurian. With the move, Calder becomes the leader of Google Cloud’s product and engineering teams. Calder’s official title will be vice president of engineering product for Google Cloud/Technical Infrastructure. Calder joined Google Cloud in 2015 and has been leading a large product and engineering org. Hölzle will remain senior vice president of technical infrastructure and Google Fellow. Hölzle will continue to collaborate and work closely with Kurian as well as Google CEO Sundar Pichai but will focus on long-term architecture and infrastructure across Google. Indeed, Hölzle will manage the technical infrastructure org responsible for global capacity delivery, unified fulfillment optimization, data center ops and construction, reliability, network infrastructure and cloud chief information security officer. In a nutshell, Calder will productize Google’s infrastructure via Google Cloud and Hölzle will focus on what’s next.Google Cloud confirmed the reorg and a spokesperson said:As Google Cloud grows, we regularly evaluate the best organizational structure to better scale our business and provide a world-class experience for our customers. More