Networking

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I recently moved and along the way my faithful 2016 Sony XBR-75X850D, as such things do, suffered a fatal screen crack. It was time for something bigger and better. I’d long used smaller LG TVs, but since my new place also included a home theater it was time to think big. So, after much research, I got LG’s newest 77″ 4K TV: the 2021 LG OLED77C 3,299.99TV. In a word, it’s impressive.

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Why? Well, let me start with the basics. LG uses organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) for its high-end 4 and 8K TVs. Unlike the more common, and less expensive LEDs, these carbon-based diodes can be adjusted pixel by pixel in luminance from a perfect back to a bright white. The result is you get more contrast from an OLED screen than from any other. And, yes, I include yesteryear’s top plasma TV, the Panasonic TC-P60ZT60 plasma.OK, that’s technically what’s going on. What’s going on when I sitting in front of it watching The Suicide Squad is the best TV display I’ve ever seen. And, my friends, I’ve seen a lot of TVs in my day. Sure, it’s possible that there are better TVs out there that I haven’t seen. For example, the LG 8K OLED88Z1PVA with its 8K resolution isn’t currently available in the States. And, the new LG OLEDG1 series, which is designed to be wall-mounted, and with its cutting edge OLED evo panels may be a bit better, but I couldn’t see it.Besides being great for 4K movies with High-Dynamic Range (HDR), I found the screen to also be great with sports and games. The video response time has to be seen to be believed.  Some of that is the outstanding screen, but it’s also LG’s Alpha a9 Gen 4 processor for better upscaling and video rendering. It uses deep learning (ML) in AI Picture Pro to analyze and optimize your video. Besides doing an excellent job of upscaling video from old-school 480i it also removes noise and optimizes picture quality. In concert with the new Scene Detection, the TV analyzes what’s being shown in real-time to improve the video. You can adjust the video manually but left to its own devices the 77C1 does a good job of improving your video on the fly.Gamers will like the new Game Optimiser menu. This enables you to easily and quickly tune your brightness, contrast, and variable refresh rate (VRR) on the fly. Combine this with its automatic low latency mode (ALLM), aka auto game mode, and you’ve got a wonderful gaming display. 

A serious gamer who’s managed to get his or her hands on a PlayStation 5 will be also pleased to find that the 77C1 comes with four HDMI 2.1 ports. HDMI 2.1 is the latest HDMI standard. The connector itself hasn’t changed. Your current cables and gear will still work just fine on the 77C1. But, with newer cables and devices you can play games with frame rates of up to 120 frames per second. Personally, I like all the connections I can get on my TVs. Besides the HDMI ports and the usual RF CoAx port, it also comes with three USB 2.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, Bluetooth 5.0, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and an Optical Digital Audio Output.Besides the display, the TV also comes with outstanding 2.2 Channel front-facing speakers. Now usually when you’re talking about TVs at this level, you skip this because it’s assumed you’ll be using a sound system with it. That’s a safe assumption. I use a Bose TV Speaker with a Bose Bass Module 500 subwoofer. But, to my surprise, the LG’s sound was excellent even without an external speaker. 

I credit some of that outstanding audio to the hardware design, but I quickly found out a lot of that is due to the 77C1’s ML/AI software. The AI Sound Pro does an outstanding job up-mixing with the TV’s built-in speakers while Auto Volume Leveling 3 maintains a consistent level of volume when switching between channels or streaming apps. I was honestly startled at how good the system was in dealing with audio changes. There is a moment when it switches over from ordinary to enhanced sound, but it was worth the momentary pause. I also really liked the updated webOS 5 interface. WebOS is a Linux-based system that could have been a smartphone and tablet contender, but its original creator, HP, gave up on it. Fortunately, LG saw its potential. Today, webOS is my favorite smart TV interface over both Android and Roku. Combined with the newest LG Magic remote, it’s a pleasure to use. In addition, the remote supports both Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa.Previously I’ve always recommended you add a Roku Ultra or other top streaming device to your smart TV. I did that because smart TV OEMs did a poor job of the more obscure online streaming services. Now, LG is giving Roku a run for your money. I have a Roku Ultra working with my new TV, but for the first time ever with a smart TV, I don’t feel like I need to have it. Besides the usual top streaming TV suspects — Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, Netflix, and Hulu — it supports many more obscure streaming channels.The TV itself is a pleasure to watch. It is seriously thin. Chances are your smartphone is thicker than it is. I’m not kidding. Simultaneously, if you use the LG stand as I do, it feels rock-solid on my home theater credenza.There’s only one thing about this TV I regret: The list price of $3,299.99. But, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. And, in this case, I got the best TV I’ve ever had.If you want even more TV for your money, the 83″ model will cost you $5,499.99. For me, the few more inches weren’t worth the extra two grand plus. For those of you on a tighter budget, the 65-inch version is $2,099.99; 55-inch is $1,499.99; and the 48-inch model is $1,299.99. I recommend that if you’re looking for a new high-end TV, you buy the one that best matches your finances. You won’t be sorry.Related Stories: More

SK Telecom posted double-digit growth in its operating income during the second quarter, thanks to an influx of new 5G subscribers that boosted profitability.The South Korean telco said on Wednesday it recorded 4.81 trillion won in sales and 397 billion won in operating income during the second quarter, an increase of 4.7% and 10.8%, respectively, from the previous year.Its main mobile network operator business contributed 328 billion won in operating income, which was over 80% of the company’s total income for the quarter. Compared to its performance last year, this was an increase of 21.7%.As of the end of June, SK Telecom said it accrued a total of 7.7 million 5G subscribers, with nearly a million of those subscribers joining during the second quarter.The telco, together with its subsidiary SK Broadband, spent 849 billion won to build up its 5G networks and fixed internet infrastructure during the quarter, triple that of the first quarter, it added.Like its compatriot telcos KT and LG Uplus, SK Telecom also saw its content services perform solidly during the quarter. The telco’s IPTV service business saw operating income increase 4.9% year-on-year, contributing 64.2 billion won.Meanwhile, in April, the telco announced that it would split into two companies. The surviving company plans to keep existing telco assets, while the spin-off company will take over operations of SK Telecom’s various tech subsidiaries, such as the chip giant SK Hynix, e-commerce company 11th Street, and ride-sharing app T Map Mobility, among others. 

The split was approved by the company’s board in June and will go through shareholders’ approval in October.SK Telecom said it intends for the surviving company to continue to focus on 5G, home media, and other core services for growth for the remainder of the year, much like it did for the second quarter.RELATED COVERAGE More

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Earlier this week, Telstra was among the trio of telcos hauled into Federal Court by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) over allegations of making misleading NBN FttN speed claims. The consumer watchdog alleges the trio made false representations to consumers over being able to: Test lines to determine the maximum speed on fibre-to-the-node connections, notify the customer of test results, and offer remedies if a line was performing below the speed the telco sold it as. The ACCC also alleges that the trio “wrongly accepted payments” from customers for NBN plans when they could not receive promised speeds. It has put the number of impacted customers in the “hundreds of thousands” range. Taking to Twitter on Wednesday morning, Telstra CEO Andy Penn laid blame for the issue at the feet of NBN Co. “When you sign up for the NBN you tell us what speed you want. However, when we connect you for the first time, NBN can’t tell us what speeds you’ll get. Despite this, we still have an obligation to provide you the speed you’ve chosen,” Penn said. “The root cause is at the beginning. We need NBN to tell us what its network is capable of for customers upfront, before we connect and for regulators to impose on NBN the same obligations we have to meet. That’s how we’ll get this right for customers once and for all.” Penn said the telco did not deliberately set out to mislead its customers, and apologised for not fixing it sooner.

“When we identified issues, we reported them to the ACCC and ACMA and started a process to make it right by customers impacted. And let me be clear: It’s our accountability to fix it and we should have been on top of it sooner. That responsibility is with us and for that I’m sorry,” he said. On Monday, TPG said it would be “making things right” with its impacted customers who never received a maximum attainable speed notice. “For the oversight, we are sorry,” a company spokesperson said at the time. “There were two key contributing factors to this issue. The first was failure by NBN Co to provide timely and accurate speed information to TPG Internet. The second was anomalies in TPG Internet’s legacy processes in place since 2017, and these have been fixed post-merger.” TPG added its intent was not to avoid obligations, and of its two million customers, “only a small percentage” did not receive information. Elsewhere on Wednesday, Aussie Broadband announced it signed a five-year deal with Telstra Wholesale to hook up 42 NBN points of interconnect (POI) not covered by its existing fibre footprint. Aussie Broadband said it would save AU$1 million this fiscal year, and AU$15 million per year thereafter. “The deal comprises both inter-capital and NBN POI capacity through the use of dark fibre and wavelengths and allows for significant capacity increases across the network,” the company said. “Upgrades will be rolled out over the next nine months and are expected to be completed by April 2022.” “All 121 NBN Points of Interconnect, through both Aussie Broadband’s own fibre and through Telstra Wholesale fibre, will be upgraded from current 10G or 20G connections to 100G minimum capacity at each POI.” Each POI would be connected to two separate capital city data centres, with Aussie Broadband adding it would be upgrading its inter-capital links with 400G, and have 100G paths to other capital cities. Related Coverage More

Extreme Networks has announced its intent to acquire Ipanema Technologies, the SD-WAN (software-defined wide area network) and SASE (secure-access service edge) division of Infovista. France-based Infovista, which had already had a major stake in the ground as a service assurance company, acquired Ipanema in 2015, well before SD-WAN went mainstream a couple of years ago. Extreme will purchase Ipanema for 60 million Euros (approximately $73 million) in an all-cash transaction. The deal is expected to close in October, pending regulatory approval. Since Infovista is privately held, revenue numbers for the Infovista division are not readily known. I know that pre-pandemic, Ipanema revenue was about 40 million Euros annually but had fallen to 30 million and was probably sliding to the 20 million level. If that’s the case, the 60 million Euro purchase price is a steal and fits the mold of other Extreme acquisitions, because it is a top-tier technology that’s effectively a stranded asset inside a larger organization where it doesn’t fit. Extreme makes another strategic acquisition to fuel its businessExtreme’s addition of the WiFi business at Motorola, Avaya’s network business, and Brocade’s Ethernet products, are other examples of how the company rolls. COO Norman Rice has a knack of finding these diamonds in the rough and has used acquisitions like these to fuel the resurgence of the company. The network vendor is now past $1 billion in revenue and has become a Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader, which is impressive given the company’s bumpy past. The purchase of Ipanema is yet another example of how the company will use a modest investment to fuel another wave of growth. Ipanema isn’t the most well-known SD-WAN company, but its technology is very good. However, Infovista was not willing to make investments in the areas of sales and marketing. The company was founded in 1999 as a WAN optimization vendor, which competed with the likes of Riverbed and Packeteer. I had many engagements with Ipanema customers, and they raved about how good the tech was. Evidence of this? The company was a perennial Gartner MQ Leader for years, and this solid foundation is what it used to build its SD-WAN portfolio. More recently, the company partnered with Equinix and CheckPoint to develop a full cloud-native SD-WAN and SASE platform. This new product shifts SD-WAN to an on-demand service that can be scaled up and down like other cloud services. Ipanema has solid SD-WAN and SASE technology With this big product investment, one might wonder why sell Ipanema? The answer is focus. In a media advisory, Infovista stated: “The planned transaction is part of Infovista’s strategic transformation as it sharpens its focus on delivering its cloud-native lifecycle automation platform.” SD-WAN and SASE do not fit into that strategy. From my dealings with Infovista, this is the right move, because they should focus on service providers. The company doesn’t understand how to sell to businesses or the importance of investing in sales and marketing. Despite having a strong product, they were getting drowned in an ocean of other companies that were far better in those areas. Thus Infovista fell behind.

I expect Extreme to do big things with the Ipanema product. The investments that Infovista made in developing the cloud-native platform align nicely to Extreme’s cloud-first approach. In the short term, it’s strong enough for Extreme to sell as a standalone product, but the company does expect to have the technology integrated into its ExtremeCloud platform within a year. This also will enable Extreme to bring its AI capabilities to SD-WAN and SASE, which should add significant value to Ipanema customers. This also boosts Extreme’s total addressable market, because the combined SASE-plus-SD-WAN market could be as big as $20 billion in five years. Ipanema is well aligned with Extreme’s Infinite Enterprise VisionThe acquisition is also well aligned with Extreme’s strategy of the Infinite Enterprise, where connectivity needs to reach anywhere a worker is located. Before Ipanema, Extreme didn’t have the products to reach branch offices and home workers at scale. While there were other SD-WAN and/or SASE vendors Extreme could have purchased, I believe it was the strong cloud back end that made Ipanema so attractive. Its cloud-native software delivery platform now makes this possible and gives Extreme products that span WAN, LAN, data center, and campus–all of which can be managed via the cloud. Extreme will use Ipanema to establish a second technology innovation center in Europe. This will strengthen Extreme’s European footprint and bring into the company several service providers and managed service partners–including a couple of behemoths such as British Telecom and Orange, the enterprise division of France Telecom. More

Credit: Microsoft
Microsoft has acquired Peer5, a WebRTC-based electronic content-delivery-network (eCDN) vendor, for an undisclosed amount. Microsoft announced the Peer5 purchase on August 10. Peer5’s technology will be used to enhance live video streaming in Microsoft Teams, Microsoft officials said. Peer5’s current product runs in browsers to optimize bandwidth usage for line-of-business applications, Microsoft officials said, and its mesh networks can automatically scale as the number of viewers increases. Peer5’s technology doesn’t require additional installation on user endpoints or any changes to physical network infrastructure, officials added. While the addition of the Peer5 solution will give Microsoft its own, first-party product in this space, Microsoft will continue to support other eCDN solutions from Microsoft certified partners, officials said. Current Peer5 customers will be able to continue using their existing Peer5 services, they said.Peer5 has been touting its “seamless integration” with Microsoft’s Teams, Stream and Yammer products on its site. It also has offered legacy support for IE and live and video-on-demand support for Office 365.  Peer5, founded in 2012, has offices in Palo Alto, Calif. and Tel Aviv. According to its web site, the company’s staff has experience in big-data analytics, virtualization and networking. The company is active in the WebRTC space and a member of the W3C steering committee. More

A new report from cybersecurity company Intsights has spotlighted the thriving market on the dark web for network access that nets cybercriminals thousands of dollars.

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Paul Prudhomme, cyber threat intelligence advisor at IntSights, examined network access sales on underground Russian and English-language forums before compiling a study on why criminals sell their network access and how criminals transfer their network access to buyers.  More than 37% of all victims in a sample of the data were based in North America while there was an average price of $9,640 and a median price of $3,000. The study notes that the kind of access being offered continues to be used in ransomware attacks across the world. Dark web forums are enabling a decentralized system where less-skilled cybercriminals can rely on each other for different tasks, allowing most ransomware operators to simply buy access from others, according to Prudhomme.  The network access on offer ranges from the credentials of system administrators to remote access into a network. With millions still working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the sale of network access has increased significantly over the last 18 months. Remote access is generally through RDP and VPNs.  In dark web forums and marketplaces, cybercriminals share access to a slate of malware, malicious tools, illicit infrastructure, and compromised data, accounts, and payment card details. Many of the most sophisticated forums and marketplaces are in Russian but there are also many English, Spanish, Portuguese and German-language forums.  Cybercriminals rarely have a full team of attackers experienced in each stage of an attack, making dark web forums ideal as they either sell what they’ve already stolen or search for malware payloads, hosting infrastructure and access to compromised networks.

“This factor is particularly applicable to compromises of specialized environments, such as those with operational technology (OT), industrial control systems (ICS), Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, or other less common or less conventional technology that may be unfamiliar to many attackers,” Prudhomme explained.  At times, attackers realize they have broken into a network with no data that can be stolen or sold and decide to sell access to ransomware groups. The posts offering compromised network access include the victim, the form and level of access for sale, as well as the pricing and other transaction details. Sometimes the victims are identified by location, industry or sector and revenue information is often included.  The descriptions may also include the number and types of machines on it or the types of files and data that it contains. Often hackers will explicitly mention something as a potential ransomware target in ads.  Some access is sold as an auction while others are negotiated over time.  The most common features of these sales are RDP credentials and VPN credentials, both of which are being used considerably more due to the pandemic. Web shells are also used as persistence mechanisms that can be transferred.  “Elevated privileges are a common feature of these sales, but not a universal one. Many types of malware, including ransomware, need elevated privileges in order to run,” Prudhomme said.  “Higher privileges can also enable attackers to create their own accounts or take other measures to use as additional persistence mechanisms, providing redundancy for the access that they purchased. Domain administrator credentials are a common component of these sales, in conjunction with a form of remote access. Some forms of remote access for sale may also come with their own elevated privileges.” Included in the study is a quantitative and qualitative analysis of a sample of 46 sales of network access on underground forums covered in alerts provided to IntSights customers from September 2019 to May 2021. Among this selection, seven individuals accounted for more than half of the access points for sale, representing the larger trend of concentrated attacks by vendor-specific hackers.  Of the 46 samples, 40 named the location of victim organizations and nearly 40% were in the US or Canada.  Ten of the 46 victims were in the telecommunications industry while three other industries — financial services, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, and energy and industrials — tied for second place.  “Despite the relatively small number of retail and hospitality victims, the second-most expensive offering in this sample, with an asking price of approximately $66,000 USD worth of Bitcoin at the time, was for access to an organization supporting hundreds of retail and hospitality businesses,” Prudhomme explained.  “The victim was a third-party operator of customer loyalty and rewards programs. The seller highlighted the various ways in which a buyer could monetize this access, including: review and manipulation of source code; access to the accounts and points of loyalty program members; and spam and phishing attacks, including ransomware campaigns against loyalty program members via legitimate communication channels.”  Prudhomme noted that cybercriminals often go after airline frequent flier programs and similar customer loyalty programs because of the general lack of anti-fraud measures. While $9,640 was the average price, IntSights researchers said most prices hovered around $3,000. Just ten of the prices surpassed $10,000 and most were for access to telecommunications or technology companies. Many offers were in the hundreds and the lowest offer was $240 for access to a healthcare company in Colombia.  The peak seen in the study was $95,000 for access to a large telecommunications service provider in Asia with over $1 billion in revenue.  The researchers urge organizations to patch systems, enable MFA and take other measures to close off potential access points.  “The amount of time that it takes to sell network access may give security teams more time to detect a breach before a buyer monetizes it or does anything else with it that could cause significant harm,” the report said.  “The amount of time needed to find a buyer varies considerably, ranging from hours to months, but a time frame of days or weeks is more typical. If security teams discover an intruder who has had access for a significant period of time but has not yet begun to monetize it, e.g., by exfiltrating profitable files or deploying ransomware, then that delay could indicate that the initial intruder is still waiting for a buyer.” More

Networking hardware giant Netgear has announced a slate of new cybersecurity and privacy-focused features for one of its most popular products.The Netgear Armor security product, which is built into most routers like Orbi and Nighthawk, will now come with new threat detection features designed specifically for smart appliances. The new features include sensitive data protection — which blocks attempts to send login information, banking data, social security numbers and moreover encrypted networks — as well as an anomaly detection tool that uses machine learning algorithms to monitor how your connected devices usually operate. The system blocks any activity that is considered “out of the ordinary.”Netgear Armor will also try to shield connected smart devices from bots and brute force attacks while also stopping denial-of-service attacks and protecting networks against malicious intrusions through exploits. Netgear Armor is available to customers who have certain Wi-Fi 6 routers, and the company said it planned to roll out the tools to a wider audience in the coming weeks. Right now, Netgear Armor is free for 30 days and then costs $99.99 for a yearly subscription. David Henry, president of connected home products and services at Netgear, explained that it could be overwhelming for people to know what to do to keep themselves and their information safe with the explosion of connected devices in the home. Henry said the company added the features after realizing “that a new type of security solution was needed.”

There are an array of threats facing smart TVs, smart thermostats, light switches, home theater systems, security cameras, game consoles, smart speakers, tablets, smartphones and other smart home gadgets.The company cited a report from Bitdefender that found the number of vulnerabilities in smart TVs and cameras grew precipitously between 2019 and 2021. Netgear said in a statement that the security system is built into the router and eliminates “the need and cost for multiple security subscriptions or software.” The company also offers a cybersecurity program for devices and computers along with the subscription.  More

South Korean telco KT saw operating income jump 38.5% from the year prior during its second-quarter thanks to high demand for 5G and content services. On Tuesday, the company said it recorded 6 trillion won in sales, and 476 billion won in operating income during the second quarter. It is an increase of 2.6% and 38.5% respectively from the previous year. KT said it saw growth across the board with its content and 5G services performing especially well during the quarter. Its IPTV service saw sales increase 14.5% from the previous year. The telco credited the growth to stay-at-home culture and homeschooling trend caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. KT also saw its average revenue per subscriber increase 3% compared to the previous year during the quarter. The telco said this was from its increasing number of 5G subscribers. As of the second quarter, the company had accumulated 5.01 million 5G subscribers, it said. Its data centre and cloud services for enterprises also performed relatively well, seeing a 6.2% sales increase from the previous year. Meanwhile, compatriot telco LG Uplus last week also reported year-on-year growth during the second quarter.

The company posted 3.34 trillion won in sales and 268 billion won in operating income, an increase of 2.2% and 12%, respectively, from the previous year. LG Uplus also credited its 5G services for the uptick. Its total number of 5G subscribers as of the end of the second quarter was 3.72 million, an increase of 108% from the previous year. The telco said it expected to beat its annual target of 4.5 million 5G subscribers before year-end. Its solutions for enterprises, such as smart factories, saw a 34.3% year-on-year sales increase during the quarter, LG Uplus added. Meanwhile, last month, KT launched its 5G standalone service, becoming the first carrier in the country to offer mobile services wholly on 5G networks. South Korea is planning to allocate more 5G spectrum in November to promote 5G-related services. More from Korea More