iOS 7 downloads consumed 20 percent of an ISP’s traffic on release day

When Apple released iOS 7 to the world at 1pm ET on Sept. 18, legions of iPhone and iPad owners immediately downloaded the new operating system. That’s no surprise, but statistics released today illustrate just how much of an impact the mobile OS had on Internet traffic.

At one unnamed North American fixed Internet provider, “Apple Updates immediately became almost 20 percent of total network traffic and continued to stay above 15 percent of total traffic into the evening peak hours,” according to Sandvine’s Global Internet Phenomena Report for the second half of 2013. Sandvine makes equipment that helps consumer broadband providers manage network congestion.

Over-the-air update sizes were 760MB for the iPhone 5, 900MB for the iPad 2, and 729MB for the Apple TV, the report says. Updates downloaded on desktops through iTunes were 1.2GB for the iPhone and 1.4GB for the iPad.

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Ars Technica » Technology Lab

Cisco-threatening open switch coming from Facebook, Intel, and Broadcom

Cisco Nexus switches.
pchow98

Six months ago, Facebook announced that its Open Compute Project (OCP) would develop a top-of-rack switch that could boot nearly any type of networking software. With the help of Intel, Broadcom, and others, the consortium devoted to open hardware specifications would develop a rival to Cisco’s network hardware.

Today, Facebook and friends described the first tangible steps they’ve taken toward reaching that goal. Intel, Broadcom, Mellanox, and Cumulus Networks have contributed specs and software that bring the Open Compute Project closer to a finished switch design.

Frank Frankovsky, VP of hardware design and supply chain operations at Facebook and head of the Open Compute Project, announced the latest developments in a blog post and conference call with reporters today. Frankovsky says the project is on track to “help software-defined networking continue to evolve and flourish,” since open source software-defined networking systems could be installed on Open Compute switches.

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Ars Technica » Technology Lab

Quantum of pwnness: How NSA and GCHQ hacked OPEC and others

Documents provided by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden have revealed that the NSA and its partner, Great Britain’s GCHQ, have done a whole lot more than just passively monitor what passes over the Internet. Using their surveillance tools, the intelligence agencies have been able to identify and target individuals at organizations of interest—not just suspected terrorist cells.

The latest target of these “tailored access” efforts to come to light is OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Brazil’s Petrobras, Belgium’s Belgacom, and many others have been targeted as well, based on documents provided by Snowden. According to a report in Der Spiegel, the NSA and GCHQ have had access to OPEC’s internal networks and systems since January of 2008, allowing the NSA to provide intelligence on individual members of OPEC and the countries’ negotiations and tactics. As with the GHCQ hack of engineers at Belgian telecom provider Belgacom, the infiltration of OPEC took advantage of partnerships with international telecommunications providers to reroute Internet traffic to and from targeted users within the organization, including Saudi Arabia’s OPEC governor, through network equipment controlled by the intelligence agencies. That allowed the NSA and GCHQ to perform “man-in-the-middle” attacks that let them install malware onto the target computers and gain access to OPEC’s internal network—even gaining administrative privileges for the network and access to file servers.

The attack, called a “Quantum insert,” is just part of an arsenal of network monitoring and attack tools that the NSA and GCHQ have created that have essentially turned the global Internet into a weapons system that can scan for, identify, target, and attack nearly anyone of interest who connects to Internet services across borders.

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Ars Technica » Technology Lab

How one site beat back botnets, spammers, and the “4chan party van”

The real “party van.”
Aryan Blaauw

One Sunday late last month, administrators at Orlando, Florida-based TorGuard were in high spirits. They had just successfully rebuffed the latest in a series of increasingly powerful denial-of-service attacks designed to cripple their virtual private networking service. Despite torrents of junk traffic that reached peaks as high as 15Gbps, the admins had neutralized the offensive by locking down the TorGuard servers and then moving them behind the protective services of anti-DoS service CloudFlare.

“This seemed to anger the attackers, however, because on Monday things got a bit more personal,” TorGuard administrator Ben Van Pelt told Ars. “Unable to spam, DDoS, hack, or social engineer us, they employed the tactics of the ‘4chan party van.’ Throughout the day our office received multiple unrequested deliveries from local pizza chains, Chinese food, and one large order of sushi. A handful of local electricians and plumbing services were also disappointed to be turned away. To my knowledge no fake calls have been placed to law enforcement yet, however nothing would surprise me at this point.”

The two-month-long campaign of harassment and attacks, which Van Pelt suspects was carried out by a competing virtual private networking service, illustrates the lengths some people will go to goad their online adversaries. His experience provides a vivid account of what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a relentless stream of distributed denial-of-service attacks and ultimately what can be done to mitigate them.

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Ars Technica » Technology Lab