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Even tech experts are vulnerable: What we can learn from the DDoS attack on GitHub

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There are certain occurrences in life that are unfortunate. They just are. Having your house broken into. Crashing your car into a telephone pole. Burning up half your lawn during a bonfire. No matter who you are, any one of these things happening to you would be unfortunate.

github ddos-attack

However, there are some people for which these unfortunate occurrences would be absolutely, positively terrible. It’s one thing to have your house broken into as an average person, but what if you made your living as a home security expert? Or what if you were a driving instructor that crashed your car into a pole? Or a firefighter that burned up your lawn?

There’s unfortunate, and then there’s unfortunate and embarrassingly ironic. Which brings us to the story of the large-scale DDoS attack on GitHub.

What you have to get about GitHub

GitHub.com is a web-based hosting service dedicated to giving software developers a convenient place to store and work on their projects, as well as open their projects up to collaboration. The beauty of GitHub is that it stores every single change and revision made to each project, and provides change logs that keep track of who made what change and when they did so.

Not only does this make it easy to provide updates, but it also makes it virtually impossible to irreparably mess up anything. It’s no wonder GitHub reportedly has over 9 million registered users.

An unlikely target that was nevertheless targeted

So let’s get this straight: GitHub is a website populated by some of the smartest, most tech-savvy people on the internet. Millions of them. And yet, GitHub just crawled out from under a massive five-day DDoS attack reportedly perpetrated by the Chinese government to censor pages they did not want available to Chinese citizens.

GitHub themselves described the DDoS attack as the largest they’d ever seen. In addition to being slammed with multiple known DDoS attack vectors, they were also hit with what they called new and complex techniques that involved sending unsuspecting and uninvolved web users to GitHub, flooding the website with traffic. Specifically, users of the Chinese search engine Baidu were redirected to a GitHub page mirroring the New York Times Chinese language version for the people of China, and a GitHub page run by GreatFire.org that links to copies of ten websites that are currently blocked in China.

The experts weigh in on the attackers

For their part, the Chinese government has sort of denied but not truly denied their involvement, instead opting to remind the world that China is one of the major victims of cyber attacks. Baidu outright denied that their services had what they referred to as “security problems” or “hacker attacks.”

However, this is at odds with what internet security experts are saying. GreatFire posted a forensic report from an independent security researcher that examined evidence from the attack and identified the Cyberspace Administration of China as the culprit.

Ofer Gayer, a security researcher at DDoS mitigation firm Incapsula, seems to share this opinion. “You need to have good control over infrastructure to mount an attack like this,” he said. “The Chinese have control of the infrastructure of an entire country, so they can divert traffic to wherever they want, inject code they want to run, and create requests with the code to GitHub.”

Gayer also went on to explain why this particular DDoS attack would have been harder to mitigate compared to more standard DDoS attacks that use botnets. “With botnets, all the requests look pretty much the same, so once patterns are identified, you can block them,” he said. “In this case, it’s very diverse. You have many different IPs and browsers creating non-homogenous traffic. This attack is very clever, and it’s not very easy to mitigate.”

What it all means

This is definitely a case of if it can happen to them, it can happen to anyone. If a website full of tech experts like GitHub isn’t prepared to deal with a DDoS attack, then it’s likely no website can be – unless it has professional DDoS protection.

This is the third high-profile DDoS attack where a nation’s government was rumoured to be involved. With DDoS attacks now coming from hackers, legitimate organizations and even governments, there’s an increasing number of attacks with increasingly complex techniques and increasingly devastating consequences. If GitHub wasn’t prepared to deal with this reality, are you?’

 

Bonus Infographic: 

Top 5 Valuable Facts And Stats About Mobile Application Development

Top 5 Valuable Facts And Stats About Mobile Application Development

In this mobilization age, where 90 percent of phone users have got smartphones, there is hardly anyone who does not use an application. With the increase in the use of apps, it has become a necessity, more than a trend, for businesses to have a mobile app of their own; be it Android, iPhone or Windows. As the future belongs to the mobile devices, the mobile application development is an emerging field.

If you are planning to become a mobile application developer, you must be aware of some of the most interesting facts about the application development. If you are a business owner, these stats will interest you for sure.

Without wasting any time in rounding about the bush, here are some of the most interesting facts about the mobile applications that you need to know before you step out in the real world field of development.

Some facts on Mobile Application Development:

  • It is not necessary that the one who uses the app is tech savvy. Make an app that is easy to understand and use, even by the novice.
  • There are thousands of applications getting submitted to the app store each day. So, be ready to face the competition! You must think something innovative you stand out from the crowd.
  • It is no where written that the app you build is perfect in the first place. You must test your app and fix the bugs before making it go live.
  • Speed should definitely not be a problem; irrespective of the type of device being used for your app.
  • Mobile app is the future of this modern age and the field will continue to advance. So, stay up to date.

Some stats:

  • Number of free apps downloaded on mobile devices:
  • In 2012: 57.33 billion
  • By 2017: 253.91 billion

The graph shows the number of free apps downloaded on mobile devices across the globe from the year 2012 to the projection in the year 2017:

  • Number of paid apps downloaded on mobile devices:
  • In 2012: 6.65 billion
  1. By 2017: 14.78 billion

The graph shows the number of paid apps downloaded on mobile devices across the globe from the year 2012 to the projection in the year 2017:

  • Number of free and paid app store downloaded on mobile devices:
  • In 2012: 57.33billion (free) and 6.65 billion (paid)
  • By 2016: 211.31billion (free)

The graph shows the number of free and paid app store downloaded on mobile devices across the globe from the year 2012 to the projection in the year 2017:

  • Number of mobile apps downloaded on devices:
  • In 2009: 2.52 billion
  • By 2017: 268.69 billion

The graph shows the number of mobile apps downloaded on devices across the globe from the year 2009 to the projection in the year 2017:

 

  • The global mobile app revenues:
  • In 2012: 18.56 billion US dollars
  • By 2017: 76.52 billion US dollars

The graph shows the global mobile apps revenues from the year 2011 to the projection in the year 2017:

Summing up.

Every business will want a smart, user friendly and innovative app that will not only impress their customers, but also help them access the company information. So, these above mentioned amazing facts would be quite helpful to you when developing the mobile apps.

Bonus Infographic: Trends in business apps

5 Benefits Of Business Phone Plans You Need To Know

As the business world changes and become more connected, more mobile, and more digital, companies need to adapt in order to keep up with the more competitive business arena. The need for advancement is even more essential in the coming years, and using business phone systems are no exception.

Here are the reasons why you need a good business phone plan – if you disappointingly still don’t have one.

  1. Remote and Distance Workers. More and more workers today are giving up office and instead opting for a more mobile approach to work. Whether they work as employees or freelancers who work from home, employers are taking advantage of this new trend in the current industry. Applying these unique off-site workers helps any business become more flexible and collaborative. Using the technology to its full potential will help significant boost a business’s work quality and productivity. Using cloud-based technology and remote workers allow managers to oversee the entire project and the employees, no matter where their workers are.
  2. Easy Expansion. Businesses are meant to expand. Only the best business phone systems can deliver comprehensive customization and optional features that can be tailored fit to any industry or business. Put that into consideration. The cost for best business phone plans available at Arrow Voice are typically much lower than most traditional phone systems cost to upgrade and maintain, and the benefits? Vast.
  3. Enhanced Personalization. Phone systems are becoming more popular because of the vast advantage of the services they can offer. These services allow the companies to manage their teams and workers more efficiently, help them understand their clients better, encourage better communication, oversee team interactions, promote better relationships between team members, and eventually increase overall business production.
  4. Phone Systems and Automation. Many businesses are now leaning towards automating their phone operating systems from taking calls, channeling callers to the right departments, taking messages, managing wait times, as well as assisting customers, there are hundreds of areas where phone systems can help save resources and streamline the communication process. With this system, businesses are able to record and track calls, which is very helpful in highlighting problem areas and pinpointing areas that need enhanced assistance and work for clients.
  5. Conferencing Calls. One of the growing issues that businesses face today is the ever-widening existence of a skill gap between older, experienced workers and new blood coming into the company. Older workers need training in the new technology and tools used in the industry while younger worker needs training on the specifics of the business. Cloud phone systems allow owners and managers to provide a variety of visual and audio tutorials that can be held and attended anywhere, no matter where the employee is. Training has never been easier!

Businesses needs to keep up with the market and innovate as necessary, and not be frightened by technology. The potential for profit is limited only by the company itself. This can be easily achieved with a modern phone system that includes data plans, conferencing calls, and much more! Technology really is amazing.

 

Top 5 Famous Websites Built With Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails is undoubtedly one of the most in-demand frameworks for web application development. IT specialists choose it for its powerful features and ease of use. Developers save lots of time, effort and money, building their web applications with Ruby on Rails.

A great number of famous websites are built with Ruby on Rails. Here are 5 most popular:

Twitter

Yes, Twitter was built with Ruby on Rails. This popular social networking website, that has $10 billion valuation, does not need introduction. In fact, this is one of the most famous sites built with RoR. Due to the concerns with scalability, Twitter stopped using Ruby on Rails.

Jobster

Another popular site created with Ror is Jobster. This job search website is very easy to navigate through and features a number of other benefits that only a site built with Ruby on Rails can offer. One of these advantages is that Jobster enables its visitors searching multiple job website at once.

Shopify

This is one of the most popular tools for building e-commerce websites. An e-commerce site created with Shopify offers a myriad of beneficial features. It enables site owners, customizing the storefront, managing orders, processing credit card payments, etc. In other word, it gives users a flawless shopping experience. Since 2006, the year of its foundation, Shopify has raised more than 122 million dollars in funding for the development of its platform.

Github

If you are a newcomer to the IT community, you probably do not know much about Github, but you’ve definitely heard this name at least once. Github is a popular social network for web developers. In just a few years it has raised 100 million dollars and joined the list of leaders for “code sharing”. GitHub is the largest Git hosting for open source projects. GitHub is huge!

Indiegogo

This is one of the most popular crowd-funded platforms. Indiegogo has quickly gained a worldwide fame and is currently the main rival of another popular crowd-funding platform – KickStarter. Indiegogo started its crowd funding activity in 2008. Today, its total crowd-funded capital makes 55 million dollars and this amount will continue growing, just like Indiegogo’s popularity.

Ruby on Rails is an ideal choice for both startup and well-established companies looking for a powerful and cost-effective tool for web application development. With railsware.com, their experience and the skilled team you will quickly avail all benefits of using Ruby on Rails.

 

Bonus Infographics: History of Programming languages

What is Trade and Source And How Does It Work in Microsoft Dynamics

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Trade and Source are important aspects of Microsoft Dynamics that must be known if you want to attain the maximum benefit from your Microsoft Dynamics ERP for your business. In the following article I have tried explaining the two concepts and how they work in Microsoft Dynamics. Read on to know.

Microsoft Dynamics provides an all-in-one solution through giving you real-time connectivity within your business. Trade and Source are important aspects of Microsoft Dynamics and need to be known to use it to its maximum potential.

Trade

The Trade module of Microsoft Dynamics can be used to integrate purchasing processes and sales with other vital functional areas of an organization including master planning and CRM, application integration framework, financials, warehouse management, production and logistics. The salient features of this module are:

  • Delivering better customer service through a range of sales processes that are more efficient
  • Reducing costs through optimizing and supporting the warehousing and purchasing processes.
  • Enhancing customer and supplier relationships through trade agreements.
  • Trading seamlessly with subsidiaries through the software’s ability to manage intercompany orders, all within one system.
  • Achieving improved cost control through greater visibility into accurate inventory valuation and cost prices.

Sources

Sources are an important aspect of trade agreement in Microsoft Dynamics and, they come into consideration when populating the result field in a trade agreement. In essence, the result fields of a trade agreements are filled using different sources. Sources can be divided into multiple groups, some of which are guarded by policies. They include:

 

  • Trade agreements, which has been a legacy feature of Microsoft Dynamics, ever since it came into existence. It’s a price-discount setup and and is considered to default source in a default scenario, where the user updates or creates a document from the User Interface directly. No Trade Agreement Evaluation (TAE) policies are applied in such a scenario though.
  • Manual input, where a manual-type TAE policy is imposed to prevent the user from overwriting an input already entered into a particular trade agreement field.
  • System sources, where documents are updated or created using means other than the ones used in the default scenario. The resources referred to update or create such documents could either be copied from other documents or imported via AIF. In this source group, a system-type TAE policy is imposed to prevent overwriting of values in one or more result fields of trade agreements.
  • Sales and purchasing agreements can also be considered as sources for discounts and prices, including the legacy feature of trade agreements. The sales and purchasing agreement feature can serve as a source in basically two ways. They include:
    • For as long as a documents are linked to agreements, the agreements will serve as a system source. A group of fixed TAE policies is imposed to prevent values from being overwritten in such a scenario.
    • Even if documents are unlinked from their respective agreements, the discounts and prices that originate from the agreements can be preserved. Hence, the agreements continue to serves as sources and TAE policies are applied accordingly.

If you wish to learn more about Microsoft Dynamics modules, consider enrolling yourself for AX 2012 Finance Training or Ax 2012 POS Training or AX 2012 Trade and Logistics Training, etc. They’ll help you get the maximum from your Microsoft Dynamics ERP.

 

Have thoughts or opinions to share? Post them in the comments below; I’d love to hear from you as well.

10 Great Apple Watch Apps You Can be Really Enthusiastic About

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Anyone can get excited about a smartwatch and when it is an Apple watch, there is no limit to the excitement. Many luxury watch brands are manufacturing smartwatches and the coming years will see more intelligent wrist wearable.

The Apple watch also consists of many unique features similar to the unique features of the Apple devices that make it completely unique from the other wearable available from other brands.

The Apple watch has many different features like fitness trackers, digital crown, scrolling and zoom, etc. Lets look at some apple watch apps

Reasons to buy Apple watch

There are a number of reasons to buy AppleWatch. Let’s see some of the reasons as to why people would love to buy one.

  • An iDevice will keep you moving. It is sort of motivator wearable that will stay very close to you just on your wrist and will keep updating you for various custom alerts.
  • The watch will keep the user organized. It basically liberates the users from the smartphone. It just needs a few clicks to operate an AppleWatch.
  • It is best for the people working in health and technology sectors. As a technology freak, it is the best wearable in today’s tech world.
  • If you are a fan of iDevices, then you will surely not miss this amazing iDevice on your wrist that will keep you updated all the time.

If you are planning to buy an Apple watch, then here are the few applications that are worth using.

 

  • Apple Pay

Apple Pay has the killer features and it is not a third party app. This is the smart application that makes the user click on the side button to bring up the image of your credit card. You can then move to an NFC enabled terminal and can make the payment from it. It will give you a signal when the payment is done right from your wrist.

This acts as the host of other ticket apps. The application allows a wireless payment whenever the user wants. It is a very convenient method of making payments on the go.

  • Evernote

Evernote is an application that is available everywhere. The major feature of using this app is that it allows to record voice notes. It is fun to record your voice right from the wrist.

A wearable technology needs applications to be quicker and more viewable. An app on the iWatch always complements the app on the phone. Evermore is the combined version of both the iPhone and Apple watch versions. They have worked together to create this beautiful app. Evernote lets you set reminders and check off items in your list without even using the phone.

Evermore allows you to read on the AppleWatch, then you can continue reading on the iPhone and then back again. This helps moving from the wrist to the hand and then back again.

  • Citymapper

Citymapper is the best transit app till now. Its watch specific functionality makes it more special and better. It keeps your hands free and allows you to look at the directions on the AppleWatch. Whenever a specific destination is reached, it buzzes at the wrist and you get an alert that your stop has arrived.

This is one of the best apps on your Apple Watch if you are a tourist and are a frequent traveler.

  • Instagram

This app is owned and maintained by Facebook. Having Instagram right on the wrist is very exciting.

Quality does not matter and so the small screen should not get affected. We all know that there is a lot of functionality on the other versions of Instagram, so the small screen is getting a bit messy with all the features of the app.

  • BetterWorks

This app will make the sales force better than ever before. It is a specialized app for the customers that will work parallel to the existing mobile software. Instant alerts are also available.

BetterWorks is a great application for the sales teams and the digital marketers as well. The latter can be alerted whenever a marketing campaign reached the target goal.

  • WeChat

WeChat is available for the AppleWatch as well. The users can send and receive messages on WeChat right on the wrist. They can also use stickers during the conversation as well.

WeChat is sure to make a prominent place. China will be the first country to get this app for the Watch as China is the second most important market for Apple.

It adds the ability to accept friend requests and can view the nearby users as well.

  • Alarm.com

This is one of the smartest applications for AppleWatch. It is basically a smart home app. It allows the user to open the garage door and lock all the smart-locks as well. It automatically connects to the devices in your home and will give you a smart and integrated approach towards operating all the home devices.

The app is created for quick interactions. The best feature of this application is the video feed that can be directly viewed from your home in your watch.

The app is also Home kit compatible and it is going to work great on your wrist. Customized alerts are also possible in this application . You can set various alerts for the important activities in your day. The app creates an instant window for you in your home.

  • Shazam

Identifying a song playing at a bar by opening Shazam on your mobile phone is an impressive trick. This is a nice way to listen songs, but the unimpressive part of this is opening the phone and then finding out the application and then looking for the specific song to play.

Shazam on the wrist can add wonders to it as you will be a tap distance away from your favorite notes.

  • StepWise

This is a great fitness tracker app and allows the user to count the steps he or she walks in a specified period of time.

StepWise is basically a pedometer application that can be managed directly from the wrist of the user. It is a must-have.

  • Dude

Dude is a context aware messaging application, especially for the iWatch. The app allows the user to pick any location for the nearby list of places and even select a contact to tweet it.

The context-aware sentence is created and is based on the time of the day and current location of the user. It allows the users to have an update about what their friends are doing at the time.

Google begins supporting Apple Watch with News & Weather app

Future of Apple Watch Apps

Creating applications for the AppleWatch is a billion dollar opportunity for the developers. There should be apps that make iDevice a must-have wearable instead of a luxury accessory.

As far as the future of apps is concerned, there will be more interactive applications for the Applewatch in the near future. Developers are working hard on creating unique applications. Better improvements will be seen in the hardware of the Watch. It is planned to be slimmer that now.

There are many ideas with Apple that will be surely seen in the iWatch in the coming few years itself. The company has to look for innovative ways in order to make the device as a must-have. There are many features available on the smartphones, so why need an AppleWatch? This is a big and a tricky question for Apple.

Apple watch is surely going to change people’s day to day life in the future, especially the office going people. There will be a number of apps that will solely be for the office goings. More engagement would be needed in such apps in order to make the watch more effective to wear. There are many new productivity apps in development that will definitely be able to track the time to always go valuable. People are optimistic for this new and smart gadget to be more user-friendly in the future.

Author Bio

Keval Padia is a Founder & CEO of Nimblechapps, a fast-growing smartwatch app development company. The current innovation and updates of the field lures him to express his views and thoughts on certain topics.

How to Convert MBR to GPT Disk

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If you just bought a new hard disk drive that is larger than 2TB of space, then you need to know how you can convert mbr to gpt without data loss. And you will also need help especially if you are not sure how to extend partition.

So it is better to leave it to the experts and in this case, there’s a partition manager going by the name of EaseUS Partition Master Free 10.5.

We all know how tough it is to convert mbr to gpt without data loss, there are not many in the market can do so actually. That’s exactly why you are going to be interested in this free solution that can help you in just that. Plus if you are clueless on how to extend partition, then the partition manager is your savior.

Well actually there are a lot more features and functions that make EaseUS Partition Master Free 10.5 hugely popular with more than 24million users worldwide currently using it. They all say that it is one of the best solutions to create, delete, resize, move, merge, split, wipe or format partitions to make better use of your hard drive capacity.

Other than being able to convert mbr to gpt without data loss, you can also convert from a dynamic disk to basic disk and convert the rather ancient FAT to NTFS file system. You can also now extend NTFS system partition without having to reboot in order to maximize your PC performance.

Or you can use it to safely merge two adjacent partitions into a bigger one without data loss. If you are not sure how to extend partition, don’t worry as in just a few simple clicks; it will solve your issues for you.

Some of the more under-rated feature is that it allows you to create a WinPE rescue disk so that you can still boot on a computer that is facing troubles to boot. And it can also speed up your computer by performing defragmentation on it. It is more than meets the eye other than the initial usage of being able to convert mbr to gpt without data loss.

On the hardware side of things, you will be glad to know that it supports all kinds of hardware RAID, removable storage device, hard disk, GPT disk and FAT/NTFS/EXT2/EXT3 file system. It will also work on the more traditional BIOS-based motherboard and the trendy UEFI-based motherboard.

Look no further if you are still looking for a partition software to convert mbr to gpt without data loss. EaseUS Partition Master Free 10.5 also comes with an endorsement by the software experts. It’s ok to be clueless about something such as how to extend partition, as you know that there is a reliable software that you can count on.

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