It's Borg Bug Day, and this week Cisco's issued patches of interest to users of its Adaptive Security Appliances ASAs .The two newly-announced bugs are CVE-2016-1379, a VPN block memory exhaustion vulnerability; and CVE-2016-1385, a problem with the ASA XML parser.The software has a bug in how it handles ICMP errors in IPsec packets, and crafted packets sent either through LAN-to-LAN or remote access VPN tunnels can deplete available memory .That results in a denial-of-service, either because the system becomes unstable or it stops forwarding traffic.The software is vulnerable if the user's using IKEv1 or IKEv2 for LAN-to-LAN VPNs, or remote access VPNs using Layer 2 Tunnelling Protocol and Ipsec; and if the system is validating ICMP errors.The XML parser vulnerability is less serious, because it can only be exploited by an authenticated user.

Nvidia says its virtual desktop products will start at $2 per user, per monthNvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang at the GTC conference on April 5, 2016Nvidia is introducing a new graphics card option for its Grid virtual desktop system, promising to cut the costs of streaming graphics-intensive applications to employees.Customers buy the graphics hardware in Grid servers from partners such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell, Cisco Systems and Nutanix, along with virtualization software such as VMware Horizon, Citrix XenApp and Citrix XenDesktop.It can also make workers more mobile, because the streamed apps can be accessed from anywhere and on almost any client, including a tablet.With the new M10 cards, Nvidia wants to branch out into the broader market for office workers, or what it calls knowledge workers."Every marketing person I know uses Photoshop or Illustrator, so these apps are becoming more widely used," he said.That includes the price of the Tesla M10, but it doesn't include the rest of the server hardware.

Now, Talk It Over: On your anniversary, you want to remember the good times that got you to where you are today.You probably don t want to feel forced into spending time with someone you don t really feel like hanging around with.Well, that s kind of what Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg was faced with Wednesday.See, Wednesday marked the fourth anniversary since Facebook held its IPO and became a publicly traded company.On this day in 2012, Facebook went public at $38 a share.And in order to ensure whatever comes out of Handler s mouth is understood as much as possible, Netflix has hired more than 200 translators to handle the 20 languages in which Chelsea is being streamed.It s too early to say if Handler s humor will cross all those international borders no matter how well Netflix s translators do their jobs.The company will offer up $1.4 billion of its shares, and the rest will come out of the portfolio of Chief Executive Elon Musk.Tesla is banking on the $35,000 Model 3 to spur its next phase of growth, as the company has set a target of producing 500,000 cars a year by 2018.Cisco Comes Out On Top: Cisco Systems reported its fiscal third-quarter results after the stock market closed Wednesday, and investors liked what the networking-equipment maker had to say.Cisco reported a profit of 46 cents a share on revenue of $12 billion.Apparently, a bunch of people thought Lively s use of one of Sir-Mix-A-Lot s lines from his 1992 hit Baby Got Back showed racial insensitivity.

Cisco Systems Inc. posted a 3.6% decrease in profit for its latest quarter, but the network-equipment maker s adjusted profit came in better than analysts expected and it gave a rosy outlook for the fourth quarter.As of Wednesday s close, they had fallen 5.2% in the past month.The San Jose, Calif., company, whose results are watched as an indicator of demand for corporate technology, has shown strength lately, and the company in February boosted its dividend and stock-buyout plans as it projected stronger-than-expected adjusted revenue for the third quarter.On Wednesday, Cisco said adjusted revenue grew 3%, compared with company expectations of 1% to 4% growth, though the top line did decline 1.1% overall when including the video business that Cisco separated in November.Still, there have been signs that weakening economic conditions have taken a toll on the businesses the company serves, as revenue from switching gear—its largest single business—has declined.Over all for the quarter ended April 30, Cisco reported earnings of $2.35 billion, or 46 cents a share, down from $2.44 billion, or 47 cents a share.

The company's sales grew slightly in the last quarterCisco Systems CEO Chuck Robbins spoke at the Global Editors Conference in San Jose, California, on Oct. 5, 2015.That continues a trend the company identified in February, the last time it posted financial results.Those cutting-edge outfits keep expanding their huge data centers and adopting automation to cut costs, Robbins said.Cisco s model for future networks is its Meraki division, which sells network gear with cloud-based management and policy.We see a path to deploying that model across the rest of our portfolio, Robbins said.That s part of the company s push to rely less on selling hardware and more on delivering software and services, which generate ongoing revenue.

"We delivered a strong Q3, executing well despite the challenging environment," said CEO Chuck Robbins."I'm pleased with our performance today as well as the progress we're making in transitioning our business to a more software and subscription focus, which we'll continue to apply across our entire portfolio."For the fiscal Q3, ending April 30, Cisco reported:Revenues of $12bn, down 1 per cent from $12.1bn in Q3 2015.Switching hardware revenue of $3.45bn was down 3 per cent year over year, while NGN Routing revenue of $1.89bn saw a 5 per cent decrease.The numbers reflect an ongoing effort within Cisco to shift its focus away from its core networking hardware business and more towards hosted services, including security and virtual appliance management.Cisco's guidance for the upcoming Q4 period estimates that revenues will increase 0-3 per cent and non-GAAP earnings per share will be $0.59-$0.61.

Victims of the widespread TeslaCrypt ransomware are in luck: Security researchers have created a tool that can decrypt files affected by recent versions of the malicious program.However, in April 2015, researchers from Cisco Systems discovered a flaw in the ransomware program that allowed them to create a decryption tool for some of its variants.The number of TeslaCrypt attacks spiked in December and starting with version 3.0.1 of the program, which appeared in March, all encryption flaws were fixed and the existing decryption tools were rendered ineffective.Researchers from security vendor ESET have recently managed to obtain a copy of TeslaCrypt s master key, allowing them to create a new decryption tool that is capable of recovering files affected by the newer versions of TeslaCrypt 3.0 and higher .On this occasion, one of ESET s analysts contacted the group anonymously, using the official support channel offered to the ransomware victims by the TeslaCrypt s operators, and requested the universal master decryption key.The tool can recover TeslaCrypt-encrypted files whose extension was changed to .xxx, .ttt, .micro and .mp3, as well as those whose extension hasn t been modified.

Cisco Systems has fixed four denial-of-service vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit to cause Web Security Appliance devices to stop processing traffic correctly.One of the four DoS vulnerabilities fixed Wednesday by Cisco stems from how the OS handles a specific HTTP response code.If this happens, the device will no longer accept new incoming connection requests, Cisco said in an advisory.Another DoS vulnerability is caused by a lack of proper input validation of the packets that make up HTTP POST requests.The flaw can be exploited through specifically crafted HTTP requests and can lead to the proxy process becoming unresponsive and the WSA reloading.In addition to the WSA flaws, Cisco also patched a moderate severity cross-site scripting vulnerability in the Web interface of the Cisco Unified Computing System UCS Central Software.

Networking routers and switches and services don t play as well in a TV commercial as do iPhones shooting 4K video.You could make an argument that the only time Cisco was really cool was back in 2009, when it paid $590 million for Pure Digital, the maker of the then-popular line of Flip Video digital video cameras.And whether it was because a consumer gadget didn t fit in with its traditional networking gear business, or people just didn t buy enough Flips once they really got into shooting video on their iPhones, Cisco shut down Flip, and stopped making its video cameras in 2011.And on Thursday, Cisco s shares rose 3.2 percent to close at $27.57 after the company reported one of its typically solid business quarters.So, in case you missed it…Late Wednesday, Cisco reported fiscal third-quarter earnings of 57 cents a share on $12 billion in sales, while Wall Street analysts had forecast the company to earn 55 cents a share on $11.97 billion.By contrast, sales of routers were off by 5 percent and switching-gear revenue declined by 3 percent.No, it s not the kind of stuff that will have the cool factor of something like a 50-foot-high green wall and a park where you can wander in and contemplate whether you should get the 64-gigabyte or 128GB iPhone 6 Plus.: If Cisco is boring, yet consistent, anything involving John McAfee is going to be like 17 straight rides on Disneyland s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad without being strapped into your seat.It was barely a week ago, that McAfee, founder of McAfee, one of the first big anti-virus software companies, one-time-kinda-but-not-really fugitive from Belize, and current Libertarian Party presidential candidate, was named Chief Executive to MGT Capital Investments.Actually, it was more like McAfee took over the company, as part of his joining MGT was it acquiring his latest venture, anti-spy technology company D-Vasive, and saying it would rename itself John McAfee Global Technologies.So, it should come as no surprise that investing in a John McAfee company would be as wild an experience as McAfee being McAfee.

Cisco will retire its Nexus 6000 switches in mid-2017.The company recently popped out a end-of-life notice for the switches, which were launched in 2013 as part of a push to encourage adoption of 40G Ethernet.These days Cisco is keener on 100G Ethernet, promising to sell you faster kit for the same price as 40G kit.With that offer in the field, 40G switches start to look a little laggy, so its no surprise Cisco has planned the range's demise.Cisco's not the kind of company to take something behind the shed with a loaded gun: first it will stop selling the boxes next April, then shipments will stop at the end of July 2017.Or perhaps you'll buy nothing, lobotomise your switches with open-source software defined networking and run it as a white box server until it starts to emit smoke.

Tucci, IBM UK, Microsoft UK and more put pen to paperAmerican storage seller EMC is the latest tech tanker to tell the good burghers of Britain it wants the country to remain in the EU, and it even did so without mentioning Hitler or ISIS.Outgoing CEO Big Joe Tucci and execs at other big businesses including Cisco, Ford of Europe, Airbus, Mars, IBM UK and Microsoft UK signed a letter stating their case and sent it to the FT.UK and Ireland boss at EMC Ross Fraser tried to explain why his employer felt sufficiently compelled to add to the rhetoric ahead of the 23 June date when the British public have a chance to vote.He said the UK would benefit from continued participation in the European Economic Area and European Free Trade Associate or be faced with negotiating bi-lateral trade deals with Europe and the rest of the world.EMC are advocates of an EU-wide regulatory agenda, the Digital Single Market and reckoned the UK needs to keep its place at the negotiating table in ongoing discussions about Privacy Shield.Fraser claimed the tech industry is all about freedom of data and collaborative innovation and both of these could become significantly more complicated if the UK decides to remove itself as a member of the world s largest trade bloc .Earlier this week Microsoft and Hewlett Packard Enterprise both came out in favour of Remain, as did IBM and SAP last month.

Utilities will be among the sectors rushing to keep their fast-growing Internet of Things IoT systems safe from hackers will drive growth in the IoT security market by 55% between 2016 and 2020, according to a new study.The report by MarketResearchReports.biz entitled Global Internet of Things Security Market 2016-2020 found that IoT security will be driven by such end-use industries as automotive, healthcare – and especially utilities.During the forecast period, the utilities sector is expected to drive the demand from the market with highest adoption of IoT security solutions, the report media release stated.Gartner predicted worldwide expenditures on IoT security will grow by 24% this year to $348 million, then grow to $547 million in 2018 and to $841 million in 2020.These included: Nokia, NetComm Wireless, Palo Alto Networks, Cisco Systems, Intel, Broadcom, Sierra Wireless, Secure Crossing, Systech Solutions, Sophos, IBM, Gemalto, Kore Wireless, Numerex, Rockwell Automation, Symantec, Infineon Technologies, Axeda Machine Cloud, Fortinet, Eurotech, Tofino, Ventus Wireless, Digi International, Ericsson and Telit.The geographic scope of the report covered such regions as: the Americas; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and the Asia Pacific region.

EARNINGS FORECAST: Analysts on average expect adjusted earnings per share of 42 cents for the period ended April 30, according to Thomson Reuters, compared with 43 cents in the year-earlier period under pro forma figures released by the company.But the company s results and guidance topped expectations, and it has shown pockets of strength—particularly popular lines of storage hardware and wireless networking products resulting from two past acquisitions.—CURRENCY CUSHION: HP Enterprise, like many other U.S. tech companies, has been hurt by the dollar s strength relative to many foreign currencies.Now the situation has eased a bit, some analysts say, with the euro in particular rising in value versus the dollar in a pattern that could modestly reduce the drag on HP Enterprise s revenue.In April, HP Enterprise reached a deal to sell its majority stake in Indian outsourcing firm Mphasis Ltd. EQMPHASIS -1.05 % for about $825 million to Blackstone Group BX 2.56 % LP; that deal isn't yet closed.HP Enterprise in early May did complete a previously announced $2.3 billion deal in China to sell a 51% stake in a venture there called H3C that sells networking, server and storage hardware and related services.

The cloud-managed infrastructure business now sells a desk phoneThe MC74, introduced May 24, 2016, is the first phone from the Meraki division of Cisco Systems.Its first phone, the MC74, can be managed on the same dashboard Meraki provides for its switches, Wi-Fi access points, security devices, and other infrastructure.The wireless gear remains, but Cisco took the cloud management concept and ran with it.Other than volume and mute buttons and the corded handset, all the controls pop up on that screen.For example, if two employees were in a text chat on Cisco s Spark messaging app and decided to switch to voice, a user with a Meraki phone might be able to make that shift with one click, Estrada said.The MC74 has a list price of US$599.

In 1980, there were only 10,000-15,000 living Black Rhinos.It doesn't, say, involve darting the animals to insert sensors into their horns or under their skin, unlike some other initiatives.In the US alone, bee colonies have seen a 90% decline since the 1960s.However, many people believe that Varroa destructor mites are the main cause, which leads to beekeepers using strong, harmful pesticides.It examined occurrences of species living near major streams, rivers, lakes and creeks, which resulted in millions of results.While tech is making our lives easier and creating massive profits for multi-billion dollar companies, it's important to remember that some of it is doing good for the world.

Researchers Rob Wu and Guang Gong picked up the two remaining top payments in the patch run landing US$7500 and US$4000 each for another cross-orgin bypass and a type confusion hole.$7500 598165 High CVE-2016-1674: Cross-origin bypass in extensions.Credit to Rob Wu.$500 598077 Low CVE-2016-1692: Limited cross-origin bypass in ServiceWorker.Credit to Khalil Zhani.$500 603682 Low CVE-2016-1694: HPKP pins removed on cache clearance.

The Government of India launched this challenge as a selection process to distribute central government funding to 100 cities over three years.Since 2014 Cisco have been involved in consulting with local government and development authorities to bring connected capabilities to cities like Hamburg, Barcelona and Adelaide.We make these viable by being free up to a certain point and once a person reaches the paid point, the money earned goes back into funding the free serviceWe ve also made it possible that public services like hospitals and education providers now have extensive Wi-Fi.We ve also set up a City Infrastructure Management Centre CIMC and a Response Control Room to manage the city with greater efficiency… nearly all the solutions are integrated into a digital platform.The digital platform can aggregate data from various sensors and solutions and conduct data analytics.Cisco also announced – in collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies Inc., General Electric and 3M India Ltd. – the launch of an Innovation Centre in Jaipur to help accelerate co-innovation of IoT-based solutions.

Cisco Systems Inc. is broadening the purview of its security unit chief while changing the roles of three other executives who have been instrumental in developing some of the company s most successful products.David Goeckeler, the senior vice president who leads Cisco s sideline in computer security products and services, will continue in that capacity while also overseeing Cisco s core networking hardware business.The unit recently reported that sales grew 17% to $482 million in the company s third fiscal quarter this year, much more quickly than most other businesses at the company.The three men, along with Soni Jiandani, formed an entrepreneurial team that developed key product lines at three separate Cisco spin-ins.Mr. Robbins has announced changes in most key leadership roles at the company since last summer, when he became CEO.Cisco s management changes were reported earlier by Re/code.

This will bring more intelligence closer to where the action is, helping enterprises run things like factories and oil rigs more efficiently.The partnership with IBM is a big step toward making the IoT edge more intelligent and linking it to powerful cloud-based analytics, said Mike Flannagan, Cisco vice president of data and analytics.IBM, which has a vast set of offerings in IoT, may go from here to integrate more of those with Cisco in the future, MachNation analyst Steve Hilton said.Analytics at the edge gives the port quicker reaction times, more efficient use of data and networks, and better dollar value per IoT device, IBM Watson IoT General Manager Chris O Connor said.The partnership isn t exclusive for Cisco or IBM, and there s nothing stopping enterprises and system integrators from combining the companies technologies themselves.In addition to the purpose-built IoT devices, Watson can be integrated into many other Cisco products, including ISRs Integrated Services Routers and UCS Unified Computing System servers.

Today came the latest development on that front: IBM has inked a deal with Cisco to bring Watson IoT technology into Cisco s architecture, specifically aimed at providing analytics services for networks of autonomous and unmanned connected devices.While we have a focus on Watson as a cloud-based system, for certain clients with remote or autonomous operations we need something else, she said.The idea is to put in Cisco hardware, specifically edge routers and switches that already run Cisco s analytics, that will host the Watson tech to both collect and hand off IoT analytics data.And that, in turn, can be used to better manage connected devices, as well as to obtain analytics as part of a wider big data information-gathering effort that spreads across IBM s bigger IoT network, where devices that are used to deliver data also become points of data ingestion that will help train and fuel the bigger Watson AI brain.Green added that while the deal between IBM and Cisco is not exclusive, it is the first of its kind for both in the approach to working with another huge vendor to tackle new business areas — in this case, the new wave of IoT business as well as the emerging market for big data analytics.Featured Image: Gavin Baker Photography/Shutterstock