Dan York

Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...

Author's posts

Google+ Finally Gets Photo Sharing Parity On iPhone/iPad/iOS

In an update to iOS (iPhone/iPad) apps yesterday, Google+ finally got the kind of sharing of photos that Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other social networks have had for some time. Now, when I go to share a photo, one of my options is Google+:

Photo Dec 22 1 07 16 PM

I realize that this is old news to Android users, but for those of us on iOS who have wanted to share photos on Google+, it seemed strange that we couldn't do so from the built in photos application within iOS. Sure, we could do it through the G+ app on the iPhone or iPad, but not from within the native photos app.

This functionality appeared after I installed version 4.8.0:

Googleplus 4 8 0

I did have to tap the " More ... " button once and then turn on the Google+ sharing, but after doing that I was then able to easily share to G+ the next time.

Great to see G+ finally getting parity with the other social networks. I look forward to being able to more easily share more photos!


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Jim Galvin Writing About DNSSEC On CircleID

Jim GalvinWe’ve been very pleased to see Dr. Jim Galvin of Afilias writing a series of articles about DNSSEC over on Circle ID.  Jim has been a long-time friend and supporter of the Deploy360 Programme and has spoken multiple times at our ION conferences. (For example, he spoke at our recent ION Belfast event.)  Jim was also involved with the recent sponsorship of our ION conferences by Afilias.

Anyway, over at CircleID Jim started a series of articles about different aspects of DNSSEC. His articles thus far include:

The three articles provide a good overview of the current state of DNSSEC.  His third article, in particular, dives into an issue that has not been widely discussed – the potential 5-day waiting period during the transfer or a domain between registrars. As Jim notes:

In pre-DNSSEC days this technical issue would resolve itself relatively benignly. However, post-DNSSEC, if the domain name in question is DNSSEC signed, the failure of the domain name to DNS resolve (and hence, validate) results in a security incident. The previously benign “site not found” becomes a scary “you don’t want to go there” message, potentially damaging the credibility and brand of the domain name owner.

He goes on to note what needs to be done to address this issue and concludes:

The current business practices around this transfer policy require urgent coordination amongst registrars so that effective DNSSEC deployment can happen without an impact to the end-user or the domain name owner.

We agree that this is a concern when transferring domains and do hope to see this kind of coordination happening among registrars.

We also hope to see Jim continue writing detailed articles like these over on CircleID.  You can see his writing there on his author page at CircleID.

And if you’d like to learn more about DNSSEC, please visit our Start Here page to begin!

FIR #787 – 12/22/14 – For Immediate Release

Thoughts for our anniversary episode; Cision-Vocus UK webinar featuring Neville now available; Quick News: PCs still tops for video viewing, half of US doctors are on Doximity, Bad web bots account for 1 in 3 site visits, Microsoft to ignore Internet Explorer rivals in Europe; Ragan promo; News That Fits: communications' role dealilng with harrassment and abuse online; Michael Netzley's Asia Report; content marketing, community, and the long tail; Media Monitoring Minute from CustomScoop; listener comments; distraction-free writing; Dan York's Tech Report; the past week on the FIR Podcast Network; Igloo Software promo; a mobile update; how to comment; music from Allison Crowe; and more.

FIR #787 – 12/22/14 – For Immediate Release

Thoughts for our anniversary episode; Cision-Vocus UK webinar featuring Neville now available; Quick News: PCs still tops for video viewing, half of US doctors are on Doximity, Bad web bots account for 1 in 3 site visits, Microsoft to ignore Internet Explorer rivals in Europe; Ragan promo; News That Fits: communications' role dealilng with harrassment and abuse online; Michael Netzley's Asia Report; content marketing, community, and the long tail; Media Monitoring Minute from CustomScoop; listener comments; distraction-free writing; Dan York's Tech Report; the past week on the FIR Podcast Network; Igloo Software promo; a mobile update; how to comment; music from Allison Crowe; and more.

TDYR 201 – Winter Solstice and the Coming of Light

TDYR 201 - Winter Solstice and the Coming of Light by Dan York

10 Years of FIR Podcast Coming Up on January 5, 2015 – Suggestions?

Unbelievably, the For Immediate Release (FIR) Podcast to which I contribute is coming up on a TEN YEAR anniversary! As co-host Neville Hobson recently wrote in the FIR Community on Google+:
On January 5, 2015, Shel and I will be recording episode 789 of The Hobson & Holtz Report.

That episode will mark a very special milestone for us and for our community of listeners and friends as it will be the episode that starts our eleventh year of podcasting.

So on January 5 next year, we will have completed 10 years of The H&H Report almost to the day - episode 1 was published on January 3, 2005.

A rather amazing run for a podcast! I remember quite well way back in early 2005 as the whole world of "podcasting" was this new and fascinating space. It was something like February or March 2005 when I stumbled across FIR and started listening... and then, of course, shy person that I am, almost immediately started sending in audio comments.

Over time those audio comments evolved into reports and sometime in the fall of 2005 I was officially named a "correspondent" into the show.

And ever since those days in 2005... pretty much every week I've sent in my 5-7 minute report. I've missed a few weeks, but over all those years it's only been a few weeks. Even as I write this post, I'm also writing the notes for what I'm going to talk about in my report into tomorrow's show (that I'll record in the morning).

I'll save some more reminiscing for that actual show #789 on January 5, 2015 ... but in the meantime I'll relay the rest of Neville's request:

We have in mind a few things we plan to say in episode 789 to mark the milestone. One thing we definitely want to do is highlight the journey from that single podcast in 2005 to the FIR Podcast Network you see today, and our plans in 2015.

Is there anything that you would like to say or contribute or suggest for that episode to celebrate 10 years? All ideas most welcome!

If you do have ideas... I would encourage you to leave them as comments inside the FIR community on Google+. You can also contact Shel and Neville through one of the various contact methods in the sidebar of the FIR website.

It's pretty amazing to think of FIR being around - and consistently published for 10 years - I'm looking forward to joining in the celebration on January 5, 2015!


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Congrats to the Wire Team for TNW Apps of The Year Selection

Congratulations to the Wire.com team for having Wire be selected as one of The Next Web's "Apps of the Year"!

Tnw app of year wire

TNW's Napier Lopez talks about how beautiful Wire is and how much it is a platform that he wants to use... and suddenly he is the one asking people to join him.

Many of comments mirror my own opinion of how much I enjoy using the app. It's just a pleasure to use for communication.

Napier Lopez does, though, hit Wire's real challenge:

Still, I mentioned earlier that I started using other messaging platforms because my friends made me, and therein lies the crux with Wire, or any new messaging platofrm, really: you need to get users on the platform.

This is indeed the "user directory problem" that I wrote about at great length. And I, too, hope that the Wire team - and we all as Wire users - can find ways to help bring people to the platform.

Meanwhile, congrats to the Wire team for this recognition - and I look forward to seeing what may be coming up next in the app!

P.S. I notice a version 1.2 for iOS just appeared in the AppStore and it includes the ability to invite people to join, so that's a start....


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SS7 Security On Techmeme? A Reminder About Interconnected Systems…

techmeme-ss7SS7 security issues reported on Techmeme?  I did a double-take yesterday and, as Jay Cuthrell noted on Twitter, wondered if this was a “ThrowbackThursday” taken to the extreme.  But no, there was indeed a report in the Washington Post about German security researchers discovering that aspects of SS7 signaling that could be used to listen to phone conversations and/or read text messages on mobile networks.  As the article notes:

The flaws discovered by the German researchers are actually functions built into SS7 for other purposes – such as keeping calls connected as users speed down highways, switching from cell tower to cell tower – that hackers can repurpose for surveillance because of the lax security on the network.

The researchers noted that one of the attackers could get around existing encryption mechanisms used on mobile networks:

For calls or texts transmitted using strong encryption, such as is commonly used for advanced 3G connections, hackers could request through SS7 that each caller’s carrier release a temporary encryption key to unlock the communication after it has been recorded.

SS7, or Signalling System 7, is of course the dominant set of telephony signaling protocols used in the legacy Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) made up of today’s wired and wireless (mobile) telephone networks.  As such, we don’t write about SS7 hardly at all here on the VOIPSA blog as it is not related to VoIP.

However, there were three important thoughts to me coming out of this article:

1. VoIP can be more secure than the PSTN. The report mentions the encryption of the underlying 3G transport infrastructure being subverted.  However, with VoIP apps that are “Over-The-Top” (OTT) riding on the mobile data network, the encryption can happen from within the app on one mobile device all the way to the app on the other mobile device – or at least back to a central set of servers.  Now, there can be other security vulnerabilities with such a system, but the transport layer could at least be secured.

2. Telecommunication systems are only as secure as their weakest link – and are interconnected.  The bigger concern is of course that most of our telecom systems are all interconnected… and you can have the most secure VoIP system in the world, but if you wind up connecting to the PSTN – and specifically in this case to mobile PSTN networks – then you are open to exactly these kind of attacks.  Obviously if you are communicating only within an OTT “walled garden” where you only talk to others using the same OTT app you can be secure, but the moment you go out to the PSTN you are open to all the issues there.

3. Fixed lines are no safer if you talk to mobile users. The article ends with a German senator saying “When I really need a confidential conversation, I use a fixed-line phone“.  I don’t know about that.  For one thing, if the person you are calling is a mobile phone user, you are again open to these kind of attacks.  Secondly the Snowden revelations of the past year have certainly shown us that large agencies have the ability to listen in to communications on the networks of the PSTN.  If I absolutely want a confidential conversation, I’m personally going to use one of the VoIP applications that has end-to-end encryption. I’m NOT going to trust a fixed line any more than I would trust a mobile phone.

And I guess the final thought is of course that the legacy PSTN is full of security issues – they just aren’t necessarily as open to all to see because of the more closed nature of the traditional telephone networks.

A good reminder, though, that telephony security has always been a problem – and we need to ensure that both our VoIP and traditional networks have adequate security.

Meanwhile, it was rather fun to see SS7 mentioned on Techmeme… not something you’d expect to see!

Friday Humor – Hipku Encodes An IPv6 Address As Haiku

hipkuFor your Friday enjoyment, here is the IPv6 utility you never knew you needed – Hipku will encode an IP address as haiku.  For instance, here is the IPv6 address of our Deploy360 website:

Chilled apes and fat smew
aid chilled ace ace ace ace ants.
Ace ants aid ace clans.

Now, I’m not personally sure that helps me a great amount… but it’s certainly something amusing to try on a Friday.  You may get something more memorable for your address. :-)   You can visit the site at:

http://gabrielmartin.net/projects/hipku/

and get the actual source code on Github at:

https://github.com/gabemart/hipku

It does work for IPv6 and IPv4 addresses and if you click on the link for your current IP address (under “Example”) you’ll get a nice page with an image behind it.

As author Gabriel Martin explains, he did this entirely for fun … and he does go into great detail about how he did it all.

Anyway… have fun with it!

P.S. And when you are ready to get serious about implementing IPv6, please head over to our Start Here page to find resources designed to help you get started today!

P.P.S. And if you are asking yourself, “why would I remember an IPv6 address? That’s what DNS is for!”  We agree… and we also think DNS should be made secure!  If you aren’t familiar with DNSSEC, why not learn about it today?

Norway’s .NO Passes 22,000 DNSSEC-signed Domains

It’s fun watching on Twitter as Norway’s .NO grows in the number of DNSSEC-signed second-level domains. Norid’s Unni Solås tweeted out today that they had passed 22,794 signed .NO domains – and also provided an explanation for this ongoing growth:

Congrats to the Norid team – it’s great to see the growth… you may recall that only a week ago we wrote about .NO crossing the 5,000 signed domain mark!  Quite a good increase in the space of only a week! Given that Norid’s main page states there are 650,211 .NO domains in total, this brings them to about 3.5% of all .NO domains being signed with DNSSEC.   Not a bad start for a newly signed domain.

Norid has also published its “DNSSEC Policy and Practice Statement (DPS)” that outlines their policies and procedures.  We’ve added that to our list of DPS documents that can be found at:

http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/resources/dnssec-practice-statements/

If you are with a top-level domain, or even with an enterprise seeking to sign your own domain(s), these DPS documents can be useful to understand the degree of security that some TLDs are undertaking.

Congrats again to the Norid team and we’ll look forward to seeing their continued growth!

P.S. If you want to sign your domain with DNSSEC or enable DNSSEC validation on your network, please visit our Start Here page to find resources aimed at your type of organization or role.