The Air Gap a Security Fallacy?

12 Saturday Jun 2021

Posted by mp3monster in General, Technology

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Securing systems through an air gap is an idea goes back decades, and through the 50s to as recently as the 2000s the idea that you could safely and successfully run and maintain systems by simply not connecting to a network protects them from vulnerabilities may have been true. But in the last ten or more years, I would argue it is a fallacy, that can lull people into a false sense of security and therefore more likely to take more risks (or at least not be as careful as we should be). This idea is a well established piece of psychology with modern cars (here for example). This is known as Risk Compensation (also more here) or an aspect of behaviour adaptation.

Whilst this is rather theoretical, perhaps we should illustrate in practical terms why it is both a fallacy, and in the modern day simply impractical.

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New and coming to a screen near you soon

31 Monday May 2021

Posted by mp3monster in Books, Fluentd, General, manning, Oracle, Technology

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API, Fluentd, logging, Logging in Action, OCI, Oracle, OraWorld

Last night saw the final chapter of Logging in Action with Fluentd go back to my editor. The next step is that Chapter (and others I hope) will go to MEAP, so early readers not only get the final chapter, but also the raft of improvements we’ve made. Along with that, the manuscript goes for a full peers review. Once that’s back, its time for a round of edits as I address the feedback then into copy editing and Manning sign off review.

As you might have guessed, we’ve kept busy with an article in the 25th edition of OraWorld. This follows Part 1 talking about GraphQL with a look at considerations for API Security.

In addition to that we’re working on a piece around automation of OCI management activities such as setting up developers, allowing them a level of freedom to experiment without accidentally burning through all your credits by spinning up Exadata servers or 500 node Kubernetes clusters.

We might even have some time to write more about APIs and integration.

Restriction on custom logging for OCI always free

26 Wednesday May 2021

Posted by mp3monster in Cloud, General, Oracle, Technology

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alwaysFree, logging, OCI, shape, VM

OCI Always Free compute node has a restriction that isn’t clearly documented or obvious when you go to a instantiate such compute resources. That restriction is the absence of OCI Custom logging. This is a little surprising given that this capability is based on Fluentd and the compute footprint needed by Fluentd is so small. In the following screen shot, as you can see when configuring the compute, there is no reason to believe you can’t use OCI Logging for custom logs.

*Configuration for a logging agent on the Always Free VM*

But when you go to configure the custom logging on your running compute, you can see that the feature is disabled with the message about the restriction. It would have been nice, to have the warning on the creation phase, as if I’d manually setup the VM then went to switch on OCI Logging knowing where I’d deployed my applications, I’d have wasted time in the setup.

Solution, use one of the AMD Flex or Previous Generation to minimize the footprint to your needs.

UPDATE 09th June 2021

We’ve been told that the this constraint has been addressed. In addition Oracle also introduced the new Ampere offering which allows for nodes with a form factor of upto 4 OCPU and 24GB of RAM using the new ARM chips. You can also use variations on this such as 4x 1 OCPU 6GB RAM

Creating screenshots of application shells – easing the writing process

24 Monday May 2021

Posted by mp3monster in General, Technology

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console, Linux, shell, terminal, Windows, WindowsTerminal

If you hadn’t noticed, I have been involved with writing several books as well as various blogs and journal contributions. One of the challenges when it comes to books particularly is when wanting to share a screenshot of a shell/console Window, be that a Linux shell (bash, ZSH, korn etc) Windows cmd or PowerShell.

*All the different shells configured, note Git and Ubuntu in the list and integration to support Azure as well.*

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Blog Post on Oracle.com and more

19 Wednesday May 2021

Posted by mp3monster in General, Oracle, Technology

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blog, book, Capgemini, conference, Fluentd, IaaS, manning, monitoring, OCI, Oracle, WorldFestival

We recently received an invite to write a guest blog post for Oracle. We’re please to say it has gone live, and can be found at https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud-infrastructure/oracle-cloud-infrastructure-logging-and-alert-rapid-smoke-testing-of-config-and-alerts. A little different to my typical posts. Hope you find it interesting.

Opening of the blog post on blogs.oracle.com

World Festival Conference

We’ve also scored another success, this time we’ve been invited to speak at WorldFestival in August, this is an online conference organized by the same team behind DeveloperWeek. This is the first time outside of an Oracle linked event where I’ve been amongst the first few named speakers, so proud of that. The conference looks really interesting as it looks beyond just core developer themes with conference tracks on Space & Transportation, Smart Cities, Robotics, Digital Health to name a few of the 12 streams. Worth checking out.

DeveloperWeek Europe 2021 – APIs more than just a Payload definition

27 Tuesday Apr 2021

Posted by mp3monster in APIs & microservices, General, Technology

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API, DeveloperWeek, OAS, payload

So this week the big Developer Week Europe conference is running online at the moment. I got to present today. It was a relatively short session, with an unfortunate brief interruption of a smoke alarm. My presentations is here …

API more than payload from Phil Wilkins

OraWorld Magazine – Latest Edition

09 Tuesday Mar 2021

Posted by mp3monster in APIs & microservices, General, Oracle, Technology

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API, article, external, external publications, GraphQL, journal, magazine, OraWorld

The latest edition of OraWorld has become available to today. With its blend of insight into the Oracle community, and Oracle technologies from database to modern apps. I have to own up and say, I mention the magazine not only because of the beautifully crafted independent insights, but also it includes an article from myself. Taking a look at GraphQL what it is and how recent new Oracle product features could make a big difference to the GraphQL adoption opportunities.

The next edition should include a follow up article to this focussing on API security considerations.

Extracting Dependencies and Versions for a Node Solution

15 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by mp3monster in development, NodeJS Cloud, Technology

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jason, JQ, node.js, npm, parser

We have had a requirement from a customer to be able define every package including dependencies within a Node solution (as it happens Apollo GraphQL), not only the complete download path but the version numbering as well. There are many ways to solve this problem. But here is an elegant(?) and portable answer. To ensure that we don’t get pollution from a global node space we created a project package in an empty folder using:

 npm init --yes

This defaults all the package,json settings which for our requirements is fine. Then in the same location its npm install <product from the npm registry to pull> e.g. for Apollo GraphQL:

npm install apollo-server graphql

This will bring down to your npm project all the dependencies putting them in the node_modules child folder. We’re now in a position to retrieve all the details of the packages, their dependencies and version information. This can be done by using the command:

npm list --json

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Unified Logging with Fluentd becomes Logging in Action using Fluentd, Kubernetes and more

08 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by mp3monster in Books, Fluentd, General, manning, Technology

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book, Fluentd, In Action, Kubernetes, manning, progress

The book has had a title change as Manning found that links the book was clashing with other solutions using the term ‘Unified Logging’. With the name change it helps bring the book inline with the Manning naming with their In action series. This means the book website is now https://www.manning.com/books/logging-in-action.

With the name change we’ve agreed that there should an additional chapter added. As I’d written the book with a view that everything we cover applies to both modern solutions such as Microservices coming from the CNCF camp but equally relevant to more traditional IT landscapes. Within the book we have explianed how things are positioned and can be used in Kubernetes, but it was agreed with our editorial team that not tackling the configuration of Fluentd with Kubernetes and Docker was to an extent ignoring a key community that will be using Fluentd. So the new chapter will be introduced to address this aspect.

In terms of progress we’re into the 1’s – 1 Chapter to start (the new one), 1 Chapter back from the Technical Editor (Logging Best Practises) – some edits to be done, 1 Chapter now with the editor (How To Create Custom Plugins), 1 Chapter being finished (Logging Frameworks) and finally 1 peer review cycle to go.

Given the lovely review comments that have been quoted on the book’s page. I can only recommend if you have an interest in logging and monitoring then check it out through Manning Early Access Programme (MEAP).

Adventures in DevOps – Fluentd

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by mp3monster in Fluentd, General, Podcasts, Technology

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Adventures In DevOps, Blueprint LDN, conference, manning, podcast, speaker, speaking, virtual, virtual event

I was fortunate enough to record a podcast with the team at Adventures In Dev Ops just before Christmas. The recording has been fine tuned and now available on their web site here. From my perspective, the discussion was really interesting and explored a wide range of areas around the challenges of monitoring.

As the podcast is linked to the book we’re writing for Manning (Unified Logging With Fluentd), there is a discount code currently running – poddevopsadv20.

Thanks to Charles Wood and Jeffrey Groman for having me on as a guest.