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Up until recently, Docker servers misconfigured and left exposed online have been historically targeted with cryptocurrency-mining malware, which has helped criminal groups generate huge profits by hijacking someone else's cloud resources.

However, in a report published this week, security researchers from Trend Micro have discovered what appears to be the first organized and persistent series of attacks against Docker servers that infect misconfigured clusters with DDoS malware.

According to Trend Micro, the two botnets are running versions of the XORDDoS and the Kaiji malware strains. Both malware operations have a long and well-documented history, especially XORDDoS, which has been spotted used in the wild for many years.

However, the two DDoS botnets had usually targeted routers and smart devices, and never complex cloud setups, such as Docker clusters.

"XORDDoS and Kaiji have been known to leverage telnet and SSH for spreading before, so I see Docker as a new vector which increases the potential of the botnet, a green field full of fresh fruit to pick with no immediate competitors," Pascal Geenens, cybersecurity evangelist at Radware, told ZDNet via email earlier this week.

"Docker containers will typically provide more resources compared to IoT devices, but they typically run in a more secured environment, and it might be hard to impossible for the container to perform DDoS attacks," Geenens added.

"The unique perspective of IoT devices such as routers and IP cameras is that they have unrestricted access to the internet, but typically with less bandwidth and less horsepower compared to containers in a compromised environment," the Radware researcher told ZDNet.

"Containers, on the other hand, typically have access to way more resources in terms of memory, CPU, and network, but the network resources might be limited to only one or a few protocols, resulting in a smaller arsenal of DDoS attack vectors supported by those 'super' bots."

However, these limitations don't usually impact crypto-mining botnets, which only need an open HTTPS channel to the outside world, Geenens said.

But despite the limitations in how a DDoS gang could abuse hacked Docker clusters, Geenens says this won't stop hackers from attacking this "green field full of fresh fruit to pick" as there are very few vulnerable IoT devices that haven't been infected already, which has forced hackers to target Docker servers to begin with.

And on a side note, Geenens also told ZDNet that he suspects that DDoS operators are already quite familiar with Docker systems already.

While this is the first time they're hacking Docker clusters, Geenens believes hackers often use Docker to manage their own attack infrastructure.

"I have no immediate proof, but I'm pretty sure that in the same way as legitimate applications benefit from [Docker's] automation and agility (DevOps), so will illegal applications."

The most common source of Docker hacks is the management interface (API) being left exposed online without authentication or being protected by a firewall. For readers looking to secure their servers, that would be a good first thing to check.

In its report, Trend Micro also recommends that server administrators secure their Docker deployments by following a series of basic steps, detailed here.

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Docker servers infected with DDoS malware in extremely rare attacks - ZDNet

Ampere, a semiconductor startup founded and led by former Intel executive Renee James, has revealed a new 128-core, Arm-based server processor designed to take on Intel and AMD in the cloud.

The new processor, Altra Max, was unveiled Tuesday, three months after the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker launched its first product, the 80-core Altra. Like Apple, which revealed plans Monday to use Arm-based processors for Mac computers later this year, Ampere pays license fees to use silicon IP developed by British chip designer Arm to build its own specialized processors.

[Related: Top 500 Supercomputers: New No. 1 Uses Arm-Based Fujitsu CPUs]

Ampere, which is not to be confused with Nvidia's new Ampere GPU architecture, said the new 128-core Altra Max is best suited for scale-out and elastic cloud architectures and provides the "industry's highest socket-level performance and I/O scalability." The processor is expected to start sampling with customers in the fourth quarter.

At 128 cores, Altra Max has double the number of cores of AMD's 64-core EPYC Rome processors but the same number of threads, 128, because Altra Max doesn't support hyperthreading. But even without hyperthreading, the company said it can provide "ideal performance scaling."

Jeff Wittich, who had a 15-year career at Intel and is now senior vice president of products at Ampere, told CRN that the chipmaker was able to design processors that can provide better performance scaling than Intel and AMD as the number of cores go up. Beyond providing predictable high performance and scalability, Ampere also promises optimal power efficiency, he added.

"With x86 today, if you look at EPYC, as you fill up all of the physical cores and start to bring in all of the sibling threads, you don't get that much incremental performance from each of the sibling threads," he said. "And so whether that means that every [core's] performance is going down, or it means the incremental [cores] aren't really getting what they expect, this is not an ideal case for the cloud."

An AMD spokesperson said the chipmaker stands by its "record with cloud providers using EPYC right now across a variety of instance types for a variety of workloads."

"Were in multiple instances from Azure, AWS, Oracle, Google, IBM, Tencent and others doing everything from HPC in the cloud, to memory bound computing, to general purpose, to burstable," the spokesperson added.

Intel also defended its processors, which are widely used by cloud service providers.

"Customers around the world have developed solutions and services optimized for Intel Xeon Scalable processors because of their proven performance on a wide range of workloads, steadfast reliability, and the broad ecosystem compatible with the Intel platform," an Intel spokesperson said.

Wittich said Altra Max is compatible with Altra's dual-socket server platforms and will share other features, like eight channels of DDR4 3,200GHz memory and 192 lanes of PCIe 4.0 connectivity.

"If you're more in the space of, 'I'm throughput-limited and I want to take advantage of all of that I/O and memory bandwidth and I'm not compute-bottlenecked,' great, Ampere Altra is awesome for you," he said. "If you can scale out to a ton of cores with 128, Ampere Altra Max is going to give you the highest socket performance and the highest overall performance for those applications."

Ampere didn't have any performance benchmarks for Altra Max, but Wittich said the original Altra processor has been shown to provide more than two times the performance of Intel's highest-end Xeon Scalable processor with 28 cores from the Cascade Lake Refresh lineup. In comparison to AMD's highest-end EPYC, Altra provides performance that is a couple of percentage points higher.

"These are 80 cloud-class, data center-class cores, delivering leading performance, more cores than anyone else, more performance at the SOC level than anyone else, as much memory bandwidth as anyone else and more than Intel and more I/O attached than anybody else," he said.

While Altra's flagship processor has 80 cores, the product actually consists of 11 SKUs, with four 80-core processors ranging in thermal dynamic power (TDP) from 150 to 250 watts and in frequency from 2.6GHz to 3.3 GHz. The midrange processor has 72 cores, 3GHz and a 195-watt TDP. Four additional processors have 64 cores, ranging in TDP from 95 watts to 220 watts and in frequency from 2.4GHz to 3.3GHz. The second-to-last Altra has 48 cores, 2.2GHz and an 85-watt TDP while the final SKU has 32 cores, 1.7GHz and a 45-watt to 58-watt TDP.

Beyond Altra Maxwhich like the original Altrais based on Taiwanese chip foundry TSMC's 7-nanometer process technologyWittich said the company has already taped out a 5nm processor that is set for volume production in 2022.

"So pretty fast cadence. We'll keep expanding core count, we'll keep expanding performance capabilities," he said. "I think it's a pretty exciting picture."

One of Ampere's early partners in the channel is Phoenics Electronics, a semiconductor and board distributor owned by Avnet, which plans to offer Ampere processors and servers in the coming months.

"Adding the Ampere Altra processor and associated servers to our portfolio will enable Phoenics to provide our customers with key solutions for cloud, storage, edge and other server applications," Peter Rooks, president of Phoenics Electronics, said in a statement.

Other early ecosystem supporters include security and performance services vendor Cloudflare, Android development tool provider Genymobile, GPU maker Nvidia, Equinix-owned bare metal instance provider Packet and cloud computing provider Scaleway.

"We are excited to extend our partnership with Ampere by providing early access to their new Ampere Altra processors," Zac Smith, managing director at Packet, said in a statement. "Our shared passion for pushing the boundaries of performance for cloud-native applications is complemented by an equally deep commitment to engaging with the software ecosystem early and often. With this early access program our users, and the community at large, can experience what's next with silicon, today."

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Ampere's New 128-Core Altra CPU Targets Intel, AMD In The Cloud - CRN: Technology news for channel partners and solution providers

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Introduction

It is well documented that the amount of data that is being produced on a daily/monthly/yearly basis is growing at astronomical rates. IDC (Reference 1) have estimated that by 2025, 175 zettabytes of data will be created each year and will continue to grow. The data will be in both structured and unstructured forms and there will be major logistical challenges in moving this data from the devices that create the data to where the data is acted upon and decisions made.

Promoting Edge With Private Cloud

Edge computing refers to the computing paradigm that moves the computation and storage of the data closer to where the data is generated or where it is needed. In this model, the bandwidth from the edge of the infrastructure to the longer term storage or where the higher powered analytics reside is reduced as well as increasing response times (lower latencies) in certain instances. The appropriate computing and storage power, optimized and balanced, is needed at or near the edge to not waste space and energy.

In a highly distributed and optimized data environment, the data that is generated will be aggregated and then acted upon closer to where decisions based on the data need to be made. While a certain percentage of the data can be passed to the cloud, latency and security sensitive data needs to be processed locally. This is also the case of large amounts of information that can be discarded after initial ingest and analytics. For example, with the Covid-19 pandemic, we have seen how critical the management of hospital resources is to quickly react to unexpected threats. Being able to provide a real-time response to fast changing situations can save lives. (Reference 2)

New Technologies 5G, AI & IoT

In addition to the massive amounts of data that is now being generated, new technologies that are in early stages of deployment will surely increase the amount of data that is generated as new applications come on-line. This includes the new 5G communication standard that speeds up network bandwidth with lower latencies. The Internet of Things (IoT) finds a perfect growth partner in 5G, which provides support to the increasing number of connected devices.

However, it is not as simple as stating that some data that is generated will remain at the edge and some data will be transmitted to more centralized and larger data centers (both cloud and on-premises). For example, the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in applications such as Factory 4.0 or Smart City will need to process gigabytes of data locally but will also need to communicate bi-directionally with both data centers and other edge devices to enable intelligent solutions such as machine vision, autonomous driving or advanced security. Optimized edge hardware will be critical to the smooth integration of edge technologies to and from the back end data centers.

Advantech Solutions

Advantech is a leader in providing a wide range of servers that facilitate efficient computing and storage at the edge. For example, by using the SKY-7221 software defined storage server, organizations can easily process a large volume of data with very low latencies. Data that is obtained can be filtered, aggregated and analyzed closer to where the data is generated, reducing clogging up networks with un-needed data. The SKY-7221 server also acts as a powerful computing engine for analytics through the use of dual Intel 2nd Gen Xeon Scalable Processors that also can contain powerful accelerators. As mentioned before, AI at the edge is a novel infrastructure concept which can speed up decision making in real-time. Besides powerful compute and flexible storage a server sitting at the edge must have powerful and fast networking capabilities. The SKY-7221 is a high bandwidth, low latency system that easily integrates with applications that require 5G capabilities. More information about the Advantech SKY-7221 server can be found here. (Reference 3)

In addition to superior hardware designs, Advantech offers an optimized edge-to-cloud software platform for IoT. By working with key customers, Advantech was able to develop and fine-tune a software stack that includes security features and user defined access pathways that ensure the privacy of data as the data moves from the edge to more centralized servers. The software stack integrates with Advantech WISE-STACK Private Cloud solution (Reference 4) which has been tested in IoT environments and with software solutions that require AI capabilities. The advantage when using WISE-STACK is that applications that require high availability, elastic expansion and advanced security can now have all these capabilities concurrently and integrated without having to piece together various software packages. With optimization of WISE-STACK to work with the SKY-7221 hardware, new and innovative applications can easily be developed that take advantage of cutting-edge hardware, robust storage and secure and fast networks. More information about the WISE-STACK can be found here.

Conclusion

Advantech has developed highly optimized servers that enable new applications to be developed that utilize the power of edge computing with the back-end processing and storage of hybrid clouds. With the growth of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), the integration of edge data capture and analytics with fast networking will open up a new category for applications that can adapt to changing data requirements. IIoT devices provide valuable data that needs to be analyzed, but not necessarily transmitted via networks beyond the edge. As IIoT becomes more ubiquitous, IT suppliers that can provide integrated hardware and software, will become an obvious choice to partner with to offer more intelligent services. Visit http://www.advantech.com.

References

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomcoughlin/2018/11/27/175-zettabytes-by-2025/#52c8e8835459

[2] https://www.advantech.com/resources/industry-focus/smart-healthcare-command-centers-wise-paas-data-qualily-efficiency

[3] https://www.advantech.com/products/9fe67b0b-26e8-493e-9e73-2ab4eed2b38e/sky-7221/mod_55f02993-4fe6-4479-81c5-622801f85941

[4] https://www.advantech.com/srp/wise-stack-private-cloud

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Empowering Edge Cloud in the 5G & IoT Hyper-Connected Era - insideHPC

Ampere recently announced that its 128-core cloud-native processor will be leading the way for addressing the demanding workloads in data centers.

Because workloads in data centers are rough on servers, processorspeed and adaptability are critical to prevent bottlenecks. The workloads simultaneously consist of analytics, high capacity management, and application testing verification. Amperes Altra processors drive efficiency in the data centers infrastructure workloads with a specialized design methodology and precise EDA tools.

Earlier this year, Ampere was able to design the worlds first cloud-native processor, a system built for cloud computing with a modern 64-bit Arm server-based architecture. Amperes Altra processor family is planning to continue to give users the freedom to accelerate the delivery of all cloud-computing applications. Ampere recently shared the news of its Altra Max 7 nm, 128-core processor that will launch at the end of this yearaneffort to alleviate data centers.

Ampere initially launched an 80-core processor called Altra earlier this year. This processor is said to addressinfrastructure workloads found in data centers. Amperes Altra Max is the expansion of the newly-released Altra family.

The Altra Max processor will be usefulfor applications that take advantage of scale-out and elastic cloud architectures. The highly anticipated 128-core processor will also be compatible with its predecessor's robust rack servers.

There is a big lingering question to answer:how will Amperes new processors stand against competition such as Intel or AMD?

Intels Xeon Gold 6238R processor provides 28 cores and 56 threads. Whenthese cores and threads are combined, the device provides performance similar toan 84-core processor. A processors amount of threads is a hardware support line; if a workload is running on each core and it stalls due to a memory access issue, a thread can start executing on the free core with minor setbacks.

Ampere Altra avoids hyper-threading, which is the method used by Intel to compensate for a lower amount of cores by breaking up physical cores into virtual ones to increase performance. However, in cases where the user needsto improve the cloud workloads and requirements found in data centers, there is little to no room for error or setbacks that can be brought on by relying on threads more than physical cores.

Intel has its 3rd generation of processors available that are built specifically to run complex artificial intelligence (AI) workloads on the same hardware as existing workloads, stepping up embedded hardware performance. Amperes family of Altra products claims to improve cloud workloads by utilizing all 128 high-performing cores and high-memory bandwidth while power management workstowardlow consumption.

AMDs EPYC 7662 is asecond-gen 64-core processor coupled with 128 threadsthe real competition in addressing data center workloads.

AMDs EPYC processors offer a consistent set of features across the product line, allowing you to optimize the number of cores required for the workload without sacrificing features like memory channels, memory capacity, or I/O lanes.

Amperes Chief Executive Jeff Wittich states, If you can scale out to a ton of cores with 128, Ampere Altra Max is going to give you the highest socket performance and the highest overall performance for those applications. Regardless of the number of physical cores per socket, AMD and Ampere surpass Intel in per-core performance.

AMD holds a slight advantage in terms of cache memory; the way AMDs EPYC handles copies of data closer to the processors core is at memory size of 4 MB at its level 1 cache while Amperes Altra is at 64KB. There are three levels of cache memory. Each level gets slower as it increases in memory size but improves the performance of previous levels. AMDs EPYC has more cache memory spaceto store frequently opened programsthan Amperes Altra.

Amperes Altra addresses many data center workloads including data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), database storage, edge computing, and web hosting. It is an aptchoice for data centers since it avoids relying on threads by offering a higher number of physical cores.

However, for AI-based workloads, Intels Xeon Platinum and 3rd-gen scalable processors provide an accelerated inference performance for these deep learning workloads.

Ampere, AMD, and Intel all have processors that are pushing the boundaries to provide clients with dependable, reactant, high-performing processors. Each manufacturer has processors designed for high-performance computing workloads with a supporting eight-channel DDR4-3200 MHz memory. But for addressing the demanding workloads of data centers, evaluating memory storage, speed, and per-core performance, Ampere and AMD may be the most fruitfuloptions.

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Ampere's 128-Core Processor Challenges Intel and AMD in a Cloud-Based Processor Showdown - News - All About Circuits

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (June 25, 2020) The Winston-Salem Symphony is proud to announce newly elected Directors for the Class of 2020. Elected Directors serve three-year terms. The Class of 2020 includes four new and 15 renewing Directors. The new Directors are Jonathan Allen, Dawnielle Grace, Esq., Christopher Gyves, Esq., and Katie Hall.

Jonathan Allenis a client development manager at Inmar, where in May of 2018 he moved into the companys Client Development organization. Prior to this move, he was in the Technology organization at Inmar for 12 years. The new role allows him to combine technical skills with meeting the needs of Inmars clients. Allen takes pride in the design, deployment, and management of technology systems, ranging from frontend hardware such as laptops and mobile devices to backend systems such as cloud servers and network routers.

Apart from a career at Inmar, Allen is an active servant at St. Paul United Methodist Church, located in Winston-Salem. At St. Paul, he serves as a musician, media, and technology team lead, and a leader of high school youth. Other organizations that he works with include United Ways Young Leaders United, LEADGirls NC, and Love Out Loud. In 2017, Allen was awarded one of the Winston Under 40 Leadership Awards, which are presented annually to 20 leaders under the age of 40 in Winston-Salem. As well, in 2020, Allen received recognition as one of the Most Influential African Americans Under 40 in the Piedmont Triad, by Black Business Ink. Allen holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Hampton University (2003), and a Master of Business Administration from Wake Forest University (2017). He is a member of several boards in the city of Winston-Salem, including Greater Winston-Salem, Inc. (formerly the W-S Chamber of Commerce), The Royal Curtain Drama Guild, and HandsOn Northwest NC.

Dawnielle Grace, Esq.is the founder and owner of enlign counsel+compliance. Her primary areas of practice are corporate and employment law, as well as regulatory healthcare compliance. She advises clients on FMLA, ADA, HR, and corporate governance related issues, conducts workplace investigation trainings, and has a focus on church/religious organization legal and compliance related issues.

Prior to starting enlign, Grace was an associate at Spilman Thomas & Battle, PLLC. Before joining the firm, she served as vice president, corporate secretary, general counsel, and compliance officer for Computer Credit, Inc., a North Carolina medical collections agency and hospital extended business office. Prior to a career in law, she served as a teacher and project manager for four years. Grace has both a Master of Business Administration from Benedictine University and a law degree from Wake Forest, she is proficient in Japanese from her undergraduate studies at both Purdue and Ochanomizu Universities.

Christopher Gyves, Esq. is a seasoned corporate and securities lawyer at Womble Bond Dickinson who helps public companies overcome their most significant legal issues. He is a partner in the Corporate & Securities Practice Group and chair of the firms Public Company Advisors Team. In the boardroom, Gyves counsels boards of directors on leading-edge and highly confidential transactional and governance matters and special committee investigations. He is experienced in public and private mergers and acquisitions, takeover preparedness, shareholder activism, and executive compensation. Gyves helps his clients succeed by understanding their businesses and sharply focusing the myriad of legal issues through a lens of practical, strategic legal advice. He has been recognized by Chambers USA (Mergers & Acquisitions) and received a Client Choice Award from the Association of Corporate Counsel and Lexology in recognition of his commitment to outstanding client service.

In addition to his legal practice, Gyves speaks and writes on areas relating to his professional interests. He has served as a corporate governance panelist alongside current and former vice chancellors of the Delaware Court of Chancery and moderated panels on shareholder activism and mergers and acquisitions for the National Association of Corporate Directors (Carolinas Chapter). Gyves contributed two chapters to the Directors Handbook: A Field Guide to 101 Situations Commonly Encountered in the Boardroom and is co-author of several publications with noted governance scholar Charles Elson. Gyves is an adjunct law professor at the Wake Forest University School of Law, where he teaches mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance courses, and has guest-lectured on mergers and acquisitions and private equity at the Duke University School of Law and the Wake Forest University Babcock Graduate School of Management.

Katie Halljoined Vela Agency after experiences in communications, client relations, and business development at IFB Solutions, Bethesda Center for the Homeless, Hege Financial Group, and M Creative. After graduating summa cum laude from Salem College, she learned how to challenge the status quo and implement strategies that promote marginalized groups of people. Over the past three years, Hall has served as an integral part of alumnae efforts to help reenergize Salem Colleges strategic direction and fundraise $14M for the Step Up for Salem campaign. These duties include serving as a member and committee chair of the Salem College Alumnae Association, class president and fundraising committee member of the Class of 2014, and a member of the Friends of the Salem College School of Music. In April 2019, her efforts were recognized at the Salem College Alumnae Association Annual Meeting when the Class of 2014 received the Young Alumna Award for outstanding service to Salem College.

In July 2019, Hall was appointed to the Winston-Salem Local Governance Study Commission by Mayor Allen Joines to evaluate the City of Winston-Salems local governance structure. Prior to these volunteer experiences, Hall served Authoring Action as a board member and marketing committee member. In September 2019, Katie graduated from Wake Forest Universitys Master of Business Administration (MBA) program. During her time at Wake Forest, she spent countless hours serving as an ambassador for the School of Business and co-chairing the Women of Wake group dedicated to connecting female MBA students with opportunities to network and support one another. While working as business development manager at Vela Agency, Hall has had the privilege to work alongside 30+ Winston-Salem arts organizations and help elevate BTHVN Rocks Winston-Salem to a new scale thanks to the generous support of Mercedes-Benz Winston-Salem. Hall is a native of Midway, North Carolina.

Renewing Directors are: Betsy Annese; James M. (Jim) Apple; Pam Cash; William F. (Bill) Clingman; James (Jim) Dossinger; Steve Holland; Martin L. (Mark) Holton, III, Esq.; Francis (Frank) M. James, M.D.; Steve Koelsch; Stephen I. Kramer, M.D.; Jeffery T. Lindsay; John E. Pueschel, Esq.; Myra Denise Robinson; Deborah Debbie Wesley-Farrington, RN, BSN, CCRC, CCA; and Erna Womble, Esq.

For 202021, the Officers for the Board of Directors of the Winston-Salem Symphony are: Board Chair, Ann Fritchman-Merkel; Treasurer, Thomas Bornemann; and Secretary, Pam Cash.

About the Winston-Salem Symphony

Under the baton of Music Director Timothy Redmond, the Winston-Salem Symphony is one of the Southeasts most highly regarded regional orchestras. Now in its 74th season, the Symphony also hosts four youth orchestra ensembles, and a multitude of educational and community engagement programs, including the P.L.A.Y. (Piedmont Learning Academy for Youth) Music program providing instrumental music instruction and more, primarily to under-served youth. The Symphony is supported by Season Presenting Sponsors BB&T Wealth and Bell, Davis & Pitt, P.A.; Music Director Season Sponsor Betty Myers Howell; Symphony Unbound Sponsors Chris and Mike Morykwas; as well as generous funding from the Arts Council of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, the North Carolina Arts Council, and other dedicated sponsors. For more information, visit wssymphony.org.

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The Winston-Salem Symphony Announces Newly Elected Directors - Yes! Weekly