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Story of the Wild
Posted by Rotaract Club of SLIIT on 26 Nov 2018 25 Nov 2018
COMMON NAME: Gray Wolf
SCIENTIFIC NAME: Canis lupus
TYPE: Mammals
DIET: Carnivores
GROUP NAME: Pack
AVERAGE LIFE SPAN IN THE WILD: 6 to 8 years
SIZE: Head and body, 36 to 63 in; tail, 13 to 20 in
WEIGHT: 40 to 175 lbs
SIZE RELATIVE TO A 6-FT MAN:
IUCN RED LIST STATUS: Least Concern
CURRENT POPULATION TREND: Stable
The wolf (Canis lupus), also known as the gray wolf, timber wolf, western wolf, and its other subspecies is a canine native to the wilderness and remote areas of Eurasia and North America. It is the largest extant member of its family, with males averaging 43–45 kg (95–99 lb) and females 36–38.5 kg (79–85 lb). Like the red wolf, it is distinguished from other Canis species by its larger size and less pointed features, particularly on the ears and muzzle. Its winter fur is long and bushy and predominantly a mottled gray in color, although nearly pure white, red, and brown to black also occur. Mammal Species of the World (3rd ed., 2005), a standard reference work in zoology, recognises 38 subspecies of C. lupus.
The evolution of the wolf occurred over a geologic time scale of at least 300 thousand years. The gray wolf Canis lupus is a highly adaptable species that is able to exist in a range of environments and which possesses a wide distribution across the Holarctic. Studies of modern gray wolves have identified distinct sub-populations that live in close proximity to each other. This variation in sub-populations is closely linked to differences in habitat – precipitation, temperature, vegetation, and prey specialization – which affect cranio-dental plasticity.
The archaeological and paleontological records show gray wolf continuous presence for at least the last 300,000 years. This continuous presence contrasts with genomic analyses, which suggest that all modern wolves and dogs descend from a common ancestral wolf population that existed as recently as 20,000 years ago. These analyses indicate a population bottleneck, followed by a rapid radiation from an ancestral population at a time during, or just after, the Last Glacial Maximum. However, the geographic origin of this radiation is not known.
Wolves are legendary because of their spine-tingling howl, which they use to communicate. A lone wolf howls to attract the attention of his pack, while communal howls may send territorial messages from one pack to another. Some howls are confrontational. Much like barking domestic dogs, wolves may simply begin howling because a nearby wolf has already begun.
Population and Conservation
Wolves are the largest members of the dog family. Adaptable gray wolves are by far the most common and were once found all over the Northern Hemisphere. But wolves and humans have a long adversarial history. Though they almost never attack humans, wolves are considered one of the animal world's most fearsome natural villains. They do attack domestic animals, and countless wolves have been shot, trapped, and poisoned because of this tendency.
In the lower 48 states, gray wolves were hunted to near extinction, though some populations survived and others have since been reintroduced. Few gray wolves survive in Europe, though many live in Alaska, Canada, and Asia.
Wolf Pack Behavior
Wolves live and hunt in packs of around six to ten animals. They are known to roam large distances, perhaps 12 miles in a single day. These social animals cooperate on their preferred prey—large animals such as deer, elk, and moose. When they are successful, wolves do not eat in moderation. A single animal can consume 20 pounds of meat at a sitting. Wolves also eat smaller mammals, birds, fish, lizards, snakes, and fruit.
Wolfpacks are established according to a strict hierarchy, with a dominant male at the top and his mate not far behind. Usually this male and female are the only animals of the pack to breed. All of a pack's adults help to care for young pups by bringing them food and watching them while others hunt.
Reproduction and development
The gray wolf is generally monogamous, with mated pairs usually remaining together for life. Upon the death of one mated wolf, pairs are quickly re-established. Since males often predominate in any given wolf population, unpaired females are a rarity. If a dispersing male gray wolf is unable to establish a territory or find a mate, he mates with the daughters of already established breeding pairs from other packs. Such gray wolves are termed "Casanova wolves" and, unlike males from established packs, they do not form pair bonds with the females they mate with. Some gray wolf packs may have multiple breeding females this way, as is the case in Yellowstone National Park. Gray wolves also practice alloparental care, in which a wolf pair may adopt the pup or pups of another. This might take place if the original parents die or are for some reason separated from them. In addition to heterosexual behavior, homosexual behavior has been observed in gray wolves.Male gray wolves often mount each other when the highest ranking female in the pack comes into heat.
The age of first breeding in gray wolves depends largely on environmental factors: when food is plentiful, or when wolf populations are heavily managed, wolves can rear pups at younger ages in order to better exploit abundant resources. This is further demonstrated by the fact that captive wolves have been known to breed as soon as they reach 9–10 months, while the youngest recorded breeding wolves in the wild were 2 years old. Females are capable of producing pups every year, with one litter annually being the average. Unlike the coyote, the gray wolf never reaches reproductive senescence. Estrus typically occurs in late winter, with older, multiparous females entering estrus 2–3 weeks earlier than younger females. During pregnancy, female wolves remain in a den located away from the peripheral zone of their territories, where violent encounters with other packs are more likely. Old females usually whelp in the den of their previous litter, while younger females typically den near their birthplace. The gestation period lasts 62–75 days, with pups usually being born in the summer period.
Wolves bear relatively large pups in small litters compared to other canid species.[93] The average litter consists of 5–6 pups, with litter sizes tending to increase in areas where prey is abundant, though exceptionally large litters of 14–17 pups occur only 1% of the time. Pups are usually born in spring, coinciding with a corresponding increase in prey populations. Pups are born blind and deaf, and are covered in short soft grayish-brown fur. They weigh 300–500 g (11–18 oz) at birth, and begin to see after 9–12 days. The milk canines erupt after one month. Pups first leave the den after 3 weeks. At 1.5 months of age, they are agile enough to flee from danger. Mother wolves do not leave the den for the first few weeks, relying on the fathers to provide food for them and their young. Pups begin to eat solid food at the age of 3–4 weeks. Pups have a fast growth rate during their first four months of life: during this period, a pup's weight can increase nearly 30 times.Wolf pups begin play fighting at the age of 3 weeks, though unlike young foxes and coyotes, their bites are inhibited. Actual fights to establish hierarchy usually occur at 5–8 weeks of age. This is in contrast to young foxes and coyotes, which may begin fighting even before the onset of play behavior. By autumn, the pups are mature enough to accompany adults on hunts for large prey.
Hunting and feeding behaviors
Gray wolf trotting. The gray wolf generally places its hind paws in the tracks made by the front paws.Although social animals, single wolves or mated pairs typically have higher success rates in hunting than do large packs, with single wolves having occasionally been observed to kill large prey such as moose, bison and muskoxen unaided. The gray wolf's sense of smell is relatively weakly developed when compared to that of some hunting dog breeds, being able to detect carrion upwind no farther than 2–3 kilometres (1.2–1.9 mi). Because of this, it rarely manages to capture hidden hares or birds, though it can easily follow fresh tracks. Its auditory perception is acute enough to be able to hear up to a frequency of 26 kHz, which is sufficient to register the fall of leaves in the autumn period. A gray wolf hunt can be divided into five stages:
Locating prey: The wolves travel in search of prey through their power of scent, chance encounter, and tracking. Wolves typically locate their prey by scent, though they must usually be directly downwind of it. When a breeze carrying the prey's scent is located, the wolves stand alert, and point their eyes, ears and nose towards their target. In open areas, wolves may precede the hunt with group ceremonies involving standing nose-to-nose and wagging their tails. Once concluded, the wolves head towards their prey.
The stalk: The wolves attempt to conceal themselves as they approach. As the gap between the wolves and their prey closes, the wolves quicken their pace, wag their tails, and peer intently, getting as close to their quarry as possible without making it flee.
The encounter: Once the prey detects the wolves, it can either approach the wolves, stand its ground, or flee. Large prey, such as moose, elk, and muskoxen, usually stand their ground. Should this occur, the wolves hold back, as they require the stimulus of a running animal to proceed with an attack. If the targeted animal stands its ground, the wolves either ignore it, or try to intimidate it into running.
The rush: If the prey attempts to flee, the wolves immediately pursue it. This is the most critical stage of the hunt, as wolves may never catch up with prey running at top speed. If their prey is travelling in a group, the wolves either attempt to break up the herd, or isolate one or two animals from it.
The chase: A continuation of the rush, the wolves attempt to catch up with their prey and kill it. When chasing small prey, wolves attempt to catch up with their prey as soon as possible, while with larger animals, the chase is prolonged, in order to wear the selected prey out. Wolves usually give up chases after 1–2 km (0.62–1.3 mi), though one wolf was recorded to chase a deer for 21 km (13 mi).[96] Both Russian and North American wolves have been observed to drive prey onto crusted ice, precipices, ravines, slopes and steep banks to slow them down.
The actual killing method varies according to prey species. With large prey, mature wolves usually avoid attacking frontally, instead focusing on the rear and sides of the animal. Large prey, such as moose, is killed by biting large chunks of flesh from the soft perineum area, causing massive blood loss. Such bites can cause wounds 10–15 cm (3.9–5.9 in) in length, with three such bites to the perineum usually being sufficient to bring down a large deer in optimum health. With medium-sized prey such as roe deer or sheep, wolves kill by biting the throat, severing nerve tracks and the carotid artery, thus causing the animal to die within a few seconds to a minute. With small, mouse-like prey, wolves leap in a high arc and immobilize it with their forepaws.When prey is vulnerable and abundant, wolves may occasionally surplus kill. Such instances are common in domestic animals, but rare in the wild. In the wild, surplus killing primarily occurs during late winter or spring, when snow is unusually deep (thus impeding the movements of prey) or during the denning period, when wolves require a ready supply of meat when denbound. Medium-sized prey are especially vulnerable to surplus killing, as the swift throat-biting method by which they are killed allows wolves to quickly kill one animal and move on to another.
Once prey is brought down, wolves begin to feed excitedly, ripping and tugging at the carcass in all directions, and bolting down large chunks of it. The breeding pair typically monopolizes food in order to continue producing pups. When food is scarce, this is done at the expense of other family members, especially non-pups.[109] The breeding pair typically eats first, though as it is they who usually work the hardest in killing prey, they may rest after a long hunt and allow the rest of the family to eat unmolested. Once the breeding pair has finished eating, the rest of the family tears off pieces of the carcass and transport them to secluded areas where they can eat in peace. Wolves typically commence feeding by consuming the larger internal organs of their prey, such as the heart, liver, lungs and stomach lining. The kidneys and spleen are eaten once they are exposed, followed by the muscles. A single wolf can eat 15–19% of its body weight in a single feeding.
Written By,
Rtr. Sethil Muhandiram
President 18-19
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Preservation Mirage produced the first Modernism Week home tour at the historic Tamarisk Country Club. The tour featured the work of leading desert architects. All of the stunning residences overlook fairways and were designed for discerning clients with deep pockets.
The tour provided an extraordinary insight into three decades of desert architecture and interior design with a compelling exploration of varying styles of modernism and post-modernism. Individually, each house was worthy of its own tour; but combined, they provided a terrific introduction to the country club lifestyle that began in Rancho Mirage.
Preservation Mirage thanks the homeowners and volunteers who made our inagural tour a success. THANK YOU!!!


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Andy Jeffries
Keypoints
Side Interests
Andy Jeffries FBCS CITP
Chief Technical Officer (CTO)
Fellow of the British Computer Society,
Chartered IT Professional
64 Sish Lane, Stevenage
Hertfordshire, SG1 3LS, England
E: andy@andyjeffries.co.uk
W: http://andyjeffries.co.uk
What I am known for
I am a senior executive with web and mobile development experience of over 20 years in web development including agency work, e-commerce, publishing and sports betting.
Previous work includes developing custom Content Management Systems for major technical review sites such as Pocket-Lint and leading the team responsible for the CMS behind 40+ online magazines produced by IPC Media.
E-commerce sites for small Jermyn Street retailers, to large online betting sites taking millions of pounds worth of transactions per year such as the sports betting site for La Française des Jeux (the French national lottery) and the Israeli Sports Betting Board (the Israeli government-owned national sports betting site).
Chief Technical Officer
Civo Ltd, Stevenage
Responsible for development, design and site reliability engineering functions with Civo Ltd. Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), my duties include ensuring work is completed for our external clients, managing and mentoring the development team while maintaining a very active hands-on development role.
Having previously installed OpenStack for a client, in 2016 we launched our own OpenStack-based cloud environment under the brand Civo.com in to Beta. The frontend of the site and API are written in Ruby (2.6) and Rails (5.2). After a succesful beta, we launched fully to the public in April 2019 and at the time of full launch I had written 54% of the frontend website and 85% of the API/orchestration backend. Key to the success of the platform was both the KPI statistics we gather and monitoring platforms. I installed Kubernetes on top of Civo, and then moved Civo.com and the API to be dogfood-hosted within our own platform - this is automatically deployed via GitLab CI jobs performing rolling updates out to the Kubernetes cluster.
In 2019 we launched our Kubernetes managed service running on Rancher Labs's k3s service to a group of beta customers called our #KUBE100. This is (to the best of our knowledge) the first managed k3s service in the world. I was responsible for writing almost all of the code for the platform, as well as liasing with the marketing team and working with the developer advocate to ensure a great developer experience.
Ruby on Rails Team Lead (Contract)
Absolute DevOps Ltd, Stevenage
May 2015 - December 2015
While offering team leading consultancy to LCN Ltd, I worked with a very talented system administrator to build an OpenStack based cloud, with a custom Go (golang) based API. I also technically lead a team of designers/developers to deliver sites for customers and provide estimates for work.
LCN Ltd, Stevenage
Modernised LCN.com's Rails platform from Rails 3.1 to 4.1, including migrating Cucumber tests to RSpec feature specs, upgrading Gems from old forked plugins and putting in place automated processes such as Jenkins automatically managing job creation/deletion as branches are created/deleted.
Ensuring the coding standards for Ruby on Rails are known and worked towards within the department.
Used Go to develop a log aggregator (rsyslog listener and web interface) and for migration scripts when upgrading tens of thousands of mail accounts via an API (Ruby was predicted to take 30 hours to complete, the Go version took 27 minutes)
Working with the Support Manager, Marketing Manager and Directors to specify new functionality while leading a team of up to 3 other Ruby on Rails developers and 3 Frontend developers from a technical point of view (not responsible for them on a personnel/HR level).
Implemented more modern development processes and practices such as hack days, Scrum for project management, weekly tech talks.
Assisted developers in the team to improve their knowledge of developing to modern best practices.
Interim Ruby on Rails Team Lead (Contract)
Which? Ltd, London
May 2013 - April 2014 (1 renewal)
Developing the next version of the main Which? homepage and product reviews in Ruby 1.9/2.0/2.1 and Ruby on Rails 4.0 (including migrating applications from 3.x to 4.0), using Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) with RSpec and Capybara, deployment to cloud servers configured with Chef and Heroku, and ensuring high test coverage checking using SimpleCov.
Defined the coding standards for Ruby on Rails within the department.
Defined requirements for the future of Rails development while leading a team of 4 other Ruby on Rails developers from a technical point of view (not responsible for them on a personnel/HR level), reporting in to the Head of Engineering.
Pushed through the release of Which?'s first piece of open source software, including a lot of liasing with their Legal Department, ActiveRestClient.
Contract Technical Leader (Ruby on Rails)
LVS Ltd, London
April 2009 - May 2013 (4 renewals)
I ran a team of up to 10 web site developers from a technical point of view (not responsible for them on a personnel/HR level), building the first version of FDJ's (La Française des Jeux) sports betting site. I was responsible for some of the code on the first version while leading the team, all of the In-Running Betting code in the second version (In-Running Betting is very intensive), managing the development of the iPhone specific web interface (including betting) and all of the performance optimisation performed on site at FDJ's offices in France. This code was written in Ruby on Rails version 2.0 and migrated to 3.0. While I don't consider myself a Frontend Developer, the role included all HTML/CSS and Javascript work (including writing jQuery plugins and lots of AJAX interactivity/DOM manipulation).
I then almost solely built a next generation betting component system using Rails 3.1 engines, including writing a custom gem server and this framework (Apollo) was used to rebuild FDJ's site in 2012. Lots of dynamic code has been written in order to build a nice system for interacting with the REST web interface of the Java-based Advanced Betting Platform backend system. MongoDB is used for rolling visitor accesses to be able to trace visitor actions/numbers. Tests were written using RSpec and Cucumber and deployment with Capistrano.
After heavily participating in preparing the RFP response and then presenting/demonstrating in Paris to compete for the bid, I then lead the team building the new website and mobile/tablet interfaces for the Israeli Sports Betting Board, including a lot of negotiation/liasing with the clients regarding specification, code reviews and payment integration with multiple service providers.
Experience in migrating large code bases to a cleaner architecture based on RubyGems.
Aided FDJ's highly security conscious systems administrators in hosting Ruby on Rails sites in a highly available and high throughput way.
NextGen Development Ltd, Stevenage
May 2005 - Present
My company operates as an independent business on a number of sites, subcontracting to others when required; including liasing with the client to analyse requirements, generating quotes and delivering systems to agree timescales (including maintaining Linux servers for the clients where required). Some of our work has been:
DojangScore - An iOS application to provide scoring ability for matches within a gym or at a small competition for WTF Taekwondo. This is being built in RubyMotion for iOS6. (in progress)
Pocket-lint.co.uk - A gadget news and reviews site. The first version was built by the client, I built the second version to greatly enhanced requirements while maintaining the existing content and search engine rankings. At the end of working with Pocket-Lint they were achieving 4.5 million page impressions per month.
Rightboat.com - A site for selling/buying boats. Complete e-commerce system including a Solr-based search utilising a custom framework/code generation system, storing data including collective-intelligence in MongoDB (suggestions for other boats used, statistics, etc) and use of MySQL Stored Procedures.
Menshealth.co.uk - A site for Natmag-Rodale. The frontend code/markup was created by the client, but the entire backend was written by me. This was a major publishing platform with a full Content Management System generating up to 5 million page impressions per month.
Contract Technical Leader (PHP/Symfony)
IPC Media Ltd, London
May 2007 - April 2009 (3 renewals)
IPC Media Ltd is a major magazine publisher based in London, with an online and magazine portfolio of over 80 titles include What's on TV, Pick Me Up, Woman, Now, Marie Claire, In Style, Woman & Home, Nuts, Loaded and NME. I was Lead Developer of the Content Management System (CMS2) Team, leading up to 8 developers (in a technical capacity, rather than personnel/HR point of view) in turning the project round from a failure, with business consultants from Bearing Point Ltd brought in, to be one of the top performing teams in the department.
I undertook a variety of tasks from managing the team in a Scrum/Agile methodology, developing new modules and enhancing existing ones, code reviewing frontend and backend developers work, interfacing with Business Analysis and Quality Assurance/Testing and presenting progress to Director/Senior Management level.
As the lead developer of IPC's Search 2 team, I was the main developer on a pluggable search system based on Apache Solr with a RESTful web service interface, developed and released successfully to a strict time-scale and with minimal defects. I was also a member of the Architecture Working Group, meeting weekly to discuss/decide the future architecture of IPC's current and future web platforms.
Internet Assist Ltd, Maldon, Essex
December 1999 - May 2005
I was the Technical Director of a small (up to 25 people total, 15 in the technical teams) Web Design/ Development Agency working for clients such as Moet & Chandon, Maldon Sea Salt, OXO Gravy, Budgens, Essex Boatyards developing e-commerce systems, CMS, forums and managing all hosting and deployment.
My responsibilities included working closely with the client to analyse their requirements, specify the project and timescales and deliver the work on time, to budget and with an excellent quality level. Providing consultancy services to clients regarding desktop application development. Interviewing, reviewing staff's development and disciplinary procedures.
Jo Wickremasinghe
Which? Ltd
"Andy was a pleasure to work with. Andy stepped up well beyond the expectations of a contractor in the Which? Digital team. He took on a role as Lead Ruby on Rails developer and worked with us to set best practices for RoR at Which?"
"Andy made many positive contributions to our ways of working, running brown bags and training sessions for team members and helping cross skill our front end developers to Ruby on Rails."
"And last but not least Andy was a great team member - he made quite an impression with his fancy dress outfit for Halloween (I think he won first prize if I recall [I did]). Andy is a positive and 'cup half full' person, and relished new challenges. A really great person to have in the team and he'll be missed."
Amanuel Burham
"Andy is a real pleasure to work with. Efficient, effective, strong technical ability and a great communicator. He was a real asset in my team and got stories completed quickly and correctly. Andy is very proactive and engaging in looking at stories and suggesting viable (normally more efficient) solutions. If you have the chance to work with Andy, I'd strongly recommend it. I look forward to working with him again."
Nick Dutton
LVS Ltd
"He is one of these guys who I really enjoy working with, whatever I thow at him, he is able to come back with a solution (or 3) and a way forward. His technical understanding is extremely strong and there were many occasions where I was able to bounce ideas off him and between us find a way forward. However he has more to his bow than being a strong technical person. He is very good with customers and was invaluable to me on our last project together where I knew I could trust him to provide solutions which not only met the requirements of the customer but also were well thought through, with one eye on the future."
Arnaud Germis
"Andy was the Ruby on Rails development lead in the team I've worked in for more than 18 months and I've always been impressed by his technical knowledge. He has in-depth knowledge of Rails and the whole stack of technologies around it, but he's also curious and on the lookout for new tools and technologies for doing the job. Andy is very good at tackling difficult technical challengies and explaining them in understandable terms to non-technical clients. I would highly recommend him for teams needing punctual help or the long-term mentoring of a team. Be warned his passion for technology is contagious."
Nick Baxter
"I found Andy to be a confident Technical Team lead with a keen interest in new technology and development methodologies. He has excellent experience of Agile development and is able to work well with a large development team of varying ability."
Amir Abiri
IPC Team Leader
"Andy is one of the most capable developers I have every worked with. I will greatly miss our ramblings about the finer points of a designs or the advantages of Ruby vs PHP."
Rob Young
IPC Deputy Team Leader
"Andy has been my team lead for over 6 months now and in that time I have come to respect his knowledge of Software design and development as well as his leadership ability. He has a keen interest in new technologies, and keeps himself up to date on almost everything in the IT world that he can. I highly recommend Andy for his work and believe him to be a true asset to any team that he works with."
Technical Reviewing
Smashing Magazine GmbH
I was the Technical Reviewer for the following articles for SmashingMagazine.com:
Building a Ruby Gem with Bundler, Travis CI, TDD, oh my!
Twelve Commandments Of Software Localization
Get Started Writing iOS Apps With RubyMotion
A Guide To Starting Your Own Rails Engine Gem
Image Manipulation with jQuery and PHP GD
PeachPit Publishing
I was credited as Technical Reviewer for PeachPit's book "PHP Advanced".
Wrox Publishing
I was credited as Technical Reviewer for Wrox Publishing's book "Professional PHP Programming".
Korean martial art and Olympic sport
I am a Taekwondo 7th degree black belt Master Instructor running a club for around 90 students ranging from 5 year old children up to adults of 50+ years old. I have been training since 1986 and running my club since early 2011.
I was invited by the World Taekwondo Headquarters in Korea to attend the World Taekwondo Leaders Forum in 2012 along with about 150 masters from 53 countries around the world and was appointed a Regular Member of the forum. I went back to Korea in July 2013 to attend the Kukkiwon Master Training Course, one of 126 international masters to do so, and passed the 3rd class course and received a Citation for "outstanding performance amongst the trainees". I also was re-appointed as a Regular Member of the World Taekwondo Leaders Forum.
In November 2015 I attended a course in Vienna, Austria and qualified as a Poom/Dan (black belt) Examiner under the World Headquarters. In the summer of 2016 I am heading back to Korea, to attend the International Master Training Course,to qualify as a 2nd class Master Instructor (the course requirement is a minimum of 6th degree black belt and an existing 3rd class master instructor qualificiation).
In July 2016 I went back to Korea to attend the Kukkiwon Master Training Course, and successfully passed my 2nd Class master qualfication, again receiving a Citation for my performance. In February 2018 I received a Commendation from the Kukkiwon for my "outstanding contribution to the development and dissemination of Taekwondo".
While at Which? I launched their first ever piece of Open Source Software, ActiveRestClient. This is an abstraction library to help easily implement REST API clients in Ruby (in particular for Ruby on Rails, as its public interface is modelled on ActiveRecord). Unfortunatley, since I left Which? the project stagnated and eventually my committed access was revoked. I therefore forked it and currently still maintain it as Flexirest.
I'm also an amateur photographer, shooting with a Canon 450D, mainly family shots and contact sports (Taekwondo, UFC) and then doing simple processing in Lightroom or for more adventurous manipulations using Photoshop or Pixelmator.
RubyMotion
Sysadmin/Chef
I am currently in a contract, so I'm not looking for other opportunities. Thanks anyway.
Feel free to call or email on the details below.
© 2014 Andy Jeffries

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
The key functions of the Department are:
Promoting Uganda's image both at home and abroad by actively and continuously engaging various stakeholders (i.e. civil society, media, private sector, academia, international community, etc.) through publications, seminars, regular press briefings, use of social media, etc.
Ensuring that the public in Uganda and abroad (through our missions) have accurate updates on foreign policy developments and domestic economic and social policies that have bearings on Uganda's image and reputation abroad.
Engaging the media and the non-media channels in cultural diplomacy, public information, internal broadcasting, education and political action to reflect the country's policies in the correct perspective and dispel any wrong impression about the same.
Articulating government core functions, policies, positions and regulations nationally, regionally and internationally with a view to protecting, promoting and projecting the country's image.
Providing assistance and avenues for highlighting Uganda's foreign policy priority focus, achievements, challenges and branding and rebranding of both the Ministry and Government.
Cascading the National Communication Strategy to all levels in the Ministry and missions abroad.
It is envisioned that the Department would have 3 Divisions and an audio-visual unit:
MEDIA & PUBLIC RELATIONS DIVISION:
This Division is responsible for setting the agenda in the media on anything that relates to Uganda's foreign policy. The principle followed is not to wait for others to break the news but set the agenda and turn any news event or story into a platform to promote Uganda and the Ministry. It would handle Public Outreach, Public Relations.
The Media Liaison Division will among others be responsible for
Accurate and timely information content that goes up on the 36 MoFA websites.
Media Relations: Talking with the media, fielding questions from reporters, arranging for interviews with key individuals in the organization preparing press releases to make the media aware of Ministry events, achievements and official positions.
Crisis Monitoring and Communication
Liaison with the Public Relations Companies hired by GoU on promoting Uganda abroad.
Coordination of Opinion pieces in print media by Ministry Staff
It will be responsible for organizing an Editor's forum, maintaining an updated media communication list and events that involve the media
Will keep and maintain an up to date communication database of all staff for efficient communication.
Responsible for the publication of the official MoFA Magazine/Journal and any other promotional articles
Monitoring Social Media activity in line with the agreed Social media Marketing Plan. It will collect media reports on anything about Uganda that is trending in the media. Tracking negative mentions on television, radio (local and international) and any other social media platform. Maximizing positive use of social media to build the Ministry's image. Managing a Twitter feed, a Facebook page and a YouTube channel, Monitoring public comments about the organization on the Internet and early warning of any emerging trends or problems.
The Department will ensure that before any major event, the Ministry's engagement on social media targets those that have opinion on foreign policy with a huge public following. "Twitter allies" will be invited before every major event and discuss with the responsible experts in order to gain a clear understanding of the event and how it will promote Uganda's foreign policy.
Crisis Communication: Ensuring that in the event that the Ministry or the country is struck by a disastrous event that ruins its public image appropriate steps are taken to repair this damage, communicate how it is dealing with the problem and regain control of its message.
Responsible for mailing list of Media Officers in Resident Missions and Missions abroad
Represents the Ministry on the Government Communicators Forum
CORPORATE BRANDING AND MARKETING DIVISION:
Corporate branding paints a corporate image of the MoFA to the public and shapes the perception of visitors or clients to ensure that it exudes soft power as well as handling of Promotional Advertising of the Ministry at home and abroad. It would manage the messages and outward appearances of the Ministry, where it is seen and who sees it from mission statements to implementation. It serves as the face of the Ministry, coordinating and producing all materials representing our business. It is this Division's job to reach out to prospects, customers, investors and/or the diplomatic community, and create an overarching image that represents the Ministry in a positive light that is, Brand MoFA. Marketing is typically responsible for selecting and managing the agencies and vendors who produce marketing materials and or/provide marketing support. These may include ad agencies, print vendors, PR agencies or specialists, Web providers, etc.
Under Corporate Branding, the division will
Ensure the visual identity of the Ministry is distinct, recognizable and respectable.
Create and disseminate standard templates for Ministry's visual image using set/agreed guidelines. This will include looking at internal communication and branding of emails ensuring uniformity on corporate identity for email, identity cards, business cards, setting and enforcing the standard publication font, quality of headed papers and stationery, use of the Ministry logos for all internal and external communication.
It will give guidance to the procurement department and estates department on the appearance of MoFA public spaces (both for HQ and Missions abroad), meeting rooms, lobbies, wall art etc to ensure that the Corporate Identity of the MoFA is not lost as it markets the work of other departments.
Manage the Ministry's Gift Policy and ensure that Official Government delegations and officials carry gifts that are commensurate with the image and standard of a Foreign Ministry
Give guidance on Ministry decor, signage, graphics, promotional posters, special websites for official events, conferences and ceremonies organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Missions abroad and ensures that during events, customized banners are designed and placed in strategic locations.
Be responsible for the creation/design of Ministry templates, uniforms, decals, stickers, labels, branded stationery and branded gift and promotional items. Create the materials that describe and promote our core products and/or services, and keep them up-to-date as those products and services evolve.
Be responsible for the typesetting, graphics, photography and cover designs for all Ministry publications in line with the agreed Corporate Branding Policy of the Ministry
Design, Brand and make adverts for national days, events, celebrations and sponsors. This branded content will be customized to official languages of our different host countries abroad and used at different Missions
Responsible for sourcing advertorial sponsorship packages from Ministry partners, foreign missions and their business partners.
In close consultation with the Protocol Department will take charge of managing the corporate image during all stage managed events such as dinners, plays, events, awards, Ministerial Dinners and diplomatic fairs where the diplomatic corps are invited to an exhibition to show case their national products that are of interest to locals.
The marketing team is also responsible for any award ceremonies that are held to celebrate individuals that have expanded Uganda's global footprint.
Represents the Ministry on the National Branding Committee
OUTREACH, CULTURE AND STUDENT EXCHANGE PROGRAMS:
Cultural Diplomacy creates a foundation of trust with other peoples. It creates relationships which endure beyond changes in Government, can reach influential members of foreign societies who cannot be reached through traditional embassy or national functions; It provides a positive agenda for cooperation in spite of policy differences; Creates a neutral platform for people-to-people contact; Serves as a flexible, universally acceptable vehicle for rapprochement with countries where diplomatic relations have been strained or are absent and is uniquely able to reach out to young people, non-elites and broad audiences even where a language barrier exists. It does this through the universally understood media of music, dance, drama, food, art, sports, tourism, film etc
Under Outreach, Culture and Student Exchange Programs the Division's role would be to
Foster mutual understanding between the people of Uganda and the people of other countries to promote friendly and peaceful relations through academic, cultural, sports, and professional exchanges that engage youth, students, educators, artists, athletes, fashion trends and rising leaders in Uganda and the rest of the world.
Liaise with the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities to create standard promotional products that sell Uganda, for use by both HQ and Missions abroad
Track and ensure that all cultural cooperation bilateral agreements are compliant with the needs of Uganda and that the country maximizes benefits from them
Ensure that the Ministry takes the Diplomatic corps to communities. This is a way to transform MoFA into a service oriented Institution. During these outreach projects, ambassadors, heads of department and various experts in the foreign policy field are invited to outreach programs in universities and communities where the diplomatic corps meets with country men and women so as to better understand the community.
Responsible for organizing open days to invite International Relations students to know and understand MoFA's mandate, as well as manage the Ministry's Student Exchange Program. In close partnership with the Department of HRM, they will be able to source and identify necessary skill set in the department and outside.
Liaison with the National Film Commission or office responsible for film promotion to build the necessary film infrastructure and promote Ugandan films and foreign films shot on location in Uganda in association with the Directorate of Culture, the UCC, Media Council, National Theatre and UNESCO.
Liaison with the National Council of Sports to ensure that Sports delegations or personalities that will fly Uganda's flag abroad are well briefed, facilitated and are given the requisite public profile and assistance by our Missions abroad.
Represents the Ministry on bodies that vet National Icons and Cultural Ambassadors
Liaises with cultural Attaches in our Missions abroad
PHOTOGRAPHY AND AUDIO-VISUAL UNIT
The MoFA photo Unit documents mandated activities throughout the Ministry, telling the story of the Ministry at its headquarters and in the field. It ensures photographic and audio capabilities of the Ministry's activities are taken care of and safely stored. All images in the collection are intended for news and editorial usage. The Photography Unit's Mission is to make its collection available both internally and to media organizations, governments and non-governmental organizations, researchers and civil society at large, in order to foster public understanding of the work of the Ministry and its goals.
The provision and maintenance of audio-visual equipment in the Ministry
Short-term hire of audio-visual equipment for field activities
Advice on the purchasing and installation of related technology for the Ministry
A basic photo, video and audio media editing and copying service
Photography services for Ministry activities, functions, events and publications
It is responsible for ensuring that all images, both historical and newly captured, are available through a specially designed Photo Library.
The audio-visual section ensures quality audio-visual coverage, storage of videos and voice recordings, and the maintenance and responsible use of the Wapakhabulo Auditorium.


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The Wolf River Pedestrian Bridge is a beautiful amenity at Shelby Farms Park that connects trail systems in the Park with the Wolf River Greenway and adjacent neighborhoods. The bridge is part of the ever-expanding network of connections linking visitors to Shelby Farms Greenline, which connects to Midtown Memphis. The 200-foot long pedestrian and cycling bridge features a steel-truss span and 12-foot custom wood decking that shapes the views that walkers, cyclists and others will get as they cross the Wolf River. The strategic design serves to dramatize the experience of entering the Park. The bridge connects not only with paved trails, but the primitive trails through the forest in the Lucius Birch State Natural Area.
SSR worked as a sub-consultant to Quality Iron to design the bridge. A major engineering challenge for the design of this huge structure was the planning for the actual, physical construction of the bridge. Two cranes were utilized to lift this massive structure into place and splice the trusses together over the Wolf River. This resulted in the splice being at the mid-span of the bridge. It was an engineering challenge to design a splice capable of withstanding very large forces and still have a simple connection that was easily installed while two cranes supported the half bridges.
To design the 250,000 pound bridge, a finite element model was utilized for comparison with traditional methods. The bridge was designed for specified vertical and lateral loads with adherence to AASHTO's LRFD Guide Specification for the Design of Pedestrian Bridges (Dec. 2009). The superstructure of the bridge is composed of HSS members made from weathering steel material. An interesting fact is that the structure actually corrodes to protect itself. The 200 foot trusses were formed by shorter members that were welded together with complete joint penetration welds. The splice has four plates on the inside face of the HSS that slide inside the adjacent members. All bolts were high-strength A490 type three bolts.
SSR's role was to provide the structural engineering for the bridge superstructure. This involved the design of the main trusses, the lateral bracing, and the bearing connections for specified loading conditions. The project had a construction cost of $1.27 million and the bridge opened to the public in December of 2010. The project won the 2011 Memphis City Engineer's Award of Excellence as well as the 2011 TSPE People's Choice Award in the Engineering as Art competition.


text:
Q: In Splunk , how to set fixed colour for bars in column chart? In Splunk, how do I set a fixed colour for bars in column chart?

A: If you are looking at a SimpleXML dashboard, you need to add something like the following. There should be an Edit XML button on your dashboard/chart.
The following example makes the ERROR column always red, the WARN column always yellow and so-on and so-forth.
<option name="charting.fieldColors">
  {"ERROR": 0xFF0000, "WARN": 0xFF9900, "INFO":0x009900, "NULL":0xC4C4C0}
</option>

Refer to https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/8.0.5/Viz/BuildandeditdashboardswithSimplifiedXML#Specify_custom_colors_for_fields_in_charts

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Past Webinar
Improving Security Forensics in Kubernetes Environments
Back to All Webinars
Watch this On-Demand Webinar
The success of Kubernetes has made monitoring and alerting more difficult for traditional Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools. Attend this live webinar to learn how implementing the right network security and compliance solution will improve the accuracy and completeness of security forensic monitoring and alerting when using Kubernetes.
Complete Transcript
Michael: Hello, everyone and welcome to today's webinar, Improving Security Forensics in Kubernetes Environments. I am pleased to introduce today's speaker, Christopher Lijenstolpe. He is the original architect behind Tigera's Project Calico. He is a speaker at over 60 meetups a year, so he's educating lots of people on networking, network security for modern applications, microservices and containers, et cetera. He also consults Tigera's enterprise clients on security and compliance for their applications.
Michael: Okay. Well, Christopher, it's all you.
Christopher: Welcome everyone. Today we're gonna talk a little bit about forensics and how forensics change as we go into a containerized, specifically a Kubernetes environment. But a lot of what I'm talking about is gonna apply equally to any kind of containerized environment.
Christopher: And we're gonna talk a little bit a out not only how you do forensics might change, some of the things you need to consider, some of the things you need to adapt. For example, to make forensics data in your CM tools more useful, et cetera. How you deal with doing actual forensics on suspect workloads, et cetera.
Christopher: This is a very deep topic, so we're not gonna be able to cover everything in the allotted times. So, we're gonna, sort of, give you some thinking to be thinking about. And potential areas that you might want to think about your designs and maybe design differently going forward. Especially as it relates to forensics in containerized environments.
Christopher: So, let's go ahead and talk about the first case which is how we used to do forensics on VM or even bare metal workloads. In this case, we have a VM or a bare metal host and it's pretty much a black box. From a forensic standpoint, in the legacy days, you could take a look at what was coming in or out of that black box. Coming in or out of that VM. Coming in or out of that bare metal host. And the Sally, the security engineer, could observe that and make forensics decision about is that black box doing the right thing or doing something that we didn't intend for it to do.
Christopher: So, that's a pretty limited amount of visibility. Those were big monolithic apps. There's lots of things going on within that black box, but we didn't have much visibility other than it goes in and it goes out. And that was mainly north, south traffic, too, by the way. There wasn't a lot of east, west traffic, so mainly this is the request comes in and the response goes out. Or the request coming in turns into a request going to the next thing down in the stacks, the database server. So, [inaudible 00:04:51] invisibility.
Christopher: So, we came up as an industry with APM. And APM allowed us to instrument these black boxes and look at what's going on inside the black box. And that might be catching system calls. That might be instrumenting libraries and API level calls within the application.
Christopher: So, that gave us visibility, at least at the module level or the library level within this black box. Now sort of a semi-transparent, a smokely transparent box. However, this had quite a bit of implications. If you wanted to deploy this kind of visibility, you had to compile it in or build it into your application. The developers had to all have this as part of their build process or deployment process to push this capability actually into the code. To actually make it visible.
Christopher: So, you could get greater visibility, but you were doing so at an additional cost and complexity to the way you built your application. And, for anyone who's done it, before, gee, I want to go deploy the latest version of an operating system image or module. And then you discover that your APM tool doesn't support that yet. So, you have another dependency in your build cycle. Waiting for APM vendors to catch up with current states. But that's the tools we've had and people have successfully used those, even with the complexity.
Christopher: But what happens is we've gone through now, almost like a big bang model of taking and exploding this big monolithic app into lots of micro services. This is the whole model behind Kubernetes and the other orchestrated environments. So now, what had been one big monolithic app with a bunch of library calls, it got compiled into it and the library calls, now becomes individual entities in the infrastructure. So, instead of one PM, we now have lots of microservices and potentially multiple instances of each microservice.
Christopher: So, that is, and actually, well, that brings some complexity. And we've talked about Kubernetes and how Kubernetes orchestrates things before and how Kubernetes corrals that complexity. It actually opens up an interesting avenue for forensics. And that is, that now what had been API calls, within a given executable, or library calls within an executable, now become network calls. All of those, what had been libraries are now separate microservices, or can be. And now, the linkage between those different components is an API call, usually an HTP rest space or GRP or equivalent call across the network. So, we've now exposed, on the network, the actual traffic between the components of our application.
Christopher: So, you can have that built, you can manage all of those API connections yourself and build in the mechanics to do back offs and retries and failure detection and rerouting, all of that, back early on, everyone wrote all that code into each of these modules themselves. These microservices. That brings with it it's own set of issues. Every developer having to basically write an API call framework. And all of the trolling that need to go around that.
Christopher: So, IBM and Google rolled out a project called Istio, which is an instance of a service mesh. There are other service meshes out there, but, taking for example, Istio here. Now, Tigera and Red Hat and other folks are actively contributing to this. This is an industry, a fairly fast moving industry approach to service meshing. But one of the things that you get off of these service meshes isn't just retries and back offs and rerouting due to failures, et cetera. You get a lot of visibility. One of the things these service meshes do is kick out a lot of data about each and every one of these API calls. Between the individual components of your application. And it's doing this in a way that the developers don't necessarily have to know much about the service mesh or implement the service mesh. Basically, the service mesh component inserts itself into each pod or container. Pod in Kubernetes case. And instruments this set of connectivity, this connectivity drop, all these arrows.
Christopher: So, we're collecting, now, a lot of data about who's calling who and what the [inaudible 00:10:20] of that was and all the characteristics of that call. So now, what we used to use is very intrusive APM infrastructure, tells a lot what's going on with a service mesh across a standard network. You now have visibility, very fine grain visibility, into all of the inter modules traffic or inter component traffic in your application.
Christopher: Instead of try to collect your forensics data post fact, after you've had an incident. If you can collect more of that data upfront, before you have an incident, allows you a better detach when there is an incident. You know, indicators are compromised. Also allows you to establish a base line and allows you to see when changes happen. So, if you detect a compromise later, if you have all of this API call data, basically available, you can see when behavior started changing, maybe giving a better indicator of what was compromised and when.
Christopher: So, do your forensics in advance of an event, rather than after an event and collect this data and use it and normalize it. That becomes much easier in a Kubernetes environment using a service mesh. So, no questions so far, it looks like. So, we'll continue on.
Christopher: Next is, waiting for [inaudible 00:11:50]. Okay, so, now let's say we have Eve, evil genius Eve and she is going to attack your infrastructure. So first, let's have her attack that heritage VM, sort of a smokey box. So, she attacks that VM and compromises that VM. So she now has compromised it. It is not acting as a commanding control infrastructure for a bot net or is going out and harvest data out of your customer records database or whatever other nefarious things she's going to try and do. And we've gotten an indicator of compromise. So, some alarm was tripped and Sally realizes that smokey gray box has been compromised or believes that it might be compromised.
Christopher: So, what Sally has done, classically in this environment is, it's a bare metal server, the server gets shut down and isolated and then moved into a forensics clean room, so to speak where it can be analyzed. Similarly, if it's a VM, you would pause or freeze that VM and, again, move it, logically, into a clean room where you can analyze and evaluate what happened.
Christopher: There's two different ways of response to an attack, to a compromise. One is to get rid of the compromised things. You're not interested in what happened, except for, you just want it off your network. So, you can basically shut down or kill that instance and restart and hopefully, you restart with a clean instance. So, that's one approach. That's just the I want it gone approach.
Christopher: The other is let's try and figure out what Eve was trying to do. And that's when we start getting into actual forensics of an attack.
Christopher: ...to do, and that's when we start getting into actual forensics of an attack. Now, as has been mentioned, I think, before in the series, I was a park ranger in the park service at one time. And as part of our law enforcement training, I remember very well our officer survival instructor said, "When you find a weapon on someone, don't stop looking because people who carry one weapon usually carry more than one weapon." So, let's say if I take that to heart, if I find Eve has comprised a machine, if I assume, do I stop there and just assume that was the extent of the compromise, kill off the machine, and reinstantiate and I'm back in business? Or do I assume that Eve potentially, what I've detected may not be her first or only thrust of attack in my infrastructure.
Christopher: So maybe what I want to do is, instead of just killing it off, I want to examine it and try and figure out what else she was really trying to do, what else she might have already done, so I can actually try and more completely contain the compromise. So, what was she going after? What was the data she was going after, or what was she attempting to do? Oh this looks like it could be a command and control center for a botnet in my infrastructure maybe I need to figure out what the control panel is so I can go find the nodes that might have already been infected and are acting as a bot net already. So there's advantages, if you have the skill set, to actually go and do some forensics on these components when you find them.
Christopher: So Sally's done that, Sally's figured out what Eve was trying to do and countered that and life is good. But now we've gone over to a kubernetes environment, so Sally's company is now deploying microservices in a kubernetes environment, and Eve, keeping up with the times, attacks one of the kubernetes' pods for a given service.
Christopher: We can just freeze this pod and shift it over to a forensics clean room and start looking at it, right? Unfortunately, not quite. Containers aren't really separate instances of operating systems. Containers are a memory space, or a main space, within the underlying host's operating system. There's really not a good way of freezing a container and moving it. Technically, it might be possible but that's not something that the orchestrators today really do. I can't really pick this up and move this somewhere else and reinstantiate it, [rehydrate 00:16:55] it and examine what it's doing.
Christopher: You might think the only thing you can really do is kill that pod that's been infected and reinstantiate a new hopefully clean one. But as we said there's some value to actually trying to figure out what's happening. So instead of picking up and moving it, why don't we just isolate that pod? By using a combination of what we can do with the service mesh and what we can do with network policy controls in kubernetes, like's solution, you can actually put a label or a piece of metadata on that pod that says that pod should be quarantined, that pod is [suspect 00:17:38].
Christopher: At that point the service mesh, the underlying network infrastructure, the kubernetes network infrastructure can actually isolate that pod or set of pods that has been essentially compromised and prevent them from actually communicating with anything else in the infrastructure.
Christopher: Then you take the [inaudible 00:17:58] where you can say, instead of being diked off from everything, which might be a signal to the attacking code to self-destruct. Maybe what you do instead is you cut off its connections to the production environment and replace it with connections to a honeypot environment or an evaluation environment or the attacking code may not actually notice that it's been removed from production and it continues to function. And then you can evaluate what it's doing.
Christopher: Again, maybe using service mesh, if you move it over and you point it at a honeypot infrastructure and you're still using service mesh, then the service mesh is now pointing to this honeypot infrastructure, you can now see all the API calls it's doing what it's listening for et cetera.
Christopher: In a containerized environment you may want to quarantine or change the service mesh topology, such as that pod can be evaluated, the suspect pod or pods can be evaluated without [knowing 00:19:06] them or without shutting them down. Again, try and figure out what Eve's actual and point goal was trying, what was the employee trying to do rather than just showing off the thing that she infected.
Christopher: To reiterate, before you would've frozen and moved into a clean room, here you sort of bring the clean room to the pods rather than moving the pods to the clean room by adjusting the service mesh and instituting network policies.
Christopher: Before I go on with the next topic that we want to talk about, let me pause here if there are any questions. If not, we will continue. Doesn't appear that there are any questions right now so let's move on a little bit.
Christopher: Now let's talk about Eve and the way containers get deployed in something like a kubernetes environment, the way microservices get deployed in kubernetes. [inaudible 00:20:12] most people are going to deploy their applications via some kind of CIP pipeline, containers integration, containers delivery pipeline, normally anchored to some sort of source code control system like [Id 00:20:25] in various fibers that could be github, gitlab, your own implementation. But it's some form of source code [inaudible 00:20:34] system and burdening system.
Christopher: You put your definitions and your code and your container definitions into your source code control system and a CIC pipeline then deploys those instances into your infrastructure. CIC pipeline is secured and checked to make sure what's getting deployed is what's in the repo itself and have some amount of security control surrounding. Idea being that what gets deployed should reflect what's in the actual repo itself.
Christopher: Let's say Eve attempts ... Sorry next film. Now, I wanna talk a little bit about what those pods could be doing to support forensics we should be collecting all of our logging data coming off of those pods we should make sure that our actual individual components are generating sensible logging information. Just like the service mesh is generating logging information about the API calls between the pods, we really want the things on the pods, the actual microservices themselves to be generating the logs. And those log should be going potentially to a couple different pieces of infrastructure. One should be going to some sort of EFK or ELK stacks, that's elasticsearch and Kibana or elasticsearch logstash and Kibana you might be using splunk and something else as well.
Christopher: But the idea is all of these logs should be dumping into a large searchable store that you can then use to start building, characterizing, then we see all of the behaviors of this given type of pod. So you should be able to search through things, look for things in the logs in an easy, sensible manner. And that's where the Kibana and elasticsearch components come in.
Christopher: More importantly though, you should be making sure that those logs are sensible and have [inaudible 00:22:58] data, and I talked about this in a couple of webinars, a lot of logging systems use IP addresses, for example, as indicator, as an identity of the endpoint.
Christopher: In an environment like kubernetes, things like IP addresses or nodes that something's on are very ephemeral and actually, maybe reused multiple times in a day let alone in weeks or months. All of my logs are pinned to an IP address for a given pod, that's why it's sort of useless because that IP address over time can refer to very different things in your infrastructure, so you really need to make sure those logs are annotated with data that comes from orchestrative or ICT to uniquely identify what is the thing that is being logged, what generated that log, et cetera.
Christopher: And that allows you to make sure that you can actually have sensible log data if you go do a lookback to see, for example, when Eve got in and what she did.
Christopher: Make sure your logs are sensible, make sure that [inaudible 00:24:04] is searchable. The other thing, you might also wanna make sure that you're onto something that's time series-based, like Prometheus. [inaudible 00:24:12] is you definitely want to build up baseline data. You wanna be able to say that this kind of log shows up 20 times a minute across my infrastructure per X number of instances of this particular service or microservice. And then be able to set triggers and say hey if that log is showing up more than 20 times a minute in number of microservices, then I'm wanting to look because we're now exceeding what was normal baseline.
hristopher: From that perspective we probably want to be all using a time-series database as well as my searchable log store. So different things you want to think about how you want to manage these logs.
Christopher: Other things that are obvious but worth mentioning make sure that you're on accurate time across all your components so that logs can be correlated, et cetera, all the standard practices for an accurate logging system.
Christopher: We've now been logging all this data, and let's say now Eve wants to attack one of our microservices again, she's not giving up she's gonna make an attack. If we've done the right thing, what we've done is we've made these pods, these microservices, immutable when they're deployed and the idea being here in a containerized environment, troubleshooting should not be going into a given microservice at this [inaudible 00:26:04] or injecting into it and making changes to the one microservice for a couple of reasons. One it opens a pathway for attack for Eve, which we'll talk about in a minute. The other is this means you now have a snowflake. So let's say I have built a platform that is auto scaling and normally I have three instances of a microservice and something's gone wrong with that microservice, I haven't gotten the configuration quite right.
Christopher: In a [inaudible 00:26:34] it's very likely that you would've SSH'd into each of those VMs and changed the configuration. And that's okay. A container [inaudible 00:26:42] because I will have changed the configuration on those three running instances but not back in the github repo where the assets go, so it's five minutes later and kubernetes says I need 100 more of these to be able to deal with the flash crowd, it's gonna go essentially 100 more that won't have that fixed.
Christopher: So I now have three snowflakes that work correctly and 97 that don't. It's time to troubleshoot that one. Operationally, you should make sure everything is fixed in github and the code repo and then you redeploy so let's say I've got a problem I go fix it in the code repo and then it gets pushed up to the CIC chain and the three bad instances get replaced to three new good ones, and five minutes later when you get the crush of users, an ace deploys 97 more instances that are correctly configured. So you really shouldn't need to FSH or inject into workloads, except for maybe trying to debug a problem, as in what happened and what's in the pod. But that's where you shouldn't be doing in a live system.
Christopher: So, however, people tend to do what they've always done. So, instead of saying, we won't do that, you probably actually want to put colors on that and say, we're not going to block SSH into our pods. We're going to use our back to control such that most user or all users can't exec to a pod. Kubernete is our back control.
Christopher: So if we have done that, then it becomes very very difficult for EVE to actually inspect what I mean workloads. Because those workloads have become basically immutable. Kubernetes isn't gonna allow them to change or some external factor to come in and change them.
Christopher: So if EVE launches an attack, and her little [inaudible 00:28:51] is blocked by those controls, and her attack is unsuccessful. Those pods are still running. And they were deployed out of GitHub. And we're assuming... GitHub is known, has been evaluated, is trusted.
Christopher: Let's say that that's not quite a true statement. And actually, your developers got Spearfish, and somehow from that Spearfishing an attacker, say EVE, gets around and actually writes bad code into your stack for a given microservice.
Christopher: And that is in GitHub and then it's Kubernetes deploys it's work codes through that secure CIP pipeline that attack is now distributed within the pods. If I've been doing logging, et cetera, I'll notice for example the new version of those pods is actually different from the previous ones that might be an indicator of compromise.
Christopher: I know that those pods themselves can't really be mutated, can't be changed. So Sally, our security engineer goes and looks the underlying GitHub code and finds the anomalous code that got infected. Maybe a new version of a docker container, it's a different NGINX docker container than we normally deploy and it happens to be a compromise NGINX container.
Christopher: So Sally figures that out, Sally removes that. She exempts the codes, she removes that security issue from within the GitHub repo. That also might have been caught by the way in the GitHub repo via repo scanning and those kind of things.
Christopher: But somewhere, now that we found out about it, we removed that from the GitHub repo and then we do a redeployment of those same services. And what happens then is we now end up with uninfected pods. So back in business again.
Christopher: So Ethan here, from a forensic standpoint, we noticed a change in behavior. And we went and found the code. If we know that those pods can't be mutated then we know it's gotta be in the origination, the source so repositories go up there. Find it much easier to look in first the repository for something that's bad, then to try and reverse engineer one encode in a pod.
Christopher: So we find it in the GitHub repo, we clean it up, we put new versions and we're back in business. Let's say however, we have not blocked SSH or AWOW. All our developers trace back into pods, we haven't gotten that memo yet. So in this case, EVE's attack to those pods is successful and those pods are compromised.
Christopher: So what do we do in this case? So first of all again, we have some indicator of compromise. And part of forensics we notice that [inaudible 00:32:03] that there's log changes, that these things are doing different things. Our service messaged saying they're making different API calls. Call trying to come up with different databases or it's the stuff they usually do, et cetera.
Christopher: So I have noticed a change in the environment that looks suspicious. So I go look in the GitHub repo and nothing has changed there. There has been no change in the GitHub repo between before and after the indicator of compromise floated up. So I now have to assume that someone has actually been able to change my pods. So again, now I can go through what we talked about earlier.
Christopher: I can isolate those infected pods and start evaluating them. But at the same time I don't like service to go down, right? So if I isolate all those pods that were supposed to be doing a useful service, useful function in my applications. So let's say I now isolate those so I can evaluate what was done, but I need to get back to a known good working state.
Christopher: So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to put in the rules I should have put in in the first place. Which is I'm going to block the ability of SSH or [Ex-Axin 00:33:15] to otherwise modify one pods in the infrastructure. So I put in those features and at the same time I redeploy with the known good in GitHub set of instructions and code base.
Christopher: So I'm actually... We redeploy, we now have uninfected, un-EVE tainted pods. And I've put in the filters in Kubernetes and with network filtering, network policy to block things like [inaudible 00:33:51] and have very strong our back controls around exec. And now I know that you can't reinfect those pods, I don't think she can. And my application is still running, while at the same time I have the isolated pods that were infected that I'm now doing analysis on so I can maybe find what else EVE might have done to my infrastructure.
Christopher: So that gives you a little bit of a workflow on how you forward protect. How you can identify compromise, what you do when you've identified compromise in the Kubernetes environment. And where you might wanna start collecting data to develop baselines on what is normal versus abnormal behavior in your infrastructure.
Christopher: So before I... So I'm go on talk a little bit about some of the things that we can do to help here in Tigera. I don't wanna set us into a product definition, [inaudible 00:34:42]. But I do wanna talk just a little bit about some other things that Tigera has that can help in this regard.
Christopher: So I guess before I do that though let's talk about best practices. So configuring new laws in the central, searchable space that I talked about. EFK, [inaudible 00:35:05] stack, an [inaudible 00:35:07] or something along those lines. Also use TimeSeries infrastructure. For medias to detect deltas and identify when behaviors change over time in your infrastructure.
Christopher: Make sure your logs are sensible. Make sure that you... Kubernetes meta-data and mutations are possible so you can actually know what that thing was that threw that particular log. Use service meshes to do a number of things like make it easier to develop restful and TRPC, API-based infrastructures but also to collect API call data.
Christopher: STO's a wonderful example of a service mesh that can actually do that for you, help you do that. Don't show things that are interesting 'cause if you do you lose any chance of actually trying to recreate or figure out what was done. You're lying in the dark. Instead isolate them using service mesh and network policies and Kubernetes. Isolate them such that you can examine them but really can't do any more on them
Christopher: Ensure that, and the last thing is the mutability. Ensure that the running pods are from a known source and you know the prominence of that code. And you've examined it and you've done static testing on it. All those things that you should do for codes that you're gonna deploy. And make sure that the pods are coming from a code base that you've done all that work on.
Christopher: And if they are, try and make them immutable once they're launched. So that EVE can't infect them. Giving EVE the only path to infect is through your code base which would be easier to detect. And if you must allow mutability on pods, make sure that everything is logged. Because Kubernetes [R back 00:37:01] controls to know exactly what changes were made to running pods, who made those changes. And when you see those, go back and ask why. Or have some kind of proactive logging facility where if somebody's gonna make a change to a pod, has to log why they did it. So that in case something does happen you at least have traceability as to where it came from.
Christopher: So those are some basic best practices to support forensics in a Kubernetes environment. Some of the things that Tigera can help with in this space. We can provide very detailed meta-data labeled flow logs from network data in the infrastructure. That not only indicate the standard IP address, twelve two-fold, was it allowed, denied, accepted. But indicates what policies were used to allow or deny the traffic. But main spaces, the endpoints, the source and destination we're in, what [inaudible 00:38:09] policies were used, like what better policies were used to allow or deny, and even what meta-data labels were attached. What Kubernetes labels were attached to the source in best.
Christopher: And the Kubernetes name. For unique name for that source and that. So it gives you actually a very detailed log so you can see exactly what things are involved and what the configuration was that allowed or caused traffic to be a little bit more denied.
Christopher: We also give you the ability to dive in and explore your connectivity and your infrastructure. And we can scope this down by allowing or denying traffic by main spaces, by pod types, or instances. So I want you to visualize very clearly all the flows of traffic that are in a either application space or a given application.
Christopher: So it allows you to visualize the connectivity that your application components are performing. And lastly, we can filter these by main space, main status, et cetera, as I said. And lastly, we can give you policies that allow you to control traffic all the way from layer 3 to layer 7. Such that only endpoints labeled Bob can talk to endpoints labeled Alice on port 443. But may also only do so if they're using the right TLS certificate and they're making the right kind of HTTP or TRPC query.
Christopher: So this gives you the ability to control those API all the way up to layer 7 now, as well as layer 3, layer 4. And this is how you would implement for example, quarantine, as well as just controlling the service graph to begin with.
Christopher: So those are some capabilities that we give you. There's others. There are other platforms out there as well, but I think here the idea is get you to rethink a little bit how you do forensics in the Kubernetes environment. And take advantage of some of the capabilities that Kubernetes has that may not have been present in more heritage kind of environments.
Michael: Once again, thank you guys for attending.


text:
Mark of Fire
(The Endarian Prophecy, #1)
by Richard Phillips
Genres: fantasy > high fantasy
An epic new fantasy about an immortal evil and a warlord's daughter, bound by an ancient prophecy only one of them can survive...
Lorness Carol, coming of age in the kingdom of her warlord father, Lord Rafel, aspires to become a wizard. But she's also unknowingly become the obsession of an avenging wizard as old as evil itself: Kragan, a wielder of epic destruction. He's waited centuries to find and kill the female prophesied as the only human empowered to destroy him. However, dispatching the king's assassin, Blade, to Rafel's Keep, ends in treason. For Blade arrives not with a weapon but rather a warning for the woman he's known and loved since he was a child. With a price on his head, Blade flees — as Carol and her family are urged away on their own desperate route of escape.
Now, traversing the lawless western borderlands, Carol struggles to understand the uncanny magic she possesses and must learn to master. Though separated, Carol and Blade are still united — not only by the darkness pursuing them both but by a quest toward destiny, revenge, and the revelations of an ancient prophecy that signal the ultimate war between good and evil.
About the Author :: Richard Phillips
Richard Phillips was born in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1956. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1979 and qualified as a US Army Ranger, going on to serve as an officer in the army. He earned a master's degree in physics from the Naval Postgraduate School in 1989, completing his thesis work at Los Alamos National Laboratory. After working as a research associate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he returned to the army to complete his tour of duty.
Richard is the author of several science-fiction and fantasy series, including The Rho Agenda (The Second Ship, Immune, and Wormhole); The Rho Agenda Inception (Once Dead, Dead Wrong, and Dead Shift); The Rho Agenda Assimilation (The ... (more)
Kasari Nexus, The Altreian Enigma, and The Meridian Ascent); and Mark of Fire, Prophecy's Daughter, and Curse of the Chosen in the epic Endarian Prophecy series. Richard lives with his wife, Carol, in Phoenix, Arizona.
Richard Phillips >
The Endarian Prophecy


text:
Gas Gas returns to top the bill at the X-Trial World Championship in Barcelona
NEWSPress release
The fortieth anniversary of the Barcelona Indoor Trial has been the scene of the lively return of the Gas Gas Factory Trial Team to the very highest level of international competition. James Dabill and Franzi Kadlec got off to a great start with the official X-Trial team with seventh and eighth positions. Gas Gas has celebrated its return to the World Championship on home turf together with the thousands of fans who filled the stands of the Palau Sant Jordi to enjoy all the different activities in an event which was jam-packed with emotion and symbolism.
A mythical venue, the Palau Sant Jordi, and a very special date, the fortieth anniversary of the Barcelona Indoor Trial, the greatest stage and the very best moment in time for Gas Gas' return to the X-Trial World Championship, together with their fans and a team reinforced with James Dabill and Franzi Kadlec.
The latest signing to the bike brand from Girona arrived in Barcelona with extra motivation after achieving a podium finish at the Sheffield International Trial. This was one of the preparatory events before the real start of the X-Trial calendar. Unfortunately this time round Dabill was unable to repeat his success at the opening event of the World Championship.
The British Gas Gas rider started the evening well, getting through the first of the five zones of the classifying round facing the eight best international indoor trial riders without too much trouble. However, a fall in the second zone made a huge difference to the result from the latest signing to Gas Gas in his first event in the World Championship on the new Gas Gas TXT 300 GP. The rider from West Yorkshire will be riding this machine throughout the whole of the X-Trial Championship.
The hard knock to the handlebar of his bike on the ground of the course meant that Dabill had to beat a hasty retreat back to the boxes to pick up his second machine. A change of bike with different adjustments affected Dabill's concentration in this classifying round of only five zones and practically zero margin for error. Two fives in the next two zones made a classification for the final impossible even though the expert British rider completed the last zone with only one penalty point. This meant that finally he ended up with a seventh place. This result, while not making the British rider terribly happy, does mean extra motivation for the next event in the World Championship on 5th March in Neustadt, Austria.
James Dabill: "This has been a difficult event for me. And in fact I felt much better about how I rode today. I was a bit worried at first in the first zone. And in the second I had a fall and bent the handlebar. I had to change bike and it was difficult to get back into the pace with a different bike, although they are the same. It hasn't been possible to get 100% performance. A bit later I made another couple of mistakes and I wasn't allowed into the final."
Lady luck also turned her back on his teammate in the Gas Gas Trial Factory Team. Young Franzi Kadlecis only nineteen years old and he is already starting out in the X-Trial World Championship on his Gas Gas TXT 300 Racing. This was a hopeful start for the talented young German rider, whose understandable beginner's nerves took their toll in the first three zones.
An eighth position in the classification prevented Kadlec from getting his passport to the final of the opening event in the World Championship. This is where Gas Gas was celebrating its return to the greatest showplace on earth for indoor trial, without a doubt extra-special and full of emotion. The pioneer of indoor trial celebrated its fortieth anniversary together with a load of Gas Gas activities for the thousands of fans filling up the stands in the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona.
A Barcelona X-Trial full of Gas Gas activities
Unfortunately the strong winds forced the cancellation of the Gas Gas and Torrot Kids children's circuit planned before the event so that the very youngest fans could have some fun on the electric bikes, the very best way to get girls and boys off to a good start off-road.
However, it was a very different story inside the venue. The fans went wild with their passion for the trial riding brand, painting one of the stands red with the emblematic Gas Gas colour. Gas Gas also sponsored of one of the eight zones in the event.
The most historic machines from the company from Girona, for example the very first Gas Gas Halleymodel, manufactured in 1985, had a starring role in the retrospective look back at the trial riding speciality which warmed the hearts of the fans in the Palau Sant Jordi. A flash back in time with an affectionate homage to all the riders who have written the story of the Barcelona Indoor Trial and especially its eleven winners. Amongst them was Marc Colomer, winner of five editions of this event in the 90's, and since last year, Gas Gas sports manager.
Beta presents the new EVO FACTORY MY 2017
Franzi Kadlec X-Trial Barcelona


An event that causes a business to relocate or temporarily close. For example, an office may flood and becomes unusable, or a natural disaster may make commerce unfeasible in an entire area. A company may purchase business interruption insurance to guard against losses resulting from this.
Hundreds of Christchurch businesses were forced to relocate their premises after the 2010 earthquake and many only had a 12 month indemnity period on their business interruption.
for more stats about business interruption insurance.
The Superior Court found that the original umpire's possible impartiality was sufficient to set aside the Business Interruption Award.
Natural catastrophes or cyber attacks can cause business interruption not only for one company, but to whole sectors or critical infrastructure," says Chris Fischer Hirs, CEO of Allianz Global Corporate & SpecialtySE (AGCS).
Technology failures leading to business interruption are "equally damaging to a company's operations, reputation and bottom-line profits," Paxton added.
Weigh the price, but realize that contingent business interruption coverage is not a commodity where you are comparing apples to apples.
Many microbusiness owners don't know where to begin when seeking a business interruption endorsement, which can overwhelm them into inaction.
Their suppliers would not have suffered a loss, so there would be no contingent business interruption loss.
Policies usually have a 48- to 72-hour waiting period before business interruption insurance kicks in.
These camps most likely did not receive any benefit from their business interruption insurance because 1) they may not have had coverage for communicable disease events, and even if they did buy the additional peril of communicable disease and 2) their decisions to close were voluntary and not ordered by the health department.
Finally, the cost of business interruption - the time spent when you physically can't sell to customers, the overall disruption to your company - is likely to be a higher overall cost than the cost of replacing the assets.
TELECOMWORLDWIRE-26 February 2008-Capital Continuity introduces Business Interruption Protection Service(C)1994-2008 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD http://www.


text:
#ifdef USE_TI_APPIOS

#import <TitaniumKit/TiApp.h>
#import <TitaniumKit/TiProxy.h>

#import <UserNotifications/UserNotifications.h>

@interface TiAppiOSUserNotificationCenterProxy : TiProxy

- (void)getPendingNotifications:(id)args;

- (void)getDeliveredNotifications:(id)args;

- (void)removePendingNotifications:(id)args;

- (void)removeDeliveredNotifications:(id)args;

- (void)requestUserNotificationSettings:(id)args;

@end
#endif

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub