Hello,

My day job is at a security software company (anti-malware). We don't do anything in the backup space (either develop software, resell someone else's software, etc.) but I did write a paper on the subject of backups for them, because not every computer problem is a virus. It is more geared towards home users or home-based businesses than the video, above, because I figured that businesses already have some idea about backups—whether or not they are doing them properly is entirely another question, though.

The paper is basically an overview of backup technologies that might be applicable to a single PC or a small LAN, and is completely vendor neutral (like I said, no ties to anyone/anything in the backup space). It is also specific to on-premise backup technologies, as opposed to cloud, because those are the types of backup technologies with which I am experienced.

Anyways, if you are interested, or want to share it with a friend, family member, et cetera, here's the the paper: Options for backing up your computer [PDF, 862KB]

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

Since you mentioned the problem seems to have started due to issues arisen from dealing with people in online games, it seems likely that these people are attacking you after they see you log into those games. Even if the game is client/server based, there may be some mechanism for them to obtain your IP address (direct messaging requests, lookups to see if you are online, etc.).

So, my suggestion would be to stop playing the games (or even joining the networks hosting them, if possible) for a while and let the unsavory characters find under people to harass. You can then go play some different games on some different gaming networks. Eventually, they'll probably think they've scared you off permanently and drop you from their DDoS list, and you can go back to gaming on that network.

Alternatively, you could look into using a VPN to tunnel your game traffic to a box outside your network, but you run the risk of annoying the VPN provider if their network gets DDoSed. Still, that at least transfers the problem off your home network, and it could be the VPN provider is in a better position to mitigate the DDoS than your home ISP.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

While raising the price on an enterprise product is a good way to boost short-term revenue, it seems to me that companies might begin to seek less expensive alternatives. In this case, though, that might not be Linux at all.

I haven't seen any mention of this so far, but I have to wonder if the price increase might be an attempt to make enterprises look at Windows Azure as an alternative to continuing to run their own datacenters.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

From what I recall, Lookout Mobile Security was founded in San Francisco in 2008. They started as an iOS shop, but moved over to Android, and their security product is probably one of the most used on that platform. I do not recall having any contact with employees, but they publish some decent research on their blog at https://blog.lookout.com/.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

I guess you didn't look very closely at ESET's web site:

About Page - http://www.eset.com/us/about/profile/overview/

Contact Page - http://www.eset.com/us/about/contact/

According to their page on Wikipedia, they have over 800 employees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESET

Hardly obscure, and as for the U.S. government listening to them, they'd have to get in line far, far behind Symantec, McAfee, Trend, etc.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

Does the ban extend to VPS providers like Linode and Lowendbox (et al), or cloud services like Amazon AWS or Google Cloud which could host a VPN? If not, perhaps provisioning a VPN server is one of these is an alternative.

Credit card companies and payment processors might be less willing to suspend operations with Amazon or Google.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Hello,

The problem with the current crop of 802.11ac adapters is that most of them have USB 2.0 interfaces (Edimax and Zyxel each offer a USB 3.0 adapter, and Asus has a PCIe card). With 480Mbit/s of bandwidth (and that's theoretical, since it does not include serialization, 8b/10b conversions, other overhead from peripheral bus communications, etc.) no one is is going to be getting anything near a Gbit/s of bandwidth over the bus even if they do have a strong signal. They may get better data rates due to technological improvements over previous generations of Wi-Fi (fatter channels, more MIMO streams, beamforming, etc.)

That will change as more adapters enter the market (probably in the form of MiniPCIe cards inside laptops), but consumers are not going to be much better off, bandwidth-wise, then going with 802.11n gear at home until the market for 802.11ac wireless adapters matures.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky