According to a recent report from the IEA, data center electricity demands are set to rise over the next three years. The report discusses the CO2 emissions and the potential mitigation that companies have committed to doing to achieve carbon neutrality. Also of note was the assertion that clean energy sources could meet this growing demand to help offset the need to rely on older power systems that are harder to optimize for efficiency.
1:09 – Veeam Poking Around with Proxmox
The brouhaha around Broadcom and VMware is leading to some interesting explorations. News came out this week that backup giant Veeam is exploring support for Proxmox. This report highlights the growing concern with the direction that Broadcom is taking and reflects community interest in an open source alternative to commercial virtualization solutions. The conversation so far seems to be mostly replying to discussion threads, indicating that Veeam is interested in what the community is seeing and how they’re feeling about the future of virtualization.
Read More: Veeam researching support for VMware alternative Proxmox as backup buyers fret about Broadcom
4:40 – Snyk Acquires Helios for Cloud Capabilities
Application security company Snyk is acquiring Helios to help bolster their visiblity into how data drives software security needs. The move is aimed to help close the gap between developers and SecOps teams that are trying to deliver user security after the program has been written. By aligning the build time and runtime aspects of application security Snyk and Helios are hoping to help more teams shift left on the DevSecOps workflow.
Read More from The Futurum Group: Snyk Recently Acquired Helios
7:36 – TSMC’s Second Fab in Arizona Delayed
One of the highlights of the US CHIPS act was the news that TSMC was building fabrication facilities in Arizona. The first fab facility has faced delays in construction due to reports that there aren’t enough skilled workers in AZ. Now there are reports that the second facility will be delayed until at least 2027 if not later. In addition, the second plant might not be ready to start producing the advanced 3nm process chips that were proposed for it even with a the construction delay. Bloomberg is reporting that some of the delay could be due to a lack of funding from the CHIPS act, as none of the companies seeking the money have been approved yet.
Read More: TSMC’s Second Factory in Arizona Delayed as US Grants Remain in Flux
12:44 – CVE Accusations against Ivanti and Juniper Networks.
Patching exploits is no small task. One way it gets easier is by tracking the exploits, which is the purpose of the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure (CVE) program. We talk a lot about CVEs on the Rundown but two companies are facing some flack for misusing the CVE process. The first is Juniper Networks, which has been accused of not filing some of their vulnerabilities with the CVE program. This means that tracking those potential exploits is very difficult if not impossible. At the other end of the spectrum we have a report that Ivanti has lumped several remote code execution vulnerabilities under a single CVE when they should have each had their own number.
Read More: Ivanti and Juniper Networks accused of bending the rules with CVE assignments
16:06 – Chinese Authorities Exploit Apple AirDrop Security Weakness
Chinese authorities are leveraging the vulnerability in AirDrop’s hashing mechanism, using rainbow tables to de-anonymize users and identify those involved in the mass distribution of prohibited content. Apple has been aware of this weakness for a few years but so far has not fixed it.
Read More: Apple AirDrop leaks user data like a sieve. Chinese authorities say they’re scooping it up.
21:46 – Microsoft’s Caught In Midnight Blizzard
Another week, another weak Microsoft password. This time, a Russian-sponsored group known as Midnight Blizzard was able to break into Microsoft through a password spray attack and compromise a test tenant account with a bad password. From there they did the lateral movement thing into some juicy executive accounts and made off with emails and some other fun data. Microsoft said the attack had been ongoing since November of 2023 and they were only able to determine the full extent by this month.
Read More: Microsoft Actions Following Attack by Nation State Actor Midnight Blizzard
25:43 – Should We Be Concerned About Growing Electricity Demand?
According to a recent report from the IEA, data center electricity demands are set to rise over the next three years. The report discusses the CO2 emissions and the potential mitigation that companies have committed to doing to achieve carbon neutrality. Also of note was the assertion that clean energy sources could meet this growing demand to help offset the need to rely on older power systems that are harder to optimize for efficiency.
Read More: Electricity 2024: Analysis and Forecast to 2026
41:42 – The Weeks Ahead
Cloud Field Day 19 – January 31 – February 1
Cisco Live EMEA – February 6 – February 7
AI Field Day 4 – February 21 – February 22
Networking Field Day 34 – February 28 – February 29
The Gestalt IT Rundown is a live weekly look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.
