It has been one year since the Xen Project introduced Unikraft as an incubator project. In that time, the team has made great strides in simplifying the process of building unikernels through a unified and customizable code base.

Unikraft is an incubation project under the Xen Project, hosted by the Linux Foundation, focused on easing the creation of building unikernels, which compile source code into a lean operating system that only includes the functionality required by the application logic. As containers increasingly become the way cloud applications are built, there is a need to drive even more efficiency into the way these workloads run. The ultra lightweight and small trusted compute base nature of unikernels make them ideal not only for cloud applications, but also for fields where resources may be constrained or safety is critical.

Unikraft tackles one of the fundamental downsides of unikernels: despite their clear potential, building them is often manual, time-consuming work carried out by experts. Worse, the work, or at least chunks of it, often needs to be redone for each target application. Unikraft’s goal is to provide an automated build system where non-experts can easily and quickly generate extremely efficient and secure unikernels without having to touch a single line of code. Further, Unikraft explicitly supports multiple target platforms: not only virtual machines for Xen and KVM, but also OCI-compliant containers and bare metal images for various CPU architectures.

Over the last year the lead team at NEC Laboratories Europe along with external contributors from companies like ARM and universities such as University of Bucharest have made great strides in developing and testing Unikraft’s base functionality, including support for a number of CPU architectures, platforms, and operating system primitives. Notable updates include support for ARM64.

The Unikraft community continues to grow. Over the last year, we’ve seen impressive momentum in terms of community support and involvement:

• Contributions from outside the project founders (NEC) now make up 25% of all contributions.

• Active contributors rose 91%, from 2 contributors to 23.

• The initial NEC code contribution was around 86KLOC: since then around 34KLOC of code have been added and/or modified.

An upcoming milestone for the project is the Unikraft v0.3 release, which will ship in February. This release includes:

• Xenstore and Xen bus support

• ARM32 support for Xen

• ARM64 support for QEMU/KVM

• X86_64 bare metal support

• Networking support, including an API that allows for high-speed I/O frameworks (e.g., DPDK, netmap)

• A lightweight network stack (lwip)

• Initial VFS support along with an a simple but performant in-RAM filesystem

We are very excited about this coming year, where the focus will be on automating the build process and supporting higher-layer functionality and applications:

• External standard libraries: musl, libuv, zlib, openssl, libunwind, libaxtls (TLS), etc.

• Language environments: Javascript (v8), Python, Ruby, C++

• Frameworks: Node.js, PyTorch, Intel DPDK

• Applications: lighttpd, nginx, SQLite, Redis, etc.  

Looking forward, in the first half of 2019 Unikraft will be concentrating its efforts towards supporting an increasing number of programming languages and applications and towards actively creating links to other unikernel projects in order to ensure that the project delivers on its promise. Stay tuned for what’s in store. If you want to take Unikraft out for a spin, to contribute or to simply find out more information about Unikraft please head over to the project’s website.

Also, if you are attending FOSDEM, February 2nd and 3rd, please stop by room AW1.121 for the talk “Unikraft: Unikernels Made Easy,” given by Simon Kuenzer. Simon, a senior systems researcher at NEC Labs and the lead maintainer of Unikraft, will be speaking all about Unikraft and giving a comprehensive overview of the project, where it’s been and what’s in store.  

Want to learn more about Unikraft and connect with the Xen community at large? Registration for the annual Xen Project Developer and Design Summit is open now! Check out information on sponsorships, speaking opportunities and more here.

This article originally appeared at Xen Project.

By Owen Faraday 31 Jan 2019

SAP has been working with open source for decades and has now established an open source program office (OSPO) to further formalize the coordination of its open source activities and expand its engagement with the open source communities. “SAP was one of the first industry players to formally define processes for open source consumption and contribution,” says Peter Giese, director of the Open Source Program Office.

Even so, many people do not yet consider SAP to be a company that embraces open source engagement and contributions.

“In the past, we may not have been active enough in sharing our open source activities,” says Giese.

Now, SAP is shining a spotlight on its work in open source. Transparency is an essential part of the new open source mandate, beginning with an explanation of what the company has been up to and where it is headed with open source.

How SAP came to adopt open source

“In 1998, SAP started to port the R/3 system, our market-leading ERP system, to Linux,” says Giese. “That was an important milestone for establishing Linux in the enterprise software market.”

Porting a system to Linux was just a first step, and a successful one. The action spurred an internal discussion and exploration of how and where to adopt Linux going forward.

Read more at The Linux Foundation

Do you remember the first or last time you found a user had shared sensitive information with the wrong people?

Companies dedicate large amounts of resources and money towards establishing an air tight DLP policy to detect and protect company data and prevent it from getting into the wrong hands, whether deliberately or by mistake. But no matter how good the technology, or how vigilant the security team, there is always a wildcard – end users.

“A company can often detect or control when an outsider (non-employee) tries to access company data either physically or electronically, and can mitigate the threat of an outsider stealing company property. However, the thief who is harder to detect and who could cause the most damage is the insider—the employee with legitimate access. That insider may steal solely for personal gain, or that insider may be a “spy”—someone who is stealing company information or products in order to benefit another organization or country.”

                –Introductory guide to identifying malicious insiders, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

Figure 1: Statistics from the Insider Threat 2018 Report

From the above data we can see that insider threats are becoming a real concern for most organizations, and that active steps are taken to mitigate the risk inherent to these threats.

In this post we’ll discuss how regular users can expose sensitive data by wrongly classifying documents, how malicious users can take advantage of the encryption to exfiltrate data, and how Microsoft Cloud App Security’s new capability of scanning content in encrypted files, as well as the wider Microsoft Information Protection offering, can help organizations mitigate these risks.

The innocent mistake

While employees in the modern workplace are getting increasingly technologically savvy, and are finding new tools to improve their productivity, they aren’t always aware of the security implications of their actions.

Many of our customers are leveraging Microsoft Information Protection solutions to classify, label and protect their data. To minimize the impact on end users and their ability to be productive, these organizations often choose to empower their users to label documents themselves, by providing automatic suggestions but not auto-labeling or -protecting documents.

A user can inadvertently label a document containing highly confidential information with a low sensitivity label that applies minimal access restrictions. Since the file is already encrypted, it will not be scanned by the DLP solution, but might still be accessible to unauthorized people.

The malicious insider

A bigger threat with a much higher potential for damage, is the malicious insider. A malicious insider who is actively working on exfiltrating sensitive information from the organization, whether for personal gain, corporate espionage or other reasons.

This malicious user might exploit the ability to encrypt files to purposefully classify a file as low sensitivity while inserting highly sensitive data and then sharing it externally. As in the “mistake” scenario this will allow the file to pass the scanning of the DLP solution.

How does Microsoft Cloud App Security handle these risks?

Microsoft Cloud App Security has a wide set of tools targeted at handling insider threats. These include user behavior anomaly detections, cloud discovery anomaly detections, and the newly released ability to scan content of encrypted documents.

User anomaly detection

Microsoft Cloud App Security comes with a wide set of out-of-the-box anomaly detection policies that are activated by default as soon as the product is enabled. These detections look at the activities performed by users in sanctioned apps and define a usage baseline, leveraging UEBA capabilities to automatically identify any anomalous behaviors going forward.

An example of these types of detections, aimed at insider threats, is “Unusual file download activity by user”. This detection will create an alert whenever a user performs file downloads that differ from their usual pattern – a potential indicator of a data exfiltration attempt.

Cloud anomaly detection

In addition to the user anomaly detections for sanctioned apps, Cloud App Security also offers detections aimed at identifying suspicious behavior of users in unsanctioned applications. These detections are based on the data we get and analyze as part of our Cloud Discovery capabilities.

An example for such a detection is “Data exfiltration to unsanctioned apps”, which looks at the amount of data being uploaded by users to unsanctioned applications – one of the most common scenarios of insider threat data exfiltration.

Content inspection of encrypted files

We have recently released the ability for an admin to allow MCAS to scan the content of files that are protected by Azure Information Protection. After enabling this functionality, the admin can define MCAS file policies to inspect the content of encrypted files, and generate an alert, or take an action based on the match.

This functionality ensures that files are handled according to their actual content, even if they are labeled incorrectly; thus, preventing sensitive data from leaving the organization – both by mistake and by design.

Figure 2: Policy setting to allow Microsoft Cloud App Security to scan files protected with AIP

Human error and malicious intent will forever be a part of organizational lifecycles. While we cannot eliminate them completely, it’s our goal to enable IT and Security admins to minimize this risk. With our advanced capabilities and unique set of insights, Microsoft Cloud App Security and the wider Microsoft Information Protection offering help organizations to protect their sensitive information – wherever it lives or travels.

More info and feedback

Learn how to get started with Microsoft Cloud App Security with our detailed technical documentation. Don’t have Microsoft Cloud App Security? Start a free trial today!

As always, we want to hear from you! If you have any suggestions, questions, or comments, please visit us on our Tech Community page.

Learn more about Microsoft Information Protection.

Around 1997-98, a hack-and-slash game under the name Dragon Sword was in development for the Nintendo 64. Sadly, it was never completed, and players never got to see it as it was truly intended, but that might be about to change.

The game was originally being created by Team Storm at Interactive Studios, the team behind 1998 platformer, Glover), but unknown complications relating to its publisher meant that it never made it to store shelves. A beta of sorts was eventually released in 2010 thanks to an anonymous collector, shared online for those intrigued to experience the game at the point at which it had been abandoned, but its unfinished state and unresolved bugs meant that it was more of a novelty than a fully working game.

Now, though, Piko Interactive has confirmed that it has acquired the rights to the game along with its source code, hinting that it may well go on to finally finish the game’s development 20 years later. Piko Interactive has a history of restoring lost games, notably resurrecting another lost N64 title, 40 Winks, via Kickstarter just last year.

We could well see a similar crowdfunding campaign for this project in the near future – potentially being something for any eager retro fans to keep their beady eyes on. If you’re interested in rare or lost games and have fond memories of the N64 era, make sure to keep an eye out for this one.

The agenda will cover the latest developments to the DPDK framework and other related projects such as FD.io, Tungsten Fabric and OpenvSwitch, including plans for future releases by contributors, and will provide an opportunity to hear from DPDK users who have used the framework in their applications.

Learn more

Inside Xbox returns Tuesday, February 5 at 2 p.m. PT / 5 p.m. ET with an all-new episode featuring exclusive news, content, reveals, interviews and footage you won’t see anywhere else!

With the February 15 release of Crackdown 3 available with Xbox Game Pass and on Xbox One and Windows 10 PC, you can expect it to take center stage in the February episode of Inside Xbox. We’ll have Creative Director of Crackdown 3, Joseph Staten, on hand to divulge details on the game’s campaign mode and more.

And that’s just the start! We’ve got reveals and new info to share on Mortal Kombat 11, The Division 2, Sea of Thieves, Astroneer, Journey to the Savage Planet, Jump Force, Metro Exodus, and of course, Xbox Game Pass and bunch of news under lock and key so be sure to tune in on Tuesday, February 5.

You will find the show live on Mixer, Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. We want you to watch the show where you want to watch it, but we hope you’ll check us out on Mixer for some exclusive behind-the-scenes content and a super-top-secret MixPot that will give you free stuff just for logging in. We’ll have more details on these exciting (and did we mention free?!?) giveaways before the show airs, but if you don’t already have a Mixer account, now’s the perfect time to head over to our streaming service on your Xbox, PC or mobile device and get logged in with your Microsoft account so that you’re all set on show day.

Set your alarm for Tuesday, February 5 at 2 p.m PT / 5 p.m. ET. See you then!

The Trese Brothers should be considered a ‘house name’ in mobiles games – for years they’ve been quietly toiling away at their own series of inter-connected RPG and strategy games, from Star Traders Elite, to Turn-based strategy favourite Templar Battleforce. Other than some updates and regular sales they’ve been rather absent from our handheld screens of late, but for one astonishingly good reason: Star Traders: Frontiers.

For those not in the know, Star Traders: Frontiers is an open-world/sandbox style sci-fi RPG where you, as a ‘Star Trader’ and captain of your very own ship, must try to make a living in a hostile and unforgiving universe. It can be considered the spiritual (if not direct) sequel to the original Star Traders RPG released in 2011. You can customise your captain however you want in terms of looks and starting traits/stats which will effect what kind of playstyle to try and follow. There’s also a range of basic ship types to get you going, and more can be unlocked through playing.

Frontiers started life as a PC game (which enjoyed a successful Kickstarter), so this is a port of a title that’s been available on Steam since its Early Access launch in November 2017. The game launched into 1.0 in August last year, and since then has received countless free content updates big and small. It’s a state of affairs that will expand to include the mobile version, which is excellent for the game’s longevity on all platforms.

The sheer diversity within the game is its strongest asset. A key gameplay pillar is naturally trading – there are plenty of basic and lucrative trade goods to found all over the game’s world. Buy low, sell high and there are ratings available to give you an indication on how good the price is (although, don’t take it as bible – some of the lower rated goods can yield better profits if you find the right buyer). Beyond this, there’s variations on the trading game such as smuggling and black market trading and of course you could turn into a pirate and just steal everyone else’s goods. You can also ignore commerce completely and go down a more military-focused route, or even make a living chasing down rumours, exploring dangerous wildlands and fighting alien monstrosities.

Trading alone can quickly become a bit of a sterile experience, however, and doesn’t really achieve anything other than making money. You will start with an initial pool of contacts across a few factions (mainly your ‘home’ faction), which you can approach to ‘quests’ – missions that you vary by the type of contact and the type of mission you go for. Factions are always allying and fighting each other, even engaging in trade bans (which makes honest trading difficult), so the missions you will get asked to do will slot into these contexts. The more influence you gain with a contact the more bonuses they’ll net you, and some will even introduce you to further contacts, expanding your network and allowing you to earn reputation with more factions.

There are some light elements of strategy to this game, although it’s not really a full-blown ‘strategy’ RPG like Fire Emblem. You can engage in both space combat and ground combat – both are static affairs that involve you selecting abilities and actions in turn order, and simply pounding away at each other until one side folds or dies. In ship combat you can mount a wide array of weapons that work better at different distances, and you can even close in to board. You can equip your crew with various guns and melee weapons, with some jobs roles specialising in ground combat. It works well enough, although it reminds me of the Pokémon games at times – you’re walking (flying) around minding your own business and suddenly a trash-tier Pidgey (pirate) jumps you.

Coming to STF on mobile, especially having come from playing the PC version, has been a remarkably seamless transition. I’m impressed with how robust the experience is even playing it on a phone – the UI has been reduced in a way that still leaves the information accessible (more or less) but leaves plenty of real-estate free so you can see your ship and what’s around it as you travel through space.

But it’s easy to look at things through rose-tinted classes because Frontiers is such a good PC port, and a welcome breath of fresh air in the current app marketplaces. As a game it’s not without some faults. Like the original game, Frontiers’ openness can be almost intimidating – you’re not always sure what to do. Trying to learn everything on the fly, naturally, comes with some trial and error.

Another element of the game that’s both a boon and a curse, especially for new players, is how Frontiers’ game world is persistent. The factions are always interacting with each other around you, and major plot elements and the game ‘eras’ will progress whether you’re directly influencing the story or not. You’re quite quickly introduced to two ‘main’ plot threads you can follow from the off, which you can choose to ignore, but eventually they will expire.

This idea of being left behind can actually be quite stressful for someone learning the rope. Getting a quest done in time is one thing but failing a major quest because you’re trying to do everything in time AS WELL as explore and learn how the game works can be frustrating. It sometimes leads you into situations you’re not equipped to handle as well: Unlike other RPGs of this nature, the game doesn’t quite lead you along a progression curve that lets you meet each new ‘escalation’ on equal footing. Whiz through things too quickly and you may end up fighting an opponent you can’t win against. Whether you’re playing with permadeath or not, it can be a jarring set-back.

It’s great to exist in a persistent universe – one that has such a wealth of content to pull the player through, but it can get a bit overwhelming for a newcomer, and the game doesn’t inherently possess many systems to help deal with that. You either adapt, or you end up dying a lot – we recommend if you’re struggling to take a break and go read some gameplay guides and tips videos. Even just a little bit of ‘behind-the-scenes’ knowledge will help smooth over any gameplay wrinkles you’re encountering.

The Trese Brothers have come a long way since their earlier releases, but it’s great to see how their games keep getting better and better. Star Traders: Frontiers is a new pinnacle of not only their own personal work, but also of PC-to-mobile ports in general and an excellent edition to the roster of premium mobile games. If any of Frontiers’ traits appeals to you, then this is absolutely a must buy.

Treat your brain to these puzzle games for Puzzle Day!

Today is National Puzzle Day! That means folks are dedicating today to keeping their brain active and practicing its skills. Just like your body, the brain needs a good workout. Consider exercising your mind with some of these stimulating puzzle games.

Sushi Striker™: The Way of Sushido: Help Musashi end the Empire’s tyrannical monopoly of the world’s sushi supply by becoming a Sushi Striker! Devour conveyor-belt sushi, matching plates and sushi types to defeat any enemy or boss who stands between you and victory.

Captain Toad™: Treasure Tracker: Grab your pickaxe; Toad is ready for an adventure! Each world is a maze full of tricks and traps to solve on the way to treasure. You can go it alone or invite a friend to take the journey with you.

Donut County: Raccoons have taken over Donut County with remote-controlled trash-stealing holes. In this story-based physics puzzle game you play as BK, hole-driving raccoon who swallows up his friends and their homes. Meet cute characters, steal their trash, and throw them in a hole.

Pikuniku: Help peculiar characters overcome struggles, uncover a deep state conspiracy, and start a fun little revolution in this delightful dystopian adventure!

The Office Quest: Not all heroes wear capes… some prefer fluffy onesies. Trick your grumpy boss and annoying co-workers into letting you slip away! Look for the red light and use everything you’ve got to make your way out of the grey abyss called the office.

Grab Lab: Time travelling is a hoot… when your machine works. Solve increasingly problematic puzzles to rescue the professor’s friends. Spikes, saws, levers — it won’t be easy, but you’ve got this!

Pipe Push Paradise: Tap into your inner plumber with Pipe Push Paradise! In this challenging, plumbing puzzle paradise, you arrive on a lonely island faced with a hero’s calling. Rise to the occasion! Push pipes around to restore the island to its former glory.

Funghi Explosion: Take a lichen to these fun-guys! Clear the Funghi blocks by gather up three or more of the same kind to make them disappear. Whether you’re a beginner or a puzzle pro, there are a variety of modes for everyone!

Starman: Sometimes you need a game that’s short, sweet, and full of puzzles. Guide Starman through architectural sceneries and elaborate puzzles. Recover the light and bring life back!

For more puzzle games, be sure to visit https://www.nintendo.com/games/nintendo-switch-puzzle-games.

Games Shown: