4 min
IT Ops
Logs To Understand User Activity and Behavior
Logging user activity is a great way to understand what users are doing, and how
they are using network and computing resources. Collecting data from the
standpoint of a user identity or login is a great way to correlate all kinds of
information, too, including client or workstation activity, network and server
access, and application usage. This provides a unique opportunity to make use of
Logentries’
[https://logentries.com/centralize-log-data-automatically/?le_trial=user_activity_and_behav
6 min
IT Ops
The Value of Correlation IDs
In the old days when transactional behavior happened in a single domain, in
step-by-step procedures, keeping track of request/response behavior was a simple
undertaking. However, today one request to a particular domain can involve a
myriad of subsequent asynchronous requests from the starting domain to others.
For example, you send a request to Expedia, but behind the scenes Expedia is
forwarding your request as a message to a message broker. Then that message is
consumed by a hotel, airline
5 min
IT Ops
The Generosity of Thought: Caring and Sharing in the Open Source Community
I want to share something with you that is pretty amazing. But, before I do,
allow me to provide the backstory.
The Backstory
I’ve been using Open Source Software (OSS) for a while now. I started with the
big ones, Apache [http://apache.org/], Maven [http://maven.apache.org/], MySQL
[http://www.mysql.com/], etc…. But, as time went on and my work became more
specialized, I started using smaller projects. When you use the big projects
such as Maven and Apache, there’s a boatload of books, video
5 min
IT Ops
Solving the expression problem
If you look at any OO-based codebase of a nontrivial size, you’ll [hopefully]
find well understood behavior formalized and encapsulated through the effective
use of polymorphism- either via interfaces which decouple calling code from a
types’ implementation, or via sub typing to share code common to multiple types.
To take an example from a statically typed language like Java, let’s look at the
Map interface and a few of its implementations in the standard library:
A receiving method which
3 min
InsightOps
Announcing InsightOps - Pioneering Endpoint Visibility and Log Analytics
Our mission at Rapid7 is to solve complex security and IT challenges with
simple, innovative solutions. Late last year Logentries joined the Rapid7 family
to help to drive this mission. The Logentries technology itself had been
designed to reveal the power of log data to the world and had built a community
of 50,000 users on the foundations of our real time, easy to use yet powerful
log management and analytics engine.
Today we are excited to announce InsightOps, the next generation of Logentri
5 min
IT Ops
Node.js as a Proxy to Logentries.com
Logging from the client side of a web application can seem like a challenge.
The web browser exposes everything to the user. There is no way to hide
anything delivered to the client from prying eyes, including your log token to
your Logentries
[https://logentries.com/centralize-log-data-automatically/?le_trial=nodejs_as_a_proxy-logentries_blog-post_cta-create_trial&utm_campaign=nodejs_as_a_proxy&utm_source=logentries_blog&utm_medium=post_cta&utm_content=create_trial]
log. There is no relia
4 min
IT Ops
Goodbye to the VCR: Rewinding Down Memory Lane
The VHS tape was a thing of a magic that is alien in the world of on-demand
media. It represented a promise of entertainment. A promise only realized when
loading the tape into the player and pressing the play button. There was an air
of excitement around every video, and you could never be entirely certain about
what the video contained.
I was reminded of the mystique of the VCR just this month when I read about its
final demise. Funai Electric, the last major manufacturer of VCR players,
3 min
IT Ops
Widely-used Android App Leaks MS Exchange Credentials
In October, Rapid7 researchers
[https://community.rapid7.com/community/infosec/blog/2016/10/11/r7-2016-21-nine-folders-certificate-validation-vulnerability-cve-2016-2533]
uncovered a significant vulnerability in the Nine mobile application
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ninefolders.hd3&hl=en] for
Android. Baldly stated, this app leaks Microsoft Exchange user credentials, plus
mail envelopes and attachments, mailbox synchronization data, caleandar entries
and tasks to attac
3 min
IT Ops
Top 5 Questions from the October Walkthrough Webinar
The October Walkthrough Webinar was broadcasted & recorded on October 27th 2016.
This broadcast included a Logentries demonstration and live Q&A.
Below is a sample of some of the questions asked by the audience following the
demonstration. To try out the features mentioned below sign up for a Logentries
free trial [https://logentries.com/centralize-log-data-automatically].
1. “Can I control which logs certain users can see?”
Yes! Logentries supports the creation of multiple teams. Logen
3 min
IT Ops
Empowering Leexportpy with new services
In previous posts [/2016/07/05/introduction-to-leexportpy/] of this series, we
have gone through how leexportpy works, how it is configured and currently
supported services for transforming and pushing Logentries Query API
[https://docs.logentries.com/docs/query-api] data to other systems. When it
comes to creating a new service for leexportpy, the core of leexportpy is quite
dynamic and flexible. Placing your new service file that conforms to the
requirements [https://github.com/rapid7/leexp
4 min
IT Ops
Overview of 'online' algorithm using Standard Deviation example
Here at Logentries
[https://logentries.com/centralize-log-data-automatically/?le_trial=online_algorithm-logentries_blog-post_cta-create_trial&utm_campaign=online_algorithm&utm_source=logentries_blog&utm_medium=post_cta&utm_content=create_trial]
we are constantly adding to the options for analysing log generated data. The
query language ‘LEQL’
[https://logentries.com/resources/how-to-videos/building-a-query/] has a number
of statistical functions and a recent addition has been the new Standard
5 min
IT Ops
Logging OwnTracks to Logentries
A previous blog
[/2016/10/07/logging-mosquitto-server-logs-from-raspberry-pi-to-logentries/]
showed how MQTT logs can be sent to Logentries for storage, analysis and how
those logs can be to alert on potential MQTT security threats, as well as to
store and visualize sensor data. This blog follows that by showing how to build
a fully connected IoT system composed of the OwnTracks iOS app as an MQTT
publisher, a Raspberry Pi with Mosquitto embedded as an MQTT messaging broker
and Logentries as
5 min
IT Ops
Logging Mosquitto Server logs (from Raspberry Pi) to Logentries
The Internet is evolving and part of this is the emerging Internet of Things
(IoT). IoT allows us to use the Internet to seamlessly connect the cyberspace
and real world using physical sensors at huge scale, allowing us to gather and
analyze the data across many domains. It is estimated that there will be 20
billion Things connected to the Internet by 2020, generating an enormous amount
of data.
A previous blog post
[/2016/05/17/raspberry-pi-logs-and-iot-sending-pi-log-and-sensor-data-to-loge
4 min
IT Ops
Using Event and Log Data to Assure Security and Compliance
All the way back in 2007, security industry analyst and expert Dr. Larry Ponemon
of the eponymous institute wrote for Network World
[https://web.archive.org/web/20080820033845/http:/www.networkworld.com/news/2007/051507-data-breaches.html]
that “data breaches are a pervasive problem for most organizations in the United
States today.” Nobody is prepared to argue that this situation has improved
much, if at all, 9 years later in 2016. However, those organizations that exert
themselves to make t
5 min
IT Ops
Moving away from MVC
In of all my years as a software engineer, trying new libraries, frameworks and
paradigms has been such a pleasure especially in web development. Even before
the well known javascript libraries, web development was based on backend apps
which render heavy html code within css and some js code. Frameworks such as
spring, .NET MVC, django and rails helped us with abstractions and predone tasks
increasing development speed and quality (reuse principles). But, it was not
enough. Apps were getting