Tapping network traffic in Kubernetes

The rapid increase in cloud usage among organizations has led to a shift in the cybersecurity industry. Whereas before, organizations wanted traditional security monitoring using statically placed IDS sensors within their data centers and networks, they now want dynamic security monitoring of their cloud solutions. As more and more organizations move their infrastructure and applications to the cloud the need for cybersecurity solutions that can adapt and transform to meet this new demand is increasing. Although many cloud providers, provide integrated security solutions, these are dependent on the correct configuration from the customers, which may rather want to pay a security firm instead. Telenor Security Operation Center is a long contender in the traditional cybersecurity firm space and is looking to move into IDS monitoring of cloud solutions, more specifically providing network IDS monitoring of traffic within managed Kubernetes clusters at cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services Elastic Kubernetes Service. This is to be accomplished by providing all the desired pods within a cluster their own sidecar container, which acts as a network sniffer that sends the recorded traffic through vxlan to an external sensor also operating in the cloud. By doing this, traditional IDS monitoring suddenly becomes available in the cloud, and is covering a part that is often neglected in cloud environments, and that is monitoring the internal Kubernetes cluster traffic. AWS EKS was used as a testing ground for a simulated Kubernetes cluster running sample applications monitored by the sidecar container. Which is essentially a Python script sniffing the localhost traffic of the shared network namespace of a Kubernetes pod. This infrastructure will be generated by a set of Terraform files for automated setup and reproducibility, as well as making use of the gitops tool Fluxcd for syncing Kubernetes manifests. The solution will also be monitored by a complete monitoring solution in the form of kube-prometheus-stack which will provide complete insight into performance metrics down at the container level, through Prometheus and Grafana. Finally, a series of performance tests will be conducted, using k6s and iperf, automated by Ansible, to gather the performance impact of the sidecar container. A series of iperf and k6s tests were conducted against the sidecar container. The k6s test was run at a data rate of 3 Mb/s and showed that the data rate needed to be higher to gather useful performance metrics. This is where iperf took over and tested the sidecar container at data rates of 50,100,250 and 500 Mb/s using a server at the University of Agder as base. These initial raw performance results showed a max CPU usage of 11.8% of the Kubernetes node’s 2 vCPU’s. Together with a max memory usage of 14 MB this showed that the sidecar container does not consume a vast amount of resources. And has the potential as a scalable and efficient network tapping method in Kubernetes. However, some anomalies were discovered during the performance testing that revealed undiscovered issues with the method. One of which was packet anomalies between the number of packets at the sensor and the number of packets observed by the iperf server at the University of Agder. Due to the many layers involved in the networking stack for this method, there needs to be conducted additional research into how these anomalies arise. While also considering alternative transport methods to vxlan

Stevin numbers and reality

We explore the potential of Simon Stevin's numbers, obscured by shifting foundational biases and by 19th century developments in the arithmetisation of analysis.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1104.0375, arXiv:1108.2885, arXiv:1108.420

Level Eulerian Posets

The notion of level posets is introduced. This class of infinite posets has the property that between every two adjacent ranks the same bipartite graph occurs. When the adjacency matrix is indecomposable, we determine the length of the longest interval one needs to check to verify Eulerianness. Furthermore, we show that every level Eulerian poset associated to an indecomposable matrix has even order. A condition for verifying shellability is introduced and is automated using the algebra of walks. Applying the Skolem--Mahler--Lech theorem, the ${\bf ab}$-series of a level poset is shown to be a rational generating function in the non-commutative variables ${\bf a}$ and ${\bf b}$. In the case the poset is also Eulerian, the analogous result holds for the ${\bf cd}$-series. Using coalgebraic techniques a method is developed to recognize the ${\bf cd}$-series matrix of a level Eulerian poset

Biosynthesis and characterization of Ti-doped silica-based Nanostructures formed by the Diatoms Pinnularia sp. and Coscinodiscus wailesii

The metabolic insertion of titanium into the biosilica frustules of the pennate diatom Pinnularia sp. and the centric diatom Coscinodiscus wailesii was explored in the present study. A total of five titanium incorporation experiments were conducted on Pinnularia, in addition to five control experiments. Titanium dissolved in HCl was co-delivered with silicate dissolved in NaOH to silicate replete and silicate deplete Pinnularia cultures over a 10 hour delivery period. Cell number, silicate and titanium concentration, Quantum Yield, Instantaneous Chlorophyll Fluorescence and pH was measured regularly throughout the experiments. The diatoms were left to consume the delivered silicate/titanium for 62 hours after delivery was completed before they were harvested and rinsed to remove the organic material. The resulting biosilica frustules were analyzed with (Scanning) Transmission Electron Microscopy to investigate the frustule structure, Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry to measure the elemental composition of the frustules and Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy to determine the location of the elements in the frustules. Quantum Yield measurements were conducted to obtain information about the Pinnularia photo system condition, and high Quantum Yield values were interpreted as an indication of a good overall physiological state of the cell. It was found that a combination of high Quantum Yield values and silicate depleted cultures produced the highest titanium content in the Pinnularia frustules (1.3 wt% relative to silicon). Furthermore, EDS analysis revealed that titanium was not evenly distributed throughout the biosilica frustule. The relative titanium content in the Pinnularia frustules was higher in the biosilica at the base of the large pores covering the frustule surface than in the biosilica between the pores. This was in accordance with findings reported in literature. The observed inhomogeneous distribution trend was found to apply also to phosphorous and iron present in the titanium-doped frustules. This observation has not been previously reported.Cell aggregation of the Pinnularia cultures was observed upon silicate/titanium addition. Based on results from control experiments there was reason to believe that the aggregation was triggered by titanium, but the explanation for this cellular response as well as its effect on titanium uptake and incorporation was not determined. Three titanium incorporation experiments were conducted in the proof on concept study on Coscinodiscus . Titanium dissolved in HCl and silicate dissolved in NaOH was co-delivered with a pipette once a day for three, five and seven days. On the day following the final addition, the diatoms were harvested and rinsed before they were analyzed in the same manner as Pinnularia. The experiments on Coscinodiscus revealed that metabolic insertion of titanium into the frustule biosilica was possible, but due to the small maximal titanium content achieved (0.03 wt% relative to silicon) and the slow growth rate, Coscinodiscus was not considered an optimal choice of diatom species for titanium incorporation purposes.It was not possible to rule out whether the frustule structure in any of the two species had been altered or impaired as a consequence of titanium exposure. Structural flaws were observed in frustules with and without titanium incorporated. A faint irregular pattern on the nanoscale was observed in Pinnularia frustules containing titanium. No such pattern was observed in titanium free frustules.The amount of boron measured in the frustule biosilica was higher than the regular dopant concentration in boron-doped silicon. The boron content in Pinnularia was found to be on average 0.1 wt% or 0.28 atomic % relative to Si, while the average in Coscinodiscus was nearly twice as high. Without further manipulation, this high boron natural boron concentration makes diatom frustules unusable for doped semiconductor purposes.Future work should involve reproduction of the obtained results with more replicates, as well as larger culture volumes and, in the case of Coscinodiscus in particular, longer time scale. Titanium uptake and incorporation studies should if possible be performed on single Coscinodiscus cells. Multiple continuous silicate starvation and titanium/silicate delivery cycles should be tested to determine if it is possible to incorporate titanium into a larger fraction of the culture population, as well as to increase the maximum amount of titanium incorporated into one frustule.Aggregation of Pinnularia diatoms should be further investigated to determine reason for the observed reaction, the effects on titanium uptake/incorporation and possible strategies to prevent it from occurring. Pinnularia frustules unexposed to titanium should be inspected in order to determine if the iron and phosphorous distribution pattern observed in the titanium-doped frustules is present in titanium-free frustules as well.A completely artificial culture medium and plastic cultivation containers should be applied to explore how the boron content of diatom frustules can be tailored by controlled delivery of boron to the culture medium

Ten Misconceptions from the History of Analysis and Their Debunking

The widespread idea that infinitesimals were "eliminated" by the "great triumvirate" of Cantor, Dedekind, and Weierstrass is refuted by an uninterrupted chain of work on infinitesimal-enriched number systems. The elimination claim is an oversimplification created by triumvirate followers, who tend to view the history of analysis as a pre-ordained march toward the radiant future of Weierstrassian epsilontics. In the present text, we document distortions of the history of analysis stemming from the triumvirate ideology of ontological minimalism, which identified the continuum with a single number system. Such anachronistic distortions characterize the received interpretation of Stevin, Leibniz, d'Alembert, Cauchy, and others.Comment: 46 pages, 4 figures; Foundations of Science (2012). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1108.2885 and arXiv:1110.545

From Intention to Action: How Ecolabels Influence Green Purchase Behavior in Household Cleaning Products

Det er vidt anerkjent at for å forbedre miljøvennlig bærekraft på planeten, så må vi ta tak i bærekraftig forbruk. Den økonomiske veksten og økende urbaniseringen de siste tiårene har ført til en trend med enestående forbruk som hindrer bærekraftig utvikling (Ghali-Zinoubi, 2020). En mulig måte å redusere den skadelige miljøpåvirkningen fra forbruk på, er gjennom mer bevisst valg av hverdagsprodukter. Dette kan gjøres gjennom kjøp av varer som er miljømerket. Imidlertid så er det begrenset med forskning på faktorene som påvirker kjøp av miljømerkede varer. Formålet med denne studien er å identifisere hvilke psykologiske og kontekstuelle faktorer som kan påvirke kjøp av miljømerkede produkter, spesielt innen kategorien husholdning og rengjøringsartikler. Metoden benyttet for å oppnå dette målet er en kvantitativ studie basert på eksisterende forskning på bærekraftig konsum. Data ble innhentet gjennom en spørreundersøkelse fra et tilfeldig utvalg. Det foreslåtte teoretiske rammeverket samt hypotesene er testet gjennom regresjonsanalyse. Resultatene viser at miljøbevissthet og kjennskap til miljømerker er betydelige drivere for intensjon om bærekraftig forbruk. Dette antyder videre at intensjonen fører til faktisk kjøp av miljømerkede produkter. Selv om tillit til miljømerker spiller en viktig rolle i beslutningsprosessen, indikerer resultatene at bekymring for miljøet har en større betydning enn sensitivitet til pris. Funnene tyder på at økt kunnskap om miljømerker og miljøforringelse kan forbedre bærekraften i forbrukeres kjøpsatferd. Videre bør produsenter av miljømerkede produkter kommunisere sin verdiskapning og reduserte miljøpåvirkning, samt øke gjenkjennelsen av miljømerker blant forbrukere

A Cauchy-Dirac delta function

The Dirac delta function has solid roots in 19th century work in Fourier analysis and singular integrals by Cauchy and others, anticipating Dirac's discovery by over a century, and illuminating the nature of Cauchy's infinitesimals and his infinitesimal definition of delta.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures; Foundations of Science, 201