Security Notification and Linode Manager Password Reset

January 5, 2016 1:53 pm

Effective immediately, Linode Manager passwords have been expired. You will be prompted to set a new password on your next login. We regret this inconvenience, however this is a necessary precaution.

A security investigation into the unauthorized login of three accounts has led us to the discovery of two Linode.com user credentials on an external machine. This implies user credentials could have been read from our database, either offline or on, at some point. The user table contains usernames, email addresses, securely hashed passwords and encrypted two-factor seeds. The resetting of your password will invalidate the old credentials.

This may have contributed to the unauthorized access of the three Linode customer accounts mentioned above, which were logged into via manager.linode.com. The affected customers were notified immediately. We have found no other evidence of access to Linode infrastructure, including host machines and virtual machine data.

The entire Linode team has been working around the clock to address both this issue and the ongoing DDoS attacks. We’ve retained a well-known third-party security firm to aid in our investigation. Multiple Federal law enforcement authorities are also investigating and have cases open for both issues. When the thorough investigation is complete, we will share an update on the findings.

You may be wondering if the same person or group is behind these malicious acts. We are wondering the same thing. At this point we have no information about who is behind either issue. We have not been contacted by anyone taking accountability or making demands. The acts may be related and they may not be.

The security of your data, the functionality of your servers, and your confidence in Linode are extremely important to all of us. While we feel victimized ourselves, we understand it is our responsibility, and our privilege as your host, to provide the best possible security and service. You can help further enhance the security of your account by always using strong passwords, enabling two-factor authentication, and never using the same password at multiple services.

We sincerely apologize for the recent disruptions in your Linode service. Thank you for your patience, understanding and ongoing trust in Linode.

Upcoming Events

September 4, 2015 3:25 pm

Check out where we’ll be over the next few months. Find us at any of these events to talk to our team and get your hands on Linode swag and credit!

PennApps XII
Philadelphia, PA | September 4-6pennapps

PennApps XII is going to be bigger and better than ever! It’s taking place at the Wells Fargo Center (that’s right, they rented out a professional sports arena) over Labor Day weekend. You can expect a record-setting 2,000 attendees. Our mentors will be on site for the duration with exclusive swag that you can’t find ANYWHERE ELSE. Use Linode for your projects and each member of your team could win a Samsung Galaxy Tablet!


MHacks 6
Ann Arbor, MI | September 11-13
mhacks6
We’re thrilled to be a part of MHacks this year! We are sending several mentors to the University of Michigan. They will be hanging out all weekend, doling out tons of advice and Linode swag. Stop by our booth and enter to win a Moto 360 Smartwatch!


Hack the North
Waterloo, ON, Canada | September 18-20
hackthenorth
We are sending our mentors across the border for Hack the North in September. They’ll be hanging out all weekend, helping with projects and spreading good vibes and swag.


PuppetLabs & Linode Meetup
Philadelphia, PA | September 29
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On September 29th at Industrious Philly (203 S. Broad St.), Jeremiah Sullivan from PuppetLabs will be giving a high-level talk about Puppet Enterprises along with a demo using Linode servers. Come by to grab some free beer and snacks and hang out to network and ask Jeremiah any questions you may have. RSVP on our meetup page: http://bit.ly/1hHkB98


Asbury Agile
Asbury Park, NJ | October 2
asburyagile
We’re glad to be a part of Asbury Agile this year! Asbury Agile is an informal conference intended for web professionals and students. We’ll be there to talk cloud hosting and attend sessions. Hope to see you there!


HackRU IX
New Brunswick, NJ | October 3-4
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We are heading to New Brunswick again this year for HackRU. Come by the Linode table to chat with our mentors and see how Linode can power your projects.


New England DrupalCamp
Providence, RI | October 10
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Join us on October 10th for New England DrupalCamp in Providence, RI! Our team will be there, giving away Linode goodies and answering all your cloud-hosting questions.


Central PA Open Source Conference (CPOSC)
Lancaster, PA | October 17
CPOSC
We’re heading to Lancaster for the Central PA Open Source Conference. It starts at 8 a.m. and we’ll be there all day. See you there!


HackingEDU
San Francisco, CA | October 23-25
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Join us in San Francisco for the World’s Largest Education Hackathon! With over 1,000 attendees, this 36-hour hackathon will be one to remember. As always, our mentors will be on site, hanging out and sharing technical advice.

hacknjit
HackNJIT | Newark, NJ | November 7-8
HackNJIT is a 24-hour hackathon running November 7-8th at NJIT in Newark, NJ. This is our first year sponsoring and we can’t wait to see all of the projects.


HackPrinceton | Princeton, NJ | November 13-15hp-orange
We are very excited to return for HackPrinceton again this year. In November, we will spend 36 hours working with all of the hackers on their sure-to-be-amazing projects. We will also have a prize on hand for “Best Use of Linode Services,” so make sure to stop by and get some Linode credit for your project!


Philly Codefest | Philadelphia, PA | February 20-21phillycodefest
We will be finishing up our hackathon tour at Philly Codefest, February 20-21. Hosted by Drexel University, this hackathon will draw in hundreds of students to participate. We will be sending mentors and even hosting a side event prior to the hackathon, so stay tuned for details.

 

 

Introducing Linodes in Frankfurt!

August 3, 2015 9:57 am

Achtung baby! Linodes in Deutschland!

grmcloud-300x300We’re excited to announce our newest European datacenter located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany! This new facility will better serve the growing tech communities in Germany, greater Europe, and surrounding areas.

This marks our eighth datacenter worldwide, and complements our other Europe-based datacenter in London. Both our Frankfurt and London deployments are located in TelecityGroup facilities.

Frankfurt is an important financial and Internet hub for Europe, with a third of Europe’s Internet traffic going through it. Frankfurt is home to DE-CIX, the largest Internet exchange in the world in terms of traffic. DE-CIX will no doubt provide abundant peering access opportunities for us, over time.

Linode customers can now be compliant with Germany’s Federal Data Protection Act (a.k.a., Bundesdatenschutzgesetz or BDSG) by hosting their data on German soil.

Frankfurt supports all Linode features and services, and same great hardware including datacenter-grade SSD storage, E5-2680v3 CPUs, DDR4 ECC SDRAM, full-stack redundant networking and 40 GbE to each hypervisor host. Linode Frankfurt is KVM only.

Now is the time when we dance.

Check out our speedtest, or go straight into the Linode Manager to add a Frankfurt Linode!

Enjoy!

Linode turns 12! Here’s some KVM!

June 16, 2015 12:01 pm
Happy 12th birthday to us!

Welp, time keeps on slippin’ into the future, and we find ourselves turning 12 years old today. To celebrate, we’re kicking off the next phase of Linode’s transition from Xen to KVM by making KVM Linodes generally available, starting today.

Better performance, versatility, and faster booting

Using identical hardware, KVM Linodes are much faster compared to Xen. For example, in our UnixBench testing a KVM Linode scored 3x better than a Xen Linode. During a kernel compile, a KVM Linode completed 28% faster compared to a Xen Linode. KVM has much less overhead than Xen, so now you will get the most out of our investment in high-end processors.

KVM Linodes are, by default, paravirtualized, supporting the Virtio disk and network drivers. However, we also now support fully virtualized guests – which means you can run alternative operating systems like FreeBSD, BSD, Plan 9, or even Windows – using emulated hardware (PIIX IDE and e1000). We’re also working on a graphical console (GISH?) which should be out in the next few weeks.

In a recent study of VM creation and SSH accessibility times performed by Cloud 66, Linode did well. The average Linode ‘create, boot, and SSH availability’ time was 57 seconds. KVM Linodes boot much faster – we’re seeing them take just a few seconds.

How do I upgrade a Linode from Xen to KVM?

On a Xen Linode’s dashboard, you will see an “Upgrade to KVM” link on the right sidebar. It’s a one-click migration to upgrade your Linode to KVM from there. Essentially, our KVM upgrade means you get a much faster Linode just by clicking a button.

How do I set my account to default to KVM for new stuff?

In your Account Settings you can set ‘Hypervisor Preference’ to KVM. After that, any new Linodes you create will be KVM.

What will happen to Xen Linodes?

New customers and new Linodes will, by default, still get Xen. Xen will cease being the default in the next few weeks. Eventually we will transition all Xen Linodes over to KVM, however this is likely to take quite a while. Don’t sweat it.

On behalf of the entire Linode team, thank you for the past 12 years and here’s to another 12! Enjoy!

-Chris

Fedora 22

May 28, 2015 11:18 am

Fedora 22 was released publicly Tuesday, and is now available for deployment in the Linode Manager! Fedora 22 boasts several improvements over the previous version including:

– Improved built-in Docker and Vagrant support
– Python 3 as  the default implementation
– Django 1.8, now available from the repositories
– Ruby 2.2 and Rails 4.2
– DNF package manager, a replacement for yum (yum is still available). You can read more about DNF here or here.

The full release notes are available here. Fedora 21 will continue to receive updates, while Fedora 20 will reach EOL on June 26th.

To deploy Fedora 22 on a new Linode, simply select it from the drop down menu under “Image.” You can also upgrade your existing Linodes running Fedora 21 to the newest version using the fedora-upgrade tool.

VENOM (CVE-2015-3456) Vulnerability and Linode

May 13, 2015 2:21 pm

A new security advisory, CVE-2015-3456 called VENOM (Virtualized Environment Neglected Operations Manipulation), was released today. Our Security Team has thoroughly reviewed this vulnerability and we wanted to take a moment to reassure Linode customers that this vulnerability does not affect any part of the Linode infrastructure and no action is required on your part.

What is VENOM?

VENOM is a security vulnerability that exploits virtual floppy drive code in QEMU that emulates a floppy disk controller. On certain platforms, this code can be exploited which allows attackers to escape from a Virtual Machine guest and gain privileged access to the host.

Why is Linode not affected?

In XSA-133, which is the Xen Security Advisory that provides details related to this vulnerability, it states that “Systems running only x86 PV guests are not vulnerable”. This vulnerability applies to QEMU guests on KVM and XEN HVM Guests. Linode only uses XEN PV guests which are not affected by this vulnerability. Specifically, XEN PV guests do not require the use of QEMU.

What do I need to do?

Fortunately, nothing needs to be done at this time to your Linode. The Linode Security Team constantly monitors all CVE’s and XSA’s to ensure that our internal infrastructure and customer Linode’s are as secure as possible.

Upcoming Conferences 2015

May 1, 2015 1:57 pm

Linode is making the rounds on the conference circuit! Check out where we’re going over the next few months.

angelhacklogo
Angelhack
Austin | Austin, TX | May 9-10
Brooklyn | Brooklyn, NY | June 6-7
Los Angeles | Los Angeles, CA | June 6-7

We’re sending our mentors all over the U.S. for Angelhack. Angelhack is a 24-hour hackathon where developers of all ages and skill levels go to create awesomeness. It’s open to the public, so check out their website for more details and to buy tickets: www.angelhack.com/events


DrupalCon_NA2015_LosAngeles
DrupalCon LA | Los Angeles, CA | May 11-15
This year’s DrupalCon is in Los Angeles so we’re packing our bags and heading to the west coast. If you’re attending, stop by booth #209 to meet our team and talk about what you can do with Linode.


Velocitylogo
Velocity | Santa Clara, CA | May 27-29
With amazing topics and incredible speakers, Velocity 2015 is shaping up to be one to remember. Our team will be hanging out at Booth #401 loaded with tons of Linode goodies.


logo_lcna
LinuxCon North America | Seattle, WA | August 17-19
We are thrilled to be part of LinuxCon North America this year! There will be over 100 sessions and we can’t wait to connect with all of the Linux pros in attendance. Stop by our booth for Linode swag PLUS credit towards your new account.


fossconlogo
FOSSCON | Philadelphia, PA | August 22
FOSSCON is a free-and-open-source software conference held in Philadelphia. Our team will be there, prepped and ready to talk cloud hosting with you.

Linode Is Holding Its First Job Fair!

April 29, 2015 3:03 pm

On May 7th and 8th, Linode will be hosting a job fair at our Kings Hall location in Haddonfield, NJ (literally, minutes outside of Philadelphia). We aim to hire as many as 10 Customer Support personnel immediately, with a goal of an additional 25 by year end.

Who are we looking for? People with a passion for Linux, who have the ability to troubleshoot problems, and have a strong desire to help our customers. Customer Support has the most contact with our customers, so we have high standards for this position. You must be able to write well, converse professionally on the phone, and, as Rudyard Kipling sagely advised,”keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.”

What’ll make you really stand out? If you’ve got experience with technologies and topics like firewalls, iptable rules, DNS, Apache, nginx, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Postfix, BIND, Perl, Python, Bash, etc, etc. — you get the idea.

But if you don’t know all of these, don’t despair. We hire for cultural fit, social skills, technical aptitude and a solid work ethic. We’re committed to training and developing the people we hire.

And there’s the impact you can have. Other companies offer you the opportunity to fill a role; Linode offers you the chance to make a difference.

Of course we offer great benefits — health and dental insurance, a generous supply of paid time off (including to help a favored charity), MacBook Pro computers for everyone to use, weekly catered lunches, plenty of cool swag, social outings, conference attendance, etc.

The job fair runs from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Thursday, May 7th and Friday, May 8th at Kings Hall, 2 Kings Highway West, Haddonfield, NJ 08333. There’s parking in the area and a PATCO high-speed line station is within walking distance.

Find more Job Fair information at www.linode.com/events. Find more Linode career information at www.linode.com/careers. Find Kings Hall information at kingshallnj.com.

Singapore Linodes are now available!

April 27, 2015 10:04 am

SingaporeWe’re very excited to announce the opening of our newest datacenter in Singapore! This marks Linode’s seventh datacenter, and is purpose-built to serve the already huge and growing markets in Southeast Asia, India, Australia, and surrounding regions.

We’ve spent the majority of the past few months working on getting great connectivity to the Internet. Our Singapore network is powered by Cisco ASR 9000-series routers, and currently blends transit from Telstra/Pacnet and PCCW, along with direct peering into the Equinix Internet Exchange (EIE) – providing us with access to hundreds of peering opportunities. Check out our Speedtest page to test latency and download speeds.

Singapore supports all of the standard Linode features available in all of our datacenters – like 40 Gbps redundant connectivity to each hypervisor host machine, the Linode Backup service, NodeBalancers, native IPv6, etc – and is the same simple pricing as our other datacenters. Try Singapore now!

We’re also hard at work on other great news. Stay tuned!

Enjoy!

The GHOST Vulnerability

January 28, 2015 6:57 pm

Heads up everybody – a Linux vulnerability known as GHOST (CVE-2015-0235), discovered by Qualys, has recently been publicized. This particular vulnerability is a nasty one, since it allows for remote code execution.

The vulnerability has been exhaustively documented in this Security Advisory, which you may find interesting. In short, the vulnerability exists within glibc in __ns_hostname_digits_dots(), which deals with hostname resolution via the gethostbyname() call.

Am I Vulnerable?

Yes, most likely. In order to address this, you’ll want to ensure that you have updated and rebooted your systems.

Debian and Ubuntu have updated packages for their supported distributions. Run apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade to bring your system up to date, and then reboot to ensure no references to the old libraries still exist.

For other popular distributions, please follow their equivalent steps for upgrading packages.  For more information, you can follow our GHOST guide.

Is Linode Infrastructure vulnerable?

No. Our Security Team has worked to protect our infrastructure from this vulnerability and we have taken the appropriate steps to address this issue on all of our systems.