stdout (Blog) - Raju Alluri

Brave Browser

Raju Alluri 0 Comment Security, Technical

Started using Brave browser recently. I am quite impressed with the security features. Now a days it is my browser of choice for reading several news and entertainment sites. It limits the eye-catching distractions that are otherwise irksome.

I like the way shields work and I often control the security settings either at global level or for each page. Brave browser is now part of my standard install on desktop clients.

Cricket World Cup 2019 Standings

23 Jun

Raju Alluri 0 Comment Entertainment, Misc, Sports

Now that we have two-thirds of the league matches (30 out of 45) of Cricket World Cup 2019 completed, interesting patterns emerge for the teams. Here are the standings of the teams as of today.

Cricket world cup 2019 standings at the end of 30 league matches.

New Zealand and Australia are relatively well placed and can enter semifinals with one win or with a no-result or two forced by rain.
India are also well positioned, needing a couple of wins from four matches (or one win and few other scenarios for other teams). Given that they are yet to play with two teams that are below them in the points table as of today, they should have no issue sailing thru to semifinals.
England are in an interesting situation. They have to play three more league matches. All these three matches are with teams that are leading ahead of them in the points table. If they manage to win only one of those three matches, then their situation becomes tricky. Points won by other teams might play a vital role in deciding their semi-final berth. In such a situation, their Net Run Rate which is the best in the table so far should come handy.
Sri Lanka bounced back well in their last match. Two more wins would put them in a good position. Winning all three remaining matches would get them a berth.
Bangladesh showed one of the best spirits in the tournament so far. They also need three wins to get to final four.
Pakistan did very well against South Africa and England so far. They could put themselves in the last four if they win all the three remaining matches. If they repeat the 1992-ish feat, then we may as well see a IND vs PAK semi-final or final.
West Indies need to win all the three matches and pray that no other team gets to 9 points. That might be next to impossible.
South Africa and Afghanistan are already out of the race. But they might impact the prospects of other teams in the next couple of weeks.

I am personally wishing for an IND vs ENG or IND vs NZ final.

Linux Kernel Session at SRKR Engineering College

06 Mar

Raju Alluri 0 Comment Education, Technical, Unix/Linux

On Tuesday, 06th March, I delivered a session on Linux Kernel Architecture at CSE department of SRKR Engineering College, Bhimavaram. The session’s goal is to introduce various subsystems of Linux Kernel and how they work together to deliver a flexible and robust operating system. Here are a few pictures from the event.

Slides used in the linux kernel session are here in the classes page.

à°•à±Šà°¤à±à°¤ à°•à°¥ 2017

04 May

Raju Alluri 0 Comment Entertainment, Literature, Telugu

à°¬à±à°°à°¦à°°à± à°†à°«à± à°¬à°‚à°—à°¾à°°à°¿ – “à°°à°¾à°¤à±à°°à°¿ à°¸à°‚à°¸à°¾à°°à°¾à°¨à°¿à°•à°¿ à°†à°¨à°µà°¾à°³à±à°³à± à°²à±‡à°µà°¨à°¿ à°¨à°®à±à°®à°•à°‚ à°•à°²à°¿à°—à°¾à°•”
à°’à°• à°œà±€à°µà°¿à°¤à°‚… à°°à±†à°‚à°¡à± à°•à°²à°²à±… – “à°•à°³à±à°³à°¤à±‹ à°¨à°µà±à°µà°¿à°¨ à°°à°œà°¨à±€à°—à°‚à°§à°¨à°¿ à°ªà±†à°¦à°µà±à°²à°¤à±‹ à°¨à°µà±à°µà°¿ à°ªà°²à°•à°°à°¿à°‚à°šà°¿”
à°šà±à°¨à±à°¨à±€ – “à°¶à°°à±€à°°à°¾à°¨à°¿à°•à°¿ à°®à±à°–à°‚ à°‰à°‚à°Ÿà±‡à°¨à±‡ à°®à°šà±à°š”, “à°…à°‚à°¦à±à°•à±‡ à°†à°®à±† à°šà±à°¨à±à°¨à±€à°¨à°¿ à°°à±€à°‡à°¨à±à°µà±†à°‚à°Ÿà± à°šà±‡à°¸à°¿à°‚à°¦à°¿”
à°•à±ƒà°·à±à°£ à°¶à±‹à°§ – “à°†à°²à°¸à±à°¯à°®à°¯à°¿à°¤à±‡à°¨à±‡à°‚, à°…à°®à±ƒà°¤à°‚ à°…à°¯à°¿à°¨à°ªà±à°ªà±à°¡à±”
à°®à°Ÿà±à°Ÿà°¿ à°—à±‹à°¡à°²à± – “à°“ à°ªà°•à±à°·à°‚ à°°à±‹à°œà±à°²à± à°…à°²à±à°²à°°à±ˆà°¨à°¾ à°—à°¾à°¨à±€ à°ªà±à°°à°œà°¾à°¸à±à°µà°¾à°®à±à°¯à°®à±‡ à°—à±†à°²à°¿à°šà°¿à°‚à°¦à°¿. à°ªà±à°°à°œà°²à± à°“à°¡à°¿à°ªà±‹à°¯à°¾à°°à±”

Bahubali and The Lion King Resemblance

26 Apr

Raju Alluri 1 Comment Brain Dump, Entertainment, Movies

There are very few stories. It is the storytelling that counts.

The above statement is very true for movies. I have been a big fan of Disney’s The Lion King. The storyline of Bahubali has a strong resemblance to that of The Lion King, even though the storytelling takes a completely different route and takes gigantic proportions.

Storyline	Bahubali	Lion King
The Good King	Amarendra Bahubali is the good king that is refused the throne and eventually gets killed	King Mufasa is the good king that gets killed
The Bad Brother	It is the King’s antagonist brother Bhallaladeva that mastermindsÂ the killing of Amarendra Bahubali	It is the King’s antagonist brother Scar that plans the killingÂ of Mufasa
The Captive Queen	Devasena is held captive in Maahishmati by Bhallaladeva	Sarabi is forced to hunt for Scar and the hyenas, resembling slavery
The Kingdom	Maahishmati: People are sick and tired of Bhallaladeva’s cruel rule	The Pride Lands: The herds and packs are starving and shrinking under Scar’s inept and cruel rule
The Far Away Prince	Mahendra Bahubali grows up in a remote place without realizing that he is the prince of Maahishmati Kingdom	Simba runs away and grows up in a remote place without acknowledging his princehood
Prince Returns forÂ Love Interest	Mahendra Bahubali searches for his eventual love interest Avanthika and returns to Maahishmati to fulfill her task of freeing Devasena	Simba meets his friend and eventual love interest Nala and that leads to his return to the Pride LandsÂ and freeing of Sarabi
TheÂ Lookalikes	Mahendra Bahubali’s resemblance to Amarendra Bahubali is the key factor in the story that leads to many scenes with Bhallaladeva, Devasena and Kattappa (in the first part itself.) His resemblance brings cheers to many in the kingdom and fear to the antagonists	Simba’s resemblance to Mufasa and the former’s realization of the same is the key turning point of the story. His resemblance scares Scar and brings joy to Sarabi and rest of the pride rock
The Exploring	Mahendra Bahubali, as a kid, wants to explore what is on the other side of the high mountains. He does several unsuccessful attempts as a kid to explore beyond the mountains. Once he becomes successful doing so as an adult, the story takes a new turn	Simba’s exploratory interests are the key part of the story and his attempts end him up in big trouble. That forms the crux of the storyline and his run away from the kingdom
The Trustworthy	Kattappa, the trustworthy general and trainer that has bald head and large white beard. Discloses the identity of Mahendra Bahubali to the later and gives him an account of his own past.	Rafiki, the trustworthy shaman and advisor who has bald head and large white beard. Makes Simba realize who he really is and what his responsibilities are.
The Pride	Pride Ride	Pride Rock
Announcing the Prince	Mahendra Bahubali	Simba

Does that make you think that the storyline of Bahubali is lifted from The Lion King? You are very much wrong if you do so. There are several Telugu movies that follow similar lines (Jayam Manadera to Aadi to Indra) where the protagonist lives elsewhere without taking up his true identity and eventually comes back to claim his throne or leadership position. In fact, the faction movie series of Telugu Film Industry have considerable resemblances to The Lion King at some point or other. So are some of the early folk movies of Indian Film Industry. For that matter, all these movies have some resemblance toÂ William Shakespeare’s Hamlet in which Prince Hamlet is true heir of King Hamlet but King Claudius takes the throne.

Then why this post? I strongly believe that the storyline of the movie is of lesser importance when there is good storytelling. On the eve of the release of Bahubali – The Conclusion, I am looking forward to watch a very good storytelling. I care less for the story that I already know of from several other movies.

IPv6 on AWS

21 Feb

Raju Alluri 0 Comment Cloud, Technical

IPv6 is finally gaining some momentum, thanks to support from several public cloud vendors and data center players in the recent months. Beyond the infrastructure players, the slow migration of several ISPs and corporations towards IPv6 is evident in Google’s IPv6 traffic statistics:

Raju Alluri: IPv6 adoption over years, courtesy Google

Hovering around 13%, the adoption rate is impressive in the recent months and support from players like AWS is going to improve this metric over the next few months.

It is also interesting to see that India is reasonably ahead in this initiative, as seen in Google’s stats:

Raju Alluri: IPv6 adoption by country, courtesy Google

AWS published its support for IPv6 in EC2 around 1st December 2016 and by January this year, the support is extended to 15 of its global regions. During those weeks, the dual-stack support is also extended to ELBs (load balancing), Route 53 (DNS), public VIFs, S3, IoT and individual CloundFront distributions.

One key thing to note is that the IPv6 addresses assigned are internet-routable and it needs an Egress-only Internet Gateway if any if the VIFs don’t need to get exposed to internet and have to remain in a private network.

Simple yet strong steps towards IPv6 adoption!

Reading between the lines: PM’s speech on New Year’s Eve

01 Jan

Raju Alluri 0 Comment Economy

People all over India and abroad expected surprise announcements in PM’s speech on New Year’s Eve. They glued to the seats in front of their TV screens like never before. But the speech, surprised many by not having any surprise announcements. Or is it so? Here is my take on what to read between the lines from PM’s speech.

According to PM’s speech, three crore Kisan Credit Cards are going to be converted to RuPay debit cards by end of the quarter. These cards are traditionally used to withdraw money from banks and now will be evolved as debit cards. This means

Farmers would be made to purchase essentials like seeds and fertilizers using trackable transactions on these cards. The cash withdrawal nature of the schemes and cards would slowly cease to exist.
So the expenses of farmers (more importantly, the income of vendors) would go both cashless and trackable.

PM announced interest subvention of 4 percent and 3 percent for housing loans taken in 2017 upto 9 lakhs and 12 lakhs respectively.

This will help banks push their cash and deposits surplus to loans that are large in volumes and small in magnitude. That means more and more middle class and lower middle class people are going to opt for housing loans.
If and when these loans and subventions are linked to tax filing, more and more people come under tax net.
This also has potential to create more business in the housing market (in the short run, i.e. 2017) for middle class and lower middle class. It offsets any potential shortfall in the real estate market (specifically housing market) post notes ban. Given PM’s public statements earlier this month regarding Benami lands, I think there might be some hard decisions that give setbacks in agricultural land markets and the government is trying to offset that in housing market.

PM’s speech almost conceded that there are going to be simultaneous elections in the country. Assuming that there would be a push towards Parliament and Assembly elections in the country to be held simultaneously, it needs significant changes in constitution and the role of Election Commission. I think the PM started his pre-work (of getting people mentally ready for simultaneous elections) with this speech. Rest of the work is purely procedural.

PM’s speech also gives a hint towards “holier than thou” approach needed by political parties.

That seems like a hint towards an inevitable curb or restrictions on cash based donations accepted by political parties.

Income from turnover of businesses (with upto 2 crores of turnover) will be calculated as 6% as opposed to earlier 8%, provided the transactions are digital. Effectively, that means a potential 25% tax reduction if the businesses are doing their transactions in digital mode. This is one more push to go digital in their transactions.

The underwriting for small businesses is increased from one crore to two crores, while extending the coverage to loans given by NBFCs also. Not sure how much impact it would immediately have, but I think it might attract small businesses to go for higher loans, garner higher revenues and pay higher taxes. However, the discretion used by NBFCs might not match what the normal banks would do while evaluating a businesses loan potential. So we may have interesting scenarios unfolding in this sector.

Increase in working capital loans from 20% to 30% is another way to push the surplus cash and deposits with banks back into the market.

In a nutshell, here are the key points I do read from the speech.

Create more avenues to push surplus cash with banks back into the market.
While doing so, ensure that the cash is pushed to trackable ~~investments~~ disburses like loans and agricultural spending.
Push for more and more digital payments at all levels. “You get more sops if your transactions are more digital.”
Bring more people into tax net, by encouraging them to do businesses at a larger scale with an increase in their capital and loans.
Start measures to offset the impact of future hard decisions in real estate markets
Give a hint about potential axe on the current leeway enjoyed by political parties
Give a hint about election reforms on the horizon

So, no surprises? That is a platform being set for future surprises.

High Denomination Notes Cease To Be Legal Tender

09 Nov

Raju Alluri 0 Comment Economy

In a very bold move by PM Narendra Modi, India’s Ministry of Finance cancels the legal tender nature of India’s High Denomination notes of Rs. 500 and 1000 issued earlier by RBI. The move appears sudden, harsh and makes the entire country take a few hardships in the next few days, but it is a much needed and welcome move though. My personal opinions and account of what what to expect soon and how to handle the transition phase.

Baseless Criticism

Some people (especially politicians) call this anywhere from anti-nation to draconian. In My Opinion, this is just a harsh and bold move that hurts a bit. Just like you take a shot of injection when you are ill. The move is far less draconian and anti-nation when compared to the inconveniences we common people face when you politicians and employee associations of banks and governments announce sudden strikes/bandhs for some stupid reasons known only to you.
Some people criticize the timing of the decision, but I admire this timing for the following reasons.
1. A big festival season is just over, so common man would have relatively less cash transaction needs
2. The first week of this month just passed, so majority of monthly cash needs of middle class and upper middle class Indians, like rents and monthly groceries, would be taken care of by now. However, people who do daily and weekly grocery purchases would have a couple of weeks of inconvenience.
3. This action immediately follows the tax declaration scheme, so people with large sums of undisclosed income did get a chance to get clean. If they haven’t, then they are the most hit.
Some people suggest phased withdrawal of notes. However, that would have lesser impact on black money and would lead to long term cash flow issues in the market if big guys cease flow of new currency notes during that phased withdrawal. In my opinion, the cash flow issues with the current approach of PMO and Ministry of Finance would last about a week or two at the most, provided banks and RBI are ready to handle the volumes.

Personal Inconveniences And How To Overcome

I think an average Indian has a short phase of going very conservative. Here is my way to cope up with this critical juncture after assessing the PM’s announcement and its impact on myself. After the announcement, I quickly counted my left over high denomination notes that can be legally tendered. Specifically Rs. 100 and 50. They totaled to Rs. 3850 and here is what I would do with that money.

I resolved not to withdraw any cash from an ATM or Bank at least until Friday evening. Preferably until Monday evening. By that time, I presume the rush at these places would ease up and people with more immediate needs can use this time rather.
I am going conservative for a few weeks and keeping my cash in bank as contingency for any emergencies including medical emergencies. This would continue even if I am able to withdraw a few high denomination notes in a week or two.
I may do some shopping of basic needs using my credit card and limit my purchases to essential food items. That may include biscuit and snack packs for my upcoming travel.
I have set aside Rs 1300 towards fuel. My two wheeler needs a refill of about 300 and my car can live with Rs 1000 worth of fuel in the next one week, provided I use my two wheeler more often than my car.
I have a weekend travel coming up that involves three overnight travels of 7-13 hours each. I am planning to use biscuit and snack packs as travel food as opposed to meals that I usually buy for anywhere between Rs 80 to 200. With all my tickets purchased earlier, I may be able to manage my travel with about Rs. 1000 of that left over money.
I am planning to use public transportation during my weekend travel, so that I would spend less cash than usual for taxis and local transportation.
That leaves me with about Rs 1500 to meet any immediate cash needs. Hopefully we can manage with that money and feel proud next week that our nation has done the right thing.

The key thing here is to go conservative and minimize the spending rather than trying to amass large amounts of cash or goods.

Tougher scenarios

I see a few tougher scenarios like these that have no easy way out.

My son is going for a few days of international travel representing his college this weekend. The tickets are taken care of by funds from college, but he needs foreign exchange before Friday for food and incidental expenses. Given that he doesn’t have a credit card and we need to arrange forex cash for him before he leaves for the trip, we are not sure how we can manage that. This is a very special case, but a tough scenario for me as an individual.
The next few days are auspicious days as per our calendar and lot of my friends and relatives have weddings and functions lined up. Conducting those functions is going to be tough for them (for example, how can one buy Rs. 15,000 worth of vegetables in a farmers market for a wedding dinner tomorrow?) until the banks and ATMs ease up to let them use their cash in banks or exchange already withdrawn legitimate money in high denomination notes.

Barring the impact of tougher scenarios like these, I see that we as a nation can easily wade through the short periods of lesser cash flow. The key is not to panic. Don’t try to get more cash, just conserve the cash you have.

The nation needs support from all of us for this bold and game changing decision. Let us join hands with PM Modi and his administration to make this a smooth phase.

Jai Hind.

IT, Android One and BYOD

11 Jun

Raju Alluri 0 Comment Brain Dump, Other Opensource, Security, Technical

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is now a paradigm that is tightly integrated into IT spectrum. IMO, Android One helps simplify the life of IT staff while handling user owned devices that operate on data that is owned by the organizations.

The IT staff’s ownership over the client devices/end points is reducing very fast in recent years. This is due to the use cases that focus on end users,Â service providers, partners and internal employees that are continuously contributing to the data of an organization. Despite reducing level of ownership of these devices, the IT staff continue to have a responsibility to prove that they have adequate controls over these devices and their data.

For example, signatures of customers and delivery details on delivery personnel’s client devices should be ascertained with to all the integrity and confidentiality controls by IT staff of any shopping website and its delivery partners. There were times when the client devices are custom made solutions for the delivery companies, but smart phones are rapidly replacing these legacy client devices. More often than not, these smart phones are owned and updated by individuals rather than organizations. Hence these BYOD devices pose a challenge to the IT staff and increase threat to the data confidentiality and integrity.

The major challenge for IT staff is to ensure that all the nomadic client devices are running approved, stable and latest stack. In olden days (say about 10 years ago), the client devices are mostly laptops that need to be patched and upgraded regularly, along with appropriate user access controls on these devices. With the proliferation of smart phones as client devices, the challenge goes multi-fold. Wearing an IT Professional’s hat, I do see every smart phone like this:

The moment I think about manageability of that smart phone (not ownership of the smart phone, which is never going to happen), I see the smart phone as

The IT stack in the above picture is a combination of various off-the-shelf and home grown applications, together with well tested configurations of these applications. More often than not, the IT stack applications and configurations heavily depend on the underlying Android Stack. That means it pays to support these applications and configurations on a limited set of latest versions of Android.

When it comes to the upgrades (read patching) of the Android stack, both the carrier and vendor have long release cycles in place for stack upgrades on target devices. As a result, most smart phones that are more than a year old end up running Android versions that are old and probably not patched fast enough. This is true with any mobile OS though, not just with Android.

Supporting the IT Stack in the above picture is a nightmare for IT staff if they are to support this on multiple and older versions of mobile operating systems. Due to this, the IT staff may want the mobile phones to run with the latest OS. But the large release cycles of phone vendors and carriers often become a hurdle to accomplish this.

Android One (https://www.android.com/one/) is the best solution out of that version control mess. I have been using a cost effective and reasonably powered Android One phone since 2014. Over the last year and half, this phone has become my device of choice for use cases that strictly require latest versions of Android Platform and its eco system. The use cases include IT tools like VPN connectivity apps, single sign-on solutions, device control/erase solutions, messaging solutions and sharing solutions. This $100 unlocked dual SIM phone is a very reasonable investment for accomplishing adherence to stringent IT policies.

Android One is supported by phones that are very high end (e.g. the Nexus series sold directly by Google) all the way to cost effective phones in emerging economies. In almost all cases, the phones come with unlocked versions, leaving a wider choice of carriers to customers.

Updates to my Android One smartphone have been regular and painless in the last year and half. The ability to grab the latest update of Android within a few hours makes Android One my preferred choice.

In any BYOD centered IT infrastructure, Android One is the best way to go for IT staff to enforce tighter IT policies on smart phones while ensuring that the user devices are running with latest version of the mobile stack. That in turn ensures that the IT stack on the smartphone is current and easy to manage.

Identity as the Perimeter

03 Sep

Raju Alluri 0 Comment Security, Technical

The perimeter of an enterprise has been its LAN and WAN for quite a number of years. The popularity of VPN based remote access did extend the definition of an enterprise’s perimeter to the remote presence of its employees, albeit for short bursts of time more often than not.

As trends like Cloud based services and BYOD emerged, enterprises have this daunting challenge of protecting their data. In the new age network, data gets hosted (e.g. public cloud services) and accessed (e.g. laptops and phones) on devices that are beyond the firewalls of an enterprise. Moreover, employees want more and more flexibility towards accessing data – at wherever they are and on whatever they carry.

RSA‘s Jason wrote this blog post in which he describes the (potentially outdated) strategy of one of the Information Security persons he met – take out access to anything that has a hint of risk. Jason identifies the problem as well as side effects of that approach.

Here are the key assumptions enterprises need to make regarding their data:

Data takes multiple forms: e.g. Email, documents, code, tools, configurations and employee personal data
Each form of data might need different levels of access in terms of confidentiality and integrity: e.g. read-only, read-write for owner, write-once, privileged read-only and limited access
Data gets hosted at multiple locations (often beyond the firewalls of the enterprise): e.g. E-mail service provider, private data centers, private clouds, shared public clouds
Data gets accessed from multiple locations (often beyond the firewalls of the enterprise): e.g. desktops, laptops, phones, and to take it a step forward, TVs and car infotainment systems capable of reading your email.

Centrify‘s Tom Kemp shares his thoughts on making identity as the new perimeter. Making identity as the new perimeter has potential to provide solutions to many of the challenges arising out of the assumptions we listed above for the enterprise.

Identity controlled by an enterprise can be made to control access to data that takes different forms.
Enterprises can use single sign on (SSO) solutions that go beyond two factor authentication to provide on-demand access to data using identity as the primary factor
SSO solutions make it easy for the enterprises to control identity driven access consistently across multiple service providers like public clouds, internal data centers, private clouds.
SSO solutions, combined with device remote access/control solutions make it easy for enterprises to control the life of data persisted on nomadic devices like phones. This helps when a device is no longer tied to the same identity.

There is lot of mindshare building around managing identity and making it as a primary factor in access management. As Jason observes in his article, identity should be managed well beyond making it a two factor authentication. Context should be clubbed with identity to make more meaningful decisions for giving access to privileged information. That requires wiring several identity management and analytics products together for dynamically determining access levels.

Google already does this for its own services. If you login from a unusual location, device and application, it has the ability to enforce additional steps in determining the identity. I am really impressed (but not at all surprised) by Google’s ability to take it to not just the location and device level, but also application level. For example, Google maintains analytics data about your favorite browser on your desktop for accessing drive and if you change it, it notifies (and often counters you with additional checks, depending on context) you about that change.

I take Google’s approach as an exemplary first step in driving the identity with augmented data around context. As identity management solutions evolve, enterprises can bank on independent and collaborating solutions that determine identity. The collaboration among these solutions would be around determining the context of the user and making decisions around whether the identity can be determined unambiguously within that context. As the definition of perimeter evolves to center more around identity, these emerging trends in identity management are both welcome and necessary.