Episode 358: A Future Without Servers

The term serverless gets thrown around a lot, but what does it really mean? What are the benefits and the drawbacks? It’s a TechSNAP introduction to Serverless Architecture.

Plus new research with ideas to dramatically improve private web browsing, the growing problem of tracking security vulnerabilities with CVE’s, and much more!

Sponsored By:

• Digital Ocean: Apply our promo snapocean after you create your account, and get a $10 credit. Promo Code: snapocean
• iXSystems: Get a system purpose built for you. Promo Code: Tell them we sent you!
• Ting: Save $25 off a device, or get $25 in service credits! Promo Code: Visit techsnap.ting.com

Links:

• Revamp of 'Pwned Passwords' Boosts Privacy and Size of Database — In V2 of Pwned Passwords, launched last week, Hunt updated his password data set from 320 million passwords to 501 million new passwords, pulled from almost 3,000 breaches over the past year.
• Finding Pwned Passwords with 1Password — Troy Hunt and his friends from Cloudflare found a brilliant way to check if my password is leaked without ever needing to send my password to their service. Their server never receives enough information to reconstruct my password.
• Troy Hunt: I've Just Added 2,844 New Data Breaches With 80M Records To Have I Been Pwned
• Apple’s China data migration includes iCloud keys, making data requests easier for authorities — Now, according to Apple, for the first time the company will store the keys for Chinese iCloud accounts in China itself. That means Chinese authorities will no longer have to use the U.S. courts to seek information on iCloud users and can instead use their own legal system to ask Apple to hand over iCloud data for Chinese users, legal experts said.
• Microsoft’s Big Email Privacy Case Heads to the Supreme Court Tomorrow — The 2013 warrant involved a drug case, and the Justice Department asked Microsoft to turn over emails that were stored in its Ireland data center. Microsoft objected, arguing that the DoJ could not use a domestic warrant to conduct an international search and that it should instead acquire the data through a treaty process with the Irish government.
• Researchers Propose Improved Private Web Browsing System — The newly proposed system keeps all the data that the browse loads into memory encrypted until it is displayed on the screen, the researchers say. Users no longer type a URL into the browser, but access the Veil website and enter the URL there. With the help of a blinding server, the Veil format of the requested page is transmitted. 
• Nearly 8,000 Security Flaws Did Not Receive a CVE ID in 2017 — A record-breaking number of 20,832 vulnerabilities have been discovered in 2017 but only 12,932 of these received an official CVE identifier last year, a Risk Based Security (RBS) report reveals.
• What is Serverless Architecture? What are its criticisms and drawbacks? — Serverless architectures refer to applications that significantly depend on third-party services (knows as Backend as a Service or “BaaS”) or on custom code that’s run in ephemeral containers (Function as a Service or “FaaS”), the best known vendor host of which currently is AWS Lambda.
• Serverless Security: What's Left to Protect?
• OpenFaaS - Serverless Functions Made Simple — Serverless Functions Made Simple for Docker and Kubernetes
• open-lambda: An open source serverless computing platform — An open source serverless computing platform
• Iron.io - DevOps Solutions from Startups to Enterprise
• Apache OpenWhisk is a serverless, open source cloud platform
• Feedback: David's Drive Tips
• Question: Alex has BIG cloud storage requirements....
• Crostini - Linux App Containers on ChromeOS — In other words, the Crostini/Terminal feature could be to Chrome OS what the Windows Subsystem for Linux is for Windows 10: a way that developers, power users, and Linux enthusiasts can run native Linux software on a device that’s not running a traditional Linux distribution.