EMC rolls out Symmetrix disk library for mainframes
EMC Monday unveiled a high-capacity mainframe disk archive based on its flagship VMAX Symmetrix storage array.
The new DLm8000 Disk Library follows three earlier versions of "disk libraries" or disk archive arrays -- the DLm1000, DLm2000, and DLm6000. The earlier disk libraries were built using either EMC's Data Domain virtual tape library or its midrange VNX storage array.
EMC's disk libraries appear as tape libraries to mainframes, but offer superior performance, particularly for data recovery.
All four EMC disk libraries can be managed through the same management interface. Read more...
Size does matter: Outlook.com punters want meatier passwords
Microsoft has come in for a bit of stick in security circles for only allowing a 16-character password for sign-ups to Outlook.com, Redmond's newly launched Gmail rival.
The service – which has already attracted more than a million sign-ups – has a maximum password length of 16 characters, the same as Hotmail.com and Windows Live ID. Yahoo!, by comparison, allows up to 32 characters (although its minimum of six is too short, even for a complex password).
Experiments by Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, suggest that Google supports password lengths well over 32 characters. "When registering an account with Gmail, I was unable to hit a limit on password length," Cluley explains in a blog post. "However, as I tried to log into an account I had created with a ridiculously long password I was told I could only enter 200 characters."
The length of a password is less important than its strength, which depends on whether the login credential uses a mix of letter, numbers and non-alphanumeric characters (good) or words that might be found in a dictionary (terrible). But length is a factor is password strength and there's no good reason for Outlook.com to be more restrictive on this point than either Gmail or Yahoo!, its main competitors. Read more...
Microsoft confirms dumping ‘Metro’ brand from Windows 8
Microsoft will walk away from the "Metro" tag it's been using for over a year to describe the new environment and apps in both Windows 8 and Windows RT, the company confirmed Friday.
"We have used Metro style as a code name during the product development cycle across many of our product lines," a spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. "As we get closer to launch and transition from industry dialog to a broad consumer dialog we will use our commercial names."
Late Thursday, The Verge reported it had seen an Microsoft internal memo that explained to employees the change was a result of "discussions with an important European partner" that forced Microsoft to "discontinue the use" of the Metro brand.
A replacement for Metro will be introduced this week, the memo continued, which hints at a renaming by today or Saturday. Until then, Microsoft employees are to use the phrase "Windows 8 style UI." Read more...
Macs stuck in 4th place on reliability, support ranking
Apple's personal computers remained fixed in fourth place during 2012's second quarter, a spot it's occupied most of the year, a technical support franchise said today.
The cause, ironically, was the very success that Apple has had selling Mac laptops and desktops.
"It's due to Apple's increased market share," said David Milman, founder and CEO of Rescuecom of Syracuse, N.Y., in explaining Apple's spot in his company's repair and reliability rating.
"That increase has put some stress on their systems," Milman argued. "They've done a great job with their retail stores and the [in-store] Genius Bar, but Apple owners are telling us that they sometimes have to wait two, three or four days for an appointment, even when they have AppleCare. [Apple's] not as responsive, so some people are bypassing AppleCare because they don't want to wait."
The number of Mac owners who turn to Rescuecom for support directly impacted Apple's score. Read more...
Siri, meet Nina
Nuance Communications Monday introduced Nina, a virtual speech assistant that companies can add to iOS and Android mobile apps.
Nina combines Nuance speech recognition technology, text-to-speech software, voice biometrics and other software into a single offering that's hosted on cloud servers.
The technology is designed to understand what a user says, and to identify who is saying it, Nuance said. Read more...
Samsung will ship Galaxy Note 10.1 in August with better processor than expected
Samsung Electronics will start shipping the Galaxy Note 10.1 later this month, with a 1.4GHz quad-core processor and a software feature from the Galaxy S III.
When it revealed the Galaxy Note 10.1 at Mobile World Congress in February, Samsung said the device would have a 1.4GHz dual-core processor, but the company apparently felt that wasn't enough to compete with the latest iPad or the current crop of Android-based tablets.
Removing the S Pen stylus from its slot in the Galaxy Note 10.1 turns the screen on, while a software feature inherited from the Galaxy S III uses the front camera to see if someone is using the device, and while that is the case the screen isn't dimmed. Read more...
Nvidia releases Unix driver to fix high-risk vulnerability
Graphics chip maker Nvidia released a new version of its Unix driver on Friday in order to address a high-risk vulnerability that can be exploited by local users to gain root privileges on Linux systems.
The privilege escalation vulnerability fixed in the new 304.32 version of the Nvidia Unix driver 304.32 was publicly disclosed last Wednesday by Dave Airlie, a principal engineer in the graphics team at Linux vendor Red Hat.
The public disclosure was done at the request of an anonymous researcher who originally discovered the flaw and after Nvidia failed to respond to a private report about the vulnerability, Airlie said in an email sent to the Full Disclosure mailing list.
Airlie's message also included proof-of-concept exploit code created by the anonymous researcher to demonstrate the vulnerability. Read more...
Hackers increasingly zero in on small businesses
The percentage of targeted attacks aimed at small businesses doubled in the first half of 2012, an indication that hackers are dedicating more resources to what they see as the most vulnerable marks, a major security vendor said.
In the first six months of the year, more than a third of targeted attacks on businesses were pointed toward companies with fewer than 250 employees. That was twice the percentage of attacks aimed at similar sized companies at the end of 2011, Symantec said in its mid-year Intelligence Report.
A targeted attack is one that's tailored to a specific company. Cyber criminals customize malware to particular vulnerabilities and use information gathered publicly -- or stolen from other companies -- to create emails with malicious attachements that have a higher chance of being opened by employees. That type of social engineering has proved successful despite corporate efforts to bolster security training and warn workers away from opening potentially dangerous emails. Read more...
Apple iCloud breach proves Wozniak’s point about cloud risks
This past weekend, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak predicted that cloud computing would yield "horrible problems" in coming years. By extraordinary coincidence, Wired reporter Mat Honan experienced firsthand a series of horrible, cloud-related problems, all of which reportedly started when an unnamed Apple employee reset his iCloud password at the request of a hacker posing as Honan.
This marks the second high-profile cloud-related snafu in the past week, the first being the the Dropbox fiasco where hackers pulled a list of Dropbox customer email addresses from a Dropbox employee's Dropbox account. The incidents almost render moot the raging debate over on Sophos' Naked Security blog as to whether Microsoft's newly rebooted Outlook.com should support more than a 16-character limit on passwords: Evidently even the strongest, most complex password is no match for the formidable combination of hacker perseverance and resourcefulness and end user naiveté (or ignorance) about best security practices. Read more...