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Adata Outs 40MB/s UHS microSD Card
Adata has launched a 32GB UHS-1 microSD card offering 40MB/s write bandwidth.
Adata, which recently has been making a big push in the solid-state disk (SSD) drive market, has announced its first microSD cards that support the UHS-1 specification. The firm’s Premier Pro cards come in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB capacities with the firm citing read bandwidth of 45MB/s and all important write bandwidth of 40MB/s.
The SD Card Association defined the UHS-I specification as part of its SD Version 3.01 standard, and while Adata’s new cards boast impressive speeds there is a lot of headroom left, with UHS-1 supporting bandwidths up to 104MB/s. Adata’s cards, roughly translated to the ‘X’ speed rating used on a number of memory cards, come out at 266X.
Ray Chu, product manager at Adata said, “These cards have the best read and write performance among all comparable products offered by the industry’s key players. When that is combined with the aggressive pricing options in store for this line, the result is going to be a bonanza for our customers worldwide.”
Powerful “Flame” Virus Found In Iran
Security experts have uncovered a highly sophisticated computer virus in Iran and other Middle Eastern states that they believe was deployed at least five years ago to engage in state-sponsored cyber espionage.
Evidence suggest that the virus, dubbed Flame, may have been built on behalf of the same nation or nations that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran’s nuclear program in 2010, according to Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cyber security software maker that claimed responsibility for discovering the virus.
Kaspersky researchers said on Monday they have yet to determine whether Flame had a specific mission like Stuxnet, and declined to say who they think built it.
Iran has accused the United States and Israel of deploying Stuxnet.
Cyber security experts said the discovery publicly demonstrates what experts privy to classified information have long known: that nations have been using pieces of malicious computer code as weapons to promote their security interests for several years.
A cyber security agency in Iran said on its English website that Flame bore a “close relation” to Stuxnet, the notorious computer worm that attacked that country’s nuclear program in 2010 and is the first publicly known example of a cyber weapon.
Iran’s National Computer Emergency Response Team also said Flame might be linked to recent cyber attacks that officials in Tehran have said were responsible for massive data losses on some Iranian computer systems.
Microsoft’s Vista Infection Rates Climb
Microsoft said last week that an uptick in more security exploits on Windows Vista can be attributed to the demise of support for the operating system’s first service pack.
Data from the company’s newest security intelligence report showed that in the second half of 2011, Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) was 17% more likely to be infected by malware than Windows XP SP3, the final upgrade to the nearly-11-year-old operating system.
That’s counter to the usual trend, which holds that newer editions of Windows are more secure, and thus exploited at a lower rate, than older versions like XP. Some editions of Windows 7, for example, boast an infection rate half that of XP.
Tim Rains, the director of Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group, attributed the rise of successful attacks on Vista SP1 to the edition’s retirement from security support.
“This means that Windows Vista SP1-based systems no longer automatically receive security updates and helps explain why there [was] a sudden and sharp increase in the malware infection rate on that specific platform,” said Rains in a blog post last week.
Google Tweaks It’s Search Engine
May 24, 2012 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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Google is changing the way it handles searches in the United States to give users quick access to answers without leaving the page, the company said.
The new search process is based on what Google calls the “knowledge graph” — meaning that it tries to pinpoint faster the context surrounding its users’ keyword searches.
“Over the years, as search has improved, people expect more,” said Amit Singhal, vice president of engineering at Google and the head of search, in an interview. “We see this as the next big improvement in search relevance.”
The redesign, which for now affects only U.S.-based English language users, is gradually being rolled starting Wednesday on desktop, mobile and tablet platforms. Google plans to eventually expand the new search features outside the U.S., Singhal said, without specifying when.
Many of the results will carry more graphical elements, compared to standard lists of search results, such as maps and pictures of related results, often in separate pop-ups. The idea is to let users easily discover what related material interests them and click through to it, Singhal said.
Dell Intros Ivy Bridge Xeon Servers
Dell has become the first to announce servers using Intel’s latest Ivy Bridge Xeon E3 processors.
Intel launched its single socket Ivy Bridge Xeon E3 processors a month after it wowed everyone with its dual-core Sandy Bridge Xeon E5 processors, and it has taken Dell only another month to announce the first servers to make use of Intel’s latest nearline server chip. Dell’s Poweredge C5220 microserver uses Xeon E3 1200 series processors that have thermal design power (TDP) down to 17W.
Dell is pitching its Poweredge C5220 servers towards high performance computing, cloud deployments and content delivery networks. While Dell calls the Poweredge C5220 a microserver, that really isn’t a reference to its size or density, but rather the fact that it is a single socket server.
Dell offers the Poweredge C5220 with either 17W or 45W TDP Intel processors supporting DDR3-1600 memory. The firm claims close to double the performance over previous generation single socket servers, mainly due to a 50 per cent increase in density.
Cisco Lends A Hand In Fighting Fraud
Cisco released an API at the Interop 2012 Conference this week for its branch routers designed to enable third-party developers to write applications to beef up the security of phone calls over the router network.
The Cisco UC Gateway Services API is a Web-based programming interface that allows customers and developers access to call information over a Cisco ISR G2 router at the edge of a voice network, such as signaling and media. This information can be used to detect and help prevent malicious activity such as social engineering and identity theft scams, contact center account takeover fraud, unauthorized network and service use, and denial-of-service attacks.
Applications written to the API can then apply appropriate action to terminate, redirect or record the call.
Cisco, citing data from the Communications Fraud Control Association, says global telecom fraud losses are estimated to be $40 billion annually.
Rackspace Goes Openstack
Rackspace has finally deployed an Openstack based cloud, playing down claims that it benefits the most from the alliance.
Rackspace is one of the leaders of the Openstack alliance, an open source cloud initiative that aims to break Amazon’s stranglehold on the industry by offering open application programmable interfaces (APIs). Until now Openstack has largely been all talk, but Rackspace has deployed a production Openstack cloud that the firm claims will help it sell Openstack to the enterprise.
Fabio Torlini, VP of cloud at Rackspace said the firm has been “going flat out to make the code production ready”. Torlini said Rackspace’s decision to deploy an Openstack based cloud could be a tipping point in deployment. “It’s going to be the catalyst for many other companies deploying Openstack,” said Torlini.
Rackspace has been the largest contributor to Openstack and the fact that it has the first major Openstack deployment support claims that Rackspace is getting the most out of Openstack.
However Torlini said, “For us, we’re able to be the first one to launch a large scale Openstack compute platform because, yes, we are one of the main providers of the original code and we are a founder of Openstack, so we have tried to develop Openstack as a neutral foundation and it is a foundation to provide a service to all its members. But we’re lucky enough to be one of the founder members, to be able to drive it, and get there [deployment] first.”
Torlini defended Rackspace’s role in the Openstack alliance, claiming the strong leadership shown by the firm is good for the community. Torlini said, “Openstack is beneficial to the product itself but that’s the whole point. The whole idea of many more providers going onto Openstack helping develop the Openstack cloud, helping advance the actual products and code is the whole point of Openstack. On the counter side of that argument is if it’s beneficial for us it is just as beneficial for any other member of Openstack because they have access to the same code and they are able to provide.”
Torlini admitted that Openstack and the community is an advantage for the firm but claimed it wasn’t possible for Rackspace to dominate. “You have companies in Openstack that are far larger than Rackspace enabled to put much more resources into Openstack as well, it’s impossible for us to dominate Openstack – it’s an independent foundation. Is it advantageous from a product perspective? I should damn well hope so,” said Torlini.
Is Samsung Pursuing The Server Market?
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It is certain that Korean electronics giant Samsung will soon be entering the server chip market.
Reports are coming in that the company has been picking up key server personnel from Intel and AMD. Samsung has been focused on developing ARM chips and stayed clear of the x86 architecture used by Intel and AMD.
But the companies latest hires seem to indicate that might change.
Samsung’s latest recruits include veterans of the chip business like Jim Mergard, Frank Helms, who is a Fusion APU architect, Brad Burgess who designed the Bobcat APU and Patrick Patla (VP of AMD’s server business). Patla was behind the success of the Opteron chip set and has done well using the x86-server system.
RIM Goes Non-BlackBerry
April 9, 2012 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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Research In Motion on Tuesday launched software that will allow its large “enterprise” customers to manage Apple and other rival devices through the same servers as they use for the BlackBerry smartphone and Playbook tablet.
The new Mobile Fusion software, first announced in November, is an acknowledgement of sorts by RIM of a growing preference by many users inside big corporations and government to access professional communications over their personal devices, often the Apple iPhone or iPad, or devices running Google’s Android.
RIM, which long dominated the so-called enterprise market, has watched the BlackBerry’s market share steadily erode in recent years. Unable to arrest the trend, the company now aims to generate a fresh revenue stream from it. Mobile Fusion will cost $99 per user to license and $4 per user a month, with discounts available for bulk orders.
In a second announcement on Tuesday that highlights RIM’s eroding market position, it said its PlayBook tablet now boasts 15,000 applications – still just a tiny fraction of the number available on the iPad. One of the biggest complaints about RIM’s products is the dearth of content and applications.
A recent survey from Appcelerator and IDC showed less than 16 percent of developers were “very interested” in creating programs for RIM, compared with 90 percent for Apple and 80 percent for Android.
Microsoft Seizes Botnet Servers
Microsoft Corp scored a win in efforts to fight online banking fraud, saying it had seized several servers used to steal login names and passwords, disrupting some of the world’s most sophisticated cybercrime rings.
The software giant said on Monday that its cybercrime investigation group also took legal and technical actions to fight notorious criminals who infect computers with a prevalent malicious software known as Zeus.
By recruiting computers into networks called botnets, Zeus logs the online activity of infected machines, providing criminals with credentials to access financial accounts.
“We’ve disrupted a critical source of money-making for digital fraudsters and cyber thieves, while gaining important information to help identify those responsible and better protect victims,” said Richard Boscovich, senior attorney for the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, which handled the investigation in collaboration with the financial industry.
Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit is worldwide team of investigators, lawyers, analysts and other specialists who fight cybercrime. A year ago they helped U.S. authorities take down a botnet known as Rustock that had been one of the biggest producers of spam e-mail. Some security experts estimated that in its heyday Rustock was responsible for half the spam in junk email bins.