Lucas123 writes "John Webster over at Computerworld says VMware and Cisco plan to develop a Data Center OS that would consist of a data center cloud populated by servers, storage, and Cisco's 'intelligent' networking gear, all managed by Cisco and its partners — starting with VMware."Read more of this storyat Slashdot.
BaCa writes to mention that a new hardware/software combination has been created by a company called ElcomSoft that will reportedly allow cryptography professionals to build cheap PCs that work like supercomputers for the specific task of retrieving lost passwords. Utilizing a combination of the CPU and the GPU the task of brute forcing a password may be reduced by as much as a factor of 25. "Until recently, graphic cards' GPUs couldn't be used for applications such as password recovery. Older graphics chips could only perform floating-point calculations, and most cryptography algorithms require fixed-point mathematics. Today's chips can process fixed-point calculations. And with as much as 1.5 Gb of onboard video memory and up to 128 processing units, these powerful GPU chips are much more effective than CPUs in performing many of these calculations."Read more of this storyat Slashdot.
eweekhickins writes "Corvil has unveiled a new tool to help network managers cope with increasing pressure to improve performance. This appliance, from the Dublin-based company (with backing from Cisco), passively monitors traffic across networks in segments below 1 microsecond in length and correlates monitoring data with remote appliances and gives a complete picture of latency, jitter, packet loss and other phenomena that affect network and application performance. Corvil CEO Donal Byrne noted that 'If you can drop a millisecond [of latency] off, you're a hero.'"Read more of this storyat Slashdot.
vlakkies writes "The Colorado Rockies Major League Baseball team decided to only sell tickets for the World Series games at Coors Field online. As a result of overwhelming interest, the ticket vendor Paciolan experienced a system meltdown resulting in a suspension of all ticket sales."Read more of this storyat Slashdot.
BlueMerle writes to mention that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has asked the FTC to take another look into the world of peer-to-peer file sharing. This time around however the inquiry has nothing to do with copyright. "But a USPTO report earlier this year stirred up the issue again by claiming that P2P installs could adversely affect national security when they made confidential government information available. This has already happened several times, as the Oversight Committee learned in July when it held hearings on the USPTO report and its findings. At that hearing, representatives were also shown real-time P2P search data. While most of the searches were for porn, movies, and music, the committee noted a surprisingly number of searches for private financial information."Read more of this storyat Slashdot.
Last week we discussed some of the security features coming in Leopard. This article goes into more depth on OS X 10.5 security — probably as much technical detail as we're going to get until the folks who know come out from under their NDAs on Friday. The writer argues that Apple's new Time Machine automatic backup should be considered a security feature. "Overall, Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard is perhaps the most significant update in the history of Mac OS X — perhaps in the history of Apple — from a security standpoint. It marks a shift from basing Macintosh security on hard outside walls to building more resiliency and survivability into the core operating system."Read more of this storyat Slashdot.
alphadogg sends us to Network World, as is his wont, for a summary of a new study of identity theft based on the outcomes of more than 500 Secret Service cases from 2000 to 2006. Here is the study report (PDF). The AP has coverage emphasizing other slants on the findings. Among the surprises: just 51% of convicted ID thieves were sent to prison. Only 20% of the cases involved use of the Internet, and such cases may be on the decline. More perpetrators used good old-fashioned dumpster diving and stealing stuff out of mailboxes.Read more of this storyat Slashdot.
BlueMerle writes with news that Verizon is offering 20 Mbps symmetrical service for current FiOS customers in NY, CT, and NJ. It will cost $65 a month. Cable companies aren't in a position to match this capability.Read more of this storyat Slashdot.
inkslinger77 writes to mention that MySQL has published their software roadmap out through 2009 and it includes an injection of code from Google. Google remains relatively secretive about how their systems work but they are one of the largest users of MySQL. Earlier this year Google signed a Contributor License Agreement which provides a framework for them to contribute code to MySQL. "The search company has done a lot of work customizing MySQL to meet its special needs, which include better database replication, and tools to monitor a high volume of database instances, Axmark said in an interview at MySQL's user conference in Paris. MySQL will include some of those capabilities in future versions of its database, probably in point upgrades to MySQL 6.0, which is scheduled for general availability in late 2008, Axmark said."Read more of this storyat Slashdot.
alphadogg writes "The Storm worm, which some say is the world's biggest botnet despite waning in recent months, is now fighting back against security researchers that seek to destroy it and has them running scared, conference attendees in NYC heard this week. The worm can figure out which users are trying to probe its command-and-control servers, and it retaliates by launching DDoS attacks against them, shutting down their Internet access for days, says an IBM architect."Read more of this storyat Slashdot.
Stony Stevenson writes to tell us that at the recent RSA Conference security expert Bruce Schneier told delegates that human beings are not evolved for security in the modern world, especially when it comes to IT. "He told delegates at the 2007 RSA Conference that there is a gap between the reality of security and the emotional feel of security due to the way our brains have evolved. This leads to people making bad choices. 'As a species we got really good at estimating risk in an East African village 100,000 years ago. But in 2007 London? Modern times are harder.'"Read more of this storyat Slashdot.
An anonymous reader writes "The Register is reporting that the blogosphere is alight with accusations of Microsoft forcing Windows Desktop Search on networks via the 'automatic install' feature of Windows Update — even if they had configured their systems not to use the program. Once installed, the search program began diligently indexing C drives and entire networks slowed to a crawl."Read more of this storyat Slashdot.
Lucas123 writes "The chips can be combined to create a 128-GB flash storage device capable of holding up to 80 DVD movies or 32,000 MP3 music files. The chip was created using 30-nanometer processing technology that was developed with Samsung's self-aligned double patterning technology. Manufacturing will start in 2009; but the article quotes a Gartner analyst who reminds us, 'Samsung has had a difficult time adhering to its timelines for mass production due to the complexity of MLC architectures and ever shrinking process geometries.'"Read more of this storyat Slashdot.
ParaFan writes "In a fascinating story on KernelTrap, Theo de Raadt asserts that while virtualization can increase hardware utilization, it does not in any way improve security. In fact, he contends the exact opposite is true: 'You are absolutely deluded, if not stupid, if you think that a worldwide collection of software engineers who can't write operating systems or applications without security holes, can then turn around and suddenly write virtualization layers without security holes.' de Raadt argues that the lack of support for process isolation on x86 hardware combined with numerous bugs in the architecture are a formula for virtualization decreasing overall security, not increasing it."Read more of this storyat Slashdot.
