WD is developing 40TB hard drives powered by microwaves

Western Digital (WD) may have lost a bid to buy Toshiba’s flash memory technology, but is still hard at work on its bread-and-butter hard drives . The company has unveiled a breakthrough called microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR) that will allow ever-higher disk capacities, up to 40TB by the year 2025. “Commercialization of MAMR technology will pave the way to higher recording densities and lower cost per terabyte hard disk drives, ” said VP of research John Rydning in a statement. If you’re wondering what microwaves have to do with hard drives, WD has a developed a new type of drive head called a “spin torque oscillator” that generates a microwave field. That allows data to be written to magnetic media at a lower magnetic field than with conventional disks, making it possible to pack more bits into the same space. “As a result, Western Digital’s MAMR technology is now ready for prime time, and provides a more cost-effective, more reliable solution, ” the company said in a technical brief , adding that “MAMR also has the capability to extend areal density gains up to 4 Terabits per square inch.” As with its current enterprise drives, WD’s MAMR drives will use helium instead of air to reduce internal turbulence. So how “ready for prime time” is it? Western Digital says MAMR-based drives for data centers will appear in the market starting in 2019, and it will produce 40TB 3.5-inch disks by 2025, with “continued expansion beyond that timeframe.” WD didn’t say what capacity early MAMR drives would pack, but it recently released its first 14TB drive via its HGST (formerly Hitachi) subsidiary, so we’d expect the MAMR variants to go beyond that. Mechanical hard disk don’t have nearly the speed or reliability of SSDs, but the cost per gigabyte is multiple times lower. That’s crucial for data centers and cloud storage firms, especially since data-hungry AI software is becoming more and more pervasive. Don’t expect to see MAMR drives in your local media backup (NAS) drives right away, but it should trickle down fairly soon, giving you enough storage for future 8K HDR videos . Source: Western Digital

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WD is developing 40TB hard drives powered by microwaves

Hyatt Hotels Discovers Card Data Breach At 41 Properties Across 11 Countries

Hyatt Hotels has suffered a second card data breach in two years. In the first breach, hackers had gained access to credit card systems at 250 properties in 50 different countries. This time, the breach appears to have impacted 41 properties across 11 countries. Krebs on Security reports: Hyatt said its cyber security team discovered signs of unauthorized access to payment card information from cards manually entered or swiped at the front desk of certain Hyatt-managed locations between March 18, 2017 and July 2, 2017. “Upon discovery, we launched a comprehensive investigation to understand what happened and how this occurred, which included engaging leading third-party experts, payment card networks and authorities, ” the company said in a statement. “Hyatt’s layers of defense and other cybersecurity measures helped to identify and resolve the issue. While this incident affects a small percentage of total payment cards used at the affected hotels during the at-risk dates.” The hotel chain said the incident affected payment card information — cardholder name, card number, expiration date and internal verification code — from cards manually entered or swiped at the front desk of certain Hyatt-managed locations. It added there is no indication that any other information was involved. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hyatt Hotels Discovers Card Data Breach At 41 Properties Across 11 Countries

Sound of mystery attacks in Cuba released. It’s as obnoxious as you’d expect

Enlarge / Personnel gather at the US Embassy in Cuba after the US State Department announced it will cut the embassy’s staff by half in the wake of mysterious health problems. (credit: Getty | Sven Creutzmann/Mambo Photo ) On Thursday, the Associated Press released the first audio recording of the sound that some diplomats say they heard during mystery attacks in Havana, Cuba. Those attacks have so far left 22 Americans with a puzzling range of symptoms, from brain injuries to hearing loss. The sound is high-pitched and grating. You can listen to it here (but beware: it’s unpleasant). The noise is comprised of 20 or more different frequencies, all around about 7,000 kHz and 8,000 kHz. It reportedly came in abrupt pulses of varying lengths. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Sound of mystery attacks in Cuba released. It’s as obnoxious as you’d expect

Equifax may have been hacked again (updated)

When Equifax’s interim CEO penned a letter of apology on The Wall Street Journal , he admitted that it will take a lot of effort to regain people’s trust. Unfortunately, the company still seems to be lacking when it comes to security, because according to Ars Technica , it’s been hacked yet again. Independent security analyst Randy Abrams told Ars that he was redirected to hxxp:centerbluray.info and was met with a Flash download when he went to equifax.com to contest a false info on his credit report. The fake Flash installer apparently tricks people into downloading what Symantec identifies as Adware.Eorezo , an adware that inundates Internet Explorer with advertisements. Unfortunately, we can’t replicate the problem, but Abrams said he encountered the issue on three separate visits and captured one of them on video: We reached out to Equifax to ask whether the company has already cleaned up the adware downloader. To be safe, though, don’t click on any random Flash installer that pops up when you visit the agency’s website in the near future. Update: Equifax says its IT and security teams are looking into the issue, but while the investigation is in progress, the page has been taken offline. The company plans to share more information as it becomes available. Source: Ars Technica

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Equifax may have been hacked again (updated)

Roku’s new ad-supported channel lets you watch a bunch of movies for free

The Roku 4 and its remote. (credit: Andrew Cunningham) Movie buffs looking for titles to watch now have a new option on Roku devices. Roku announced  that its new channel (aptly dubbed The Roku Channel) is now available for all US users that have a Roku device made after June 2011. This channel has a bunch of movies from studios including Lionsgate, MGM, Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Warner Brothers that are available to watch for free with advertisements. Roku revealed plans for this channel about a month ago, but now it has rolled out to all customers with compatible devices. Roku has curated content collections in the past, like its Roku Recommends and 4K Spotlight sections. But now the company is actively seeking licensing agreements with studios to offer movies and TV shows on The Roku Channel. In addition to big studios, the channel also has content from smaller companies including Popcornflix and American Classics. After adding the channel to your Roku homepage (it’s under the “Featured,” “New and Notable,” and “Movies and TV” sections in the Streaming Channels setting), you can watch any of the available titles for free. There will be ads throughout the movie, so it’ll be more similar to watching a movie on a broadcast network than streaming one on Netflix. And don’t expect to see the newest movies or the latest seasons of your favorite TV shows on The Roku Channel: since viewing is free, most of the content available is older. Roku cites  Mission: Impossible 3, Beauty Shop, Philadelphia, and Zookeeper as just a few of the options available. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Roku’s new ad-supported channel lets you watch a bunch of movies for free

Quickly add the Google Play store to your new Amazon Fire 10HD

Last time I bought an Amazon tablet adding the Google store was a real pain! It takes about 3 minutes and one reboot on the new Amazon Fire HD 10 . In order to get the most out of my new 7th generation Amazon Tablet, I needed the Google Play store. GMail, Chrome and a few other apps were not available via Amazon’s walled garden. Used to be Amazon made this hard. Now it is very easy! To add the Google Play store follow these steps: STEP THE FIRST Enable apps from UNKNOWN SOURCES! Settings > Security > Enable Apps from Unknown Sources This will trigger a warning. Read it, then ignore it. THE SECOND STEP Download and install four Google apps in this specific order: Google Account Manager Google Services Framework Google Play Services Google Play Store STEP THREE Reboot the device. FOURTH Open the Google Play app. Login and start installing apps. It was that easy. I’m just getting into playing with the new tablet, but thus far it is great. I’m pretty sure this’ll work for all 7th generation tablets regardless of screen size. All-New Fire HD 10 Tablet with Alexa Hands-Free, 10.1″ 1080p Full HD Display, 32 GB via Amazon

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Quickly add the Google Play store to your new Amazon Fire 10HD

Supreme Court: Hacking conviction stands for man who didn’t hack computer

Enlarge / Front row from left, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, and Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, back row from left, Associate Justice Elena Kagan, Associate Justice Samuel Alito Jr., Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch. (credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images ) On Tuesday, the Supreme Court let stand the novel hacking conviction of a man who did not hack a computer to gain unauthorized access. The justices, without comment, turned away the the appeal of David Nosal, who was convicted of three counts under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) hacking statute. Nosal’s conviction was based on a hacking conspiracy of sorts. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Supreme Court: Hacking conviction stands for man who didn’t hack computer

Equifax: we doxed 400k Britons, erm, make that 700k, erm, we mean 15.2 million

Oh, Equifax : “Equifax says that for approximately 14.5 million of the 15.2 million affected, the stolen records contained only a small amount of information, limited to name and dates of birth.”

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Equifax: we doxed 400k Britons, erm, make that 700k, erm, we mean 15.2 million

Accenture left four servers of sensitive data completely unprotected

UpGuard has yet again uncovered a trove of corporate data left unprotected, this time from major consulting and management firm Accenture . The data — contained on four cloud-based storage servers — were discovered by UpGuard Director of Cyber Risk Research Chris Vickery in mid-September and weren’t protected by a password. Anyone with the servers’ web addresses could download the stored information, which included decryption keys, passwords and customer info. And Accenture’s client list includes a number of large companies. On its website , Accenture says its clients “span the full range of industries around the world and include 94 of the Fortune Global 100 and more than three-quarters of the Fortune Global 500.” UpGuard says that the information stored on the unprotected servers could have been used to attack Accenture itself as well as a number of its clients and Vickery told ZDNet that the data amounted to the “keys to the kingdom.” In a blog post about the exposure, UpGuard said, “Taken together, the significance of these exposed buckets is hard to overstate. In the hands of competent threat actors, these cloud servers, accessible to anyone stumbling across their URLs, could have exposed both Accenture and its thousands of top-flight corporate customers to malicious attacks that could have done an untold amount of financial damage.” This data exposure is just the latest to be sniffed out by cybersecurity firm UpGuard. Other recent discoveries by the company include Election Systems & Software’s exposure of 1.8 million Chicago residents’ personal information, Deep Root Analytics’ leak of nearly 200 million US citizens’ data, the release of 14 million Verizon customers’ info by Nice Systems and exposure of classified intelligence data by a US defense contractor. In light of these repeated mishandlings of sensitive data, it’s becoming increasing clear that major companies need to take a serious look at their cybersecurity practices. UpGuard quickly notified Accenture after discovering the exposed data and the company secured the servers soon thereafter. Accenture also said that UpGuard was the only non-authorized visitor to access the servers. Accenture told ZDNet , “We closed the exposure when the Amazon Web Services S3 issue was first reported. As we continue our forensic review we may learn more but, the email and password information in the database is more than two and a half years old and for Accenture users of a decommissioned system.” Source: UpGuard

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Accenture left four servers of sensitive data completely unprotected

Super NES Classic hacks are now oh, so easy to pull off—you can even add features

Enlarge / The clean look of the SNES Classic gets ruined a bit the second you plug stuff in. (credit: Kyle Orland) After guesses, estimations, and positive early tests, the Super NES Classic has emerged as a hackable little piece of gaming nostalgia—and quite an easy one to hack, at that. This weekend saw the September device receive a simple exploit in the form of hakchi2 , a Windows program designed by a Russian hacker who calls himself “ClusterM,” and, among other things, it allows fans to add far more games to the system than its default set of 21. If any of that sounds familiar, as opposed to gibberish, it’s because the same program and hacker emerged shortly after the launch of 2016’s Linux-powered NES Classic. ClusterM found a way to wrap that system’s FEL-mode exploit (read lots more about that here ) in a tidy Windows GUI, which allowed fans to use Windows Explorer menus to dump game ROMs, emulator cores, and even new art into their boxy ode to ’80s Nintendo bliss. ClusterM announced plans to repeat his trick well before the SNES Classic landed in stores, and his hacking hopes looked promising with the reveal, courtesy of Eurogamer , that the SNES Classic has a near-identical chipset and board compared to the NES Classic. Initial tests of the FEL-mode exploit, which requires booting into a telnet interface to talk to Nintendo’s Linux box, proved promising, and ClusterM returned eight days after the system’s launch with a new hakchi2 version—which now works with either “Nintendo classic” system. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Super NES Classic hacks are now oh, so easy to pull off—you can even add features