Month: October 2009
-
Intel’s SSD updates and firmware issues
It seems that Intel just can’t get it right when it comes to SSD firmware updates. First they introduced a subsector remap algorithm on the G1 which increased performance but this was shown to cause fragmentation and performance loss over time. This was fixed with a firmware update but a new G2 appeared with more…
-
Virtualisation part 2: Storage
The first part of the series focussed on the OS layer of virtualisation. This second part will focus on storage in relation to server virtualisation. Storage on its own, is a minefield of standards, specifications, technologies, protocols and incompatibilities. Add to this the concept of virtualisation and you’re looking at an area that’s difficult to…
-
Backups? We don’t need no stinking backups!
Here are 2 stories ( just in this week ) of tragic data loss or nearly … My wife’s aunt phoned last night and indicated her daughter’s MacBook had been stolen while at a client. Simple: call the insurance, claim for a new laptop and restore your data. Not so fast. No backups … Considering…
-
Local insurance company loses client data
So it’s not just the Americans who are poor at client data security – the South Africans have got into the act as well. Local insurance firm Zurich SA said it had lost a tape containing client information. Apparently the backup tape was lost during a routing tape transfer to a data storage centre in…
-
Data loss for Sidekick users Part 3
Internetnews.com mentioned on the 16th October that the bulk of the data had been recovered: “Microsoft today reports it recovered the majority of lost customer data for Sidekick owners amid a flurry of lawsuits filed yesterday over the recent server failure caused a service outage and data loss.” This is not quite the truth: no…
-
SCO’s Darl McBride terminated
Finally it seems that they’ve had enough of poor old Darl at SCO. Took them long enough but they’ve filed some paperwork with the SEC in the USA indicating as much.
-
Microsoft hijacks Firefox Part 2
So there was a call for Mozilla to blacklist the MS plugins. And that is exactly what they have done! The Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant and Windows Presentation Foundation were added, for reasons of their vulnerability to remote code execution. All versions for all applications have been blocked. Apparently the Framework Assistant has now been…
-
Microsoft hijacks Firefox
Microsoft was quite upset with Google recently with the latter’s attempt to install a plugin ( Google Frame ) for IE; it seems though that it’s fine for Microsoft to install a plugin for Firefox – and it’s come back to haunt them with a security hole in the plugin that they silently installed! Earlier…
-
Data loss for Sidekick users Part 2
So yesterday Microsoft/Danger indicated that they had managed to get back most of the users’ data that was ‘lost’ as part of a problem with their core database earlier this week. Unfortunately not many of their customers are amused and have started a host of legal challenges regarding the system failure. Most of this revolves…
-
Apple and data leakage?
Wow, looks like it’s getting to be a very bad week for data security. First Microsoft and Co. lose ALL of your Sidekick data, then Apple has a pretty serious bug in terms of their OS and the possibility of data loss. Now from Apple’s MobileME service, there comes a report of data leakage –…
-
Data loss for Sidekick users
It appears that Sidekick users in the USA, who stored their data/backups on-line though the Microsoft/Danger on-line cloud service, have lost access to all their data after a server failure: “Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device—such as contacts, calendar…
-
Possible data loss in Mac OS X 10.6
Based on the amount of Apple forum postings on this issue, it seems to be very serious: there is the possibility of data loss if you have a guest account enabled prior to installing/upgrading Snow Leopard. It is speculated that the actual bug is that after logging in to the Leopard-created guest account while running…
-
Online mail services, security and your identity
A number of high profile on-line mail services were hit with a phishing scheme which resulted in the posting on-line of thousands of account details over the weekend. Hotmail seems to have been hit the hardest but both GMail and Yahoo were also targetted. There are 2 serious issues here: many people are still using…
-
The new Browser Ballot Screen for EU Windows
This is the latest iteration of the browser for any Windows PCs sold into the EU in the next 5 years.
