Online retailer jumpstarts Intel's Core i3 chip launch

IDG News Service - An online retailer is taking orders for a Hewlett-Packard laptop that includes Intel's latest Core i3 processor, providing details of the chip maker's next-generation laptop processor ahead of the product's official launch.

ECost, a U.S. online store, is taking orders for an HP Pavilion dv6-2157sb laptop with the Core i3-330m processor. The processor runs at a speed of 2.13GHz, according to the listing.

The laptop is priced at $919 and includes 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 320GB hard drive, wireless networking, a 15.6-inch screen and theWindows 7 OS.

Intel last week said it would officially release the next generation of

laptop and desktop processors at the Consumer Electronics Show, which will be held in Las Vegas January 7-10. The chips will be available under the Core i3, i5 and i7 brands and will offer better application and graphics performance than Intel's existing Core 2 Duo processors.

The new chips integrate the CPU and graphics processor in a single package, which could improve graphics performance while drawing less power. The graphics chips will be able to play back full 1080p high-definition video and decode Blu-ray movies.

Better performance also comes from running more threads on each core for faster task execution. A dual-core Core i3 chip, for example, will be able to run four threads simultaneously, compared with two threads on existing dual-core Core 2 Duo processors. Intel's new Turbo Boost technology, featured in the i3, can ratchet up the speed of a processor core or even shut off a core when not needed to save power.

An Intel spokesman declined to comment on the laptop listing. HP did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Earlier, a Canadian retailer, A-Power, listed the Core i3-530 chip for desktops running at 2.9GHz. That listing has been pulled off the Web site. The dual-core chip included 512KB of L2 cache and 4MB of L3 cache.

The new chips are part of Intel's Westmere architecture and will be manufactured using the latest 32-nanometer process. Intel's existing chips are made using a 45-nm process.

Westmere is based on the same micro-architecture underpinnings as existing Nehalem chips, which are made using the 45-nm process. Nehalem chips include Core i5, Core i7 desktop and Xeon 5500 server chips.

source:http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9142740/Online_retailer_jumpstarts_Intel_s_Core_i3_chip_launch

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Report: Russian gang linked to big Citibank hack

IDG News Service - U.S. authorities are investigating the theft of an estimated tens of millions of dollars from Citibank by hackers partly using Russian software tailored for the attack, according to a news report.

The security breach at the major U.S. bank was detected mid-year based on traffic from Internet addresses formerly used by the Russian Business Network gang, The Wall Street Journal said Tuesday, citing unnamed government sources. The Russian Business Network is a well-known group linked to malicious software, hacking, child pornography and spam. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing the case, the report said.

It was not known whether the money had been recovered and a Citibank representative said the company had not had any system breach or losses, according to the report.

The report left unclear who the money was stolen from but said a program called Black Energy, designed by a Russian hacker, was one tool used in the attack. The tool can be used to command a botnet, or a large group of computers infected by malware and controlled by an attacker, in assaults meant to take down target Web sites. This year a modified version of the software appeared online that could steal banking information, and in the Citi attack a version tailored to target the bank was used, the Journal said.

The attackers also targeted a U.S. government agency and one other unnamed entity, the report said, adding that it was unknown if the attackers accessed Citibank systems directly or through other parties.

source:http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9142578/Report_Russian_gang_linked_to_big_Citibank_hack

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Twitter's own account caused blackout, says DNS provider

Twitter's authorized account made changes to DNS records, shunting users to hacker site, says Dyn Inc.

Computerworld - Hackers redirected Twitter.com's traffic to a rogue Web site for more than an hour early today by accessing its DNS records using an account assigned to Twitter, the company that manages Twitter's DNS (Domain Name System) servers said today.

Twitter initially blamed the early-Friday hour-long blackout of its site on changes made to the company's DNS records, which act like a telephone directory to match the twitter.com domain name with the IP addresses used by its servers.

"Twitter's DNS records were temporarily compromised, but have now been fixed," the company said on its service status page at 2:30 a.m. ET. "We are looking into the underlying cause and will update with more information soon." The status page has not been revised with more information since then.

Twitter uses a New Hampshire firm, Dyn Inc., to manage its DNS records, which match Twitter's domain name (twitter.com, and numerous others) with the IP addresses of its servers.

Today, Dyn denied that its infrastructure had been hacked. Early Friday, Tom Daly, Dyn's chief technology officer, told the Washington Post it appeared someone changed Twitter's DNS records to point visitors to a different IP address using the proper account credentials assigned to Twitter.

"Someone logged in who purported to be a legitimate user of their [DNS] platform account and started making changes," Daly told the Post's Brian Krebs. "It was not a failing on our systems whatsoever."

Kyle York, Dyn's vice president of marketing, echoed that in an interview with Computerworld. "No unauthenticated e-mail address associated with the account accessed the [Twitter] account," York maintained. "This was not an unauthorized breach of our system."

When asked whether the Twitter account had been used by someone authorized to do so, or if those account credentials had been pilfered by hackers, York declined to answer directly. "You'll have to read between the lines," he said. However, he did point to a tweet on Dyn's own Twitter feed as having the right explanation.

That tweet referenced a story on The Tech Herald, in which reporter Steve Ragan used the clues available, including Dyn's public statements, to theorize that someone compromised a Twitter staffer's e-mail account, presumably via malware that snuck onto the Twitter employee's computer, or through a standard phishing-style identity theft attack.

Once in control of the e-mail account, the hackers then used it to request a password reset for Twitter's account with Dyn, Ragan speculated. "The password reset process is completed, and at this point the person(s) posing as a Twitter staffer gets the reset password via e-mail," Ragan wrote.

That approach makes the most sense, agreed Ray Dickenson, chief technology officer at security vendor Authentium. "That's the most logical explanation," said Dickenson. "If someone obtained administrator credentials for Twitter's account with Dyn, or even if it was inside job, everything worked except the human element."

Dickenson said Dyn's claim that its servers had not been officially hacked is also likely true. "It's very difficult to directly hack a top-tier DNS provider," he said, noting that security at such firms is extremely tight. "You've got to believe that Twitter looked at the options, and made the right choice when it went with Dyn. Twitter's a huge site, and a huge brand."

Also in Dyn's favor, said Dickenson, is the company's contention that only Twitter's DNS records were altered, a fact that York stressed. "The fact that virtually all of Twitter's records were pointing to this defaced site, and that no other [Dyn] customers' records had been altered, corroborates what Dyn's saying."

According to York, Twitter will post a more detailed explanation of the cause of the outage later Friday. "It will fully exonerate us, that's one thing I can say," York said.

Twitter has been on shaky security ground for some time. Last August, determined distributed denial-of-service attacks knocked it offline for several hours. Two months before that, a hack of a URL-shortening service redirected millions of Twitter users to an unintended destination.



source:http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9142486/Twitter_s_own_account_caused_blackout_says_DNS_provider?source=rss_news

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