The end of the year in cybersecurity mirrored the wider world by concluding in catastrophe: With more than 10000 people dying every day from Covid-19, a highly sophisticated electronic espionage campaign targeted U.S. government agencies and critical private industry, all customers of a single company: SolarWinds.
But there are some champions trying to make the online world a safer place. Our inaugural Forbes Cybersecurity Awards celebrate their achievements.
Posted in cybercrime/malcode, information science, particle physics | Leave a Comment on Fujifilm develops technology to deliver the world’s highest 580TB storage capacity for magnetic tapes using strontium ferrite (SrFe) magnetic particles
“FUJIFILM Corporation (President: Kenji Sukeno) is pleased to announce that it has achieved the world’s record 317 Gbpsi recording density with magnetic tapes using a new magnetic particle called Strontium Ferrite (SrFe)*4. The record was achieved in tape running test, conducted jointly with IBM Research. This represents the development of epoch-making technology that can produce data cartridges with the capacity of 580TB (terabytes), approximately 50 times greater than the capacity of current cartridges*5. The capacity of 580TB is enough to store data equivalent to 120000 DVDs.”
TOKYO, December 162020 — FUJIFILM Corporation (President: Kenji Sukeno) is pleased to announce that it has achieved the world’s record 317 Gbpsi recording density with magnetic tapes using a new magnetic particle called Strontium Ferrite (SrFe) *4. The record was achieved in tape running test, conducted jointly with IBM Research. This represents the development of epoch-making technology that can produce data cartridges with the capacity of 580TB (terabytes), approximately 50 times greater than the capacity of current cartridges *5. The capacity of 580TB is enough to store data equivalent to 120000 DVDs.
SrFe is a magnetic material that has very high magnetic properties and is stable to maintain high performance even when processed into fine particles. It is widely used as a raw material for producing magnets for motors. Fujifilm has applied its proprietary technology to successfully develop ultra-fine SrFe magnetic particles, which can be used as a magnetic material for producing particulate magnetic tape media for data storage. The company has been conducting R&D for commercial use of SrFe magnetic particles as potential replacement of Barium Ferrite (BaFe) magnetic particles, currently used in magnetic tape data storage media. Magnetic tapes used in this test have been produced at the company’s existing coating facility, confirming the ability to support mass production and commercialization.
The amount of data in the society is exponentially increasing due to the introduction of high-definition 4K / 8K video, advancement in IoT / ICT, and the proliferation of Big Data analysis. “Cold Data,” or data that was generated a long time ago and rarely accessed, is said to account for over 80% of all data available today. There is a fast-growing trend of utilizing such Cold Data and other accumulated data, creating the need to secure safe, affordable and long-term data storage. Magnetic tapes have been used by major data centers and research organizations for many years as they not only offer benefits including large storage capacity, low cost and long-term storage performance, but also create air gap data protection, physically isolated from the network, thereby minimizing the risk of data damage or loss caused by cyberattacks.
The companies involved used compromised software, but it’s not clear if hackers entered their networks. Finding out could be difficult.
Just in time for the Christmas holiday, Emotet is sending the gift of Trickbot.
After a lull of nearly two months, the Emotet botnet has returned with updated payloads and a campaign that is hitting 100, 000 targets per day.
Emotet started life as a banking trojan in 2014 and has continually evolved to become a full-service threat-delivery mechanism. It can install a collection of malware on victim machines, including information stealers, email harvesters, self-propagation mechanisms and ransomware. It was last seen in volume in October, targeting volunteers for the Democratic National Committee (DNC); and before that, it became active in July after a five-month hiatus, dropping the Trickbot trojan. Before that, in February, it was seen in a campaign that sent SMS messages purporting to be from victims’ banks.
[Editor’s Note: Independent security consultant Christopher Budd worked previously in Microsoft’s Security Response Center for 10 years.]
Analysis: To understand where the SolarWinds attackers are going next, and how to defend against them, look to the clouds.
The SolarWinds supply chain attacks are unprecedented in many ways. The attacks are sophisticated in execution, broad in scope, and incredibly potent in their effectiveness. But perhaps most notable is the unprecedented manner in which the SolarWinds attackers seem to be seeking access to cloud-based services as one of their key objectives.
Covid-19 vaccines are coming—so are hackers.
As drugmakers distribute Covid-19 vaccines, cybersecurity experts are warning against the growing threat of tampering and theft by organized crime networks. WSJ explains how hackers are targeting the vaccine rollout during the pandemic. Illustration: George Downs.
Security researchers have shared lists of organizations where threat actors deployed Sunburst/Solarigate malware, after ongoing investigations of the SolarWinds supply chain attack.
One of these lists—shared by cybersecurity firm Truesec —includes high-profile tech companies such as Intel, Nvidia, Cisco, Cox Communications, and Belkin, to name just a few.
Mediatek, the world’s second-largest provider of fabless semiconductors, might have also been specifically targeted in this campaign but TrueSec hasn’t yet fully confirmed the breach at this point.
There are many reasons why hackers might want to get into a big tech company’s systems.
Big tech companies like Intel and Nvidia had their computers hacked, along with the departments of the US federal government, in the SolarWinds hack.
While analyzing artifacts from the SolarWinds Orion supply-chain attack, security researchers discovered another backdoor that is likely from a second threat actor.
Named SUPERNOVA, the malware is a webshell planted in the code of the Orion network and applications monitoring platform and enabled adversaries to run arbitrary code on machines running the trojanized version of the software.
The expert whose company uncovered the hack also backs US officials’ view that Russia was behind it.
