Tag Archive for: Hardware

IBM Warns Customers After Shipping Them Infected USB Drives

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IBM is urging customers to destroy flash drives it shipped to storage system customers because they contain malware.

The company warned in an advisory Tuesday that an unspecified number of USB flash drives shipped with the initialization tool for Storwize systems contain malicious code. IBM instructed customers who received the V3500, V3700 and V5000 Gen 1 systems to destroy the drive to prevent the code from replicating.

“When the initialization tool is launched from the USB flash drive, the tool copies itself to a temporary folder on the hard drive of the desktop or laptop during normal operation,” IBM said in its advisory.

The malicious code is part of the Reconyc Trojan malware family, which typically targets computers in Russia and India, according to data from Kaspersky Lab.

IBM said that while the malware is copied onto the victim’s device, the malicious code is not executed during initialization.

IBM recommends users who have already inserted the drive into their systems run an antivirus system to remove the malware. Users can also remove the directory containing the identified malicious file.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the malware landed on the flash drives. IBM didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The affected Initialization USB flash drive looks like the image below, and contains a folder called InitTool.

IBM infected USB

 

New tech harvests drinking water from (relatively) dry air using only sunlight

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A new device the size of a coffee mug can generate drinkable water from desert air using nothing but sunlight.

“With this device, you can harvest the equivalent of a Coke can’s worth of water in an hour,” says cocreator Omar Yaghi, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley. “That’s about how much water a person needs to survive in the desert.”

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More university students are using tech to cheat in exams

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A growing number of UK university students are cheating in exams with the help of technological devices such as mobile phones, smart watches and hidden earpieces.

Data obtained by the Guardian through freedom of information requests found a 42% rise in cheating cases involving technology over the last four years – from 148 in 2012 to 210 in 2016. Last year, a quarter of all students caught cheating used electronic devices.

Among the worst offenders were students at Queen Mary University of London, where there were 54 instances of cheating – two-thirds of which involved technology. At the University of Surrey, 19 students were caught in 2016, 12 of them with devices. Newcastle University, one the bigger institutions to provide data, reported 91 cases of cheating – 43% of which involved technology.

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Scientists invent new material for storing data

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Associate Professor Yang Hyunsoo (left) and research fellow Shawn Pollard are part of the team at the National University of Singapore working on the use of skyrmions as data carriers.

A nano-sized piece of film could hold the key to storage that is faster, holds more data and uses less power compared with current solid-state memory.

Scientists at the National University of Singapore’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering have combined cobalt and palladium into a film that’s capable of housing stable skyrmions, which are swirling magnetic textures a few nanometers in size that can store and process data, the university said Monday in a statement.

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