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Reader coondoggie writes: As expected the IEEE has ratified a new Ethernet specification — IEEE P802.3bz — that defines 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T, boosting the current top speed of traditional Ethernet five-times without requiring the tearing out of current cabling. The Ethernet Alliance wrote that the IEEE 802.3bz Standard for Ethernet Amendment sets Media Access Control Parameters, Physical Layers and Management Parameters for 2.5G and 5Gbps Operation lets access layer bandwidth evolve incrementally beyond 1Gbps, it will help address emerging needs in a variety of settings and applications, including enterprise, wireless networks. Indeed, the wireless component may be the most significant implication of the standard as 2.5G and 5G Ethernet will allow connectivity to 802.11ac Wave 2 Access Points, considered by many to be the real driving force behind bringing up the speed of traditional NBase-T products.

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An anonymous Slashdot reader shares an excerpt with us from a report via ZDNet that summarizes a catfishing scheme designed to deceive Amazon users into buy low-quality ebooks: Emma Moore is just one of hundreds of pseudonyms employed in a sophisticated "catfishing" scheme run by Valeriy Shershnyov, whose Vancouver-based business hoodwinks Amazon customers into buying low-quality ebooks, which have been boosted on the online marketplace by an unscrupulous system of bots, scripts, and virtual servers. Catfishing isn’t new — it’s been well documented. Some scammers buy fake reviews, while others will try other ways to game the system. Until now, nobody has been able to look inside at how one of these scams work — especially one that’s been so prolific, generating millions of dollars in royalties by cashing in on unwitting buyers who are tricked into thinking these ebooks have some substance. Shershnyov was able to stay in Amazon’s shadows for two years by using his scam server conservatively so as to not raise any red flags. What eventually gave him away weren’t customer complaints or even getting caught. It was good old-fashioned carelessness. He forgot to put a password on his server.

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Members of ING Bank found themselves unable to use their debit cards this weekend due to a completely unexpected technical failure: it was just too dang loud. More specifically, a loud noise caused by a fire extinguisher test knocked out a few dozen hard-drives at the bank’s main data center in Bucharest Romania. It’s an uncommon, but not unknown phenomenon — sound causes vibration, and hard-drives hate being jostled.

The bank was testing an electronics-safe fire suppression system in the main data center, but a pressure discrepancy caused the system to emit a loud noise while expelling inert gas. According to the bank, the sound was measured a over 130dB — apparently loud enough to knock the HDD’s physical components out of alignment.

That makes sense, but why hasn’t something like this happened before? In a paper about hard-drive fragility and fire suppression systems, IBM researchers blame the march of progress: "Early disc storage had much greater spacing between data tracks because it held less data," The paper reads. "Which is a likely reason why this issue was not apparent until recently." Modern hard drives are less tolerant, and will fail if its read/write arm nudges 1/1,000,000 of an inch off of its data track. Good to know for folks building data centers with potentially loud fire suppression systems — but maybe this is just yet another sign that solid state storage is the future.

Source: Motherboard, Data Center Journal

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A flight from Sydney to Malaysia ended up in Melbourne after the captain incorrectly entered the plane’s location in its navigation system just before take-off, according to a safety investigation, whose conclusion was published this week. Mashable reports:The Air Asia pilots made several errors in entering data into the aircraft’s navigation system, which caused them to follow an incorrect flight path out of Sydney, according to Australian transportation officials. While troubleshooting the incorrect flight path, the pilots were unable to fix the issue, and may have compounded it. The aircraft’s systems would not allow the plane to be flown in instrument conditions and the weather also had deteriorated in Sydney by the time the pilots decided to turn back. They were directed via radar to a visual approach in Melbourne where they could land safely. The pilots did not believe the airport was located in Malaysia.

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Download the full version of Paragon Backup and Recovery 16 for free (usually $39.95)!

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Jim Finkle, reporting for Reuters:SWIFT, the global financial messaging system, on Tuesday disclosed new hacking attacks on its member banks as it pressured them to comply with security procedures instituted after February’s high-profile $81 million heist at Bangladesh Bank. In a private letter to clients, SWIFT said that new cyber-theft attempts — some of them successful — have surfaced since June, when it last updated customers on a string of attacks discovered after the attack on the Bangladesh central bank. "Customers’ environments have been compromised, and subsequent attempts (were) made to send fraudulent payment instructions," according to a copy of the letter reviewed by Reuters. "The threat is persistent, adaptive and sophisticated – and it is here to stay." The disclosure suggests that cyber thieves may have ramped up their efforts following the Bangladesh Bank heist, and that they specifically targeted banks with lax security procedures for SWIFT-enabled transfers. The Brussels-based firm, a member-owned cooperative, indicated in Tuesday’s letter that some victims in the new attacks lost money, but did not say how much was taken or how many of the attempted hacks succeeded.

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I’ve been trying out a service called Tinfoil Security recently. It’s basically an automatic hacking system that will try to break into your web site by trying all the tricks that real hackers do. Thousands of them. And if any of the tricks manage to succeed, you get a report so you can plug the hole.

If you run a web site, whether you have your own server or just a shared hosting package, this type of exercise (known as penetration testing) is something that you should definitely try. But if you’re wondering whether you can try the test against someone else’s site, sadly the answer is no. You’ll need to prove that you own the site in question before Tinfoil starts its work.

A subscription to Tinfoil costs from $59 a month, but you get 1 month’s free trial so you can easily scan your site a few times before the trial runs out. They also offer a very limited free-forever plan that allows you to check for a specific vulnerability.  Read More

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