Fujitsu claims that it has developed a key technology that would allow the company to quintuple today’s highest commercial storage densities in hard disk media. If researchers will be able to transfer the technology into commercial products, we could see 5 TB desktop drives and 1.5 TB notebook drives in the not too distant future.

Fujitsu’s news describes a one of first details and outlooks provided by one of the leading hard drive manufacturers about its patterned media technology research. So far largely limited to paper publications and simulation programs, Fujitsu claims that it was able to build a patterned media device with a one-dimensional array nanohole pattern with a track width of only 25 nm.

Source: TG Daily

Swedish bank Nordea has told ZDNet UK that it has been stung for between seven and eight million Swedish krona–up to $1.1 million–in what security company McAfee is describing as the “biggest ever” online bank heist.

Over the last 15 months, Nordea customers have been targeted by e-mails containing a tailor-made Trojan, said the bank.

Nordea believes that 250 customers have been affected by the fraud, after falling victim to phishing e-mails containing the Trojan. According to McAfee, Swedish police believe Russian-organized criminals are behind the attacks. Currently, 121 people are suspected of being involved.

The attack started by a tailor-made Trojan sent in the name of the bank to some of its clients, according to McAfee. The sender encouraged clients to download a “spam fighting” application. Users who downloaded the attached file, called raking.zip or raking.exe, were infected by the Trojan, which some security companies call haxdoor.ki.

Haxdoor typically installs keyloggers to record keystrokes, and hides itself using a rootkit. The payload of the .ki variant of the Trojan was activated when users attempted to log in to the Nordea online banking site. According to the bank, users were redirected to a false home page, where they entered important log-in information, including log-in numbers.

After the users entered the information an error message appeared, informing them that the site was experiencing technical difficulties. Criminals then used the harvested customer details on the real Nordea Web site to take money from customer accounts.

Source: News.com

Internet media company Yahoo Inc. launched on Friday a new Web site to help users manage their personal finances, with tools for building a budget or retirement plan.

The site contains nine categories for managing personal finance, from tax planning to college and education expenses, loans and real estate.

Yahoo Personal Finance will also draw on information from such publishers as CNNMoney.com, Consumer Reports and the Wall Street Journal.

Source: Reuters

Search engine giant Google Inc. plans to spend $600 million to build a data center in North Carolina, state officials and the company said Friday.

The so-called “server farm” will eventually employ 210 people in a region hit hard in recent years by layoffs in the furniture and textile industries.

“This company will provide hundreds of good-paying, knowledge-based jobs that North Carolinas citizens want,” Gov. Mike Easley said in a statement. “It will help reinvigorate an area hard hit by the loss of furniture and textile jobs with 21st century opportunities.”

Source: AP

Computer virus writers started to use raging European storms on Friday to attack thousands of computers in an unusual real-time assault, head of research at Finnish data security firm F-Secure told Reuters.

The virus, which the company named “Storm Worm” is sent to hundreds of thousands of email addresses globally, with the e-mail’s subject line saying “230 dead as storm batters Europe.”

The attached file contains the so-called malware that can infiltrate computer systems.

“What makes this exceptional is the timely nature of the attack,” Mikko Hypponen, head of research at F-Secure said.

Hypponen said thousands of computers around the world, most in private use, had been affected.

He said most users would not notice the malware, or trojan, which creates a back door to the computer that can be exploited later to steal data or to use the computer to post spam.

Source: Reuters