Category Archives: Storage

News articles and other information as it relates to computer storage technology.

SynoLocker demands 0.6 Bitcoin to decrypt Synology NAS devices

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It’s not clear yet how SynoLocker’s operators installed the malware, for example, if they had exploited a vulnerability in Synology devices. CSO Australia has asked Synology for comment and will update the story if it receives one.

According to the victim, Synology’s support team are interested in hearing from victims who have not reinstalled its Linux-based DiskStation Manager NAS operating system. Synology’s NAS devices were hit late last year by scammers looking to use their compute power to mine several cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin.

via SynoLocker demands 0.6 Bitcoin to decrypt Synology NAS devices – CSO | The Resource for Data Security Executives.

Having proper backups would thwart this attack.  Simply wipe the box and rebuild the NAS.

New PostgreSQL guns for NoSQL market

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In particular, PostgreSQL 9.4 natively supports JSON JavaScript Simple Object Notation which is quickly becoming the format of choice for sharing data across different systems, often using the REST Representational State Transfer protocol. The success of the MongoDB document database has been built in large part on the growing use of JSON.

PostgreSQL’s structured format for saving JSON, called JSONB, eliminates the need for restructuring a document before it is committed to the database.

via New PostgreSQL guns for NoSQL market – Computerworld.

US seeks information on industry ability to hold bulk phone data

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The RFI has been posted to the Federal Business Opportunities site that lists federal government procurement opportunities. The government is looking for information on whether commercially available services can, among other things, provide secure storage and high availability to U.S. telephone metadata records for a sufficient period of time, and ensure that there are no unauthorized queries of the database and no data is provided to the government without proper authorization.

via US seeks information on industry ability to hold bulk phone data | ITworld.

Unison File Synchronizer

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Unison is a file-synchronization tool for Unix and Windows. It allows two replicas of a collection of files and directories to be stored on different hosts (or different disks on the same host), modified separately, and then brought up to date by propagating the changes in each replica to the other.

Unison shares a number of features with tools such as configuration management packages (CVS, PRCS, Subversion, BitKeeper, etc.), distributed filesystems (Coda, etc.), uni-directional mirroring utilities (rsync, etc.), and other synchronizers (Intellisync, Reconcile, etc).

via Unison File Synchronizer.

What Hard Drive Should I Buy?

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At the end of 2013, we had 27,134 consumer-grade drives spinning in Backblaze Storage Pods. The breakdown by brand looks like this:

Hard Drives by Manufacturer
Brand Number
of Drives		 Terabytes Average
Age in Years
Seagate 12,765 39,576 1.4
Hitachi 12,956 36,078 2.0
Western Digital 2,838 2,581 2.5
Toshiba 58 174 0.7
Samsung 18 18 3.7

via Backblaze Blog » What Hard Drive Should I Buy?.

Why do we have the drives we have? Basically, we buy the least expensive drives that will work

There are a lot of numbers tossed around in this article that are difficult to summarize.  The above table shows the data set they worked from.

ownCloud.org

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ownCloud Documents is collaborative editing of rich-text documents. The documents can be created from within the web-interface or existing documents can be uploaded. Sharing and editing can be done securely in the browser and be shared inside ownCloud or via a public link. User that have an account on the same server can be invited or public invitations can also be sent be email. The editing works on top of normal ODF files that are stored in ownCloud. ownCloud Documents is built in cooperation with KO GmbH

via Features | ownCloud.org.

I haven’t tried this solution out yet.

Magnetic tape to the rescue

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Tape will never be the whole answer to storing data, according to Dr Eleftheriou. But it forms a crucial part of a “storage hierarchy”. At the top of this are so-called hot data, those that need to be available for immediate access. These are best held in flash memory. Lukewarm data—those that people need to access frequently, but not instantaneously—are best stored on disks. Cold data, the stuff in long-term storage, can be recorded on tape. This cold store is by far the biggest repository. A report published in 2008 by Andrew Leung of the University of California, Santa Cruz, found that in general, 90% of an organisation’s data becomes cold after a couple of months.

via Monitor: Magnetic tape to the rescue | The Economist.

Seagate introduces a new drive interface: Ethernet

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Called the Kinetic Open Storage Platform, the new approach turns disks themselves into servers, delivering data over the network to applications using an open application interface. The Kinetic platform is a combination of an open programming interface and intelligence and a network interface installed in the storage device itself. It’s targeted mostly at companies looking to adopt the same sort of architecture in their data centers that they use to connect to cloud storage providers such as Amazon

via Seagate introduces a new drive interface: Ethernet | Ars Technica.

Choosing a Journaling File System

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A journaling file system is a special type of file system that maintains a tracking file, called a journal. The journal enables the system to repair any inconsistencies that may arise as a result of a system halted abnormally. It does this by keeping track of changes that are made before committing them to the main file system. In the event that the computer is not shut down properly, any data loss can be recreated. This type of file system is therefore less likely to suffer from corruption, and brings file systems back online quickly.

via Choosing a Journaling File System – Linux Links – The Linux Portal Site.

HP D2D/StoreOnce Backdoor

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HP’s D2D product line, which has recently been rebranded “StoreOnce”, is effectively an expensive software platform.

via HP D2D/StoreOnce Backdoor.

Open up your favourite SSH client, key in the IP of an HP D2D unit. Enter in yourself the username HPSupport, and the password which has a SHA1 of 78a7ecf065324604540ad3c41c3bb8fe1d084c50. Say hello to an administrative account you didn’t know existed.