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Hard Drive RMA drop

This is ominous news.  Seagate / WD (yes, same company) are cutting back their RMA windows significantly.

Being as I have been working user support for the last year, I can tell you I have seen a large amount of bad drives of both these brands, especially Segate labeled ones.  I have done many more RMAs on machine deployed in the last 6-9 months, than I have on the older 2-3 year old machines that are out in the field.

Gonna have to say the cut in RMAs is a tell tale sign of the declining reliability of these traditional drives.  The 250GB models have been the most prevalent fatalities, with the 120GB models a little behind them.

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Square Enix Members breach

Looks like 1.8 million of the 2.1 million accounts were breached.  I’m wondering if the hack completely side-stepped user accounts with keyfobs, or the .3 mil user accounts were the ones with said devices.  Info on breach

I’d login and check, but the site remains to be down.  Looks like they found out about the rooting during some maintenance on the 13th.  So I guess that also means that Final Fantasy logins are down too?

Been clear of the MMOs lately, as Forsaken World just got to the bleh threshold for me.  Haven’t tried an SE account since start of last month.

Update as of Friday night:

Temporary Suspension of “SQUARE ENIX MEMBERS” Operations (Update)

As a result of our continuing investigation into the unauthorized intrusion reported yesterday, Square Enix has now determined that user login credentials were not accessed. Moreover, we have not found evidence that the individual was able to access any personal information at all.

We will be sending an email to all SQUARE ENIX MEMBERS advising that an incident took place. This email will not be requesting any action from you.

We have reported this incident to the Japanese Government.

Because we have decided to conduct a broader internal investigation, it will take a few more days before we make the SQUARE ENIX MEMBERS service available once again. We deeply regret the inconvenience this may have caused our customers and fans, and appreciate your patience.

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Windows 7 Malware / FakeHDD

Rouge.FakeHDD is making it’s rounds this week and now is also floating around on Windows 7 Machines.  Point of post is the new spot for malware seems to be:
C:\ProgramData

This is your new spot to check on Windows 7, versus the Application Data or Local folders in the Docs and Settings folder in XP.

As usual, run TDSSKILLER too, since search result hijacks are commonly also present.  Rootkit.boot.SST.b found in today’s instance.

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Security vendor Gov't Compliance

Say what you will about wikileaks being ‘evil’.  If Gov’t and businesses didn’t do such shady shit, there would be far less ominous information to report.

What vendors spy on customers for Gov’t.

Stepping aside from the instinct to view this a paranoid babble, please take a moment to remember that a deliberately designed back door, is only a few steps short of an unauthorized intrusion.  When you design deliberate flaws like this for the ease of authority auditing requests, the ‘bad guys’ are just as likely to obtain the same level of access.