BBC News Online has been shown just how lax security is on wireless networks used in London's financial centre. On one short trip, two-thirds of the networks we discovered using a laptop and free software tools were found to be wide open. Any maliciously minded hacker could easily join these networks and piggy back on their fast net links, steal documents or subvert other machines on the systems to do their bidding. None of the wireless networks we found used anything but their flawed, in-built security systems to protect against hack attacks.
On the warpath
Many people think of hacking as a sedentary pursuit, carried out in bedrooms and back rooms all over the world. Often it is, but the growing popularity of wireless networks is making some curious folk leave their bedrooms and venture out into the fresh air. Armed with a laptop, a wireless network adapter card, as well as some widely available software tools, you can travel the streets logging the location of these networks and picking up information that could let you attack them.
News source: Slashdot
View: BBC News
On the warpath
Many people think of hacking as a sedentary pursuit, carried out in bedrooms and back rooms all over the world. Often it is, but the growing popularity of wireless networks is making some curious folk leave their bedrooms and venture out into the fresh air. Armed with a laptop, a wireless network adapter card, as well as some widely available software tools, you can travel the streets logging the location of these networks and picking up information that could let you attack them.
News source: Slashdot View: BBC News
One of the problems for Dell has been that storage systems aren't made out of standard building blocks and don't have standardized software, a difference from areas such as PCs and low-end servers where Dell is more successful. In storage, a lot more research, development and testing are required.
Dell sells two kinds of storage devices--lower-end "network-attached storage" (NAS) systems that attach to ordinary computer networks and higher-end "storage area network" (SAN) products that reside on special-purpose networks.
Dell's foray into storage began in 1999 with a deal to sell NAS devices from leading supplier Network Appliance while building its own SAN storage systems.
However, Dell and NetApp parted ways in September 2000, with Dell deciding to stick to a lower-end NAS market segment by selling the Quantum systems.
But the company will re-enter the high-end NAS market, this time with the IP4700 "Chameleon" product from storage specialist EMC through a deal announced in October.
Also as part of that deal, Dell canceled its own SAN products, despite recent work to improve the product line, and now will sell EMC's products.
Eventually, though, Dell still believes storage systems will come to resemble the server and PC market, filled with interchangeable "commodity" parts, McAnally said.
Storage systems attached directly to servers are a commodity today, he said. "NAS is quickly approaching that model. SAN would be farther up the commiditization curve," McAnally said.
Dell's new products, aimed at smaller customers or at the branch offices of larger ones, are made of commodity parts.
The 715N, aimed at entry-level consumers, costs between $2,000 and $4,000 and can store as much as 400GB of data. The 750N and the rack-mountable 755N version cost between $8,700 and $30,000, has capacity up to 7 terabytes, and competes mostly against models from IBM, Compaq and Hewlett-Packard.
The new models all use a specially tailored version of Windows 2000, Dell said.
Dell began selling NAS systems of its own design in February.
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