SAN FRANCISCO — A team of European and American mathematicians and cryptographers have discovered an unexpected weakness in the encryption system widely used worldwide for online shopping, banking, e-mail and other Internet services intended to remain private and secure.
The flaw — which involves a small but measurable number of cases — has to do with the way the system generates random numbers, which are used to make it practically impossible for an attacker to unscramble digital messages. While it can affect the transactions of individual Internet users, there is nothing an individual can do about it. The operators of large Web sites will need to make changes to ensure the security of their systems, the researchers said.
H.P.’s Servers Are a Play Against the Cloud
Hewlett-Packard just announced a new line of business computers. They include sensors in the racks and wires, and smart software. Perhaps it should also include a small prayer that its customers do not change too much or too fast.
The new machines, the ProLiant Generation 8 servers, are the product of two years of development costing $300 million. The company claims the machines have over 160 different upgrades and new features compared with H.P.'s previous generation of servers, including things like automated updating of security patches that can cut server re-provisioning times to 10 minutes from 5 hours. Sensors in the server racks can tell where machines are located and how they are performing. Performance tweaks yield 70 percent more computing power per watt, H.P. says. Fewer humans and more software, the company claims, can cut server downtime by up to 93 percent.
The new machines, the ProLiant Generation 8 servers, are the product of two years of development costing $300 million. The company claims the machines have over 160 different upgrades and new features compared with H.P.'s previous generation of servers, including things like automated updating of security patches that can cut server re-provisioning times to 10 minutes from 5 hours. Sensors in the server racks can tell where machines are located and how they are performing. Performance tweaks yield 70 percent more computing power per watt, H.P. says. Fewer humans and more software, the company claims, can cut server downtime by up to 93 percent.
Hacking Cases Focus on Memo to a Murdoch
LONDON — As dozens of investigators and high-powered lawyers converge on Rupert Murdoch’s News International in the phone hacking scandal, attention has focused on the printout of an e-mail excavated three months ago from a sealed carton left behind in an empty company office.
The Age of Big Data
Mo Zhou was snapped up by I.B.M. last summer, as a freshly minted Yale M.B.A., to join the technology company’s fast-growing ranks of data consultants. They help businesses make sense of an explosion of data — Web traffic and social network comments, as well as software and sensors that monitor shipments, suppliers and customers — to guide decisions, trim costs and lift sales. “I’ve always had a love of numbers,” says Ms. Zhou, whose job as a data analyst suits her skills.
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