QNAP TS-879 Pro Review: Massive NAS Box Offers Terrific Capacity and Performance, for a Price

If your shared data or storage needs are greater than a four-bay box will handle, the eight-bay QNAP TS-879 Pro is just what the doctor ordered. With 2GB of memory and an Intel Core i3-2120 CPU, it's fast and then some. It also sports dual gigabit ethernet ports for failover protection and aggregation, plus QNAP's feature-rich operating system. But it's expensive: $2199 (as of March 23, 2012) without drives, and $2920 with 6TB of hard drives.

The TS-879 Pro is built like a tank, with eight front-mounted bays. In our roundup of 11 NAS boxes, only it and its cousin, the QNAP TS-459 Pro II, support 6GB/s SATA as well as drives with capacities greater than 2.2TB. The front of the unit contains a status display and a rocker selection/enter button for configuring the RAID array on the first run. Also on the front are a USB 3.0 port and a quick-copy button for transferring data onto the box from attached drives.

The back of the TS-879 Pro houses the ethernet ports, four USB 2.0 ports, a second USB 3.0 port, two eSATA ports, and three relatively unusual port types: a VGA connector for proprietary diagnostics, an HDMI port that lets you attach a monitor to display the output from video surveillance cameras, and an opening for the box's expansion slot that supports gigabit and 10 gigabit ethernet cards.

Though it finished third out of 11 NAS boxes on the task of writing a 10GB mix of files and folders (its speed was 54.2 megabytes per second), the TS-879 Pro was in other respects the fastest box we tested. It read the same mixed group of files and folders at a whopping 71.3 MBps, and it read our single large 10GB file at 111.6 MBps. Most impressively of all, it wrote that large file at 111.3 MBps. If you need to back up a lot of PCs in a hurry, this box can do it.

QNAP packs a lot of features into its very usable operating system--far too many to list here (QNAP has posted an online demo of the options)--but a short list includes DLNA-certified and iTunes media serving, Web serving, a wide array of remote-access protocols, and the ability to function as an LDAP or VPN server. QNAP already supported populating its user lists with LDAP. As on all QNAP boxes, the video surveillance access is strictly browser-based without the HDMI port provided by the TS-879 Pro for direct viewing.

At $2920 with its full complement of drives in place, the TS-879 Pro is clearly not intended for the average small-office or home-office user; small- and medium-size businesses, however, should take note. If you need the amount of storage that eight bays provide, along with top performance and advanced features, there's no better multibay NAS box to be had.

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Massive Android Malware Op May Have Infected 5 Million Users

The largest-ever Android malware campaign may have duped as many as 5 million users into downloading infected apps from Google's Android Market, Symantec said today.

Dubbed "Android.Counterclank" by Symantec, the malware was packaged in 13 different apps from three different publishers, with titles ranging from "Sexy Girls Puzzle" to "Counter Strike Ground Force." Many of the infected apps were still available on the Android Market as of 3 p.m. ET Friday.

"They don't appear to be real publishers," Kevin Haley, a director with Symantec's security response team, said in an interview today. "These aren't rebundled apps, as we've seen so many times before."

Haley was referring to a common tactic by Android malware makers to repackage a legitimate app with attack code, then re-release it to the marketplace in the hope that users will confuse the fake with the real deal.

Symantec estimated the impact by combining the download totals -- which the Android Market shows as ranges -- of the 13 apps, arriving at a figure between 1 million on the low end and 5 million on the high. "Yes, this is the largest malware [outbreak] on the Android Market," said Haley.

Android.Counterclank is a Trojan horse that when installed on an Android smartphone collects a wide range of information, including copies of the bookmarks and the handset maker. It also modifies the browser's home page.

The hackers have monetized the malware by pushing unwanted advertisements to compromised Android phones.

Although the infected apps request an uncommonly large number of privileges -- something that the user must approve -- Haley argued that few people bother reading them before giving their okay.

"If you were the suspicious type, you might wonder why they're asking for permission to modify the browser or transmit GPS coordinates," said Haley. "But most people don't bother."

Android.Counterclank is a minor variation on an older Android Trojan horse called Android.Tonclank that was discovered in June 2011.

Some of the 13 apps that Symantec identified as infected have been on the Android Market for at least a month, according to the revision dates posted on the e-store. Symantec, however, discovered them only yesterday.

Users had noticed something fishy before then.

"The game is decent ... but every time you run this game, a 'search icon gets added randomly to one of your screens," said one user on Jan. 16 after downloading "Deal & Be Millionaire," one of the 13. "I keep deleting the icon, but it always reappears. If you tap the icon you get a page that looks suspiciously like the Google search page."

Android users have hammered one of the infected apps with low review scores, calling it 'crap.'

All 13 suspected apps are free for the downloading.

Symantec's researchers have told Google of their discovery, said Haley. Google, however, did not immediately reply to questions and a request for confirmation on the security firm's claims.

Haley said Symantec's researchers are still "peeling back the layers of the onion," and added that the company would publish more information on the threat as it unearthed details. "What's interesting here is that instead of taking legitimate apps, [malware authors] have created apps similar to legitimate ones," said Haley. "That, and the big numbers of downloads, of course."

Symantec has published a list of the 13 infected apps on its website.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer , on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His e-mail address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

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