Author: Nick Farrell

Dutch can outsource spying

Posted on July 25, 2014 by - News

dutch-childrenThe Dutch courts have ruled that while the government is forbidden to snoop on its citizens over the internet, it is allowed to use data stolen from them by the American spooks.

The Hague District Court Dutch ruled that intelligence services can receive bulk data that might have been obtained by the US National Security Agency (NSA) through mass data interception programs, even though collecting data that way is illegal under Dutch law.

A civil case filed by a coalition of defence lawyers, privacy advocates and journalists who sued the Dutch government wanted a court order to stop the AIVD and MIVD from obtaining data from foreign intelligence agencies that was not obtained in accordance with European and Dutch law.

NSA’s mass data collection programs violate human rights guaranteed by international and European treaties including the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the lawyers argued.

However, the court said that under Dutch law, Dutch intelligence services are allowed to collaborate with the NSA. The NSA in turn is bound by US law which, in general, does not conflict with the human rights convention privacy requirements.

Since raw data is shared in bulk, less stringent safeguards are necessary than would apply when the data is examined and used, the court said. It added that there would be a big difference between receiving data and using it for individual cases.

The court said it only ruled on general grounds, assessing the actions of the state in general. It suggested the outcome could be different when individual lawsuits or complaints were filed with the relevant institutions.

The lawyers bringing the case were furious and dubbed it “incomprehensible.”

In a statement, they said that innocent citizens’ privacy rights should prevail over the interests of intelligence services. Because the data exchanged in bulk involves information on many innocent people, safeguards that are more stringent are needed.

They plan to appeal the ruling.

Chromebooks outclass iPads

Posted on July 25, 2014 by - News

classApple’s dominance over the tablet market is slumping but one thing that the Tame Apple Press is failing to say is that they are being eclipsed by Chromebooks.

Jobs’ Mob has admitted that it only sold 13.3 million iPads, down nine percent from last year, but Apple CFO Luca Maestri insisted that in education, the iPad remains the tablet of choice with 85 percent share of the US education tablet market. She said that Apple had sold 13 million iPads to education customers globally.

But while Apple leads the academic market for tablets, not all schools are buying iPads to give to students; they’re also buying laptops, including Chromebooks. In otherwords, while Apple is leading tablet sales, that is because its main rival is not providing tablets.

Chromebooks run ChromeOS on what would best be described a cheap laptop hardware – although there are a few premium models like the Pixel – with an Intel CPU. Google has a number of hardware partners, including Acer, which lead the pack with 30 percent of the Chromebook market.

Apparently, sales have been so good that Google only recently added tablets to the range.

Google reported a few days ago that it sold a million Chromebooks to schools last quarter (another 800,000 were sold to consumers. While that might not look nearly as impressive as Apple’s 13 million iPads, the numbers suggest  that Google could be selling as many Chromebooks to schools as Apple is selling iPads.

You can work it out. If schools bought five million iPads in the 17 months,  Apple averaged under a million iPads sold to schools each quarter – an average which is less than the million Chromebooks sold.

So why are Chromebooks doing so well?  They are cheaper and they have keyboards so you can do a lot more with them.

IE is back to being Internet Exploder

Posted on July 25, 2014 by - News

rage-explosionAfter years of keeping its security flaws down in its Internet Explorer range, Microsoft appears to be under siege from malware writers.

Bromium Labs analysed public vulnerabilities and exploits from the first six months of 2014. The research determined that Internet Explorer vulnerabilities have increased more than 100 percent since 2013.

This makes IE worse than Java and Flash for vulnerabilities.

It does not appear to be Microsoft’s fault. Hackers had been increasingly targeting Internet Explorer and Vole had responded by a progressively shorter time to first patch for its past two releases.

In contrast, the number of Java zero-days have declined and in the first six months of 2014, there has not been a single public Java exploit.

Bromium thinks that so much attention was paid to JAVA exploits in 2013 and countermeasures such as disabling Java may have had a role in forcing attackers to switch to new targets this year. This resulted in a drop in Java being targeted generally.

The hackers have been using Action Script Spray which is an emerging technique that bypasses address space layout randomisation (ASLR) with a return-oriented program (ROP) chain.

Rahul Kashyap, chief security architect, at Bromium said web browsers have always been a favourite avenue of attack, but hackers are not only getting better at attacking Internet Explorer, they are doing it more frequently.

He said that Action Script Sprays are a new technique and similar techniques will start to appear in the months to come. This is further evidence that the world of Web browser plugins presents a weak link that is just waiting for exploitation.

Web browser release cycles are compressing and the interval between the general availability of a new release and the appearance of the first security patches has been decreasing recently, he noted.

“This may represent greater efforts on the part of software manufacturers to secure their products, or it may represent products being released to market with less security testing than earlier versions received,” Kashyap said.

Tory wants magical protection

Posted on July 25, 2014 by - News

alumni_rogues2On the 40th anniversary of the development of Dungeons and Dragons, a Tory politician has called for treasure, weapons and other magical goods in online roleplaying games to be protected by real laws.

Mike Weatherley, who is David Cameron’s chief adviser on things IP, wants those who swipe valuable items in video games to get the same sentences as burglars

It is not clear where the move will leave chaotic evil Elvin thieves who do very else in the games. Weatherley has asked ministers to consider passing a law that would mean people “who steal online items in video games with a real-world monetary value receive the same sentences as criminals who steal real-world items of the same monetary value”.

It is the sort of thing that only a gamer would come up with and Weatherley, the MP for Hove, East Sussex is a Warcraft player himself.

He said that since players can spend serious amounts of real-world cash on items, even though they exist only online, they should be offered the same protection as victims of theft in the world of solid objects.

“If you’ve spent £500 building up your armed forces and someone takes them away online, I guess you can feel hard done-by and you want your £500 back,” he told Buzzfeed.

Weatherley said that it was important that people lose the perception from some people is that if you steal online it is less of a crime than if you steal physically.

It could equally cause a few problems. In 2008, a woman in Tokyo realised her virtual husband had divorced her without warning, and as revenge she used the man’s login information to delete his avatar. She effectively committed virtual murder although she was jailed for “illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data”.

A Dutch court has ruled that virtual goods are real goods and that if you steal them you have committed a real theft.

Hole found in Edward Snowden

Posted on July 24, 2014 by - News

black_holeSecurity experts have found a flaw that could expose the identities of people using a privacy-oriented operating system touted by Edward Snowden.

The news came two days after widely used anonymity service Tor acknowledged a similar problem, making this a bad week for those who do not want their information made public.

The most recent finding concerns a heavily encrypted networking program called the Invisible Internet Project, or I2P. It is used to send messages and run websites anonymously and ships along with the specialized operating system “Tails.”

Tails was what Snowden used to communicate with journalists in secret.

I2P is supposed to obscure the Internet Protocol addresses of its roughly 30,000 users, but anyone who visits a booby-trapped website could have their true address revealed, making it likely that their name could be exposed as well.

The hole was found by researchers at Exodus Intelligence which warned people might think the technology is safe because Snowden used it.

Tails launches from a DVD or USB stick and is designed to maintain privacy even when a computer or network has been hacked.

The I2P flaw will be fixed, in what a spokesman for the I2P project called the “near future.” In the meantime, he said, users should disable JavaScript.

Exodus is normally seen as one of the bad guys, working with one of a dozen or more companies known to sell secret security flaws to intelligence agencies and spooks. In this case, Exodus alerted I2P and Tails to the problem and said it would not divulge the details to customers until the problem has been fixed.

 

Boffins print memory onto paper

Posted on July 24, 2014 by - News

postitA group of researchers from Taiwan has emerged from smoke filled labs with a method that uses ink-jet technology to print working memory on an ordinary piece of paper.

If the invention takes off then electronics printed on paper could could lead to applications such as smart labels on foods and pharmaceuticals or as wearable medical sensors.

While engineers have managed to print transistors and solar cells on paper, in the past, they have been unable to do memory.

Paper is made of fibre making it difficult to lay down the thin, uniform layers of materials that typical memory technologies need.

To get around this problem, the team, led by Ying-Chih Liao, Si-Chen Lee, and Jr-Hau He of National Taiwan University decided to build resistive random access memory (RRAM), a relatively new type of memory with a structure simple enough to cope with such surface variations.

In an RRAM device, an insulator can be set to different levels of electrical resistance by applying a voltage across it; one level of resistance corresponds to the 1s of digital logic, the other to the 0s. So each bit in RRAM consists of an insulator sandwiched by two electrodes.

The device was built with silver, titanium dioxide, and carbon, although other combinations of a metal, an insulator, and a conductor could be used. They started by using a screen-printing process to coat a carbon paste onto the paper to form the bottom electrode. The process was repeated 10 times to reduce roughness, then the coated paper was cured at 100 °C for 10 minutes in a vacuum.

Ink was made by mixing TiO2 nanoparticles in acetyl acetone and used an ink-jet printer to deposit a layer of the particles on top of the carbon, where it would act as the insulator. Once that dried, the researchers used a solution of ethylene glycol and water containing silver nanoparticles, and they printed silver dots on top of the TiO2 layer to serve as top electrodes.

The memory paper was robust and could be bent at least 1,000 times with no degradation in performance.

Apple faces class action for treating employees badly

Posted on July 24, 2014 by - News

oliverFour former retail and corporate Apple employees who filed a lawsuit against the over  labour violations managed to “upgrade” their lawsuit to class-action status.

The status was awarded because it was believed that more than 20,000 current and former Apple employees were harmed by Apple’s management antics.

The four people who originally filed the suit had different experiences with Apple, saying the company violated California’s Labour Code and Wage Orders with its actions. These included making people work long hours without a break and receiving their paycheques late.

It has taken years to get the case to court as Apple has been fighting tooth and nail with voluminous briefing and lengthy oral arguments.

In the end however the California Superior Court granted Plaintiffs’ motion and certified the case as a class action, appointing Plaintiffs and Plaintiffs’ counsel (Hogue & Belong) as the class representatives and class counsel on behalf of approximately 20,000 Apple employees.

Apple now faces claims of meal period, rest period and final pay violations affecting approximately 20,000 current and former Apple employees, rather than just four.

It is not clear how much cash this is going to cost Apple if it is found guilty as no financial demand has been made in the case.

It has been a bad time for Apple lately which has just been told by a court that its long-standing policy of locking in staff using no-poaching agreements with other companies was illegal.

Apple alongside co-conspirators Google, Intel and Adobe agreed to settle for $324 million with the tech workers who filed the class action.

Nvidia shows off its SHIELD tablet

Posted on July 23, 2014 by - News

nvidia-gangnam-style-330pxNvidia has officially announced its new SHIELD tablet  and SHIELD wireless controller which is powered by its powered by their Tegra K1 System on a Chip.

The graphics chip maker has been developing the Android-based SHIELD portable to create what appears to be a mix of SHIELD portable and the Tegra Note 7, but featuring updated technology and better materials.

All this is supposed to create a gaming-oriented tablet to consumers with the screen de-coupled from the controller.

The original SHIELD portable and the Tegra Note 7, were built around Nvida’s Tegra 4 processor. The SHIELD tablet, however, is powered by the newer Tegra K1, which features quad ARM A15 cores and 192 Kepler-class graphics cores.

The SHIELD tablet’s specifications makes it one of the more powerful tablets on the market. It has 2GB of RAM and an 8”, full-HD IPS display, with a native resolution of 1920×1200. There are also a pair of 5MP cameras on the SHIELD tablet (front and rear), 802.11a/b/g/n 2×2 MIMO WiFi configuration, GPS, a 9-axis motion sensor, and Bluetooth 4.0 LE.

There is a WiFi-only version and a 32GB version coming with LTE connectivity as well. N

Nvida  is using a mostly untouched version of Android to run the thing with a few pre-installed applications, and control panels for the SHIELD’s gaming features.

The gaming features include the ability to stream games directly to Twitch, Nvida’s ShadowPlay technology, PC Streaming, Nvida GRID cloud gaming support, and access to the new SHIELD hub.

The SHIELD tablet is also one of a select few mobile devices that has been certified to stream Netflix 1080p content.

 

Microsoft vows to end Nokia losses

Posted on July 23, 2014 by - News

nokia-lumiaSoftware giant Microsoft said that it will get its loss-making Nokia phone unit to break even within two years.

Bringing in Nokia into the Vole hill cost Microsoft a seven percent dip in quarterly profit and Redmonds chief financial Vole Amy Hood said that the company plans to take $1 billion in costs out of the Nokia operation and stop its losses by fiscal 2016 following massive job cuts announced last week.

This statement pacified the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street who did not expect Vole to act that quickly to stop Nokia haemorrhaging Microsoft’s bottom line.

Microsoft shares hit new 14-year highs over the past week, and were up 1.1 percent at $45.33 after hours.

Nokia’s Lumia smartphones, while well-reviewed, have not been as successful as Microsoft hoped, capturing no more than four percent of the global market. Lumia sales hit 5.8 million for the nine weeks of the quarter that Nokia was part of Microsoft.

Vole is in the process of drastically reducing Nokia’s operation, closing some facilities and cutting about half of its 25,000 workforce, as it looks to rein in costs and refocus on cloud-computing.

The fact that the PC market recovered after two years of declines, helped sales of Microsoft’s core Windows and Office products in the quarter.

Overall quarterly revenue rose 17 percent to $23.38 billion, above analysts’ average estimate of $23 billion, although the bulk of that was due to the addition of sales from Nokia.

Microsoft reported fiscal fourth-quarter profit of $4.61 billion compared with $4.96 billion last year.

Apple loses momentum

Posted on July 23, 2014 by - News

gala_appleThe fruity cargo cult Apple is slowing down and will look to its old enemy IBM to pull its nadgers out of the fire.

Yesterday the company posted a smaller-than-expected six percent rise in quarterly revenue.

The Tame Apple press, desperate to find something good in the figures said that revenue surged 28 percent in greater China despite stiff competition in its third-largest market. What they failed to say is that 28 percent of sod all is still sod all.

Apple sold 35.2 million iPhones in the June quarter, a rise of about 13 percent that was in line with analysts’ projections.

Chief Executive Tim Cook told analysts on a conference call that Apple’s Chinese performance was “honestly surprising”. Unit iPhone sales jumped about 48 percent and Mac computer sales rose 39 percent in the June quarter.

But Apple has never been a particularly big seller in the Android dominated Chinese market and for Jobs’ Mob to make serious money it would have to increase its sales by several hundred percent to be any use.

Again the Tame Apple Press stepped in to say that this quarter is always light because there is a new phone coming out which means people are not buying the old one. But signs are that Apple is putting its hopes on larger screen phones, ignoring the fact that its rivals have been there already.
The figures also show a different story. Apple forecast revenue of $37 billion to $40 billion this quarter, weak compared with Wall Street’s outlook for $40 billion or more — Apple does not believe the new phone will make that much difference.

Some of the dafter Apple press have even suggested that the company will be turned around by entering the wearable device market with the iWatch.

Apple reported sales of $37.4 billion in its fiscal third quarter ended June, falling short of Wall Street’s expectations for about $38 billion.

Sales of iPads, which like smartphones are coming under growing pressure from Android rivals, at 13.3 million fell a little short of analysts’ projections for more than 14 million. Net income jumped 12.2 percent to $7.75 billion.

British people tell Cameron to stick his net filters

Posted on July 23, 2014 by - News

David CameronWhile the British Prime Minister David “one is an ordinary bloke” Cameron is adamant that people want their internet censored by him to “protect their children” the population of Blighty is telling him where to shove it.

Broadband customers are overwhelmingly choosing not to use parental-control systems foisted on ISPs by the government. Take-up in the single digits for three of the four major broadband providers even though many have to opt into an uncensored internet.

An Ofcom report has revealed that the vast majority of new customers are not opting for the filters and the whole thing was an expensive waste of time.

Only five percent of new BT customers signed up, eight percent opted in for Sky and four per cent for Virgin Media. TalkTalk rolled out a parental-control system two years before the government required it and has had much better take-up of its offering, with 36 per cent of customers signing up for it.

Ofcom said about 40 percent of British homes would likely have children in them, but noted that customer demographics varied by ISP. BT said about 20-25 percent of its customer base has children “of a relevant age.”

Ofcom noted that previous research showed about 42 percent of British homes with children already had parental controls of some sort before the rollout. BT noted that about nine percent of its customers – which it said works out to 40 percent of its customers with young children use a device-based filter rather than the network-level filter.

In other words, those who wanted to “protect the children” had already done it and did not need any help from David Cameron. Probably these same people hire baby sitters and do not leave their children in pubs when they want a quiet night in.

Ofcom admitted that filters are easily ignored, but suggests it requires a “dedicated and technically competent user, supported by a range of advice available online”. Actually you can get around some of the filters can be dodged by using basic proxy services, including Google Images or Google translate.

All up, it is looking like most people do not want to be protected by David Cameron and are ignoring his attempts to censor what they watch.

Putin the thumbscrews on Western tech companies

Posted on July 22, 2014 by - News

imperial_russiaTsar Vladimir Putin is taking his revenge on the US for bringing in sanctions against its Ukraine activity by cutting back on the use of American technology.

Apparently Putin is cross about the sanctions which froze the business assets of some of his closest business supporters. He thinks he should be allowed to supply missiles to pro-Russian supporters to use how they see fit without any world sanctions.

It looks like Putin is taking out his frustrations on US companies like Microsoft and IBM and ordering the country to be less reliant on Yankee tech.

Russia’s executive secretary of the commission for the State Duma, Andrey Chernogorov, was quoted as saying, “This all has to do with sanctions. Given the current international tensions, substituting imports with local software and hardware becomes the key to ensuring self sufficiency.”

The State Duma is currently in the process of drafting a bill which would seek to replace products from Microsoft and IBM in favour of software and hardware made by local companies.

It looks like the Russians will eventually only buy products that do not need to be imported or have licensed components.

It is not clear how that will play out yet. Probably some support or pressure to move to Open Source products. That might work well with the software, but hardware dependence on US, made in China, goods will be harder to shake.

Apple wants gazillions of big screens for iPhones

Posted on July 22, 2014 by - News

gala_appleFruity cargo cult Apple has asked its manufactures between 70 million and 80 million of its two forthcoming large-screen iPhones by the end of the year.

The Wall Street Journal has found sources which claim that Apple has predicted the numbers of people wanting iPhones with 4.7-inch (11.9-cm) and 5.5-inch (14-cm) displays is much larger than the initial order last year of between 50 million and 60 million for iPhone 5S and 5C models.

Foxconn and Pegatron plan to start mass producing the 4.7-inch iPhone model next month, and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, whose parent is Foxconn, will begin making the 5.5-inch version exclusively in September.

The Journal was full of the normal predictions about what the iPhone will deliver designed to create some hype in what is actually product similar to what is already out there.

But the numbers suggest that Apple seriously believes that it is on to a money spinner that will eclipse the sales of all other iPhones.

This is a bold statement, given that the smartphone market is saturated and developing markets have only shown slight interest in joining the Apple cargo cult.

Both iPhone 6 screens are expected to use in-cell touch panel technology, built into the screen and allowing for thinner construction than with standard touch panel films, that was introduced with the iPhone 5.

It is possibly this reason, rather than growing worldwide sales, which means that Apple has ordered so many. Word on the street is that there could be difficulties with in-cell production technology for the larger 5.5-inch size.

Apple has ordered shedloads more products because some will not work. Although this sounds sensible, it does mean that a lot of material will be junked. What might worry Apple is that if faults are not detected before they end up in the shops it might create a reputation for unreliability.

Autonomy chief financial officer wants to block HP settlement

Posted on July 22, 2014 by - News

HPAutonomy’s former chief financial officer is seeking to block the maker of expensive printer ink, HP from settling three shareholder lawsuits over its troubled purchase of the British software company.
Sushovan Hussain, said the “collusive and unfair” settlement in which HP officials are wrongly absolved of a $8.8 billion writedown.

Hussain, said the “collusive and unfair” settlement, if approved by a federal judge, would let HP “forever bury from disclosure the real reason for its 2012 write-down of Autonomy.

“This motion reveals the depth of the corruption that permeates the settlement,” the spokesman said. “The shareholders who have borne the losses get nothing, and learn nothing about what really happened.”

He said that it ignored HP’s destruction of Autonomy’s success after the acquisition.

The June 30 accord called for HP shareholders to end efforts to force current and former officials, including Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman, to pay damages to the Palo Alto, California-based company over its disastrous $11.1 billion Autonomy purchase.

Instead, the shareholders agreed to help HP pursue sue former Autonomy officials like Hussain and former CEO Michael Lynch.

HP announced the $8.8 billion writedown in November 2012, just over one year after buying Autonomy, and claimed it as down to accounting fraud and inflated financials by Autonomy executives.

HP spokesman Howard Clabo shrugged and said that Hussain’s opposition to the settlement is baseless. He thought that at the end of the process, the jury will conclude that Hussain engaged in a multi-billion dollar fraud.

Stop taking a pizza the action, Italy tells Google

Posted on July 22, 2014 by - News

OgleItaly has given Google 18 months to sort out how it treats and stores user data.
According to the Italy’s data protection regulator has been investigating Google as part of a European drive to reform the internet giant’s privacy practices.

There was concern after Google consolidated its 60 privacy policies into one, combining data collected on individual users across its services, including YouTube, Gmail and social network Google+. It gave users no means to opt out.

The Italian watchdog barked that Google’s disclosure to users on how their data was being treated remained inadequate, despite the company having taken steps to abide by local law.

The Rome-based regulator said Google would not be allowed to use the data to profile users without their prior consent and would have to tell them explicitly that the profiling was being done for commercial purposes.

The watchdog snarled that requests from users with a Google account to delete their personal data be met in up to two months.

A spokesman for Google said the company had always cooperated with the regulator and would continue to do so, adding it would carefully review the regulator’s decision before taking any further steps.

Google also agreed to present a document by the end of September that will set a roadmap of steps to comply fully with the Italian regulator’s decision.

If it does not it could cost Google a million euros in fines, which is such a small part of Google’s income it is a wonder if it will care. There are criminal proceedings which could get a few Google executives in the dock. Google executives have been in the dock before in Italy and it ended badly.
Regulators in France and Spain have already fined Google for breaking local laws on data protection, underscoring growing concerns across Europe about the volume of personal data that is held in foreign jurisdictions.

In Britain, the ICO regulator gave Google until September 20 last year to make changes to bring the policy into line with local law.