Tag: France

French ISPs will not surrender their clouds to government

libertyFrench ISPs have warned the government that they will move their operations out of France if the government brings through a bizarre spying bill.

Five hosters of French computer data said the bill will create an intelligence “exile” from France as ISPs try to avoid losing their customers by moving their operations somewhere else in the EU.

The five do not want to install the “real-time capture of data connection” boxes on their sites which is part of the law.

The ISPs believe that this project “will not reach its goal of putting every French person under surveillance, and will destroy a major segment of the economy of the country.” They said that their customers will turn to other territories to flee the intrusion.

The five have pledged to move their infrastructure, investments and employees where our customers will want to work with us. This will mean massive job losses in France.

“There are thousands of jobs … and start-ups and large companies will go also create elsewhere,” they added.

Two of the biggest data warehouses Gandi and OVH signed the statement along with IDS outfits Ikoula and Lomaco.

The French Association of Software and Internet solutions Publishers (AFDEL), which brings together publishers and Internet companies, said that the proposed implementation of the devices mentioned in the bill was “vague” and that it “feared” that this law, which is part of an extra-judicial framework, would undermine confidence in digital technologies and solutions and thus the competitiveness and attractiveness of French industry.

French spooks behind latest malware

peter_sellers_3918It seems that the French are not going to stand idly by while other nations spies get all the attention for creating spyware.

Cyphort Labs found a cyber-espionage tool of the kind a nation state would be behind which invades Windows desktop machines and aims at extracting almost anything of value: it steals data from instant messengers, softphones, browsers and office applications.

Dubbed ‘Babar64’  the malware is believed to have been written by French intelligence.

It is a natty bit of code. It logs keystrokes, taking screenshots, steams audio from softphone applications, nicks clipboard data and can steal the names of desktop windows.

The malware creates an invisible window, with no other purpose than to receive window messages. By processing the window message queue it filters out input events and dispatches them to a raw input device object. Said object is configured to grab keyboard events through GetRawInputData.

Babar has two hard coded C&C server addresses included in its configuration data — http://www.horizons-tourisme.com/_vti_bin/_vti_msc/bb/index.php and http://www.gezelimmi.com/wp-includes/misc/bb/index.php

The domain horizons-tourisme.com is a legitimate website, operated by an Algerian travel agency, located in Algiers. The website is in French and still online today. Gezelimmi.com is a Turkish domain, currently responding with an HTTP error message 403, access not permitted. Both domains appear to be of legitimate use, but compromised and abused to host Babar’s server side infrastructure.

Cisco to invest in French starters

Cooked_snailsUS network equipment maker Cisco is to invest $100 million in French start-ups according to French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

The investment is part of a partnership between the company and the French state that aims to develop better networks, improve cybersecurity, provide training 200,000 people over three years and finance academic research.

A statement from Valls’ office said that Cisco would assist digital innovation thanks to an  in French startups.

The deal was announced after Valls met Cisco CEO, John Chambers. It is not clear what Cicso’s cunning plan in France is yet, but we suspect it will be part of Chamber’s cloud strategy.

Recently SFR France announced that it was using Cisco products in its upgrade from IPv4 to IPv6.

 

Amazon faces off with the French

Obama BarackUS bookseller Amazon is engaged in a war of words with the French government.

Last month, the French parliament stood up for small book retailers and voted to ban major online book retailers, including Amazon and the French retailer FNAC, from offering free delivery on book orders.

The idea was that if customers had to pay for delivery for books they would be more inclined to shop at their local bookshop.

However it appears that they did not think the law through properly. Amazon did start charging for delivery, it was just that it charged a Euro cent.

It posted the following FAQ saying:

“We are unfortunately no longer allowed to offer free deliveries for book orders. We have therefore fixed delivery costs at one centime per order [0.01 Euros, or roughly a US penny] containing books and dispatched by Amazon to systematically guarantee the lowest price for your book orders.”

France has had a long running war on major US tech companies flogging books.

In 2011, the country updated an old law related to printed books that then allowed publishers to impose set e-book pricing. In 2012, there was a spat between French lawmakers and Google over the country’s desire to see French media outlets paid for having their content pop up in search results.

In most cases, the solution involved a quick and easy way to regain the upperhand. Google suggested it would sooner cut off French media sites than pay them for the snippets of content it features in search results. This would kill off the newspapers online efforts, or give a commercial advantage to those who did not insist Google paid up.

French police raid Apple over reseller treatment

peter_sellers_3918 Inspector Clouseau of the French Yard has raided Apple’s Paris headquarters on behalf of the government competition authority.

French police were in the building for 24 hours seizing documents as part of an ongoing government antitrust investigation.

Investigators are interested in the relationship between Apple and its resellers in France.  It was spurred by a premium reseller in France, eBizcuss, which went bankrupt last year.

According to Apple Insider the company filed a complaint against Apple accusing it of unfair competition.

According to the complaint Apple favoured its own retail stores rather than resellers like eBizcuss, which exclusively sold Apple products.

Apple made it difficult for resellers to obtain the latest models of new Apple products, while Jobs’ Mob’s cathedrals to consumerism were packed.

The French competition authority is also interested in Apple’s iOS App Store.  Apple increased the minimum selling price for magazines and newspapers last year and the authority is worried that Fruity co is abusing its power for digital downloads as well.

Cupertino should have seen the writing on the wall and that it was suddenly off the French government’s Christmas card list when it was ordered to pay $6.5 million in 2011 taxes for iPad sales.

The mandate came from a French professional association that collects revenue for artists’ copyrighted works.

UserReplay, Star-Archats team up

cosyUserReplay has got all cosy with with Star-Achats.

The Session replay software startup has signed a deal with the French distributor in a bid to expand its reach into the pan-European eCommerce market.

According to Star-Achats the French eCommerce market now includes 120,000 e-commerce sites and will account for more than 53 billion Euros in transactions in 2013.

It added that major French financial institutions were also increasing their online banking offerings.

The company, which represents American and British software companies in the growing French-speaking markets of France, Belgium and Switzerland, said UserReply would fit in well in the markets as because of these factors.

UserReplay is claimed to allow users to record, re-run and analyse every visitors’ journey through a website. This aims to help customer service desks and support staff can use this information to quickly identify problems with the website.

Apparently this saves days for the web development team as they don’t have to try and replicate what happened based on vague details from the customer.

Other key uses of session replay are in resolving complaints and disputes with customers, recovering abandoned checkout pages and even protecting against online fraud.

IBM goes on axe rampage in France

ibm-officeIBM is said to be wielding the axe amongst its employees in France.

According to Reuters, the company, which reported a five percent decline in revenue to $23.4 billion for the first quarter of 2013, has said it will be trying to make up gaps through  $1 billion of accounting charges this year.

It also wants to ensure its profits are boosted by 2015, despite the critical global economic crisis.

Part of this saving will have a knock on effect on its workforce, with three trade union reps over in France claiming that the company plans to axe  up to 1,400 jobs in the country over the next two years.

IBM has yet to confirm that its heads in the US have okayed the pink slip practice, but the union reps have said the deed had already been communicated.

Pierry Poquet, secretary general of the UNSA union told Reuters that IBM head honchos were set to present the plan to cut between 1,200 and 1,400 staff in a meeting was planned for April 25.

The CFE-CGC union’s representative, Evelyne Heurtaux, backed up her pal saying she had also been told that there was a around 1,300 jobs slated for the next two years.