China hack 'targeted' Coca-Cola

5 November 2012 Last updated at 09:48 ET

Chinese hackers have been blamed for infiltrating confidential systems within Coca-Cola for more than a month, Bloomberg has reported.

The fizzy drink firm was breached in 2009 when a malicious link was emailed to a senior executive.

Hackers were able to spend a month operating undetected, logging commercially sensitive information.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Coca-Cola did not publicly disclose the attack.

Last year the SEC outlined guidelines for companies who had been hit by cyber-attacks, saying that transparency on the issue was in the interest of investors and other stakeholders.

However, companies have so far been reluctant to do so - fearing for reputational loss and negative impact on stock price.

"Investors have no idea what is happening today," Jacob Olcott, a former cyber policy adviser to the US Congress told the financial news agency.

"Companies currently provide little information about material events that occur on their networks."

Collapsed deal

In Coca-Cola's case, hackers masqueraded as Coca-Cola's chief executive, sending an email to Paul Etchells, Coca-Cola's deputy president for the Pacific region.

The email contained a malicious link which was clicked on - allowing for hackers to install keyloggers and other forms of malware on Mr Etchells' machine.

In the days that followed, hackers took emails and stole passwords to give themselves administrative privileges on the network.

The infiltration was - according to internal documents seen by Bloomberg - blamed on state-backed Chinese attackers.

The hack came at a time when Coca-Cola was looking to acquire the China Huiyuan Juice Group for about $2.4bn. Had the takeover happened, it would have been the largest foreign takeover of a Chinese company.

However, the deal collapsed three days after the cyber-attack, Bloomberg said, citing internal sources.

Coca-Cola told the BBC in a statement: "Our company's security team manages security risks in conjunction with the appropriate security and law enforcement organisations around the world.

"As a matter of practice, we do not comment on security matters."

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

Smartphone app inquiry launched

5 November 2012 Last updated at 11:41 ET

An official inquiry into smartphone apps has been commissioned by the Treasury of the Australian government.

Australia's Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury said he would be inviting smartphone owners to "name and shame" apps they were unhappy with.

The inquiry will ask whether users are given enough information about the costs associated with apps before and after they are downloaded.

The public consultation will end in January 2013.

"In a very short period of time, new mobile devices like smartphones and tablets have changed the way consumers engage in commerce," said Mr Bradbury in a statement.

"At the same time though, some consumers have raised concerns about aspects of mobile commerce, particularly where purchases can be made without much difficulty using stored credit card data."

Mr Bradbury said he was particularly concerned by apps aimed at children that encourage the purchase of virtual goods and subscriptions.

"We have strong consumer laws in Australia that protect the rights of consumers and place clear obligations on businesses," he said.

"This inquiry is an opportunity to look at the adequacy of existing measures to address any consumer concern."

The inquiry, which will start soon, will be carried out by the government's Consumer Affairs Advisory Council.

People will be able to submit their experiences via the council's website.

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

Funding sought for Elite remake

5 November 2012 Last updated at 19:01 ET

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

Rory Cellan-Jones talks to Elite co-creator David Braban in his Cambridge offices

Classic video game Elite is getting a 21st Century makeover.

David Braben, one of the creators of the original, is seeking £1.25m ($2m) via Kickstarter to fund the updated version.

Called Elite: Dangerous it will involve the same mix of interstellar travel, trading, piracy and spaceships as the original 8-bit game.

Those who pledge cash to the project will also get a chance to shape the development of the updated version.

"Elite is a game that I've wanted to come back to for a very, very long time," Mr Braben told the BBC. "It's the sort of game that I would very much like to play today."

Funding squeeze

When Elite was first published in 1984 it instantly became a huge success. Its wire-frame 3D graphics and open-ended play across eight randomly generated galaxies was at odds with the narrow, 2D side-scrolling games that were the norm at the time.

"It changed the way that people looked at games very much for the better," said Mr Braben.

The updated version will keep the open-ended, space trading setting and will make use of modern PC power to create a vast interstellar territory that players can explore. Ships will be fitted with hyperspace drives to enable them to get around and the planets, stars, asteroid belts and other things found in deep space will be procedurally generated.

However, said Mr Braben, its exact final form will be partly down to those that pledge cash.

"The people who are involved in Kickstarter can be involved in the game," he said.

The finished PC game should be ready in March 2014 although some of the early development work has already been done at Mr Braben's game studio Frontier.

The underlying network technology to support the multi-player version of the game is almost done and stress tests are being carried out to ensure it can support large numbers of players. A single player version will also be available.

Continue reading the main story

Elite Dangerous is the seminal game reimagined for the 21st Century - but it will only be built if it finds an audience first"

End Quote

When it appears the game will face competition from both new and established titles. Space trading and piracy sim Eve Online has a dedicated following and more recent titles, such as FTL and Pioneer, are winning fans. On Kickstarter, veteran game designer Chris Roberts is seeking cash for Star Citizen which shares many of the traits of Elite. Finally, by the time Elite appears Markus Persson, creator of Minecraft, may have finished work on his space simulation game 0x10c.

Audience

Mr Braben said he had turned to Kickstarter to fund Elite because it was the type of game that would be hard to persuade a publisher to back.

"Publishers want to see the end result before they move forward and with a lot of games like this it's very important to balance the design of the game as you are going," he said.

As well as providing funding, Kickstarter also helped to ensure that there was an audience interested in the game.

"It also helps us at Frontier to validate that there is a market for this type of game out there," he said. "We then have the confidence that we know who we are making the game for."

Kickstarter has become a firm favourite among game makers keen to get backing for their projects. The launch of a UK-focused Kickstarter has also provoked projects from British game studios.

Games including Kung Fu Superstar, mmoAsteroids and Sir, You Are Being Hunted are all looking for cash via the crowdfunding site.

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

Apple anti-Google case dismissed

5 November 2012 Last updated at 21:59 ET

A US judge has dismissed Apple's case in which it alleged that Google's Motorola unit was seeking excessive royalty payments for patents.

Motorola has sought 2.25% of the price of Apple products that use some of its patents, which Apple said was too high.

Last week, Motorola asked the court to set a price but Apple said it would not pay more than $1 (£0.60) per device.

Firms that own industry-essential patents are expected to offer them under fair licensing terms.

Motorola said it was still open to negotiations with Apple and was interested in reaching an agreement.

"Motorola has long offered licensing to our extensive patent portfolio at a reasonable and non-discriminatory rate in line with industry standards," the firm said in its statement.

'Subjectivity and assumption'

Continue reading the main story

It is very tough to determine what a fair price is of any patent held by a firm"

End Quote Andrew Milroy Frost & Sullivan

Google finalised its purchase of Motorola Mobility earlier this year for $12.5bn (£7.9bn).

The deal was Google's biggest acquisition ever and gave it access to more than 17,000 of Motorola's valuable patents.

While the firm is required to offer industry-essential patents at terms that are "fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory" or Frand for short, analysts said it was difficult to determine what a reasonable royalty was.

"It is very tough to determine what a fair price is of any patent held by a firm," Andrew Milroy of Frost & Sullivan told the BBC.

"There are complex financial models that are used to evaluate it - but there is a lot of subjectivity and assumption that goes into those.

"It can hardly be described as a science."

Meanwhile, some analysts said the dismissal of the case was a major setback for Apple as it was likely to give Motorola an upper hand in negotiations.

"This puts Apple back into the position it was before," said Lea Shaver, an intellectual property professor at Indiana University School of Law,

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

Government to revamp 'poor' sites

6 November 2012 Last updated at 05:21 ET By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News

Plans to reduce the need for face-to-face government services by improving "confusing" online offerings in the UK have been announced.

The Government Digital Strategy report acknowledges that most people "rarely" use online government services.

Services which handle more than 100,000 "transactions" per year are to be completely overhauled.

The government expects the changes to save up to £1.8bn a year by 2015.

However, the costs of implementing the changes have not yet been outlined.

"A business case will be made for each of these services," a Cabinet Office spokesman said.

"So we won't be in a position to know costs until those cases have been assessed. The services will be identified and published in the departmental digital strategies alongside detailed delivery plans in December."

The report said that the average cost of an hour of government interaction "costs the average citizen £14.70".

"If just half an hour were saved by digitising every transaction currently completed offline," the document stated, "the total savings to the economy could therefore be around £1.8bn."

Redesigns of the busiest services - including HM Revenue & Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions - will begin in April 2013, the document said, with completion predicted for March 2015.

New or redesigned sites launching after April 2014 will be subject to set standards for consistent design and usability.

All must offer application programming interfaces (APIs) - which will allow third-parties to create useful tools and services, a similar approach to that of Facebook and Twitter.

'Costly for government'

The government classes "transactions" as anything involving "sharing information, requesting services, buying goods, asking for permission, or paying money".

It is estimated that more than 1.5 billion transactions of this type are made every year - with the majority being done either face-to-face or over the telephone.

In 2011, more than 150 million calls in 2011 were classed as "avoidable" and "costly for government".

A study of local councils put the cost of face-to-face transactions at £8.62, transactions via telephone at £2.83 - but only 15p for transactions via a website.

While millions in the UK have taken to carrying out key tasks online - such as shopping and banking - relatively few have used the web for needs involving government.

"Until now government services have stood out by their failure to keep up with the digital age," wrote Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, in a foreword to the strategy.

"While many sectors now deliver their services online as a matter of course, our use of digital public services lags far behind that of the private sector. For example while 74% of people use the internet for car insurance, only 51% renew car tax online."

The document blames a culture of creating "digitised versions of pre-digital business processes", as well as outdated methods of data gathering and sharing.

Driving tests, for example, still require examiners to fill in and file paper forms, "adding cost and delay for users that a truly end-to-end digital service could remove".

The Driving Standards Agency is to begin a trial using mobile devices for examiners in order to eliminate paper forms.

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

US email voting scheme 'risky'

6 November 2012 Last updated at 06:45 ET

Plans to let US citizens displaced by storm Sandy vote by email have been dubbed "risky" by security experts.

New Jersey officials have decided to let people displaced from their homes by Sandy vote via email as if they were living overseas.

The hasty decision has drawn criticism and forced election officials to put in place a postal backup plan.

Other problems are emerging as some voters report that email inboxes set up to gather votes are already full.

Horror show

Tweetsfrom some US voters reveal that email votes sent to inboxes in the Essex and Morris counties in New Jersey are being bounced back. Essex County is the third largest county in New Jersey.

"It's really maddening," Jason Tanz, an editor at tech news magazine Wired, who lives in Essex County, told Buzzfeed, adding that the state's officials had a duty to make sure the email voting plan worked.

Flood waters meant many had to abandon their homes, and others left because they had no electrical power. In addition public transport in New Jersey has been disrupted and roads are hard to navigate because of the storm.

New Jersey residents can take advantage of e-voting by emailing or faxing a request for an absentee ballot. These are more usually used by US military and diplomatic staff based overseas, expatriates and travellers who are out of the country on election day.

Massively expanding email voting and squeezing it into a tight timetable was a "risky" measure, said security expert Matt Blaze in a blogpost.

"The security implications of voting by email are, under normal conditions, more than sufficient to make any computer security specialist recoil in horror," he wrote. Email was not, by its very nature, "authenticated, reliable, or confidential", he said,

The big problem that was likely to catch out New Jersey officials was the sheer number of people that wanted to take up the option, he said.

"Systems that work on a small scale almost never work without significant change at a large scale," he said, adding that he had doubts about whether email votes would be secured against "tampering and loss" either by corrupt officials or hackers.

Motivated attackers could also target email inboxes with attacks that bombarded them with data and made it impossible to send in a vote.

Mr Blaze's comments were echoed by Princeton computer scientist Prof Andrew Appel, who said net voting was "inherently insecure" and that email was the "most insecure form of internet voting". Prof Appel also said using email voting meant citizens had to surrender their right to make a choice anonymously.

Fears about the security of email voting led New York to abandon plans to use it.

In a bid to allay some fears about email voting, New Jersey officials said anyone who votes electronically must also send in a paper ballot recording their preference.

Pam Smith, of the Verified Voting Foundation, which opposes any use of e-voting that does not involve a follow-up paper vote, said there was a better option for those that could not get to their designated polling station.

"You can vote at any polling place in New Jersey and you won't lose privacy," she said.

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

Hackers set up Guy Fawkes protest

6 November 2012 Last updated at 07:18 ET

A series of website hacks over the past 24 hours has been attributed to the online hacktivist group Anonymous.

The websites of US broadcaster NBC, pop singer Lady Gaga and the Australian government have all been attacked.

Some of the hacked websites displayed a rhyme about 5 November, when Guy Fawkes's attempt to destroy Parliament in 1605 is marked in the UK.

Paypal and security firm Symantec said they were investigating whether they had also been compromised.

Both companies were linked to the latest attacks, in various online reports.

After investigating Paypal said it had "no evidence" of a security breach and the list of almost 28,000 passwords said to be from Paypal accounts was from another service.

The passwords seem to have been taken from free hosting company ZPanel.

Anuj Nayar, a PayPal spokesman, said the payments company had been investigating the attack since Sunday night and concluded that there was no evidence any of its data had been breached.

A tweet by the hacker collective, which claimed to have hacked Paypal has now been taken down.

Symantec said it took "each and every claim" of an attack on its systems seriously.

"Our first priority is to make sure that any customer information remains protected," it said in a statement.

Continue reading the main story

• Guy Fawkes was among a group of disaffected Catholics who, in 1605, plotted to blow up the House of Lords in a bid to kill King James I
• Although born into a Protestant family, Fawkes later converted and by 21 was in Europe fighting for Catholic Spain in the Eighty Years War
• In 1603, petitioned Spain's King Philip III to support a rebellion against the "heretic" English king - but was turned down
• Fawkes was later approached to join the Gunpowder Plot - his role was to source and ignite the barrels
• The plot was foiled when Fawkes was arrested under the Lords on 4 November 1605. He was tortured for two days and later executed

Source: BBC History

Surveillance theme

A video posted to YouTube called on Anonymous members and activists around the world to "act now against overall surveillance systems".

It argued that systems like Trapwire and Indect, which use CCTV data and number plate readers to identify individuals and try to predict criminal activity, are a breach of privacy.

UK privacy and civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch has previously described such projects as demonstrating "a dangerously heavy-handed attitude towards the public".

Members of the online group wear distinctive Guy Fawkes masks, like the one used in the film V for Vendetta, when demonstrating in public.

It is thought that most Anonymous members are unknown even to each other.

Anonymous has pursued the Australian government before over its proposals to introduce a country-wide internet filter it says will block pornographic and criminal material.

At time of writing the Australian government website is operating normally, but new-age website ascensionaustralia.com.au carries a message from Anonymous suggesting the government is compromising the online privacy of its citizens.

"When will governments learn that the internet will never be controlled and we will not allow governments to trample on our civil liberties and our basic digital privacy rights?" reads the statement on the front page of the site.

Many of the websites hacked so far are currently operating normally again.

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

Imagination challenges ARM's CPUs

6 November 2012 Last updated at 08:16 ET

UK-based computer chip designer Imagination Technologies is buying US central processing unit (CPU) architect Mips's business operations and some of its patents.

It said the deal would help it compete against ARM, the British firm whose CPU designs power most smartphones.

Imagination had previously been more successful at licensing graphics processing unit (GPU) designs.

Analysts said Imagination's change of strategy could be risky.

Imagination said the $60m (£37.6m) deal was designed to make it an "industry-leading force" in CPU development.

"We think that it strengthens our line-up and offers more choice," Imagination spokesman David Harold told the BBC.

"ARM are obviously very strong in the CPU space and we have been niche.

"But by bringing Mips into our business we think it will become a strong alternative in the CPU market."

British rivals

CPUs are designed to carry out calculations in sequence where the answer to one process provides the information to carry out the next one. They are usually a device's most powerful processor and tend to do most of its computations.

By contrast, GPU processors are typically slower at carrying out each single calculation, but benefit from the ability to carry out several simultaneously. This makes them a better choice for what are termed parallalisable tasks such as drawing graphics on a screen or speech recognition.

Both ARM and Imagination license their designs to others but do not make their own chips.

In some cases the technologies sit side by side in devices - Apple's iPhone 5, for example, features a PowerVR GPU based on Imagination's architecture, and Apple's A6 CPU which is based on ARM's work.

Sony's PlayStation Vita also uses a PowerVR GPU and an ARM-based Cortex design.

Matters have been complicated by ARM's push into the GPU market - its Mali design powers Samsung's new Google-branded Nexus 10 tablet, for instance.

Hertfordshire-based Imagination now intends to turn the tables on its rival. It notes that Mip's CPU architecture can be used to power devices running Google's Android operating system, even though few manufacturers have so far made use of it.

One analyst said Imagination might find it a hard market to crack.

"There is a definite synergy to be had by being able to offer both parts of the solution," said Chris Green, principal technology analyst at Davies Murphy Group Europe.

"As more manufacturers move towards system-on-a-chip solutions - where all the processors are put onto the same silicon - they are looking for solutions that come from the same designer. It helps with future planning and economies of scale.

"But it could be challenging for Imagination to move out of its niche space. The broader CPU market is high volume and low margin, and many manufacturers are already happy with ARM."

Investec bank's tech analyst James Goodman added that rumours of the acquisition had been circulating for some time, but he had thought the move unlikely.

"Mips has good standing, we understand, in areas such as networking and digital TVs," he said.

"Imagination expects to broaden the strategy towards the mobile segment, whilst at the same time we are seeing ARM aggressively target the networking and DTV segments.

"We therefore believe the competitive pressure has increased significantly, whilst the risk to the strategy is also considerably greater.

"The cash cost is $60m and we assume there will be further exceptional costs in combining the businesses."

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

Google's UK share 'dips to 90%'

6 November 2012 Last updated at 09:02 ET

Search giant Google has dropped to its lowest percentage of the UK market share in five years, Experian Hitwise, a firm that monitors web traffic, says.

October figures released by the company suggest 89.33% of all web searches in the UK were made using Google.

Its main rival, Microsoft's Bing, now has 5% of the market share, with Yahoo's Ask in third place.

Microsoft's recently launched Windows 8 operating system has Bing installed by default instead of Google.

Analyst Luca Paderni, from Forrester Research, said: "In the UK, Bing has been using very aggressive tactics of promotion for last few months, in preparation for the Christmas season.

"But Google is still dominant, and we would need to see a trend over more months to call it a consistent decline."

Although Google is the leading search engine in many places around the world, alternative search engines have managed to get ahead of it in their home markets.

In China, Baidu is number one, and in Russia, the leader is Yandex, with Google in second place.

In Europe, Google's competitors would need to concentrate on services other than general purpose search to improve their chances of rivalling the search giant, said Mr Paderni.

Search habits

"There's increasingly more space for search services specialising in specific industries or topics," he said.

Hitwise told BBC News it had used data from various internet service providers in the UK to track the search habits of eight million people.

The firm's digital insight manager said web users were "demanding more of the engines they interact with everyday".

"The search engines that remain reliable, relevant and useful will be the ones that profit in the future."

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More

Instagram extends into web space

6 November 2012 Last updated at 11:16 ET

Instagram, a photo-sharing app recently purchased by social network Facebook, has extended from mobile devices to the web.

The move will allow people to share their pictures via PCs rather than just iOS and Android-powered smartphones and tablets.

Facebook said the facility would make it easier for users to discover each others' photos.

But privacy campaigners have raised concerns about the implications.

As might be expected, Instagram's new web-based profiles resemble the design of Facebook's pages.

They feature a profile image and short biography of each user above a grid showing their recent photo uploads.

For the time being members will only be able to view and download images from the service.

"Instagram is focused on the production of photos from mobile devices so users are not currently able to upload from the web," Facebook said in a statement.

Despite this limitation the move should help boost the service's popularity by making it accessible to more people than before.

That, in turn, might make Facebook's environment more appealing to marketers. The firm highlights Nike's Instagram web profile as an example of the new feature at work.

Privacy concerns

Since its launch in 2010, Instagram has gained more than 100 million registered users, becoming one of the most popular social media services.

Facebook bought the app using its own shares. They were worth about $1bn (£625m) at the time, although they have since fallen in value.

The company has been keen to stress that users can restrict who has access to their uploads.

But Nick Pickles, from Big Brother Watch, expressed concern that the facility would make it easier for users to copy and spread potentially embarrassing photos allowing them to go viral.

"A web-based service makes it easier to collect lots of information about people using the service and also makes it easier for people to share photos their friends post," he said.

"Clearly both of these issues raise privacy questions, and time will tell if the company really has any desire to address them."

23.43 | 0 komentar | Read More