Bitcoin trade ban for Chinese banks

5 December 2013 Last updated at 07:31 ET

China has banned its banks from handling transactions involving the Bitcoin virtual currency.

The ban came in a notice issued by the People's Bank of China, financial watchdogs and the nation's IT ministry.

Bitcoins were a "virtual good", had no legal status and should not be used as a currency, it said.

The decision comes after bitcoins' rapid rise in value was called a "bubble" by Alan Greenspan, former US Federal Reserve chairman.

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Bitcoin is often referred to as a new kind of currency.

But it may be best to think of its units being virtual tokens rather than physical coins or notes.

However, like all currencies its value is determined by how much people are willing to exchange it for.

To process Bitcoin transactions, a procedure called "mining" must take place, which involves a computer solving a difficult mathematical problem with a 64-digit solution.

For each problem solved, one block of bitcoins is processed. In addition the miner is rewarded with new bitcoins.

This provides an incentive for people to provide computer processing power to solve the problems.

To compensate for the growing power of computer chips, the difficulty of the puzzles is adjusted to ensure a steady stream of about 3,600 new bitcoins a day.

There are currently about 11 million bitcoins in existence.

To receive a bitcoin a user must have a Bitcoin address - a string of 27-34 letters and numbers - which acts as a kind of virtual postbox to and from which the bitcoins are sent.

Since there is no registry of these addresses, people can use them to protect their anonymity when making a transaction.

These addresses are in turn stored in Bitcoin wallets which are used to manage savings.

They operate like privately run bank accounts - with the proviso that if the data is lost, so are the bitcoins owned.

The ban was imposed because bitcoins were not backed by any nation or central authority, said the notice.

It added that it was planning to step up its efforts to curb the use of bitcoins to launder cash.

Individuals were still free to trade in bitcoins but should be aware of the risks involved, said the People's Bank of China (PBOC), adding that it planned to formalise the regulation of exchanges that dealt in the digital cash.

Experts told Reuters the PBOC was moved to make its decision because Chinese nationals were heavily involved in trading the virtual currency. Many believe this is because it helps them avoid controls on trade in the yuan.

Value soar

The value of bitcoins traded on Chinese exchanges fell after the announcement was made.

Interest in the virtual currency has seen its value soar in recent weeks.

On 28 November, the value of one bitcoin surpassed $1,000 for the first time.

The swift rise in value led Mr Greenspan to say the exchange rate for the virtual currency was "unsustainably high" in an interview with Bloomberg.

"It's a bubble", he said, going on to question the financial value people had pinned on bitcoins.

"You have to really stretch your imagination to infer what the intrinsic value of Bitcoin is," he said. "I haven't been able to do it. Maybe somebody else can."

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NSA 'tracking' millions of mobiles

5 December 2013 Last updated at 06:34 ET

Almost five billion mobile phone location records are logged by the NSA every day, reports the Washington Post.

The data is said to help the NSA track individuals, and map who they know, to aid the agency's anti-terror work.

The "dragnet surveillance" was condemned by digital rights groups who called for the NSA's snooping efforts to be reined in.

The news comes as Microsoft plans to use more encryption to thwart NSA spying on it and its customers.

Wrong target

The huge database built up by the NSA (National Security Agency) keeps an eye on "hundreds of millions" of mobile phones, said the Post, adding that it let the agency map movements and relationships in ways that were "previously unimaginable".

It added that the vast programme potentially surpassed any other NSA project in terms of its impact on privacy. Information about the programme was in papers released to the Post by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The spying agency is said to have accumulated so much data, about 27 terabytes according to leaked papers seen by the Post, that it was "outpacing" the NSA's ability to analyse the information in a timely fashion.

The analysis, via a computer system called Co-Traveler, was necessary as only a tiny fraction of 1% of the data gathered was actually useful in its anti-terror work, said the paper. The analysis is so detailed that it can be used to thwart attempts to hide from scrutiny by people who use disposable phones or only use a handset briefly before switching it off.

The vast majority of the information gathered is said to come from taps installed on mobile phone networks and used the basic location-information that networks log as people move around. Analysing this data helps the NSA work out which devices are regularly in close proximity and, by implication, exposes a potential connection between the owners of those handsets.

The American Civil Liberties Union said it was "staggering" that the NSA could mount such a vast location-logging system without any public debate. The "dragnet surveillance" broke US obligations that require it to respect the privacy of foreigners and Americans.

"The government should be targeting its surveillance at those suspected of wrong-doing, not assembling massive associational databases that, by their very nature, record the movements of a huge number of innocent people," it added.

The steady flow of information about the NSA's surveillance work has led Microsoft to take steps to protect itself and its customers from unwarranted scrutiny, it said in a blogpost.

Brad Smith, Microsoft legal counsel, said government snooping was now as much of a security problem as computer viruses and other cyber-attacks.

In response, Mr Smith said, Microsoft was expanding its use of encryption; would fight legal orders that stop it telling customers when their data is being sought and would allow a closer look at the code it develops to show there were no backdoors built in.

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Android app caught sharing ID data

6 December 2013 Last updated at 06:42 ET

Tens of millions of Android users have been "deceived" by a developer who covertly gathered personal data, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said.

GoldenShores Technologies took ID and location data from the millions using its Brightest Flashlight app.

The developer shared the data with ad networks but did not tell users about this practice, an FTC statement said.

To settle the charges, GoldenShores has agreed to give users more control over what happens to their data.

In its statement, the FTC criticised GoldenShores for its poor privacy policy, which did not let people know that the app was logging their precise location and a unique identifier for their phone and was then sharing that information with advertisers.

'Left in the dark'

Although the free app offered people an opt-out clause, the FTC said this was "meaningless" because data from all users of the Brightest Flashlight app was shared whether they agreed or not.

"When consumers are given a real, informed choice, they can decide for themselves whether the benefit of a service is worth the information they must share to use it," said Jessica Rich, director of the FTC bureau of consumer protection, in a statement.

"But this Flashlight app left them in the dark about how their information was going to be used," she added.

A settlement deal signed by GoldenShores tightens up its privacy policy and demands that the company change how it handles data. In particular, it must no longer misrepresent how it gathers data and whom it is shared with, and must give consumers meaningful control over what is done with the information.

In addition, it must delete all the data it previously gathered from those who downloaded the Flashlight app.

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UK paves way for driverless cars

5 December 2013 Last updated at 07:07 ET

The government has announced that it wants to make the UK a world centre for the development of driverless cars.

It said it would conduct a review next year to ensure that the legislative and regulatory framework is in place for such vehicles to be incorporated on Britain's roads.

It will also create a £10m prize to fund a town or city to become a testing ground for autonomous vehicles.

Milton Keynes is already experimenting with driverless pods.

By mid-2017 it is planned that 100 fully autonomous vehicles will run on the town's pathways along with pedestrians, using sensors to avoid collisions.

The plans for self-drive cars were announced in the chancellor's National Infrastructure Plan.

Radical change

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People will be like the millionaires of old where you just had a driver that did everything"

End Quote Brad Templeton Software engineer

Much of the hype around driverless cars centres around Google. Its self-drive car recently completed 500,000 miles (804,000km) of road tests.

In the US, California, Nevada and Florida have passed legislation to allow driverless cars.

This month Nissan carried out the first public road test of an autonomous vehicle on a Japanese highway.

Many envisage a future when we may not own cars at all but simply hail one to fulfil all our transportation needs.

"I call it mobility on demand. You pop out your mobile phone, say where you want to go and how many people and in a short amount of time a vehicle rolls up," said Brad Templeton, software engineer and adviser to Google on its self-drive car project.

"People will be like the millionaires of old where you just had a driver that did everything. These cars will worry about recharging, parking and refuelling. They will drive down a road without you paying much attention to it," he said.

Such cars will make cities both safer and greener, he thinks.

"It will radically change the amount of energy we use, how congested our streets are and eliminate most of the parking lots that take up a huge amount of space in our cities.

"Humans kill 1.2 million people in car accidents each year so the idea of being able to make a safer vehicle is very appealing," he said.

Many think that the issue of who will be liable in the event of accidents will hold up the development of autonomous vehicles but Mr Templeton is not convinced.

"I think only the barristers will find it the most interesting question," he said.

"For me the more interesting question is whether a machine is more liable than a drunk driver. Countries that decide a machine is more liable will slow the development of this technology," he added.

Car manufacturers suggest that autonomous vehicles will be on the roads within the decade.

Google has given 2017 as the date its cars will hit the roads. Not to be outdone, Elon Musk, head of electric car company Tesla Motors, has said he will have such vehicles ready in 2016.

Other car manufacturers, including Daimler and Nissan have given a 2020 date for their own versions.

Much of the underlying technology for autonomous driving is already installed in cars such as the Mercedes S500 which uses onboard radar and 3D stereoscopic cameras to gauge the distance from other cars.

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Microsoft disrupts ZeroAccess botnet

6 December 2013 Last updated at 01:46 ET

ZeroAccess, one of the world's largest botnets - a network of computers infected with malware to trigger online fraud - has been disrupted by Microsoft and law enforcement agencies.

ZeroAccess hijacks web search results and redirects users to potentially dangerous sites to steal their details.

It also generates fraudulent ad clicks on infected computers then claims payouts from duped advertisers.

Also called Sirefef botnet, ZeroAccess, has infected two million computers.

The botnet targets search results on Google, Bing and Yahoo search engines and is estimated to cost online advertisers $2.7m (£1.7m) per month.

Microsoft said it had been authorised by US regulators to "block incoming and outgoing communications between computers located in the US and the 18 identified Internet Protocol (IP) addresses being used to commit the fraudulent schemes".

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Due to its botnet architecture, ZeroAccess is one of the most robust and durable botnets in operation today and was built to be resilient to disruption efforts"

End Quote Microsoft

In addition, the firm has also taken control of 49 domains associated with ZeroAccess.

David Finn, executive director of Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, said the disruption "will stop victims' computers from being used for fraud and help us identify the computers that need to be cleaned of the infection".

'Most robust'

The ZeroAccess botnet relies on waves of communication between groups of infected computers, instead of being controlled by a few servers.

This allows cyber criminals to control the botnet remotely from a range of computers, making it difficult to tackle.

According to Microsoft, more than 800,000 ZeroAccess-infected computers were active on the internet on any given day as of October this year.

"Due to its botnet architecture, ZeroAccess is one of the most robust and durable botnets in operation today and was built to be resilient to disruption efforts," Microsoft said.

However, the firm said its latest action is "expected to significantly disrupt the botnet's operation, increasing the cost and risk for cyber criminals to continue doing business and preventing victims' computers from committing fraudulent schemes".

Microsoft said its Digital Crimes Unit collaborated with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) to disrupt the operations.

Earlier this year, security firm Symantec said it had disabled nearly 500,000 computers infected by ZeroAccess and taken them out of the botnet.

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New X-Men film, Apocalypse, for 2016

A new X-Men film has been announced for 2016.

Apocalypse will be the eighth film in the superhero series, which includes two Wolverine spin-off movies.

Bryan Singer, who directed the first two films in the franchise, hinted about the project on Twitter before it was confirmed by Fox that it would be released on 27 May 2016.

The first film in the X-Men series came out in 2000.

The new movie will focus on Apocalypse, an ancient Egyptian villain who appears in the Marvel comics.

The character first appeared in 1986.

It is set to be released in the same week as Alice in Wonderland 2 and two weeks before The Amazing Spider-Man 3.

There are no indications of the plot for the film.

Bryan Singer hinted about the new film on Twitter

The next X-Men movie, Days of Future Past, will be released on 23 May 2014.

The film stars Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman and James McAvoy.

Jennifer Lawrence will also appear in the movie.

It follows the release of The Wolverine earlier this year.

The X-Men franchise has grossed more than $2 billion (£1.2bn) worldwide, including the Wolverine spin-offs.

Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter

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Warning over rare metals in gadgets

6 December 2013 Last updated at 08:24 ET

Modern technology is too reliant on rare materials whose scarcity could drastically set back innovation, a new report has warned.

It suggested that as more and more devices are manufactured, supplies of key elements, particularly metals, will be strained.

Potential substitute materials are either inadequate or non-existent, researchers said.

One scientist called the findings "an important wake-up call".

Andrea Sella, of University College London - who was unconnected to the study - told website The Conversation that it was the first time the issue had been explored in such detail.

Researchers at Yale University, led by Prof Thomas Graedel, analysed the use of 62 metals or metalloids commonly found in popular technology, such as smartphones.

Troubling

It found that none of the 62 had alternatives that performed equally well. Twelve had no alternative, Prof Graedal found.

The scope for serious disruption because of material shortages is increasingly troubling technology companies.

Rare materials are expensive to extract, and their processing comes with considerable environmental concerns.

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In April 2012, the BBC's Ian Hardy discovered the effect that mass flooding in Thailand had on the technology supply chain

Political factors also play a part: in 2010, China restricted the export of some materials, known as rare earth elements.

It said this was because of environmental issues, but some observers noted that the restrictions had two distinct effects - the price of the elements increased fivefold, and Chinese companies were simultaneously given the upper hand in using the precious materials at lower cost.

Disrupted

Natural disasters bring another unpredictable risk.

In 2011, serious flooding in Thailand disrupted global supply chains as the country is a hub for hardware manufacture.

Shortages of storage devices extended well into 2012, according to research company IHS iSuppli, with hard-drive supplies the hardest hit.

The Yale report concluded: "As wealth and population increase worldwide in the next few decades, scientists will be increasingly challenged to maintain and improve product utility by designing new and better materials, but doing so under potential constraints in resource availability."

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NatWest services hit by cyber attack

6 December 2013 Last updated at 09:54 ET

A deliberate attempt to disrupt services at NatWest left some customers struggling to access online banking on Friday.

The surge of traffic - known as a distributed denial of service attack - was blamed by the RBS Group, which owns NatWest, for the access problems.

The disruption lasted for an hour from 11:30 GMT.

It came less than a week after a major computer failure left some customers unable to use cards and cash machines.

Details safe

On Friday, a number of customers reported problems getting on to the bank's website, from which they normally access their accounts online.

The RBS Group - which includes RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank - said that NatWest was worst affected by the "deliberate" disruption.

"Due to a surge in internet traffic deliberately directed at the NatWest website, customers experienced difficulties accessing some of our customer websites today," a spokeswoman for RBS said.

"This deliberate surge of traffic is commonly known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. We have taken the appropriate action to restore the affected websites. At no time was there any risk to customers. We apologise for the inconvenience caused."

She stressed that the latest incident was not connected to Monday's IT failure and no customer information was compromised at any time.

The incident on Monday also affected cash machines and card payments and prompted an apology from the boss of the RBS group, Ross McEwan.

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Samsung and Philips raided by EU

6 December 2013 Last updated at 10:26 ET

Samsung and Philips have revealed that they were among several consumer electronics companies raided recently by European Commission inspectors.

Thursday's raid focused on companies making and selling consumer electronics products and small domestic appliances.

The Commission said it was concerned these firms had colluded in restricting online availability of some products in a bid to restrict competition.

Media-Saturn, the European consumer electronics retailer, was also raided.

Both Samsung and Philips said they were co-operating with the authorities.

"The Commission has concerns that the companies concerned may have violated EU antitrust rules that prohibit anticompetitive agreements or concerted practices," it said in a statement.

Restricting supply "may lead to higher consumer prices or the unavailability of products through certain online sales channels", it said.

The Commission did not give details of the companies it had visited.

Exclusive appeal

If found guilty, the companies could face fines equivalent to 10% of global annual turnover.

In Samsung's case, this could amount to £17bn, although a fine of this size would be unprecedented and extremely unlikely.

Sources familiar with the case told the BBC that agreements between manufacturers and retailers are not necessarily illegal.

Luxury goods brands, for example, often want to restrict the supply and distribution of their products to safeguard their exclusive appeal.

Whether such a defence would apply to low-cost electronic products is for the lawyers to decide.

"The fact that the Commission carries out such inspections does not mean that the companies are guilty of anticompetitive behaviour," the Commission said, "nor does it prejudge the outcome of the investigation itself."

EU competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia has been stepping up antitrust investigations under his watch.

This week the Commission fined eight banks - including Royal Bank of Scotland - a total of 1.7bn euros (£1.4bn) for forming illegal cartels to rig interest rates in the financial derivatives markets.

And in May, Commission inspectors raided several oil companies suspected of price-fixing.

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Samsung reattempts botched update

6 December 2013 Last updated at 13:10 ET

Samsung has started again to roll out an update to its Galaxy S3 smartphone, weeks after a botched attempt angered users.

Some S3 owners were left with devices that drained battery quickly, would suddenly freeze, or were "bricked" altogether.

The update was to give users version 4.3 of the Android operating system - also known as Jelly Bean.

"We are sorry for the inconvenience this has caused," the company said.

A statement explained: "The fix for the issues with Galaxy S3 Jelly Bean 4.3 upgrade has begun rolling out to selected users in the UK, and will continue to do so.

"Specific upgrade schedules will vary by mobile operators. Please check your phone for the upgrade."

Samsung was unable to give more precise details on who the "selected" users were, or when the problem would be fully resolved for all.

'How much longer?'

Users in the UK and US appeared to be worst affected by the problems, which began last month.

Samsung was forced to temporarily suspend its upgrade service after a flood of complaints on social media - with the length of time it has taken to fix being the most common complaint.

"We have paid a lot of money for this phone," wrote Tushar Dass on Facebook. "I don't think we deserve this treatment."

Another, Jim Lovett-Dalley, added: "How much longer must we wait for a working phone, Samsung? Been over two weeks now. I'm paying £27 a month for a phone that's about as useful as a chocolate teapot."

Enthusiasts and bloggers speculated that the update may have been rushed out to ensure compatibility with the recently released Galaxy Gear smartwatch.

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