Woman jailed for £450,000 iPad scam

3 January 2014 Last updated at 09:02 ET

A woman who defrauded hundreds of customers in an iPad scam worth £450,000 has been jailed.

Kirsty Cox, from Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, took thousands of orders for the tablet computers between March and December 2012 after claiming she could source them at a reduced price.

Teesside Crown Court heard how the 37-year-old was paid for the devices but could not provide them.

Cox, who previously admitted four fraud charges, was jailed for two years.

Judge George Moorhouse said her offending had "caused misery" to children last Christmas after "tricking" their parents into thinking she could supply the presents.

The mother-of-two told people she had a contact who could provide her with iPads for £50 to £100 off the retail price, using her "niceness" to "deceive" customers, the court heard.

'Trusted her 100%'

Cox's former sister-in-law Karen Kennedy and her husband Saul took cash from work colleagues which they passed on to her.

Mrs Kennedy said: "I had a really close relationship with Kirsty and she had a really good reputation.

"She told me that she could get really cheap iPads and she had been supplying them to loads of companies and she just asked me to spread the word at my work.

"I trusted her 100% and I had no reason not to."

The court heard how on one occasion Cox spent £1.52m on iPads from PC World and then sold them at a loss in a bid to cover her tracks.

When she was arrested in December 2012, Durham Police kept her in custody for her own safety after angry customers gathered outside her home demanding to know what had happened to their orders.

Det Supt Neil Jones from Durham Police said: "The actual real cutting effect was for the people who had been saving the small amounts per week to buy iPads for the kids for Christmas.

"To find out the week before that your goods weren't coming was devastating, people's Christmases were ruined."

Mr Jones said one lady cancelled her own wedding to try and pay back the people she had taken money from to give to Cox.

Saul Kennedy said: "You're feeling everyone's pain and you can understand why everyone is so angry, but you feel absolutely helpless.

"You're in a situation where you can do nothing about it but these people have trusted you with their money. You are responsible."

Hundreds of people are believed to have been victims of Cox's scam. Shaun Dodds, prosecuting, said the actual loss to customers was more than £1.1m.

Judge Moorhouse jailed Cox as she wept in the dock, despite hearing that her family had suffered while she spent six months on remand.

He said: "You have two young children who suffered miserably while you were on remand.

"I am afraid they are going to suffer even more."

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Alicia Keys to end Blackberry role

3 January 2014 Last updated at 04:27 ET

Alicia Keys will end her partnership with Blackberry at the end of January after a year as serving as its global creative director.

The singer-songwriter was hired by the smartphone maker last year when it launched its BlackBerry 10 devices.

Since then Blackberry has seen a drastic fall in profits and changed its leadership and strategy.

The company is now moving away from the consumer market to concentrate on business and government customers.

"We have enjoyed the opportunity to work with such an incredibly talented and passionate individual," the company said in an emailed statement.

The BlackBerry 10 devices were seen as the company's big chance to challenge the industry leaders, Apple and Samsung.

But sales flopped leaving Blackberry with a loss of almost a billion dollars in the second quarter.

The company put itself up for sale, but failed to find a buyer.

During her time as creative director Ms Keys was involved with Blackberry's Keep Moving project which bought together musicians, writers, artists, filmmakers and athletes.

She encouraged fans to send pictures to the project to be used on her 2013 tour.

She also worked on a Blackberry scholarship programme for women wanting to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

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Ford reveals solar-powered car

2 January 2014 Last updated at 09:37 ET

Ford has unveiled plans for a prototype solar-powered hybrid car.

The Ford C-Max Solar Energi Concept has a solar panel system on the roof which tracks the position of the sun. The company said it can draw power equal to a four-hour battery charge.

Fully charged the car could travel for up to 21 miles powered just on electricity.

The concept car will be on display at CES in Las Vegas before testing begins to see if production is feasible.

Continue reading the main story

The limited capability for solar panels means that we won't see them used as the main power source anytime soon"

End Quote Damion Smy Car Magazine

The solar panel roof will use a separate off-vehicle solar concentrator lens, similar to a magnifying glass, to ensure it absorbs enough energy. The Fresnal lens will follow the movement of the sun from east to west and direct sunlight to the solar cells which project researchers say boosts the impact of sunlight by a factor of eight.

'Charging socket'

Ford claim that a day's worth of sunlight will produce the same performance from the Solar Energi Concept as is given by their conventional plug-in hybrid car. Both vehicles would have the same range of 620 miles.

The concept car - which was developed from a collaboration between Ford, the Georgia Institute of Technology and SunPower Corp, a solar power company - will still have a conventional electrical charging socket so its charge can be topped up from the power grid.

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But Ford claim that by using the solar power system drivers will not be dependent on the grid to use the car.

Research from the company suggests that in future the sun could power up to 75% of all trips made by an average user in a solar hybrid vehicle.

However, it may be a while before solar panel cars are a common sight on the road, said Damion Smy from Car Magazine.

"What Ford has done here is clever use of solar technology, as it assists battery charging.

"Solar power could be used to run ancillaries, such as air-conditioning, but the limited capability for solar panels means that we won't see them used as the main power source anytime soon," he said.

Another car manufacturer reported to be unveiling new technology at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is Audi. They will be showcasing cars which use the Android operating system, which is normally found on smartphones and tablets, at the event which starts on the 7 January.

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Netflix tests pay-per-user service

2 January 2014 Last updated at 14:30 ET

The subscription video-streaming site Netflix is testing a new pricing model based on the number of people who can operate an account.

It means selected customers pay more if increased number of people log in to the account at the same time.

Users would pay $6.99 (£4.26) a month to use one screen to watch a TV show or film. This would rise to $9.99 if three screens were being used simultaneously.

The company said it is was only testing these options for some new users.

Currently subscribers pay a monthly fee of $7.99 for a standard service that allows them to watch different shows or movies on two screens at once.

There is also an upgraded-account version available for $11.99 where customers can watch across four screens. When Netflix's chief executive Reed Hastings announced this option in April he said he expected fewer than one per cent of customers to sign up.

Curbing piracy

Netflix currently has 40 million subscribers around the world. Its growth has been helped by its self-commissioned programmes including the political drama House of Cards and prison series Orange is the New Black.

Its most recent figures indicate that Netflix users watched five billion hours of films and television shows in the three months to September 2013.

At the time the company said it was looking to invest more in developing original television shows and was considering a move into movie-production.

Some analysts have suggested that the new pricing model is the firm's attempt to curb account sharing and to combat piracy.

The new pricing plans are only being tested on some new users who will see a screen displaying the options when they sign up to the service.

"Not everyone will see this and we may not ever offer it generally," a Netflix spokesman told the BBC.

"Typically tests take anywhere from several weeks to several months. Whether we roll out any of these options depends on the test results."

Chris Green, an analyst with consultancy firm Davies Murphy Group, thinks allowing customers to chose different price points will prove popular.

"There will be demand from technologically adept families who are frustrated by only being able to run two concurrent streams", he said.

"But there will also be households that won't mind getting a cheaper deal as the cost of these products can add up month by month."

He also commented that other firms which have tried different pricing models had been successful including the US-based streaming service Hulu and BSkyB's Sky Go.

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Facebook sued over message 'scan'

2 January 2014 Last updated at 20:29 ET

Facebook is facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it monitors users' private messages.

The lawsuit claims that when users share a link to another website via a private message, Facebook scans it to profile the sender's web activity.

It alleges that Facebook systematically intercepts messages to mine user data and profits by sharing it with data aggregators, advertisers and marketers.

Facebook said the allegations were "without merit".

"We will defend ourselves vigorously," the world's biggest social networking site added.

The lawsuit is claiming the greater of either $100 (£61) a day for each day of alleged violations or $10,000, for each user.

'Profitable opportunity'

Continue reading the main story

Facebook has positioned itself to acquire pieces of the users' profiles that are likely unavailable to other data aggregators"

End Quote Matthew Campbell & Michael Hurley Plaintiffs

The lawsuit, filed earlier this week, cites independent research that, it claims, found Facebook reviews the contents of its users' private messages "for purposes unrelated to the facilitation of message transmission".

"Representing to users that the content of Facebook messages is "private" creates an especially profitable opportunity for Facebook," it says.

It says this is "because users who believe they are communicating on a service free from surveillance are likely to reveal facts about themselves that they would not reveal had they known the content was being monitored.

"Thus, Facebook has positioned itself to acquire pieces of the users' profiles that are likely unavailable to other data aggregators."

However, others have come forward to defend Facebook.

Writing on his blog, security expert Graham Cluley said that if the site was not examining links shared privately, Facebook would be failing a "duty of care" to its users.

"If you didn't properly scan and check links there's a very real risk that spam, scams, phishing attacks, and malicious URLs designed to infect recipients' computers with malware could run rife," he argued.

Criticism

Facebook has come under attack over its privacy policies in the past.

In September last year, it faced criticism over a proposed change to its privacy policy which would have allowed ads to be created using the names and profile pictures of Facebook users.

The firm had claimed that its proposal merely clarified the language of its privacy policy, rather than making any material changes to it.

Facebook undertook to change the wording in the wake of a legal action launched in 2011 which saw it pay $20m to compensate users who claimed it had used their data without explicit permission.

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Snapchat to update app after hack

2 January 2014 Last updated at 21:17 ET

Snapchat said it will release an updated version of its app after hackers downloaded usernames and phone numbers for 4.6 million accounts.

It said the update will allow users to opt out of appearing in its feature, Find Friends, after they have verified their phone number.

Find Friends allows users to upload their address book contacts to find others who are also using the service.

The hack came after a security firm warned of vulnerabilities in the app.

The security firm, Gibson Security, highlighted the flaw, which it said could be used to reveal the phone numbers of users, in its report published on 25 December.

Protect

Snapchat had acknowledged in a blogpost last week that "it was possible for an attacker to use the functionality of Find Friends to upload a large number of random phone numbers and match them with Snapchat usernames".

But it said at that time that it had taken measures to protect users' data.

However, the hackers still managed to download the phone numbers and even temporarily post the data online.

On Thursday, Snapchat said the report by Gibson had made "it easier for individuals to abuse our service and violate our Terms of Use".

Snapchat said that, along with allowing users to opt out of appearing in Find Friends, it will improve "other restrictions to address future attempts to abuse our service".

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Cyber security firms agree $1bn deal

3 January 2014 Last updated at 00:34 ET

Cyber security company FireEye has acquired Mandiant, a firm known for responses to network breaches, in a deal worth more than $1bn (£608m).

Mandiant rose to prominence last year after it alleged that a secretive branch of China's military had stolen data from more than 100 global firms.

The deal, one of the largest ones in the sector recently, comes amid increased worries over cyber security.

FireEye shares rose 24% in after hours trading in New York on the deal.

The companies said they had agreed the deal on 30 December, but only made it public on Thursday after close of US markets.

FireEye and Mandiant had entered into a technology development agreement in 2013.

"Organizations today are faced with knitting together a patchwork of point products and services to protect their assets from advanced threats," David DeWalt, chief executive of FireEye, said in a statement.

"Together, the size and global reach of FireEye and Mandiant will enable us to innovate faster, create a more comprehensive solution, and deliver it to organizations around the world at a pace that is unmatched by other security vendors."

Kevin Mandia, Mandiant's founder and chief executive officer prior to the acquisition, has been appointed as the chief operating officer of FireEye.

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NSA 'developing quantum computer'

3 January 2014 Last updated at 06:30 ET

The US National Security Agency is building a quantum computer to break the encryption that keeps messages secure, reports the Washington Post.

The NSA project came to light in documents passed to the newspaper by whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

The spying agency hopes to harness the special qualities of quantum computers to speed up its code-cracking efforts.

The NSA is believed to have spent about $80m (£49m) on the project but it has yet to produce a working machine.

If the NSA managed to develop a working quantum computer it would be put to work breaking encryption systems used online and by foreign governments to keep official messages secure, suggest the documents excerpted in the Post.

The quantum computer is being developed under a research programme called Penetrating Hard Targets and is believed to be conducted out of a lab in Maryland.

Processing power

Many research groups around the world are pursuing the goal of creating a working quantum computer but those developed so far have not been able to run the algorithms required to break contemporary encryption systems.

Current computers attempt to crack encryption via many different means but they are limited to generating possible keys to unscramble data one at a time. Using big computers can speed this up but the huge numbers used as keys to lock away data limits the usefulness of this approach.

By contrast, quantum computers exploit properties of matter that, under certain conditions, mean the machine can carry out lots and lots of calculations simultaneously. This makes it practical to try all the possible keys protecting a particular message or stream of data.

The hard part of creating a working quantum computer is keeping enough of its constituent computational elements, called qubits, stable so they can interact and be put to useful work.

The NSA is not believed to have made significant breakthroughs in its work that would put it ahead of research efforts elsewhere in the US and Europe. However, the documents passed to the Post by Edward Snowden suggest the agency's researchers are having some success developing the basic building blocks for the machine.

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Kanye-inspired currency 'to launch'

3 January 2014 Last updated at 08:27 ET

A new Bitcoin-like virtual currency inspired by rapper Kanye West is set to be launched, and has been dubbed "Coinye West".

Kanye West is not involved and has yet to comment on its inception.

It will follow in the footsteps of "Dogecoin", another virtual currency based on the popular Doge meme.

The value of Bitcoin, the most famous virtual currency, peaked at over $1000 (£613) last year but is currently worth around $850 (£520).

Various alternatives to Bitcoin have sprung up, such as Litecoin, Namecoin and PPCoin.

Virtual currencies are often linked to the purchase of illegal items, namely drugs, thanks to transactions being extremely difficult to trace.

However, more humorous currencies like Dogecoin are used for more tongue-in-cheek transactions.

One user, posting on Dogemarket, a section on popular link sharing site Reddit, offered Dogecoins in exchange for ideas to name a company.

Continue reading the main story

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.

"I thought the whole Dogecoin thing was interesting," said Jeremy Bonney, from virtual currency news site Coindesk.

"It grew into something somewhat legitimate. There are people that genuinely believe in it out there."

Gig tickets

The makers of Coinye West have lofty ambitions for the currency which they described as a "cryptocurrency for the masses".

Speaking anonymously to music site Noisey, they said: "I can picture a future where Coinye is used to buy concert tickets, with cryptographically verified virtual tickets, and other ideas I can't give away just yet."

They said they planned to give away a number of Coinye to early users when the currency launches on 11 January.

"It will get people who are on the fence interested and help them to start using the currency, and we hope they'll share it with their friends, too."

However, one Bitcoin expert urged caution in investing in new virtual currencies that were as yet untested in public use.

"There's been a number of people who have put out 'joke' currencies in the past," said Johnathan Turrall, chief technology officer at Metalair, a cryptocurrency start-up based at the University of Sussex.

"There were some coins in the past that seemed to be a 'pump and dump' operation.

"In one case, the original developers launched on obscure websites, but when they took it mainstream, and the price spiked, they sold up and disappeared. Estimated earnings in one instance were $800,000."

Mike Hearn, a Bitcoin developer, said Coinye West was, at the very least, an expression of the "democratic" nature of the technology behind virtual currencies.

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Elite hacker 'overdosed on drugs'

3 January 2014 Last updated at 18:55 ET

A world-renowned hacker, who died in San Francisco in July, overdosed on a mix of heroin, cocaine and other drugs, a coroner's report shows.

New Zealand-born Barnaby Jack was found dead in his bed a week before he was scheduled to give a talk at an event.

An autopsy revealed that "acute mixed drug intoxication" led to his death, San Francisco's medical examiner said.

Mr Jack rose to fame after a 2010 demonstration, in which he hacked a cash machine, making it give out money.

The technique was dubbed "Jackpotting".

He had also emerged as a leading expert in the weaknesses that could be found in medical technology.

'No visible trauma'

In July, the medical examiner had provided no further details into what may have caused the hacker's sudden death.

But the autopsy report has now been made available and says Mr Jack had shown "no visible or palpable evidence of trauma".

Instead, his physical symptoms indicated an accidental overdose of heroin, cocaine, and prescription drugs.

The report said Mr Jack's girlfriend had found him lying in bed unresponsive, with "multiple bottles of beer and champagne in the garbage can".

Mr Jack's death occurred shortly before he was due to demonstrate how heart implants could be hacked at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

He had said one technique could kill a man from 30 feet (nine metres) away.

Last year, he told the BBC about how he had discovered flaws in widely-used insulin pumps which allowed him to compromise the devices.

The hack made it possible to control them and administer a fatal level of insulin, Mr Jack said.

"My purpose was not to allow anyone to be harmed by this because it is not easy to reproduce," he told the BBC during an interview in April 2012.

"But hopefully it will promote some change in these companies and get some meaningful security in these devices."

Mr Jack's expertise and vivid demonstrations of his knowledge at events like Black Hat earned him the respect of many security professionals.

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