'Chewbacca' attack hits cash tills

31 January 2014 Last updated at 06:00 ET

Swift action has stopped an attack that stole credit and debit card details from retailers in 11 nations.

The attack, which used a malicious program called "Chewbacca", was discovered by security company RSA.

The server at the centre of the attack has now been shut down but not before thieves managed to grab details of 24 million transactions.

Retailers in 11 separate nations fell victim to the attack including shops in Russia, Canada, Australia and the US.

In the blogpost detailing the shutdown, security analyst Yotam Gottesman said the thieves grabbed data from equipment at cash tills in "several dozen" shops. RSA has contacted the shops and told them about the attack.

On point-of-sale equipment the malicious software disguised itself as a file that handled printing.

It was given the name "Chewbacca" because the login page for the server collating data from infected machines features a picture of the Star Wars wookie.

The group behind the attack tried to hide its tracks by routing stolen data through the Tor network that many people use to hide where they are browsing from.

Chewbacca comes in the wake of an attack on giant US retailer Target in late 2013. That attack also inserted malware on cash tills and card swipe devices and managed to scoop up details of more than 40 million credit and debit cards.

Luxury department store Neiman Marcus was also hit by thieves who used a similar tactic to grab card and personal details.

The attacks led the FBI to issue a warning to retailers alerting them to the changing attack patterns used by thieves and asking them to be vigilant about their point-of-sale equipment.

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Forgotify plays unheard Spotify songs

31 January 2014 Last updated at 07:48 ET

A new music streaming service that only plays songs that no-one has listened to on Spotify has been launched.

According to data released by Spotify only 80% of the 20 million songs on its site have been listened to at least once.

The founders of Forgotify said that the four million unheard tracks were "a musical travesty".

Users of Forgotify have to be logged in to Spotify for it to work.

Once logged in, listeners are presented with a track that they can listen to and share. If it is not to their taste there is a "next" button that will offer them another previously unplayed track.

'Neglected songs'

Jazzy American Ballads for Piano, and Sally in Our Alley, Op. 108, No. 25 by Robert White from the album "Robert White Sings Beethoven (Remastered)" were two examples of the unheard tracks listed on the new service.

Lane Jordan, J Hausmann and Nate Gagnon, who set up Forgotify, said that they were lovers of music and that they were giving "these neglected songs another way to reach your earholes".

Mr Jordan said in an interview with Time that the website uses an embedded Spotify player and runs a program searching Spotify for songs with a "0″ popularity rating, indicating that the song has never been selected by a user.

He said any song that has been played even once is removed.

Although he added that the four million unlistened-to tracks are unlikely to decline as Spotify adds new music all the time.

Twitter users were keen to talk about the new service but one did wonder how popular the music would be.

"Lovely idea, surfacing songs that have never been played on Spotify. However, there's usually a reason they're ignored," tweeted @superglaze.

A spokesperson for Spotify said they had no comment to make about Forgotify's launch.

Music is listed on Spotify via record labels or "aggregators" that already have a delivery model in place with the company.

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Rare Twitter username 'stolen'

30 January 2014 Last updated at 09:39 ET

The owner of the Twitter username @N claims it has been stolen from him by a hacker.

Naoki Hiroshima, a software developer from California, has had the Twitter handle @N since 2007.

In a blog post he said he had previously been offered $50,000 to sell it and people had tried to "steal" it before.

This time, he said, someone took control of other online accounts he had until he agreed to give it up.

Mr Hiroshima said his Twitter name was considered rare as it only contains one character.

He explained said that a hacker gained access to his GoDaddy account - a domain name registration service - and had changed the account settings to gain access to his personal email.

In a subsequent email exchange, the hacker told Mr Hiroshima that he had managed to access his GoDaddy account by learning the last 4 digits of his credit card number.

He claimed to have done this by contacting PayPal, where Mr Hiroshima has an account, and posing as an employee. Then he said he used "some very simple engineering tactics to obtain the last four [digits] of your card".

Social engineering

In a statement PayPal denied that it had given out Mr Hiroshima's details.

"We have carefully reviewed our records and can confirm that there was a failed attempt made to gain this customer's information by contacting PayPal.

"PayPal did not divulge any credit card details related to this account."

GoDaddy said in a statement to news website TechCrunch that one of its employees had been "socially engineered" to provide the hacker with the information needed to access Mr Hiroshima's account.

Social engineering is a method of tricking someone in to doing something they should not - in this case divulging confidential information.

In its statement GoDaddy said: "Our review of the situation reveals that the hacker was already in possession of a large portion of the customer information needed to access the account at the time he contacted GoDaddy.

"The hacker then socially engineered an employee to provide the remaining information needed to access the customer account. "

Irreversible disaster

Mr Hiroshima eventually gave up the @N Twitter handle after the hacker intimated that he would compromise data and websites owned by Mr Hiroshima.

"I remembered what had happened to @mat [Mat Honan's digital presence was erased in an hour after attacks by hackers] and concluded that giving up the account right away would be the only way to avoid an irreversible disaster," he wrote.

"I changed my username @N to @N_is_stolen for the first time since I registered it in early 2007."

The hacker took control of the @N username and Mr Hiroshima had his access to his GoDaddy account returned.

"With my GoDaddy account restored, I was able to regain access to my email as well. I changed the email address I use at several web services."

Mr Hiroshima said his advice to stop this happening to others is to not let companies store your credit card information and for companies to stop using it as a method of verification.

In response to why Twitter had not restored Mr Hiroshima's access to the @N account a spokesperson said:

"While we don't comment on individual accounts, we are investigating the report."

In the latest development Mr Hiroshima tweeted from his new Twitter account that it seemed the hacker had deleted his old account.

"It seems the guy who stole @N from me just deleted the account. It's available but unavailable to take."

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Yahoo Mail target of hacking attempt

31 January 2014 Last updated at 05:56 ET

Yahoo says it has identified an attempted hack on customers' email accounts.

It said the usernames and passwords for accounts were likely to have been collected from a database owned by a third party that had been compromised.

It has reset passwords on all affected accounts and has implemented an extra verification step when users sign in.

The company said it was working with law enforcement to find out who was responsible for the attack.

It has not revealed how many Yahoo email accounts have been affected.

"Our ongoing investigation shows that malicious computer software used the list of usernames and passwords to access Yahoo Mail accounts," said a statement on Yahoo's Tumblr page written by Jay Rossiter, a senior vice-president at the company.

"The information sought in the attack seems to be names and email addresses from the affected accounts' most recent sent emails."

Multiple passwords

No date was given for the attempted hack but the company said there was no evidence that the usernames and passwords had been obtained directly from Yahoo's systems.

It went on to say that it had implemented "additional measures to block attacks against Yahoo's systems".

Customers were advised to change their passwords when prompted and reminded to pick new passwords on a regular basis.

The statement warned that customers should never use the same password to log in to many different sites.

"Using the same password on multiple sites or services makes users particularly vulnerable to these types of attacks," it said.

This is not the first incident to affect Yahoo since its mail service was redesigned in October last year.

At the time thousands of users complained about the removal of key functions and others reported technical problems.

These included the removal of tabs, meaning users could not organise their inboxes. Others complained about the placing of the delete button next to the sender name and no longer having new emails in bold. Some reported that emails were disappearing from their folder after sending.

In December some users were not able to access their accounts because of a hardware problem at one of its data centres that lasted several days.

Yahoo shares fell more than 5% after it announced a drop in revenue for the fourth straight quarter in its latest set of results.

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Slimmer PlayStation Vita heads to UK

30 January 2014 Last updated at 08:06 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter

A slimmer version of the PlayStation Vita games console will launch in the UK on 7 February, making it the first market set to get this version of the handheld after Japan.

Sony said it would cost about the same as the previous model.

The firm also announced a series of child-focused titles for the machine - an area where Nintendo's rival 3DS console has performed strongly.

One expert said that the lack of a price cut was likely to limit sales.

Earlier in the year Sony announced plans to stream games from its PlayStation 3 catalogue to smartphones and tablets.

However, the managing director of Sony Computer Entertainment said the firm had not yet decided whether that meant this Vita would be its last dedicated handheld console.

"We'll continue to monitor how the market evolves and will continue to listen to what gamers want," Fergal Gara told the BBC.

"It has a dual role as a standalone gaming device and an exciting accessory for the PlayStation 4 [the Vita can connect to a PS4 and play its games], so let's see what behaviour and gameplay pattern emerges."

Games for kids

Sony said the new model was 15% lighter and 20% slimmer than before, and the wi-fi only version would cost about £180.

It also gains 1GB of internal storage and boasts longer battery life - claiming up to six hours of gameplay and nine hours of video playback - thanks in part to the firm replacing the OLED touchscreen with a more traditional LED version. Early reviews suggest this makes it appear less bright.

The company spent more time at its London launch event focusing on forthcoming software than the hardware itself.

The new titles include Invizimals: The Alliance - an augmented reality title targeted at children that uses the Vita's cameras to show fantasy creatures interacting with views of the real world.

The franchise has been compared to Nintendo's bestselling Pokemon series.

"Invizimals in southern Europe is massive, with a TV show, a magazine and figurines," said Christopher Dring, editor of the video games trade magazine MCV.

"Over here in the UK it hasn't really taken off yet and Sony is trying to promote it in a big way when it launches in March. That may be a key to pushing the Vita."

Other child-focused games include a Lego Movie game and PS Vita Pets, a title which challenges the player to raise a virtual animal and then take them out into a virtual environment.

The Vita has sold a fraction of the 81 million units claimed by its predecessor, the PlayStation Portable - something Mr Gara said was due in large part to the rise of smartphones and tablets.

But he also acknowledged that Nintendo's efforts to target a younger market had meant that the Vita had also been outsold by the 3DS.

"Nintendo has done a great job I think in creating franchises for the kids market," he said.

"They kind of have that market quite firmly in their hands I guess.

"We've brought out a device more for the core gamer and not as many of those necessarily want that experience on the move.

"So, you'll see us moving more into that [kids] market, but we recognise that there's a strong player in that space."

Too expensive?

Sony is also making greater efforts to promote games from independent developers, launching a £20 "megapack" containing 10 of the sector's best reviewed titles, including Hotline Miami and Limbo.

This may help it counter the popularity of low-priced games available for Android, Windows Phone and iOS devices.

But MCV's editor said the Vita might need to be priced £140 or below to drive a big rise in sales.

"They could do with lowering the price... but that may be to come," said Mr Dring.

"There is a die-hard fan group for the Vita, and while there may not be many devices sold, the number of games bought per device is relatively high when compared to the PlayStation 3.

"So, the Vita isn't like the Wii U where you think there's probably no way back - perhaps Sony can get some momentum behind it."

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Google earnings climb on ad revenue

30 January 2014 Last updated at 17:00 ET

Search giant Google reported fourth quarter profits of $3.38bn (£2.05bn), up 17% from a year earlier, buoyed by stronger advertising revenue.

"We ended 2013 with another great quarter of momentum and growth," said Google chief executive Larry Page in a statement.

The firm also announced a stock split will take place on 2 April.

The company reported a widening loss of $384m in its Motorola Mobility unit, compared to $152m in 2012.

Google announced the surprise sale of that business late on Wednesday to Chinese computer maker Lenovo for $2.91bn.

Continue reading the main story

News of the deal caused Google shares to jump on Thursday, because the unit had long been seen as a drag on the firm's profits.

Ad woes

The stock split has been in discussion for three years, because shareholders were worried it would unfairly benefit co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

In the split, a new class of "C" shares will be created - but with no voting power - compared to the current class "A" shares.

Shares in Google remained flat after the earnings were released, but are up more than 50% for the year.

Although Google remains the number one digital advertising seller, handily beating out rivals Facebook and Yahoo, the firm has struggled to raise its prices for mobile advertising.

Advertisers have so far been unwilling to pay more for mobile adverts compared to the traditional desktop offerings.

Overall, Google increased its number of paid clicks by 31%, but the company's average cost-per-click for the fourth quarter was down 11%.

That partially indicates that the firm is selling more mobile ads, but it is not being offset by a rise in mobile rates.

Unlike in prior quarters, Mr Page was not on hand to discuss earnings in a conference call with analysts. He has previously said it was not the best use of his time.

Mr Page has been suffering from a chronic vocal chord issue.

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Zynga buys game-maker NaturalMotion

30 January 2014 Last updated at 18:39 ET

Social gaming firm Zynga has announced the purchase of UK game-maker NaturalMotion for $527m (£320m).

Oxford-based NaturalMotion has had a string of mobile game hits, such as CSR Racing and Clumsy Ninja. Its purchase gives Zynga an entry into the lucrative mobile games market.

As news of the deal emerged, Zynga also reported a loss of $25m for the fourth quarter.

It said it would trim its workforce by 15% - equivalent to about 314 jobs.

Mobile help

Continue reading the main story

Leo Kelion Technology reporter

---

The acquisition calls into question the state of the UK tech sector, coming days after Google bought artificial intelligence firm DeepMind.

Some will wonder why such promising UK start-ups are unable to grow organically and instead sell out to larger, foreign firms.

Of course there are UK tech firms making a success of going it alone: ARM, CSR and Imagination Technologies for example.

But it does pose the question: does Britain have the capability for fostering the next Google or Electronic Arts, or is it inevitable that the UK version would sell out abroad?

"We believe that bringing Zynga and NaturalMotion together is the right step at the right time," said Zynga chief executive Don Mattrick in a statement.

"Our acquisition of NaturalMotion will allow us to significantly expand our creative pipeline, accelerate our mobile growth and bring next-generation technology and tools to Zynga that we believe will fast-track our ability to deliver more hit games."

In a note to employees, Mr Mattrick highlighted that with the acquisition, Zynga will now have five top gaming brands: Farmville, Casino, Words with friends, CSR Racing and Clumsy Ninja in the "people" category.

NaturalMotion's Clumsy Ninja has been rated more than 78,000 times in the US and UK version of Apple's App Store - the vast majority of them positive.

New leadership

Mr Mattrick also told employees the acquisition gives Zynga access to NaturalMotion's Euphoria technology, which helps create realistic motion for characters in movies and games.

The takeover of the 13-year-old firm is being interpreted by some as Mr Mattrick's bet on character-driven intellectual property.

As part of the terms co-founder of NaturalMotion, Torsten Reil, will stay on and report to Mr Mattick, and new games will continue to be released under the NaturalMotion brand.

Zynga has struggled to replicate the success it has had with desktop games Farmville and Mafia Wars and has been unable to generate new hits on smartphones.

This is seen as a crucial weakness, as more and more consumers play games on their phones.

NaturalMotion is the biggest acquisition for the firm, and it comes after Zynga bought OMGPOP for $180m in 2012, only to see that firm's flagship game, Draw Something, shed users.

In June, the company announced it would cut 18% of its workforce and then a month later, it was announced that Mr Mattrick would take over from Zynga founder Mark Pincus.

The $25m loss actually represents good news for Zynga: it is 43% lower than the same period last year.

Investors cheered the news of the acquisition and the cuts, sending Zynga's stock up in after hours trading.

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UK to act on wrongly-blocked sites

30 January 2014 Last updated at 19:54 ET By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

The government is drawing up a list of sites inadvertently blocked by the filters it asked internet service providers (ISPs) to implement.

Many sites on the list are run by charities that aim to educate children and others about health, sex education and drugs issues.

The whitelist will be used to ensure the sites are not immediately blocked.

The list has emerged from a working group looking into accidental blocking and how to fix the problem.

'Master list'

The group is also looking into ways to set up a standard system that will let any site which thinks it has been wrongly blocked tell ISPs about the mistake so it can get on to the approved list.

"Research suggests the amount of inadvertent blocking is low," said David Miles, who chairs the working group on over-blocking for the government's UK Council for Child Internet Safety.

"However. if you are a charity and you deal with teenagers in distress that 1 or 10 matters to you."

Other reports have suggested that many innocuous sites such as TorrentFreak, a copyright and privacy news site, are being accidentally caught up in the filters ISPs are starting to use.

A spokesman for the Internet Service Provides Association said: "There's a growing realisation that filters are not perfect and will lead to some over-blocking,"

"There's a feeling that some sites sit in a grey area and more needs to be done for them."

The working group was set up in the wake of a Downing Street internet safety summit held in November 2013 which aimed to get ISPs doing more to filter inappropriate content.

The group first met in December and involved ISPs, charities, representatives from government, the [British Board of Film Classification] BBFC and mobile operators.

Since then, Mr Miles said he had been reviewing research on inadvertent blocking and visiting charities to find out how the steady introduction of web-based filters for adult and inappropriate material had hit visitor numbers.

"We are building a master list of sites that the charities are helping us with and actively testing this right now," Mr Miles told the BBC.

Soon the list would be shared among ISPs that had introduced network-level filters to ensure that the educational sites were widely viewable.

The need for the list of sites wrongly blocked would become more pressing in 2014 as ISPs contacted established customers and asked them to choose whether to switch on the filters, he said.

Currently most big UK ISPs only ask new customers to make a choice about net filters.

"What we are seeing in the UK is quite unusual," said Mr Miles, who is also the European director for the Family Online Safety Institute.

"At the ISP level, on public wi-fi and via mobile operators, the UK will be subject to a substantial amount of network-level filtering all of a sudden."

"That new network-level filtering could increase the level of over-blocking," he said.

Getting systems in place now would help later in the year as more and more web browsing becomes subject to filtering, he added.

Eventually, Mr Miles said, standardised systems might emerge that let sites check if their content falls foul of the filters, or put in place a simple way for sites to inform all ISPs that they do not have inappropriate content.

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Canada 'spied on airport travellers'

31 January 2014 Last updated at 06:25 ET

Canada's electronic spy agency collected data from travellers passing through a major airport, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reports.

The CSEC collected information captured from unsuspecting passengers' wireless devices by the airport's free wi-fi system over two-weeks, the report says.

The revelations come from documents leaked by Edward Snowden, CBC says.

The CSEC is prohibited by law from targeting Canadians or anyone in Canada without an appropriate warrant.

Its primary mission is to collect foreign intelligence by intercepting overseas phone and internet traffic.

The CSEC (Communications Security Establishment Canada), in a statement to CBC, reiterated that it is "mandated to collect foreign signals to protect Canada and Canadians.

"And in order to fulfil that key foreign intelligence role for the country, CSEC is legally authorised to collect and analyse metadata."

Metadata is the information about a communication - such as the date and location of a call or email - rather than the details of what was actually said or written.

'Hot spots'

The leaked document indicates the 2012 passenger tracking operation was a trial run of a powerful new software programme being developed jointly with the US's National Security Agency (NSA), CBC reports.

It is now fully operational, CBC News quotes sources as saying.

Experts told the broadcaster that information captured from travellers' devices would have enabled the agency to track them for a week or more as they showed up in other wi-fi "hot spots" around Canada, such as other airports, hotels or restaurants.

Such was the volume of data that CSEC could even track the travellers' movements back to the days before they arrived at the airport, the experts say.

The document does not specify which airport was targeted or explain how CSEC was able to access the data.

Two airports - Vancouver and Toronto - and Boingo, an independent supplier of wi-fi services at other Canadian airports, have denied any involvement in supplying wi-fi information.

Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, is currently living in Russia having fled the US in May 2013 after leaking thousands of documents that revealed extensive internet and phone surveillance by the US and other intelligence services.

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'Candy' trademark prompts protest

31 January 2014 Last updated at 07:50 ET

Gamemakers have mounted a protest against King.com after it trademarked the word "candy".

The company trademarked the word in Europe in a bid to protect its best-selling Candy Crush Saga game.

The move angered many game developers who have now joined together to mount a protest called Candy Jam.

This involves producing lots of different games that use the word "candy" in their title. So far, more than 100 games have been produced.

The Candy Jam webpage said the protest was in response to King.com's action to defend its trademark. King has told at least one independent gamemaker to stop using the word "candy" in the title for his game.

The Candy Jam page accused King.com of being a "bully" and said the issue had now become one of "freedom and creativity".

In a bid to annoy King.com, the Jam has encouraged developers to make and submit games that also use the word "saga" - which King.com is also keen to trademark. Developers have been given until 3 February to submit games using one or both words to the site.

At the time of writing 111 different games were being featured on the Candy Jam website. The titles of the games included Candy Fight Saga, Candy Growth, Candy Cruiser Planetary Rescue Saga and Super Candy Handy Mandy Saga.

King has yet to comment on the appearance of Candy Jam and the games its backers have created.

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