Tech firms urged to share data with US

13 February 2015 Last updated at 22:19

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President Obama: ''We have to make cyber-space safer''

Private tech firms should share more information with government and with each other to tackle cybercrime, according to US President Barack Obama.

"We have to work together like never before" Mr Obama said during a speech at a White House cybersecurity summit hosted in Silicon Valley.

The issue has become a White House priority since a widely publicised hack of Sony Pictures at the end of 2014.

But some key tech firms are concerned about government surveillance.

Senior Google, Yahoo and Facebook executives turned down invitations to the summit, held at Stanford University.

Relations between the US government and tech firms have been strained relations since electronic surveillance practices were exposed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Mr Obama is backing the creation of information sharing and analysis organisations (ISAOs) to help firms and government share material on potential threats.

The plan calls for the development of a common set of voluntary standards for organisations to follow to ensure civil liberties protection, according to the White House.

Mr Obama has also launched an intelligence unit to co-ordinate cyber-threat analysis.

"Just as we're all connected like never before, we have to work together like never before, both to seize opportunities but also meet the challenges of this information age," Mr Obama said.

"Government cannot do this alone. But the fact is that the private sector can't do it alone either because it's government that often has the latest information on new threats."

But one cybersecurity analyst said the proposals "face significant headwinds" from both Congress and large US tech companies.

"Based on the Snowden leaks, these companies believe they've already been badly burned by the government, and have very little to gain by publicly backing the president's proposals," Ben Desjardins, director of security solutions at cybersecurity firm Radware told the Associated Press.

Analysis, Richard Taylor, North America technology correspondent

President Obama is bringing a message of inclusive collaboration to beat cyber threats, and a co-ordinated federal approach, superseding the patchwork of state laws, might seem sensible.

But the absence of Silicon Valley's most senior figures hints at a deep division between it and Washington. They are uneasy about allying strongly with an administration tarnished by Edward Snowden's revelations the NSA has spied extensively on their customers.

More than 18 months on, the tech goliaths are still struggling to rebuild users' trust and they are as keen to protect themselves from prying official eyes as they are from external malevolent hackers.

Mr Obama' own intelligence officials now say cybercrime poses a more pressing threat to national security than terrorism.

But the ongoing tension and mistrust between the security and tech communities does not auger well.

According to Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg and Marissa Mayer - chief executives of Facebook and Yahoo, respectively - and Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt all declined invitations.

Facebook, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft have all sent less senior executives to the conference.

Obama's cybersecurity push follows similar efforts by British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said in January that forms of communication that are resistant to surveillance measures should not be allowed.

His comments were interpreted as a direct attack on encrypted communications, such as Apple's FaceTime and Microsoft's Skype, among others.

The conference also took place in the aftermath of the hacking scandal that hit Sony Pictures and which the US authorities blamed on North Korea.

America and China have also taken more aggressive stances towards each other over cybersecurity recently, with the US charging a series of Chinese people with hacking last year.

The French authorities beefed up their security efforts after claiming to have detected attempts to launch cyber-attacks in the aftermath of the Paris terror attacks.

And this week the Dutch government fell victim to a distributed denial of service attack, which took many of its websites down by flooding them with traffic.

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Xiaomi to open online US store

12 February 2015 Last updated at 23:00

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has announced that it will open an online store for US customers.

However, the company said it will not sell its popular smartphones and will instead offer lesser-known products such as headphones.

Xiaomi cited logistical issues like hardware certification as a reason why it wasn't yet ready to bring handsets to the US.

It said it hoped to instead build brand awareness with the Mi.com store.

Xiaomi has enjoyed a meteoric rise in China, where it has been hailed as the country's Apple for its popular smartphones which it sells at a fraction of the cost of an iPhone.

It's the world's most valuable privately held company, and its third biggest smartphone maker, selling 61 million handsets last year.

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Facebook offers after-death controls

12 February 2015 Last updated at 15:49

Facebook has added a new setting that gives users the option of having their account permanently deleted when they die.

Or, if they wish, they can choose to appoint a friend or family member to take control of some aspects of the account after their death.

These features were among the most requested by users who gave feedback on its memorial page policies.

Facebook's legacy contact feature will initially only be available in the US.

Announcing the new feature, Facebook said: "When a person passes away, their account can become a memorial of their life, friendships and experience.

"By talking to people who have experienced loss, we realised there is more we can do to support those who are grieving and those who want a say in what happens to their account after death."

If a user chooses to allow someone to manage their page in the event of their death, that person will be able to

• write a post to display at the top of the memorialised timeline

• respond to new friend requests

• update the profile picture and cover photo

People can also choose to give their legacy contact permission to download an archive of the photos, posts and profile information they shared on Facebook.

Other settings will remain the same. The legacy contact will not be able to log in as the person who died or see their private messages.

Facebook has been looking at ways to help families remember loved ones following a series of high-profile cases in which people wanted to access dead relative's pages.

In one a father wanted to create a video using Facebook's Look Back feature, which brings together popular moments on a person's profile.

But because he could not access his son's profile he was unable to make one.

Facebook said it would create one on behalf of his dead son and promised that they would look again at how to help families in similar circumstances.

In 2009, Facebook introduced a memorialising process which meant that a user who had died would no longer appear alongside advertising, or in contextual messages - and friends would not be reminded of a person's birthday.

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Attack downs Dutch government sites

12 February 2015 Last updated at 13:28

A cyber-attack took down most of the Dutch government's websites on Tuesday, it has been confirmed.

The attack, which also took down some private sites, highlighted the vulnerability of public infrastructure.

It came as the US beefed up its defences, and followed warnings that sites belonging to the French authorities had been targeted.

Dutch MPs demanded that the government ensures state sites were capable of withstanding similar attacks in future.

In a statement, the Dutch government confirmed that it had been the victim of a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS), in which servers are flooded with traffic, causing the sites to fail to load.

Investigators were looking into the attack "together with the people from the National Centre for Cyber-Security", said Rimbert Kloosterman, an official at the Dutch Government Information Service, which runs the affected websites.

In a statement, the government said that the sites had gone down at 10:00 local time (09:00 GMT) on Tuesday and "lasted into the evening".

Complex problem

Other websites, including GeenStijl.nl, a popular portal that mocks politicians and religions, had been hit by the DDoS, said Mr Kloosterman.

Communications provider Telford had also been affected.

The complexity and size of the government's many websites had rendered the back-up useless, he added.

The problem affected most of the central government's major websites, which provide information to the public and the media, but phones and emergency communication channels remained online.

Prolocation, the government website's host, said the attack had been a "complex" problem and that its phone lines had also gone down.

"The initial symptoms pointed first to a technical problem, but it then emerged we were facing an attack from the outside," the company said in a statement.

'Greater risk'

But one computer security expert doubted that such an attack could have been hard to identify. "If you face a DDoS, you know it," said Delft Technical University cyber-security specialist Christian Doerr.

Dave Larson, of Corero Network Security, said: "As enterprises increasingly rely on hosted critical infrastructure or services, they are placing themselves at even greater risk from these devastating cyber-threats - even as an indirect target."

He added that DDoS attacks were "increasingly being used as a smokescreen to hide even more malicious activity on the network".

Defences

On the same day as the Dutch attack, the US government announced the launch of an intelligence unit to coordinate analysis of cyber-threats, modelled on similar efforts to fight terrorism.

The Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center would fill "gaps" in the country's defences by rapidly pooling and disseminating data on breaches, it said.

In January, following attacks by Islamist militants in Paris, in which 17 people were murdered, French authorities said they had "decided to boost... security vigilance" after a series of cyber-attacks directed at French army regiments among others.

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Apple bans worker 'bonded servitude'

12 February 2015 Last updated at 13:48

Apple has banned the practice of bonded labour - where new recruits are charged a fee - from its factories.

In its latest audit of factory conditions, the iPhone maker said that any such fee must be paid by its supplier and not the employee.

Apple began the audits following criticism of the working conditions in some of its factories.

It comes as a report from labour rights group China Labor Watch questioned the low wages earned by some Apple workers.

Deeply offended

Its 2015 Supplier Responsibility Progress report said it had told its suppliers in October that it was outlawing bonded servitude from the beginning of this year.

"That fee needs to be paid by the supplier, and Apple ultimately bears that fee when we pay the supplier, and we're OK doing that," said Jeff Williams, Apple's senior vice-president of operations.

Bonded servitude or labour sees new workers charged a fee - sometimes equivalent to a month's salary or more - for being introduced to a factory, typically by third-party recruiters.

It means many employees will begin work in debt. Some have their passports confiscated.

A BBC Panorama programme investigation last year highlighted the poor treatment of workers in Chinese factories.

Undercover filming at one of Apple's factories - Pegatron - showed new recruits handing over ID cards, in breach of Apple's standards.

Apple, which declined to be interviewed for the programme, denied the allegations of poor working conditions and long hours and said it was deeply offended by the allegations.

On the same day that Apple published its audit, labour rights group China Labor Watch (CLW) released a report saying the company was unable to effectively monitor standards in some of its supply chain, allowing companies such as Pegatron to keep base wages below local living expenses.

CLW based its findings on 96 pay stubs submitted by an unknown number of employees. It suggested that low pay compelled workers to put in more hours.

Conflict minerals

Conditions in Chinese factories were first highlighted in 2010 after 14 workers killed themselves at a factory run by Apple's biggest supplier, Foxconn.

Long hours, harsh working conditions and low wages were said to be partly to blame.

In February 2012 the hardware giant announced that its factories would be inspected by the Fair Labour Association (FLA).

This is its ninth annual audit, and Apple was keen to show off the progress it has made in improving conditions.

It said that it had tracked more than 1.1 million workers on average per week in 2014 and that suppliers had achieved 92% compliance with its 60-hour maximum working week.

"We consistently report suppliers' violations of our standards," Mr Williams wrote in Apple's report. "People sometimes point to the discovery of problems as evidence that our process isn't working. Nothing could be further from the truth."

Apple has previously cracked down on excessive recruitment fees that foreign contract workers pay to labour brokers. It ruled that anything more than one month's wages had to be repaid.

Last year suppliers repaid $3.96m (£2.57m) in excess fees to more than 4,500 foreign contractors, according to the audit.

It also said that it continued to take steps to stop the use of minerals from mines in conflict regions such as those in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The company said it had more than doubled the number of verified conflict-free smelts to 135 last year. Another 64 were in the process of being verified.

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Fitbit says Surge can cause rash

12 February 2015 Last updated at 18:54

Fitbit, the maker of wearable fitness trackers, has acknowledged that its latest device, the Surge, can cause a rash for some users.

It told news website TechCrunch that a "limited percentage" of users reported skin irritation and advised users to take a break from the device.

Fitbit was forced to recall its older Force wristband when a large number of users claimed it had caused skin rashs

It comes as a report compares the accuracy of fitness trackers.

"The reactions we are seeing with new products are not uncommon with jewellery or wearable devices that stay in contact with the skin for extended periods," Fitbit said in a statement.

"According to our consulting dermatologists, they are likely from wearing the band too tight, sweat, water, or soap behind held against the skin under the device: or from pressure or friction against the skin and should resolve quickly when users take a break from the device, usually within hours or days."

The Fitbit Surge - which costs $250 (£199) - was launched four months ago and soon after, users began posting photos of skin rashes caused by wearing the device on social media sites.

Shaun Ewing posted a picture of his rash on Twitter with the message: "Having a break from my @fitbit Surge. Might need to stop wearing it - nice rash (and my skin isn't usually sensitive)."

The firm had blamed nickel for causing the rashes for Force users although some reported that they previously had no such allergies.

"Fitbit's top priority in developing its new products was to eliminate the issues we had with Force. The reactions we are seeing with new products are different from the allergic reactions we saw with Force," a spokeswoman told the BBC.

More than 200 instances of skin irritation complaints on social media have been collected in a Google document started by one affected user.

Wearable accuracy

Meanwhile, a study comparing wearables to the fitness apps on smartphones suggests that the latter could be more accurate when it comes to measuring physical activity.

The study, led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania tested a range of gadgets including the Fitbit Flex, Fitbit One, Nike's Fuelband, the Jawbone UP24.

Fourteen participants walked on a treadmill for 500 steps and then 1,500 steps, twice each, for a total of 56 trials.

Each wore a pedometer and two accelerometers on their waist, three wristbands and carried two smartphones in their pockets loaded with fitness apps.

The data from the smartphones was only slightly different than the observed step counts (with a range of -6.7 to 6.2% relative difference) compared to a -22.7 to 1.5% difference for the wearable devices.

Some wearables though - such as the Fitbit One and the Jawbone UP24 - proved to be very accurate. The study did not include smartwatches.

"Compared to the 1% to 2% of adults in the US that own a wearable device, more than 65% of adults carry a smartphone," said report author Mitesh S Patel.

"Our findings suggest that smartphone apps could prove to be a more widely accessible and affordable way of tracking health behaviours."

None of the wearables tested included heart rate sensors. The addition of such components has helped some of the latest generation of activity trackers become more accurate.

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Virgin to invest £3bn in broadband

13 February 2015 Last updated at 11:02

Virgin Media has announced it is to invest £3bn in improving its fibre optic broadband network, increasing the network's reach from 13 million to 17 million homes.

It says it is the biggest investment in broadband infrastructure in the UK for more than a decade.

Virgin said the investment would also create 6,000 new jobs of which 1,000 would be apprenticeships.

Virgin Media currently has five million customers.

The company is already in the process of expanding its network to 110,000 homes across east London, Glasgow, Sunderland and Teesside.

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Virgin chief executive Tom Mockridge: "Top speed broadband is essential to economic performance"

Virgin Media said the additional £3bn in broadband investment would be worth £8bn in terms of stimulating UK economic activity.

However, the money will be spent on filling in gaps in its existing network rather than widening the network to rural areas, which critics say has long been neglected by communications companies such as Virgin and BT.

Speaking to the BBC, Virgin chief executive Tom Mockridge said it was BT's job to do more to bridge the so-called "digital divide".

Analysis: Rory Cellan-Jones, technology correspondent

Virgin Media chief executive Tom Mockridge compares the expansion of its broadband network to the building of the railways by the Victorians or the rollout of the motorways in the 20th Century.

That sounds just a touch hyperbolic, but this is indeed one of the biggest investments we've seen in the UK's internet infrastructure, made possible by the deep pockets of Virgin's owners, Liberty Global.

What the money will do is fill in the gaps left in the network when the old cable companies ran out of money in the 1990s. That will mean that streets in urban areas where BT's superfast broadband is the only game in town should now get a choice of supplier.

What it won't do is bring high-speed services to what's known as the final third - rural Britain, where it is hard to make the economics of laying fibre cables to every home add up.

That job is being left to BT - aided by public funds, mainly money set aside from the TV licence fee. BT, which is preparing to take over EE and become the dominant player in fixed and mobile broadband, may quietly welcome today's announcement.

A stronger Virgin Media network may make regulators less inclined to worry about its dominance.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I think an investment of this size is unambiguously helping to close the digital divide. Everything can't happen at once so we are really focusing on the areas where we can bring ultra fast broadband as quickly as possible and as effectively as possible."

He also called on BT to do more to invest in improving existing infrastructure to help speed up internet services in the countryside.

The investment comes at Virgin Media announced a 2.3% increase in total revenues to £4.214bn for the year to the end of December compared with a year earlier.

Virgin said the increase in revenue was largely the result of increased cable subscription revenue, which grew 3% last year.

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Police shut 2,000 'fake goods' sites

13 February 2015 Last updated at 12:02

Two thousand websites selling fake luxury goods have been removed since the start of the year, UK police say.

Counterfeit goods from brands such as Burberry, Longchamp and Abercrombie & Fitch were among the products offered.

The raids were the result of a collaboration between brand-protection groups and internet registries.

The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, run by City of London Police, also warned the sites could be harbouring malicious software.

"The criminals behind these websites will often take advantage of your personal details, such as financial information, and so people may find their card has been compromised and used for other fraudulent scams," said Det Ch Insp Danny Medlycott, who heads the unit.

"The sites themselves can also be harmful, as they contain malware and viruses that can infect your computer.

As a general rule, "if it looks too good to be true, then it probably is", he said.

And heavily discounted products were "often a telltale sign that something isn't right", he added.

Top tips

The current police operation, known as Ashiko, has shut nearly 5,500 websites selling fake designer clothes, handbags, sunglasses, shoes and jewellery since it launched in October.

Oliver Guimaraes, MD of Globaleyez, which helps jewellery retailer Thomas Sabo to target counterfeiting, said there had been "a tremendous decrease" in websites selling fake products.

Police also issued some guidance:

• Check the spelling and grammar on the website, as well as the URL - people running such sites often do not pay a lot of attention to that

• Look to see where the trader is based and whether they provide a postal address - just because the web address contains "UK", do not assume the seller is based there
• Only deal with reputable sellers - use sites that you know or which have been recommended to you. Check online reviews if you have not bought from the seller before.

• Check the website is a legitimate stockist by visiting brand-i.org

• Ensure the website address begins "https", which indicates it is secure

• Don't access links in unsolicited emails; always type in the website address or use a search engine to find a site.

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Net pioneer warns of data Dark Age

13 February 2015 Last updated at 11:25 By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News, San Jose

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Watch Pallab Ghosh's full interview with Vint Cerf, internet pioneer, on his "digital Dark Age" warning

Vint Cerf, a "father of the internet", says he is worried that all the images and documents we have been saving on computers will eventually be lost.

Currently a Google vice-president, he believes this could occur as hardware and software become obsolete.

He fears that future generations will have little or no record of the 21st Century as we enter what he describes as a "digital Dark Age".

Mr Cerf made his comments at a large science conference in San Jose.

Continue reading the main story

Even if we accumulate vast archives of digital content, we may not actually know what it is"

End Quote Vint Cerf Web pioneer and Google VP

He arrived at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science stylishly dressed in a three-piece suit. This iconic figure, who helped define how data packets move around the net, is possibly the only Google employee who wears a tie.

I felt obliged to thank him for the internet, and he bowed graciously. "One is glad to be of service," he said humbly.

His focus now is to resolve a new problem that threatens to eradicate our history.

Our life, our memories, our most cherished family photographs increasingly exist as bits of information - on our hard drives or in "the cloud". But as technology moves on, they risk being lost in the wake of an accelerating digital revolution.

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What is the digital Dark Age? The BBC's Pallab Ghosh reports

"I worry a great deal about that," Mr Cerf told me. "You and I are experiencing things like this. Old formats of documents that we've created or presentations may not be readable by the latest version of the software because backwards compatibility is not always guaranteed.

"And so what can happen over time is that even if we accumulate vast archives of digital content, we may not actually know what it is."

'Digital vellum'

Vint Cerf is promoting an idea to preserve every piece of software and hardware so that it never becomes obsolete - just like what happens in a museum - but in digital form, in servers in the cloud.

If his idea works, the memories we hold so dear could be accessible for generations to come.

"The solution is to take an X-ray snapshot of the content and the application and the operating system together, with a description of the machine that it runs on, and preserve that for long periods of time. And that digital snapshot will recreate the past in the future."

A company would have to provide the service, and I suggested to Mr Cerf that few companies have lasted for hundreds of years. So how could we guarantee that both our personal memories and all human history would be safeguarded in the long run?

Even Google might not be around in the next millennium, I said.

"Plainly not," Vint Cerf laughed. "But I think it is amusing to imagine that it is the year 3000 and you've done a Google search. The X-ray snapshot we are trying to capture should be transportable from one place to another. So, I should be able to move it from the Google cloud to some other cloud, or move it into a machine I have.

"The key here is when you move those bits from one place to another, that you still know how to unpack them to correctly interpret the different parts. That is all achievable if we standardise the descriptions.

"And that's the key issue here - how do I ensure in the distant future that the standards are still known, and I can still interpret this carefully constructed X-ray snapshot?"

The concept of what Mr Cerf refers to as "digital vellum" has been demonstrated by Mahadev Satyanarayanan at Carnegie Mellon University.

"It's not without its rough edges but the major concept has been shown to work," Mr Cerf said.

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Rural groups angry over Virgin plans

13 February 2015 Last updated at 16:01

Campaigners have expressed disappointment that Virgin Media's £3bn investment in broadband will not benefit rural areas.

The company said it had no plans to extend the network into the countryside, concentrating instead on expansion in towns and cities.

The decision could "exacerbate the rural-urban digital divide", said the Country and Land Association (CLA).

But a group that represents rural broadband providers was unsurprised.

"With £1.7bn of public funding going almost entirely through BT, it isn't surprising that an investment of this scale is focusing on areas that Virgin expects to see delivering better results," said Malcolm Corbett of the Independent Networks Co-operative Association.

Virgin Media currently has five million customers and its latest investment, which it claims is the biggest in broadband infrastructure in the UK for more than a decade, is expected to extend its network from 13 million to 17 million homes.

'Look beyond cities'

The CLA acknowledged it was not always profitable for private businesses to invest in remote areas.

However, a spokesman said it was "a pity that private companies are not putting the infrastructure in place to benefit rural business".

"What is clear is that rural areas will not be able to access speeds in excess of 30Mbps or 50Mbps for some time to come. All this does is show that the rural economy is neglected once again," he added.

Many rural business and families would like to be able take advantage of Virgin Media's Fibre to the Home technology, he said.

"BT's rollout of superfast broadband under the government's rural broadband programme relies on fibre to the cabinet (FTTC). This further disadvantages rural communities and businesses from effective connection speeds, because the further away a business is from the cabinet, the slower the speed."

Meanwhile the Countryside Alliance's head of policy, Sarah Lee, said it was "disappointing that the improvements will not be seen in rural areas, but we welcome this challenge to BT's monopoly".

"We hope this investment will encourage all broadband providers to look beyond the cityscape and invest in our countryside communities, to enable them to compete economically and socially in this digital world."

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