EA games web server hack fixed

20 March 2014 Last updated at 12:44

A web server belonging to the games company Electronic Arts which had been hacked and was hosting a phishing website, has now been fixed.

The website that was put in place by hackers asked users to enter their Apple IDs - the credentials needed to access services like Apple's iTunes.

A second screen then asked users to enter further personal information, including credit card details.

EA said the problem had been found and hacking attempts had been stopped.

Paul Mutton, from Netcraft, the internet security company that uncovered the hack, said in a blog that it was likely a vulnerability in an online calendar application hosted on the web server had been exploited by the attackers.

The calendar based on the web server was an old version of software that had since been updated, he said.

"The mere presence of old software can often provide sufficient incentive for a hacker to target one system over another, and to spend more time looking for additional vulnerabilities," he wrote.

Once a user has entered their Apple ID and password on the fake website they are then asked to verify their name, date of birth, phone number and credit card details among other information.

Users were then directed to the legitimate Apple ID website, said Mr Mutton.

It was reported earlier in the year that other servers belonging to EA had been hacked, causing problems for users trying to log on to online games and services.

A hacking group known as Derp posted a tweet claiming responsibility for that attack.

Mr Mutton said he had reported the most recent problems to Electronic Arts.

In a statement to the BBC, EA said: "We found it, we have isolated it, and we are making sure such attempts are no longer possible."

Michael Sutton, from security research firm Zscaler, said that hackers using legitimate websites to host malicious content was now the norm.

"Social engineering attacks always involve an element of communication - the victim must be tricked into performing an action such as providing data, clicking on a link, downloading a file, et cetera. Attackers have learned that it's far easier to simply infect an already popular web property than to attempt communication with victims directly," he said.

Users should check that websites are secure before entering any private information, says guidance from Get Safe Online.

They should look for a padlock symbol in the browser window frame and they should check that the web address begins with https - the "s" stands for secure.

The advice also says that users should check the address in the browser's address bar after arriving at a website to check that it matches what they actually typed.

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Alan Turing Institute to be set up

19 March 2014 Last updated at 15:10

An institute named after computer pioneer and code-breaker Alan Turing is to be set up, the chancellor announced in his Budget speech on Wednesday.

The Alan Turing Institute will focus on new ways of collecting, organising and analysing large sets of data - commonly known as big data.

The government will provide £42m over five years for the project.

Universities and other interested parties will be able to bid for the funding to set up the institute.

Turing received a posthumous royal pardon last year, following a conviction for homosexual activity.

He worked at Bletchley Park during World War Two, and his work helped accelerate Allied efforts to read German naval messages enciphered with the Enigma machine.

He also contributed some more fundamental work on code-breaking, which was only released to public scrutiny in April 2012.

In 1952 he was convicted for gross indecency, following which he was chemically castrated.

He had been arrested after having an affair with a 19-year-old Manchester man.

The conviction meant he lost his security clearance and had to stop the code-cracking work that had proved vital to the Allies in World War Two.

A pardon was granted in December 2013 under the royal prerogative of mercy after a request by Justice Minister Chris Grayling.

Britain leads

Delivering his Budget speech in the House of Commons, the Chancellor, George Osborne, said: "In my maiden speech here in this House, I spoke of Alan Turing, the code-breaker who lived in my constituency, who did more than almost any other single person to win the war, and who was persecuted for his sexuality by the country he helped save.

"I am delighted that he has finally received a posthumous royal pardon.

"Now, in his honour, we will found the Alan Turing Institute to ensure Britain leads the way again in the use of big data and algorithm research.

"I am determined that our country is going to out-compete, out-smart and out-do the rest of the world."

The government said that big data "can allow businesses to enhance their manufacturing processes, target their marketing better, and provide more efficient services".

The think tank Policy Exchange said that the institute was a good idea but government needed to make more use of big data itself.

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Hackers thwarted by net timekeepers

20 March 2014 Last updated at 11:45 By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

A massive worldwide effort is under way to harden the net's clocks against hack attacks.

The last few months have seen an "explosion" in the number of attacks abusing unprotected time servers, said security company Arbor.

Unprotected network time servers can be used to swamp target computers with huge amounts of data.

About 93% of all the vulnerable servers are now believed to have been patched against attacks.

'Appropriate' use

The attack that paved the way for the rapid rise was carried out by the Derp Trolling hacker group and was aimed at servers for the popular online game League of Legends, said Darren Anstee, a network architect at net monitoring firm Arbor.

That attack took advantage of weaknesses in older versions of the software underlying the network time protocol (NTP). Known as an "NTP reflection" attack, it used several thousand poorly configured computers handling NTP requests to send data to the League of Legend servers.

Around the world about 1.6 million NTP servers were thought to be vulnerable to abuse by attackers, said Harlan Stenn from the Network Time Foundation that helped co-ordinate action to harden servers.

Precise timings are very important to the steady running of the net and many of the services, such as email and e-commerce, that sit on it.

Early 2014 saw the start of an Open NTP initiative that tried to alert people running time servers to the potential for abuse, Mr Stenn told the BBC.

Now, he said, more than 93% of those vulnerable servers had been updated. However, he said, this did leave more than 97,000 still open to abuse. Arbor estimates that it would take 5,000-7,000 NTP servers to mount an overwhelming attack.

The feature that attackers had exploited had been known for a long time in the net time community and was not a problem as long as those servers were used "appropriately", he said.

"This was before spammers, and well before the crackers started using viruses and malware to build bot armies for spamming, phishing, or DDoS attacks," he said.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are those that try to shut servers down by overwhelming them with data.

The success of the Derp Trolling attack prompted a lot of copycat activity, said Mr Anstee from Arbor.

"Since that event it's gone a bit nuts to an extent and that tends to happen in the attack world when one particular group succeeds," he said. "We've seen an explosion in NTP reflection activity."

NTP reflection attacks can generate hundreds of gigabits of traffic every second, said Mr Anstee, completely overwhelming any server they are aimed at.

The copycat attacks have fed into a spike in the number of "large events", mainly DDoS attacks, that Arbor sees hitting the net, he said.

"Historically we used to see a couple of hundred gigabit events every year," said Mr Anstee. "In February 2014 we tracked 43."

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'Anti-social' app to avoid friends

19 March 2014 Last updated at 12:21

While most social networks aim to connect people, one new service seeks to join the growing trend of doing the opposite and help you avoid them.

Cloak uses public location data from other social networks, Foursquare and Instagram, to determine the locations of others you know.

Users can choose to receive an alert when certain people are believed to be nearby.

It is the latest in the recent trend of "anti-social", or secretive, apps.

Apps such as Snapchat - which deletes photographs and videos seconds after they have been viewed - and Secret - which broadcasts messages anonymously - are growing in popularity.

Likewise WhatsApp, a private-messaging service recently bought by Facebook for $19bn (£11.4bn), indicates a shift back to conducting online conversations in private.

Cloak describes itself as a method to "avoid exes, co-workers, that guy who likes to stop and chat - anyone you'd rather not run into".

It was created by programmer Brian Moore and the former creative director of viral news site Buzzfeed, Chris Baker.

'Gimmick'

Mr Baker told the Washington Post that his service was typical of the direction social networking was taking.

Continue reading the main story

Secrecy has its advantages"

End Quote Nick Jones App Magazine

"Personally, I think we've seen the crest of the big social network," he said.

"Things like Twitter and Facebook are packed elevators where we're all crammed in together… I think anti-social stuff is on the rise. You'll be seeing more and more of these types of projects."

Nick Jones, editor-in-chief of App Magazine, told the BBC he was unconvinced - though tempted.

"It does sound like a gimmick," he said. "But I might use it myself!"

He suggested that these niche apps were being developed not because of any great consumer need, but because developers are keen to corner some of the few remaining untapped social-media markets.

"People are having to diversify their apps and find some unique angle to their app, and then try and sell it to Facebook and make a pretty penny."

However, he admitted: "Secrecy has its advantages for people. It's quite attractive."

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Ovivo UK shuts down without warning

20 March 2014 Last updated at 04:12

British firm Ovivo mobile has shut down without warning, citing "reasons beyond our control" in a posting on its website.

Ovivo was a mobile virtual network operator that allowed customers access to Vodafone's network for no monthly fee.

It funded operations by advertising, which users agreed to view every 10 minutes.

Ovivo customers immediately took to web forums to express outrage.

Most were upset that the firm did not warn customers, and even allowed some purchases to go through as late as Wednesday afternoon.

Users reported that mobile phone services had been shut down, and that they could not access their accounts on Ovivo's system to retrieve unused credit.

Ovivo wrote on its website that customers could fill out a form in order to keep their number, but cautioned "there is a high demand for this service" and the code needed to ensure ownership may take some time to arrive.

According to industry websites, the mobile firm had around 50,000 subscribers.

The firm's Twitter and Facebook accounts have also been deactivated.

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Sony unveils virtual reality headset

19 March 2014 Last updated at 02:40

Sony has unveiled a prototype for a virtual reality headset for its PlayStation 4 console at a developers conference in San Francisco.

Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony's Worldwide Studios, said Sony had been working on the technology - called Project Morpheus - for three years.

"We believe VR will shape the future of games," said Mr Yoshida in a blog post.

The prototype will be made available to developers, but no commercial release date was given.

Project Morpheus is a head-mounted display with 1080p resolution and a 90 degree field of view.

It has sensors built into the unit that can track head orientation and movement, so that when a user's head moves, the image of the virtual reality world moves with it.

Sony's move into virtual reality follows a product released by crowd-sourced group Oculus Rift.

It unveiled its prototype headset Crystal Cove at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

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Autonomy's ex-boss hits back at HP

19 March 2014 Last updated at 14:31

Technology firm Autonomy's former boss has hit back at claims his company was overpriced when it was sold to Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011.

HP says it had to write off $5bn after its $10bn (£6bn) purchase, because Autonomy had inflated its value.

Autonomy's ex-boss, Mike Lynch, told HP's shareholders the US firm was "not just smearing us, but misleading you".

In response, HP said it had uncovered "numerous accounting irregularities" before the sale.

The UK's Serious Fraud Office and accounting regulator, the Financial Reporting Council, and the US Department of Justice are investigating the sale.

'Lied to'

The US computer giant's allegations included "accounting improprieties, misrepresentations and disclosure failures" at Autonomy.

In an open letter to HP's shareholders, Mr Lynch asked how HP could "justify" declining to show his management team the allegations or evidence against them, because they were with regulators, while it had "selectively disclosed" some documents and emails to the media.

HP's spokesperson said: "HP reported those irregularities to appropriate civil and criminal regulators in the US and UK. HP continues to co-operate in ongoing investigations by those regulators."

Mr Lynch said Ms Whitman had made "incendiary and defamatory" accusations on behalf of her firm.

In November 2012, HP said Autonomy had made a "wilful effort to mislead".

At the time, HP chief executive Meg Whitman said her company had done a "whole host" of due diligence but "when you're lied to, it's hard to find".

She said Autonomy was "smaller and less profitable that we had thought".

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Larry Page on Google's smart future

20 March 2014 Last updated at 00:04 By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter, Vancouver

Larry Page wants patients to hand over their data to researchers in order to save "100,000 lives".

It's just one of the ideas expressed in a wide-ranging interview at the Ted (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Vancouver.

Google's co-founder criticised the US government for its mass surveillance programs.

But he added that consumers need to accept that a new era of open data is inevitable.

Smarter computers

Interviewed on the Ted stage by US television host Charlie Rose, Mr Page was asked why Google bought the UK machine learning firm DeepMind.

"I was looking at search and trying to understand how to make computers less clunky and also thinking about how speech recognition is not very good," said Mr Page.

"We are still at the very early stages with search. Computers don't know where you are and what you are doing," he added.

He was drawn to DeepMind because it had helped make computers smarter - teaching them how to play computer games.

"It was really exciting, we have not been able to do this before. Imagine if that intelligence is thrown at your schedule," said Mr Page.

He said that Google was working on its own machine learning project, using YouTube to "teach" computers.

"It has learnt what cats are," he said.

Tremendous disservice

Mr Page was also asked about the Edward Snowden revelations, following a surprise appearance from the whistle-blower at Ted.

"It is disappointing that the government secretly did this stuff and didn't tell us about it," said Mr Page.

"It is not possible to have a democracy if we have to protect our users from the government. The government has done itself a tremendous disservice and we need to have a debate about it," he added.

Google has had its fair share of criticism for the way it collects users' data. It is currently embroiled in row with European regulators over its privacy policy.

Mr Page was in defiant mood and warned that people were at risk of "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" over plans to tighten privacy.

"We are not thinking about the tremendous good that can come with sharing information with the right people in the right ways," he said.

He said that anonymised medical records should be made available to researchers.

"It could save 100,000 lives this year," he said.

Health data has personal resonance with Mr Page who developed a hoarse voice after a cold 15 years ago from which he has never recovered. Sharing details about his condition helped him, he said.

"I was scared to share but Sergey [Brin] encouraged me and we got thousands of people with similar conditions," he said.

Gaining space

Mr Page also talked about some of his "crazy ideas", including Google Loon, a project to use balloons to provide internet access to parts of the world without any.

He revealed that he got the idea off the ground with a Google search.

"I found that 30 years ago someone had put up a balloon and it had gone round the world multiple times," he said.

He realised that a similar thing was possible to connect the two-thirds of the world that have no net access.

"We can build a world-wide mesh of balloons to cover the whole planet."

Google plans to launch its automated cars on the roads by 2017. The project has been a personal obsession for 18 years, he told the Ted audience.

"It started when I was at college in Michigan. I was waiting for the bus and it was cold and snowing," he said.

He believes that automated cars can help save lives - currently 20 million people are injured each ear in car accidents and in the US crashes are the biggest cause of death for the under 35s.

He finished the interview with a call to firms to embrace new technologies.

"Most businesses fail because they miss the future," he said.

It is a mistake he has made himself, he added.

He said that he "felt guilty for wasting time" working on the Android operating system, which at the time was a side project for Google.

"That was stupid, it was the future," he said.

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Flappy Bird to return, says creator

20 March 2014 Last updated at 05:14

Addictive mobile game Flappy Bird will return to Apple's app store, creator Dong Nguyen has confirmed - although he declined to give a specific date.

On Twitter, a fan had asked if he was going to put the game back in the app store.

"Yes. But not soon," Mr Nguyen replied, later adding: "I don't work by plan. I will release it when it is done."

Mr Nguyen removed the popular game in February, saying its popularity had ruined his "simple life".

Ruined lives

Launched in May 2013, Flappy Bird was free to download and required players to tap the screen to keep the bird in flight.

Despite its simple graphics, Flappy Bird was a notoriously difficult game since many users could only keep the bird in the air for a few seconds before it hit an obstacle and fell.

The game went viral after being promoted almost entirely by social media users and was reviewed on a YouTube channel by more than 22 million subscribers.

It was downloaded 50 million times, and at the height of its popularity, Mr Nguyen was reportedly earning $50,000 (£30,450) a day from advertising

In an interview earlier this month with Rolling Stone, Mr Nguyen said he was moved to remove the popular mobile game from the App store after users wrote to him detailing how the game had destroyed their lives.

After the game was taken down, users started several passionate petitions to get the game reinstated.

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IBM's Watson to help fight cancer

20 March 2014 Last updated at 13:05

IBM supercomputer Watson is to help determine the best treatments for a common type of brain cancer.

Watson will analyse glioblastoma patients' DNA and correlate the results with available relevant medical data.

New York Genome Center president Robert Darnell said tremendous progress had been made in understanding the genetic drivers of cancer in the past 10 years.

And the project would "improve outcomes for patients with deadly diseases by providing personalised treatment".

IBM Research director John E Kelly said: "It's like big data on steroids.

"Watson can do in seconds what would take people years. And we can get it down to a really personal level.

"This is the proverbial needle in the haystack and the haystack is enormous."

Watson uses artificial intelligence to examine huge amounts of data and can also understand human language. Rather than being programmed to spot patterns it "learns" about connections between different types of data. It is hoped that it will continue to "learn" as it processes new patient information and new medical research.

IBM Global Technology and Analytics vice-president Stephen Harvey said: "What we're really talking about is taking a process that takes three weeks to three months for research organisations to complete today and to boil that down, using Watson technology, in to less than three minutes."

Watson is already being used by doctors and nurses at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in New York, to help make decisions about lung cancer treatment.

Watson has become smaller and faster over the years. What started as a system the size of an average bedroom is now the size of three stacked pizza boxes. It is also available via the cloud, meaning it can be accessed from anywhere.

It can process 500GB of information - equivalent to a million books - every second.

And it has proved its abilities. In 2011 it appeared on the Jeopardy game show answering general knowledge questions, without being connected to the internet.

Pitted against the two biggest winners of the trivia quiz show, despite a few stumbles it eventually walked away with the $1m (£605,000) prize.

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