Gmail appears to be blocked in China

30 December 2014 Last updated at 11:38

Easy access to Google's email service Gmail is now blocked in China, according to reports.

Using Gmail directly via Google's site has been impossible in the country for some time, but locals had still been able to use third-party apps, such as Microsoft Outlook, to use the service.

However, Google's own data indicates such traffic took a nosedive on Friday and has only slightly recovered since.

The US firm said there were no known issues with its provision of Gmail.

"There's nothing technically wrong on our end," Taj Meadows, a spokesman for Google Asia Pacific, told news agency Associated Press.

The digital rights campaign group, GreatFire.org, was one of the first organisations to flag the fact that internet protocol addresses used to let software access Gmail had become inaccessible in China.

"Those protocols are used in the default email app on iPhone, Microsoft Outlook on PC and many more email clients," it said.

"Chinese users now have no way of accessing Gmail behind the GFW [great firewall]."

Google's data suggests there is still, however, a low level of Gmail use in China.

The Wall Street Journal has also reported that some users had reported Gmail access being restored to their mobile devices.

The Chinese government has neither confirmed nor denied that it was behind fresh restrictions.

"The past two years have seen a consistent tightening of all kinds of censorship on the internet and media," said Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of Beijing-based media tracker Danwei.

"There is an increasingly aggressive attitude towards what they [Beijing] call 'internet sovereignty' and they are confident about talking about internet censorship in positive terms."

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China's internet curbs - explained in 60 seconds

Google closed its China office in 2010 following a rocky relationship with the authorities about its handling of censorship.

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Xiaomi most valuable tech start-up

30 December 2014 Last updated at 01:12

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has become the world's most valuable technology start-up just four years after it was founded.

The firm raised $1.1bn (£708m) in its latest round of funding, giving it a valuation of $45bn, which surpassed the $40bn value of taxi booking app Uber.

It has quickly risen to the ranks of the world's biggest smartphone makers, behind Samsung and Apple in sales.

The company is also set to unveil a new flagship device in January.

Xiaomi's investors include private equity funds All-Stars Investment, DST Global, Hopu Investment Management, Yunfeng Capital, and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, said co-founder and president Bin Lin in a Facebook post.

"This is an affirmation of Xiaomi's stellar results in four years, and heralds a new phase for the company," Mr Bin said.

On the fast track

Xiaomi's strategy of producing cheap smartphones has catapulted its growth to overtake giant Samsung this year in sales in the world's second largest economy China.

The company's worth is now more than quadruple the $10bn valuation it received during its last financing round last year.

Its skyrocketing valuation comes despite the intellectual property challenges it faced earlier this month in India, where sales were temporarily halted after Swedish firm Ericsson filed a patent complaint.

The Beijing-based company has set a target of selling 60 million smartphones this year, up from less than 20 million in 2013.

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Fingerprint 'cloned from photos'

29 December 2014 Last updated at 12:43 By Zoe Kleinman Technology reporter, BBC News

A member of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) hacker network claims to have cloned a thumbprint of a German politician by using commercial software and images taken at a news conference.

Jan Krissler says he replicated the fingerprint of defence minister Ursula von der Leyen using pictures taken with a "standard photo camera".

Mr Krissler had no physical print from Ms von der Leyen.

Fingerprint biometrics are already considered insecure, experts say.

Mr Krissler, also known as Starbug, was speaking at a convention for members of the CCC, a 31-year-old network that claims to be "Europe's largest association" of hackers.

'Wear gloves'

He told the audience he had obtained a close-up of a photo of Ms von der Leyen's thumb and had also used other pictures taken at different angles during a press event that the minister had spoken at in October.

Mr Krissler has suggested that "politicians will presumably wear gloves when talking in public" after hearing about his research.

Fingerprint identification is used as a security measure on both Apple and Samsung devices, and was used to identify voters at polling stations in Brazil's presidential election this year, but it is not considered to be particularly secure, experts say.

Living biometrics

"Biometrics that rely on static information like face recognition or fingerprints - it's not trivial to forge them but most people have accepted that they are not a great form of security because they can be faked," says cybersecurity expert Prof Alan Woodward from Surrey University.

"People are starting to look for things where the biometric is alive - vein recognition in fingers, gait [body motion] analysis - they are also biometrics but they are chosen because the person has to be in possession of them and exhibiting them in real life."

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Simon Gompertz tried out Barclays' finger scanner when it launched

In September this year Barclays bank introduced finger vein recognition for business customers, and the technique is also used at cash machines in Japan and Poland.

Electronics firm Hitachi manufactures a device that reads the unique pattern of veins inside a finger. It only works if the finger is attached to a living person.

Trials in the intensive care unit at Southampton General Hospital in 2013 indicated that vein patterns are not affected by changes to blood pressure.

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Wind-up radio inventor honoured

30 December 2014 Last updated at 22:34 By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

Inventor Trevor Baylis has been made a CBE in the New Year Honours list.

Best known for creating the Baygen wind-up radio, Mr Baylis was honoured for services to intellectual property.

Throughout his colourful life, which involved a stint as a stuntman, Mr Baylis has spent much of his time inventing or involved with engineering.

Most recently he has campaigned to make the UK a more hospitable place for inventors, and is seeking to help them safeguard their creations.

Stolen property

"It was a great surprise," said Twickenham-based Mr Baylis of learning of the award. "I got an OBE in 1997 and that was one of the best days of my life."

"I've been pushing hard to help other inventors because so many people get ripped off like a turkey or find they do not have the money to pay the lawyers to protect themselves."

Mr Baylis is currently heading a venture called Baylis Brands, which advises inventors about the best way to develop ideas and puts them in touch with other experts that can help turn their creations into marketable products.

He is also working to get laws changed to help inventors and engineers if they find someone else is profiting from their work.

"I'm trying to get patent theft recognised as a white collar crime," he said, adding that the idea had received a sympathetic hearing from the Metropolitan Police.

Mr Baylis' best known invention is the Baygen wind-up radio, which he came up with in 1991 while watching a documentary about Aids in Africa that proposed using educational radio programmes to tackle the virus' spread. An appearance on the BBC's Tomorrow's World in 1994 helped turn his invention into a commercial product.

Despite its success, Mr Baylis did not profit from his invention and the design is now under the control of the Freeplay engineering firm.

"Inventing is not about the money," he said. "Who wants to be the richest man in the graveyard? There are no pockets in a shroud."

He said many others could go through the same experience as he did and become an inventor of a household object.

"I want to make sure everyone is aware they are an inventor," he said. "I don't want people to think you have to be a genius to be one."

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Wolf 'most pirated film of 2014'

29 December 2014 Last updated at 10:26

The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese's true-life tale of corrupt New York stockbrokers, was the most illegally downloaded movie of 2014.

Disney cartoon Frozen was second on the list, said The Hollywood Reporter, quoting piracy-tracking firm Excipio.

Both films were downloaded around 30 million times by torrent users between 1 January and 23 December 2014.

The third most-pirated film was space thriller Gravity.

It was just behind Frozen with 29.357 million downloads.

The Wolf of Wall Street, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio as real-life stockbroker Jordan Belfort, caused controversy when it was released in the US a year ago for its scenes of sex and drug-taking.

It was nominated for best picture at the Oscars and contained more than 500 uses of the F-word in its almost three-hour running time.

Other Oscar nominees in the most-pirated top 20 included 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle and Captain Phillips.

The Hollywood Reporter noted that the biggest-grossing film of the year, The Guardians of the Galaxy, was not on the list "perhaps because anyone interested in the film opted to see it in theaters".

And Variety reported that while the number three spot went to RoboCop, the figures included both MGM's 2014 reboot as well as the original 1987 version.

Top 20

• 1. The Wolf of Wall Street 30.035m
• 2. Frozen 29.919m
• 3. RoboCop 29.879m
• 4. Gravity 29.357m
• 5. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug 27.627m
• 6. Thor: The Dark World 25.749m
• 7. Captain America: The Winter Soldier 25.628m
• 8. The Legend of Hercules 25.137m
• 9. X-Men: Days of Future Past 24.380m
• 10. 12 Years a Slave 23.653 million
• 11. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire 23.543m
• 12. American Hustle 23.143m
• 13. 300: Rise of an Empire 23.096m
• 14. Transformers: Age of Extinction 21.65m
• 15. Godzilla 20.956m
• 16. Noah 20.334m
• 17. Divergent 20.312m
• 18. Edge of Tomorrow 20.299m
• 19. Captain Phillips 19.817m
• 20. Lone Survivor 19.130m

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Facebook says sorry for Year in Review

Facebook was launched in 2004 and boasts 1.35 billion monthly active users

Facebook has apologised over its Year in Review feature after some users complained about the images chosen to sum up their 2014.

Eric Meyer described the feature as "jarring" and "wrong" after he logged on to discover a picture of his six-year-old daughter, who had died earlier in the year, was selected.

The photo album, which is automatically generated, includes photo uploads and wall posts that received the most "Likes" over the past 12 months.

Facebook say it is looking at ways to improve the app to prevent similar incidents from happening again.

Facebook ended 2014 by creating a photo album with the most popular uploads from users

In a blog Meyer wrote: "I know, of course, that this is not a deliberate assault.

"This inadvertent algorithmic cruelty is the result of code that works in the overwhelming majority of cases.

"The Year in Review ad keeps coming up in my feed. There wasn't enough thought given to cases like mine or anyone who had a bad year.

"The design is for the ideal user, the happy, upbeat, good-life user. It doesn't take other user cases into account."

Jonathan Gheller, product manager for Facebook, told the Washington Post that the social network site had been in touch with Mr Meyer.

Gheller said: "[The Year in Review feature is] awesome for a lot of people, but clearly in this case we brought him grief rather than joy."

Facebook has also seen complaints from users after pictures of deceased pets and an urn containing human remains were selected as "highlights" of the year.

Writer, Julieanne Smolinski, uploaded one of the images automatically chosen to select her best bits of 2014, a picture of her ex's house on fire.

She wrote: "So my (beloved) ex-boyfriend's apartment caught fire this year, which was very sad, but Facebook made it worth it."

The photo album, which users could personalise before sharing also ended with the caption, "See You Next Year!"

Facebook, which boasts 1.35 billion monthly active users, was launched in 2004.

The company also owns WhatsApp and Instagram.

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Sony hackers 'shared' stolen logins

30 December 2014 Last updated at 11:33

Data that helped hackers access Sony's internal network came from another group targeting the firm's gaming network, reports the Washington Post.

In an interview, a self-proclaimed Lizard Squad member said it had given stolen data to the Guardians of Peace.

The GoP has carried out several attacks on Sony in a bid to halt the release of comedy film The Interview.

By contrast, the Lizard Squad targeted Sony's PlayStation network knocking it offline on Christmas Day.

The man interviewed by the newspaper appears to be one of the two members who spoke to the BBC last week.

'Massive issues'

In the interview, the self-identified senior member of Lizard Squad said his group knew people that were part of GoP. Despite the connection, the spokesman said Lizard Squad did not play a "large part" in the attacks the GoP mounted against Sony.

GoP's attacks involved exposing confidential information about many Sony employees and sharing thousands of emails sent between employees, film stars and movie makers.

The Lizard Squad member said his group "handed over some Sony employee logins" that were used by GoP to get its initial attack underway. The admission is the first acknowledgement by the Lizard Squad of its connection to GoP.

The information throws some doubt on the theory that North Korea was behind the attacks on Sony's internal systems. The state was accused of being behind the hack by the FBI because The Interview is about a fictional American plot to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and Pyongyang has filed formal complaints about the film.

However, the Reuters news agency has reported that US investigators are exploring whether North Korea "contracted out" some of the work involved, which could explain how Lizard Squad formed links to GoP.

Europe-based

Lizard Squad members are all based in European nations, said the senior member.

The GoP attacks forced Sony to withdraw the film from its planned release, but it is now available to view online and is on show at some cinemas. It made about $15m (£9.6m) through downloads alone over its first three days of distribution.

The Lizard Squad spokesperson did not elaborate on how the group got hold of the login information for Sony employees. However, it is possible it found or uncovered them while searching for ways to attack the PlayStation gaming network.

The Lizard Squad has repeatedly attacked Sony's network and many others during 2014. On Christmas Day it managed to disrupt it and the Xbox Live network for hours leaving many gamers unable to log in.

The spokesperson said the attacks were carried out to expose the "massive security issues" many large companies suffer.

"The customers of these companies should be rather worried," they said.

The attacks on the PlayStation and Xbox networks have now stopped thanks to the intervention of tech entrepreneur Kim Dotcom. Instead, the group has switched its attention to the Tor network which has taken steps to limit the effect the Lizard Squad can have on the system.

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Travel firms sue cheap airfare site

30 December 2014 Last updated at 14:14

United Airlines and travel firm Orbitz have launched legal action against a site that seeks out cheap "hidden city" airfares.

The site finds cheap fares by looking for flights that have a stopover at the city someone wants to travel to.

The two firms allege the site is engaged in "unfair competition" and seeks to recoup lost revenue.

The developer behind the site said he was doing nothing wrong by exposing the "inefficiencies" in airline ticketing.

The legal action has been filed in Illinois.

No luggage

The Skiplagged website works by looking for longer flights that include a stop in a big city en route to another destination. One example might be flying from New York to Lake Tahoe that has a stopover in San Francisco.

If someone wanted to travel to San Francisco they might spend less on the fare by booking the stopover flight and not travelling to Tahoe than they would simply booking a flight to San Francisco from New York. In some cases, the site suggests, travellers can save 40% or more on ticket fares.

The trick only works with one-way flights. Travellers cannot check in any luggage as that would then travel on to the flight's final destination.

Twenty-two-year-old developer Aktarer Zaman, who created the site, told CNNMoney that he had made no profit from Skiplagged. He declined to comment specifically on the case to CNN.

Mr Zaman has launched a fundraising campaign to gather cash to fight the legal battle against United and Orbitz. So far he has raised $10,538 (£6,776) of the $15,000 needed.

In its legal filing, United and Orbitz said the site was "intentionally and maliciously" interfering with the travel firms' business and was making it breach its contracts with its partners.

The documents added that "logistical and public safety concerns" meant using "hidden city" tickets was prohibited and, as a result, using Skiplagged broke these rules.

The two firms are seeking damages of at least $75,000 in revenue they claim they have lost as a result of Skiplagged operating.

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Child porn tops Tor hidden site visits

30 December 2014 Last updated at 18:24 By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

Most traffic to sites hidden on the Tor network go to those dealing in images of child sexual abuse a study suggests.

The six-month study sought to catalogue hidden services on the so-called "dark net" and work out which were the most popular.

It found lots of sites peddling illegal drugs but the most popular were those involved with abuse.

However, the researcher behind the study said it was hard to conclude that people were behind all the visits.

Drug traffic

Tor, or The Onion Router, is an anonymising system that lets people use the web without revealing who they are or which country they are in. The anonymity offered by the network has encouraged many people to set up hidden .onion sites that offer content, services and goods that it is illegal to sell openly.

Carried out by Dr Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth, the study set up servers to join the Tor network and catalogued hidden services found on it. The system was also able to visit the sites to download HTML content so they could be categorised and to track how many visits each one received.

Traffic to hidden services on Tor represents about 1.5% of all the data passing across the network on any given day.

Over the six months of the study, Dr Owen and his colleagues saw about 80,000 hidden sites on Tor.

"Most of the hidden services we only saw once. They do not tend to exist for a very long time," he said during a speech at the 31st Chaos Communications Congress in Hanover, where he presented his findings.

The top 40 hidden services were involved with controlling botnets - networks of home computers compromised by malicious programs. Many of these botnets have been shut down which has left their client computers fruitlessly polling Tor seeking the now dormant command systems.

The study found that the biggest number of hidden services were dedicated to selling illegal drugs. Also in the top five were underground markets, fraud sites, mail services and those dealing in the virtual currency Bitcoin.

Although the number of sites dealing in images of abuse on Tor is small, traffic to them dwarfs that going to other sites, said Dr Owen.

About 75% of the traffic observed in the study ended up at abuse sites, said Dr Owen.

"When we found this out we were stunned," he said. "This is not what we expected at all."

Despite the findings, Dr Owen cautioned against drawing too many conclusions since he did not know which visits were done by people and which by machines.

"It's not as quite as straightforward as it looks," he said. "It might look like there are lots of people visiting these sites but it is difficult to conclude that from this information."

"What proportion are people and which are something else? We simply don't know." he said, adding that "crawlers" run by law enforcement and other agencies that police abuse sites could be responsible for the steady stream of traffic.

Roger Dingledine, one of the original developers of Tor, also said the methodology of the study - which only scanned long-lived sites to see what content they offered - made it hard to draw conclusions about what people did on the network.

"Without knowing how many sites disappeared before he got around to looking at them, it's impossible to know what percentage of fetches went to abuse sites," he said.

"There are important uses for hidden services, such as when human rights activists use them to access Facebook or to blog anonymously," he added.

"These uses for hidden services are new and have great potential."

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Nasa to hack 'amnesiac' Mars rover

31 December 2014 Last updated at 11:44

Mars rover Opportunity, which has been exploring the Red Planet for more than 10 years, is suffering from memory problems, Nasa has said.

The six-wheeled vehicle - not to be confused with Curiosity, which launched in 2011 - keeps resetting unexpectedly.

The Opportunity team thinks an age-related fault affecting the flash memory used by the robot is to blame.

It believes it has found a way to hack the rover's software to disregard the faulty part.

Speaking to Discovery News, Nasa project manager John Callas outlined how his team intended to solve the issue.

'It forgets'

He explained how the rover, like a typical computer, has two key types of memory - volatile and non-volatile.

• Non-volatile memory "remembers" its information even if it is powered down, making it ideal for long-term storage, similar to how a hard drive works on a PC
• Volatile memory - comparable to a PC's random access memory, or RAM - is quicker to access but requires power, so when the machine turns off, any data stored within the volatile memory is lost

The problem with Opportunity is that its non-volatile memory is suffering from a fault, probably related to the hardware's age.

It means that when the rover tries to save telemetry data to the flash memory it fails, and so it then writes it to the volatile memory instead. When the rover powers down, the information is then wiped.

"So now we're having these events we call 'amnesia,'," explained Mr Callas in Discovery News.

"Which is the rover trying to use the flash memory, but it wasn't able to, so instead it uses the RAM... it stores telemetry data in that volatile memory, but when the rover goes to sleep and wakes up again, all [the data] is gone.

"So that's why we call it amnesia - it forgets what it has done."

Old rover

The problems are becoming more severe, Nasa says, with the memory issue causing the rover reset itself, and in some cases stop communicating with mission control altogether.

In an attempt to solve the problem, the Nasa team is attempting to "hack" the rover's software so that it ignores the faulty part of its flash memory, and instead writes, permanently, to the healthy hardware.

The process will take a couple of weeks, Mr Callas told Discovery News. However, he added that Opportunity is ageing and could be heading towards the end of its useful life.

"It's like you have an aging parent, that is otherwise in good health - maybe they go for a little jog every day, play tennis each day - but you never know, they could have a massive stroke right in the middle of the nigh," he said.

"So we're always cautious that something could happen."

Even if the rover fails now, it will have comfortably exceeded the initial goal of spending three months on the Red Planet.

Ten years after it first landed, Opportunity has covered 26 miles (41.8km) of the Mars surface, and sent back vital intelligence about the planet's biological make-up.

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