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Android adware 'infects millions'

Written By Unknown on Rabu, 04 Februari 2015 | 23.58

4 February 2015 Last updated at 12:52 By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor

Android users are being warned that several popular apps that were on the official Google Play store appear to have contained hidden code that made malicious ads pop up.

Security firm Avast said that one of the apps involved - a free version of the card game Durak - had been downloaded up to 10 million times, according to Google Play's own counter.

Google has now blocked access.

But one expert noted that the problem might be less widespread than feared.

Avast said that it first became aware of the issue after a member of the public contacted it after carrying out his own investigation into how his Nexus 5 smartphone had come to be infected with malicious code.

The "adware" was causing spurious pop-up messages to appear that had been made to look like system notifications. These told him his phone was running "slow" and that he needed to install new software to fix the problem.

If he followed the on-screen prompts he was then directed to download other apps, only some of which were legitimate.

"You get re-directed to harmful threats on fake pages, like dubious app stores and apps that attempt to send premium SMS behind your back or to apps that simply collect too much of your data for comfort while offering you no additional value," wrote Avast's malware analyst Filip Chytry.

The original apps were said to have held off showing the pop-ups until seven or more days after being installed, which the analyst suggested was intended to mask the fact that they were responsible.

"Most people won't be able to find the source of the problem and will face fake ads each time they unlock their device," he wrote.

"I believe that most people will trust that there is a problem that can be solved with one of the app's advertised 'solutions' and will follow the recommended steps, which may lead to an investment into unwanted apps from untrusted sources."

In addition to the Durak card game, other apps alleged to be involved include:

  • A Russian language IQ test, which Google Play indicates had been downloaded up to five million times
  • A Russian history educational tool, which Google Play indicates had been downloaded up to 50,000 times

A search by the BBC for other apps made by the same developers revealed dozens more apps, including video games, a psychology guide, wedding planning software and cookery tips - all of which have now been blocked.

The publishers involved have not replied to requests for comment.

A spokesman for Google said: "We're just confirming that all of the apps in the report have been suspended and nothing more."

Inflated numbers

Although Google Play's own site indicated the software had been downloaded many millions of times, one security researcher was cautious about the figures.

"I would take the numbers with a pinch of salt because one thing that malware authors might do is deliberately up the amount of downloads in order to make an app appear more popular than it really is," said Dr Steven Murdoch from University College London's information security research group.

"Google does scan for malware that it knows about and it also has some more advanced techniques to detect malicious behaviour.

"But these don't work 100% of the time and some apps do slip through the checks - and there is a continual cat and mouse game of people looking for malware and the authors trying to bypass the checks."

Although Avast is using the publicity it has generated to promote its own security software, Dr Murdoch noted that it too would fail to identify all new types of malware.

One alternative, he said, was to check reviews.

Several people who had downloaded the Durak card game had posted warnings on Google Play as far back as November 2013, that they suspected it was forcing pop-up ads to appear.

"But that's still not going to catch everything," Dr Murdoch added.

"Phone users ultimately have to trust the operating system vendor - whether that's Google or Apple [or someone else] to protect them."


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Micromax 'overtakes Samsung in India'

4 February 2015 Last updated at 07:17

Samsung has been overtaken as the largest seller of smartphones in India by local budget brand Micromax for the first time, according to market research firm Canalys.

Micromax accounted for 22% of India's smartphone shipments in the three months to December, its figures showed.

Samsung's market share fell to 20%.

India is the world's third-largest smartphone market and many users are upgrading to smartphones for the first time from basic handsets.

More than a quarter of all shipments were for smartphones that cost less than $100 (£65).

As a result, phone makers have rushed to produce basic but affordable smartphones that can appeal to different income groups.

"Catering to local market preferences will become increasingly important," said Canalys analyst Rushabh Doshi.

"Micromax has been quicker than its competitors to improve the appeal of devices, for example, by including a wide variety of local languages on its Unite phones.

"But vital to success is selling these handsets at low price points to appeal to the bulging mid-level income market in India."

Analysis: Simon Atkinson, BBC News, Mumbai

When I moved to India about a year ago and turned on the hotel room TV, the first advert I saw was for a brand I'd never heard of. It was Micromax - with a (fairly cheesy) ad fronted by the Australian actor Hugh Jackman.

The company's aggressive marketing assault - where it has also ploughed cash into cricket sponsorship - has helped it grab market share. But the more important factor has been its pricing. Millions of Indians are upgrading to smartphones every month and the firm has released dozens of handsets specifically targeted at different types of Indian consumers.

Though the phones are still made in China, Micromax has become an Indian success story. Rivals like China's Xiaomi are snapping close at its heels, however, but the brand still looks well-placed in the country's booming smartphone market.

Micromax, which is based near Delhi, has seen brisk sales of its flagship line of products such as the Canvas Nitro and Canvas Hue phones.

Nearly 22 million smartphones were sold in India during the period, a 90% increase from a year earlier.

Aside from Micromax and Samsung, domestic vendors Karbonn and Lava are also key players in the Indian smartphone market.


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Google and Uber may become rivals

3 February 2015 Last updated at 12:18

Uber has announced plans to research self-driving cars, which could put it head to head with Google.

Google launched a driverless car division in 2010.

Uber is teaming up with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA, to fund the Uber Advanced Technologies Center, it said in a blog post.

In turn, Google may be mulling over plans to roll out its own car-hailing service, according to Bloomberg.

Bloomberg quoted a source close to Uber's board of directors who claimed it had been shown screenshots of an app-based cab service, which Google already offers to staff.

Google has been contacted by the BBC for comment but tweeted in response to the article:

"We think you'll find Uber and Lyft work quite well. We use them all the time."

In 2013, Google invested around $250m (£166m) in Uber, which now operates in more than 200 cities worldwide but has faced controversy over the way in which it vets its drivers following the rape of a customer in Delhi.

Uber's new research partnership will also look at maps and car safety technology, the firm said.

"The partnership will provide a forum for Uber technology leaders to work closely with [Carnegie Mellon University] faculty, staff, and students — both on campus and at the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) — to do research and development, primarily in the areas of mapping and vehicle safety and autonomy technology," said Uber.


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Death threat hacker is jailed

4 February 2015 Last updated at 11:41

A hacker who hijacked computers to make death threats has been jailed for eight years.

Yusuke Katayama played a game of cat and mouse with the authorities, leading them to make numerous wrongful arrests.

He threatened a massacre at a comic book event, as well as to attack a school attended by the grandchildren of Japan's Emperor Akihito.

Katayama's campaign highlighted the difficulties the country's police force has had in dealing with cyber crime.

"He committed the crime, and the purpose of it was [for police] to make wrongful arrests," said presiding judge Katsunori Ohno at Tokyo District Court, adding that Katayama's actions had been "vicious".

Riddles

Throughout 2012, the 32-year-old used a virus to gain control of strangers' computers. He then issued threats - which appeared to come from the computer's owner - and a series of riddles that captured the attention of the national media.

Among the other threats made by Katayama - who went by the alias Demon Killer - was one to attack a plane.

The case highlighted the Japanese police's tendency to extract confessions from suspects, as four people owned up to crimes which the National Police Agency (NPA) later admitted they did not commit.

Computers belonging to each had been infected with a Trojan Horse virus, introduced via a link on the popular Japanese chat forum 2channel.

The NPA's chief apologised, acknowledging his force had been tricked by the hacker, and promising his cyber crime unit would improve.

Reward

Police held one falsely suspected person for several weeks before media and a cyber crime expert received anonymous messages containing information that investigators conceded could only have been known by the real culprit.

Katayama had taunted police in emails that sent them all over Japan.

In one message, investigators were told to go to Enoshima, an island off Tokyo, and to look for a cat that turned out to be wearing a collar on which was a memory card.

The card held details of the code and malicious program he had used to gain remote control of victim's computers.

In December 2012, the police offered a 3m yen (£16,822) reward for information leading to the arrest of the culprit.

But it was the cat that led police to arrest Katayama in February 2013, who was seen on CCTV footage with the animal.


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Lost chunk of historic computer found

3 February 2015 Last updated at 11:59 By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

An original part of one of the UK's pioneering computers has been found in the US.

The part is a significant chunk of Edsac - a machine built at Cambridge in the late 1940s to serve scientists at the university.

It came to light because of publicity surrounding an effort to rebuild the computer.

The part has now been donated to the rebuild project and will be incorporated into the finished machine.

Edsac, the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator, ran its first programs in May 1949 and through its working life aided many scientists by analysing data generated by many different experiments.

Before now, it had not been known what happened to the parts of Edsac after it was decommissioned and dismantled in the 1950s.

The uncovering of the part, called the Chassis 1A, solved part of that riddle, said Dr Andrew Herbert who is leading the reconstruction project at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.

The original Edsac computer

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WATCH: The pioneering Edsac computer is being recreated by engineers

It now appears that at the end of Edsac's life it was sold off in an auction but it is not known who bought all the parts.

"Details of the 'auction' are unclear, but there is a possibility that other parts of the original Edsac still exist and could even be in the Cambridge area stored away in lofts, garden sheds and garages," said Mr Herbert.

Book shelves

The Chassis 1A found its way to the US after being bought by Robert Little, who currently lives in Pennsylvania.

He got it from a Cambridge scientist called Dr Robert Clarke in 1969, who had bought several Edsac pieces in the auction intending to turn them into bookshelves.

Mr Little contacted the Edsac reconstruction team after reading about the project online.

The Chassis is designed to hold 28 of the 3,000 valves that formed the main computational elements of Edsac.

The 12 vertical racks of Edsac held up to 14 individual chassis on to which the valves were fixed.

Dr Herbert said the donated chassis was "quite distressed" by corrosion after being in storage for several decades.

Work is now under way to see how much of it can be incorporated into the reconstructed Edsac.

"It would be a major task to return this particular chassis to operating condition," he said.

"However, we hope to try to use some of the valves, if they are still functional, in our reconstructed Edsac thus providing a very tangible connection with the original machine."

The chassis is the second Edsac artefact that publicity about the reconstruction has brought to light. In June last year, detailed circuit diagrams of Edsac were discovered and are now aiding project workers.

The reconstruction of Edsac is due to be completed by the end of the year.


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'Revenge porn' site owner convicted

3 February 2015 Last updated at 13:56

A man who ran a so-called "revenge porn" site has been convicted of identity theft and extortion.

Kevin Bollaert ran one site to which people submitted compromising pictures, usually of their ex-partners, and another that charged the subjects to have the pictures taken down.

He faces up to 20 years in prison after being convicted on 27 charges. He was not tried under revenge porn laws.

His lawyer had described his actions as gross and offensive, but not illegal.

"It ruined my life and I'm still going through it," one victim told the court in California.

She said she had been thrown out of her home after nude photos of her had been posted

She added: "I lost my family. They think that I brought shame on them. My reputation is ruined."

The woman was one of more than two dozen named as victims in the case.

Blackmail

Some testified they had suffered humiliation and fear when their private photos had been posted.

Prosecutor Tawnya Austin told jurors the victims had also been harassed by people who had tried to contact them through Facebook or by email.

Bollaert, 28, admitted knowing the pictures had been private and posted without the consent of his victims. He described the business as essentially a blackmail scheme.

He ran UGotPosted.com, on which the pictures were posted, and changemyreputation.com, which he used to extort money from his victims - whom he told to pay up to $350 (£232) a time to remove a picture.

He insisted that the site's users had posted the pictures, not him, and he was not convicted under California's revenge porn laws, which were not enacted until after he was charged.

Abuse

About 10,000 pictures were posted on the site, which required users to include the victim's full name. It also displayed contact details, including links to their Facebook and Twitter profiles, as well as details of their places of work and other personal information.

According to court documents, Bollaert is said to have made "around $900 (£596) per month from advertising on the site, and records obtained from his changemyreputation.com PayPal account indicate that he received payments totalling tens of thousands of dollars".

Revenge porn is so called because, while the pictures may sometimes be taken consensually, they are then uploaded without consent by an abusive ex-partner. In some cases, the pictures are also stolen - sometimes as a result of a hack.

An amendment to the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill making it a specific offence in England and Wales was introduced in 2014 and is expected to come into force this year. Plans to introduce a separate law making it illegal in Scotland were announced in October last year.

The San Diego County Superior Court jury was unable to reach verdicts on two charges of identity theft and conspiracy, and a judge declared a mistrial on those counts on Monday.

Bollaert's lawyer Emily Rose-Weber argued in court that her client may have conducted an immoral business that had taken advantage of "human weakness", but he had not broken the law by allowing others to post the explicit photos.

"It's gross, it's offensive, but it's not illegal," she said.


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US adds rules for intelligence data

3 February 2015 Last updated at 18:26

Data about innocent US individuals gathered "incidentally" during intelligence operations must be deleted immediately under new rules from the Obama administration.

However, if the data belongs to a non-US citizen, it can be held for up to five years.

This includes phonecalls, emails and social media activity gathered by American security services.

The monitoring of foreign leaders will also be regularly reviewed.

The new rules were announced in a report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Another amendment to existing policies on data gathering and storage states that the Federal Bureau of Investigation can only keep its surveillance activities secret for up to three years when using its national security letters system to prevent disclosure.

"Our signals intelligence activities must take into account that all persons have legitimate privacy interests in the handling of their personal information," said Lisa Monaco, homeland security advisor to President Obama in a statement.

"At the same time, we must ensure that our intelligence community has the resources and authorities necessary for the United States to advance its national security and foreign policy interests and to protect its citizens and the citizens of its allies and partners from harm."

'Right direction'

Cybersecurity expert Prof Alan Woodward from Surrey University told the BBC the changes in the rules were "a step in the right direction".

"It gives people some confidence," he said.

However, he added that the five-year rule for keeping the data of non-US citizens was concerning.

"Regimes change, governments change, and if they keep your data - and it's getting easier and cheaper to keep it - who knows what it might be used for in the future?" Prof Woodward added.

"The fact they are setting limits on it is good. But for non-US citizens five years is a long time."


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YouTube: Subtitles not good enough

rikki poynter

YouTube has told Newsbeat it "fully admits" that automatic subtitles, or closed captions, for deaf and hard-of-hearing users are "by no means good enough yet".

The firm added improving them is "a big priority".

The pledge comes as a campaign launched by hard-of-hearing vlogger Rikki Poynter continues to win support.

She says the automatic service "makes absolutely no sense 99% of the time".

line

Subtitled versions of both of the videos featured in the article can be found on Newsbeat's YouTube channel.

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"I can look up a video about concealers and somehow the automatic closed captioning will be talking about zebras," she told Newsbeat.

Her campaign, which asks YouTubers to manually subtitle their videos, has gained the attention of high profile vloggers including Tyler Oakley and Laci Green.

Rikki, 23, said it's great that awareness of closed captioning videos is increasing but it's taken a lot of time and effort, including hand-writing to popular YouTubers until "my hand wanted to fall off", to get to this stage.

She added: "It's pretty frustrating because we've been trying to do this for years.

"We've also contacted YouTube themselves.

YouTube stats

  • More than 1bn unique users each month.
  • Over 6bn hours of video are watched each month - almost an hour for every person on Earth.

Source: YouTube

"If they couldn't try to improve the automatic closed captioning then I fell like maybe they should just do without it because just seeing it knowing that it's completely nonsensical is just ridiculous."

In response to Rikki's comments YouTube's product manager Matthew Glotzbach said: "Although I think having auto caption is better than nothing I fully admit and I fully recognise that it is by no means good enough yet.

"It's an area that we've been committed to really from the beginning.

"Frankly, it's really hard computer science problem that hasn't been solved that scale yet."

Tyler Oakley and Tanya Burr
Tyler Oakley and Tanya Burr have backed Rikki's campaign

YouTube recently launched a community caption service, allowing vloggers' fans to caption videos for them.

Within days of Tyler Oakley's video supporting Rikki's campaign going online, there were over 2,000 caption submissions in 70 different languages.

Hearing difficulties in the UK

  • More than 45,000 under 18s are deaf.
  • 3.7m people of working age affected by hearing loss across.

Source: Action on Hearing Loss

According to Mr Glotzbach, 25% of YouTube's content has some form or closed captioning.

This is mostly made up of automatic subtitles.

Talking about plans to improve the system he added: "This is a big priority.

"I announced the initial work on our captioning systems at VidCon last year.

"We announced that it was one of our top priorities and that we would be aggressively working on it. And that commitment continues.

Other high profile vloggers have shown support for Rikki.

Beauty vlogger Tanya Burr told Newsbeat: "I totally get that. I think it's [automatic closed captioning] terrible.

"People actually turn the subtitles on sometimes just for fun because they're like it's so hilarious seeing what they'll actually come up with because it's completely wrong."

But for people like Rikki, it's not a laughing matter.

She said: "It's not funny for us because we want to understand the video and we can't.

"The people that are laughing about it, at the end of day, they can still understand it so it's not funny."

youtube caption

Dr Roger Wicks, who is director of policy and campaigns for charity Action on Hearing Loss, said they have seen a rise in the number of people getting in touch about the quality of automatic subtitles on YouTube.

He said: "There'll be tens of thousands of people in their 20s who have hearing loss trying to access YouTube. It's a key social activity.

Although we ultimately hope to have an algorithm that can do it automatically, we're not there yet
Matthew Glotzbach, Product manager, YouTube

"We talk about what we see on television and increasingly YouTube so it's critical we get this [subtitling] right.

"More needs to be done to ensure they actually do the job they're designed to."

YouTube said it welcomes feedback from users and that it has invested time and money to help vloggers caption their videos and edit automatic captions.

Mr Glotzbach added: "The challenge is a big one.

"YouTube has over 300 hours of video that's get uploaded to YouTube every minute. that's a lot of content to caption.

"Although we ultimately hope to be able to have an algorithm that can do that automatically, we're not there yet."

Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter, BBCNewsbeat on Instagram and Radio1Newsbeat on YouTube


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China bans 'vulgar' web pseudonyms

4 February 2015 Last updated at 15:15

China's internet watchdog has banned web users from posting messages under the names of famous people.

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said it was combating the "vulgar culture" of using names like Barack Obama, or those of Chinese officials.

The CAC is a Communist Party organ overseen by President Xi Jinping, so its rules will carry more force than those of other regulators.

Similar restrictions by other bodies have been sidestepped by web firms.

The CAC announced a series of measures that would be in force from 1 March.

It said nicknames should not include information that could violate the constitution, subvert state power, undermine national security or promote rumour-mongering.

In addition, web users must sign a pledge to avoid "illegal and unhealthy" internet activity, and register accounts under their real names even if they want to post under nicknames.

Measures criticised

CAC's head of mobile internet, Xu Feng, promised that the new regulations would not limit users' freedom.

"This does not restrict internet users, instead it protects their legitimate rights," he said.

Real-name registration has been a goal of the Chinese authorities for years.

The State Internet Information Office (SIIO), an organ of the State Council, passed similar rules in 2012.

The office announced last month that it would step up its efforts to enforce users of microblogs, smartphone chat apps to register with real names.

But campaigners have decried the regulations as a crackdown on free speech, and the SIIO has been largely unable to enforce the measures.

Tightening grip

With some 649 million people online, there are more internet users in China than any other country.

However, Beijing has been gradually tightening its control over the web and has the world's most well-developed censorship system, known as the Great Firewall.

International websites such as Facebook are banned, and last month China successfully blocked several Virtual Private Network (VPN) services that were allowing people to skirt around the restrictions.

Internet comments that appear to criticise or undermine the government are monitored particularly carefully.

Last month 133 accounts on the messenger service WeChat were shut down for "distorting history", state media said.


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Alibaba begins drone delivery trials

4 February 2015 Last updated at 15:05 By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor

China's biggest internet retailer says it has begun testing drone-based deliveries to hundreds of customers.

It says the trial will last three days and be limited to areas within a one-hour flight of its distribution centres in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

The company's blog adds that it believes the technology has the potential to speed up deliveries.

Amazon, Google and parcel service UPS are among other companies carrying out more private trials of such aircraft.

Alibaba is using its drones to deliver orders for a specific type of ginger tea, helping limit the maximum weight of the packages to 340g (12oz).

The Tech in Asia blog, which was one of the first to report the development, said the experiment was being undertaken by Alibaba's Taobao division - an eBay-like marketplace that connects third-party sellers and buyers - and would involve 450 shoppers.

"Even though it's very limited in scope, Taobao is delivering real goods to real people, which is a step further than its Western counterpart Amazon has gone," Tech in Asia's Paul Bischoff told the BBC.

"That said, which company will actually roll out a fully functioning drone-based delivery service remains to be seen and [such a deployment] is still a long way off."

In 2013, a much smaller Chinese company - the InCake bakery - began delivering cakes to customers in Shanghai using remote-controlled drones. However, the trade was quickly halted by a local aviation watchdog, for operating without a licence.

Restrictions on the use of drones in the US have led Google to carry out its own drone-based delivery tests in Australia.

Safety concerns

Alibaba's founder, Jack Ma, has said he aims to expand his company's operations across the globe in order to reach a target of having two billion customers by 2025.

In 2014, the company raised a record $25bn (£16.4bn) when it listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange.

However, its ambitions were threatened last week by a high-profile spat with one of China's regulators, which alleged that Alibaba had not done enough to tackle the sale of counterfeit goods on Taobao, letting this "abscess fester until it became a danger".

Mr Ma later said that the regulator's actions were not supported by "certain government officials", and he indicated that the matter had been resolved.

The tests provide Taobao with a chance to generate more positive headlines.

But one expert said it would be wrong to dismiss them as a PR stunt, even if drone-based deliveries were still years away from becoming the norm.

"It's well established that drones can be flown autonomously above the tree-line - but below it, there are still a lot of issues," said Ravi Vaidyanathan, a robotics lecturer at Imperial College London.

"They will need to get around moving obstacles like children and pets when they come to land below the roof of your house. And the kind of co-ordination it would take to get airspace reserved for drone flights is also a big issue too.

"I don't think these problems are insurmountable, but the safety considerations must be addressed, and obstacle-free take-off and landing zones may need to be considered in the near term."

A video released by Alibaba indicates it will use quadcopter drones that fly far beyond the sightlines of their operators, travelling over roads, rivers and buildings before landing in open spaces close to apartment blocks.

However, the company has not provided technical details abut how it intends to achieve this.


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