Tuesday, June 10, 2014

TechEye

TechEye

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Cybercrime numbers out

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 02:06 AM PDT

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) have been adding up numbers and have divided by their shoe size to come up with a cost for cybercrime worldwide.

As you might expect the numbers came out in their billions because they set a value on the esoteric costs of "damage to business from the theft of intellectual property." As a result the final cost of hacking is $445 billion. However a slightly more reasonable figure is the estimated $160 billion loss to individuals from hacking.

The CSIS said cyber crime was a growth industry that damaged trade, competitiveness and innovation.

A conservative estimate would be $375 billion in losses, while the maximum could be as much as $575 billion, said the study.

The study was sponsored by security software company McAfee which has absolutely no interest in causing a panic about the cost of hacking. It said improved international collaboration was beginning to show results in reducing cybercrime, for example in the takedown last week of a crime ring that infected hundreds of thousands of computers known by the name of its master software, Gameover Zeus.

Jim Lewis of CSIS said in a statement that Cyber crime is a tax on innovation and slows the pace of global innovation by reducing the rate of return to innovators and investors. For developed countries, cyber crime has serious implications for employment.

The world's biggest economies bore the brunt of the losses, the research found, with the toll on the United States, China, Japan and Germany reaching $200 billion a year in total.

Losses connected to personal information, such as stolen credit card data, was put at up to $150 billion.

About 40 million people in the United States, or 15 percent of the population, has had personal information stolen by hackers, it said, while high-profile breaches affected 54 million people in Turkey, 16 million in Germany and more than 20 million in China. 

NSA exploits a "feature" in iPhone

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 02:05 AM PDT

The NSA is particularly pleased with the security features in Apple's iPhone which allows it to spy on people when they think it is switched off.

Edward Snowden said that the NSA can get into an iPhone, turn it on remotely if it's off and can they turn on apps?

The Tame Apple Press dismissed the claim as "magical" - after all the iPhone was designed by Steve Jobs and is totally unhackable and completely secure. The fact that it usually takes experts less than a minute to break into one is neither here nor there.

A group of particularly cunning iPhone hackers say it's possible. All the spooks have to do is trick you into installing malware before you shut down your phone. This software could make the phone look like it's shutting down—complete with a fake "slide to power off" screen.

However instead of powering down, it enters a low-power mode that leaves its baseband chip which controls communication with the carrier on.

The NSA could actually install the software before you actually bought the phone. Already we have seen the NSA intercepting routers from Cisco and installing backdoors. It would be a doddle for spooks to show up at an Apple store and insist on their own software being installed before you buy your phone.

However it is possible you can completely turn off your iPhone so no one can use it to spy on you. Surprisingly it does not involve a hammer and buying a proper phone.

What you do is turn off their iPhones by putting them into device firmware upgrade (DFU) mode, a kind of "panic" state designed to let the phone reinstall its firmware or recover from repeated operating system crashes.

In DFU mode, says McDonald, all elements of the phone are entirely shut down except its USB port, which is designed to wait for a signal from iTunes to install new firmware.

It seems a bit of an arse to us. It is probably easier to hit it with a hammer and buy a proper phone. 

Facebook board sued over pay

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 02:00 AM PDT

Mark Zuckerberg and other members of Facebook board have been sued by a shareholder who is furious that they can collect $150 million of stock each.

Ernesto Espinoza said the board was "essentially free to grant itself whatever amount of compensation it chooses" under the social media company's 2012 equity incentive plan, which also covers employees, officers and consultants.

The plan annually caps total awards at 25 million shares and individual awards at 2.5 million, and in theory lets the board annually award directors $156 million in stock each.

Espinoza added that last year's average $461,000 payout to non-employee directors was too high, being 43 percent larger than typical payouts at "peer" companies such as Amazon.com and Walt Disney that on average generated twice as much revenue and three times more profit.

The lawsuit alleges breach of fiduciary duty, waste of corporate assets and unjust enrichment.

It seeks to force directors to repay Facebook for alleged damages sustained by the Menlo Park, California-based company, and to impose "meaningful limits" subject to shareholder approval about how much stock the board can award itself.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, a director whose compensation was $16.15 million in 2013, is also in the dock, along with Zuckerberg who made $653,165 last year.

Espinoza has a history of getting miffed with companies he has invested in. He was a plaintiff in a 2010 shareholder case in Delaware against HP concerning its handling of the resignation of Chief Executive Mark Hurd over his alleged sexual harassment of a former soft-porn star turned contractor. 

Apple to crunch Candy Crush

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 01:48 AM PDT

The fruity cargo cult Apple is set to ban popular games like Candy Crush from its iTunes store even though fanboys are starting to spurn the service like a rabid dog.

Revamped policies in the iOS 8 App Store reveal that Candy Crush and other apps that reward you for social sharing could soon be booted.

Apps that provide users incentives for sharing on social networks aren't the only ones to violate Apple's latest terms and conditions for developers - those that provide in-game credit for watching videos are also under fire, along with apps that promote other apps.

Already Apple has started rejecting apps including those old games which had been updated. Apple is telling developers that games are violating guidelines around in-game credits for watching videos and promoting apps other than one's own. Other developers have received rejection notices for using social sharing.

However with the iTunes store use declining, we are surprised Apple is keen to see the death of its App store too.

This sort of app monetisation plan is really popular and Apple's policies will have a huge effect on developers. Platforms like Tapjoy, which lets you download an app instead of making an in-game payment, will clearly be affected as well.

Jobs' Mob hopes to clean the App Store of the apps made just to earn cash, but it is clear that legit titles could be squashed. 

Some people shouldn't code says Linus

Posted: 10 Jun 2014 01:45 AM PDT

Creator of the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds, said that some people do not need to learn basic programming skills.

The idea is being touted by those who think that programming should he taught alongside learning to read, write, and do basic adding up.

Torvalds said that the concept is silly and he did not think that everybody should necessarily try to learn to code.

The skill is reasonably specialised, and nobody really expects most people to have to do it. It's not like knowing how to read and write and do basic maths, he said.

Getting some form of exposure to it would be good, since it would allow those who have an interest to be able to identify that interest and foster that and turn it into a skill, which could ultimately lead to a career in programming.

In that sense computer courses in schools are a great idea, even if he did not believe in the "everybody should learn to code" thing.

We guess he means that if you learn it at school you will hate it so much that you will never want to do it again. There is also the risk that what you learn in school will be so out of date that you might as well never have bothered. Sheesh my computer studies teacher insisted that we learn Pascal and most of my six form life was spent searching for missing semi-colons. 

Mobile app Payfriendz takes on Paypal and the rest

Posted: 09 Jun 2014 07:27 AM PDT

A service is aiming to take on the big players in consumer friendly financial tech with a newly launched iOS and Android app, aiming to popularise payments over a P2P, instant messaging network.

Payfriendz allows users to send money over a peer to peer transaction system. What this means in practice is a PIN protected app that acts like a digital wallet, but allows you to "attach" sums of money to contacts through IM.

Services like Paypal have traditionally dominated this market, but Payfriendz seeks to differentiate itself by taking less of a cut, and with international transactions it takes just one percent while also converting currency with up to date, real time information.

NFC support will be added this year, and any money that finds its way into your account can be accessed through an on-screen virtual MasterCard that seems to work pretty much anywhere MasterCard does.

It may not change the world in an earth shattering way, but as part of the consumerification of just about everything, the app certainly could simplify - and make quicker - the act of transferring money. 
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