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- Apple theft carried out by “geniuses”
- Latvian admits infecting computers with Gozi
- Google plans a Chinese comeback
- Life mimics our art as Vole buys VoloMetrix
| Apple theft carried out by “geniuses” Posted: 07 Sep 2015 01:26 AM PDT
Four US men have been arrested for the theft of more than a million dollars of MacBook Airs which sounds a lot but is actually only a couple. The men were arrested are accused of "participating in a scheme to steal, transport, and sell a shipment of approximately 1,200 computers, valued at over $1 million, that were bound for two public high schools in New Jersey”. Rather than saving the kids of New Jersey from the perils of the Apple Cargo cult, it would appear that the men thought they could make a lot of dosh from stealing the laptops. Sadly for them, planning was not one of their strong suits. One of the men, Anton Saljanin, was hired to transport 1,195 laptops from a vendor in Massachusetts on January 15, 2014, after having successfully delivered 1,300 other laptops. Saljanin appears to have stopped at home in Yorktown Heights, New York, where he left the large, rented Penske truck in a parking lot overnight. When he came back the next day, he told police, the truck was gone. The coppers smelt a rat because he told them that no one else knew that he was making the delivery. Later in the day, Saljanin told Yorktown Police that he went looking for the truck, and happened to find it in a parking lot just off Interstate 84 in Danbury, Connecticut, approximately 27 miles away. He claimed that he spotted it from the highway by coincidence. When coppers investigated there was no sign that the truck had been broken into. However there were indications that it had been broken into at the Danbury parking lot. Another problem was that the you could not see the Danbury Parking Lot if you were driving along Interstate 84. Then there was the small matter of the surveillance footage which showed the truck being driven by Saljanin and his brother, Gjon a few minutes before the truck was supposed to have been stolen. Instead of going to the Yorktown parking lot it was seen near the home of another one of the defendants, Ujka Vulaj. All the timings suggest that the time difference between the story are perfect for the amount of time it would take to drive to Vulaj's residence, unload the computers, and return to the route to the Front Street Parking Lot. Vulaj and a bloke called Carlos Caceres, sold some of the laptops for as little as half of their regular retail price—$500 in cash. . |
| Latvian admits infecting computers with Gozi Posted: 07 Sep 2015 12:40 AM PDT
Deniss Calovskis, 30, pleaded guilty in a federal court in Manhattan to conspiring to commit computer intrusion. He told the court he had been hired to write some of the computer code that made theGozi virus so effective. The plea followed Calovskis’ extradition in February from Latvia, where he was arrested in November 2012 and held for 10 months in jail. Under a plea agreement, Calovskis, who has been in US custody since his extradition, agreed not to appeal any sentence of two years in prison or less. The Gozi virus was discovered in 2007. It stole personal bank account information of computer users while remaining virtually undetectable. When authorities announced charges in 2013, more than a million computers worldwide had been infected, including at least 40,000 in the United States, over 160 of which belonged to NASA. Prosecutors claimed that the whole thing was hatched up by a Russian called Nikita Kuzmin, and Mihai Ionut Paunescu, a Romanian accused of running a service that enabled its distribution. Prosecutors said Calovskis, who resided in Riga, Latvia, and went online as “Miami,” helped develop code that increased the virus’ effectiveness by altering the appearance of banks’ websites, tricking victims into divulging their information. Kuzmin was arrested in 2010, secretly pleaded guilty in May 2011 as part of a cooperation agreement with prosecutors. Pauneschu was arrested in Romania in December 2012. His extradition remains pending, a spokesman for Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said. |
| Google plans a Chinese comeback Posted: 07 Sep 2015 12:39 AM PDT
The company hopes to get Chinese government approval for a China version of its Play store mobile app. Basically Google wants to make sure that its new version of Android gets some adoption in China where the Google store is not exactly permitted. The tech giant is also planning to extend support of a version of Android for wearable devices in the country. Google has assured Chinese authorities that it will follow local laws and block Play store apps that the government deems objectionable. The Play store app will only work on devices running the recently unveiled “M” version of Android, and only on devices that comply with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology requirements. Google is also planning to offer new incentives to phone makers to upgrade Android phones to the latest versions of its operating system. |
| Life mimics our art as Vole buys VoloMetrix Posted: 07 Sep 2015 12:38 AM PDT
Ever since a huge skeleton of a giant Vole was dug up at Redmond, we have been calling Microsoft "Vole" because clearly the way it behaved was in its antique genes. Mike had a pair of antique jeans so knows how tight they are about the crotch. Over the years, we have even acquired web addresses like Volesoft for our own gags and cunning plans. Last week it was leaked to us that Microsoft was planning to increase its volishness by buying an employee productivity outfit appropriately called VoloMetrix. This outfit has been helping Boeing, Facebook, Genentech, Qualcomm, Seagate, and Symantec measure their Volish habits by looking at their email. VoloMetrix uses data about an employee's email habits and electronic calendar to provide a view into productivity trends across a company. Too many meetings, for example, could prevent teams from getting real work done. Top Vole Rajesh Jha said the technology would become part of Microsoft's organisational analytics offering, appropriately called Delve, which will be digging Volehills out of company data from October. Eventually, the service will become part of Office 365, which Jha oversees. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed as providing useful information is decidedly non-Volish. Writing in his bog about the deal, VoloMetrix co-founder and CEO Ryan Fuller hinted about several forthcoming updates. Becoming part of Microsoft will allow the team to scale far more quickly than previously possible. Roughly translated this means that until now they have only been little Voles and now will become huge, with giant whiskers and claws. "Microsoft has a huge vision to reinvent productivity and a set of assets in Office 365 that are fundamental to how work gets done," Fuller said.
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