TechEye

Wales dubs Cameron’s encryption blocking “moronic”
Sony might pull out of smartphone market
Dell in talks to buy EMC
Hack helped hackers
US businesses fear EU data ruling
Cisco man angles for shift to security

Wales dubs Cameron’s encryption blocking “moronic”

Posted: 08 Oct 2015 12:38 AM PDT

Moves by UK Prime Minister David "I love bacon" Cameron to block the use of encryption have been dubbed "moronic" by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

Cameron thinks that by ending end-to-end encryption terrorists will have nowhere to hide and MI16 will know where they are going to place the bombs and have the coppers in place to stop them.

Wales is less impressed saying it was far too late for Cameron to stop end-to-end encryption and it was "a moronic, very stupid thing to do."

It would be a bit like leaving your daughter in a pub we guess, but no one would ever do anything at stupid.

Wales called on internet users around the world to use end-to-end encryption, to ensure that their personal data and habits cannot be spied on.

Speaking at the IP Expo in London, Wales said that all major traffic will be encrypted soon – and that's a good thing.

Wikipedia has adopted SSL encryption technology for all of its sites around the world, which means that the browsing of users can now not be detected by agencies or governments.

He said that there was a trend towards SSL as people have a higher understanding of a safe and secure public internet. It was no longer cost-prohibitive to encrypt all your data, thanks to advances in Moore's Law advances and increased consumer understanding of the need for security, he said.

Efforts by governments and other agencies around the world have actually made it harder to track individuals, as major news stories such as the Edward Snowden revelations have heightened the public's sense of the need for security.

Sony might pull out of smartphone market

Posted: 08 Oct 2015 12:35 AM PDT

Next year will be Sony's last chance to make cash out of smartphones or it will pull out of the market.

The outfits' CEO has flagged next year as a make-or-break year for its struggling smartphones, saying he will consider other options for the business if it failed to turn profitable.

Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai has engineered a successful restructuring drive at Sony, with recent results showing improvement thanks to cost cuts, an exit from weak businesses such as PCs, as well as strong sales of image sensors and videogames.

However Sony's smartphone business is a blot on his perfect restructuring.

“We will continue with the business as long as we are on track with the scenario of breaking even next year. Otherwise, we haven’t eliminated the consideration of alternative options.”

Sony and other Japanese electronics makers have struggled to compete with cheaper Asian rivals, but then again few are making money out of smartphones.

Sony phones including its Xperia-branded smartphones held only 17.5 percent of the market in Japan and less than 1 percent in the North America, according to company data last year.

“I do have a feeling that a turnaround in our electronics business has shown progress. The result of three years of restructuring are starting to show. But we still need to carry out estructuring in smartphones,” Hirai said.

Dell in talks to buy EMC

Posted: 08 Oct 2015 12:31 AM PDT

Tin box shifter Dell is in talks to buy data storage company EMC in what could be one of the biggest technology deals ever.

Dell has been seen wining and dining bankers to get enough cash to push the deal through. EMC has a market capitalization of about $50 billion so he needs a fair bit to pull the deal off.

The move could further strengthen Dell’s presence among corporate clients at a time when Michael

Dell has been trying to transform the company he founded in 1984 into a complete provider of enterprise computing services like HP and IBM.

It is amazing really because it is only two years since Dell was taken private for $24.9 billion by founder Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake.

EMC has been struggling under pressure from activist investor and shareholder Elliott Management which wants the company to spin off its majority-owned VMware unit.

The House of Elliott plans to give EMC most of October to respond to its demands.
It would appear that the Dell deal has been a while in making. In September 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported that EMC was exploring options and had held talks with Dell and HP.

Hack helped hackers

Posted: 08 Oct 2015 12:29 AM PDT

A US court has decided that journalist Matthew Keys helped members of the Anonymous hacking collective break into his former employers' computers.

Keys, 28, was indicted in 2013 for conspiracy to cause damage to a protected computer and two other counts, after being accused of giving hackers access to the Tribune computer systems in December 2010. Keys had just left a job at a Tribune-owned television station after words with a dispute with a supervisor.

The hackers then went on to change a story on the Tribune’s Los Angeles Times website.

Keys denied the charges and his brief Tor Ekeland said he would appeal the verdict.

Sentencing is scheduled for January 2016. The Justice Department has not determined what sentence it will request, but it will likely be less than five years, spokeswoman Lauren Horwood said.

Prosecutors claimed Keys urged on the hackers by giving them a password. But Keys’s lawyer had told jurors he was operating as a professional reporter trying to gather information about members of Anonymous.

The events occurred before Keys joined Thomson Reuters as a Reuters.com editor in 2012. A month after Keys was charged, he said Reuters dismissed him.

US businesses fear EU data ruling

Posted: 08 Oct 2015 12:27 AM PDT

US companies are fearing that an EU ruling on data might hurt them and cause them to lose business in the Old Country.

An EU court struck down a deal to let US and European companies easily transfer personal data between continents and it could mean some US tech companies frozen out of the market or replaced by EU rivals.

Coupon company RetailMeNot and security software outfit Symantec said a European change to rules governing transatlantic personal data transfers would hurt US companies and called for a quick fix.

A quick fix is unlikely. The EU seems in no mood to fix a law that the US broke by spying on EU businesses, citizens and politicians.

Big Tech giants like IBM are less likely to be effected because they can use a number of different legal arrangements they say will keep their data flowing.

Midsize companies including document management company Adobe Systems, design software maker Autodesk and coupon company RetailMeNot relied on Safe Harbour.

Adobe said it was “evaluating options” to transfer personal data between continents and Autodesk also said it was evaluating the decision.

Symantec said it has mechanisms in place to legally protect data transfers, but the uncertainty following the ruling has made it difficult for such companies to determine their next steps and how much business might be lost.

The company said that setting up data servers in Europe would not solve anything as you can't isolate the flow of data only within one territory or jurisdiction. Data storage without processing would not be enough.

The US Chamber of Commerce has warned that companies could create new agreements with their customers in the European Union, but the lack of clarity and high costs could leave smaller firms with a “disproportionate share” of the burden of new legal requirements.

On the EU side, companies are rubbing their paws with glee. The change could be an opportunity for European companies like Orange and Deutsche Telekom to take business from U.S. companies.

Customers, both private individuals and businesses, will have to reassess their data plans and to look at storing their data within Europe, a source close to the company said.

IBM, Facebook, Google and Amazon will have to face additional legal arrangements such as “model clauses” which set privacy standards between the sender and receiver of the data and allow them to continue data transfers.

Some have agreements with European users who consent to having their data transferred to the United States. Facebook, for example, has a registration process that allows it to obtain consent from users when they sign up for the service.

Cisco man angles for shift to security

Posted: 07 Oct 2015 08:23 AM PDT

David Gieckeler, senior VP Cisco security gave his views at the Canalys Channels Forums at Barcelona about threats people and businesses will face in the future. And he focused on the Angler attack which targets hosting providers rather than end users.

Gieckeler was responding to the announcement made by Cisco yesterday, which claimed it had stopped a cyber crime catastrophe.

But Gieckeler warned that the next wave of the internet of things with 50 billion devices provides big opportunities for people and enterprises, but he also pointed out the hacking threat it poses.

Cisco views billions of queries and monitors 100 malware and other attacks a second, he said. Cisco is blocking billions of threats a day. He said that security is the number one concern of enterprises across the world and it's risen to a board level matter because threats increase because hacking is very lucrative. The global hacker economy is three to five times the size of the security industry, he claimed.

He said that security is now the "number one priority" at Cisco and hacking will grow even more over the coming years. At some point a hacker is going to get in, so enterprises should think of the act before it happens.

He claimed it takes companies an average of 100 to 200 days for the techies to hunt down a threat.

It's being speculated that Cisco, like HP, will spin off into two separate firms – one based on security and the other on networking.

He made no comment on that, but suggested that as the threats became greater, the vendors multiplied and people and companies were unsure how to defend themselves against the threat.

Obviously, he believes that Cisco has the answer.

But he would say that, wouldn't he?

* For more coverage of the Canalys conference, go to our sister title, ChannelEye.