Stuff mag's surprise gadget award

2 November 2011 Last updated at 22:41 ET

A hybrid laptop-tablet computer is the unexpected winner of Stuff magazine's gadget of the year award.

Asus's Eee Pad Transformer beat the iPad 2 to the top prize, despite stronger demand for Apple's device.

It is a marketing coup for the Taiwanese company ahead of the busy Christmas shopping period. It may also aid Asus with the imminent launch of an upgraded version to its product.

However, other journalists voiced surprise at the choice.

"Despite the iPad 2 being a finer tablet in the purest sense, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer offers so much more," Stuff's consulting editor, Simon Osborne-Walker, told the BBC.

"The clip-on keyboard means it can be as much about productivity as leisure.

"Best tablet? No. Best netbook? Probably not. But as a combo of the two - awesome."

Competition

It is the second time in less than a month that Apple has missed out on one of the UK's leading technology awards.

T3 magazine picked Microsoft's Kinect full-body motion sensor for its Xbox console as its top gadget of 2011.

Stuff also echoed T3's selection of the Samsung Galaxy S2 as its phone of the year.

However, it was far from a complete washout for Apple. It won Stuff's tablet of the year, the magazine's readers voted the iPad 3 their most wanted future gadget, and the MacBook Air laptop was named the best computer.

Other technology journalists invited to the ceremony were caught out by Stuff's headline award.

Pocket-lint's editor, Stuart Miles, said he was "surprised", while CNET's Andrew Holye described it as an "unexpected decision".

Wired.co.uk's editor, Nate Lanxon, said: "The iPad 2 would have been the obvious guess. But the winner is well-deserved, regardless."

Contrasting sales

Asus recently revealed it shipped 1.2 million Eee Pads over the previous two quarters. By contrast Apple said it sold over 20.3 million iPads over a similar period.

However, Stuff's editor suggested the California-based company's lead is no reason to be complacent.

"Apple's most recent products have been more about evolution rather than revolution, which has allowed some competitors to creep up on them," Mr Osborne Walker said.

Asus is expected to launch a successor hybrid device within the coming weeks. Analysts say the new version is likely to include a faster processor and the latest version of Google's Android system.

Other Stuff winners included Virgin's TiVo video recorder as the top home cinema gadget, the Olympus PEN E-P3 as the best camera, and LA Noire as the best videogame.

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Duqu linked to Microsoft document

2 November 2011 Last updated at 09:54 ET

The Duqu computer infection was spread with the help of an infected Microsoft Word document, according to a report.

The research says the Trojan exploited a previously unknown vulnerability embedded in Word files, allowing Duqu to modify computers' security protection.

The code is believed to have been designed to gather intelligence from industrial control-systems.

Microsoft says it is preparing a software patch to address the issue.

The Laboratory of Cryptography and Systems Security (Crysys) at Budapest University made the discovery.

"We carefully analysed the available forensics data from the original incident where Duqu was uncovered," Dr Boldizsar Bencsath, who led the investigation, told the BBC.

"We found suspicious files that we further analysed, and in one case, we were able to prove that the file contains the installer of Duqu and it uses a zero-day exploit."

A zero-day exploit is a computer threat that make use of a previously unknown software error to allow the attacker to gain permissions they should not have.

Dr Bencsath added that it is possible that Duqu may also be installed by other means, but he had not found any evidence to suggest it.

Global attack

The news is being publicised by the internet security firm Symantec.

It says that it has confirmed the Duqu infection at six different computer networks belonging to unidentified organisations across a total of eight countries. They include Iran, India, France and Ukraine.

In addition other security firms have reported suspected infections in a further four countries, including the UK.

Duqu has been compared to last year's Stuxnet worm attack, but Symantec says they operate in two distinct ways.

"Stuxnet was about spreading as far and as wide as possible to hunt down systems that could pass on control of industrial organisations - such as nuclear power plants," said Greg Day, Symantec's director of security strategy.

"Duqu has specifically targeted a number of organisations looking to scan across their internal systems, gather intelligence and pass it back out.

"The sort of things it's collecting are design documents and other information that could be the reconnaissance for a further attack."

Patch

So far neither Symantec nor Crysys have been able to trace who is receiving the data. Efforts to address the exploit are ongoing.

"Microsoft is working with our partners to provide protections for a vulnerability used in targeted attempts to infect computers with the Duqu malware," a company statement said.

"We will be providing a security update for customers through our update process."

Experts say these types of focused attacks appear to be on the rise.

Earlier this week Symantec reported that 29 chemicals firms had been targeted by a separate Trojan named PoisonIvy.

"Industrial espionage is the natural evolution from cybercrime," said Mr Day.

"Cybercrime is like pick pocketing. But these latest threats are like great train robberies, where the attackers have taken time to understand the intended victim and have a carefully constructed plan to rob them."

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Socialbots 'steal' Facebook data

2 November 2011 Last updated at 08:00 ET

Researchers have demonstrated a new technique capable of stealing personal information from Facebook.

Using 'socialbots', computer programmes that mimic real Facebook profiles, the researchers were able to harvest vast quantities of personal data.

Socialbots are increasingly being used by internet criminals and are being offered for sale on the internet for as little as $29 (�18).

Facebook said that the research was overstated and unethical.

A socialbot is a social networking adaption of the wide-scale botnets used by criminals to send out spam.

Making friends

In a traditional botnet, a network of computers are infected by a virus to allow a hi-tech criminal to use them remotely. Often botnet controllers steal data from victims' PCs or use the machines to send out spam or carry out other attacks.

What makes a socialbot different is that it is able to pass itself off as a real Facebook user.

The software takes over control of a social networking profile and from there performs basic activities such as posting messages and sending requests.

The four researchers from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, created 102 socialbots for use in their experiment and one 'botmaster' - software that sent commands to the other bots.

The researchers employed their socialbots over a period of eight weeks. In total the bots attempted to make friends with 8,570 Facebook users. 3,055 accepted the friendships.

The researchers found that the more friendships people had on Facebook, the more likely they were to accept the 'fake' friend.

To prevent triggering Facebook's fraud detection software, the fake accounts only sent 25 requests per day.

Phishing

From the profiles of those they befriended and the extended networks of those friends, the researchers claimed to have 'stolen' 46,500 email addresses and 14,500 home addresses.

In their paper, due to be presented at next month's Annual Computer Security Applications Conference in Florida, the researchers wrote: "As socialbots infiltrate a targeted online social network, they can further harvest private users' data such as email addresses, phone numbers, and other personal data that have monetary value."

"To an adversary, such data is valuable and can be used for online profiling and large-scale email spam and phishing campaigns."

Facebook said that the experiment was unrealistic because the IP addresses used came from a trusted university source, whereas the IP addresses used by real-life criminals would raise alarm bells.

It also said that it had disabled more of the fake accounts than the researchers claimed.

"We have numerous systems designed to detect fake accounts and prevent scraping of information. We are constantly updating these systems to improve their effectiveness and address new kinds of attacks," said a spokesperson.

"We use credible research as part of that process. We have serious concerns about the methodology of the research by the University of British Colombia and we will be putting these concerns to them.

"In addition, as always, we encourage people to only connect with people they actually know and report any suspicious behaviour they observe on the site."

Ethical?

The researchers estimated that a real-life malicious attack could have a success rate of 80%.

"Online social network's security defences, such as the Facebook Immune System, are not effective enough in detecting or stopping a large-scale infiltration as it occurs," they concluded.

"We believe that large-scale infiltration in online social networks is only one of many future cyber threats, and defending against such threats is the first step towards maintaining a safer social web for millions of active web users."

Consultant from security firm Sophos Graham Cluley said the research was "interesting"

"Clearly there's a lesson for Facebook users to learn there about the need to carefully vet who you allow to become your Facebook friend, and what information you choose to share online," he said in his blog.

But he questioned how ethical such research was.

"Facebook's security team is unlikely to look kindly on people who conduct experiments such as that done by the university researchers, and users are reminded that under Facebook's terms of service you are not allowed to create fake profiles, should use your real name, and should only collect information from other users with their consent," he said.

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HP announces ARM-based servers

1 November 2011 Last updated at 14:41 ET

Hewlett Packard plans to make computer servers using low-energy processors based on ARM Holdings' designs.

HP said the equipment would be cheaper to run than current alternatives.

UK-based ARM's chip architecture was originally developed for use in smartphones and other mobile devices.

The British firm said the deal was "a first step" towards increasing its presence in a sector dominated by Intel's X86-based processors.

Lower bills

The chips will be manufactured by Texas-headquartered Calxeda.

It said its Energycore server-on-a-chip would use as little as 1.5 watts. It claimed that is less than a tenth the power of today's most energy-efficient server processors.

Since the chips give off less heat, HP is able to put more of them in a single enclosure. As a result, it said, some companies would find their equipment took up to 94% less space.

But HP stresses the chips should not be viewed as an alternative, rather than a replacement, for Intel's more powerful products.

"There is always a trade off, you have less electrical draw but you have less processing power," David Calmers, HP UK's chief technology officer for servers, storage and networking, told the BBC.

He said the ARM-based chips would be suitable for delivering static web pages, but not tasks that involved heavy number crunching.

HP also plans to offer Intel's energy-efficient Atom processors as an alternative.

Test runs

To help customers decide what best suits their needs, the US firm also plans to open "discovery labs", so they can match their chips to their workload.

The first lab will open in Houston, Texas, and others are planned in Asia and Europe.

Mr Chalmers said he expects that by 2015, the low powered technology would account for about 10% of all servers' workload.

"Energy demands are a growing concern across our customer base. It's being felt most keenly at the hyperscale end - companies like LinkedIn or Facebook with hundreds of millions of users," he said.

"But also applications in more normal scale institutions."

ARM's designs are most commonly found in smartphones, such as Samsung's Galaxy S2, as well as televisions and tablet computers.

If Calxeda's use of its technology proves popular, it could become another lucrative licensing revenue stream. A recent report by research firm Gartner suggested HP was the world's largest server vendor, claiming about 30% of the market.

"We commend HP's innovation in this space and the investment being made to accelerate the development of a new class of compelling, energy-efficient servers," said Lance Howarth, ARM's executive vice president of marketing.

"[We] believe that ARM low-power technology and broad partner ecosystem will provide the ideal foundation for HP to drive a new wave of innovation in the server market."

However, industry watchers are more guarded, noting some customers may find the chips problematic.

"It's encouraging that HP is breaking away from the Intel monopoly. But that is what the software is designed to run on," said Chris Green, principal technology analyst at Davies Murphy Group.

"It's all very well them rolling out an ARM-based chip, but the fact is that the technology isn't necessarily going to be 100% compatible with all the software needed to run on it."

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Ofcom reveals Britons' data diet

1 November 2011 Last updated at 12:30 ET

British households download about 17 gigabytes of data on average every month over their home broadband connections, suggests a report.

Regulator Ofcom's study takes a high level look at the state of the UK's digital communications.

The monthly data diet is equivalent to streaming 11 movies or 12 hours of BBC programmes via iPlayer.

The report reveals which regions are rich in broadband, mobile and digital radio coverage and which lag behind.

As part of the research, Ofcom has produced maps which grade each county or conurbation on how well they support different technologies.

The technologies are fixed broadband, local TV, mobile base stations, digital TV, mobile coverage and digital radio.

Variation

The report divides the UK in 200 areas which are graded on a scale of 1-5 on how well particular technologies fare in that location.

For instance, on fixed broadband speeds only a few areas are ranked as 1 for their high take-up of broadband, higher than average wire speed, and availability of superfast broadband.

Good grades for many of the technologies centre on Birmingham with the broad patch of decent coverage or usage stretching north to Lancashire and south to West Sussex.

Hilly, sparsely populated areas such as mid-Wales and the Scottish highlands rank low for their support of different technologies.

Even within those regions that are relatively well-served by communications technologies not everyone gets as much choice as they should, said the report.

It estimates that about 900,000 premises cannot get 2G signals from all the UK's operators and 7.7 million UK places do not have 3G signals from the five operators that offer it.

The data collected will be used to work out how to spend �150m of government money to tackle mobile not-spots.

The Digital Economy Act requires Ofcom to carry out such studies once every three years.

The regulator says the data collected for this first report would be used as a benchmark by which future surveys would be measured.

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Central London to get free wi-fi

1 November 2011 Last updated at 07:29 ET

Nokia has switched on a trial of a free wi-fi service in central London.

From today until the end of 2011, the public will be able to use the high-speed service in certain parts of the city courtesy of the phone firm.

If the two-month trial is deemed a success, the Finnish company plans to turn it into a fully fledged free wi-fi service early in 2012.

The initiative is one of many that will eventually see London dotted with hotspots offering free net browsing.

Trial run

Nokia has set up 26 hotspots to support the service and these are largely concentrated around West End shopping areas. Victoria, Marylebone and Westminster will also get access points. The firm said people would not need to register or sign in to use the wi-fi.

The offer is the largest such project Nokia has set up. It said it was considering repeating the exercise in cities in Africa and India where telecoms infrastructure is poor.

The hotspots will be located on phone boxes owned and operated by project partner Spectrum Interactive. It said that the full service would involve using many more of its 1,000 sites in London.

The hotspots are built around web links that run at 20 megabits per second but download speeds will be limited to a maximum of 1 megabit per user to ensure others can get at the service.

"The trial is going to help us understand what people are using it for so we can improve it in the future," said Craig Hepburn, Nokia's director of digital and social media.

Free wi-fi is widely already widely available in London. In particular, London's financial district, the Square Mile, has had free wi-fi provided by The Cloud for years.

In Central London free wi-fi is available generally via solitary access points in shops, hotels, pubs and bars. In addition some ISPs, such as BT, give their subscribers free wi-fi via their own-brand wireless services.

The fragmented nature of existing services has led the Greater London Authority to encourage boroughs to set up free wi-fi along the busiest streets. Projects for wi-fi in Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea as well as Hammersmith & Fulham and other regions are believed to be in the closing stages of negotiation.

There are also ongoing talks to put wi-fi on London tube stations so passengers can browse the web while they wait for a train.

There is also a plan to provide free wi-fi in and around London for the 2012 Olympics to help visitors and tourists find their way around and to make it easier for the sights and sounds of the games to be shared.

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London to host cyberspace summit

1 November 2011 Last updated at 04:16 ET

London is preparing to host a major international conference on the threat from cyber security attacks.

Representatives of 60 nations are gathering to discuss how to tackle the rising levels of cybercrime.

It comes a day after intelligence agency GCHQ warned that cyber attacks on the UK were at "disturbing" levels.

Foreign Secretary William Hague convened the London Conference on Cyberspace, and urged a "global co-ordinated response" on policy.

Experts attending the two-day conference include EU digital supremo Neelie Kroes, with leading cybersecurity experts and technology entrepreneurs such as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Cisco vice-president Brad Boston and Joanna Shields, a senior executive at Facebook.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been due to attend, but cancelled the trip on Monday night after her 92-year-old mother fell ill.

'Very real threat'

On Monday, Baroness Pauline Neville Jones, the prime minister's special representative to business on cybersecurity, said Russia and China - who are both attending the conference - were some of the worst culprits involved in cyber-attacks.

And Iain Lobban, the head of GCHQ, warned that a "significant" attempt was made to target the computer systems of the Foreign Office and other government departments over the summer.

Some reports at the time quoted intelligence sources as saying China was responsible for that attack.

With cybercrime estimated to cost (�600bn) a year worldwide, Mr Lobban, writing in the Times ahead of the summit, warned that the "disturbing" levels of illegal activity online represented "a very real threat to our prosperity".

Britain said it wanted to develop a set of international "rules of the road", establishing "norms of acceptable behaviour" in cyberspace, while stopping short of a full treaty advocated by some countries.

Mr Hague said a "collective endeavour" was needed to tap into the "enormous potential" of cyberspace.

"How to ensure we can all reap the benefits of a safe and secure cyberspace for generations to come is one of the greatest challenges we face," said Mr Hague.

"The response does not lie in the hands of any one government or country but it is too important to be left to chance. This needs to be a collective endeavour, involving all those who have a stake in cyberspace.

"The ideas and proposals we hope to emerge from the conference will develop into the 'London Agenda' - an inclusive and focused approach to help us realise the enormous potential cyberspace offers for a more prosperous, safe and open networked world."

The government has put aside �650m of additional funding to help tackle computer-based threats over the next four years, Mr Hague added.

'Drain the swamp'

Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, said there had been a "great growth" in cybercrime over the past six years.

As many as 5% of PCs are infected with malware - short for malicious software - Prof Anderson said, and there was a one in 20 risk that any given computer was sending spam without the owner's knowledge.

"If you want to defend against this kind of threat it's not enough to just shoot a few crocodiles, you have to drain the swamp," Prof Anderson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"We need action against the whole ecology of cybercrime, not purely defensive measures to protect, for example, the Foreign Office."

Misha Glenny, author of Dark Market, which looks at the issue of cybercrime, said those involved were not, on the whole, engaged in traditional organised criminal activities.

But he added: "We're seeing a migration of traditional organised crime groups over into cyber, exploiting a new type of person engaged in crime who tends to be young, technically sufficient, very good at maths and physics, but perhaps not your traditional criminal figure in the outside world."

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Chemicals industry hacking attack

31 October 2011 Last updated at 15:56 ET

At least 29 firms involved in the chemicals industry were targeted by a recent series of cyber-attacks traced to China, according to Symantec.

The security company said it had evidence a further 19 companies, including defence specialists, had also been affected.

It said the attacks began in late July and lasted until mid-September.

Symantec said the campaign was focused on intellectual property, including formulas and design processes.

While the report did not reveal the names of any of the companies involved, it did say they included Fortune 100 firms.

It disclosed that at least 12 of the infected companies were based in the US, five in the UK, and two in Denmark.

Several of the firms were also said to have developed materials for military vehicles.

Trojans

Symantec said workers at the organisations were sent emails asking them to open an attachment.

It said in some cases they claimed to be invitations from established business partners, in others a security update.

The firm said if the attachments were opened they installed a piece of code known as a Trojan horse, which allowed the hackers to obtain details of the targets' computer networks. The attackers were then able to use this information to locate and copy files to another part of their targets' systems, from where they were extracted.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

This is unfortunately becoming a new normal behaviour"

End Quote Greg Day CTO, Symantec

Symantec identified the Trojan involved as PoisonIvy, which it said was developed by a Chinese speaker.

The firm also said it had traced the attacks back to a "20-something male located in the Hebei region of China" who funnelled the process through a US computer server.

Symantec said that when prompted, the man provided contact details for someone who would "perform hacking for hire". However, the company was unable to establish whether this was the same person or a different individual.

The incidents are being linked to earlier attacks on carmakers and human rights organisations.

"This is unfortunately becoming a new normal behaviour," Symantec's chief technology officer, Greg Day, told the BBC.

"We had at least a decade of cybercrime which generally targeted anybody. Then we had the emergence of very skilled techniques involving a lot of time and effort to target global organisations.

"What we have now is almost the commercialisation of those techniques, using elements such as advanced persistent threats to pursue espionage and intellectual property theft, whether that is for their own gain or resale."

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BT speeds up UK broadband rollout

31 October 2011 Last updated at 06:49 ET

Telecoms provider BT is accelerating its fibre broadband rollout. It now plans to offer "super-fast" internet speeds to two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014.

The target is a year ahead of its original plan.

The firm says its main product will offer maximum download speeds about 10 times faster than at present, at 70-100Mbps on average.

That will help it compete against Virgin Media's 100Mbps offer.

BT says it is employing an additional 520 engineers and bringing forward �300m of investment to achieve the goal.

The company says six million premises already have access to its fibre broadband technology, about 25% of the total.

It aims to increase that to about 10 million properties, or about 40% of those in the UK, by the end of next year.

"Our rollout of fibre broadband is one of the fastest in the world and so it is great to be ahead of what was an already challenging schedule," said BT's chief executive Ian Livingston.

Global position

A recent report suggested the UK ranked 25th in the world in terms of average broadband connection speeds.

Akamai's State of the Internet Report said the average UK connection speed was 5Mbps compared to the Netherlands' 8.5Mbps and South Korea's 13.8Mbps.

"For a long time people thought the UK was on a low-fibre diet and it was taking us a long time compared to everyone else," said Matthew Howett, senior analyst at the telecoms consultants Ovum.

"These investments are expensive and risky - especially when you don't know if people even want the faster product. But BT has seen demand for its top speeds and that's encouraging them to roll out the fibre more quickly."

Speeds of up to 100Mbps will allow households to stream multiple high definition television programmes, music and games at the same time.

Experts say most homes will not need such fast speeds for the foreseeable future, however it will help future-proof the network against further developments.

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'Disturbing' cyber attacks on UK

30 October 2011 Last updated at 22:08 ET

The UK has been subject to a "disturbing" number of cyber attacks, the director of communications intelligence agency GCHQ has said.

Sensitive data on government computers has been targeted, along with defence, technology and engineering firms' designs, Iain Lobban said in the Times.

There was a "significant" unsuccessful internet-based attack on Foreign Office computer systems this summer, he added.

On Tuesday, the government hosts a two-day conference over the issue.

Foreign Secretary William Hague convened the London Conference on Cyberspace against a backdrop of the UK treating the threat from cyber warfare as seriously as that from international terrorism.

It aims to bring together political leaders, such as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and EU digital supremo Neelie Kroes, with leading cyber security experts and technology entrepreneurs such as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Cisco vice-president Brad Boston.

'Threat to economy'

Mr Hague believes a "global co-ordinated response" is required to forge policy on cyber development.

Writing in the Times, Mr Lobban said such an inclusive approach was vital.

"The volume of e-crime and attacks on government and industry systems continues to be disturbing," he wrote.

"I can attest to attempts to steal British ideas and designs - in the IT, technology, defence, engineering and energy sectors, as well as other industries - to gain commercial advantage or to profit from secret knowledge of contractual arrangements.

"Such intellectual property theft doesn't just cost the companies concerned; it represents an attack on the UK's continued economic wellbeing."

Mr Lobban added that government online taxation and benefits services could be targeted in future and said a black economy had already developed which saw UK citizens' credit card details offered for sale.

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