US to target fake pill web sales

17 December 2010 Last updated at 05:36 ET

Online stores that sell fake drugs or pills without prescriptions are being targeted by the US government.

It has set up an initiative that will try to shut down the web stores and educate people about the dangers of buying drugs from such places.

Search firms, payment providers and net hosting firms have all pledged to help the crackdown.

Research suggests about 36 million Americans have bought medicines from unlicensed web pharmacies.

"Those who sell prescription drugs online without a valid prescription are operating illegally, undercutting the laws that were put in place to protect patients, and are thereby endangering the public health," said Victoria Espinel, US intellectual property enforcement co-ordinator, in a statement.

"It is a real wake-up call that so many Americans have engaged in this dangerous behaviour," she said.

Web firms joining the initiative include search giant Google, domain registration firm Network Solutions, hosting companies as well as payment processors Paypal, Visa and Mastercard.

Together, the firms hope to tackle every link in the chain that keeps unlicensed pharmacies operating by stopping them showing up in search results, taking their websites offline, delisting the domains they use and stopping payments reaching them.

Many spammers align with online pharmacies and direct those who click on links in junk mail to the pedlars of fake pills.

The commercial partners in the initiative will also share information with law enforcement agencies and fund public awareness campaigns of the dangers of buying drugs from unlicensed pharmacies.

"The abuse of prescription medications is one of the most troubling public health problems in our country today," said Steve Pasierb, president of the non-profit Drugfree.org which runs education campaigns about drug abuse.

Drugfree and the Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies are planning research to find out why one in six Americans have bought drugs from web pharmacies. They will also look into what they buy and try to uncover the reasons some people see the practice as risky and others do not.

The initiative was announced at a White House summit on intellectual property and is one result of a plan the Obama administration submitted to Congress in mid-2010 that committed to tackling counterfeit medicines.

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Assange tells of 'smear campaign'

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Julian Assange spoke to Newsnight's Kirsty Wark after being released on bail

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Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has said attempts to extradite him to Sweden over sexual assault allegations are part of a "smear" campaign.

Mr Assange is staying at a house near Bungay, Suffolk, after being freed on bail by the High Court in London while awaiting extradition proceedings.

He said more information would be published by the whistle-blowing website following his release.

Mr Assange denies the allegations made by Swedish prosecutors.

'Disturbing aspects'

Speaking to BBC Newsnight, the 39-year-old Australian said of the case against him: "My feeling is in fact that there's a number of different interests - personal, domestic and international - that are all feeding from this process and encouraging it and pushing it along.

"But it is revealing some important things. It's revealing some disturbing aspects of Europe.

"For example, that any person in any European country can be extradited to any other European country without the provision of any evidence whatsoever."

Referring to the Wikileaks website, he said: "Now that I am back to assist the directing of our ship, our work will proceed in a faster manner.

"But as we have seen with my absence, things are well set up to proceed even without my direct involvement."

BBC Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark asked Mr Assange if he would give his word of honour that he would not try to abscond before the next hearing.

He replied: "We have done everything by the book. We have tried as hard as possible to set up a situation where we can clear my name of these allegations.

"But what we have not seen is the provision of any evidence or material to allow us to do that."

'Continuing vendetta'

Mr Justice Ouseley ordered Mr Assange be bailed on payment of �240,000 in cash and sureties.

The judge imposed strict bail conditions including wearing an electronic tag, reporting to police every day and observing a curfew.

Mr Assange must also reside at a manor home on the Norfolk-Suffolk border owned by Vaughan Smith, a Wikileaks-supporting journalist and owner of the Frontline Club in London. Mr Assange had spent the previous eight nights in prison.

Mr Assange's solicitor Mark Stephens said after the court appearance that the bail appeal was part of a "continuing vendetta by the Swedes".

Speaking to the BBC after his release, Mr Assange said there was a rumour from his lawyers in the US that there had been an indictment made against him there.

A spokeswoman from the US Department of Justice would only confirm there was "an ongoing investigation into the Wikileaks matter".

Mr Assange has received the backing of a number of high-profile supporters, including human rights campaigners Jemima Khan and Bianca Jagger, and film director Ken Loach.

Sex allegations

Wikileaks has published hundreds of sensitive American diplomatic cables, details of which have appeared in the Guardian in the UK and several other newspapers around the world.

He has been criticised in the US, where former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has said he should be hunted down like the al-Qaeda leadership.

Mr Assange argues the allegations against him are politically motivated and designed to take attention away from the material appearing on Wikileaks.

Mr Assange is accused of having unprotected sex with a woman, identified only as Miss A, when she insisted he use a condom.

He is also accused of having unprotected sex with another woman, Miss W, while she was asleep.

A full extradition hearing should normally take place within 21 days of the arrest. Mr Assange was arrested on 7 December, so this should be by 28 December.

However, in such a high profile case, it is possible that a full extradition hearing will not take place for several months.

At that hearing Mr Assange will be able to challenge the warrant and raise any defences to the extradition request.

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Facebook suffers brief shut down

17 December 2010 Last updated at 03:58 ET

Facebook was forced to take itself offline after a staff member accidentally leaked internal product prototypes.

The social network was unreachable for about 20-30 minutes while the mess was cleared up.

The outage happened as the site introduced redesigned brand pages, a revamped photos section and a new page management feature.

In a statement on its blog, Facebook apologised for the brief downtime.

"For a brief period of time, some internal prototypes were made public to a number of people externally." read the message. "As a result, we took the site down for a few minutes. It's back up, and we apologise for the inconvenience."

The BBC understands that the problem arose when code for a number of new products was exposed to the public before they were ready to be launched. This included a feature called "memories" that indexed what people have done on Facebook chronologically.

"They're not pleased that they had to shut the website down for 30 minutes," said Sam Gustin at Wired.com.

"But it comes with the territory when you have a culture of iterative innovation, they say," he said. "Sometimes code gets pushed out before it's ready."

"There's probably an engineer at Facebook who is feeling pretty sheepish that he or she caused the world's biggest online social network to shut itself down for a half an hour," added Mr Gustin.

The news blog ReadWriteWeb saw the funny side of things by listing five things to do during a Facebook outage. They included resorting to instant messaging, using the phone to connect with people and reading a book.

On Twitter, one widely circulated tweet doing the rounds read "Facebook is down. Half the world population had suddenly become productive. The other half of the population is using Twitter."

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Wikileaks activists go analogue

16 December 2010 Last updated at 09:35 ET

Online activist group Anonymous has once again changed tactics in its campaign to support Wikileaks, eschewing web-based attacks.

At least one faction of the group has urged supporters to plaster the streets with pro-Wikileaks propaganda on 18 December.

The group had earlier attacked websites of firms they accused of colluding with governments to censor Wikileaks.

The Metropolitan Police has confirmed it is investigating the web incidents.

Now Operation Paperstorm, as it is known, aims to get volunteers to print pro-Wikileaks posters and plaster them across towns and cities.

It has asked supporters to distribute the material on Saturday - when many people will be in town centres finishing off their Christmas shopping.

Volunteers have been translating the posters in to different languages.

Low tech attacks

The campaign is another example of Anonymous going low-tech.

Earlier this week, people associated with the group began a campaign to flood the fax machines of PayPal, Mastercard and Amazon with copies of secret memos published by Wikileaks.

The firms were targeted after refusing Wikileaks' custom and had previously had their websites attacked.

Within Anonymous there has been a growing consensus to change tactics, Phill Midwinter, who describes himself as an active member of the collective, told BBC News.

"We don't want to annoy or make life difficult for internet users," he said.

Paperstorm was one of "about 10" initiatives that would enable Anonymous to publicise the leaked cables and the case of Bradley Manning, the US Army intelligence specialist being held in conjunction with the leaks, said Mr Midwinter.

"They're examples of how we can use crowd-sourcing to get our message across, without doing anything illegal," he added.

But while some connected with Anonymous seek less inflammatory options to express their opinion other than attacking websites, others may be about to launch new ones.

Several programmers have posted updated versions of the tool, LOIC, used to launch the initial denial-of-service attacks.

These bombard websites with page requests until the servers are unable to cope, effectively taking the page offline. The group has had mixed success with its efforts to take websites offline.

One of the new tools, Hive Mind LOIC, has been adapted so that it can be controlled from a central source, such as a Twitter feed.

Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police has confirmed that it was investigating a string of attacks, which Anonymous claimed to have carried out.

A Met spokesman confirmed that earlier this year it "received a number of allegations of 'denial-of-service' cyber attacks against several companies by a group calling themselves Anonymous".

Earlier this year a series of attacks hit the websites of organisations that targeted web pirates.

"The Metropolitan Police Service is monitoring the situation relating to recent and ongoing denial of service attacks and will investigate where appropriate," it said.

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Nokia Apple patent row escalates

16 December 2010 Last updated at 10:42 ET

Nokia has extended its legal action against Apple by filing 13 more patent infringement claims.

Nokia's latest legal move involved filing claims in courts in the UK, Germany and Holland.

The claims build on legal action started in October 2009 when Nokia sued Apple, alleging 10 patent infringements.

In response, Apple countersued and then extended the action accusing Nokia of infringing more of its patents.

The latest action is the fourth time that Nokia has filed claims against Apple. Earlier claims in Delaware and Wisconsin covered alleged patent infringements of 3G and wi-fi technology.

Another was a petition to the US International Trade Commission which Nokia asked to halt imports of Apple products. Apple asked the ITC to do the same to Nokia products.

Legal action between the two was suspended while the ITC investigated the competing claims. Apple and Nokia took their arguments to the ITC earlier this month but no ruling has yet been released.

The latest infringement claims from Nokia cover a variety of technologies including touch interfaces, caller ID and display illumination.

Announcing its legal action, Nokia said some of the patents had been filed more than a decade before the launch of the iPhone.

Apple has not responded to a request for comment on the latest legal filing.

Soon after Nokia filed its initial legal action in 2009, Apple countersued and then in September 2010 sued Nokia in the UK saying it had violated nine of its patented technologies.

Both sides in the dispute have always denied each other's claims.

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Hack triggers blitz on passwords

15 December 2010 Last updated at 07:42 ET

Millions of web users are being asked to reset their passwords as concerns spread over a major hacking attack.

Yahoo, Twitter and LinkedIn have asked users to change their details, days gossip site Gawker was hacked.

Online game World of Warcraft, which has more than 12 million subscribers, has also asked some users to reset their passwords.

Blizzard, the company behind the game, said it was an attempt to "minimise the effects" of the Gawker breach.

Although thousands of Twitter accounts were compromised after the attack, there have been few other reports of damage directly linked to the breach.

Many companies, however, have taken steps to identify users at risk and warn them before an exploit can take place. A spokesman for LinkedIn said it necessary to take "proactive security measures" to screen users thought to be in danger.

Defence mode

The attack on Gawker, which runs one of the world's most popular blog networks, was carried out over the weekend by an organisation calling itself Gnosis.

The group - which says it was making a protest at the site's perceived "arrogance" - subsequently published account details of 1.3 million Gawker users online, including a significant number of passwords.

Analysis of the breach has triggered a widespread defensive response because it emerged that many users had chosen common words and codes that left them wide open to abuse.

Documents show that the most popular password among Gawker users was "123456", followed by "password" and "12345678".

Other common terms, used by hundreds of people, included "monkey", "qwerty" and "consumer".

Although security experts warn against the use of passwords that are easy to guess, research suggests such behaviour is increasingly common online.

According to a study by computer security company Sophos, 33% of people admitted using the same password for every single website they visit.

A further 48% said they used just a handful of different codes, while just one in five said they never used the same password twice.

The firm's Graham Cluley said that the domino effect evident among web companies exposed a number of significant issues.

While it was important to remind users that their passwords should be changed regularly, he said, the warnings sent out to users did not always address the central issue of poor password choices.

"The bad guys already have databases of the most common passwords, and they look a lot like this," he said.

"It's no bad thing to try and help, but websites should give users more information about how to create a secure password."

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Three scraps smartphone data caps

15 December 2010 Last updated at 06:53 ET

Mobile operator Three has scrapped its mobile data caps in an effort to gain more smartphone customers.

It said users needed all-you-can-eat data plans in order to make the most of their devices.

Demand for data is increasing as more people use their handsets to connect to the web as well as make voice calls.

Experts say it could force other operators to rethink data limits, introduced this year as networks struggled to cope with demand.

But it could put also put strain on Three's network.

"It is a bold move by Three and goes against the prevailing tide set by other networks who are trying to rein in data usage," said Ben Wood, an analyst with research firm CCS Insight.

"This is great news for prolific mobile data users but Three will need to be careful it does not end up attracting all the extreme users who have proved a real headache to rival networks with their excessive data usage."

Mobile operators, including Three, introduced data caps in the summer over fears that some users were consuming so much data it was putting unacceptable strain on networks.

Most operators offers data caps of around 500 megabytes (MB) a month for basic phone tariffs.

Three offered the highest data cap at 1 gigabyte (GB) per month.

"We were typically seeing people using around 400 to 500 megs at the moment but there was a large number who regularly go over the 1 gigabyte limit, enough to warrant us doing this," said a spokesman for Three.

Now users of its One Plan tariff can get 2,000 any-network voice minutes, 5,000 Three-to-Three minutes, 5,000 texts and any amount of data for �25 a month.

Such aggressive pricing is historically easier for Three, said Ian Fogg, an analyst with Forrester.

"Three is still one of the smaller operators and is working to acquire customers," he said.

Data notspots

Taking away data caps will make things easier for consumers, some of whom have fallen foul of data caps and ended up with huge bills.

"The latest smartphones stretch far beyond the capabilities of a traditional handset. All-you-can-eat tariffs will give users the freedom to explore these to the limit without the fear of running up extortionate bills," said Ernest Doku, a communications expert from comparison site uSwitch.

It will also lay down the gauntlet to other operators.

"It will be interesting to see how the competition will react. They will certainly not find it easy to handle the same influx of traffic as Three's data-savvy 3G infrastructure - nor will they be willing to give it away for free - making it difficult to see them follow suit with all-you-can-eat alternatives," said Mr Doku.

As mobile phones become the conduit to a world of apps, maps, social media updates, e-mail, music and video calls so there is increasing attention on how quickly the mobile network works.

The UK's 3G networks are notoriously patchy with mobile data speeds varying from provider to provider, town to town and even from street to street.

In an attempt to map the UK's data blackspots, comparison site Top10 is offering a web and iPhone app for customers to see and record their 3G speeds.

Initial data, based on 1,000 speed tests, shows that Vodafone offers the fastest connections, with an average of 3.04Mbps (megabits per second), compared to 2.61Mbps for 02 and 2.61Mb for Orange.

Three averaged 1.48Mbps and T-Mobile came bottom of the league table with an average of 1.40Mbps.

Mr Fogg predicts that operators could start offering tariffs based on speeds, with higher data rates being made available to those on premium packages.

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Jeopardy trial for supercomputer

14 December 2010 Last updated at 18:54 ET By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

An IBM supercomputer will take on two human contestants in a TV showdown of artificial intelligence.

IBM's supercomputer Watson will compete in an edition of the popular US quiz show Jeopardy on 14 February for a prize of $1m (�634,000).

It is reminiscent of a 1997 contest between an IBM computer and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.

The TV show is an important test for Big Blue's work in the field of artificial intelligence.

"The big challenge we see here is helping people really appreciate the power and limits of the technology we are developing with Watson," Dr David Ferrucci, IBM's chief scientist of Watson computing told BBC News.

The aim is to have Watson, which was named after IBM's founder Thomas J Watson, to mimic human intelligence by deciphering and answering questions without being connected to the internet.

Watson is a new question-answering system based on natural language.

"What I see is the potential for computers to help us with our tremendous frustration in dealing with the huge glut of information that is doubling every year," said Dr Ferrucci.

"Just imagine being able to converse with a computer in an intelligent dialogue to help you understand and leverage all that information out there, so that people can focus on solving their problem and not get overwhelmed by information. That is what Watson is about."

IBM said that the technology could be applied in a number of areas such as health care for accurately diagnosing patients, parsing legal documents, or to solve customer problems at technical support centres.

Ultimate test

Jeopardy is seen as the ultimate challenge in the artificial intelligence world because the game's clues involve analysing subtle meanings, irony, riddles and other complexities where humans excel and machines do not.

Dr Ferrucci said the tough part for Watson is that it has to "know what it knows with utmost confidence".

"Otherwise if it buzzes in and gets the answer wrong that is bad on Jeopardy because you lose money and lose the game."

Watson has been preparing for its big moment in the spotlight by playing against previous Jeopardy winners. To date it has played 55 games but IBM is keeping mum about how well Watson performed.

The contestants willing to pit their wits against Watson are Ken Jennings who won 74 games in a row - the most consecutive victories ever - and Brad Rutter, who scored the most money with winnings of more than $3m.

IBM said it would donate its winnings to charity while Mr Jennings and Mr Rutter said they would give half of their prize money away.

"Whether we win or lose we are reasonably confident going forward in the competition and I think it is important to play competitively," said Dr Ferrucci.

The showdown will be spread over three days that will air on TV from 14-16 February.

It is not the first time that IBM has pitted man against machine. The most famous head to head battle was in 1997 when a computer called Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov.

To compete at chess, the company built an extremely fast computer that could calculate 200 million chess moves per second based on a fixed problem.

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Yahoo cutting its workforce by 4%

14 December 2010 Last updated at 17:26 ET

Yahoo has confirmed that it is cutting its workforce by 4% or 600 people.

The internet firm has now announced redundancies four times in three years, as it cuts costs to try to lift profits that trail bigger rival Google.

The redundancies also follow after Google recently announced a 10% pay increase for every member of staff.

In 2008 Yahoo rejected a $47.5bn (�30bn) bid from Microsoft. Today its market capitalisation - the combined value of its shares - totals $21.68bn.

Yahoo said in a statement: "Today's personnel changes are part of our ongoing strategy to best position Yahoo for revenue growth and margin expansion, and to support our strategy to deliver differentiated products to the marketplace."

The company's revenues have risen by less than 2% so far this year, compared with growth of 23% at Google.

Maggie Shiels, the BBC's technology reporter in Silicon Valley, said: "The Yahoo job cuts come in stark contrast to what is happening in Silicon Valley as a whole, where companies like Google and Facebook have embarked on an aggressive hiring spree.

"Undoubtedly some of those employees who have been given pink slips are likely to see job offers landing in their email boxes amid a fierce battle for talent in the Valley.

"As for the prospects of Yahoo's CEO Carol Bartz, these cuts are only likely to intensify pressure on her and increase criticism of her role in failing to improve the fortunes of the once mighty internet company."

Yahoo had 14,100 employees at the end of September.

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Government warned on web attacks

14 December 2010 Last updated at 07:43 ET

The UK's national security adviser Sir Peter Ricketts has warned that government websites could become the next target for pro-Wikileaks hackers.

He told civil servants that websites used to file tax returns or claim benefits could be the most vulnerable.

So far attacks from the Anonymous group of hacktivists have concentrated on firms perceived to be anti-Wikileaks.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange faces an extradition hearing in London on Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the Prime Minister told a press briefing that Sir Peter had spoken to permanent secretaries about the security of government websites in the light of pro-Wikileaks attacks.

"The priority would be websites that dealt with information that belonged to members of the public such as the DWP [Department for Work and Pensions] and HMRC [Revenues and Customs], he said.

The government did not want to speculate on the scale of the problem.

Data flood

UK web attacks could be likely because Mr Assange is due in court in London later. He is wanted by authorities in Sweden for questioning over two sex crimes. He denies the crimes and will fight extradition, his lawyer said.

His mother Christine Assange, who has visited him in prison, said he remained committed to the ideals of Wikileaks.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

Many of us are law-abiding citizens of our respective countries around the world"

End Quote Phill Midwinter Anonymous member

She also passed on his thoughts on the firms which have withdrawn services from the whistle-blowing site.

"We now know that Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and others are instruments of US foreign policy. It's not something we knew before," Mr Assange said.

The US government has denied that it wrote to individual firms, asking them to stop doing business with Wikileaks.

To date, members of Anonymous - a loose-knit group of net campaigners - have focused their distributed denial-of-service attacks on these firms rather than governments.

The attacks, which flood websites with so much traffic that they fall over, have had some success.

Both Mastercard and Visa, which have stopped processing payments to the Wikileaks site, experienced web outages last week.

The attacks are co-ordinated via an online tool which members of Anonymous are being encouraged to download.

The tool, which volunteers people's computers to become part of the attack, has now been downloaded more than 80,000 times.

The attacks are a protest against attempts to close down Wikileaks and end the publication of 250,000 secret US diplomatic cables.

'Cyber mob'

Some have described the fight between Anonymous, Wikileaks and the US government as the "first infowar".

But security experts have downplayed the conflict.

"It was a demonstration, a protest, nothing more than political theatre - entertaining and influential but not war," James Lewis, a specialist in cybersecurity at the Washington think-tank the Centre for International and Strategic Studies, CSIS, told BBC News.

Allan Friedman, a research director at the US Brookings Institution's technology innovation centre, agreed.

"It's very much not a cyberwar. If we are calling it war, we are devaluing what war is. It's a cyber mob.

"Mobs can be destructive but they tend not to have a long lasting impact."

Some members of Anonymous are also keen to distance themselves from the attacks.

"Many of us are law-abiding citizens of our respective countries around the world," Anonymous member Phill Midwinter told BBC News.

"We're currently involved in more forward-thinking projects that help to spread our message of internet transparency in a more open and productive manner," he added.

This includes a new venture dubbed Operation Leakspin, which aims to release details from the leaked cables that the mainstream media has overlooked and summarise them "into chunks that everyone can understand".

Meanwhile the US government remains determined to bring Mr Assange and Wikileaks to book.

It is exploring a nearly century-old spy law as a way to prosecute Mr Assange.

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