Man arrested over Nintendo hack

14 February 2011 Last updated at 13:44 ET

Police in Spain have arrested a man who allegedly stole details on thousands of Nintendo users and tried to blackmail the company.

The unnamed individual obtained data on 4,000 gamers, according to Spain's Interior Ministry.

It is claimed he threatened to contact the country's data protection agency, accusing the firm of negligence.

When Nintendo did not respond, he began leaking some of the information online, said police.

The man was arrested in the southern province of Malaga.

Authorities say he had been planning to release the full contents of the user database onto the internet.

It is unclear if the alleged theft was from Nintendo's own computer system or that of a third party.

Nintendo said it was unable to comment on the case as is was the subject of of an active investigation by the Spanish authorities.

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Image site hits back at spammers

14 February 2011 Last updated at 10:58 ET

Spammers are being thwarted by finding that their junk messages unexpectedly contain warnings urging recipients to delete the e-mail.

The alerts are issued by ImageShack, in an effort to stop spammers using its services.

It is replacing pictures, known to have appeared in spam, with warnings such as "Do not buy".

Spammers often use image hosting sites so they can include fake logos, intended to make the mail look genuine.

The aim is raise users' awareness of the problem and to make life difficult for those sending the spam, Alexander Levin, president of ImageShack told BBC News.

"The net effect is that the spammers lose customers and see a decrease in revenue."

Spam warning

ImageShack's system is capable of swapping thousands of the spammers' images for warnings within an hour of them being reported.

The company works with anti-spam groups to identify any files that have been uploaded to its servers and are being used in junk emails, he said.

It then scours its web logs to uncover other images that have been uploaded from the same web address.

This allows it to identify images "not previously reported to the anti-spam communities", Mr Levin added.

The move was welcomed by Paul Wood, senior analyst at security firm Symantec.cloud.

However, he warned that if image hosting sites are serious about tackling spam, they should consider their registration processes.

"Users often don't need to register to use these sites - making them highly disposable and open to abuse," he said.

According to security firm McAfee, the global volume of spam is at its lowest level since 2006.

That follows one of the largest group of spammers, known as Spamit, deciding to cease its activities last August.

Even so, spam accounts for nearly 80 per cent of all email traffic, McAfee reported.

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Android launches lead mobile show

14 February 2011 Last updated at 04:26 ET By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter, Barcelona <!-- Embedding the video player --> <!-- This is the embedded player component -->

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Sony Ericsson launch phone aimed at fans of the PlayStation

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As Mobile World Congress kicks off in Barcelona, a host of mobile firms have launched new devices, many featuring Google's Android operating system.

Headline grabbers include Sony Ericsson with its smartphone-cum-gaming device, dubbed the Xperia Play.

Rival Samsung has unveiled a new tablet, the Galaxy 10.,which as the name suggests features a bigger 10.1 inch (26cm) screen.

Meanwhile LG will be showing off the first mobile phone with 3D capability.

Sony Ericsson's launch attracted a big crowd as it unveiled it not-so-secret PlayStation phone, which it is hoping will appeal to the widening mobile gaming market as well as to more hardcore gamers.

The device - dubbed the PlayStation phone - has a pull-out control pad and will feature a catalogue of games, from Electronic Art's Fifa series to Assassin's Creed, the Sims and Dungeon Defender.

It is launching with 20 gaming partners and will be available from March.

Sony Ericsson has signed up Verizon as its US partner while in the UK the Xperia Play will be carried by all operators.

Sylvia Chind, head of branded devices at network operator Three, said the handset was a "step change in the way in which consumers use data, merging mobile communications and entertainment".

Analyst Ian Fogg, from research firm Forrester, thinks it represents a real challenge to Apple's dominance: "It is an extremely competitive device and shows that Apple will not be the only player in the mobile gaming market," he said.

But just as Sony Ericsson has leveraged the PlayStation brand so others may follow, he thinks.

"Nokia, Microsoft, Apple and Google also have other assets they could bring to the mobile experience," he said.

Guy Cocker, the editor of gaming website GameSpot said the phone aimed to please both the casual and the more hardcore gamer.

Gaming, he said, was no longer a niche activity.

"People want to play games wherever they are...from fans of Angry Birds through to those who want to play more traditional games on their mobiles," he said

Not to be overshadowed by its rival, Samsung has put down its mark as a very real contender to the iPad, with its new version of the Galaxy Tab.

Announced just before the Samsung's official Mobile World Congress 2011 press announcement, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 has a number of new features, the most significant being its bigger, 10.1 inch screen.

It will run on the latest version of Android, dubbed Honeycomb, and designed specifically for tablet devices.

LG's 3D tablet and phone are also powered by Android.

Both allow users to users to shoot 3D images and video, as well as upload their clips directly to YouTube.

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Supercomputer vs human on TV quiz

14 February 2011 Last updated at 04:31 ET By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

A supercomputer, designed by IBM, is to face two human contestants on the US quiz show Jeopardy.

Watson will pit its wits against two of the game's most successful players.

At stake is a $1 million prize (�620,000) and the reputation of the field of artificial intelligence.

The company said Watson signals a new era in computing where machines will increasingly be able to learn and understand what humans are really asking them for.

Jeopardy is seen as the greatest challenge for Watson because of the show's rapid fire format and clues that rely on subtle meanings, puns, and riddles; something humans excel at and computers do not.

"Watson has to come up with an answer based on what information it has in its brain just like any human has in his head," Rod Smith, IBM's emerging technology director told BBC News.

"Watson could be connected to the internet all the time, but it won't be because that is not the way to play Jeopardy. This really is about setting the bar and working through all the data it has in less than three seconds to come up with the right answer."

Jeopardy, which first aired on US television in 1964, tests a player's knowledge of trivia in a range of categories, from geography and politics to history and entertainment.

In a twist on traditional game play, contestants are provided with answers and need to supply the questions. A dollar amount is attached to each question and the player with the most amount of money at the end wins the game.

'Gladiatorial'

The technology behind Watson relies on analytics to understand what is being asked, to crunch through massive amounts of data and provide the best answer based on the evidence it finds.

That store of information adds up to 15 terabytes of memory, about the size of the total printed text in the Library of Congress.

Mr Smith said inside Watson's brain are around "a million different books and 200m pages of material".

The amount of power used for Watson is equal to that of a small university.

Watson's adversaries in the show 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.

Mr Jennings told his hometown newspaper the Seattle Times that "it's nerve-wracking because you know a computer can't get intimidated. A human player might get frustrated. Watson has no ego, no consciousness".

The competition was held inside IBM's lab in New York and will be broadcast over the next three nights.

"The crowd is full of IBM employees cheering for human blood. It was an away game for the human race. It was gladiatorial," added Mr Jennings.

Prize money

Mr Smith said the end game is about equipping Watson to help us "solve world problems and neighbourhood problems".

"Think about today's government - it produces volumes of data and stuff that we don't even know what to ask. Think about health care or the fact that as we do drug evaluation, you would like to know the different reactions and the different relationships.

"Well Watson can do these types of things, analyse the data quickly and come up with information that is useful to answer these questions".

As well as practical business applications, Stephen Baker, author of Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything, told NPR News that Watson also brings a bit of lustre to what is seen as an unsexy company.

"They need to do this kind of thing because they're not like Apple and Google. They don't have stuff that people want. So they have to show that they can do really fun stuff so that they can attract, you know, great PhDs to their programmes".

The winner of Jeopardy will receive $1 million. The second place receives $300,000 and third place $200,000. Mr Jennings and Mr Rutter have both said they will donate half of their winnings to charity, and IBM will donate all of its winnings to charity.

This is not IBM's first foray at taking on humans. In 1997 the company's computer Deep Blue beat chess champion Gary Kasparov.

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Nokia and Microsoft form alliance

11 February 2011 Last updated at 03:06 ET

Nokia has announced plans to form a "broad strategic partnership" with Microsoft.

The deal would see Nokia use the Windows phone operating system for its smartphones, the company said.

Microsoft's Bing will power Nokia's search services, while Nokia Maps would be a core part of Microsoft's mapping services.

Earlier this week Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop sent a memo to staff warning that the company was in crisis.

The new strategy means Nokia's existing smartphone operating systems will be gradually sidelined.

Symbian, which runs on most of the company's current devices will become a "franchise platform", although the company expects to sell approximately 150 million more Symbian devices in future.

The announcement is widely seen as a response to the growing pressure from other smartphone platforms, including Google's Android and Apple's iPhone.

"This is a clear admission that Nokia's own-platform strategy has faltered," said Ben Wood, an analyst with research firm CCS: Insight.

"Microsoft is the big winner in this deal, but there are no silver bullets for either company given the strength of iPhone and Android," he added.

Nokia's share of the smartphone market fell from 38% to 28% in 2010, according to research firm IDC.

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Microsoft&#39;s IE9 browser goes live

10 February 2011 Last updated at 16:14 ET By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

Microsoft has said the latest version of its internet explorer web browser puts it ahead of competitors like Google and Firefox.

The software giant, which is losing market share, made the bold claim as it unveiled what is known as the release candidate of IE9.

This is the final test drive for the new browser - a chance to catch any last-minute bugs before its debut.

IE9 has been downloaded 25 million times during beta testing.

Privacy and speed are being highlighted as two of the features that set IE9 apart.

"This release is one that is playing catch up [on past releases], but it leapfrogs everything and now you see the other folks on the back foot trying to catch up with us," Dean Hachamovitch, corporate vice president of Internet Explorer, told BBC News.

"With this release you are seeing innovation after innovation that other folks are catching up to. Hardware acceleration was something no one was talking about until we did it. No one else was talking about privacy and tracking until we did it."

According to Web analytics company Net Applications, IE lost more than six percentage points of user share in the past 12 months. At the end of January, the browser hit an historic low with 56% of users using IE.

"This is a real race again in terms of browsers," said Lance Ulanoff, editor-in-chief of PCMag.com.

"To some extent, Microsoft had ceded that race, but when I first heard about IE9, my initial reaction was 'oh the game is on'. Now it is a question of how people will perceive it when they look at it against Google Chrome and Firefox, but Chrome is where you have the most interesting battle and this is a true battle in the browser space."

Privacy features

One feature being put front and centre of IE9 is tracking protection that gives users better control over how their information is shared across the web.

Some content on websites can be used to track activity as people hop from one site to another. IE9's tracking protection means users can limit the browser's communication with certain websites to help keep information private.

This feature relies on tracking protection lists the user can create, or on lists created by the four main online privacy and tracking companies to allow or block a site or ad network from tracking users.

Microsoft has said it will not generate such lists.

The feature is seen as a response to a call by the Federal Trade Commission for a web equivalent to the Do Not Call list aimed at telemarketers calling and harassing people at home.

Firefox also offers a 'do not track' option.

"The most exciting thing is this is a technology that is ready to use today and can provide a meaningful level of protection as you browse around the web," said Andy Zeigler, privacy programme manager with Microsoft's IE team.

"For example, the lists can block companies that collect data about you without your consent, which could be information like your browsing history, the sites you visit, the things you buy online and the videos you watch."

Need for speed

With speed becoming an increasingly seductive selling point for users, Microsoft said that this latest version of IE9 is faster than the beta by 35%, making it faster than any browser currently available.

Also new is expanded support for HTML5 and what is known as other "future-web" technologies. These include support for a geolocation feature and HTML5 semantic tags. These features are largely present in other browsers.

The company said it received over 17,000 comments from early users. As a result of some of that feedback, the software will let people add a new row of tabs to the bar at the top of the browser window. It will also pop up fewer notifications.

The company is now focused on encouraging developers to build new websites and user experiences on IE9.

IE9 is a free download that works Windows Vista and Windows 7 computers. It's not compatible with Windows XP.

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Oil and gas firms hit by hackers

10 February 2011 Last updated at 08:54 ET

Hackers have run rampant through the networks of at least five oil and gas firms for years, reveals a report.

Compiled by security firm McAfee, it details the methods and techniques the hackers used to gain access.

Via a combination of con tricks, computer vulnerabilities and weak security controls, the attackers gained access and stole secrets, it says.

The hacker group behind the attack targeted documents detailing oil and gas exploration and bidding contracts.

Cashing in

Greg Day, director of security strategy at McAfee, said that the attacks used to break into all the networks were built around code and tools widely available on the net's underground.

As such, he said, they were not very sophisticated but that did not dent their effectiveness.

In its report detailing what it dubbed the Night Dragon attacks, McAfee said the series of co-ordinated attempts to penetrate at least a dozen multinational oil, gas and energy companies began in November 2009. Five firms had confirmed the attacks, said McAfee.

In a long-running campaign, the attacks continued and the hackers methodically worked to penetrate the computer networks of these firms.

The first stage of the attack was to compromise the external server running a company's website. Hacker tools were then loaded on the compromised machine and used to lever open access to internal networks. Then, cracking tools were used to gather usernames and passwords and get deeper access.

Once embedded, the hackers disabled internal network settings so they could get remote access to machines on the corporate networks. Via this route, sensitive documents, proprietary production data and other files were found and pilfered.

McAfee said the information stolen was "tremendously sensitive and would be worth a huge amount of money to competitors".

Mr Day said that although corporates were under attack all the time, the Night Dragon attack was no run of the mill incident.

"What makes this different is the very specific ongoing targeting of specific organisations with a very distinct purpose to what they were trying to achieve," he said.

In that sense, he added, the attacks seemed to have a motive in common with that behind the Operation Aurora attacks on Google in China and the Stuxnet virus, which targeted industrial plant and machinery, and is thought to have been designed to attack Iran's nuclear programme.

It was not clear if the Night Dragon attacks were state-sponsored, said Mr Day. Circumstantial evidence, such as the fact that all the attack activity took place during the Chinese business day, suggested China was involved but it was by no means conclusive.

Equally, the fact that during its investigation McAfee uncovered the identity of one individual based in China who provided invaluable aid and computer resources to those behind the attacks did not mean everything was backed by China.

The clues could be misdirection, said Mr Day.

"The attackers did not seem to be at all careful in covering their trail," he said. "Was that just they were not that skilled or were they trying to leave a bread crumb trail to paint a false picture?"

Corporates were going to have to get much better at analysing the attacks hitting them, said Mr Day, if they were to avoid falling victim in a similar way.

"We have had a decade of cyber crime all about 'write it, randomly spray it and see who falls foul'," he said. "In the next decade many attacks will have a more specific purpose and they will keep going until they are successful."

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HP unveils Palm-powered tablets

9 February 2011 Last updated at 14:50 ET By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News

Hewlett-Packard (HP), the world's biggest technology company, is making a major play for the multi-billion dollar mobile market with a slew of products based on its own operating system.

At an event in San Francisco, the company announced two new phones and a long-awaited tablet computer.

HP's new TouchPad tablet will compete against Apple's iPad, Google's Android-powered machines and RIM's Playbook.

The TouchPad is based on the webOS operating system.

This was developed by Palm and bought by HP last year for $1.2bn (�745m).

HP is hoping its investment will pay dividends with tablet sales expected to soar to over 50 million in the coming year.

HP said the mobile connected devices market is currently worth $160bn dollars.

'Jumbo phones'

The Silicon Valley company that started life in a small garage is clearly betting big that products powered by its own operating system will give it a foothold in the sector and make it a force to be reckoned with.

"Our intention with webOS devices is to transform how people think, how they feel and how they connect," Todd Bradley, executive vice president of HP's personal systems group, told a room full of reporters, analysts and developers.

The two phones will also be powered by webOS. The Veer, which was billed as an alternative to "jumbo phones", is about the size of a credit card with a 2.6 inch screen and 8 gigabytes of storage.

Technology blogger Robert Scoble of Scoblizer.com told the BBC the Veer is "very much a second phone - cute, easy to carry and for going out at night."

The Pre3 smartphone has a 3.6-inch diagonal screen, slide-out keyboard, video calling capability and 16 or 32 gigabytes of storage.

There was no mention on how much the devices will cost.

The Veer will go on sale in the spring and the Pre3 in the summer. It will be joined by the TouchPad which will also hit shelves in the summer.

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Nokia at crisis point warns boss

9 February 2011 Last updated at 06:12 ET

Nokia's new CEO has sent an outspoken and frank memo to his staff that suggests the phone giant is in crisis.

Stephen Elop describes the company as standing on a "burning platform" surrounded by innovative competitors who are grabbing its market share.

In particular, he said, the firm had been caught off guard by the success of Google's Android operating system and Apple's iPhone.

BBC News has verified that the memo is genuine.

"The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience," Mr Elop wrote in the note that was distributed to the Finnish company's staff and was first published by technology website Engadget.

"Android came on the scene just over two years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable."

Although Nokia leads the global smartphone market in terms of handset sales, its overall share has been gradually declining.

According to research firm IDC, Nokia's share fell from 38% in 2009 to 28% by the end of 2010.

Meanwhile its rivals, including Apple and HTC have seen their share increase, or remain constant.

Ben Wood, an analyst at research firm CCS insight, said the memo showed that Mr Elop has a "deep understanding of the severe structural problems Nokia is facing".

"I think it shows that he has inherited an organisation that is in much worse shape than he anticipated and the work that will be required to get it back on track should not be underestimated," he told BBC News.

Mr Elop's leaked memo also suggests that Nokia is also being squeezed at the lower, non-smartphone end of the market by Chinese manufacturers.

"They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us," he wrote.

Nokia is expected to publicly address its future strategy at a media event this Friday.

Mr Wood said that he thought Mr Elop would use the briefing as a chance to issue a "mea culpa".

"He will use it to say 'we are not in a good position, we have been outgunned and if we are to recover we are going to have to take some drastic decisions'."

Mr Wood said this could involve using Android or Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating systems.

"No options will be ruled out," he said.

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Robots to get their own internet

9 February 2011 Last updated at 05:54 ET By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

Robots could soon have an equivalent of the internet and Wikipedia.

European scientists have embarked on a project to let robots share and store what they discover about the world.

Called RoboEarth it will be a place that robots can upload data to when they master a task, and ask for help in carrying out new ones.

Researchers behind it hope it will allow robots to come into service more quickly, armed with a growing library of knowledge about their human masters.

Share plan

The idea behind RoboEarth is to develop methods that help robots encode, exchange and re-use knowledge, said RoboEarth researcher Dr Markus Waibel from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

"Most current robots see the world their own way and there's very little standardisation going on," he said. Most researchers using robots typically develop their own way for that machine to build up a corpus of data about the world.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

The key is allowing robots to share knowledge. That's really new"

End Quote Dr Markus Waibel

This, said Dr Waibel, made it very difficult for roboticists to share knowledge or for the field to advance rapidly because everyone started off solving the same problems.

By contrast, RoboEarth hopes to start showing how the information that robots discover about the world can be defined so any other robot can find it and use it.

RoboEarth will be a communication system and a database, he said.

In the database will be maps of places that robots work, descriptions of objects they encounter and instructions for how to complete distinct actions.

The human equivalent would be Wikipedia, said Dr Waibel.

"Wikipedia is something that humans use to share knowledge, that everyone can edit, contribute knowledge to and access," he said. "Something like that does not exist for robots."

It would be great, he said, if a robot could enter a location that it had never visited before, consult RoboEarth to learn about that place and the objects and tasks in it and then quickly get to work.

While other projects are working on standardising the way robots sense the world and encode the information they find, RoboEarth tries to go further.

"The key is allowing robots to share knowledge," said Dr Waibel. "That's really new."

RoboEarth is likely to become a tool for the growing number of service and domestic robots that many expect to become a feature in homes in coming decades.

Dr Waibel said it would be a place that would teach robots about the objects that fill the human world and their relationships to each other.

For instance, he said, RoboEarth could help a robot understand what is meant when it is asked to set the table and what objects are required for that task to be completed.

The EU-funded project has about 35 researchers working on it and hopes to demonstrate how the system might work by the end of its four-year duration.

Early work has resulted in a way to download descriptions of tasks that are then executed by a robot. Improved maps of locations can also be uploaded.

A system such as RoboEarth was going to be essential, said Dr Waibel, if robots were going to become truly useful to humans.

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