US readies cyber-attack forces

12 October 2012 Last updated at 06:38 ET

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Defence Secretary Panetta warns of 'cyber Pearl Harbour'

Cyber-attacks could inflict as much damage on the US as the physical attacks on 11 September 2001, the US defence secretary has warned.

Leon Panetta said the country was preparing to take pre-emptive action if a serious cyber-attack was imminent.

He said US intelligence showed "foreign actors" were targeting control systems for utilities, industry and transport.

Advanced tools were being created to subvert key computer control systems and wreak havoc, said Mr Panetta.

"An aggressor nation or extremist group could gain control of critical switches and derail passenger trains, or trains loaded with lethal chemicals," said Mr Panetta in a speech to business leaders held on the USS Intrepid - a former aircraft carrier that is now a museum.

"They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.

"Such a destructive cyber-terrorist attack could paralyse the nation and create a profound new sense of vulnerability," he said.

Smaller scale cyber-attacks were now commonplace, said Mr Panetta.

In recent weeks, many large US firms had suffered attacks that had involved them being bombarded with huge amounts of data, he said. In addition, oil companies in Qatar and Saudi Arabia had been hit by the Shamoon attack, which had tried to replace computer data with gibberish. About 30,000 machines were hit by the Shamoon attack.

The US defence department had developed tools to trace attackers, he added, and a cyber-strike force that could conduct operations via computer networks. And it was now finalising changes to its rules of engagement that would define when it could "confront major threats quickly".

"Potential aggressors should be aware that the United States has the capacity to locate them and hold them accountable for actions that harm America or its interests," he said.

"If we detect an imminent threat of attack that will cause significant physical destruction or kill American citizens, we need to have the option to take action to defend the nation, when directed by the president."

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Love letter recreator wins award

12 October 2012 Last updated at 07:43 ET By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

An art project that helps an ageing computer write love letters has won an award for the best computer conservation project.

The LoveLetters project recreated a program that allowed the 1951 Ferranti Mark I to compose amorous notes.

LoveLetters creator Dr David Link received the inaugural Tony Sale award for his conservation work.

The award was created in memory of Tony Sale, who led UK computer conservation efforts until his death in 2011.

"I'm extremely moved to step into the footsteps of a colossus such as Tony Sale," said Dr Link after receiving his award.

Tony Sale was the brilliant engineer who rebuilt the Colossus computer, established The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park and founded the Computer Conservation Society.

Lost code

The original LoveLetters program was written by pioneering software engineer Christopher Strachey in the early 1950s. Mr Strachey, along with Alan Turing, was one of the first to write software for the Manchester Mark I - one of the first stored-program computers.

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Sample love letter

Jewel Darling, you are my covetous infatuation. My lovely infatuation. You are my precious sympathy. My precious desire impatiently adores your fancy. You are my avid fancy.

The Ferranti Mark I was based on the Manchester machine and was the first commercially available general purpose computer.

Typically the machine was used to perform complex mathematics but Mr Strachey put it to more whimsical use by writing a program that generated texts that were intended to arouse emotion. It composed the letters by following grammatical rules and using words randomly plucked from a small lexicon.

Dr Link said recreating Strachey's program was a formidable task because modern programming techniques are so different to those done in the early days of the computer industry. The notations used to illustrate written records of the software's code were very hard to decipher, said Dr Link.

"At times," he said, "it seemed almost impossible to remotely understand how the program worked."

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Sample love letter

Jewel moppet. You are my loving rapture. My heart breathlessly adores your desire. You are my beautiful adoration. My precious charm. My sympathy impatiently tempts your yearning.

Dr Link wrote an emulator that mimicked the operation of the Ferranti machine to test his recreation of the LoveLetters code. Unfortunately it did not run because a key part of the program, that printed the Love Letters, was missing.

As there was no trace of this in the original records Mr Strachey kept of his work, Dr Link wrote a new chunk of code to print the letters and get the program running. Soon after, the original turned up and proved to be utterly different to the one Dr Link wrote.

The final stage of the project was the building of a console that resembled the control panel of the original Ferranti. This console running the LoveLetters code was turned into an art installation so gallery visitors can get it to compose letters on their behalf.

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O2 suffers mobile call problems

13 October 2012 Last updated at 03:23 ET

A fault affecting millions of customers on O2's mobile network has been fixed, the operator has confirmed.

O2 said about 10% of its 22 million customers had suffered an intermittent service since 12:00 GMT on Friday.

The operator said the technical fault was fixed on Friday evening and the network has since been restored.

O2 said they were working to discover what caused the glitch, but it was not the same fault that cut off millions of customers in July.

The firm have advised any customers still having difficulty connecting to the network to switch their handset off and on again.

Initially, O2 promised to have the problem fixed by 16:30 GMT on Friday but the issue was still marked as "ongoing" on its network status page more than three hours after that time.

"Further to our previous update where some customers in some areas have been unable to make or receive calls, send texts or use data, the cause of the fault was identified and fixed," a spokeswoman for the operator told the BBC on Friday.

"Due to high traffic levels during the peak early evening period customers may experience intermittent performance as full service is recovered.

"We would like to reassure those customers still impacted that we are working as hard as we can to systematically restore their full service."

The number of people checking to see if there were any problems near them has also caused problems for O2.

A tool that let people type in their postcode and find out local problems stopped working as the network problem rolled on.

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Crime mapping website expanded

15 October 2012 Last updated at 02:48 ET

People in England and Wales can compare crime levels in their neighbourhood with other areas, following the expansion of a crime-mapping website.

The Home Office has widened the www.police.uk Compare Your Area tool to allow people to compare crime levels for a certain borough or district.

It comes a month before voters elect the first police commissioners.

Policing Minister Damian Green has said commissioners will give people "a voice" on how their areas are policed.

The website, the government's most popular online site last year, will also allow people to see how recorded crime rates have changed over the past three years from Monday, the Home Office said.

It will soon allow people to look at crime levels in smaller areas including villages and estates, and compare them with others, and will begin to feature mugshots of convicted criminals from the end of this month, it said.

The maps were launched in February 2011, allowing users to see which offences have been reported in their local streets by searching for a street name or postcode.

Elections for police and crime commissioners for England and Wales are due to take place on 15 November. They will replace existing police authorities in 41 areas.

The commissioners will be in charge of setting police priorities and force budgets but will not have any operational control.

The government hopes the move will increase the accountability of the police.

Mr Green told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme: "What they will do is for the first time ever give a democratic voice. At the moment no local person can have any kind of say over what the police authority does... Now there will be a single person to give them some voice."

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Skydiver smashes YouTube record

15 October 2012 Last updated at 06:18 ET

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Highlights from Felix Baumgartner's leap into the record books

Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner smashed a number of records with his "edge of space" stunt - including for live streaming.

More than eight million people flocked to their devices to watch the 43-year-old break the speed of sound live on Google's YouTube site.

It is the largest number of concurrent live streams in the website's history, Google UK confirmed to the BBC.

Mr Baumgartner broke the record for the highest freefall.

He jumped from a capsule taken to 128,100ft (24 miles; 39km) above New Mexico in the US by a giant helium balloon.

It took nine minutes for him to reach the ground.

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Footage from a camera on Baumgartner's chest shows out-of-control spin

The adventurer plummeted at an estimated 833.9mph (1,343km/h), hitting Mach 1.24.

"On the step, I felt that the whole world is watching," Mr Baumgartner said after the jump.

"I said I wish they would see what I see. It was amazing."

The capsule from which the skydiver fell was equipped with cameras to provide a live internet feed to millions of people around the world.

A Google spokesperson confirmed to the BBC that the number of viewers simultaneously watching the Red Bull Stratos stunt live on YouTube was the site's highest.

"We congratulate Felix Baumgartner and the entire Red Bull Stratos team for their successful mission, and for creating a live stream with the most concurrent views ever on YouTube," the company said on its blog.

In comparison, about 8.3m people accessed the BBC's sport website on the first day of this year's Olympic Games.

Invaluable data

Other technology used to record the event will have a more long-term application. Mr Baumgartner's body was monitored during the jump using equipment from Equivital, a small UK company.

A system strapped to the skydiver's chest wirelessly transmitted data about his heartbeat, respiration, skin temperature and other vital signs.

"It's a major coup for Equivital, which, despite its small size - currently only 25 employees - provides the US Army with its human body monitoring system," the company told BBC News.

The Red Bull Stratos scientists said the stunt had provided invaluable data for the development of high-performance, high-altitude parachute systems, and that the lessons learned would inform the development of new ideas for emergency evacuation from vehicles, such as spacecraft passing through the stratosphere.

"Part of this programme was to show high-altitude egress, passing through Mach and a successful re-entry back [to subsonic speed], because our belief scientifically is that's going to benefit future private space programmes or high-altitude pilots, and Felix proved that today," said Art Thompson, the team principal.

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Xbox Music launches to replace Zune

15 October 2012 Last updated at 06:22 ET

Xbox Music will become available on Xbox 360 games consoles from Tuesday.

It will become available on Windows-based devices after the launch of Windows 8 towards the end of the month.

The service replaces Microsoft's Zune media service, which was discontinued in June.

With a database of about 30 million songs, the Xbox Music catalogue is larger than that of Apple's iTunes, which has more than 26 million individual tracks.

The free version of the service will enable users to stream music, with adverts appearing every 15 minutes.

"As an entertainment company, music is an important ingredient on its own and as a part of different user experiences," said Xbox Music general manager Jerry Johnson.

Mr Johnson added that research carried out by Microsoft 18 months ago suggested that Xbox owners spent 60% of their time on the console using entertainment services rather than playing video games.

Film service Netflix, BBC iPlayer and sports TV network ESPN are all available via the Xbox console.

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Amazon to refund e-book customers

15 October 2012 Last updated at 07:47 ET

Amazon has contacted some of its US customers to offer partial refunds for e-books bought between April 2010 and May 2012.

The compensation - $0.30-$1.32 (20p-80p) per title - is the result of a settlement between publishers and the US authorities.

Barnes & Noble is expected to email its customers with a similar offer soon.

Several e-book publishers - plus Apple - were accused of colluding to fix and raise prices.

Customers covered by the settlement will not receive refunds until a hearing approving its terms takes place in February next year.

The compensation will cover titles produced by three major publishers - Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster. The firms have together raised a fund of $69m to pay the fees.

Two other publishers, Penguin and Macmillan, declined to agree to the settlement and will instead be taken to court, along with Apple.

'Big win'

Compensation will increase depending on the number of titles bought by a customer. While the exact amounts are yet to be confirmed, they will differ depending on whether or not a title appeared in the New York Times best-seller list.

In an email to customers sent over the weekend, Amazon said: "We have good news.

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Publishers were not happy at selling books to retailers under traditional wholesale pricing models, because they felt that the cost of e-books was getting too low.

Books were in danger, they argued, of becoming like music had become under iTunes - worth very little.

"You are entitled to a credit for some of your past e-book purchases as a result of legal settlements between several major e-book publishers and the attorneys general of most US states and territories, including yours."

The company added: "In addition to the account credit, the settlements impose limitations on the publishers' ability to set e-book prices.

"We think these settlements are a big win for customers and look forward to lowering prices on more Kindle books in the future."

'Aikido move'

The case, which was brought in April, was fuelled by several major publishers' decision to change how they worked with e-book retailers.

Physical books are typically sold at a wholesale price, where retailers buy on bulk and are then free to set their own prices.

E-books were also sold in this way until five publishers decided to switch instead to an agency model. Under this system, publishers set the price of a book and the retailer selling it gets a 30% cut.

This method was seen as a way of curbing Amazon's dominance of e-book sales on its Kindle platform - and was said to be favoured by the late Apple founder Steve Jobs.

According to a biography published after his death, Mr Jobs once said: "We were not the first people in the books business.

"Given the situation that existed, what was best for us was to do this aikido move and end up with the agency model. And we pulled it off."

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Guilty plea over Sony web attack

15 October 2012 Last updated at 08:00 ET

An American member of hacking group Lulzsec has admitted attacking the Sony Pictures website.

The admission of Raynaldo Rivera, of Arizona, emerged in court documents detailing a plea agreement he has reached with prosecutors.

The attack made the database behind Sony's website surrender the names, addresses, birth dates and passwords of thousands of account holders.

Lulzsec then posted the data on a separate widely accessible website.

The attack on Sony was one of many designed to show up the company's poor security practices. The Lulzsec hackers did not profit from the data they stole, but court papers suggest clearing up after the attack cost Sony $605,000 (£376,550).

Rivera attacked the Sony site through a third-party re-directing or proxy service called HideMyAss. Information about his identity was gained from this service via a court order and led to his arrest in August 2012 .

Information gathered during Rivera's arrest led police forces in the US and other countries to track down other members of the Lulzsec group.

The Lulzsec group is a loose-coalition of hackers associated with the protests co-ordinated by the Anonymous collective. Lulzsec was very active in 2011, but the arrest of many of its members has forced it to keep a lower profile.

As well as pleading guilty to the attack, the plea agreement also requires Rivera to pay compensation to Sony. He also faces spending up to five years in prison and could have to pay a fine of $250,000 (£156.000).

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EA's free game code goes viral

15 October 2012 Last updated at 08:43 ET

A promotion by games company Electronic Arts (EA) offering users one free game allowed them to download as many as they wanted.

The promotion was intended for those who completed a survey, presenting them with a code for $20 (£13) of software to be used in EA's Origin online store.

The amount is enough to download one free game.

But after people found they could use the code multiple times, it was quickly passed around the online community.

A thread was posted on social media site Reddit, where users said it had been possible to download dozens of games during a period of about 18 hours over the weekend.

The promo code became invalid at about 09:00 on Monday.

EA was unavailable for comment.

One blogger, Max Woolf, described his exchange with the company's support service, posting a screenshot of an online chat in which he was told that users would be punished for multiple uses of the coupon.

But on EA's official forum, Origin's community manager Sam Houston said the company would "honour all sales made with the coupon code over the weekend and hope fans enjoy their games".

This prompted numerous comments on Reddit and other sites, including on a video games forum on Amazon.com and on Twitter.

"So apparently EA will honor all sales used with the exploited coupon code yesterday. In other words, they can't work out who did what," said one Twitter user, @RockCalledSteve.

Reddit user I4C wrote: "Nice to see EA, will not punish us for the fault in their system."

Reddit users compiled a list of games that were downloaded using the coupon. Among them are Dead Space, Dead Space 2, Dragon Age 2, Need For Speed Shift, Mass Effect 1 and 2, Sim City 4, Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Mirror's Edge.

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Children in care data found on public PC

15 October 2012 Last updated at 09:10 ET By Zoe Kleinman Technology reporter, BBC News

Confidential government files belonging to New Zealand's Ministry for Social Development have been freely accessible from computers available for the public to use.

Blogger Keith Ng says he was able to download 7,000 files from the department's network.

He used a public computer provided in Work and Income New Zealand (WINZ) offices for job hunters.

The files included the names of children currently in state care.

Some basic search functions had been disabled but the names of people suspected of benefit fraud and invoices from contractors were easily retrievable "by just using the open-file dialogue on Microsoft Office", wrote Mr Ng in a post for blogger community Public Address.

He was also able to see children's medical records, legal bills and debt collector invoices.

"I sorted through 3,500 invoices. This was about half of what I obtained, and what I obtained was about a quarter of what was accessible," he said on his blog.

Social Development Minister Paula Bennett told Radio New Zealand: "I apologise to everyone now.

"I'm mortified that they had that level of trust in the ministry and at some level we've let them down."

New Zealand's Assistant Privacy Commissioner Katrine Evans said the ministry had shut down all of the computer "kiosks" in its public offices and there was no evidence the network had been hacked.

"Protecting personal information is a cornerstone of public trust in both government and business, particularly in the digital environment - and this is one of several recent incidents that show that agencies need to up their game," she said in a statement.

Mr Ng has handed over all the files he downloaded and says he did not keep copies.

"This stuff was all a few clicks away at any WINZ kiosk, anywhere in the country. The privacy breach is massive, and the safety of vulnerable children was put at risk," he said.

"This should never have happened."

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