World newspapers online 09-18-2013 | Science

Symantec Corp said the group, which it dubbed "Hidden Lynx," was among the most technically advanced of several dozen believed to be running cyber espionage operations out of China. Unlike a previous report by another company, Symantec did not accuse the Chinese government of involvement in the cyber attacks.

Symantec's 28-page report described Hidden Lynx as a "professional organization" staffed by between 50 and 100 people with a variety of skills needed to breach networks and steal information, including valuable corporate secrets.

The company said its researchers believed Hidden Lynx might have been involved with the 2009 Operation Aurora attacks, the most well-known cyber espionage campaign uncovered to date against U.S. companies.

In Operation Aurora, hackers attacked Google Inc, Adobe Systems Inc and dozens of other companies. Google in January 2010 disclosed the attacks, in which hackers tried to read Gmail communications of human rights activists and to access and change source code at targeted companies.

Symantec researcher Liam O'Murchu said his company could not determine which individuals were behind Hidden Lynx or if it was linked to the Chinese government.

A separate study, released in February from U.S. computer security company Mandiant, said a secret unit of the Chinese military was engaged in cyber espionage on American companies. Beijing vehemently denied the accusations in that document, which contained photos of the building that Mandiant said was the unit's headquarters. (reut.rs/ZcXODG)

Symantec believes Hidden Lynx is based in China because much of the infrastructure used to run the attacks is there and because the malicious software was written using Chinese tools and with Chinese code, O'Murchu said.

The Symantec report attributed several recent attacks to Hidden Lynx, including a breach at cybersecurity firm Bit9 and follow-on attacks at three Bit9 clients. (reut.rs/XXMqKs)

It also connects Hidden Lynx to a major campaign dubbed Voho, which was discovered last year by EMC Corp's RSA security company. Voho targeted hundreds of organizations, including financial service, technology and healthcare companies; defense contractors; and government agencies.

FINANCE TARGETED

It will compete against a similar new product, Google's Chromecast.

Sony told entertainment trade-magazine Variety that it would formally launch the Android-powered Smart Stick later this week.

It will offer access to online content including video streams, music and games. However, one analyst said its price might prove its weakness.

Sony told Variety the Smart Stick would cost $150 (£94), but Google's plug-in is being sold in the US for $35. App downloads

Many of the features offered by Sony's device were included in its earlier Google TV set-top boxes, which have struggled to find demand.

However, the Smart Stick is designed to do away with the need for a separate cable as it can be plugged directly into a TV's mobile high-definition link (MHL) socket.

News of the gadget was revealed on the company's blog last week. The post was later pulled but can still be seen via Bing's cache facility, and the device's instruction manual remains online. They state that the dongle offers access to Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube and the Chrome web browser - which will all come pre-installed - and the option to download more software from the Play app store.

The gadget comes bundled with a remote that includes a microphone for voice-control, a touchpad and more traditional buttons.

Cheaper competitor

The details have emerged two months after Google unveiled its Chromecast dongle.

The device uses an HDMI socket to offer a more limited range of online content and relies on owners using a smartphone or tablet to control it via wi-fi.

However, it has the benefit of a lower price and is not restricted to being used on a specific brand of TV.

"For many consumers this will boil down to the fact that it's $150 versus $35," said Ian Maude, a digital media expert at consultants Enders Analysis.

"Sony is offering yet another device without offering anything that different from other internet-enabled set-top boxes."

"There is clearly demand to watch internet video via the TV set, but there's a whole new price point for these devices and at $150 I don't think the Smart Stick will fly." Sony also faces competition from others who are also investing in new smart TV facilities. Samsung - the world's bestselling television manufacturer - has bought Israeli firm Boxee's assets. Boxee's most recent product had let subscribers record TV shows onto its servers and then stream them to TVs, computers and smart devices.

LG has acquired WebOS - the operating system formerly used to power Palm handhelds - to "enhance" its smart TV products.

Late on Monday, several people in Iran found they could log in to their accounts on the U.S.-based social media sites without using techniques to circumvent blocks on Twitter and Facebook that the state imposed four years ago, during a clampdown on the biggest protests since the Islamic revolution.

That prompted speculation that it might herald a broader easing of censorship under President Hassan Rouhani; last month, he succeeded Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose re-election in 2009 sparked the demonstrations, in which social media played a part.

However, access was being blocked again on Tuesday and an official involved in controlling Internet usage said the brief lifting of the embargo at some Iranian Internet service providers was probably caused by a technical malfunction.

"The lack of a filter on Facebook last night was apparently due to technical problems and the technological committee is investigating this issue," Abdolsamad Khoramabadi, secretary of a state panel that filters sites, told Iran's Mehr news agency.

Service providers were being investigated, he added.

International executives at Facebook and Twitter had no immediate comment on the development.

One Iran expert based abroad said controls had briefly been removed across a very wide range of sites, including online pornography, supporting the view that it was a glitch.

Another, however, said Rouhani's new administration could be considering easing restrictions on sites that remain popular among Iranians able to get around the domestic firewall - and which senior government figures, and even Iran's clerical Supreme Leader, have themselves used to convey their messages.

SECURITY LAPSE

"I strongly believe it was a technical glitch because all Web sites that support SSL were available in the country last night, even porn websites," said Amin Sabeti, a British-based expert on the Internet in Iran. SSL is a Web security tool.

Sabeti added: "Iran has invested millions of dollars for its filtering system and it is clear that the regime will not give up Internet censorship very easily."

Nonetheless, there have been signs in that direction. Rouhani, a moderately reformist cleric, pledged to relax some social controls during his campaign for June's election. New, U.S.-educated foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has Facebook and Twitter profiles and has engaged with other users.

Ambassador Gerard Araud told the Russian diplomat France was going to go public with proof from its intelligence services that Syria's government was using chemical weapons against its own people. The Russian diplomat laughed, according to a source familiar with the meeting. "Gerard," he told his counterpart, "don't embarrass the Americans."

It was a revealing exchange. France and Britain had been pressing for almost a year for the United States to engage more directly in the war in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad's battle against a popular insurgency has killed 100,000 people and displaced more than 6 million. But Washington had resisted pleas for action, reluctant to get sucked into another Middle East quagmire after a decade of fighting and misadventure in Iraq and Afghanistan. It had no desire for France to pile on further pressure by telling the world Assad was committing atrocities with weapons of mass destruction.

Even when the French went public with their claims in early June, the Obama administration said it needed more time and evidence to judge what had happened. A couple of weeks later the White House said that U.S. intelligence agencies had "high confidence" that Assad had launched small scale chemical attacks at various points over the previous year. But while Paris said all options were on the table, Washington played down the attacks, merely promising to give more aid to the anti-Assad rebels in Syria.

The gap between the two Western allies was just one awkward step in an extraordinary two-year dance around the civil war in Syria. That dance, detailed here with reporting drawn from interviews with senior diplomats and officials over the past year, has grown ever more complicated in recent weeks after graphic evidence of a much bigger chemical attack hit computer and television screens around the world on August 21.

Videos posted online after the attack showed hundreds of people in suburbs of the Syrian capital Damascus struck by a mysterious, lethal affliction. Men, women and children struggled for breath, foaming at the mouth and twitching. Other scenes showed scores of corpses with no obvious wounds.

Rebels said Assad had killed hundreds of civilians with chemical weapons. Assad denied it, but the evidence suggested otherwise.

The 5-cent increase in the dividend, worth about $400 million a quarter, is about 3 cents per share more than many analysts had expected. Microsoft shares rose about 1 percent on the Nasdaq.

The company also announced a share repurchase program of up to $40 billion, which has no expiration date, to replace a $40 billion program set to expire on September 30.

"We view this as a further indication that things are changing at Microsoft with respect to corporate governance that we believe could benefit shareholders over the next six to 12 months," Nomura Securities analyst Rick Sherlund said in a note. Ballmer made the announcement just weeks after he unveiled a 'One Microsoft' grand plan for the company to focus on hardware and cloud-based services.

But poor sales of the new Surface tablet, on top of Microsoft's years-long failure to make money out of online search or smartphones, have cast doubt on the plan.

This month, Microsoft announced it would buy Nokia's (NOK1V.HE) phone business and license its patents for 5.44 billion euros ($7.2 billion), a foray into mobile devices that brings potential CEO Stephen Elop back into the fold.

For years, investors have called on Microsoft to return cash to shareholders rather than invest in peripheral projects and limit its focus to the vastly profitable Windows, Office and server products.

Activist investor ValueAct Capital Management LP, whose recent lobbying of the company may have played a role in Ballmer's decision to retire earlier than he planned, is thought to favor such an approach.

In the last two years alone, Microsoft has lost almost $3 billion on its Bing search engine and other Internet projects, not counting a $6 billion write-off for its failed purchase of online advertising agency aQuantive.

Some analysts said the increase in the dividend, payable on December 12 to shareholders of record on November 21, was more than they had expected.

"Most people were expecting a little less, so this was a pleasant surprise," Morningstar Inc analyst Norman Young said.

Television footage showed Acapulco's international airport terminal waist deep in water and workers wading out to escape floods which have prevented some 40,000 visitors leaving and blocked one of the main access routes to the city with mud.

A three day downpour cut off several roads in Acapulco, wrecking cars and restricting the delivery of supplies to the Pacific port city of 750,000 people where the tourist trade has suffered in recent years from a surge in drug gang violence.

"They've started to ration food here," said Pedro de la Torre, a 53-year-old graphic designer from Mexico City stranded in a large international hotel in Acapulco. "People are starting to get annoyed. I lost two cars, total write-offs," he added. Since the weekend, the rains have killed more than 50 people in the states of Veracruz, Guerrero, Puebla, Hidalgo, Michoacan and Oaxaca, according to regional emergency services.

Guerrero has been the hardest hit, with some streets in the state capital Chilpancingo becoming rivers of mud and the local mayor Mario Moreno saying the city had "collapsed".

President Enrique Pena Nieto said via Twitter he had ordered a "house by house" census in Guerrero and told the federal transport ministry to establish an air bridge to Mexico City.

Local officials had considered using the airfield in nearby Pie de la Cuesta to restart flights but airline Aeromexico later said steps were being taken to transport stranded passengers directly to the tarmac of the city's airport.

Flights were due to begin again on Tuesday morning in Acapulco, where the rains have now abated.

The flooding chaos began late last week when tropical storms Ingrid and Manuel converged from the Atlantic and the Pacific, drenching Mexico in massive rainfall that has hit around two thirds of the country, according to the interior ministry.

Though both of the storms have dissipated, rain is still falling in much of country and more than 1 million people have so far been affected by flooding.

Rousseff, who was infuriated by the spying reports, decided to cancel despite a 20-minute telephone call from President Barack Obama on Monday night in a last-minute attempt to salvage the trip, O Globo newspaper said.

O Globo gave no source for its information.

A spokesman for Rousseff, asked by Reuters to confirm the report, replied only: "I don't have that information."

Rousseff is expected to announce whether or not she is going to Washington at a news conference later on Tuesday.

If she confirms she will not go, it would be a big blow to U.S.-Brazilian relations. Ties had been improving steadily since Rousseff took office in 2011 but were upset by reports that the National Security Agency snooped on emails, text messages and calls between the president and her aides.

O Globo said Rousseff was unsatisfied by U.S. explanations of the espionage revealed in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. U.S. officials said the NSA surveillance was aimed at tracking suspected terrorist activity and did not pry into personal communications, but Rousseff was not convinced.

O Globo said Rousseff was unconvinced by U.S. explanations of the espionage, which were based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Rousseff's visit, scheduled for October 23, was conceived to highlight the improvement in ties between the two biggest economies in the Americas and Brazil's emergence over the past decade as a regional power.

The trip has been seen as a platform for deals on oil exploration and biofuels technology, and Brazil's potential purchase of fighter jets from Chicago-based Boeing Co.

The message was from Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, a member of the Senate Banking Committee from Oregon and a vocal critic of the prospects of a Summers nomination for the central bank's chairmanship.

Merkley told the White House that there were now five Democrats on the committee, which would have to clear the nomination before a final Senate vote, who would oppose Summers, a former Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and a close confidante of Obama's.

Up until Friday, only two - Merkley and Senator Sherrod Brown from Ohio - had publicly signaled how they would vote.

But fierce Wall Street critic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts had privately told the White House she was uncomfortable with the prospective nomination and, according to a Senate aide, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota also had concerns.

The surprise on Friday was not only the number of senators deciding to vote no but that one of them was centrist Democrat Jon Tester of Montana, whose opposition showed that concerns about the former Treasury secretary were not confined to the liberal wing of the party.

"Four seemed insurmountable. Five was just game over," said a Senate aide.

After Merkley called the White House, an Obama administration official called Tester, Tester's spokeswoman said. But the early afternoon phone call was too late to change his mind.

The five "no votes" on the committee posed a potentially unassailable obstacle for Summers. Democrats only have a two-vote majority on the panel and at least three Republicans were also expected to vote against Summers.

Summers dropped out of consideration for the top Fed job on Sunday, writing to Obama that any confirmation process would likely be acrimonious. People familiar with the situation said on Monday that Federal Reserve Vice Chair Janet Yellen had become the frontrunner now that Summers has withdrawn.

NO HELP FROM WHITE HOUSE

Some critics of the administration's strategy for the Summers nomination say that the White House has itself to blame for allowing opposition to fester.

The White House did little to ease Senators' concerns about Summers, who many accuse of sowing the seeds of the recent financial crisis by refusing to regulate derivatives and easing restrictions on banks when he was Treasury chief from 1999 to 2001.

The 'Liberator' pistol is the invention of Cody Wilson, a Texan law student whose company Defense Distributed caused a furore in May when it made blueprints for its firearm freely available on the internet.

The distribution of the designs led to Wired magazine naming Wilson as one of the '15 Most dangerous People in the World'. In theory, once downloaded, the designs would allow anyone with access to a 3D printer to make their own gun.

A few days after Wilson conducted his first successful test of the pistol, the U.S. government forced Defense Distributed to take the plans down. Wilson complied, but not before the design had been downloaded over 100,000 times.

The V&A museum has two copies of the Liberator pistol on display as part of London Design Week. The two prototypes on display -- one extant and one disassembled to show its components -- are part of a new collection of 3D objects. According to the curators, the guns "represent a turning point in debates around digital manufacturing." The Science Museum in London also has a Liberator on display.

In an interview with CNN, Wilson said that he felt the museum's curators appreciated the Liberator pistol as a design object, but also appreciated the political ideas the weapon conveyed. "The curators of the museum's digital collection understand Liberator and our other pieces are first and foremost articles of political thought-practice," Wilson said.

Wilson says that in his view 3D printing is still in its infancy, and that it will become more significant in the future: "I see digital manufacturing playing a bigger role in our lives." While he thought that the mainstream firearms industry is no longer as powerful as it once was, Wilson said he thought that the spread of weaponry will gradually increase, and that in future it will be easy for almost anyone to get a gun: "I think gun-making culture is on an understandable decline, but the barrier to entry to this culture will be lowered."

Security solution providers such as German-Australian joint venture Dallmeier International, California-based Pelco, a unit of Schneider Electric PA, and Samsung Techwin Co Ltd, about 25 percent-owned by Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, are among those reaping the benefits of Asia's casino building boom.

Tens of thousands of security cameras, including some of the most advanced commercially available, have been installed in the southern Chinese territory of Macau alone in the past five years, and many thousands more are on order for the multi-billion-dollar hotel-casino resorts still in the pipeline.

"It's big business. The camera market here has started to get very big ... It's probably the most demanding environment for a video surveillance system anywhere in the world," said Craig Graham, Dallmeier International general manager for Asia.

"Some of these guys (casino operators) have 700 tables and up to 1,000 slot machines, all of which have to be monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

Graham said Dallmeier had about 20 percent of the video surveillance market in Macau's gaming industry, where its clients include Sands China Ltd, a subsidiary of Las Vegas Sands Corp and one of six casino firms licensed to operate in the only place in China where casinos are legal.

There are around 100,000 cameras installed in Macau's casinos, according to industry estimates, with room potentially for another 50,000 over the next five years. Companies declined to say how much the industry was worth.

"It's allowed firms such as ours who deal with cutting-edge surveillance technology and video analytics to gain a good loyal customer base in Macau," Graham said.

Bob Ruggles, Pelco's Asia-Pacific business development manager based in Macau, said Asian demand had "allowed us to push our products to the limit" of innovation.

In contrast, he said casinos in Las Vegas had been slow to adapt to advances in digital technology, and some were still using VCR tape, in part because of the costs associated with replacing old analogue systems. "No one (in Macau) uses analogue anymore. Those days are gone," he said.

SOMETHING UP THEIR SLEEVES

The prince, a nephew of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah and owner of international investment firm Kingdom Holding, invested $300 million in the social media giant in late 2011.

"Clearly the speed they're moving with shows that they would like to IPO sooner than later. I believe it will happen either this year or early next year," Alwaleed told Reuters in a telephone interview on Sunday.

"Twitter is a very strategic investment for us. We believe that it is just beginning to touch the surface. We have invested $300 million in the company. We will be selling zero, nothing, at the IPO." He did not say whether he might buy new shares in the offer.

Alwaleed is a closely watched figure in international markets because of successful investments through Kingdom Holding in companies such as Citigroup and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Twitter has filed for an initial public offer of shares with U.S. regulators, the company said on Thursday, taking a first step toward what would be Silicon Valley's most anticipated debut since Facebook Inc's listing last year.

"With the 300 million customers they have and half a billion tweets a day, the growth potential is tremendous," Alwaleed said. He said Chief Executive Dick Costolo was "very knowledgeable, very much trustworthy".

The market expects the company's value once listed to be more than $10 billion; Alwaleed sees potential for a much higher valuation.

"We hear that the company is valued at $14 billion-$15 billion but there have been trades above this valuation. We believe it might be worth more than that."

LEARNING LESSONS

Facebook's rocky 2012 debut and subsequent share-price plunge chilled the consumer-dotcom IPO market for a year. The stock clawed its way back to its $38 IPO price in July, however, and is now at a record high after touching $45 this week.

Alwaleed wouldn't comment on whether Twitter would choose to list on the New York Stock Exchange in order to avoid Facebook's disappointing experience on Nasdaq.

But the prince said: "In my discussion with Mr Costolo and the management of Twitter, I cautioned them to be very careful and not to repeat the mistakes of Facebook.

"The lessons are not to brag too much, don't be greedy - I mean price it right and be realistic."

The meeting, initially set for September 19, was expected to discuss a proposal by Spanish telecoms operator Telefonica to buy out Telecom Italia's core domestic shareholders.

Directors have so far rebuffed offers by Egyptian tycoon Naguib Sawiris and by Hong Kong-based conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa.

But Telecom Italia's management would welcome fresh cash to stave off a downgrade of its nearly 29 billion euro ($38.5 billion) debt to "junk" status and back investments needed to counteract declining margins in its Italian home market.

"Shareholders were told the planned board meeting will not take place," one of the sources said on Monday, adding that Chief Executive Franco Bernabe was not yet ready to present a new strategic plan.

A Telecom Italia spokesman declined comment.

Directors are expected to reconvene only on October 3, said two sources close to investors in Telco, the holding that controls Telecom Italia with a 22.4 percent stake.

Telefonica is the biggest shareholder in Telco, which also includes Italian banks Intesa Sanpaolo and Mediobanca, along with insurer Assicurazioni Generali.

Telco shareholders have up to September 28 to decide whether to exit their shareholder pact and several had said they wanted to see the options on the table at the September 19 meeting before taking any decision.

Telco shareholders took control of Telecom Italia in 2007 but the stock is trading at a fraction of the 2.8 euros per share they paid back then.