Nasa to hack 'amnesiac' Mars rover

31 December 2014 Last updated at 11:44

Mars rover Opportunity, which has been exploring the Red Planet for more than 10 years, is suffering from memory problems, Nasa has said.

The six-wheeled vehicle - not to be confused with Curiosity, which launched in 2011 - keeps resetting unexpectedly.

The Opportunity team thinks an age-related fault affecting the flash memory used by the robot is to blame.

It believes it has found a way to hack the rover's software to disregard the faulty part.

Speaking to Discovery News, Nasa project manager John Callas outlined how his team intended to solve the issue.

'It forgets'

He explained how the rover, like a typical computer, has two key types of memory - volatile and non-volatile.

• Non-volatile memory "remembers" its information even if it is powered down, making it ideal for long-term storage, similar to how a hard drive works on a PC
• Volatile memory - comparable to a PC's random access memory, or RAM - is quicker to access but requires power, so when the machine turns off, any data stored within the volatile memory is lost

The problem with Opportunity is that its non-volatile memory is suffering from a fault, probably related to the hardware's age.

It means that when the rover tries to save telemetry data to the flash memory it fails, and so it then writes it to the volatile memory instead. When the rover powers down, the information is then wiped.

"So now we're having these events we call 'amnesia,'," explained Mr Callas in Discovery News.

"Which is the rover trying to use the flash memory, but it wasn't able to, so instead it uses the RAM... it stores telemetry data in that volatile memory, but when the rover goes to sleep and wakes up again, all [the data] is gone.

"So that's why we call it amnesia - it forgets what it has done."

Old rover

The problems are becoming more severe, Nasa says, with the memory issue causing the rover to reset itself, and in some cases stop communicating with mission control altogether.

In an attempt to solve the problem, the Nasa team is attempting to "hack" the rover's software so that it ignores the faulty part of its flash memory, and instead writes, permanently, to the healthy hardware.

The process will take a couple of weeks, Mr Callas told Discovery News. However, he added that Opportunity is ageing and could be heading towards the end of its useful life.

"It's like you have an aging parent, that is otherwise in good health - maybe they go for a little jog every day, play tennis each day - but you never know, they could have a massive stroke right in the middle of the night," he said.

"So we're always cautious that something could happen."

Even if the rover fails now, it will have comfortably exceeded the initial goal of spending three months on the Red Planet.

Ten years after it first landed, Opportunity has covered 26 miles (41.8km) of the Mars surface, and sent back vital intelligence about the planet's biological make-up.

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Travel firms sue cheap airfare site

30 December 2014 Last updated at 14:14

United Airlines and travel firm Orbitz have launched legal action against a site that seeks out cheap "hidden city" airfares.

The site finds cheap fares by looking for flights that have a stopover at the city someone wants to travel to.

The two firms allege the site is engaged in "unfair competition" and seeks to recoup lost revenue.

The developer behind the site said he was doing nothing wrong by exposing the "inefficiencies" in airline ticketing.

The legal action has been filed in Illinois.

No luggage

The Skiplagged website works by looking for longer flights that include a stop in a big city en route to another destination. One example might be flying from New York to Lake Tahoe that has a stopover in San Francisco.

If someone wanted to travel to San Francisco they might spend less on the fare by booking the stopover flight and not travelling to Tahoe than they would simply booking a flight to San Francisco from New York. In some cases, the site suggests, travellers can save 40% or more on ticket fares.

The trick only works with one-way flights. Travellers cannot check in any luggage as that would then travel on to the flight's final destination.

Twenty-two-year-old developer Aktarer Zaman, who created the site, told CNNMoney that he had made no profit from Skiplagged. He declined to comment specifically on the case to CNN.

Mr Zaman has launched a fundraising campaign to gather cash to fight the legal battle against United and Orbitz. So far he has raised $10,538 (£6,776) of the $15,000 needed.

In its legal filing, United and Orbitz said the site was "intentionally and maliciously" interfering with the travel firms' business and was making it breach its contracts with its partners.

The documents added that "logistical and public safety concerns" meant using "hidden city" tickets was prohibited and, as a result, using Skiplagged broke these rules.

The two firms are seeking damages of at least $75,000 in revenue they claim they have lost as a result of Skiplagged operating.

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Fingerprint 'cloned from photos'

29 December 2014 Last updated at 12:43 By Zoe Kleinman Technology reporter, BBC News

A member of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) hacker network claims to have cloned a thumbprint of a German politician by using commercial software and images taken at a news conference.

Jan Krissler says he replicated the fingerprint of defence minister Ursula von der Leyen using pictures taken with a "standard photo camera".

Mr Krissler had no physical print from Ms von der Leyen.

Fingerprint biometrics are already considered insecure, experts say.

Mr Krissler, also known as Starbug, was speaking at a convention for members of the CCC, a 31-year-old network that claims to be "Europe's largest association" of hackers.

'Wear gloves'

He told the audience he had obtained a close-up of a photo of Ms von der Leyen's thumb and had also used other pictures taken at different angles during a press event that the minister had spoken at in October.

Mr Krissler has suggested that "politicians will presumably wear gloves when talking in public" after hearing about his research.

Fingerprint identification is used as a security measure on both Apple and Samsung devices, and was used to identify voters at polling stations in Brazil's presidential election this year, but it is not considered to be particularly secure, experts say.

Living biometrics

"Biometrics that rely on static information like face recognition or fingerprints - it's not trivial to forge them but most people have accepted that they are not a great form of security because they can be faked," says cybersecurity expert Prof Alan Woodward from Surrey University.

"People are starting to look for things where the biometric is alive - vein recognition in fingers, gait [body motion] analysis - they are also biometrics but they are chosen because the person has to be in possession of them and exhibiting them in real life."

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Simon Gompertz tried out Barclays' finger scanner when it launched

In September this year Barclays bank introduced finger vein recognition for business customers, and the technique is also used at cash machines in Japan and Poland.

Electronics firm Hitachi manufactures a device that reads the unique pattern of veins inside a finger. It only works if the finger is attached to a living person.

Trials in the intensive care unit at Southampton General Hospital in 2013 indicated that vein patterns are not affected by changes to blood pressure.

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Sony hackers 'shared' stolen logins

30 December 2014 Last updated at 11:33

Data that helped hackers access Sony's internal network came from another group targeting the firm's gaming network, reports the Washington Post.

In an interview, a self-proclaimed Lizard Squad member said it had given stolen data to the Guardians of Peace.

The GoP has carried out several attacks on Sony in a bid to halt the release of comedy film The Interview.

By contrast, the Lizard Squad targeted Sony's PlayStation network knocking it offline on Christmas Day.

The man interviewed by the newspaper appears to be one of the two members who spoke to the BBC last week.

'Massive issues'

In the interview, the self-identified senior member of Lizard Squad said his group knew people that were part of GoP. Despite the connection, the spokesman said Lizard Squad did not play a "large part" in the attacks the GoP mounted against Sony.

GoP's attacks involved exposing confidential information about many Sony employees and sharing thousands of emails sent between employees, film stars and movie makers.

The Lizard Squad member said his group "handed over some Sony employee logins" that were used by GoP to get its initial attack underway. The admission is the first acknowledgement by the Lizard Squad of its connection to GoP.

The information throws some doubt on the theory that North Korea was behind the attacks on Sony's internal systems. The state was accused of being behind the hack by the FBI because The Interview is about a fictional American plot to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and Pyongyang has filed formal complaints about the film.

However, the Reuters news agency has reported that US investigators are exploring whether North Korea "contracted out" some of the work involved, which could explain how Lizard Squad formed links to GoP.

Europe-based

Lizard Squad members are all based in European nations, said the senior member.

The GoP attacks forced Sony to withdraw the film from its planned release, but it is now available to view online and is on show at some cinemas. It made about $15m (£9.6m) through downloads alone over its first three days of distribution.

The Lizard Squad spokesperson did not elaborate on how the group got hold of the login information for Sony employees. However, it is possible it found or uncovered them while searching for ways to attack the PlayStation gaming network.

The Lizard Squad has repeatedly attacked Sony's network and many others during 2014. On Christmas Day it managed to disrupt it and the Xbox Live network for hours leaving many gamers unable to log in.

The spokesperson said the attacks were carried out to expose the "massive security issues" many large companies suffer.

"The customers of these companies should be rather worried," they said.

The attacks on the PlayStation and Xbox networks have now stopped thanks to the intervention of tech entrepreneur Kim Dotcom. Instead, the group has switched its attention to the Tor network which has taken steps to limit the effect the Lizard Squad can have on the system.

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Child porn tops Tor hidden site visits

30 December 2014 Last updated at 18:24 By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

Most traffic to sites hidden on the Tor network go to those dealing in images of child sexual abuse a study suggests.

The six-month study sought to catalogue hidden services on the so-called "dark net" and work out which were the most popular.

It found lots of sites peddling illegal drugs but the most popular were those involved with abuse.

However, the researcher behind the study said it was hard to conclude that people were behind all the visits.

Drug traffic

Tor, or The Onion Router, is an anonymising system that lets people use the web without revealing who they are or which country they are in. The anonymity offered by the network has encouraged many people to set up hidden .onion sites that offer content, services and goods that it is illegal to sell openly.

Carried out by Dr Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth, the study set up servers to join the Tor network and catalogued hidden services found on it. The system was also able to visit the sites to download HTML content so they could be categorised and to track how many visits each one received.

Traffic to hidden services on Tor represents about 1.5% of all the data passing across the network on any given day.

Over the six months of the study, Dr Owen and his colleagues saw about 80,000 hidden sites on Tor.

"Most of the hidden services we only saw once. They do not tend to exist for a very long time," he said during a speech at the 31st Chaos Communications Congress in Hanover, where he presented his findings.

The top 40 hidden services were involved with controlling botnets - networks of home computers compromised by malicious programs. Many of these botnets have been shut down which has left their client computers fruitlessly polling Tor seeking the now dormant command systems.

The study found that the biggest number of hidden services were dedicated to selling illegal drugs. Also in the top five were underground markets, fraud sites, mail services and those dealing in the virtual currency Bitcoin.

Although the number of sites dealing in images of abuse on Tor is small, traffic to them dwarfs that going to other sites, said Dr Owen.

About 75% of the traffic observed in the study ended up at abuse sites, said Dr Owen.

"When we found this out we were stunned," he said. "This is not what we expected at all."

Despite the findings, Dr Owen cautioned against drawing too many conclusions since he did not know which visits were done by people and which by machines.

"It's not as quite as straightforward as it looks," he said. "It might look like there are lots of people visiting these sites but it is difficult to conclude that from this information."

"What proportion are people and which are something else? We simply don't know." he said, adding that "crawlers" run by law enforcement and other agencies that police abuse sites could be responsible for the steady stream of traffic.

Roger Dingledine, one of the original developers of Tor, also said the methodology of the study - which only scanned long-lived sites to see what content they offered - made it hard to draw conclusions about what people did on the network.

"Without knowing how many sites disappeared before he got around to looking at them, it's impossible to know what percentage of fetches went to abuse sites," he said.

"There are important uses for hidden services, such as when human rights activists use them to access Facebook or to blog anonymously," he added.

"These uses for hidden services are new and have great potential."

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Wind-up radio inventor honoured

30 December 2014 Last updated at 22:34 By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News

Inventor Trevor Baylis has been made a CBE in the New Year Honours list.

Best known for creating the Baygen wind-up radio, Mr Baylis was honoured for services to intellectual property.

Throughout his colourful life, which involved a stint as a stuntman, Mr Baylis has spent much of his time inventing or involved with engineering.

Most recently he has campaigned to make the UK a more hospitable place for inventors, and is seeking to help them safeguard their creations.

Stolen property

"It was a great surprise," said Twickenham-based Mr Baylis of learning of the award. "I got an OBE in 1997 and that was one of the best days of my life."

"I've been pushing hard to help other inventors because so many people get ripped off like a turkey or find they do not have the money to pay the lawyers to protect themselves."

Mr Baylis is currently heading a venture called Baylis Brands, which advises inventors about the best way to develop ideas and puts them in touch with other experts that can help turn their creations into marketable products.

He is also working to get laws changed to help inventors and engineers if they find someone else is profiting from their work.

"I'm trying to get patent theft recognised as a white collar crime," he said, adding that the idea had received a sympathetic hearing from the Metropolitan Police.

Mr Baylis' best known invention is the Baygen wind-up radio, which he came up with in 1991 while watching a documentary about Aids in Africa that proposed using educational radio programmes to tackle the virus' spread. An appearance on the BBC's Tomorrow's World in 1994 helped turn his invention into a commercial product.

Despite its success, Mr Baylis did not profit from his invention and the design is now under the control of the Freeplay engineering firm.

"Inventing is not about the money," he said. "Who wants to be the richest man in the graveyard? There are no pockets in a shroud."

He said many others could go through the same experience as he did and become an inventor of a household object.

"I want to make sure everyone is aware they are an inventor," he said. "I don't want people to think you have to be a genius to be one."

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New energy rules for domestic devices

1 January 2015 Last updated at 00:47 By Roger Harrabin BBC environment analyst

European Union rules will oblige new networked devices such as modems and internet-connected televisions to switch themselves off when not in use.

Many gadgets are connected to the internet 24/7, using 25-100 watts while their owners sleep.

But new devices sold from Thursday will fall to sleep, using a trickle of power when they are not in use.

The European Commission said the move would save an average household about £32 a year.

The change is part of the EU's Ecodesign initiative, which aims to cut costs, improve competitiveness and reduce carbon emissions.

Energy labels on online products will also be improved, while gas ovens will have to display energy ratings.

The Commission said the best gas oven would typically save £143 over its lifetime compared with the worst.

Critics argue that such regulations - which recently included banning the sale of popular high-wattage vacuum cleaners - are denying consumer choice.

Energy experts have told the BBC that manufacturers deliberately increased the wattage of some vacuum cleaners to make them appear more attractive to consumers - even though the machines produced more heat and noise, rather than more suction.

Coffee machines

The UK technology guru James Dyson backed the efficiency regulations in principle and said many vacuum cleaners could use less power without compromising their ability to clean.

But he said some manufacturers had conspired to skew EU efficiency tests to their own advantage.

The new EU rules even extend to the coffee machine. Drip filter machines with non-insulated jugs must power down 40 minutes after the end of the last brewing cycle.

Domestic drip-filter coffee machines with insulated jugs - which keep the coffee warm and preserve its taste without further heating - must switch off after five minutes.

Coffee drinkers may be alarmed by the changes, but the Commission claims consumers will not even notice, as coffee in drip-filter machines without an insulated jug is undrinkable after 40 minutes anyway.

The Commission says its measures on stand-by devices will reduce energy consumption by almost 75 terawatt-hours (TWh) without affecting product performance.

This will reduce CO2 emissions by 28 million tons, equivalent to the annual emissions of 1.5 million households.

An analysis for BBC last month estimated that the efficiency rules have reduced the average individual's electricity consumption by 10% over five years.

Manufacturers who do not comply with the new rules will be judged by member states.

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