Chinese Hackers Go After Dissidents

The “Comment Crew,” a group of China-based hackers whose outing earlier this year in major media outlets caused a conflict with the U.S., have resumed their attacks against dissidents.

FireEye, a security vendor that specializes in trying to stop sophisticated attacks, has noticed attackers using a fresh set of tools and evasion techniques against some of its newer clients, which it can’t name. But Rob Rachwald, director of market research for FireEye, said in an interview Monday that those clients include an organization in Taiwan and others involved in dissident activity.

The Comment Crew was known for many years by security analysts, but its attacks on The New York Times, described in an extensive report in February from vendor Mandiant, thrust them into an uncomfortable spotlight, causing tense relations between the U.S. and China.

Rachwald said it is difficult to determine if the organizations being targeted now were targeted by the Comment Crew previously, but FireEye said last month that the group didn’t appear to be hitting organizations they had compromised before.

Organizations opposing Chinese government policies have frequently been targeted by hackers in what are believed to be politically motivated surveillance operations.

The Comment Crew laid low for about four months following the report, but emerging clues indicate they haven’t gone away and in fact have undertaken a major re-engineering effort to continue spying. The media attention “didn’t stop them, but it clearly did something to dramatically alter their operations,” Rachwald said in an interview.

“If you look at it from a chronological perspective, this malware hasn’t been touched for about 18 months or so,” he said. “Suddenly, they took it off the market and started overhauling it fairly dramatically.”

FireEye researchers Ned Moran and Nart Villeneuve described the new techniques on Monday on FireEye’s blog.

Two malware samples, called Aumlib and Ixeshe, had been used by the Comment Crew but not updated since 2011. Both malware programs have now been altered to change the appearance of their network traffic, Rachwald said.

Many vendors use intrusion detection systems to spot how malware sends data back to an attacker, which helps determine if a network has been compromised. Altering the method and format for how the data is sent can trick those systems into thinking everything is fine.

In another improvement, encryption is now employed to mask certain components of the programs’ networking communication, Rachwald said. The malware programs themselves, which are designed to steal data and log keystrokes, are basically the same.

Mandiant’s report traced the hacking activity to a specific Chinese military unit called “61398.” The company alleged that it waged a seven-year hacking spree that compromised 141 organizations.

Rachwald said it is strongly believed the Comment Crew is behind the new attacks given its previous use of Aumlib and Ixeshe. But the group has also re-engineered its attack infrastructure so much over the last few months that it is difficult to say for sure.

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Will The Tegra Processor Pay Off?

Last year Nvidia’s Tegra gamble seemed to be paying off nicely, but the insanely competitive SoC market moves fast and all it takes for things to go badly wrong is one botched generation. The Tegra 4 was late to the party and Nvidia eventually ended up with a big and relatively powerful chip that nobody wanted.

In its latest earnings call Nvidia made it clear that revenues from Tegra are expected to decline $200 to $300 million this year from about $750 million last year. Even this seems like a relatively optimistic forecast. Tegra 3 ended up in quite a few high-volume products, such as the Nexus 7, HTC One X, LG Optimus X4 and a bunch of other phones and tablets. On paper, Tegra 4 will end up with a similar number of design wins, maybe even more, but nearly all of them are low-volume products.

At the moment there are only a handful of Tegra 4 products out there. These include HP’s Slatebook 10, Toshiba eXcite Pro and eXcite Write tablets and Nvidia’s own Shield console. Nvidia’s 7-inch Tegra Tab is also on the way, along with the Surface RT 2. Some Chinese vendors like ZTE are also expected to roll out a Tegra 4 phone here and there, but the chip won’t end up in any big brand phones.

Nvidia does not release any Tegra unit shipment info, so we can only guess how many Tegra 3 and Tegra 4 chips are out there, but it doesn’t take much to realise Tegra 4 is a flop. Shipments of the original Nexus 7, powered by the Tegra 3, are estimated just north of six million units. Surface RT shipments were abysmal. Earlier this year analysts put the figure at just 900,000 units after a full quarter of sales. Microsoft eventually took a massive write-down on its Surface RT stock. LG and HTC didn’t reveal any shipment figures for the Optimus 4X and HTC One X, either. HTC shipped about 40 million phones last year, while LG managed about 27 million. We can’t even begin to estimate how many of them were flagship products powered by Tegra, but the number was clearly in the millions.

This time around Nvidia can’t count on strong smartphone sales, let alone the Nexus 7 and Surface RT. Even if it scores high-end tablet design wins, the truth is that high-end Android tablets just aren’t selling well. Nvidia needed high-volume design wins and Android tablets just won’t do the trick. Qualcomm is in the new Nexus 7 and the HTC One. Back in May analysts reported that HTC One sales hit the 5 million mark in the first two months of sales, although shipments have slowed down since then. Millions of Snapdragons found a home in the HTC One and millions more will end up in the new Nexus 7.

Nvidia’s talk of a $200 to $300 million hit this year doesn’t exactly paint the full picture. Tegra 3 shipments in the first two quarters of 2013 were modest, but relatively good. However, nothing took its place and the true extent of the Tegra 4 flop will only become visible in the first quarter of 2014 and beyond. The big hope is that the Tegra 4i and Tegra 5 will start to come online by then, so the numbers for the full year won’t be as terrible, but it is abundantly clear that Nvidia cannot afford another Tegra 4.

As for Nvidia’s Tegra Tab and Shield, they might do well. Nvidia knows a thing or two about hardware, but even if they prove successful, they just won’t be enough, at least not in this cycle.

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NOAA Super Computer Goes Live

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has rolled out two new supercomputers that are expected to improve weather forecasts and perhaps help better prepare us for hurricanes.

The two IBM systems, which are identical clones, will be used by NOAA’s National Weather Service to produce forecast data that’s used in the U.S. and around the world.

One of the supercomputers is in Reston, Va.; the other is in Orlando. The NWS can switch between the two in about six minutes.

Each is a 213-teraflop system running a Linux operating system on Intel processors. The federal government is paying about $20 million a year to operate the leased systems.

“These are the systems that are the origin of all the weather forecasts you see,” said Ben Kyger, director of central operations at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction.

NOAA had previously used identical four-year-old 74-teraflop IBM supercomputers that ran on IBM’s AIX operating system and Power 6 chips.

Before it could activate the new systems, the NWS had to ensure that they produced scientifically accurate results. It had been running the old and new systems in parallel for months, comparing their output.

The NWS has a new hurricane model, which is 15% more accurate in day five of a forecast for a storm’s track and intensity. That model is now operational and running on the new systems. That’s important, because the U.S. is expecting a busy hurricane season.

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Can Blackberry Be Sold?

Struggling smartphone maker BlackBerry is reviewing several options that could include joint ventures, partnerships or an outright sale, as the company’s leading shareholder steps down from its board in a possible prelude to taking a different role.

BlackBerry, which pioneered on-your-hip email with its first smartphones and email pagers, said on Monday it had set up a committee to review its options, sparking debate over whether Canada’s one-time crown jewel is more valuable as a whole or snapped up piece by piece by competitors or private investors.

The company said Prem Watsa, whose Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd is BlackBerry’s biggest shareholder, was leaving the board to avoid a possible conflict of interest as BlackBerry determines its next steps.

The resignation of Watsa, often described as Canada’s version of Warren Buffett, suggests Fairfax may be part of a solution.

BlackBerry, once a stock market darling, has bled market share to the likes of Apple Inc and phones using Google Inc’s Android operating system, and its new BlackBerry 10 smartphones have failed to gain traction with consumers.

Blackberry shares rose 7.5 percent to $10.80 in New York and C$10.84 in Toronto in afternoon trading. But the shares remain well below the levels seen in June, before the company reported dismal results that included poor sales of the BlackBerry 10 phones it viewed as key to a successful turnaround.

The share price peaked at about C$150 in June 2008.

A clean balance sheet makes the smartphone seller an enticing takeover candidate. Like Dell Inc, it is a tech icon in need of a turnaround. But BlackBerry’s cash flow is worse, meaning leverage would be extra risky.

The company’s assets include a well-regarded services business that powers BlackBerry’s security-focused messaging system, worth $3 billion to $4.5 billion; a collection of patents that could be worth $2 billion to $3 billion; and $3.1 billion in cash and investments, according to analysts.

But the smartphones that bear its name have little or no value, and it may cost $2 billion to shutter that unit, the analysts said.

Analysts expressed skepticism about the new committee, noting that BlackBerry announced similar steps more than a year ago when it hired JPMorgan and RBC as financial advisers. A source said both are still involved in the strategic review.

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Are Russian Hackers Exploiting Android?

Russian mobile malware factories are working with thousands of affiliates to exploit Android users, a security company has claimed.

According to Lookout Mobile Security the system is so efficient that almost a third of all mobile malware is made by just 10 organisations operating out of Russia. These “malware HQs” are pumping out nasty toll fraud apps, largely aimed at Android users, which force the user to call premium rate numbers the report said.

Thousands of affiliate marketers are also profiting from the scheme and helping spread the malware by setting up websites designed to trick users into downloading seemingly legitimate apps. Affiliates can make up to $12,000 a month and are heavy users of Twitter.

The report’s release at the DEF CON 21 conference in Las Vegas indicated that Lookout Mobile Security are working with the spooks to bring the crooks down. The malware HQs had gone to great lengths to obfuscate and encrypt their code to make detection tricky, but their advertising was pretty brazen.

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Microsoft Slashes Surface Pro

Microsoft on slashed the price of its Surface Pro tablet by $100, or between 10% and 11%, dropping the 64GB model to $799 and the 128GB to $899.

The cuts came three weeks after much more dramatic discounts to Microsoft’s Surface RT, which was reduced by up to 30% to prices starting at $349.

Microsoft said that the price cuts would be valid in the U.S. and Canada until August 30, or while supplies last. Discounts were also offered to customers in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

U.S. electronics retailer Best Buy — a key Microsoft partner — also was selling the Surface Pro tablets at the lower prices Sunday, as was Staples.

The Surface Pro tablets rely on Windows 8 Pro and Intel processors, rather than the stripped-down Windows RT and lower-powered ARM processors of the Surface RT devices. Surface Pro tablets can run traditional Windows software like the full-featured Office 2013 productivity suite.

While the price cuts were reminiscent of the more aggressive Surface RT discounts, their much smaller size could simply be part of Microsoft’s back-to-school marketing: August is the biggest month for that selling season, which is second only to the end-of-the-year holidays for retailers pushing consumer electronics, personal computers and tablets.

Microsoft is expected to refresh its Surface tablet lines this fall, a notion reinforced by company executives, who have repeatedly pledged that the company is in the tablet business for the long haul. The Surface Pro discounts could be part of the usual push to empty inventory prior to the launch of new models.

The 10% to 11% price cuts were also in line with other hardware makers’ recent discounting. Last month, Best Buy ran a short-term deal that chopped prices of the MacBook Pro by as much as 17%, and for college students, up to 25%.

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Samsung’s Eight-core Chip Goes Hacking

A Samsung eight-core chip used in some Galaxy S4 mobile devices is now available for hackers to play with on a developer board from South Korea-based Hardkernel.

Hardkernel’s Odroid XU board has incorporated Samsung’s eight-core Exynos 5 Octa 5410 chip, which is based on ARM’s latest processor designs. Samsung recently announced a new eight-core chip, the Exynos 5 Octa 5420, which packs faster graphics and application processing than the 5410. The 5420 has not yet been shipped yet, however.

The Odroid board is priced at $149 through Aug. 31, after which it will be offered for $169. Samsung for many months has said that a board with an eight-core chip would be released, and has shown prototype developer boards at conferences.

Odroid-XU will provide developers an opportunity to write programs tuned for Samsung’s octa-core chip, which has been a source of controversy. Analysts have said the eight-core design is overkill for small devices like smartphones and tablets, which need long battery life.

The eight-core chip design also takes up a lot of space, which prevented Samsung from putting LTE radios inside some Galaxy S4 models. Qualcomm, which hesitantly moved from the dual core to the quad-core design on its Snapdragon chips, on Friday criticized eight-core chips, calling the idea “dumb.”

Despite the criticism, the board will give developers a first true glimpse of, and an opportunity to write and test applications for, ARM’s Big.Little design. The design combines high-power cores for demanding applications with low-power cores for mundane tasks like texting and calling.

Samsung’s iteration of Big.Little in the Exynos 5 Octa 5410 chip combines four processors based on ARM’s latest Cortex-A15 processor design, which incorporates four low-power Cortex-A7 CPUs. The Cortex-A15 is ARM’s latest processor design and succeeds the previous Cortex-A9 core, which was used in popular smartphones like Apple’s iPhone and the Galaxy S3. Samsung said the eight-core chip provides a balance of power and performance, with the high-power cores kicking in only when necessary.

The board has an Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX544MP3 graphics processor, 2GB of low-power DDR3 DRAM, two USB 3.0 ports and four USB 2.0 ports. Other features include Wi-Fi, Ethernet and optional Bluetooth. Google’s Android 4.2 operating system is preloaded, and support for other Linux distributions like Ubuntu is expected soon. The board has already been benchmarked on Ubuntu 13.04.

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Is nVidia Working On A Tablet?

According to a report over at Tabtech.de that managed to spot an unknown device in the result page of the GFXBench, Nvidia might be gearing up to release a phablet or tablet.

The device is listed as Nvidia Tegra Note Premium and scores just slightly lower than the Nvidia Shield in GFXBench. It feature Tegra 4 clocked at 1.8GHz and has a resolution of 1280×800 which probably points out to a tablet rather than phablet but everything is possible. It was running Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean when it was tested.

At Computex 2013 back in June, Nvidia showcased a rather unique device that was used to demonstrate pressure-sensitive functions of a stylus and which might be the device that showed up in the GFXBench results. The 1280×800 resolution is not impressive and far off from what the competition currently has to offer, but then again Nvidia might want a cheaper tablet or phablet on the market.

In any case we will surely keep an eye out for Nvidia’s Tegra Note Premium, whatever it turns out to be.

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PayPal Extend Bug Bounty

PayPal is expanding its bug bounty program to individuals aged 14 and older, a move intended to reward younger researchers who are technically ineligible to hold full-fledged PayPal accounts.

PayPal’s program, which is a year old this month, only applied to those 18 years and older. Under the old rule, participants in the program were required to hold valid accounts, which excluded minors, said Gus Anagnos, PayPal’s director of information security.

In May, 17-year-old Robert Kugler, a student in Germany, said he’d been denied a reward for finding a vulnerability. PayPal said the bug had already been found by two other researchers, which would have made Kugler ineligible for bounty.

In an apparent miscommunication, Kugler said he was initially told he was too young rather than the bug had already been discovered. Nonetheless, PayPal said it would look to bring younger people into its program, which pays upwards of $10,000 for remote code execution bugs on its websites.

Those who are under 18 years old can receive a bug bounty payment through a PayPal student account, an arrangement where a minor can receive payments via their parent’s account, Anagnos said.

Anagnos said other terms and conditions have been modified to make its program more transparent, such as clarifying which PayPal subsidiaries and partner sites qualify for the program.

PayPal pays much less for vulnerabilities on partner websites, which have a URL form of “www.paypal-__.com.” A remote execution bug found on that kind of site garners only $1,500 rather than up to $10,000 on the company’s main sites.

Like other bug bounty programs run by companies such as Microsoft and Google, PayPal will publicly recognize researchers on its website with a “Wall of Fame” for the top 10 researchers in a quarter. Another “honorable mention” page lists anyone who submitted a valid bug for the quarter.

Eusebiu Blindu, a testing consultant from Romania, was one of the researchers listed on the Wall of Fame for the first quarter of this year.

“I think Paypal is the best bug bounty program, and I am glad I participated in it from the first days of its launching,” he wrote on his blog.

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The DoD May Share Airwaves

The U.S. Defense Department is proposing to share some of its radio airwaves with private industry, a nod to growing pressure from the wireless industry and the Obama administration that federal agencies ease their control of valuable spectrum.

In a letter released by the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday, the Department of Defense offers to share the airwaves it now dominates in the slice of frequencies from 1755 megahertz (MHz) to 1780 MHz with spectrum-hungry wireless and Internet companies.

The military would rearrange its systems within that slice of spectrum as well as the 2025-2110 MHz band and compress programs into the 1780-1850 MHz band that it would retain.

The Defense Department uses the airwaves for programs such as pilot training and drone systems and has faced criticism from some in the industry and in Congress for resisting efforts to open those airwaves for commercial use to satisfy growing demands posed by data-hungry gadgets and services.

The Pentagon had pointed to its own need for airwaves as its use of drones and other reliance on wireless technology grows. It also had estimated the process of moving its programs to new frequencies would cost more than $12 billion.

Under the new plan, the Defense Department drops the cost estimate to $3.5 billion by compromising on sharing slices of airwaves without completely clearing any of the spectrum bands.

In the letter, originally sent on July 17 to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which oversees federal airwaves, DOD Chief Information Officer Teresa Takai called the proposal “a workable balance to provide access to the 1755-1780 MHz band most desired by the commercial wireless industry while ensuring no loss of critical DoD capabilities.”

The NTIA, in its own letter to the FCC, said it had not had enough time to review the proposal and could not yet endorse it.

The FCC, with NTIA’s help, is preparing for several auctions of airwaves to take place in coming years, including one that would sell off chunks of federally controlled spectrum. They will be the first reshuffling of airwave ownership since 2008.

Congress has required the FCC to auction off the 2155-2180 MHz band by February 2015 and the industry has sought to pair up that slice of spectrum with the valuable 1755-1780 MHz band, arguing it would collect more money. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives have introduced a bill to ensure such pairing.

The FCC has been drafting a notice of proposed rulemaking that would seek public comments on how the FCC should auction those federally owned or already cleared airwaves to the wireless companies and an FCC official said the agency’s notice will address the Pentagon’s new proposal.

President Barack Obama last month directed federal agencies to look for ways eventually to give up or share more of their airwaves with the private sector. This followed his June 2010 call to open up 500 MHz of federal spectrum for commercial use.

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