The battle to combat spam and email phishing is hotting up as 15 major technology and financial companies have recent opened up to the industry an organisation to design a system for authenticating emails from legitimate senders and weed out fakes.
The system is called DMARC – short for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance. Snappy title, eh?
Anyone with email is bombarded by fraudsters trying to trick people into giving away passwords and other personal information by sending emails that look as if they come from a legitimate bank, retailer or even the tax office. The unwary might enter personal details, which scam artists can capture and use for fraud.
To combat that DMARC builds upon existing techniques used to combat spam. Those techniques are designed to verify that an email actually came from the sender in question. The problem is there are multiple approaches to achieve that and no standard way of dealing with emails believed to be fake.
The new system asks email senders and the companies that provide email services to share information about the email messages they send and receive. In addition to authenticating their legitimate emails using the existing systems, companies can receive alerts from email providers every time their domain name is used in a fake message. They can then ask the email providers to move such messages to spam folder or block them outright.
Work on DMARC started about 18 months ago. But now other companies can sign up with the organisation, whether they send emails or provide email services. For email users, the group hopes DMARC will mean fewer fraudulent messages and scams reaching their inbox.
The group’s founders are email providers Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc., AOL Inc. and Google Inc.; financial service providers Bank of America Corp., Fidelity Investments and eBay Inc.’s PayPal; online service companies Facebook, LinkedIn Corp. and American Greetings Corp. and security companies Agari, Cloudmark, eCert, Return Path and the Trusted Domain Project. Google uses it already, both in its email sender and email provider capacities.
“Email phishing defrauds millions of people and companies every year, resulting in a loss of consumer confidence in email and the Internet as a whole,” said Brett McDowell, Chair of DMARC.org and Senior Manager of Customer Security Initiatives at PayPal. “Industry cooperation – combined with technology and consumer education – is crucial to fight phishing.”
The DMARC specification addresses concerns that have traditionally hindered widespread deployment of an authenticated, trusted email ecosystem, the group says in a press release. It continues that email receivers lack a reliable way to know the extent to which an email sender uses standards like SPF and DKIM for authenticating their messages. As a result, providers must rely on complex and imperfect measurements to separate legitimate unauthenticated messages sent by the domain owner from fraudulent phishing messages sent by a scammer.
By introducing a standards-based framework, DMARC has defined a more comprehensive and integrated way for email senders to introduce email authentication technologies into their infrastructure. For example, a sender could set policies to easily request a provider to discard unauthenticated email in order to block phishing attacks.
The specification also creates a mechanism for email providers to send detailed reports back to email senders to help catch any gaps in the authentication system. This feedback loop raises the trust level within the email ecosystem and makes it easier to detect and stop phishing attempts.
The mystery of a savage murder has been told tweet by tweet.
Agatha Christie’s murder-mystery, The Body in the Library, was revealed– a tiny chunk at a time – through Twitter.
With permission from Agatha Christie Ltd, Stewart Bain, library assistant at the Orkney Library and Archive, has adapted the original text so it could be tweeted in 140-character nuggets from Twitter accounts specially set up for Miss Marple and each of the other main protagonists.
The first mini instalment went out at 7.15am last Friday – the moment in the book when the body is discovered – with the plot unfolding over the rest of the day and on Saturday until a cliff hanger moment was reached.
At that point followers can guess whodunnit – or go to their local library and pick up a copy of the book to find out.
Stewart, winner of two Golden twit awards last year, works in Orkney, where Copla is based.
He has worked closely with publishers HarperCollins and Agatha Christie Ltd, the company that owns and manages the literary estate of Agatha Christie – the world’s best-selling novelist of all time.
The serialisation was timed as a novel way to celebrate National Libraries Day last Saturday.
He hopes people enjoy following The Body in the Library on Twitter and that it encourages those who’ve never read Agatha Christie before to check out their local library and take a fresh look at her novels.
He is a fan of Twitter and has pioneered the way libraries can use Twitter and Facebook to highlight what they have to offer. He has attracted over 4,500 followers on Twitter, from all parts of the UK, and many countries worldwide. And he hopes they will be joined by many more as Agatha Christie’s characters interact with each other over the Twittersphere.
And perhaps some of the library’s crime writing twitter followers will particularly enjoy the tweets. Fans of the @OrkneyLibrary Twitter feed include Val McDermid and Anne Cleeves.
You may remember duel controls being used when you took your driving lessons and a nervous instructor had the power to jam on the brakes if needed or take over the steering. But now a more sinister and scary form of driving control by an unseen being is possible.
A team of university scientists has identified security issues in the design of modern vehicles. They demonstrated that cyber thieves can overtake key components within a car’s computer, allowing remote control of the brakes, engine and lights as well as tracking of the driver’s current location, speed and even audio conversations. How scary is that?
But don’t have nightmares about getting into your car and being taken down the wrong road. There have been no known attacks to date by computer hackers.
The scientists have identified vulnerabilities–and ways to fix them–in advance of any known attacks. The automotive industry is responding swiftly to fix both the particular problems identified and, through standards organisations, to improve the general level of assurance in automotive platforms.
Modern cars are computer driven, to a certain extent, though you can choose where to go – unless you allow your sat nav to decide. Digital computers monitor and control vehicles through internal networks and those connected to the outside world through a variety of physical and wireless interfaces. This technology has driven major advancements in efficiency and safety, but it has also introduced a range of potential risks.
The boffins from the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego showed in a study that compromising a single component can be sufficient to control the rest of the car as well. The second study evaluated and demonstrated a range of entry points by which an adversary could take over a vehicle without physical access (including cellular and Bluetooth networks, the CD player and the tools used by auto mechanics).
Let’s hope these scientists get there in time to keep us in control.
Research In Motion (RIM) has rolled out its Blackberry 7.1 OS, the latest version of its smartphone software. The Canadian phone giant says its new operating system will expand worldwide during the next few weeks.
One of the new features of the system is Blackberry Tag, a new content sharing tool which uses Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to allow users to share contacts, media and files, as well as invite friends to BlackBerry Messenger by touching their BlackBerry smartphones together.
It also adds mobile hotspot capabilities to turn devices into a portable Wi-Fi router, which have been available to Android and iOS users for some time and support for Wi-Fi calling. For users of BlackBerry Curve 9360 and 9380, the update also brings FM radio.
RIM has also updated a number of apps, including BlackBerry Messenger, BlackBerry Traffic and BlackBerry Travel.
RIM is being forced into upping its game as it lags significantly behind its larger rivals. For example, RIM’s BlackBerry App World boasts less than 50,000 applications. Apple’s App Store, meanwhile, offers around 600,000 applications, and Google’s Android Marketplace tops out at nearly 330,000 apps, according to a recent study from Mobilewalla.
Apple’s share of the British smartphone market has grown almost 10 per cent in the last year, bucking the trend in the eurozone, where those watching the euros are opting for cheaper Android devices.
It will be interesting to see how Blackberry fares with so many innovations happening in the smartphone marketplace.
We recently blogged about the slow broadband speed here in Orkney which lags behind that of much of the UK. And across Britain the service is at a snail’s pace behind that enjoyed in many homes in the US.
So the news of the US download film service Netflix’s launch in the UK makes us wonder whether many folk will sign up for it here. There is nothing worse than having your film freeze on the screen, sometimes every few seconds, while the streaming catches up. In many areas across Britain we have to think ahead and start downloading and go away and make a cup of tea while the streaming trickles through.
Netflix is the must have internet film subscription in the US and has deals with studios Miramax and MGM. It is expected to rival Amazon-owned Lovefilm in the UK which offers combined packages of DVDs in the post and film downloads. Industry analysts predict a host of new digital delivery service launches across the UK this year.
Google announced a movie rental service for UK Android users, and Sony the launch of its Entertainment Network, offering streaming and downloading services. Other platforms such as Sky, BT Vision and Virgin Media, have focused on providing on-demand content to deter people from using the web. Apple’s iTunes is also a major player in digital film distribution. The launch of Netflix, on a date to be confirmed, could provoke a new price war.
Netflix has done a deal with the commercial arm of the BBC, which means subscribers will be able watch older series of BBC shows, such as Torchwood , Miss Marple, Fawlty Towers and Spooks, via the service.
Those with a fast enough connection can download content to a computer, tablet or connected TV. There have been advances in the latter and a greater move towards downloadable programming and catch-up service, among them Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console which is in a range of content deals with big names.
In 2012, the BBC is set to work with Virgin Media to launch new red button services and apps on its TiVo box, while Sky’s Anytime+ service will connect its set-top boxes to other broadband services rather than just its own. The number of apps for TVs will also begin to rise creating a growth area for software developers.
At Copla we can install video sharing on our clients’ websites. Fast broadband is essential for doing business on interactive websites.
Ebook readers have been the most popular gift this Christmas with Kindles being the must-have item for book lovers of all ages. One of the most fiercely debated topics over the turkey was over books versus Kindle. Although Amazon’s eReader version has been around for two years, it seems that now Kindle fever has taken off.
Those with bookshelves groaning with volumes clutched unwrapped new hardbacks to their chests, ardently declaring their continuing faithfulness to print and paper. Their allegiance would help independent bookshops, or indeed any high street bookstores, survive, they say. And no download could beat the real thing.
Others spent three days getting to grips with their new electronic devices and extolling the freedom of travelling with thousands of tomes in their hand. Millions of books are now at their disposal through a click or two, they cried with excitement in their eyes.
Online retailer Amazon says it has enjoyed its best Christmas for its Kindle-brand, the black and white reader which it claims can be read in sunlight just like ink on paper. Meanwhile in the US the Kindle Fire, expected to be a cut price rival to Apple’s iPad, has been selling like, err, wildfire.
But its forthcoming UK launch is not being greeted with total excitement by every technology reviewer here. It has been called ‘a brick’ and ‘feels like a Soviet version of Apple’s tablet’. It may be half the price of the iPad but it’s got no GPS or mobile connection, no camera or microphone and only has a few thousand apps. And reading off a tablet for more than half an hour proves painful, some say.
It is interesting that in Sweden, for example, there are virtually no eReaders using the likes of Kindle, Sony or Kobo eInk devices but plenty reading books on iPads.
Meanwhile speculation is growing as Apple is to make a new product announcement towards the end of this month. Tech bloggers are predicting the secret development is not likely to be the revamped iPad 3, which is expected later this spring, but perhaps something related to publishing or media content
One thing is certain: the phenomenal rise in the number of people choosing to read books on electronic devices looks set to continue over the next year. Publishers say the market is booming. HarperCollins said it is seeing a 600% growth year on year in eBooks in a stagnant book selling market. Ebooks are outselling hardcover books by 2:1. And writers are discovering they can self-publish online and reap up to ten times higher percentages in royalties over book deals.
How many arguments have been raging up and down the country over Christmas and New Year as the TV remote gets lost under a pile of wrapping paper or chocolate boxes, we wonder.
Soon, we hear, you will be able to wave all those troubles goodbye. Or wave at the TV anyway.
For a small Israeli start-up company called XTR3D has developed gesture recognition software so viewers can change channels and volume with the flick of their hand.
There will be no need to leave the couch and press any buttons with the motion capture technology. XTR3D is one of the developers and has just received £5m investment and also plans to bring the first motion control smartphone into the market as early as next year.
Although the Israeli firm follows in the footsteps of Microsoft’s Kinect, the multi-directional gesture control gaming console; the technology, we understand, is quite different.
The Kinect has depth sensors, multi-array microphones and RGB cameras that provide the software with the information it needs to track both voice and gestures. But XTR3D uses ordinary 2D cameras – such as a webcam of a computer or the one in your smartphone – to extract 3D out of a 2D image.
There are many other firms working to give us a touch free world but perhaps the one with the biggest effect on stopping the arguments over: “Where’s the remote?” will be the one we are most grateful to.
We all make assumptions about people when we first meet them, but how would you feel about a machine that weighs you up and then decides what dessert to serve you?
Not content with analysing our eating habits by what we buy through loyalty cards and the internet, food companies now want to know what we look like too.
Intel and Kraft Foods have launched in the US a ‘smart’ vending machine that analyses users’ age and gender to trial a new dessert. Kraft says it can tailor the product to the shopper, and exclude children from the adult-focused promotion. Intel says it intends to retrofit the technology to existing vending machines to allow companies to study what types of people are buying their products.
The machine uses an optical sensor to recognise the shape of the human face and a computer processor carries out a series of calculations based on measurements to determine the sex of the shopper and place them in one of four age brackets. This data is then used to determine what, if any, product the shopper should be served.
Intel says the machine does not take any photographs or video, so there is no footage for hackers to steal or employees to misuse.
Kraft is using the devices to trial Temptations – a jelly-based dessert in two busy locations in Chicago and New York.
Audience Impression Metric (AIM) software has been used by several other companies including Adidas which powered a huge video touchwall that displayed the company’s shoes to shoppers, selecting which type according to whether they were male or female. Harley Davidson used a specially created electronic sign in Toronto to track when there were more women in its stores.
The software can be used in many ways such as measuring how long people look at an advert or whether they smiled. So, if you want to be served by an intelligent vending machine, your wish could soon be granted. If not, look away now.
Following our earlier blog about Facebook advertising and security concerns, which we can help you keep safe with at Copla, it is worth a mention that a security hole even caught out Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
After a web forum posted instructions on how to access images that were designated off limits to everyone except set friends lists, 13 private photos were lifted from Zuckerberg’s account and posted below a headline demanding that Facebook fixed its security flaws. The photos showed the billionaire with his girlfriend in his kitchen, with US president Barack Obama, and in another image Zuckerberg is holding what appears to be a freshly slaughtered chicken.
Facebook immediately reacted to the bug which allowed people to report multiple instances of inappropriate content simultaneously. This meant anyone could view a limited number of another user’s most recently uploaded photos irrespective of the privacy settings for these photos. Officials said the bug was only live for a limited period of time before the system was disabled.
Although Facebook’s statement says it is working to identify and resolve threats to keep the site secure, you can bet your bottom dollar that the challenge for hackers to bypass security permissions is very tempting. For example, last year, the social network was caught exposing the name and photo of all 500 million of its users when their email addresses were typed in to the log-in page.
You could, however, lose more than your privacy. Thieves targeted an apartment after a teenager in São Paulo in Brazil posted photos of his electronic equipment and expensive foreign holidays on the social network. A fellow student stole his keys and gave them to two adult accomplices. The men broke into the apartment and held up four people at gunpoint.
The thieves made off with jewellery and cash and were later shot by police and died in hospital. This, of course, is a very extreme example of the consequences of youngsters posting personal information on social networks.
Back in the UK a 25-year-old man was recently charged with five counts of illegal hacking for repeatedly penetrating the security defences of Facebook, targeting at least three different services. The alleged security breach is still being investigated and dealt with through the courts. Facebook has said that personal users’ data was not hacked into.
The message received loud and clear is that social media can be a great tool, but be careful how much you expose to the world and his friend.
From next month those who use Internet Explorer for browsing will be automatically updated to the latest version by Microsoft. And the changes will be made without you even noticing.
Microsoft says the changes are needed to improve online security to millions of computers. They are applying the updates secretly so that scammers can’t cheat people with fake updates. But you can opt out or uninstall the new software. And the changes will only apply to users who have automatic update functions turned on.
For those who are happy with the arrangement it beats having to stop whatever you are doing on your computer while you update your software. Even though updated software runs better, and we all know that, it is easy to just click ‘later’ and before you know it you are using old versions and putting yourself more at risk from scammers.
The upgrade programme will affect Internet Explorer users running Windows XP, Vista and 7. Only those Windows users with automatic updates turned on will be enrolled in the programme. People using Windows XP will be upgraded to IE8, while those on Vista and 7 get updated to IE9. IE6 is a ten-year-old version.
Across the world Internet Explorer is still the most popular browser, with more than 52% of people using it, with Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome in second place.
Internet browsers who are living anywhere in the world can buy Copla’s online VPN service; Expat Surfer. It offers a secure connection between the user’s computer and our dedicated servers in the UK and USA. This secure connection protects the user’s entire web browsing traffic from hackers and assigns their traffic a UK or US ip address. This means users can access country specific web content as if they were in the UK or USA.
British people living abroad who might be using unsecured shared networks or want to access certain UK or US websites with an appropriate ip address love this service. You can check this out on our special Expat Surfer website. There is a link in our Products section of this website. It might make the perfect Christmas gift.
May we wish a very Merry Christmas to all our customers, wherever you are. And safe surfing.