The same Russian government-aligned hackers who penetrated the Democratic Party have spent the past few months laying the groundwork for an espionage campaign against the U.S. Senate, a cybersecurity firm said Friday.

The revelation suggests the group often nicknamed Fancy Bear, whose hacking campaign scrambled the 2016 U.S. electoral contest, is still busy trying to gather the emails of America’s political elite.

“They’re still very active — in making preparations at least — to influence public opinion again,” said Feike Hacquebord, a security researcher at Trend Micro Inc., which published the report . “They are looking for information they might leak later.”

The Senate Sergeant at Arms office, which is responsible for the upper house’s security, declined to comment.

Hacquebord said he based his report on the discovery of a clutch of suspicious-looking websites dressed up to look like the U.S. Senate’s internal email system. He then cross-referenced digital fingerprints associated with those sites to ones used almost exclusively by Fancy Bear, which his Tokyo-based firm dubs “Pawn Storm.”

Trend Micro previously drew international attention when it used an identical technique to uncover a set of decoy websites apparently set up to harvest emails from the French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign in April 2017. The sites’ discovery was followed two months later by a still-unexplained publication of private emails from several Macron staffers in the final days of the race.

Hacquebord said the rogue Senate sites — which were set up in June and September of 2017 — matched their French counterparts.

“That is exactly the way they attacked the Macron campaign in France,” he said.

Attribution is extremely tricky in the world of cybersecurity, where hackers routinely use misdirection and red herrings to fool their adversaries. But Tend Micro, which has followed Fancy Bear for years, said there could be no doubt.

“We are 100 percent sure that it can attributed to the Pawn Storm group,” said Rik Ferguson, one of the Hacquebord’s colleagues.

Like many cybersecurity companies, Trend Micro refuses to speculate publicly on who is behind such groups, referring to Pawn Storm only as having “Russia-related interests.” But the U.S. intelligence community alleges that Russia’s military intelligence service pulls the hackers’ strings and a months-long Associated Press investigation into the group, drawing on a vast database of targets supplied by the cybersecurity firm Secureworks, has determined that the group is closely attuned to the Kremlin’s objectives.

If Fancy Bear has targeted the Senate over the past few months, it wouldn’t be the first time. An AP analysis of Secureworks’ list shows that several staffers there were targeted between 2015 and 2016.

Among them: Robert Zarate, now the foreign policy adviser to Florida Senator Marco Rubio; Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who now runs a Washington consultancy; and Jason Thielman, the chief of staff to Montana Senator Steve Daines. A Congressional researcher specializing in national security issues was also targeted.

Fancy Bear’s interests aren’t limited to U.S. politics; the group also appears to have the Olympics in mind.

Trend Micro’s report said the group had set up infrastructure aimed at collecting emails from a series of Olympic winter sports federations, including the International Ski Federation, the International Ice Hockey Federation, the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation, the International Luge Federation and the International Biathlon Union.

The targeting of Olympic groups comes as relations between Russia and the International Olympic Committee are particularly fraught. Russian athletes are being forced to compete under a neutral flag in the upcoming Pyeongchang Olympics following an extraordinary doping scandal that has seen 43 athletes and several Russian officials banned for life.

Amid speculation that Russia could retaliate by orchestrating the leak of prominent Olympic officials’ emails, cybersecurity firms including McAfee and ThreatConnect have picked up on signs that state-backed hackers are making moves against winter sports staff and anti-doping officials.

On Wednesday, a group that has brazenly adopted the Fancy Bear nickname began publishing what appeared to be Olympics and doping-related emails from between September 2016 and March 2017. The contents were largely unremarkable but their publication was covered extensively by Russian state media and some read the leak as a warning to Olympic officials not to press Moscow too hard over the doping scandal.

Whether any Senate emails could be published in such a way isn’t clear. Previous warnings that German lawmakers’ correspondence might be leaked by Fancy Bear ahead of last year’s election there appear to have come to nothing.

On the other hand, the group has previously dumped at least one U.S. legislator’s correspondence onto the web.

One of the targets on Secureworks’ list was Colorado State Senator Andy Kerr, who said thousands of his emails were posted to an obscure section of the website DCLeaks — a web portal better known for publishing emails belonging to retired Gen. Colin Powell and various members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign — in late 2016.

Kerr said he was still bewildered as to why he was targeted. He said while he supported transparency, “there should be some process and some system to it.

“It shouldn’t be up to a foreign government or some hacker to say what gets released and what shouldn’t.”
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Facebook on Thursday announced a major update that will put friends and family above pages or celebrities in a user’s news feed — and likely result in people spending less time on the leading social network.

The change to the way Facebook ranks posts will put more weight on social interactions and relationships, according to News Feed product manager John Hegeman.

“This is a big change,” Hegeman said.

People more important

“People will actually spend less time on Facebook, but we feel good about that because it will make the time they do spend more valuable, and be good for our business in the end.”

For example, a family video clip posted by a spouse will be deemed more worthy of attention than a snippet from a star or favorite restaurant.

“We think people interaction is more important than passively consuming content,” Hegeman said. “This will be one of the more important updates that we have made.”

Facebook co-founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg has said that bringing people together and strengthening communities in the real world are priorities.

Update coming soon

The news feed ranking update, which is set to roll out globally in the coming weeks, is expected to support that goal.

“As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media,” Zuckerberg said in a post at his Facebook page.

“And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard — it should encourage meaningful interactions between people.”

Battling fake news

Google, Twitter and Facebook have come under fire for allowing the spread of bogus news — some of which was directed by Russia — ahead of the 2016 US election and in other countries.

Facebook has introduced a series of changes intended to address the problem.

“We are doing a ton of work to reduce the frequency of bad content on Facebook,” Hegeman said.

“This update is more about amplifying the things people value.”

He cited academic research indicating that interacting with loved ones is crucial to a person’s wellbeing, while reading news articles or watching shared videos may not be.

“There is really no silver bullet here to determine what is most meaningful, but we are trying to mine the signals to get the best representation that we can,” Hegeman said.

Fix Facebook

Known for setting annual personal goals ranging from killing his own food to learning Mandarin, Zuckerberg’s stated mission for this year is to “fix” the social network, including by targeting abuse and hate, and making sure visiting Facebook is time well spent.

“I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions,” Zuckerberg said Thursday.
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More than 60 countries are represented at CES, the giant consumer electronics show taking place this week in Las Vegas, and the large international presence is a testament to the interest worldwide in entrepreneurship and technology.

But while many governments say they support a homegrown innovation economy, policy decisions may hamper entrepreneurial growth, according to a report out this week by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), which puts on the marquee Las Vegas technology show.

Innovation factors

The report looked at 12 factors to determine whether a country is an “innovation champion.” They include standard indicators like a country’s tax policy, the education level of its workforce, and broadband access and speeds.

Overall, Finland had the highest ranking, followed by the U.S., Canada, other European nations, Australia and New Zealand.

India, Morocco and Colombia were dubbed “modest innovators,” and they were among the lowest scoring nations.

A different set of countries emerged as leaders, however, when CTA looked at some of the more contentious areas of the tech economy, such as drones, ridesharing, self-driving cars and short-term home rentals such as Airbnb.

Ridesharing leaders

For example, when it comes to ridesharing, the report found that Panama, Peru, Poland, Rwanda and Mexico were among countries that allow ridesharing to operate most freely.

Likewise, for short-term home rentals such as Airbnb, the report gave its highest marks to Chile, Mexico, Nigeria and Peru among other countries.

The best countries for drone testing and deployment are Australia, Finland, Portugal, Singapore and Sweden.

In an interview with VOA, Gary Shapiro, the chief executive of CTA, said that countries were evaluated “from a uniquely American perspective.” The goal, he said, is to identify which countries have the best policies for innovators, and then encourage other countries to create similar environments.

French takeover

At Eureka Park, the exhibit area that’s home to about 800 early stage startups at CES, about one-third are French. They occupy row after row of the show floor, all under signs reading “La French Tech.”

Senegal brought two IT companies that won a competition for their work for the government.

“Right now we hope to meet a lot of companies here to check what we can do for our country,” said Cheikh Bakhoum, with the Senegal’s State Informatics Agency.

Hrvoje Bujas from Croatia said he came hoping to meet investors, but he switched his goals once he arrived at CES.

“I want to get some feedback from our potential users, women that want to get pregnant,” he said.

His second goal? “To get some space in media.”

 
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Amazon had a mostly successful debut into live streaming of major sports events with increased audience and an improved viewing experience in its first season showing NFL games.

The question looking ahead is how aggressively will Amazon be in the sports streaming landscape?

“It’s too soon to say,” said Jim DeLorenzo, the head of Amazon Sports. “We’re just in the early stages here. We were definitely pleased with the way things played out. It was great to partner with the NFL on this and we were really happy with how our customers reacted to it. But it’s too soon to say this impacts our strategy going forward.”

Amazon already has smaller deals with the ATP Tour to air last year’s Next Gen ATP Finals and the rights to show some men’s tennis tournaments to customers in the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as an upcoming deal to show beach volleyball events.

But the NFL is the biggest endeavor Amazon has made so far after paying $50 million for the rights to stream 10 Thursday night games and an additional one on Christmas.

Amazon built on the audience Twitter had in 2016 in the first year of streaming on Thursday nights, with the averaging per minute audience for the 11 games hitting 310,000, a 17 percent increase from Twitter’s numbers. 

On a per capita basis, the biggest audience was in the District of Columbia, followed by Washington, Colorado, Oregon and Utah. Prime members in Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota and North Carolina watched for the longest amount of time.

Viewers who are already used to watching movies and scripted shows on Amazon’s various platforms stayed longer on the NFL, with the average viewer watching for 63 minutes.

The feed was usually much cleaner than on Twitter or some other streaming services and was delivered even faster than some cable systems as opposed to the usual delay for online streaming.

“This was really our first step into distributing live sporting events at scale on a global basis,” DeLorenzo said. “Of course there was learning. Because we’re so early on in that process of distributing this kind of content to our customers, there are a number of things we can look at along the way.”

Even though television audiences for the NFL dropped for the second straight year as people cut the cord and drop cable or satellite service, the streaming audience on Amazon was still a small fraction compared to the more than 10 million viewers who watched on average the Thursday night games on NBC, CBS or the NFL Network. CBS and NBC pay about $45 million per game for the rights to their Thursday night broadcasts.

The NFL is expected to decide soon its plans for Thursday night games next season, but is expected to once again split the package between a broadcast and streaming partner.

Amazon offered alternate language feeds for the broadcast to cater to some of the fans from more 220 countries who tuned into the games, with feeds in Spanish, Portuguese and “U.K. English” for those less familiar with the American version of football.

“That was a fun component of what we were doing and we were glad to see customers reacted well to that as well,” DeLorenzo said.
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Female startup founders have a notoriously harder time securing funding than men. But new methods of financing could help close the gender gap. One of those methods lies in the buzzy technologies of blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

“Cryptocurrency, being a digital platform, fundamentally erases that sort of bias and does create a sort of leveling of the playing field,” said Lisa Wang, founder and CEO of SheWorx. “Women who are savvy and are able to hop onto the train are able to raise money really quickly for their ideas.”

SheWorx hosted an event last month for its New York City members dubbed “Cryptocurrency 101: Practical Advice on Getting Involved in Bitcoin & Beyond.” About 35 women showed up to learn more.

“For a lot of women, they’re looking at the Bitcoin prices, the Ethereum prices, Litecoin prices and they’re saying, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s too late for me to get involved,’” Wang said. “It’s not too late, you didn’t miss the boat.”

Women received just 11 percent of total venture funding in the first half of 2017, according to TechCrunch.

What is blockchain?

Could blockchain pave the way to more financing for women?

Blockchain technologies have garnered a lot of attention lately, thanks in part to the roller-coaster ride of their most famous protocol and cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.

The distributed ledger technology (DLT) that underpins cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin enables peer-to-peer or machine-to-machine transactions without the need for intermediary third parties.

This removal of middlemen (and their subsequent fees) is a major draw for both startups and established companies across a variety of industries.

Wang said entrepreneurs should assess their risk profile, determine whether blockchain is a fit for their startup, and research the types of fundraising processes that could best serve them.

Unique coins

Tech startups are now exploring the option of issuing their own unique tokens or coins, based on an established blockchain protocol like Bitcoin or Ethereum. Others are creating entirely new blockchain protocols and alternative coins.

These initial coin offerings (ICOs) allow startups to raise money quickly in a limited amount of time, via crowdfunding. Unlike traditional initial public offerings (IPOs), ICOs do not offer investors an ownership stake in the company. Instead, investors assess the potential usefulness and value of an alternative or “alt” coin, and the long-term profitability of its parent product or service, whether it makes sense as a blockchain application.

Michelle McCormack is the founder and CEO of Casting Coin, an Ethereum-based token that will launch this year and be used as currency on a crowdsourcing platform connecting models and brands.

Using blockchain tech

McCormack spoke at the SheWorx event and explained how her fashion industry experience helped her identify a gap in the model booking business.

“Models are a perfect example of people that have a really hard time connecting with work unless they know somebody … a lot of times, they’re faced with dealing with shady, internet intermediaries who are calling themselves agents,” McCormack said. “When they do get work, they have to give at least 20 percent of their rate to the agent.”

McCormack is a building a blockchain-based platform where industry influencers pay Casting Coins to up-vote or down-vote models, resulting in a new kind of crowdsourcing business model for the traditional model and talent agency.

“Over time, a natural influencer vertical and talent vertical will come up … so that the brand can easily identify them, directly hire them,” McCormack said.

While some may be deterred by the ambiguous qualities of a nascent technology like blockchain, McCormack said women should get involved sooner rather than later.

“There’s no legacy of male domination in blockchain, because there’s no legacy. So why not get involved, build something?” McCormack said.
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For many people, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies remain a mystery. But for female-led startups, they’re an alternative way to raise cash in the tech industry. VOA reporter Tina Trinh has more.
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People around the world are living longer, and their quality of life as they grow old is changing. The World Health Organization finds the number of older adults living alone is dramatically increasing which could lead to loneliness, social isolation and depression. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has details about a solution, a robot companion, available for homes in the not so distant future, featured at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
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People around the world are living longer, and how they grow old is changing. The World Health Organization finds the number of older adults living alone is dramatically increasing, and fewer multi-generational families are living together. To help the elderly with loneliness, social isolation and depression, an Israeli company, Intuition Robotics, created a robot called ElliQ designed for older adults.

Featured at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas, ElliQ is named in part after the Norse goddess that represents old age. Described as a “she” by her founder, ElliQ is a tabletop robot that lights up when she hears her name.

ElliQ does not have a face, arms or legs, but it talks and tries to keep her human companion active and engaged.

“You’ve been sitting all day. You’re not on your track to completing your goal. You should go for a walk,” the robot said.

The robot does mimic head movements to connect with the user.

“She can look down she can look up, she can get excited,” explained Dor Skuler, co-founder of Intuition Robotics.

He described ElliQ as a proactive social companion. She takes calls, reads emails and plays music for her human companion.

Skuler said ElliQ aims to solve a growing problem in many countries around the world because of a global demographic change.

“In China through the one child policy, we’re seeing a huge aging of the population.” Skuler added, “and Europe has a negative birth rate for a few decades already, so this is by far a global problem.”

The voice-activated robot comes with a touch-screen tablet through which the user can interact and access the web and social media assisted by ElliQ.

Skuler said this robot is not supposed to replace humans, rather, it allows older adults to “stay sharp, keep connected, active and engaged” with their environment to fend off feelings of isolation and being depressed. 

The price of the companion robot is still being determined, but Skuler said it will be on the high end of consumer electronics.

ElliQ will be tested in the homes of the elderly in the United States and will be commercially available sometime in 2018. 
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Twenty-First Century Fox’s Fox Sports is partnering with Twitter to stream a live show and Snap Inc’s Snapchat to showcase stories with match-day highlights on the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament to be hosted in Russia later this year.

Fox Sports would produce the show, which will be streamed from Moscow’s Red Square on each match day and provide previews, recaps and near real-time video highlights for each game, the company said.

Fox said the coverage of the tournament, taking place from June 14 to July 15, will be available in the United States and can be seen using the @FOXSports and @FOXSoccer Twitter handles.

Fox Sports will also produce magazine-like editions of content for Snapchat’s mobile-first audience, called Publisher Stories.

The Publisher Stories on Snapchat will record the day-by-day highlights of the monthlong tournament through recaps, previews and features produced specifically for Snap.

Snapchat will also produce FIFA World Cup “Our Stories,” featuring video highlights of goals and other key moments provided by Fox Sports.

Livestreaming has been one of Twitter’s biggest focus areas since last year as it seeks to attract new users.

The company had previously signed a multi-year deal with the U.S. National Football League to livestream pre-game coverage as well as a 30-minute show.

Snapchat has also done something similar by previously partnering with Discovery Communications Inc’s Eurosport for a European, multi-language deal that will see Winter Olympics content held this year as part of Snapchat’s “stories” feature.
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The inability of law enforcement authorities to access data from electronic devices due to powerful encryption is an “urgent public safety issue,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Tuesday as he sought to renew a contentious debate over privacy and security.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was unable to access data from nearly 7,800 devices in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 with technical tools despite possessing proper legal authority to pry them open, a growing figure that impacts every area of the agency’s work, Wray said during a speech at a cyber security conference in New York.

The FBI has been unable to access data in more than half of the devices that it tried to unlock due to encryption, Wray added.

“This is an urgent public safety issue,” Wray added, while saying that a solution is “not so clear cut.”

Technology companies and many digital security experts have said that the FBI’s attempts to require that devices allow investigators a way to access a criminal suspect’s cellphone would harm internet security and empower malicious hackers.

U.S. lawmakers, meanwhile, have expressed little interest in pursuing legislation to require companies to create products whose contents are accessible to authorities who obtain a warrant.

Wray’s comments at the International Conference on Cyber Security were his most extensive yet as FBI director about the so-called Going Dark problem, which his agency and local law enforcement authorities for years have said bedevils countless investigations. Wray took over as FBI chief in August.

The FBI supports strong encryption and information security broadly, Wray said, but described the current status quo as untenable.

“We face an enormous and increasing number of cases that rely heavily, if not exclusively, on electronic evidence,” Wray told an audience of FBI agents, international law enforcement representatives and private sector cyber professionals.

A solution requires “significant innovation,” Wray said, “but I just do not buy the claim that it is impossible.”

Wray’s remarks echoed those of his predecessor, James Comey, who before being fired by President Donald Trump in May frequently spoke about the dangers of unbreakable encryption.

Tech companies and many cyber security experts have said that any measure ensuring that law enforcement authorities are able to access data from encrypted products would weaken cyber security for everyone.

U.S. officials have said that default encryption settings on cellphones and other devices hinder their ability to collect evidence needed to pursue criminals.

The matter came to a head in 2016 when the Justice Department tried unsuccessfully to force Apple to break into an iPhone used by a gunman during a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.

The Trump administration at times has taken a tougher stance on the issue than former President Barack Obama’s administration.

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in October chastised technology companies for building strongly encrypted products, suggesting Silicon Valley is more willing to comply with foreign government demands for data than those made by their home country.
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Vietnam announced on Monday the creation of a cyberspace operations command to protect its sovereignty on the Internet, with prime minister citing risks related to the disputed South China Sea and complex regional and global situations.

The new unit would “research and predict online wars,” the defense ministry said in report on the government website, which also reported Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc’s comments.

Vietnam is locked in a long-running territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea, which it refers to as the East Sea. While Phuc singled out the South China Sea, he made no mention of China.

“To protect the country in the new situation, the Communist Party has set a high priority on protection of the State in cyberspace,” the website quoted Phuc as saying at the foundation ceremony for the new unit.

In December, Vietnam revealed it had a cyber warfare unit of 10,000 staff, named Force 47, to counter what it said were ‘wrong’ views on the Internet, local media reported.

The government has also called for closer watch over social media networks and sought the removal of content that it deemed offensive, but there has been little sign of it silencing criticism aired on global platforms.

In August, Vietnam’s president said the country needed to pay greater attention to controlling “news sites and blogs with bad and dangerous content,” amid a crackdown on critics of the one-party state.
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China shut down nearly 128,000 websites that contained obscene and other “harmful” information in 2017, the official Xinhua news agency reported late on Monday, citing government data.

Xinhua said 30.9 million illegal publications were confiscated in 2017, while 1,900 people were subject to criminal penalties, according to figures from the national office in charge of combating pornography and illegal publications.

Under China’s President Xi Jinping’s leadership, China has tightened censorship and controls of cyberspace as part of efforts to maintain “social stability.”

But while the government says its rules are aimed at ensuring national security and stability, human rights organizations have warned that the country’s tough laws governing the internet amount to repressive measures aimed at quashing dissent.

In Washington-based Freedom House’s 2017 report on internet freedom, China was designated the “worst abuser of internet freedom” for the third consecutive year.

“New regulations increased pressure on companies to verify users’ identities and restrict banned content and services,” Freedom House said in its report.

China has more than 730 million internet users, boasts the largest e-commerce market in the world and has consumers who enthusiastically embrace mobile digital technology. 
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Two former employees of Google have accused the tech giant of discriminating against conservative white men, in a class action lawsuit filed Monday.

One of the accusers, James Damore, was fired from the company last year after writing a memo defending the gender gap in Silicon Valley tech jobs as possibly a matter of biological differences between men and women.

Damore and David Gudeman, another former engineer at the Google, filed the suit at the Santa Clara Superior Court in California, alleging discrimination and retaliation.

The two argue in their suit that Google uses illegal hiring quotas to fill jobs with women and minority applicants.

“Google’s management goes to extreme — and illegal — lengths to encourage hiring managers to take protected categories such as race and/or gender into consideration as determinative hiring factors, to the detriment of Caucasian and male employees,” the complaint stated.

The suit also accuses the company of not protecting employees with conservative viewpoints, including employees who support U.S. President Donald Trump.

“Damore, Gudeman and other class members were ostracized, belittled, and punished for their heterodox political views, and for the added sin of their birth circumstances of being Caucasians and/or males,” the lawsuit said.

Google said it looks forward to defending itself against the allegations in court.

Google fired Damore in August after he wrote an internal memo that was later made public in which he said that “genetic differences” may explain “why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.”

Google chief Sundar Pichai said “portions of the memo violate our code of conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”

In Friday’s lawsuit, Damore said his memo was intended to remain internal and said he wrote it as a response to a request for feedback about a recent diversity and inclusion summit he attended.
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Two major Apple investors have urged the iPhone maker to take action to curb growing smartphone addiction among children, highlighting growing concern about the effects of gadgets and social media on youngsters.

New York-based Jana Partners LLC and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or CalSTRS, said Monday in open letter to Apple that the company must offer more choices and tools to help children fight addiction to its devices.

“There is a developing consensus around the world including Silicon Valley that the potential long-term consequences of new technologies need to be factored in at the outset, and no company can outsource that responsibility,” the letter said. “Apple can play a defining role in signaling to the industry that paying special attention to the health and development of the next generation is both good business and the right thing to do.”

The two investors collectively control $2 billion worth of Apple shares.

Among their proposals to Apple: establish an expert committee including child development specialists; offer Apple’s vast information to researchers; and enhance mobile device software so that parents have more options to protect their children’s health.

The letter cited various studies and surveys on how the heavy usage of smartphones and social media negatively affects children’s mental and physical health. Examples include distractions by digital technologies in the classroom, a decreased ability of students to focus on educational tasks, and higher risks of suicide and depression.

The investors’ call reflects growing concerns around the world about what the long-term impact will be of using mobile devices and social media, especially for those who start to use smartphones at an early age.

While tech companies have not acknowledged openly that their gadgets may be addictive, some Silicon Valley insiders have begun to speak to media about how gadgets, mobile applications and social media sites are designed to be addictive and to keep users’ attention as long as possible.
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Coral reefs support nearly a quarter of all marine species, but because of climate change, half of the world’s reefs have disappeared in the past 50 years. With that problem not going away, scientists are looking for ways to make better coral that can resist the rising temperatures. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Packed inside an SUV and heading to Las Vegas, employees of CaptureProof, a San Francisco startup, are part of a time-honored technology industry tradition — attending the giant consumer electronics show that takes over the Las Vegas strip every January.

Starting Monday, more than 180,000 people are expected to attend CES — the show once know as the Consumer Electronics Show — with about one-third of them international visitors. There will be 4,000 exhibitors in every conceivable tech category — gaming, self-driving cars, digital health, digital sports, drones, robots. Outside official CES, many companies set up their own events in hotels throughout Las Vegas.

The result is a crush of people and cars, a cacophony of sounds and logos, as everyone tries to get each others’ attention.  

And that is true for CaptureProof, as well. This is its fourth year at CES, the only consumer-focused show that it attends. The small company, which offers an app to help doctors and patients to visually track symptoms, is a regular at medical and investor shows.

But it has to go to CES, says the firm’s CEO. There’s potential partners and clients to meet — and the possibility that a conversation begins on the convention floor that leads to other business in a new direction.

Getting noticed

“Every innovation lead of every company walks through CES and spends at least 24 hours there,” said Meghan Conroy, CaptureProof’s CEO.  

Costing $4,500, the 10-foot by 10-foot booth in the Sands Expo will include a make-believe doctor’s waiting room, with old magazines and uncomfortable chairs.

With a message that no one loves doctor’s waiting rooms, the company pitches itself as a more efficient way for doctors and patients to connect outside an in-person visit.

At its booth, a giant smartphone (really a 43-inch TV screen) will show the CaptureProof app as the more appealing alternative to waiting around.

“Getting the right patient to the right doctor is what we are talking about at CES,” Conroy said.  

Packing away food, water

Once at CES, the CaptureProof staff has to be self-sustaining, much like going camping, said Conroy.

She has put thought into the details — the thickness of the booth’s floor padding, tables that need to double as storage space, the amount of snacks and water to stow away. The total cost to the company, including the booth, the carpet pads, the staff, hotel and travel is $12,000.

Rising above the fray

From prior years, the company has learned it has to put its logos and company name at least four feet off the ground — to be seen above the masses of people.

Part of the marketing strategy is giving away things affixed with the firm’s logo — bags, pens, stickers — so that people walk around advertising the firm.

Like many who have been to CES, Conroy acknowledges, “It’s awful.”

But she adds: “Everyone is there. You never know who you will meet.”
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Dogs are often used in airports to sniff out explosives or illegal drugs. But a high-tech machine has been developed that can “sniff” the air, so baggage handlers and bomb experts can check luggage and containers without touching them. VOA’s Deborah Block has more.
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Researchers in Europe and the U.S. say the use of social media among preteens and teenagers is on the rise, while internet companies, authorities and parents are slow to recognize its potentially harmful impact. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Nearly 4,000 companies and 170,000 people will descend on Las Vegas next week for CES, the massive consumer electronics show. For many small technology companies, the event is a big opportunity to raise their profile. VOA’s Michelle Quinn visits one San Francisco company to learn how they prepare for “the Super Bowl of conferences.”
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Social media giant Twitter has reiterated its stance that accounts belonging to world leaders have special status, pushing back against calls from some users for the company to ban U.S. President Donald Trump. 

In a blog post Friday, Twitter said it would not block the accounts of world leaders even if their statements were “controversial” because of a need to promote discussions about public policy. 

​“Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate,” Twitter said.

It said such a move would also not silence a world leader, but it “would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.”

“Twitter is here to serve and help advance the global, public conversation. Elected world leaders play a critical role in that conversation because of their outsized impact on our society,” the post said. 

The company has previously said that it considers whether a post is newsworthy and of public interest before deciding whether to remove it. 

Twitter did not specifically mention Trump in its statement. The debate over Trump’s tweets grew on Wednesday, when he tweeted that he had a “much bigger” nuclear button than North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Critics said the tweet violated Twitter’s ban against threats of violence. 

Last month, Twitter began enforcing new rules to remove “hateful” content on the network, including posts that promote violence. 

The company said Friday that it reviews all tweets, including those of world leaders. “We review tweets by leaders within the political context that defines them, and enforce our rules accordingly,” the statement said.

A White House spokeswoman said she did not expect there to be any White House comment on the Twitter statement. 

Pete Heinlein at the White House contributed to this report.
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Chances that a fix to a major microchip security flaw may slow down or crash some computer systems are leading some businesses to hold off installing software patches, fearing the cure may be worse than the original problem.

Researchers this week revealed security problems with chips from Intel Corp and many of its rivals, sending businesses, governments and consumers scrambling to understand the extent of the threat and the cost of fixes.

Rather than rushing to put on patches, a costly and time-intensive endeavor for major systems, some businesses are testing the fix, leaving their machines vulnerable.

“If you start applying patches across your whole fleet without doing proper testing, you could cause systems to crash, essentially putting all of your employees out of work,” said Ben Johnson, co-founder of cyber-security startup Obsidian.

Flaws not ‘critical’

Banks and other financial institutions spent much of the week studying the vulnerabilities, said Greg Temm, chief information risk officer with the Financial Services Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry group that shares data on emerging cyber threats.

The flaws affect virtually all computers and mobile devices, but are not considered “critical” because there is no evidence that hackers have figured out how to exploit them, said Temm, whose group works with many of the world’s largest banks.

“It’s like getting a diagnosis of high blood pressure, but not having a cardiac arrest,” Temm said. “We’re taking it seriously, but it’s not something that is killing us.”

Testing the patches

Banks are testing the patches to see if they slow operations and, if so, what changes need to be made, Temm said. For instance, computers could be added to networks to make up for the lack of processor speed in individual machines, he added.

Some popular antivirus software programs are incompatible with the software updates, causing desktop and laptop computers to freeze up and show a “blue screen of death,” researcher Johnson said.

Antivirus software makers responded by rolling out fixes to make their products compatible with the updated operating systems, he said. In a blog posting Friday, Microsoft Corp said it would only offer security patches to Windows customers whose antivirus software suppliers had confirmed with Microsoft that the patch would not crash the customer’s machine.

“If you have not been offered the security update, you may be running incompatible antivirus software, and you should consult the software vendor,” Microsoft advised in the blog post.

Government agencies also are watching. The Ohio Attorney General’s office is monitoring the situation, a spokesman said by email.

“Intel continues to believe that the performance impact of these updates is highly workload-dependent and, for the average computer user, should not be significant and will be mitigated over time,” the world’s No. 1 chipmaker said on Thursday in a release.

​No significant patch impact

It cited Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc, Alphabet Inc’s and Microsoft as saying that most users had seen no significant impact on performance after installing the patches.

The cloud vendors are among a group of firms that quickly patched their technology to mitigate against the threat from one of those vulnerabilities, dubbed Meltdown, which only affects machines running Intel chips.

Major software makers have not issued patches to protect against the second vulnerability, dubbed Spectre, which affects nearly all computer chips made in the last decade, including those from Intel, Advanced Micro Devices Inc, and ARM-architecture manufacturers, including Qualcomm Inc. 

However, Google, Firefox and Microsoft have implemented measures in most web browsers to stop hackers from launching remote attacks using Spectre.

Governments and security experts say they have seen no cyber attacks seeking to exploit either vulnerability, though they expect attempts by hackers as they digest technical data about the security flaws.

One key risk is that hackers will develop code that can infect the personal computers of people visiting malicious websites, said Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer of cyber security firm Veracode.

He advised PC owners to install the patches to protect against such potential attacks. Computer servers at large enterprises are less at risk, he said, because those systems are not used to surf the web and can only be infected in a Meltdown attack if a hacker has breached that network.

Operating system protection

Microsoft has issued a patch for its Windows operating system, and Apple desktop users with the most recent operating system are protected. Google has said most of its Chromebook laptops are already protected and that the rest would be soon.

Apple said it planned to release a patch to its Safari web browser within coming days to protect Mac and iOS users from Spectre.

While third-party browsers from Google and others can protect Mac users from Spectre, all major web browsers for Apple’s iOS devices depend on receiving a patch from Apple.

Until then, hundreds of millions of iPhone and iPad users will be exposed to potential Spectre attacks while browsing the web.
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The Consumer Electronics show opens this weekend in Las Vegas, Nevada. There are a host of new tech startups descending on the city, hoping to become the next big thing. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Apple Inc. will release a patch for the Safari web browser on its iPhones, iPads and Macs within days, it said Thursday, after major chipmakers disclosed flaws that leave nearly every modern computing device vulnerable to hackers.

On Wednesday, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and other security researchers disclosed two major chip flaws, one called Meltdown affecting only Intel Corp. chips and one called Spectre affecting nearly all computer chips made in the last decade. The news sparked a sell-off in Intel’s stock as investors tried to gauge the costs to the chipmaker.

In a statement on its website, Apple said all Mac and iOS devices were affected by both Meltdown and Spectre. But the most recent operating system updates for Mac computers, Apple TVs, iPhones and iPads protect users against the Meltdown attack and do not slow down the devices, it added. Meltdown does not affect the Apple Watch.

Macs and iOS devices are vulnerable to Spectre attacks through code that can run in web browsers. Apple said it would issue a patch to its Safari web browser for those devices “in the coming days.”
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Intel Corp shares fell nearly 2 percent Thursday as investors worried about the potential financial liability and reputational hit from recently disclosed security flaws in its widely used microprocessors.

The largest chipmaker had confirmed Wednesday that flaws reported by researchers could allow hackers to steal sensitive information from computers, phones and other devices. Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and other software makers have issued patches to protect against the vulnerabilities.

Intel may be on the hook for costs stemming from lawsuits claiming that the patches would slow computers and effectively force consumers to buy new hardware, and big customers will likely seek compensation from Intel for any software or hardware fixes they make, security experts said.

“The potential liability is big for Intel,” said Eric Johnson, dean of Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management. “Everybody will be scrambling over the next few days to figure out just how big it is.”

Intel has said that the patches for the bugs would slow its chips down somewhat but that most users will not notice.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the largest seller of cloud computing services, said in a statement it does not “expect meaningful performance impact for most customer workloads.”

Microsoft and Alphabet Inc’s Google both said in statements on their websites that they expect few performance problems for most of their cloud computing customers.

Financial repercussions

But the incident is likely to spur cloud companies to press Intel for lower prices on chips in future talks, said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh, which owns shares in Intel.

“What [Intel’s cloud customers] are going to say is, ‘You wronged us, we hate you, but if we can get a discount, we’ll still buy from you,'” Forrest said.

Forrest also expects Intel will have to increase its chip development spending to focus on security.

Government agencies and security experts said they knew of no cyberattacks that had exploited the vulnerabilities.

Financial services firms were studying information on the vulnerabilities to determine how to best respond, said the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a global industry group known as FS-ISAC that shares data on cyberthreats.

Banks and other firms are trying to understand what it will cost to respond to the issue, FS-ISAC said in an emailed statement.

“In addition to the security considerations raised by this design flaw, performance degradation is expected, which could require more processing power for affected systems to compensate and maintain current baseline performance,” FS-ISAC said. “There will need to be consideration and balance between fixing the potential security threat vs. the performance and other possible impact to systems.”

Lawsuit filed

Lawyers filed a lawsuit in San Jose, California, federal court on Wednesday that sought class-action status and compensation for people who had bought vulnerable Intel chips or computers that came with them already installed.

Intel did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday about the lawsuit.

While more lawsuits are expected, Intel’s biggest customers are likely to quietly seek compensation for any harm caused by the vulnerabilities, including costs to patch machines or replace microprocessors, Johnson said.

Legal experts said that consumers would have to prove concrete damages and harm to proceed with claims.

Intel shares fell 1.8 percent, following a 3.4 percent decline Wednesday.

Shares in rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc climbed 4.9 percent as investors speculated the No. 2 maker of microprocessors would woo customers away from Intel.

Still, researchers had said some of AMD’s chips had one of the two vulnerabilities disclosed on Wednesday, as do processors from ARM Holdings.
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