Working in tandem with the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA has used its Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) program to test network operations that replicate some of the functions of the Internet, such as sending messages across long distances. In addition to messaging, last month astronaut Sunita Williams used the DTN system to control a tiny LEGO robot situated in a lab back on Earth from a special NASA-developed laptop on the International Space Station. The experiment was designed to simulate a scenario in which an astronaut located in an orbiting spacecraft might remotely control a robotic rover on the surface of a planet.

“The demonstration showed the feasibility of using a new communications infrastructure to send commands to a surface robot from an orbiting spacecraft and receive images and data back from the robot,” NASA’s Badri Younes said in a statement on the space agency’s site.

“The experimental DTN we’ve tested from the space station may one day be used by humans on a spacecraft in orbit around Mars to operate robots on the surface, or from Earth using orbiting satellites as relay stations,” Younes said.

According to NASA, the DTN system uses a system similar to Internet Protocol called a “Bundle Protocol,” an analogue architecture that makes the idea of constructing an interplanetary Internet easier to envision. Eventually, the DTN system could become a primary means of communicating with deep space missions as well as a way to control unmanned missions from long distances.

by Adario Strange,

Virgin Media has won the contract to provide wi-fi to the London Underground.

The contract is only for ticket offices, escalators and platforms because it would have required major construction work to have added connectivity to the network’s tunnels.

From July 2012 all Tube passengers will initially be able to connect to the internet for free.

After the Olympic and Paralympic Games it will be a pay-as-you-go service.

Virgin Media’s mobile and broadband customers will be offered continued access as part of their subscriptions. Other non-paying users will be limited to a site showing online travel information.

The firm said it intended to introduce wi-fi to 80 stations by the summer, and by up to 120 stations by the end of the year.

The company’s chief executive, Neil Berkett, said: “We’ll help people make the most of the city and will continue to evolve the service, ensuring everyone can benefit from a service London will be proud of.”

Transport for London (TfL) estimates that four million people use the Tube every day.

Deep-level deal

London Underground staff will be responsible for fitting the equipment, but the organisation stressed that the cost would be covered by the commercial contract.

“This latest innovation is great news for Tube customers, who now have access to emails, web and social media underground for the first time,” said Gareth Powell, London Underground’s director of strategy and service development.

“It’s also delivered at no cost to fare payers and taxpayers.”

Some overseas networks – such as the Dubai Metro, which contains several underground stations – are able to offer continued access to customers during journeys.

The Chinese telecoms equipment firm Huawei had originally explored an option to install 3G phone and data services throughout the Tube, but TfL opted not to implement its scheme.

It was discovered that the cost of adding antennas to the antiquated system would have been prohibitive because the lack of space between the trains and the tunnels would have made building work necessary.

Virgin Media said it believed that the Tube’s limited wi-fi access would not put customers at a huge disadvantage.

“Every wi-fi station you pass through is going to give you the chance to stay connected, by quickly updating Facebook, Twitter, email and the like,” Kevin Baughan, Virgin Media’s director of wireless told the BBC.

“Even while travelling people will have a great experience.”

A “sophisticated cyber-attack” on the BBC has been linked to Iran’s efforts to disrupt the BBC Persian Service.

In a speech Director General Mark Thompson plans to say that the internet attack coincided with efforts to jam two of the service’s satellite feeds into Iran.

He will say: “We regard the coincidence of these different attacks as self-evidently suspicious.”

Last month Mr Thompson accused Iran of intimidating Persian service workers.

Reporters Without Borders has also complained about Iran’s “cyber-army”.

The latest revelation follows a blog post by Mr Thompson in February in which he complained of the “repeated jamming of international TV stations such as BBC Persian TV, preventing the Iranian people from accessing a vital source of free information”.

In his speech to the Royal Television Society he will note that on the day of the cyber-attack there had also been an attempt to disrupt the Persian Service’s London phone-lines by the use of multiple automatic calls.

“I don’t want to go into any more detail about these incidents except to say that we are taking every step we can, as we always do, to ensure that this vital service continues to reach the people who need it,” Mr Thompson will say.

Some parts of the BBC were unable to access email and other internet services on 1 March. It is understood that the attack may have been caused by its systems being overwhelmed by a flood of external communication requests – a so-called distributed denial-of-service attack.

However, a BBC spokeswoman was unable to provide detail about the incident.

“I’m afraid we can’t comment any further on the details of the attacks than what’s in the extract [of the speech],” a she said.

Cyber-censors

The revelations follow Reporters Without Borders “Enemies of the Internet” report which was released at the start of the week.

The free-speech lobby group reported that Iran and some of the other countries on its register “censor internet access so effectively that they restrict their populations to local intranets that bear no resemblance to the world wide web.”

It added that Iran’s authorities were now capable of blocking ports used by virtual private networks designed to bypass the restrictions.

It also reported that at times of unrest the state had slowed internet connections speeds to make it impossible to send or receive photos or videos.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard created a “cyber army” in 2010. Hundreds of net users have been arrested and some even sentenced to death.

Earlier this month the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also ordered officials to create The Supreme Council of Virtual Space – a body tasked with defining policy and co-ordinating decisions regarding the net.

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not reply to a request for comment.

BT and Talk Talk have lost an appeal over controversial measures to tackle copyright infringement online.

The internet service providers (ISPs) had argued the UK’s Digital Economy Act was incompatible with EU law.

The Act will mean ISPs will have to send warning letters to alleged illegal file downloaders, as well as potentially cutting users off.

The creative industry argues that piracy costs £400m a year in lost revenue.

The firms’ lawyers said the stricter measures could result in an invasion of privacy and run up disproportionate costs for both ISPs and consumers.

In a statement, Talk Talk said it was now “considering our options”.

“We’re disappointed that our appeal was unsuccessful though we welcome the additional legal clarity that has been provided for all parties,” the company said.

“Though we have lost this appeal, we will continue fighting to defend our customers’ rights against this ill-judged legislation.”

A spokesman for BT said: “We have been seeking clarification from the courts that the DEA is consistent with European law, and legally robust in the UK, so that everyone can be confident in how it is implemented.

“Now that the court has made its decision, we will look at the judgment carefully to understand its implications and consider our next steps.”

‘Stop fighting’

The decision was welcomed by copyright advocates.

Christine Payne, general secretary of the Actors’ union Equity, called on the ISPs to “stop fighting and start obeying the law”.

“Once again the court is on the side of the almost two million workers in the creative industries whose livelihoods are put at risk because creative content is stolen on a daily basis,” she said.

However Loz Kaye, the leader of the UK Pirate Party, argued there was no proof the measures outlined in the Act – such as cutting off users – aided the fight against illegal file-sharing.

“This decision brings the draconian Digital Economy Act another step closer,” he said.

“The coalition government must be clear now once and for all on whether it supports this anti-internet piece of legislation.

“No-one has proved that the Act will help the creative industries financially, that is just lobbyists’ spin.

“A recent study on a similar system in France suggests that there is no benefit for music sales. Threats to chuck entire households off the web will be bad for the economy, bad for society – and for us as a creative nation too.”

‘Proper scrutiny’

Adam Rendle, a copyright specialist at international law firm Taylor Wessing, said he expected BT and Talk Talk to now appeal to the UK’s Supreme Court.

He added that it was also likely the companies would step up lobbying efforts, perhaps harnessing support from groups recently protesting against the US Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and the EU’s proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta).

“We know how keen internet users are to protect what they see as freedom of speech,” Mr Rendle told the BBC.

“When the Digital Economy Act itself was passed in the dying stages of the Labour government, there was a huge amount of disquiet that this kind of important legislation was being introduced without proper scrutiny.

“That kind of disquiet didn’t result in the kind of action we’ve seen against Acta and Sopa. It wouldn’t be surprising to see a lot more public outcry than there was when the Act was first passed.”

According to the companies this new platform will let various phone functions such as messaging, calling and also browsing to be created as the HTML5 apps as well as operate in an environment which is Firefox browser based, reported PC World.

Developers have aready started using the HTML5 for mobile apps, and the advantage behind using web technology in the creation of apps allows for them to look and feel like native apps apps, however, they can be more easily ported to more than a number of mobile phone platforms.

Meanwhile, Mozilla as well as Telefónica has plans for enabling HTML5 applications to access different core phone APIs.

Director of product development and innovation at Telefónica Digital, Carlos Domingo, stated that, “With new open Web devices we will be able to offer a smartphone experience at the right price point for these customers.”

Virgin Media is set to trial 4G telecommunication in many cities in the UK to check how effortlessly decent coverage can be achieved and established. As part of this trial plan the telecoms company has set fibre-connected LTE Small Cells in the urban areas of the country.

In the month of December, the company had a single-cell trial in Oxford Street. The latest trial will cover many more areas and many more cells.

The company has not made it clear yet whether they will be bidding for any 2.6 GHz band or not across which the company is operating the trials. The company clarified that it is a test of the technology and not of any consumer offering; nevertheless it is an inspiring move.

Virgin Media which already has Virgin Mobile, a consumer mobile offering, is planning to offer 4G network most probably by end of this year, reported The Register.

The base stations for the 4G network have been built by Airspan and has already been tested. Later this year the company can also buy spectrum for providing better services and reduce dependency on Everything Everywhere’s network.

Hopefully, if things work out the way they have been planned, Virgin Media will be providing 4G services very soon.

The McAfee-backed cyberdefence survey deemed China, Brazil and Mexico as being among the least able to defend themselves against emerging attacks.

The rank is based on leading experts’ perception of a nation’s defences.

The report concluded that greater sharing of information globally is necessary to keep ahead of threats.

It also suggests giving more power to law enforcement to fight cross-border crime.

The UK, with a grading of four out of five, ranks favourably in the survey – along with the USA, Germany, Spain and France.

‘Subjective view’

The rankings are based on the perceived quality of a country’s cyber-readiness – the ability to cope with a range of threats and attacks.

“The subjectiveness of the report is its biggest strength,” explained Raj Samani, McAfee’s chief technology officer.

“What it does is give the perception of cyber-readiness by those individuals who kind of understand and work in cyber security on a day-in, day-out basis.”

Countries ranked for cyber-readiness
Country	Rating
SOURCE: MCAFEE
(None)
Finland, Israel, Sweden
Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, UK, USA
Australia, Austria, Canada, Japan
China, Italy, Poland, Russia
Brazil, India, Romania
Mexico
(None)

A good score depends on having basic measures like adequate firewalls and antivirus protection, and more complex matters including well-informed governance and education.

Sweden, Finland and Israel all impressed the report’s experts – despite the fact that the latter receives reportedly over 1,000 cyber attacks every minute.

Isaac Ben-Israel, senior security advisor to Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is quoted in the report as saying: “The hacktivist group Anonymous carries out lots of attacks but they don’t cause much damage. The real threat is from states and major crime organisations.”

He added that the country has set up a cyber-taskforce responsible for assessing threats to key infrastructure such power production and water supplies.

‘Enhancing co-operation’

At the other end of the security scale, Mexico ranked as least prepared to cope with the cyber threat – a situation which is blamed on the country’s authorities needing to overwhelmingly focus on the country’s gang and drugs problems.

China is regarded by some Western observers as an aggressor in cyberspace.

But one expert Peiran Wang said the country was itself vulnerable because it lacked a joined up strategy.

Mexico’s drug problems means available resource is put into real world policing – and not on cybercrime

“The Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of State Security and even the military are involved and they don’t communicate well,” said Peiran Wang, a visiting scholar at Brussels’ Free University.

In the UK, the report praised a £650m investment programme in cyber security.

However, the Home Office’s plans were criticised by information security expert Peter Sommer.

“A great deal depends on co-operation from the private sector, which controls about 80% of the critical national infrastructure.

“Over half of the new funding will go to the ‘secret vote’, the intelligence agencies, where value for money will be difficult to investigate. I would have preferred more emphasis on public education – helping potential victims help themselves.”

Cybercrime fighters

Among the report’s conclusions is the recommendation that greater efforts be made to improve cross-border law enforcement.

“Cybercriminals route their connection through multiple different countries,” said Mr Samani.

“If criminals are particularly clever, they go through countries where they know there isn’t any co-operation.”

In the UK, millions has been pledged by foreign secretary William Hague to fight cyber issues

“The bad guys share information – we need to do the same as well.”

Dr Joss Wright from the Oxford Internet Institute welcomed the report’s findings. However, he had serious doubts over the feasibility of its suggestions.

“They’re recommendations that people have been saying for maybe 10 years,” he told the BBC.

“I would love to see good information sharing – but when you’re talking about national security, there’s a culture of not sharing.

“They’re not suddenly going to change 70, 100, 1000 years of military thinking.”

Users have been unable to access data since the file-sharing service was raided.

The warning was made in a letter filed by the US Attorney’s Office, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Megaupload’s lawyer Ira Rothken told the agency that at least 50 million users had data which could be deleted.

Mr Rothken said that freezing of Megaupload’s funds meant it was unable to pay those who were storing its data.

In the letter prosecutors said that the data which might be deleted was being held by the storage companies Carpathia Hosting and Cogent Communications Group.

Neither they nor the US Attorney’s Office have responded to emails from the BBC.

Mr Rothken told the agency that he was “cautiously optimistic” that a deal could be done to save the data from being wiped.

He said that the data would be needed by the defence.

Legitimate data

Megaupload was shut down on 19 January.

It had about 150 million registered users, making it one of the most popular file-sharing services in the world.

US authorities are seeking to extradite founder Kim Dotcom, also known as Kim Schmitz, and three other defendants from New Zealand to the US.

Prosecutors have accused it of costing copyright holders more than $500m (£320m) in lost revenue.

But a number of users have said that they have been unable to access legitimately uploaded material as a result of the legal action.

After the shutdown one user tweeted, “I’m vehemently against copyright infringement: the files I lost were created & owned by me for my job.”

Email providers such as Google and Microsoft will work with companies like Paypal and the Bank of America to improve authentication.

Phishing attacks typically involve scammers posing as familiar companies in an attempt to trick users into sharing personal information.

This co-ordinated effort aims to make this more difficult.

The Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMarc) – as the coalition is known – has released plans to produce a “feedback loop” between email receivers and senders.

The initiative is the first significant attempt to bring together both email and service providers along with key security organisations.

DMarc said this industry-wide involvement – which covers the receivers, senders and intermediaries of email use – will mean email providers will for the first time be able to reliably filter out unwanted emails, rather than use “complex and imperfect measurements” to determine threats.

It will mean an agreed standard for authenticating legitimate emails arriving at the inboxes of AOL, Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo customers.

It will verify messages from Facebook, Paypal, American Greetings, Bank of America, Fidelity and LinkedIn.

Vulnerable

“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,” explained Paypal’s Brett McDowell, chair of DMarc.

“Industry co-operation – combined with technology and consumer education – is crucial to fight phishing.”

Email security firms Agari, Cloudmark, eCert, Return Path and Trusted Domain Project complete the collaboration.

More companies will join the open standard as it is developed.

Paypal spokesman Rob Skinner explained how the initiative is intended to make things easier for the most vulnerable part of the security chain – the human.

Fake emails are obvious to many users, but DMarc hopes to remove the risk of clicking completely

“Half the problem is, with the best will in the world and improving technology, ultimately it’s still down to the user to decide [to open an email],” he told the BBC.

“The key point is trying to block emails from getting to someone’s inbox – taking the worry and concern out of people’s minds and doing it for them.”

As one of the internet’s most ubiquitous payment companies, Paypal often finds itself impersonated by scammers.

“We’ve acknowledged it’s been an issue,” Mr Skinner said.

“We’ve had a stack of initiatives over the years to cut down on it. Fraudsters target any company that is well known, has a lot of customers, and operates across the globe.

“We recognise our responsibility to do something about it.”