Hong Kong Protesters Flock to Off-Grid Messaging App

Hong Kong Protesters Flock to Off-Grid Messaging App

The New York Times 

Amid swelling pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, protesters are turning to FireChat, a new app that allows them to send messages without a cellular or Internet connection.
Set off against a fresh wave of censorship by Beijing to ensure that potentially destabilizing images of the protests do not enter the mainland, the app is a testament to how the protean development of technology constantly challenges tried forms of blocking information online.

Introduced in March, FireChat makes use of a cellphone’s radio and Bluetooth communications to create a network between phones close to one another — up to about 80 yards — without connecting to the Internet. If a cellular signal or wireless network is available, the app uses that.
In 24 hours starting Sunday afternoon, the app, which allows users to host public chat rooms, added 100,000 users in Hong Kong and peaked Sunday night at 33,000 simultaneous users.
The surge in users was due in part to rumors that spread over the weekend that the Hong Kong government might shut down the Internet, according to protesters, though it is unlikely officials would make such a move.

Nevertheless, Kyle Hui, 19, a student at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said the app was proving useful because large crowds had overwhelmed the mobile infrastructure in parts of the city, rendering cell signals spotty.

“Protesters use it to, for example, announce what supplies are needed — goggles, surgical masks — or to announce protest tactics,” Mr. Hui said.

The Hong Kong protesters are not the first to make use of the technology. In March, just 10 days after FireChat was released, students participating in the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan downloaded the app en masse out of concerns about the Internet being cut, said Christophe Daligault, an executive with Open Garden, the San Francisco company that distributes the app.

The company also saw a jump in users in May, after the Iranian government blocked access to the photo-sharing app Instagram and the messaging app WhatsApp.

“When people find themselves in the situation where they think access to the Internet is going to be removed, they all download the app in big numbers,” Mr. Daligault said by telephone.

In Hong Kong, fears that the Internet might be blocked may have gained credence because Beijing has occasionally used the tactic, as it did in the western region of Xinjiang during riots in 2009.
Thus far in response to the Hong Kong protests, Beijing has heavily censored social media on the mainland, scrubbing references to the demonstrations from Sina Weibo, a popular microblogging service. Instagram has also been largely inaccessible in mainland China since Saturday, according to users and several Internet watchdogs, leading commentators to speculate that the government shut access to the app to staunch the flow of images of the protests. Instagram did not respond to a request for comment about the apparent blockages. Facebook, which owns Instagram, has been blocked in China since the riots in Xinjiang in 2009.

For now, FireChat has only a modest presence in mainland China, in part because potential users need Internet access to download the app and its site has been blocked, according to the company. Still, if the company were to take a new approach — for instance, work out a way for users to download and sign up offline — that could expose new vulnerabilities in China’s network of filters, known generally as the Great Firewall.

Even so, FireChat faces some of the same problems faced by all social media — such as the uncontrolled spread of rumors and overwhelming streams of data, Mr. Hui said.

“Sometimes I get more than a thousand messages in just an hour, so I simply can’t keep up,” he said.
“People keep posting the same message to grab others’ attention,” he added. “And I’m skeptical of many of the rumors that spread on the app, like saying that the People’s Liberation Army is sending in tanks and armored vehicles.”

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Norwegian Instagram rival to launch child safe tablet with Microsoft

Norwegian Instagram rival to launch child safe tablet with Microsoft

Reuters

OSLO - Kuddle, a Norwegian picture sharing app designed for children, plans to launch a child safe tablet with Microsoft on Dec 1, and expects to sign funding deals with several venture capital firms within weeks, its chief executive said on Monday.
The Oslo-based company said it was on track to reach its goal of one million users by year-end and plans to soon raise another $5 million of fresh funds on top of the nearly $6 million it has already raised.

"We are working with Microsoft on several child safe devices which will be sold on our online store," Chief Executive Ole Vidar Hestaas said. "The first device will be an Ipad Mini sized tablet prized under $100 that will be ready ahead of the Kuddle Store launch."

"This is a child friendly device and it is not possible to download games like GTA (Grand Theft Auto) or apps like Snapchat," Hestaas said.

Kuddle, which bills itself as a rival to Instagram, lets parents monitor what their children publish and keeps access to content restricted, preventing strangers from seeing and sharing pictures. There are no hashtags or comments to prevent online bullying and "likes" are anonymous.

Hestaas said the company also is in talks with Samsung and Microsoft's Nokia phones unit on similar cooperation, and that it was also working on deals with European telecoms operators Telenor and Vodafone for child safe Kuddle SIM cards to be sold separately or linked up to one of its devices.
The app, which has a target of 1 million users by the end of 2014, is now available in 7 languages. The most significant growth has recently come from Brazil and the US.

Hestaas said he expects to conclude funding deals with several major international venture capital funds within weeks.

The firm's present investors include Norwegian golf ace Suzann Pettersen.

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National Coffee Day 7 Apps That Every Coffee Lover Needs

7 Apps That Every Coffee Lover Needs

Business Insider
Madeline Stone

Coffee addicts, rejoice. In honor of National Coffee Day on Monday, Sept. 29, we're rounding up the best apps you can use to get your coffee fix.

1. Starbucks, Free 

 The official app from the coffee giant has a wide variety of handy features. Find the store closest to you with the store locator, view nutrition information, and build your own drink.
You can even manage your Starbucks Card balance, track your Stars in the Starbucks Rewards program, and send an eGift to a friend.

2. CoffeeGuru, $1.99 
 If you love coffee but big chains aren't your thing, this app will make it easy to find independent coffee shops wherever you happen to be. CoffeeGuru lists more than 7,200 coffeehouses in the U.S., U.K., and Canada, so check this app before you travel to a new city.
Use the app's flavor wheel to impress your friends with your description of the coffee's taste. This app will also give you more info about Direct and Fair Trade roasting and which coffee shops roast their own beans.

3. Spro, $1.99 
Learn to make your favorite coffee drink at home with Spro, an app that provides step-by-step instructions for a ton of different caffeinated beverages. It also includes facts and proper pronunciation for coffee drinks.

4. Percolator, $2.99
 Love the bubbles on top of your coffee? This app makes them appear on your photos. Adjust the size and color of circles to turn your photos into coffee-inspired mosaic masterpieces. This app is only superficially about coffee, but it's still fun.

5. Art of Coffee, $2.99
 If you ever wondered how your local barista makes those artful foam designs on top of your morning latte, look no further. Art of Coffee teaches users how to make 30 different patterns out of foam, from a rosette to a heart.

6. New York: Coffee Guide, Free
Find reviews, ratings, and photos of independent coffee shops around New York City. This app saves time by only showing coffee shops that are open near you at the time of your search, and you can easily see which stores have free WiFi right from the search results.

7. CoffeeTalk, $0.99 
 Learn the lingo with CoffeeTalk, a dictionary of coffee terms like "affogato," "Americano," and "skinny moo."

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Microsoft opening New York store close to Apple’s iconic cube

Microsoft opening New York store close to Apple’s iconic cube

Tom Warren

The Verge 

Microsoft is opening a retail store in the heart of New York City. The software maker has confirmed to the Wall Street Journalthat it plans to open a store just a few blocks away from Apple’s iconic cube on Fifth Avenue, following rumors from last month. Microsoft’s new retail location will replace an existing Fendi store and serve as the company’s first full retail store in Manhattan. "As our first flagship store, it will serve as the centerpiece of our Microsoft Stores experience," says David Porter, corporate vice president for Microsoft retail stores, in a statement to the WSJ. "This is a goal we've had since day one — we were only waiting for the right location. And now we have it."
A true retail presence in NYC

The location is close to Apple’s flagship New York City store, and it allows Microsoft to finally have a presence in the upscale shopping district of New York City. Microsoft has used pop-up stores previously, including a temporary retail store in Times Square for the original Surface launch, and a speciality store in Staten Island. Despite less of a focus on “devices and services” and more on cloud and mobile under CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft continues to open stores regularly.

The latest New York City location will join more than 100 Microsoft retail stores in the US, and Microsoft is planning to create an "experiential space" within its new Fifth Avenue store to turn the shop into more than just the average Microsoft Store. It’s not clear exactly what that will entail, but the new location will serve as a flagship to demonstrate upcoming Lumia devices and the company’s Surface Pro 3 tablets. Microsoft has not yet confirmed when its New York City store will launch, but the company is also opening new retail locations in Toronto, Tulsa, Bethesda, and Cerritos before the end of the year.

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Ello Users Experience Further Downtime After DDoS Attack

Ello Users Experience Further Downtime After DDoS Attack

Kyle Russell

TechCrunch

The suddenly hip social networking site Ello experienced its first major outage today, suffering a Distributed Denial of Service attack that brought it down for approximately 45 minutes. The company says that it was able to fix the issue by blocking the IP addresses responsible for the attack.
However, it seems that the site is still going through some instability, as users are still occasionally taking to Twitter to say that it has gone down or that posts refuse to upload. Anecdotally, I occasionally get the above image on attempting to load the site. We’ll update this post if Ello confirms whether these are aftershocks from the attack or simply growing pains from the site’s rapid user acquisition in recent days. 

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iPhone 6 and 6 Plus bending fears 'seem overblown'

iPhone 6 and 6 Plus bending fears 'seem overblown'

Samuel Gibbs

The Guardian 

User reports and fears that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus phones are bending in trouser pockets are overblown, according to independent testing by the US non-profit Consumer Reports.
In fact, its tests found that HTC’s One M8 phone bent under the same force as the iPhone 6 - and that the “phablet-size” iPhone 6 Plus was stronger than both. The tests showed, though, that the new phones are substantially less strong than 2012’s iPhone 5, whose body is also used in 2013’s iPhone 5S.

Consumer Reports tested the iPhone 6, 6 Plus and iPhone 5 against the LG G3, Samsung Galaxy Note 3, and HTC One M8 using a compression testing machine to apply a “three-point flexural test”, where a metered force is applied to the centre of the phone while it is supported at each end.
It concluded that “while nothing is (evidently) indestructible, we expect that any of these phones should stand up to typical use.”

It found that the 4.7in iPhone 6, which is 7.1mm thick, would show permanent bending with the equivalent of a 70lb (31.8kg) weight placed on the centre of its back. The 5.5in iPhone 6 Plus deformed at 90lbs, and the 4in iPhone 5 - which is 7.6mm thick - at 130lbs.
The 5in HTC One M8 also bend under a 70lbs weight, and its case separated at 90lb, while the iPhone 6 resisted to 100lb.

The 5.5in LG G3 resisted bending up to 130lbs, the same as the iPhone 5, and the 5.7in Samsung Galaxy Note 3 150lbs.

“While not the strongest smartphones on the market, fears of a serious structural design flaw in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus seem overblown,” explained Glenn Derene, electronics editor for Consumer Reports in a video of the tests.

Most of the phones continued to work after deforming, and required an extra 20 to 30lbs to bend enough to separate the screen from the phone’s case.
Consumer Reports bend testing the iPhone 6, 6 Plus and iPhone 5 with their Android competitors. Apple tests its smartphones using a similar method to Consumer Reports by applying 55lbs of weight to the back of the phones to test resilience to bending, or approximately the weight required to break three ordinary pencils.

Apple said that it only received nine complaints about iPhone 6 Plus phones bending and that it tested 15,000 smartphones during its own investigations.

Previous smartphone tests, which showed the iPhone 6 Plus bending, have used a a less scientific method, with a reviewer applying pressure manually with thumbs pushed into the back of phones.

‘I have a bent iPhone 6 Plus’

Initial reports by users of bending iPhone 6 Plus phones were followed up by video tests displaying a bent 6 Plus. Some reviewers of the smartphone have also found that their iPhone 6 Plus phones were either bent initially or bent during the course of their testing. The Guardian has not seen bending during testing of the iPhone 6 Plus, though it was not carried in trouser pockets.

“Like a lot of people, I have a bent iPhone 6 Plus. It’s almost imperceptible, but it’s there: a slight warp right at the buttons on the side. Put the phone screen down on a table, and it wobbles,” said Mat Hohan in a review of the iPhone 6 Plus for Wired. “I haven’t purposefully bent it and I don’t recall sitting on it (but I probably have).”

How many iPhone 6 Plus phones have been bent in users’ pockets is still unknown. Apple claims that it is not an issue for normal use, but phones from other manufactures have suffered similar bending issues.

As smartphones become thinner and longer with bigger screens, their relative strength decreases while the force applied to them inside pockets can increase due to a lever effect. 

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Artificial Atoms Talk ... and Scientists Listen

Artificial Atoms Talk ... and Scientists Listen

By Kelly Dickerson

LiveScience

For the first time, physicists have figured out how to communicate with an artificial atom using sound instead of light.
Scientists already know a lot about how atoms and light interact. When atoms get charged up with energy, they often emit subatomic particles of light called photons. The photons belong to the wacky world of quantum mechanics where they behave as both particles and waves, and scientists have been studying their bizarre behavior for decades. But now researchers at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have designed an artificial atom that can emit sound particles (called phonons) instead of photons after it's charged up.
"We have opened a new door into the quantum world by talking and listening to atoms," Per Delsing, a professor of microtechnology and nanoscience at Chalmers, said in a statement. [Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature]

Making phonons
To create the stream of sound particles, the researchers used a superconducting circuit, which represented an "artificial atom." Artificial atoms can be charged up across multiple energy levels just like a real atom, and scientists can study the quantum behavior of the particles they emit.
For the experiment, the researchers cooled the artificial atom to near absolute zero so that heat would not disturb the delicate quantum system. The artificial atom the team used is only 0.0004 inches (0.01 millimeters) long. The setup also included a speaker and microphone to record the sound emitted.
Artificial atoms are usually coupled to light but for this experiment the researchers linked the artificial atom to sound. They put the superconducting circuit between two electrodes covered with piezoelectric fibers. The piezoelectric surfaces convert vibrations into an electric charge and then convert that electricity into a sound wave.
The researchers then fired the sound wave at the artificial atom. The artificial atom absorbed the sound wave and its energy level increased, reaching what scientists call an "excited state." As the atom relaxed back into a "ground state," it released phonons. The researchers measured and recorded the behavior of the phonons, and discovered the bond between an artificial atom and sound is much stronger than the bond created between an artificial atom and light. The stronger bond makes it easier to manipulate the phonons.

What does an atom sound like?
The stream of particles that came from the artificial atom is the weakest sound that can be detected, though the researchers didn't measure the actual decibels. It's much too high-pitched for the human ear to detect. The researchers measured the frequency at 4.8 gigahertz, not far from microwave frequencies used in wireless networks. On a musical scale, that's a D28 note, or about 20 octaves above the highest note on a grand piano.
Studying phonons instead of photons could provide new insights into the quantum world that scientists still don't fully understand.
"Due to the slow speed of sound, we will have time to control the quantum particles while they travel," lead study author Martin Gustafsson, a researcher at Columbia University, said in the statement. "This is difficult to achieve with light, which moves 100,000 times more quickly."
It's difficult to study the behavior of quantum particles, because their quantum state collapses as soon as researchers start poking around and measuring the particles. Artificial atoms already give scientists more control over quantum systems, but slow-moving sound waves will make it even easier to manipulate the particles. Learning more about quantum particles could help scientists get closer to developing technology like superfast quantum computers and quantum cryptography for secure communication.

Details of the experiment were published Sept. 11 in the journal Science Express.

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Members of Congress agree on this: No cellphone calls on planes

Members of Congress agree on this: No cellphone calls on planes

Hugo Martin

Los Angeles Times 

If passengers can divert a commercial plane by feuding over reclining seats, imagine the squabbles that will erupt if fliers are allowed to make loud telephone calls while crammed together in an airline cabin.

That was one of the arguments more than 75 members of Congress made in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission and other federal regulators, urging the government to continue to ban voice calls on commercial flights.

The FCC took the first step toward allowing cellphone calls on planes in December when it began to consider adopting a rule to reverse its long-held ban on inflight calls. The FCC finished accepting public comments on the proposed new rule in February but has yet to schedule further hearings.
Even if the FCC adopts the proposed rule, each airline would have the choice to install the technology needed to allow cellphone calls that do not interrupt cellphone communications on the ground.

The members of Congress who signed the letter last week said the FCC needs to consider how cellphone calls might cause disruptions in a crowded cabin.

"Arguments in an aircraft cabin already start over mundane issues, like seat selection, reclining seats and overhead bin space, and the volume and pervasiveness of voice communications would only serve to exacerbate and escalate these disputes," according to the letter signed by dozens of Republicans and Democrats, including David B. McKinley (R-W.Va.) and Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.).
The feuds over reclining seats mentioned in the letter refers to three incidents in late August and early September when onboard squabbles among passengers over intrusions into their seat space forced the pilots to divert the flights.

To read more about travel, tourism and the airline industry, follow me on Twitter at @hugomartin.

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Facebook launches new tools to grow advertising

Facebook launches new tools to grow advertising

Julia Boorstin

CNBC

Facebook (FB)is making its big and long-anticipated move to grow its reach and take on Google's (GOOGL) DoubleClick. Its new Atlas advertiser tools, which it unveiled this morning, will allow advertisers to track and measure the impact of their campaigns—not just on Facebook, but across browsers and devices.

The social giant is taking on Google, and particularly in mobile ads, where Facebook has a huge advantage. The company knows who you are and what ads you've seen on other platforms—even when you're on mobile devices, which are usually limited by the fact that "cookies," or traditional tracking technology doesn't work on mobile devices.


Omnicom (OMC) is signing an agency-wide ad serving and measurement partnership with Facebook—the first ad conglomerate to do so.

"This idea of "people-based marketing" that Facebook is premiering with the launch of Atlas is really getting us closer to the one to one marketing solutions we've been talking about for so long," said Omnicom Digital CEO Jonathan Nelson. "It allows us to put the right message in front of the right person at the right time on the right device. Facebook's giving us a little more insight into who the customer is on the other side of the media transaction."

For Omnicom and other ad agencies, this should translate into far more efficient buying—and fewer redundant ad purchases reaching the same people on multiple devices. As for the question of whether this better positions Facebook to compete with Google's DoubleClick, Nelson says: "It better positions Facebook in all of advertising overall."
In a blog announcing the news, Facebook says the changes are designed to "make your media budget more effective."

Facebook isn't announcing all its partners in this endeavor. It did however mention Instagram, which is, no surprise, enabled with Atlas to measure and verify ad impressions. Atlas works with any publisher that accepts third-party tags, which now is 60,000 publishers—Atlas-seved ads can be seen on Yahoo and CNBC.com among others. 

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Why We Don't Have A Cure For The Common Cold

Why We Don't Have A Cure For The Common Cold

Lauren F Friedman

Business Insider 

BI Answers: Why don't we have a cure for the common cold?

Modern science has eradicated smallpox, extended life expectancy, and made huge gains in battling some of the world's deadliest diseases. So why can't we knock out the humble cold?
The short answer is twofold. First, what we think of as a cold is actually caused by many different viruses. Even the most common among those, rhinovirus, has more than a hundred different strains. "Curing" a cold would actually mean eradicating a long list of respiratory viruses that happen to cause similar symptoms. Those symptoms, incidentally, are mostly just your immune system kicking into high gear to fight off an infection, something that can manifest as inflammation in the throat and congestion in the nose.
Second, while sniffling and coughing is no fun, a cold is pretty low down on the list of ailments that need curing. It can be a concern for infants, the elderly, or those with pre-existing respiratory conditions, but "for the majority of us, a common cold is more annoyance than threat," says Ian Mackay, a virologist at the University of Queensland.
Still, in 2002, researchers calculated that the annual cost of lost productivity because of colds is $25 billion. The National Institutes of Health estimates that people in the United States experience about one billion colds every year. What if we could make those all go away? We talked to a number of experts to get the full story on why we haven't cured the common cold — and whether we ever will.

Why isn't there a cold vaccine?

Each year, multiple strains of the flu are circulating. If we can vaccinate against the most common strains of the flu, it seems as if we should be able to do the same thing for colds. But it doesn't quite work that way.
There are only about three strains of flu each season, while "there are usually 20-30 different types of rhinovirus circulating each season in one geographic area," explains Yury A. Bochkov, an associate scientist in the department of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Only about 10% of those will show up again the next year. That means, Bochkov says, that public health officials "cannot predict the spectrum of rhinovirus types for an upcoming cold season."
Plus, even if you could, Thomas Smith of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston says, "somehow stuff 100 different strains into one shot," that would take care of only the most common cold-causing virus.
More than 200 viruses can cause what a sick person would recognize as a cold, including "some strains of influenza virus, adenoviruses, coronaviruses, enteroviruses, [and] respiratory syncytial virus," Bochkov says. A rhinovirus vaccine would do nothing to protect against those.

Why isn't there a cold cure, or even a highly effective treatment?

The main reason, Mackay says, is that the common cold is usually "a short-lived and relatively mild illness."
But trying to develop drugs to treat rhinovirus also has some particular challenges. Smith, who worked on such research in his lab at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, tells us that some of the approaches they were testing "really did work," at least in the lab. Still, "while these compounds were pretty good at hitting a number of different strains at once, there were still a few outlier strains."
That's the tricky thing about rhinoviruses, Bochkov says: "It is difficult to find an antiviral equally efficient against 160 rhinoviruses."
Furthermore, colds are not usually life-threatening, so the Food and Drug Administration would have a very low threshold for the kind of side effects that would be considered worth it. "It really had to be nearly as safe as water for approval for the general public," Smith says. Few drugs are.
The challenges did not stop there. "Only humans show symptoms of [rhinovirus] infection," Smith says, making it nearly impossible to do any testing between petri dishes and human trials. Even then, researchers would first have to find a rhinovirus that test subjects had not already been exposed to — a difficult task with so many strains circulating every year.
If anyone is able to find an effective treatment, however, those efforts might pay off. "There would be a huge market among wealthy nations who have overcome some of the more serious infectious diseases and now have moved their attention to removing the annoyance of the common cold," Mackay says.

Is any progress being made?

Numerous researchers are working on something called broad-spectrum antivirals, which would target a wide variety of viruses. While much of this research is still in very early phases, it may offer the best hope for an eventual cold cure.
Todd Rider, formerly a senior staff scientist at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and now at Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, developed one such compound, called DRACO. It generated a lot of media buzz when it was first announced in 2011.
DRACO, Rider tells us, "is designed to treat or prevent infections by a broad spectrum of viruses, just as existing antibiotics can treat or prevent infections by a broad spectrum of bacteria."
The compound has so far been effective against 15 different viruses in cells and in mice. It works by entering all cells and then destroying those in which it detects a viral infection. "For the common cold in particular, DRACO was shown in human cells to be effective against all four rhinovirus strains tested," Rider says, "and to completely eliminate rhinoviruses without harming uninfected cells."
While DRACO and other related research, like that led by Leo James at Cambridge University's Laboratory of Molecular Biology, seem very promising, much more testing is needed to see whether this approach will be effective and safe in humans. If DRACO lives up to its initial promise and continued testing goes well — neither of which is a certainty — Rider expects that it could be used in humans "within a decade or perhaps sooner."

What can you do in the meantime?

Wash your hands. Get plenty of sleep. Avoid sick people whenever possible. Try your luck with over-the-counter remedies.
Or, Smith notes, there's always the extreme option: "Hermits who never see fellow human beings never get the common cold."

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Inside hackers seen as $40 billion threat for U.S. employers

Inside hackers seen as $40 billion threat for U.S. employers

Chris Strohm and Jordan Robertson

Bloomberg

Fired from a job as a technology contractor for a Toyota Motor Corp. factory in Kentucky, Ibrahimshah Shahulhameed went home, logged into the company’s computer network and attacked it with programming commands.

It took the automaker months to fix the damage and landed Shahulhameed in prison. He is appealing the conviction.

While attention has been drawn recently to outsiders suspected of attacking companies such as Home Depot Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., Shahulhameed’s case illustrates the growing threat from within. U.S. companies and organizations suffered $40 billion in losses from unauthorized use of computers by employees last year, according to SpectorSoft Corp. based in Vero Beach, Florida, which develops software that companies can use to monitor Internet activity of their workers.

“The most costly data breaches are usually those that are created by a malicious insider,” said Larry Ponemon, chairman of the Ponemon Institute, an information security research center based in Traverse City, Michigan. “These people normally have access to things external hackers generally don’t have access to.”

The FBI this week issued a warning to companies about a rise in hacking by current and former employees. Insider threats, both intentional and accidental, were cited by more than 70 percent of information security managers as their biggest concern in an April survey.

The workers often use cloud-storage services as well as personal e-mail accounts to transfer data, according to the Sept. 23 public notice by the FBI and Homeland Security Department. Sometimes they remotely access computers, the warning said.

Employee Access

Companies have to balance giving employees access to information while monitoring for suspicious or abnormal behavior, said Nimmy Reichenberg, vice president of marketing and strategy for Boston-based consulting company AlgoSec, which conducted the survey of IT managers.

“A lot of times it’s a matter of misconfiguration,” he said. “Should you be able to access your e-mail remotely? Absolutely. Should you be able to remote desktop into an e-mail service and get full control of an e-mail server? Probably not. That’s when bad things begin to happen.”

Jonathan Wolberg of Tucson, Arizona, sought revenge on his former employer, a cloud-computing company, according to prosecutors who didn’t name the employer. Wolberg was found to have secretly logged into the Virginia-based company’s networks following his resignation as a systems administrator in 2012 and shut down a server, according to the FBI.

The attack left hospitals responsible for surgery and urgent care without access to key information and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair, according to the agency.

‘Devastating Effect’

Wolberg pleaded guilty and was sentenced in April to 33 months in prison for intentionally causing damage to a protected computer, according to the FBI. He remains in prison, said his attorney, Jeff Zimmerman, a partner at the law firm Smith & Zimmerman Pllc in Alexandria, Virginia.

Shahulhameed “sabotaged various internal programs” and ``improperly accessed proprietary trade secrets and information such as pricing information, quality testing data, and parts- testing data,’’ Toyota said in an August 2012 complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.

He was convicted in February for intentionally damaging computers at the plant in Georgetown, Kentucky, after he was fired by a Toyota contractor, according to an FBI statement. He maintains his innocence and is appealing his conviction, said Derek Gordon, a partner with the law firm Anggelis & Gordon Pllc in Lexington, who filed the appeal.

A spokesman for Toyota couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.

Gray Area

Employees who illegally access company networks can find themselves in violation of the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. That’s what happened to Robert Steele of Alexandria, Virginia, who the FBI says used a secret administrative account to download proprietary documents from a government contractor where he previously worked.

Steele illegally sifted through thousands of documents belonging to his former company while working for another contractor that competed for government work, according to the FBI. He was convicted in May 2013 of unauthorized access to a protected computer. He is appealing his conviction, said his lawyer, Christopher Amolsch.

A gray area can complicate prosecutions under the 1986 law, however, because it must be proven that workers acted in excess of their authority or without proper authorization, Peter Toren, a partner in the Washington law firm Weisbrod, Matteis & Copley, said.

Proving Intent

“Did you have the right to get inside the computer?” said Toren, who served as an attorney for the Department of Justice’s computer crime and intellectual property section from 1992 to 1999. “Most employees can say they had the right to access and gain entry into the computer.”

To convict an employee for causing damage to a computer, prosecutors must prove the worker acted with intent rather than negligence, Toren said. “It can be difficult to prove but it’s all done circumstantially,” he said.

The number of information security managers who cited insider threats as their biggest concern increased to 73 percent in 2014 from 62 percent in 2013, according to an April 2014 survey by AlgoSec. The concern about insider threats, which includes accidental breaches as well as intentional attacks, surpasses that of outside hackers trying to steal financial data, the survey found.

Part of the increase might be attributed to awareness of such threats driven by Edward Snowden, the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor who took and made public secret documents about American spy programs.

Malicious Insider

Companies rely on system administrators who have privileged access to data and networks. Those employees can also do the most damage and their malice can be difficult to detect, Ponemon said.

In one case the Ponemon Institute helped investigate, a disgruntled worker at a banking and investment management company planted source code that appeared to be an attack coming from the outside to knock servers offline.

That was just a diversion. The true intent was to destroy information from within and cause physical damage to servers, costing the company millions of dollars, Ponemon said. He declined to name the company.

The institute also has seen cases where unhappy employees work as part of a conspiracy with outside hackers to attack a company. “The proportion of malicious inside cases that potentially involved a cyber syndicate seems to be on an increase,” Ponemon said.

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Instagram reportedly blocked in China amid Hong Kong protests

Instagram reportedly blocked in China amid Hong Kong protests

Ryan Vlastelica

Reuters

Instagram, the popular photo-sharing service owned by Facebook Inc, has been blocked in China, according to numerous reports, including from Hong Kong-based reporters with the New York Times.

The company did not immediately return requests for confirmation.

The reports came amid pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, where many have posted photos and videos, including of Hong Kong police firing tear gas at demonstrators.

Many of the photos were labelled with the hash tag "Occupy Central," a phrase that was blocked on Sunday on Weibo, China's version of Twitter. It had been allowed earlier in the day.

The website www.blockedinchina.net also indicated that Instagram was blocked across China, including in Beijing and Shenzhen.

If the site was blocked in China, that would not prevent users in Hong Kong from posting on social media, nor users in other countries viewing the images.

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