Samsung launches Galaxy S8 and dreams of recovery from Note 7

SEOUL/NEW YORK — Samsung Electronics Co Ltd unveiled its Galaxy S8 flagship smartphone as it battles to regain the market leadership it lost to Apple Inc after the embarrassing withdrawal of the fire-prone Note 7s.

Boasting some of the largest wrap-around screens ever made, the long-awaited S8 is the South Korean technology company’s first new premium phone since its September recall of all Galaxy Note 7 smartphones equipped with fire-prone batteries. Samsung halted their sales in 10 markets, and the phones were banned from aircraft in the United States, denting a revival of the firm’s mobile business.

Two versions of the Galaxy S8, code-named Dream internally, were launched at a media event in New York on Wednesday, with 6.2-inch (15.75 cm) and 5.8-inch curved screens – the largest to date for Samsung’s premium smartphones. They will go on sale on April 21.

“We must be bold enough to step into the unknown and humble enough to learn from our mistakes,” D.J. Koh, the company’s mobile chief, said at the event after acknowledging that it had been a challenging year for Samsung.

U.S. carriers T-Mobile US Inc and Verizon Communications Inc announced retail pricing for the smaller S8 around $700. The larger phone will sell for $840 at Verizon and $850 at T-Mobile.

The S8 features Samsung’s new artificial intelligence service, Bixby, with functions including a voice-commanded assistant system similar to Apple’s Siri. There is also a new facial recognition application that lets users unlock their phones by looking at them.

Samsung is hoping the design update and the new features, focussed on making life easier for consumers, will be enough to revive sales in a year Apple is expected to introduce major changes to its iPhones, including the very curved screens that have become staples of the Galaxy brand.

Samsung Electronics shares edge up after unveiling Galaxy S8

The S8 is also crucial for Samsung’s image as a maker of reliable mobile devices. The self-combusting Galaxy Note 7s had to be scrapped in October just two months after their launch, and the recall was particularly damaging, investors and analysts say.

“The Galaxy S8 is the most important phone for Samsung in a decade and every aspect will be under the microscope following the Note 7 recall,” said Ben Wood, a veteran smartphone industry analyst with UK-based CCS Insight.

source: interaksyon.com

Trump son-in-law met with Russian bank sanctioned by US

WASHINGTON -- A Russian bank under US economic sanctions over Russia's incursion into Ukraine disclosed on Monday that its executives had met Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a top White House adviser, during the 2016 election campaign.

Kushner, 36, married to Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump, has agreed to testify to a Senate committee investigating whether Russia tried to interfere in the election.

Allegations by US intelligence agencies that Russian actors were behind hacking of senior Democratic Party operatives and spreading disinformation linger over Trump's young presidency. Democrats charge the Russians wanted to tilt the election toward the Republican, a claim dismissed by Trump. Russia denies the allegations.

But there has been no doubt that the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak, developed contacts among the Trump team. Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was forced to resign on February 13 after revelations that he had discussed US sanctions on Russia with Kislyak and misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations.

Executives of Russian state development bank Vnesheconombank had talks with Kushner during a bank roadshow in 2016 when it was preparing a new strategy, the bank said.

"As part of the preparation of the new strategy, executives of Vnesheconombank met with representatives of leading financial institutes in Europe, Asia and America multiple times during 2016," VEB said in an emailed statement.

It said roadshow meetings took place "with a number of representatives of the largest banks and business establishments of the United States, including Jared Kushner, the head of Kushner Companies."

There was no immediate comment from Kushner.

In an article posted on December 18, Forbes estimated that Jared Kushner, his brother Josh and his parents, Charles and Seryl, have a fortune worth at least $1.8 billion, more than half of which Forbes estimates is held in real estate.

Forbes did not provide a specific estimate for Jared Kushner’s net worth on his own.

VEB declined to say where the meetings took place or the dates. US officials said that after meeting with Russian Kislyak at Trump Tower last December, a meeting also attended by Flynn, Kushner met later in December with Sergei Gorkov, the CEO of Vnesheconombank. White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed the meetings.

On Monday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters that Kushner is willing to testify to the Senate Intelligence Committee chaired by US Senator Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican.

“Throughout the campaign and the transition, Jared served as the official primary point of contact with foreign governments and officials ... and so, given this role, he volunteered to speak with Chairman Burr's committee, but has not received any confirmation regarding a time for a meeting," Spicer told reporters at his daily briefing.

The Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate panel also said Kushner had agreed to be interviewed.

Simply meeting with representatives of a US-sanctioned entity is not a violation of sanctions or against the law.

Evgeny Buryakov, 41, a Russian citizen who worked at Vnesheconombank and whom US authorities accused of posing as a banker while participating in a New York spy ring, pleaded guilty to a criminal conspiracy charge on Friday. Buryakov admitted in federal court in Manhattan to acting as an agent for the Russian government without notifying US authorities.

Classified information
Also on Monday, a mystery rooted in Trump's claim that he was wiretapped by then President Barack Obama during the election campaign deepened with the disclosure that a top congressional Republican reviewed classified information on the White House grounds about potential surveillance of some Trump campaign associates.

US Representative Devin Nunes, chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, visited the White House the night before announcing on Wednesday that he had information that indicated some Trump associates may have been subjected to some level of intelligence activity before Trump took office on Jan. 20.

Democrats have said Nunes, who was a member of Trump's transition team, can no longer run a credible investigation of Russian hacking, the US election and any potential involvement by Trump associates. Top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi last week called Nunes "a willing stooge of Trump."

Nunes spokesman Jack Langer said in a statement that Nunes "met with his source at the White House grounds in order to have proximity to a secure location where he could view the information provided by the source."

White House spokesman Spicer did not shed any light on who at the White House helped Nunes gain access to a secure location.

It was the latest twist in a saga that began on March 4 when Trump said on Twitter without providing evidence that he "just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory."

FBI Director James Comey told Congress last Monday he had seen no evidence to support the claim.

Trump's mention of wiretapping drew attention away from US intelligence agencies having said that Russia tried to help Trump in the election against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Nunes told reporters on Wednesday that he had briefed Trump "on the concerns I had about incidental collection and how it relates to President-elect Trump and his transition team and the concerns that I have."

After an uproar over the allegations and the fact that he briefed Trump first before members of his own committee, Nunes apologized on Thursday for the way he handled the information.

source: interaksyon.com

James Corden and the hit show that nearly never was

LOS ANGELES | In two years, James Corden’s “The Late Late Show” has become an Emmy Award-winning benchmark for innovative late-night TV, spawning viral videos watched by hundreds of millions of fans around the world.

Yet the British comedian and actor revealed this week that the latest incarnation of the CBS talk show almost didn’t happen — thanks to a derisory contract offer from executives.

“CBS called to say they’d like me to do a test reel for ‘The Late Late Show’ and I was like ‘I don’t know’ because I was doing this musical on Broadway and I was writing this show,” the British funnyman said in Hollywood on Wednesday.

“Then they just offered me the show and it was a terrible offer. Anyone here from CBS will know the offer was appalling. And I said no to that,” he told a Q&A session at the annual PaleyFest television festival.

Corden, 38, said executives came back with a better deal after three months and he realized if he continued to say no, he would be turning down a dream opportunity to “be creative every day.”

Since taking over “The Late Late Show” from Craig Ferguson in March 2015, Corden has redefined the late-night talk show, bringing back the tradition — long lost in the U.S. — of guests sharing the sofa.

He has also popularized a joyously daft collection of recurring comical segments, two of which — Carpool Karaoke and Drop the Mic — have become viral pop cultural phenomena.

“Carpool Karaoke,” a skit in which celebrities from Justin Bieber to Michelle Obama sing along with popular hits in a moving car, is being made into a 16-episode spin-off series for Apple Music.

SLOW START

Corden introduced the segment soon after the show started and it quickly took on a life beyond late-night television, with 1.3 billion views on YouTube.

The most successful skit starred Adele, the mega-star British ballad singer who showed a close-up and more laid-back side to herself.

Adele’s segment has been seen more than 152 million times on YouTube in 14 months, the most ever for a segment from the world of late-night television comedy.

Corden and executive producers Ben Winston and Rob Crabbe “had never been more sure” of an idea, the comedian and actor told the audience at the event.

But “Carpool Karaoke” got off to a slow start with every celebrity approached refusing to take part.

“Everyone in this room, just in your mind, think of a recording artist. Pop one in your head, see them, think of their name,” Corden instructed the packed Dolby Theatre.

“Everyone got one? They said no.”

Over 80 minutes, Corden, Winston and Crabbe answered numerous questions about making the show from audience members and the moderator, actor Bradley Whitford of “The West Wing” fame.

One fan asked if Corden would consider having President Donald Trump as a guest.

“When he was running for president, he didn’t stop by our show, but I felt like we had the absolute game to play with Donald Trump,” Corden said.

“I really felt like the game I wanted to play if he came on the show was called ‘Stand By It, or Take It Back’ (with) Donald Trump and things that he had said on the campaign trail.

“You’ve got a chance now… do you stand by it or take it back? If you take it back, you have to take it back forever and if you stand by it, you’ve got to tell me why. I felt like that was such a good game… but he never came by.”

source: interaksyon.com

Northern Ireland's Martin McGuinness dies at 66

BELFAST - Martin McGuinness, a former Irish Republican Army commander and deputy first minister of Northern Ireland who was a key figure throughout five decades of conflict and peace, has died aged 66, his party, Sinn Fein, said on Tuesday.

McGuinness, whose journey from street fighter to peacemaker began in the 1970s during Northern Ireland's "Troubles", had bowed out of politics several months earlier than planned in January due to an undisclosed illness.

"Throughout his life Martin showed great determination, dignity and humility, and it was no different during his short illness," Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams said in a statement.

"He was a passionate republican who worked tirelessly for peace and reconciliation and for the re-unification of his country. But above all he loved his family and the people of Derry and he was immensely proud of both."

McGuinness abandoned a butcher's apprenticeship in 1970 to join the Irish Republican Army in a bloody campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland. He played a key role in both the start and the end of the province's 30-year sectarian conflict, in which some 3,600 people were killed.

War and peace

McGuinness later admitted he was second-in-command in Londonderry on "Bloody Sunday" - the day in 1972 when British troops in the city killed 14 unarmed marchers, ushering in the most intense phase of the Troubles.

In the 1980s, McGuinness emerged alongside Adams as a key architect in the electoral rise of Sinn Fein, the IRA's political ally, and became the party's chief negotiator in peace talks that led to the 1998 peace deal.

McGuinness had been deputy first minister for a decade before quitting in January in protest at First Minister Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party's (DUP) handling of a controversial green-energy scheme. His resignation led to the collapse of the power-sharing government.

"History will record differing views and opinions on the role Martin McGuinness played throughout the recent and not so recent past but history will also show that his contribution to the political and peace process was significant," said Foster, who survived an IRA bomb attack on a school bus at the age of 17.

"In recent years his contribution helped build the relative peace we now enjoy." 

Shortly after his retirement, the party achieved a major electoral breakthrough in elections to the regional assembly, coming within one seat of the Democratic Unionist Party and depriving the pro-British political camp of an overall majority for the first time since the partition of Ireland in 1921.

Irish President Michael D. Higgins said McGuinness played an "immense contribution" to the advancement of peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland – a contribution he said was rightly recognized across all shades of opinion.

"The world of politics and the people across this island will miss the leadership he gave, shown most clearly during the difficult times of the peace process," Higgins said in a statement.

"His death leaves a gap that will be difficult to fill. May he rest in peace."

source: interaksyon.com

Rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Chuck Berry dead at 90

Chuck Berry, who duck-walked his way into the pantheon of rock ‘n’ roll pioneers as one of its most influential guitarists and as the creator of raucous anthems that defined the genre’s early sound and heartbeat, died on Saturday at his Missouri home. He was 90.

Police in St. Charles County, outside St. Louis, said they were called to Berry’s home by a caretaker who reported he had fallen ill, and emergency responders found the performer unconscious. Emergency medical technicians tried to revive him with cardiopulmonary resuscitation, to no avail, and Berry was pronounced dead at 1:26 p.m. local time, police said.

Although Elvis Presley was called the king of rock ‘n’ roll, that crown would have fit just as well on the carefully sculpted pompadour of Charles Edward Anderson Berry. He was present in rock’s infancy in the 1950s and emerged as its first star guitarist and lyricist.

Berry hits such as “Johnny B. Goode,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Maybellene” and “Memphis” melded elements of blues, rockabilly and jazz into some of America’s most timeless pop songs of the 20th century.

He was a monumental influence on just about any kid who picked up a guitar with rock star aspirations – Keith Richards, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen among them.

Bob Dylan called Berry “the Shakespeare of rock ‘n’ roll,” and he was one of the first popular acts to write as well as perform his own songs. They focused on youth, romance, cars and good times, with lyrics that were complex, humorous and sometimes a little raunchy.

Both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, as well as the Beach Boys and scores of other acts – even Elvis – covered Berry’s songs.

“If you tried to give rock ‘n’ roll another name,” Lennon once said, “you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.”

When Richards inducted Berry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, he said: “It’s very difficult for me to talk about Chuck Berry because I’ve lifted every lick he ever played. This is the gentleman who started it all.”

Berry’s legacy as one of rock’s founders was tarnished by his reputation as a prickly penny-pincher and run-ins with the law, including sex-related offenses after he achieved stardom.

Marking his 90th birthday in 2016 by announcing he would release his first album in 38 years, Berry listed T-Bone Walker, Carl Hogan of Louis Jordan’s band and Charlie Christian from Benny Goodman’s band as his guitar influences, but his lyrical style was all his own. Punchy wordplay and youth-oriented subject matter earned him the nickname “the eternal teenager” early in his career.

Berry came along at a time when much of the United States remained racially segregated, but it was hard for young audiences of any color to resist a performer who delivered such a powerful beat with so much energy and showmanship.

KEY COLLABORATOR

Berry said he performed his signature bent-knee, head-bobbing “duck walk” across more than 4,000 concert stages. He said he invented the move as a child in order to make his mother laugh as he chased a ball under a table.

Some critics suggested it was his former pianist, Johnnie Johnson, who composed the tunes while Berry only penned the lyrics. Johnson sued Berry in 2000 for song royalties, saying they were equal collaborators on many of the hits, but the case was dismissed on grounds that the statute of limitations had expired.

It was with Johnson that Berry first made his mark, playing at black clubs in the St. Louis area at the musically ripe age of 27. Berry started out filling in with Johnson’s group, known as Sir John’s Trio, in 1953, and Johnson eventually acknowledged Berry’s talent, charisma and business acumen by allowing the group to evolve into the Chuck Berry Trio.

At the suggestion of blues legend Muddy Waters, Berry auditioned for Chess Records, the white-owned Chicago label that put out scores of blues hits. The result was the rockabilly tune “Ida Red,” which became a hit after it was retitled “Maybellene” and discovered by white audiences.

When the record came out, Berry said he was stunned to see that pioneering rock ‘n’ roll disc jockey Alan Freed and another man he had never met, Russ Fratto, were listed as co-writers of “Maybellene.”

The shared credits deprived him of some royalty payments, but Berry dismissed it at the time as part of the “payola” system that determined which records got radio play in the 1950s. He later regained all the rights to his compositions.

ONLY ONE NO. 1 HIT

Berry and Johnson collaborated for some 30 years on such rock anthems as “School Days,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Back in the U.S.A.,” “Reelin’ and Rockin’,” “Rock & Roll Music,” “No Particular Place to Go,” “Memphis” and “Sweet Little Sixteen.” But Berry’s only No. 1 hit was “My Ding-a-Ling,” a throwaway novelty song that seemed to be a juvenile sex reference.

Berry’s reputation for being greedy and grouchy was evident in the 1987 documentary “Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll,” which focused on a 60th-birthday concert that Keith Richards organized for him. The movie’s makers said Berry refused to show up for filming each day unless given a bag of cash.

“He was an oddly cheap character in some ways,” Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger told Mojo magazine. “He … was always rude to everyone. He became too much of a parody of himself.”

Berry was born Oct. 18, 1926, the third of six children whose father was a contractor and church deacon and whose mother was a schoolteacher. They lived in a relatively prosperous black section of St. Louis known as the Ville.

In the first of his brushes with the law, Berry was sent to a reformatory as a teenager for armed robbery. After his release at age 21, he worked in an auto plant and as a photographer and trained to be a hairdresser.

As he became a star, Berry irked some in St. Louis by acquiring property in a previously white area and opening his own nightclub, where another legal scrape nearly ended his career.

At a show in Texas in 1959, Berry had met a 14-year-old Native American girl and hired her to work at the St. Louis club. She was later fired and then arrested on a prostitution charge, which led to Berry being convicted for violating the Mann Act, transporting a woman across state lines for immoral purposes. He was sent to prison in 1962 for a year and a half and wrote several songs while incarcerated, including “No Particular Place to Go.”

Berry had more trouble in 1979 when he was convicted of tax evasion, serving four months in prison, and in the 1990s when a number of women accused him of videotaping them in the bathrooms of his restaurant-club in Wentzville, Missouri.

While the hits did not keep coming for Berry, the tributes never stopped, and he continued playing a monthly show at a St. Louis nightclub into his late 80s. He received a Grammy award for lifetime achievement in 1984 and his 1986 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame made him part of the inaugural class.

Illustrating his influence, a recording of “Johnny B. Goode” was included in a collection of music sent into space aboard the unmanned 1977 Voyager I probe to provide aliens a taste of Earth culture.

Despite his reputation as a womanizer, Berry and his wife, Toddy, were married more than 60 years.

source: interaksyon.com

Trump expected to slash foreign aid, environmental spending in first budget plan

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump is set to propose drastic cuts to America's foreign aid and environmental programs in a security-heavy first budget blueprint to be released Thursday.

In a plan designed to translate bold campaign promises into dollar and cent commitments, the Republican leader is expected to propose steep cuts in State Department funding.

That could be a harbinger of reductions in foreign aid and funding to UN agencies, with knock-on effects around the world.

The Pentagon is expected to be the major winner with a nearly 10 percent boost -- shoveling more cash toward a defense budget already greater than that of the next seven nations combined.

Trump's broad-brush proposal covers only a fraction of the $3.8 trillion federal budget -- which is dominated by healthcare, pension and other baked-in costs.

The text will be heavily revised and fleshed out by Congress, before a full budget is released around May.

In that sense, the plan is as much a political statement as a fiscal outline: a fact not lost on the White House.

Playing to the base

The budget is a signal to Trump's supporters that he is a "man of action" and not a "typical politician."

Trump is looking to rally his base, amid multiple controversies over his Twitter outbursts, Russian meddling in the election that brought him to power and a simmering rift with Congressional Republicans over healthcare reform.

According to Gallup, Trump has approval ratings of 40 percent, a low for any modern president weeks into his tenure.

But security has been a major vote winner. An Economist/YouGov poll found that 51 percent of Republicans believe the United States will be safer from terrorism at the end of his term.

The budget may also be seen as a signal to the world that Trump's United States may be less engaged and will put "America first."

Diplomats and some former defense officials have already warned that less spending on things like democracy promotion and humanitarian aid will spell more trouble, and military spending, down the road.

More than 120 retired generals and admirals recently signed a letter warning "that many of the crises our nation faces do not have military solutions alone."

They cited Jim Mattis, now defense secretary, as once saying "if you don't fully fund the State Department, then I need to buy more ammunition."

'Drastic cuts'

The Environmental Protection Agency, which helps monitor air, water and other standards, is also likely to see significant cuts.

That is in keeping with Trump's promise to gut regulation.

On Wednesday, Trump traveled to Michigan, the home of the American auto industry -- and announced he will freeze targets to limit future vehicle emissions.

Trump's top advisor Steve Bannon has promised a broader "'deconstruction of the administrative state."

But Trump's plan is already coming under fire from Democratic lawmakers.

"It will prescribe drastic cuts in many of the programs and agencies that keep America safe, whether it's environmental programs, whether it is food safety, drug safety," said Kentucky representative John Yarmuth.

The ranking member on the House budget committee speculated that the proposal could be a negotiating position, an opening salvo in Trump's "art of the deal."

"If they want to negotiate with the health and safety and future of the American people, then that's pretty cynical," he said.

source: interaksyon.com

Death toll in Guatemala kids’ shelter fire climbs to 39

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala -- The death toll in a horrific fire at a government-run shelter for Guatemalan teens has climbed to 39, officials said on Saturday.

Hundreds of protesters rallied outside the residence of President Jimmy Morales, alleging that government negligence at the overcrowded facility where staffers were accused of sexual and other abuse allowed the tragedy to happen.

Some of the protesters carried blue and white Guatemalan flags stained with red to symbolize blood and death.

Three more adolescent girls succumbed to their injuries while being treated in intensive care, according to hospital officials, who said 14 girls are still in their care, including eight in critical condition.

The girls perished in a blaze Wednesday at the co-ed Virgin of the Assumption Safe Home for children in San Jose Pinula, a village just east of the capital.

The fire broke out in the girls' living quarters of the walled facility, killing 19 immediately. The others died later from their burns.

All of the victims were girls aged between 14 and 17, officials said.

The blaze was believed to have been set by girls protesting dire conditions they were subjected to at the shelter, including sexual abuse and other mistreatment by staff.

source: interaksyon.com

Justin Bieber impostor meted child sex charges in Australia

SYDNEY | A man posing online as pop superstar Justin Bieber was Thursday charged with more than 900 child sex offences in Australia after enticing young fans to send him explicit images, police said.

The 42-year-old used online platforms including Facebook and Skype to impersonate the chart-topping Canadian singer, with his alleged offenses dating back to 2007.

“Detectives had been investigating a man who allegedly posed as Justin online in order to solicit explicit images from young children,” Queensland state police said in a statement.

“As part of the investigation, a 42-year-old man had earlier been charged with a number of child sex offences including possessing child exploitation material and using a carriage service to groom persons under 16.

“After a thorough examination of the man’s computer, he has been further charged with another 931 child sex offences.”

The charges include rape, indecent treatment of children, making child exploitation material, using a carriage service to procure person under 16, and using a carriage service for child pornography material.

Bieber, who once enjoyed a squeaky clean image but has recently had frequent run-ins with the law, has a legendary army of fans dubbed “Beliebers”.

Detective Inspector Jon Rouse described the breadth of offences as “horrendous” and urged fans to be extra vigilant when using the internet.

“This investigation demonstrates both the vulnerability of children that are utilising social media and communication applications and the global reach and skill that child sex offenders have to groom and seduce victims,” he said.

“The fact that so many children could believe that they were communicating with this particular celebrity highlights the need for a serious rethink about the way that we as a society educate our children about online safety.”

source: interaksyon.com

WikiLeaks says it releases files on CIA cyber spying tools

WASHINGTON — Anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks on Tuesday published what it said were thousands of pages of internal CIA discussions about hacking techniques used over several years, renewing concerns about the security of consumer electronics and embarrassing yet another U.S. intelligence agency.

The discussion transcripts showed that CIA hackers could get into Apple Inc iPhones, Google Inc Android devices and other gadgets in order to capture text and voice messages before they were encrypted with sophisticated software.

Cyber security experts disagreed about the extent of the fallout from the data dump, but said a lot would depend on whether WikiLeaks followed through on a threat to publish the actual hacking tools that could do damage.

Reuters could not immediately verify the contents of the published documents, but several contractors and private cyber security experts said the materials, dated between 2013 and 2016, appeared to be legitimate.

A longtime intelligence contractor with expertise in U.S. hacking tools told Reuters the documents included correct “cover” terms describing active cyber programs.

Among the most noteworthy WikiLeaks claims is that the Central Intelligence Agency, in partnership with other U.S. and foreign agencies, has been able to bypass the encryption on popular messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal.

The files did not indicate the actual encryption of Signal or other secure messaging apps had been compromised.

The information in what WikiLeaks said were 7,818 web pages with 943 attachments appears to represent the latest breach in recent years of classified material from U.S. intelligence agencies.

Security experts differed over how much the disclosures could damage U.S. cyber espionage. Many said that, while harmful, they do not compare to former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 of mass NSA data collection.

“This is a big dump about extremely sophisticated tools that can be used to target individual user devices … I haven’t yet come across the mass exploiting of mobile devices,” said Tarah Wheeler, senior director of engineering and principal security advocate for Symantec.

Stuart McClure, CEO of Cylance, an Irvine, California, cyber security firm, said that one of the most significant disclosures shows how CIA hackers cover their tracks by leaving electronic trails suggesting they are from Russia, China and Iran rather than the United States.

Other revelations show how the CIA took advantage of vulnerabilities that are known, if not widely publicized.

In one case, the documents say, U.S. and British personnel, under a program known as Weeping Angel, developed ways to take over a Samsung smart television, making it appear it was off when in fact it was recording conversations in the room.

The CIA and White House declined comment. “We do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents,” CIA spokesman Jonathan Liu said in a statement.

Google declined to comment on the purported hacking of its Android platform, but said it was investigating the matter.

Snowden on Twitter said the files amount to the first public evidence that the U.S. government secretly buys software to exploit technology, referring to a table published by WikiLeaks that appeared to list various Apple iOS flaws purchased by the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

Apple Inc did not respond to a request for comment.

The documents refer to means for accessing phones directly in order to catch messages before they are protected by end-to-end encryption tools like Signal.

Signal inventor Moxie Marlinspike said he took that as “confirmation that what we’re doing is working.” Signal and the like are “pushing intelligence agencies from a world of undetectable mass surveillance to a world where they have to use expensive, high-risk, extremely targeted attacks.”

CIA cyber programs
The CIA in recent years underwent a restructuring to focus more on cyber warfare to keep pace with the increasing digital sophistication of foreign adversaries. The spy agency is prohibited by law from collecting intelligence that details domestic activities of Americans and is generally restricted in how it may gather any U.S. data for counterintelligence purposes.

The documents published Tuesday appeared to supply specific details to what has been long-known in the abstract: U.S. intelligence agencies, like their allies and adversaries, are constantly working to discover and exploit flaws in any manner of technology products.

Unlike the Snowden leaks, which revealed the NSA was secretly collecting details of telephone calls by ordinary Americans, the new WikiLeaks material did not appear to contain material that would fundamentally change what is publicly known about cyber espionage.

WikiLeaks, led by Julian Assange, said its publication of the documents on the hacking tools was the first in a series of releases drawing from a data set that includes several hundred million lines of code and includes the CIA’s “entire hacking capacity.”

The documents only include snippets of computer code, not the full programs that would be needed to conduct cyber exploits.

WikiLeaks said it was refraining from disclosing usable code from CIA’s cyber arsenal “until a consensus emerges on the technical and political nature of the C.I.A.’s program and how such ‘weapons’ should be analyzed, disarmed and published.”

U.S. intelligence agencies have said that Wikileaks has ties to Russia’s security services. During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Wikileaks published internal emails of top Democratic Party officials, which the agencies said were hacked by Moscow as part of a coordinated influence campaign to help Republican Donald Trump win the presidency.

WikiLeaks has denied ties to Russian spy agencies.

Trump praised WikiLeaks during the campaign, often citing hacked emails it published to bolster his attacks on Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton.

WikiLeaks said on Tuesday that the documents showed that the CIA hoarded serious security vulnerabilities rather than share them with the public, as called for under a process established by President Barack Obama.

Rob Knake, a former official who dealt with the issue under Obama, said he had not seen evidence in what was published to support that conclusion.

The process “is not a policy of unilateral disarmament in cyberspace. The mere fact that the CIA may have exploited zero-day [previously undisclosed] vulnerabilities should not surprise anyone,” said Knake, now at the Council on Foreign Relations.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they did not know where WikiLeaks might have obtained the material.

In a press release, the group said, “The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.”

U.S. intelligence agencies have suffered a series of security breaches, including Snowden’s.

In 2010, U.S. military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning provided more than 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to Wikileaks.

Last month, former NSA contractor Harold Thomas Martin was indicted on charges of taking highly sensitive government materials over a course of 20 years, storing the secrets in his home.

source: interaksyon.com

Bitcoin hits all-time high

NEW YORK — Digital currency bitcoin hit a record high on Friday on optimism about the approval of the first U.S. bitcoin exchange-traded fund by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“There’s one catalyst at the moment and that is the expectation that the Winklevoss Trust will be approved on the 11th of March. That’s the only game in town,” said Daniel Masters, portfolio manager of Jersey-based Global Advisors Bitcoin Investment Program.

Investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have a pending application with the SEC for a bitcoin ETF, which was filed nearly four years ago. On March 11, the twins are expected to receive a final decision from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on whether they can list their ETF.

If approved by the SEC, this would be the first bitcoin ETF issued by a U.S. entity.

On Friday, bitcoin climbed to a record $1,298 on the BitStamp platform. Bitcoin last traded at $1,263.01, up nearly 5 percent on the day. So far this year, bitcoin has surged more than 30 percent.

Bitcoin is a virtual currency that can be used to move money around the world quickly and anonymously without the need for a central authority.

Darin Stanchfield, founder and chief executive officer of bitcoin wallet KeepKey, said the approval of the Winklevoss ETF would be a big boost to the market. “It should add a fair amount of liquidity to the bitcoin market,” added.

To date, there are two other bitcoin ETF applications with the SEC. Grayscale’s Bitcoin Investment Trust, backed by early bitcoin advocate Barry Silbert and his Digital Currency Group, filed its application with the SEC in March last year.

SolidX Partners Inc, a U.S. technology company that provides blockchain services, also filed its ETF application in July of last year.

Bitcoin relies on so-called “mining” computers that validate blocks of transactions by competing to solve mathematical puzzles every 10 minutes. In return, the first to solve the puzzle and clear the transaction is rewarded with new bitcoins.

Analysts said the groundwork for bitcoin gains was laid in July last year in a process called “halving,” where rewards offered to bitcoin miners shrink. That has constrained the supply of the digital currency.

Dan Morehead, chief executive officer at hedge fund Pantera Capital, said in his recent letter to investors that the bitcoin price moves in line with the currency’s use in transactions and both have risen sharply.

He sees the bitcoin price possibly rising to $2,288 by the end of the year,

source: interaksyon.com