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An international gang of fraudsters is ripping off bank customers at ATMs across Sydney, using high-tech devices to copy card details and access their accounts.

More than 100 customers of one bank lost money after their cards were “skimmed” at ATMs.

The crooks place dummy card scanners over the slot where cards go into the ATM to read the card’s magnetic strip. Tiny cameras are hidden above the ATM to record the secret pin number being punched in.

St George Bank had to call up to 100 customers last week to tell them their cards had been cancelled as they had probably been skimmed.

Arncliffe pensioner Annette Cruger was told by St George Bank’s fraud section her account had been illegally accessed in Canada over the weekend and $1100 had been stolen.

“The bank said they had to call 80 to 100 customers who had been ’skimmed’ at ATMs and the bank had to cancel their cards to stop more money being stolen from their accounts,” she said.

“The bank did not seem to know where the card had been skimmed as they asked me which ATMs I normally use so they could cross-reference it with others who had been skimmed.”

Fraud squad head Detective Superintendent Col Dyson said his squad busted an international skimming gang of Bulgarians two years ago who had plundered $1.6 million from 600 accounts, but he could not say if the same gang was back.

Seven gang leaders escaped the police net and fled to Canada where they raided Australian accounts at ATMs around Toronto using cards copied from the Sydney operation.

Superintendent Dyson said even more high-tech skimming devices were appearing overseas which use a touch sensitive cover over the keypad to record the pin numbers, transmitting the code to a laptop computer up to 100 metres away.

Detective Sergeant Peter Meagher said the skimming devices were cleverly disguised.

But all the experts agree there is a perfect low-tech solution to the high-tech crime: shield your hand typing in the pin code so the hidden camera can’t see it.

How it works

1. Crooks attach covering to top or side of ATM cabin to that contains a tiny camera to record the secret pin code being punched in the keypad.

2. Attach replica of slot opening where card is inserted which reads the magnetic strip and stores it before it goes into ATM.

3. Overseas crooks are using keypad covers that transmit the numbers to a laptop up to 100 metres away.

4. Crooks retrieve devices after 20 to 30 uses, copy magnetic strip data onto blank card and use secret pin number to access account.

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MICROSOFT will either combine or close duplicate internet services after purchasing Yahoo!, its chief executive officer, Steve Ballmer, has said.

“We shouldn’t have two of everything,” he told a Microsoft conference in Las Vegas on Thursday. “It won’t make sense.”

Microsoft and Yahoo! own competing search engines, advertising programs, and email and instant-messaging services. Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, announced the $US44.6 billion ($48 million) offer last month for Yahoo!, owner of the No. 2 search engine.

Yahoo! rejected the deal, saying it undervalued the company. It has extended the deadline for nominating board candidates in an effort to avoid a proxy fight.

Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo! because the internet ad market will be “super big” and Microsoft hasn’t built that business fast enough on its own, Mr Ballmer says. “Advertising on the internet is a big thing and will be the next super big thing. We probably could have gotten going a lot sooner. We remain committed.”

Asked about the status of the bid by moderator Guy Kawasaki, a venture capitalist, Mr Ballmer responded: “We made an offer and it’s out there, baby.”

He said Microsoft would support Sony’s Blu-ray high-definition video format in “ways that make sense”.

Toshiba, the leading promoter of the rival technology HD DVD, conceded defeat to Sony last month. Microsoft was part of a group that backed the HD DVD standard.

Microsoft is in talks with Sony about developing a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360 video-game machine, the Financial Times reported.

Mr Ballmer also poked fun at Mr Kawasaki’s Apple MacBook Air ultra-thin notebook, saying it was heavier than his Toshiba laptop and lacked features such as a DVD drive.

“Let’s have a bake-off with my Tosh and that thing backstage,” he said.

Mr Kawasaki also asked Mr Ballmer not to repeat a conference performance from several years ago, when he jumped up and down while shouting “developers, developers, developers, developers”.

Still, an audience member requested a repeat performance on Thursday. Mr Ballmer cheered for web developers, the main attendees at the show.

“If your buddy behind you just gave you a buck, I want 50 cents,” Mr Ballmer told the attendee who had requested the cheer.

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A security consultant based in New Zealand has released a tool that can unlock Windows computers in seconds without the need for a password.

Adam Boileau first demonstrated the hack, which affects Windows XP computers but has not yet been tested with Windows Vista, at a security conference in Sydney in 2006, but Microsoft has yet to develop a fix.

Interviewed in ITRadio’s Risky Business podcast, Boileau said the tool, released to the public today, could “unlock locked Windows machines or login without a password … merely by plugging in your Firewire cable and running a command”.

Boileau, a consultant with Immunity Inc., said he did not release the tool publicly in 2006 because “Microsoft was a little cagey about exactly whether Firewire memory access was a real security issue or not and we didn’t want to cause any real trouble”.

But now that a couple of years have passed and the issue has not resolved, Boileau decided to release the tool on his website.

To use the tool, hackers must connect a Linux-based computer to a Firewire port on the target machine. The machine is then tricked into allowing the attacking computer to have read and write access to its memory.

With full access to the memory, the tool can then modify Windows’ password protection code, which is stored there, and render it ineffective.

Older desktop computers do not come equipped with Firewire ports, which are needed for the hack to work, but many recent models do. Most laptops made in the last few years include Firewire ports.

Paul Ducklin, head of technology for security firm Sophos, said the security hole found by Boileau was not a vulnerability or bug in the traditional sense, because the ability to use the Firewire port to access a computer’s memory was actually a feature of Firewire.

“If you have a Firewire port, disable it when you aren’t using it,” Ducklin said.

“That way, if someone does plug into your port unexpectedly, your side of the Firewire link is dead, so they can’t interact with your PC, legitimately or otherwise.”

Ducklin also advised people to be careful when giving others physical access to their computer.

“I know people who’d think three times about asking passing strangers to take their photo in front of the Opera House in case they did a runner with the camera, yet who are much more casual with their laptop PC, as long as it’s software-locked, even though the hardware alone is worth five times as much as the camera,” he said.

Microsoft was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.

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Microsoft Corp. will cut the price of some versions of Windows Vista, the software maker said late Thursday.

The move came a day after court filings revealed internal dissent over which Windows XP computers would be considered capable of running the new operating system _ and a feeling on at least one executive’s part that the company had “botched” the marketing of computers as “Vista Capable.”

Only copies of the year-old operating system that are sold in boxes directly to consumers are affected by the price cuts _ not the versions pre-loaded on personal computers. The cuts will range from 20 percent to 48 percent.

The reductions are to coincide with the late March release of Vista Service Pack 1, a collection of security fixes and other improvements.

Microsoft said the new prices will apply to the Home Premium and Ultimate versions of Vista, in both their full editions and the editions that upgrade an older or more basic operating system.

Both versions serve the tiny percentage of users who install an operating system on their own; most people get the latest version of Windows only when they buy a new PC.

Windows Vista’s January 2007 launch was plagued by delays. To keep consumers buying PCs in the holiday season of 2006, Microsoft and PC makers promised free Vista upgrades later to shoppers who bought Windows XP computers.

At the launch, Microsoft was widely criticized for offering too many versions of the operating system _ including Home Basic, which didn’t have the snazzy new signature look called “Aero” _ and for setting the price too high for the high-end versions.

Brad Brooks, a corporate vice president for Windows marketing at Microsoft, said in an interview that the company has since tested lower prices and found “product was moving much, much faster.”

Brooks said he expects so many customers to buy Vista at the new prices that the price cuts will increase Microsoft’s revenue, not subtract from it.

A federal judge recently said consumers could pursue a class action suit against Microsoft for labeling PCs as “Vista Capable,” even though many were not powerful enough to run all of Vista’s features, including the Aero interface.

Company e-mails produced in court chronicle Microsoft settling on a plan to market a wide range of XP-based PCs as “Vista Capable” after company officials realized in early 2006 that 30 percent or fewer of computers on the market could run the full-fledged version of Vista with Aero.

That realization apparently caused computer makers like Dell Inc. to worry that people would stop buying PCs for almost a year _ until Vista launched.

The e-mails also showed Microsoft lowering the bar for “Vista Capable” to protect Intel Corp.’s sales of some widely used chips that weren’t powerful enough for the full Vista experience.

Microsoft employee Anantha Kancherla was particularly blunt in his March 2006 response to a question about whether a certain PC configuration would be considered “Vista Capable.”

“Based on objective criteria that exist today for “capable,” even a piece of junk will qualify,” he wrote. “For the sake of Vista customers, it will be a complete tragedy if we allowed it.”

According to the e-mails, Jim Allchin, the executive in charge of Windows at the time, wasn’t involved in the decision to brand a wide swath of XP computers as “Vista Capable.”

Upon learning the details, Allchin wrote, “We really botched this.”

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China’s top search engine Baidu.com has been sued by a local music industry group for alleged copyright violation, the second recent similar action from the industry, the group said.

In a statement on its Web site Friday, the Music Copyright Society of China quoted official Qu Jingming as accusing Baidu of “providing music listening, broadcasting and downloading services in various forms on its Web site without approval, and through unfettered piracy, earning huge advertising revenue on its huge number of hits.”

The industry group said Baidu’s piracy forced legitimate online music providers to shut down.

The group said in the statement dated Thursday that it filed a lawsuit against Baidu in a Beijing court in January, alleging it illegally used 50 songs and demanding compensation.

An outside publicist for Baidu didn’t immediately respond to a reporter’s e-mail seeking comment.

The International Federation of Phonographic Industries said earlier this month several music publishers have filed a lawsuit against Baidu, accusing it of aiding illicit online copying.

That lawsuit demanded Baidu remove links to thousands of sites that carry unlicensed copies of music.

The companies that launched that legal action were Universal Music Ltd., Sony BMG Music Entertainment Ltd., Warner Music Hong Kong Ltd., and Hong Kong-based Gold Label Entertainment Ltd., according to the IFPI.

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A New Zealand teenager allegedly at the centre of an international cyber crime network has appeared in court where he was charged with computer hacking crimes.

Computer programmer Owen Thor Walker, 18, was charged with two counts of accessing a computer for dishonest purpose, damaging or interfering with a computer system, possessing software for committing crime, and two counts of accessing a computer system without authorisation.

The charges carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Walker did not enter a plea when he appeared briefly in Thames Magistrate’s Court in northern New Zealand today. He was released on bail.

Walker was arrested in November last year in the northern city of Hamilton as part of an international investigation into a cyber crime network accused of infiltrating 1.3 million computers and skimming millions of dollars from victims’ bank accounts.

“We worked closely with US and Dutch authorities on this investigation. This arrest is significant not just to New Zealand but the international community as well,” police spokesman Detective Inspector Peter Devoy said.

“Very few people who carry out this sort of offending are ever prosecuted so the resolution of this case has huge international implications,” he said. He did not elaborate.

The case is part of an international crackdown on hackers who allegedly assume control of thousands of computers and amass them into centrally controlled clusters known as botnets.

The hackers can then use the computers to steal credit card information, manipulate stock trades and even crash industry computers, authorities said when the case first surfaced in late November.

When he was first detained, police said the teenager, known by his cyber identification “AKILL,” was head of an international spybot ring that has infiltrated computers round the world with their malicious software.

Police said he was also responsible for placing advertising spam on about 1.3 million computers worldwide through computers based in the Netherlands.

Police questioned the New Zealand teenager last year and eventually released him without charge, saying he was still part of the investigation. Today’s hearing was the first time charges against him were detailed.

Eight people have been indicted, pleaded guilty or have been convicted since the investigation began last June. Thirteen additional warrants have been served in the US and overseas in the investigation.

The FBI estimates that more than one million computers have been infected and puts the combined economic losses at more than $US20 million ($A21 million).

AP

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Private Microsoft emails unearthed during a US court case have revealed that even the software giant’s own executives struggled to get Windows Vista running smoothly.

Early adopters of the operating system, which launched last year, battled with widespread hardware and software compatibility issues. Many PCs initially sold as “Vista Capable” were unable to run some of Vista’s core features, sparking a class action lawsuit against Microsoft.

Many computer components and peripherals required updated drivers in order to work with Vista. In numerous cases these were not available until long after the operating system launched.

But the emails show that it wasn’t just end-users who were incensed by Vista’s teething issues. In fact, Microsoft’s top brass were fully aware of them from the outset.

One executive, Mike Nash, complained he was “burned” so badly by compatibility issues he was left with “a $2100 email machine”.

Steven Sinofsky, the Microsoft executive in charge of Windows, struggled to even get his home printer working with Vista. In an email to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in February last year, Sinofsky outlined reasons why Vista struggled at launch.

He said hardware and software vendors never “really believed we would ever ship [Vista] so they didn’t start the work [on updated drivers] until very late in 2006″.

“People who rely on using all the features of their hardware (like Jon’s Nikon scanner) will not see availability for some time, if ever, depending on the [manufacturer],” Sinofsky wrote.

Ballmer responded with a terse “Righto”.

The “Jon” referred to is Microsoft board member and its former chief operating officer Jon Shirley, who experienced compatibility problems with his Epson printer and scanner and his Nikon film scanner.

He could not even get some of Microsoft’s own MSN software products to work on Vista and refused to upgrade his other computer to the operating system.

“I cannot understand with a product this long in creation why there is such a shortage of drivers,” Shirley wrote to Ballmer.

Other emails from various Microsoft executives show that even they struggled to work out what “Vista Capable” and “Vista Ready” meant when buying a new PC.

“Is it true that Vista Ready doesn’t necessarily mean Aero capable? I got a Dell Latitude that is Vista Ready but doesn’t have enough graphics [hardware],” Sinofsky wrote.

Aero, one of Vista’s most heavily marketed features, is the operating system’s new graphical interface. It resembles MacOS X but can only be enabled when running on a PC with the latest graphics hardware.

In a statement regarding the release of the emails, Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans said employees had raised concerns with Vista in order to make the program better for customers.

“That’s the sort of exchange we want to encourage. And in the end, we believe we succeeded in achieving both objectives,” Evans said.

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Google co-founder Sergey Brin called Microsoft’s takeover bid for Yahoo an “unnerving” maneuver that threatens innovation on the internet.

Brin reiterated the internet search leader’s position that a merger could violate antitrust laws and harm internet users.

Brin made the comment after an event at the Mountain View-based company’s headquarters for the Google Lunar X Prize, a race to land a privately funded robotic spacecraft on the moon.

“The internet has evolved from open standards, having a diversity of companies,” Brin told The Associated Press after the event. “And when you start to have companies that control the operating system, control the browsers, they really tie up the top websites, and can be used to manipulate stuff in various ways. I think that’s unnerving.”

Shortly after Microsoft unveiled its surprise $US44.6 billion unsolicited offer for Yahoo earlier this month, Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond argued in a company blog posting that a merger between companies that control the Internet’s two most heavily trafficked web portals could lead to abuses.

Those could be limiting users’ ability to easily access competing products, from email to instant messaging to Web-based services such as those Google offers.

Microsoft has argued that it’s committed to protecting innovation on the internet and that scuttling the deal would allow Google to become even more dominant on the internet than it already is.

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Japan successfully launched Saturday an experimental satellite aimed at providing high-speed Internet access across Asia, even when terrestrial infrastructure goes down, the space agency said.

The domestically developed H-2A rocket carrying the Kizuna satellite was launched at 17:55 pm (0855 GMT) with no glitches from the Space Centre on Tanegashima island off the southern tip of Kyushu Island, southern Japan.

The communications satellite, expected to be in use for five years, separated from the rocket approximately 35 minutes after the launch, said an official of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) during a live broadcast.

The 342 million dollar-Kizuna will allow super-high speed data communications of up to 1.2 Gbps, which would make it the fastest in the world, the agency said.

That rate would translate to 150 times that of the average high-speed ADSL connection rate of 8 Mbps, or 12 times the speed of a fibre-optic communication delivery to a person’s premises (FTTP).

The “Kizuna,” which also means “bond” in Japanese, is expected to begin transmitting and receiving data with terrestrial infrastructures in July after completing preparations and confirming the satellite’s safety.

Japan is looking to use the satellite to allow communication when a ground-based network is severed by a disaster in any Asian country, in which case it would be used to transmit data to crisis management offices.

The agency is hoping it can also be used as an educational or medical tool to reach people in remote or mountainous areas.

“The Internet is now an integral part of our lives; but its infrastructure levels vary. Urban areas … have a better environment, whereas some mountainous regions and remote islands are not well-equipped,” JAXA said on its website.

The satellite will enable students in Asian countries to communicate smoothly and with no time lag among one another, as if they were in the same classroom, it said.

The satellite will to last five years, an agency spokeswoman said.

The launch was delayed by one week after JAXA said it had discovered a problem with the gas jet thruster for its launch rocket.

Japan, like developing Asian powers China and India, has been stepping up its space operations and has set a goal of sending an astronaut to the moon by 2020.

Japan faced an embarrassing failure in November 2003, when it had to destroy a rocket carrying a spy satellite 10 minutes after lift-off because a booster failed to separate.

However, Japan’s first lunar probe, Kaguya, was successfully launched last September, releasing two baby satellites which will be used to study the gravity fields of the moon among other projects.

The 55-billion-yen (500-million-dollar) lunar probe is the most extensive mission to investigate the moon since the US Apollo in the 1960s and 1970s.

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Infamous computer hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow (CDC) said Friday it is offering a software tool that lets people use Google to scan websites for security flaws.

CDC says a “Goolag Scanner” program based on work done by a hacker using the name “Johnny I Hack Stuff” is available for free download at its website.

The tool lets people with fundamental programming skills check websites or Internet domains for weaknesses that could be exploited by hackers, according to CDC.

The group said it uncovered “some pretty scary holes” through random tests of the tool in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.

CDC advised website operators to use to tool to find and patch vulnerabilities before hackers use it for crime or mischief.

“If I were a government, a large corporation, or anyone with a large web site, I’d be downloading this beast and aiming it at my site yesterday,” CDC spokesman Oxblood Ruffin said in a message posted at the website.

Google did not respond to an AFP request for comment.

Computer security specialists warn people to make certain any programs they download onto their computers don’t contain malicious code.

Hackers routinely try to trick people into installing programs that then take over machines or mine them for passwords, financial accounts, or other valuable information.

CDC was established in the US in 1984 and its history includes declaring war on the Church of Scientology.

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Lawyers representing Kiss bassist Gene Simmons are furiously trying to stop the spread across the internet of a leaked sex tape featuring the ageing rocker.

The sex tape, which hit the web this week via a website, GenesSecret.com, shows Simmons, clad only in a t-shirt, purportedly having sex with an Austrian model.

The site sought to sell the video but clips from it have since spread virally across the web. Lawyers representing Simmons are now sending cease and desist letters to websites that have published the video, claiming copyright infringement.

The sex tape is particularly damaging for Simmons because he has been dating long-term partner Shannon Tweed for more than 20 years and the pair have had two children together.

Simmons allegedly made the type while on a promotional tour for Frank’s Energy Drink. The model he appears with, named only as Elsa, reportedly works for the drinks company.

“The video in question was surreptitiously filmed without Mr. Simmons’ knowledge by a woman named Traci Anna Koval,” the letter, published by Silicon Valley gossip site Valleywag, reads.

“To the extent that Ms. Koval ever claimed to have any interest in the video, which is both disputed and inconceivable, given its surreptitious filming, such rights were acquired by our client Allied Industry in 2003, pursuant to a written assignment and release agreement in which Ms. Koval assigned all of her interest in the video to Allied Industry, including the copyright, represented and warranted that no additional copies would be exploited or distributed and expressly consented to injunctive relief.”

Valleywag has refused to remove the clips, saying they were “newsworthy”.

In a blog entry, Simmons referred to the tape as “garbage that has sprung up from my past” and said his legal team was “looking at all ramifications and options”.

But past events suggest Simmons’ legal team won’t have much luck.

Last year, YouTube was banned in Brazil after a tape showing steamy footage of Brazilian supermodel Daniela Cicarelli and her boyfriend showed up on the site. But the ban was lifted after the video continued to spread across the web faster than their lawyers could have it taken down.

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Police have uncovered a $1 million internet scam with links to Nigeria during a raid at a home in Perth’s southern suburbs.

Western Australia Police Computer Crime Squad detectives arrested a Nigerian citizen after raiding the house in Treasure Road, Queens Park about 7pm (WDT) yesterday.

Police allege the 29-year-old is involved in an international syndicate, and pretending to be a foreign diplomat to convince his victims of his credentials and defraud them of significant amounts of money.

The raid was part of Operation Dunkley, which was formed after continual cases of West Australians being deceived by African fraudsters were recorded by the Computer Crime Squad.

Police said the offender’s victims were recruited online with various fraudulent stories of windfalls and inheritance.

The man is believed to have arrived in Australia last September and it is alleged he had links to a syndicate in Nigeria.

Police said about $1 million from unsuspecting victims in Australia and overseas may have passed through the Perth scam before it was shut down yesterday, but they do not yet know how long it may have operated from the house.

The offender was charged with 27 offences of fraud and four counts of money laundering.

Investigations into his involvement in similar offences are continuing.

The man was due to appear Perth Magistrate’s Court today.

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People will increasingly interact with computers using speech or touch screens rather than keyboards, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates said.

“It’s one of the big bets we’re making,” he said during the final stop of a farewell tour before he withdraws from the company’s daily operations in July.

In five years, Microsoft expects more Internet searches to be done through speech than through typing on a keyboard, Gates told about 1,200 students and faculty members Thursday at Carnegie Mellon University.

Gates also said the software that is proliferating in various branches of science, including biology and astronomy must become even more advanced.

“They’re dealing with so much information that … the need for machine learning to figure out what’s going on with that data is absolutely essential,” he said.

Microsoft is trying to establish ties not only with university computer science departments but also with reseachers in other scientific areas “to help us understand where new inventions are necessary,” Gates said.

Gates plans to retire as Microsoft’s chief software architect in July and focus on philanthropy.

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Facebook, the Internet social networking site, has suffered its first drop in British users in 17 months, according to data from web monitoring firm Nielsen Online.

The study said that since July 2006, Facebook had 17 successive monthly increases in Britain but while 8.9 million people here used the site in December 2007, 8.5 million visited in January this year — a five percent fall.

But Facebook’s overall audience is still 712 percent higher than at the same point 12 months ago and nine percent higher than three months ago, it added.

Alex Burmaster, a European Internet analyst at Nielsen Online, said the figures, which showed a downward trend for most leading social network sites, were to be expected because of their rapid early growth.

“Just as one swallow doesn’t make a summer, so one month of falling audiences doesn’t spell the decline of Facebook or social networking,” he said.

“It was inevitable that the early growth rates couldn’t be sustained and the larger networks have been plateauing over the last few months.”

MySpace was the second most popular social networking site in Britain, with five million visitors in January — nine percent down on the same period last year. It lost 14 percent in the last quarter.

Bebo, in third, had 4.1 million users last month — 53 percent more than in January 2007, but eight percent down in the three months from October 2007 to the end of last month.

Nielsen Online’s data came from technology fitted to 40,000 British computers to measure on- and off-line Internet activity.

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