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How To Cheat An ATM Demo Cheered

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Computer hacker Barnaby Jack – not to be confused with Australian pollie Barnaby Joyce – has demonstrated a way to force automated teller machines (ATMs) to disgorge their cash by hijacking the computing gear inside.

Crowds of watchers yesterday cheered as Jack successfully demonstrated his technique at the annual Black Hat Conference under way in Las Vegas, attended by around 6000 hackers and security experts.
A director of security research for IOActive, Jack spent more than a year learning to break into standalone ATMs found at service stations, bars and retail establishments.
He found physical keys used to unlock the ATMs were the same for all models. After buying a legitimate ATM , he used the key to unlock a compartment in other ATMs and – via USB – insert a program that commanded the machines to dump their cash on command.
He also hacked into ATMs by exploiting weaknesses in the way ATM makers communicate with the machines over the Internet.
Jack did not give more details because he said the goal of his talk “isn’t to teach everybody how to hack ATMs. It’s to raise the issue and have ATM manufacturers be proactive about implementing fixes.”

IBM Saves $43M Turning Green

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It may not be easy being green, but it can certainly pay off, IBM would like you to know. The company says energy saving programs saved it no less than US$43 million in 2011 and it’s on track to double that in 2012.

Big Blue said that conservation projects at more than 364 IBM facilities around the world not only saved on electricity bills, but also conserved 378,000 megawatt-hours of electricity – enough to power almost 34,000 average US homes for a year.

Altogether IBM’s energy conservation projects delivered savings equal to 7.4 percent of the company’s total energy use, executives said.

From 1990 to 2011, IBM claims to have eliminated 5.8 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity consumption and nearly 3.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, and saved the company $442 million.

Downturn Ahead For Server Market

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Enterprise server shipments are likely to slow significantly in coming months, according to a report by financial services outfit Morgan Stanley’s technology expert Katy Huberty.She blames increasing virtualisation and the cloud for

the server downturn, which comes after several years of 3-5 percent growth.

According to Huberty, growth for external storage systems dissipated last year

as flash-based products and the cloud ate into business, a time when enterprise

server shipments were still growing at 7pc year over year.

Intel Buys Self-Drive Outfit

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Chipmaker Intel has snapped up computer vision company Itseez in a bid to push further into the Internet of Things (IoT).Doug Davis, senior veep of the IoT Group at Intel,

announced the deal in a blog post, saying that it will help Intel to fuel the

creation of deep learning applications for self-driving vehicles and digital

security.

“Itseez will become a key ingredient for Intel’s IoT Group roadmap, and

will help Intel’s customers create innovative deep-learning-based computer

vision applications like autonomous driving, digital security and surveillance,

and industrial inspection,” he said.

“Computer vision includes methods for acquiring, processing, analysing and

understanding images from the real world to make informed decisions and automate

actions.”

3000 Get Sboard Sky Muster

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NBN Co has so far received 3000 orders for its new satellite service, delivered via the first Sky Muster satellite just over two weeks after launching the services, regional communications minister Fiona Nash has announced.And “that number is increasing every day,”

Nash said at a CommsDay forum in Sydney. She added that NBN expects to perform

up to 10,000 Sky Muster activations per month later this year.

Users of the older – and very slow – interim satellite solution (ISS) will be

migrated onto Sky Muster in parallel with new users, with the full migration

expected to take 10 to 12 months, she said.

She added that the second Sky Muster satellite is currently in Palo Alto,

California, where it has now completed final pre-launch testing and is

currently having its solar panels and antennas installed.

With the second satellite flying, NBN expects to eventually see 200,000 to

250,000 households and businesses in rural or remote Australia taking up the

system.

Users who have already signed up are said to be experiencing speeds of up to

25Mbps.

Twitter To Axe Staff

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Twitter shares have plummeted nearly four percent after reports that newly returned CEO Jack Dorsey is planning company-wide layoffs this week.

According to news Web site Re/code, Twitter has around 4200 employees in 35 offices around the world. The job cuts are expected to affect nearly every department.

It’s not known if Twitter staff in Australia will be affected. Twitter’s recruitment page shows the Sydney office is currently looking for experts in media analytics, consumer marketing and a senior manager in growth options.

Twitter is struggling to maintain growth with its July quarterly results revealing the slowest rise in monthly average users since it went public in 2013.

Apple Pay Drives ANZ Numbers

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The ANZ Banking Group says its recent deal with Apple to provide Apple Pay in Australia has sparked a surge in applications for credit and deposit accounts.ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott said while reporting the bank’s

interim results that online credit applications were up 20 percent since the

deal with Apple was announced on April 28. The ANZ has been promoting the Apple

Pay service with a clever TV promotion, showing a customer paying for goods

with a single click of his smartphone – and the hint of a smirk.

The ANZ’s Apple Pay microsite reportedly had 61,000 unique visitors over four

days, while traffic to the bank’s main Web site is said to have been six

percent higher than average since the launch.

TPG NBN Reaches 352 Buildings

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TPG’s fibre-to-the-building network has reached 352 apartment buildings, directly competing with the National Broadband Network, according to a Communications Department report.

TPG began rolling out its fibre-to-the-building network across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth in March last year with the aim of reaching out to 500,000 apartments.

The company faced some initial hurdles, including getting the approval of the competition regulator and setting up a separate retail operation to meet licence conditions imposed on it by Comms Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Launch Close For new Samsung phablet, trade whispers say

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Samsung is expected to launch a new model of its Galaxy Note “phablet” on Friday, according to a number of reports. The main launch event will be held in New York.

There are also reports that this event will also see the debut of the 5.5in Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge Plus, and a new circular smartwatch.

The Note 5 is expected to go on sale in the US on August 21. There’s so far no news on an Australian launch.

Samsung has reportedly ditched the leather design of last year’s Galaxy Note opting instead for a aluminium and glass body, similar to the design of the Galaxy S6. Screen size is tipped to be 5.9 inches, up from 5.7in. on the current model.

Reports suggest it will also feature Samsung’s Exynos 7422 chip rather than a Qualcomm processor. The Exynos 7422 is reported to combine CPU, GPU, RAM, storage and modem all on a single chip.

Steve Jobs Was “High Priest Of The Digital Age,” Time Magazine

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The name of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has been added to a Time magazine list of “trailblazers, visionaries and cultural ambassadors” that includes Albert Einstein, George Washington, and Alexander Graham Bell.

Jobs was named as one of the 20 most influential Americans of all time by Time magazine.

Its list, a chronological listing of “the trailblazers, visionaries and cultural ambassadors who defined a nation,” refers to Jobs as the “high priest of the digital age.”

Time said Jobs was a visionary whose great genius was for design: “He pushed and pushed to make the interface between computers and people elegant, simple and delightful. He always claimed his goal was to create products that were ‘insanely great’.