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The head of the UK's National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU), Andy Archibald, has said that the Dark web will evolve in attempt to evade authorities.

The UK's National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU) is a branch of the National Crime Agency, and it just secured its first conviction of a 27-year old Croydon man for carrying out phishing attacks while attempting to defraud institutions.

A main focus for the NCCU will be services like the Silk Road, which was shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States at the start of of the month. The Silk Road allowed users to buy and sell drugs and other items. It was masked as a TOR Hidden Service for years before FBI agents managed to unmask its alleged operator from clues he had left on the Internet.

While the Silk Road was a major boost for law enforcement against the Dark web, Archibald warns that such busts will force it to evolve.

"[Online anonymity service] Tor evolves, and will resecure itself," he said, reported by the BBC.

"The success we've had may not necessarily mean that by the same routes and same approaches we can get into other criminal forums. We have to continually probe and identify those forums and then seek to infiltrate them and use other tools. It's not simply a case of because we were able to infiltrate Tor on this occasion that we'll be able to do it next time around as well."

According to analytics firm Chitika, Chrome browser usage for iOS devices in North America has doubled since launch in June 2012, although the numbers are still tiny.

The Google browser has now jumped to 3 percent of iOS Web traffic, up from 1.5 percent when it launched.

Google should probably be excited by the growth as Apple has locked down its browser defaults, making Safari the go-to for any link you may click within an app.

Adds the firm: "While Chrome usage share on iOS devices rose only about 0.3 percentage points following September 22, keep in mind that iOS has an incredibly large existing user base meaning that usage changes need to be exceptionally great to cause a significant impact. In this realm, Google still has work to do, but the recent growth is a likely indicator that Chrome is regaining some traction in the iOS browsing space."

Valve has clarified that its Steam Machines will use graphics chips from AMD and Intel too, despite its own prototype models using NVIDIA chips exclusively.

The prototype units all use NVIDIA cards for graphics, and will ship to testers ahead of the launch of commercial Steam Machines next year. Intel and AMD are also invited to the Steam Machines party, it has been confirmed.

"Although the graphics hardware that we've selected for the first wave of prototypes is a variety of Nvidia cards, that is not an indication that Steam Machines are Nvidia-only," Valve marketing director, Doug Lombardi, said in an interview with Maximum PC.

"In 2014, there will be Steam Machines commercially available with graphics hardware made by AMD, Nvidia, and Intel. Valve has worked closely together with all three of these companies on optimising their hardware for SteamOS, and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future."

(via: GI.biz)

A fraud investigation is underway in Sweden after a press release falsely claimed that Samsung was going to buy Fingerprint Cards for $650 million.

The press release was issued by Cision, and shares in the Swedish company soared 50 percent. The Swedish Economic Crime Authority has launched a fraud probe into the incident after both Samsung and Fingerprint Cards said there was no truth to the acquisition report, and that they had never been in talks.

Fingerprint Cards makes fingerprint scanners to lock access to computers and mobile phones, and so following the release of the iPhone 5S with its Touch ID fingerprint lock, the move seemed genuine on Samsung's part.

Cision says that it was the subject of a sophisticated fraud, but Fingerprint Cards' CEO Johan Carlstrom believes the fake press release could have easily been detected.

"With a bigger press release, they should call to make sure," he said.

"There are only two people authorised to send press releases and that is the CEO and financial officer. In those cases they are sent from our e-mail addresses, and this one was not."

Missing episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s have been discovered and are available from iTunes.

The missing episodes were found by Philip Morris, director of Television International Enterprises Archive. Eleven episodes in total were found, nine of which that had not been seen in 46 years. The episodes are from two Doctor Who 6-episode stories; The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear.

All six episodes of The Enemy of the World have been rediscovered, while five of the six episodes of The Web of Fear are also now available. Episode three of The Web of Fear is still missing but the BBC Worldwide restoration team has reconstructed this part of the story using a selection of the 37 images that were still available from the episode along with the original audio, which has been restored.

Morris discovered the lost episodes by tracking records of tape shipments made by the BBC to Africa for transmission. His investigation led him to a television relay station in Nigeria.

"The tapes had been left gathering dust in a store room at a television relay station in Nigeria. I remember wiping the dust off the masking tape on the canisters and my heart missed a beat as I saw the words 'Doctor Who'. When I read the story code I realized I'd found something pretty special," Morris said.

Amazon has removed several "abuse-themed" ebooks from its Kindle Store after they were pointed out in media reports.

The ebooks on question reportedly depicted rape, incest and bestiality, in clear violation of Amazon's policies. The titles are all self-published material, and Amazon and other retailers get a cut of the sale.

Barnes & Noble are also removing similar themed ebooks after they were brought to its attention.

"When there are violations to the content policy that are brought to our attention, either through our internal process or from a customer or external source, we have a rapid response team in place to appropriately categorize or remove the content in accordance with our policy," Barnes & Noble said in a statement.

The BBC News website also found that yhe search function automatically suggested explicit topics to users typing seemingly innocuous keywords, without age verification or other restrictions.

U.S. broadcasters have petitioned the highest court in the land to review legal cases surrounding Aereo, a service that retransmits broadcast signals over the Internet.

Aereo is a premium service that allows subscribers to view broadcast TV content. It literally assigns subscribers to miniature antennas that pick up the publicly accessible signals and broadcast them to play on a variety of devices. The company believes that this setup complies with laws and regulations in the United States.

Broadcasters on the other hand are diametrically opposed to Aereo. They argue that Aereo's retransmission of content amounts to a "public performance" which has not been authorized by copyright holders.

So far, Broadcasters have failed in the courts to stop Aereo. A New York federal judge refused to grant a sought injunction because each Aereo subscriber was receiving a private, transmission stream. Broadcasters then failed to get the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the decision of the lower court. Aereo also won a case in which a Boston TV station challenged the service in court.

Broadcasters filed a petition for writ of certiorari, asking the Supreme Court to have the ultimate say on this. While the broadcasters have had no joy stepping on Aereo, they have had success in similar cases against Film On X in L.A. and Washington district courts. Film On X also uses antennas and provides digital streams to users. This, Broadcasters feel, amounts to evidence that different courts were delivering conflicting ruling on the legality of such services.

Google will start to use the names of some users, along with photos and comments in advertising.

The new ads will use personal information of some Google+ users, though there will be a way to opt out entirely and users under the age of 18 will be excluded automatically. It will be part of new "shared endorsement" ads that will resemble social ads used by Facebook.

If a user has publicly endorsed a product or service by clicking +1, or used rating or wrote reviews on products or services shared on other Google services, like the Play Store, then that information could be used too.

Even though Google+ users will be able to opt out, the changes to Google's terms of service policy has some privacy and digital rights activists speaking out.

"It's a huge privacy problem," said Marc Rotenberg, of privacy group EPIC, adding that Google users "shouldn't have to go back and restore their privacy defaults every time Google makes a change."

Rotenberg is suggesting that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) review the policy change by Google, in case it violates a consent order Google entered into in 2011, barring it from retroactively changing the privacy settings of users.

Users of Apple's iPhone 5S smartphone are reporting crashes that are accompanied by a blue screen on the device.

Most people can remember the good old Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) that happened now and then with Windows. In newer versions of Windows it is not blue, but essentially the same thing.

Now it appears Apple has gotten its own blue screen of death with the new iPhone 5S, only it contains no information at all on the crash, it just pre-empts a reboot.

The problem seems to occur when using Apple's iWork apps, particularly when multitasking. One apparent workaround, according to The Verge, is to disable iCloud syncing for Apple's Pages, Keynote, and Numbers apps. The problem persists even on iOS 7.0.2 which was released to fix lockscreen bugs.

Here is a video demonstration of the blue screen crash on an iPhone 5S.

Brazil's competition watchdog will investigate potential anticompetitive practices by the Google, following complaints form Microsoft and domestic businesses.

The complaints are very similar to those that prompted an EU anti-trust probe into Google's business practices that is just now approaching resolution. Among those who complained to Brazil's antitrust group, Cade, are Microsoft and some domestic Brazilian companies.

Microsoft accuses Google of obstructing advertising campaigns across multiple search engines, giving an unfair advantage to its own Adwords business.

Buscapé and Bondfardo, two Brazilian price comparison outfits, is accusing Google of reproducing reviews from their users without allowing competing services to reuse information on the Google Shopping website. They also accuse Google of giving unfair prominence to Google Shopping in search results by displaying photos and other information alongside the search results.

It is this favouritism to its own non-Search service that convinced the European Commission to initiate its case against Google.

Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai has revealed part of the company's plan to remain profitable into the future; smartphones.

For the immediate future, however, Sony has dropped out of the U.S. and Chinese smartphone markets, choosing to focus on Europe and Japan instead.

Currently, Japan and Europe account for 60 percent of the company's smartphone sales, and the company is the seventh largest smartphone maker in the world.

"Those two are the most important areas for us and we'll put substantial resources there. But not yet for the U.S. and China," Hirai noted. "It's not realistic to try to do everything at once. In the U.S. we'll start gradually."

Sony, despite building well-received devices, has practically no share in the U.S. Only T-Mobile USA even offers Sony devices in the States, and in China, it has priced itself out against competitors like ZTE.

For the fiscal year ended March 2014, Sony has set modest expectations for 42 million smartphone sales. The market leaders, Samsung and Sony, sold 218.2 million and 135.9 million phones respectively in their last fiscal year.

According to multiple reports, Apple will bring its iTunes Radio streaming service to Canada and the UK next year.

The service launched on September 18th alongside iOS 7.

Besides the aforementioned nations, New Zealand, Australia and some Nordic countries are expected to receive the platform, as well.

Canada would certainly be excited to receive the service, as Pandora, Spotify and Google Play All Access have never crossed the border due to licensing and royalty issues.

Apple reached 11 million unique iTunes Radio users after 5 days but has not revealed figures since.

Rockstar Games, which has been faced with server, gameplay and connection issues for its Grand Theft Auto V online multiplayer, will reward gamers with a $500,000 in-game cash "stimulus package."

While the GTA Online situation is now "much smoother (touch wood!)," the developer wants a way to start fresh with "players who experienced cloud server errors, connection issues, and lost game progress and characters."

Any gamer who has played the online mode since the game's launch will see the in-game cash deposited to their accounts in two separate $250,000 installments. The first will hit by the end of next week and the second will hit at the end of the month.

If you want to receive the cash, the developer notes that you will have to have to install a new update, one that will 'fix any remaining problems with game-progress and vehicle-purchase loss.'

Just hours after user manuals leaked online, Lenovo has confirmed it will soon be launching an Android-based notebook.

Dubbed the IdeaPad A10, the notebook will have a small 10.1-inch touchscreen display and run on the latest Android operating system.

The manuals say the device can be opened up to 300 degrees, and the keyboard will include the signature Android buttons for "home screen" and "back."

Given the leaked specs, the device is expected to be cheap. It runs on an ARM-based Rockchip quad-core processor clocked at 1.6GHz, has 2GB RAM, 16GB or 32GB internal flash storage and a 0.3MP front-side camera. For connectivity, the device will include an HDMI port, USB ports and a microSD slot.

Despite Windows 8's growth over the past year, the operating system has not made a dent in the business market, at least not according to one major player.

Toshiba says 99 percent of its enterprise sales are for Windows 7 devices. The electronics maker, which has a 5.7 percent share of the global PC market, sold about 850,000 desktops and notebooks last quarter.

B2B product marketing manager at Toshiba, Cindy Zwerling, was asked about what their enterprise customers were doing ahead of the official April 2014 retirement of Windows XP.

"Windows 7 is clearly the enterprise operating system at this time," she added. "But there are pockets of the corporate population that use [detachable] tablets, and might be running Windows 8. But for your standard clamshell notebook? It's Windows 7."

"From a business perspective, I would say 99 percent of our sales are Windows 7," she concluded. "At this point, there are few exceptions in corporate America in the enterprise space for Windows 8."