WRITING BAD CHEQUES is back with a criminal gang, thought to be operating out of Russia, using technology to revive this old form of fraud.

The criminals broke into three cheque archiving image sites, which are used to store pictures of all cheques that pass through retailers. The gang downloaded 200,000 examples and used the account numbers, sort codes and signatures to write cheques drawn on over 1,200 legitimate accounts.

A team at Atlanta-based security firm SecureWorks uncovered the fraud, which is thought to have netted the gang at least million (£5.75 million). The company is working with the FBI, but none of the gang have been arrested so far.

Counterfeit cheque writing is a very old form of fraud, but the gang had put a high-tech twist on it, explained Michael Cote, CEO of SecureWorks.

The image sites involved have been notified, but others are no doubt being targeted, he warned.

The gang sent the bogus cheques to money mules around the world using overnight shipping paid for with stolen credit cards. SecureWorks said that six mules had been contacted, all of whom denied sending money to the gang.

The fraud involved 3,285 cheques against 1,280 accounts since June 2009. Most were for less than ,000 (£1,920) in an attempt to evade anti-fraud measures. µ

 

A BILL OF MATERIALS (BOM) worth precisely 3.35 is Isuppli’s estimate of what HTC’s Droid Incredible phone actually costs in components and assembly.

Its Teardown Analysis Service came to this conclusion largely because the Droid uses an Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED) display, a Qualcomm 1GHz Snapdragon baseband processor and 4Gbit of mobile Double Data Rate (DDR) DRAM.

Qualcomm, Samsung and Hynix lead the BOM parade. The most expensive section of the Droid is the baseband applications processor at a cost of .40, accounting for 19.2 per cent of the smart phone’s total BOM. This section is dominated by Qualcomm’s baseband integrated circuit that has the Snapdragon processor.

Coming in at a close second in terms of expense is the touchscreen display at a cost of .20, or 19.1 per cent of the total. The AMOLED display portion of this subsystem is supplied by Samsung Mobile Display Company.

Next in the ranking is the memory section, at a cost of .80 and accounting for 18.2 per cent of the tab. In the handset torn down by Isuppli, this section consists of NAND flash memory and mobile DDR DRAM from Samsung Electronics and more NAND from Hynix Semiconductor. However, Isuppli believes that HTC is likely using additional sources of supply for these commodity memory parts.

Pricing for components found inside of equipment is determined using Isuppli’s component price tracker service. It provides detailed information on costs for more than 350 components commonly found in electronic equipment, allowing Isuppli to develop its BOM estimates.

The teardown assessment accounts only for hardware and manufacturing costs and does not take into consideration other expenses such as software, licensing, and royalties. µ

 

A USB STICK holding some standard keys purchased on the Internet was able to override an ATM’s firmware and cause it to spew fake million dollar bills at Black Hat 2010.

Security researcher Barnaby Jacks demonstrated that attack and another on the conference’s first day. Most ATMs use Windows CE or a cut down version of Windows XP but Jacks used a cloned version of the machines’ firmware to carry out the attacks.

With the second attack Jacks used the remote updating capabilities of the ATM to upload code that not only caused it to empty itself but also took a record of the cards used and their PIN numbers.

However these two hacks have now been countered by companies and in the case of the second hack, firmware updates now require a digital signature before they can be installed on ATM machines.

Jacks, the head of research at cybersecurity consultancy IO Active, said, “”Every ATM I’ve looked at I’ve found a game-over vulnerability that allows me to get cash. So far I’ve looked at four and running four for four at the moment.”

Jacks was due to give his presentation at last year’s Black Hat conference but was stopped by legal action because fixes for the problems weren’t available. µ

THE OPEN SOURCE Mozilla Foundation has unwrapped the second beta for version 4.0 of its Firefox web browser.

Firefox 4 will be the next major release of Mozzarella’s web browser and will include a number of improvements, updates and new features for both end users and developers.

Firefox 4 beta 2 includes the new ‘tabs on top’ layout that puts the tabs in the same place as the Chrome and Opera web browsers. It is now available in 23 languages.

Actually Windows users saw the tabs thing in the first Firefox 4 beta earlier this month, but this is the first time the feature has made it to the Mac version.

The developers moved the tabs to “make it easier to focus on the Web content” and note that Linux systems will receive the new tabs on top layout in a future update “when the theme has been modified to support the change”.

Changes affecting developers include support for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) transitions, a feature that lets websites animate changes rather than having the changes take effect instantly.

Other changes include the idea of retained layers, allowing for “super-fast scrolling” on complex websites and changes to the XPCOM framework that improve start-up time.

The plan is for developers to release another beta version “every two to three weeks”. A first release candidate (RC) for Firefox 4 is due to to arrive in October. µ

 

 

JAPANESE MANUFACTURER Panasonic has unveiled a camcorder that captures full HD 3D videos.

It seems that consumer electronics makers have gone into depth perception overdrive. Panasonic already has 3D plasma TVs and 3D Blu-ray players and now it is adding the HDC-SDT750 camcorder to its list.

Panasonic’s magic trick is pretty simple. In essence, the HDC-SDT750 is a 2D camcorder but its 3D capability comes courtesy of a conversion lens. It allows anyone to create 3D images by attaching the conversion lens that comes with the camcorder.

The camcorder has an effective motion image pixel count of 7,590,000 pixels and it records in 1080p at 60Hz for NTSC or 50Hz for PAL5 for US and European punters.

It has noise reduction technology to enhance dim images in low-light conditions and an optical image stabiliser. The HDC-SDT750 also has a ring for manual shooting options.

There’s no price listed yet but Panasonic suggests combining the 3D camcorder with its 3D TV and 3D Blu-ray player so you can have all of your entertainment as well as family memories in 3D. By our calculations that’s going to be expensive.

The HDC-SDT750 camcorder is coming out on 20 August in Japan first and will be rolled out to other countries this autumn. µ

CHIPMAKER Intel has announced a breakthrough in optical communications in the form of the first silicon based 50Gbps laser transmitter and receiver parts produced in its labs.

The company said that within five years this milestone development will lead to low-cost optical links inside computers that might scale to speeds up to 8Tbps or higher.

Chipzilla’s silicon photonics data link is still being developed in the lab, but the firm predicts it will deliver semiconductor chip manufacturing economies of scale to realise low-cost optical communications in PCs, consumer electronics and datacentres.

Dr Mario Paniccia, the director of Intel’s photonics technology lab said that the industry is reaching the limits of copper wiring, with speeds above 10Gbps requiring more energy to transmit beyond short distances. Using photonic communications over optical fibre solves the problem, but existing technology is too expensive.

“Because of the cost, because of the bulkiness, the costs are still limiting use only for telecoms. It is very difficult to drive use of optical in the PC or in and around everyday devices,” said Paniccia.

Intel’s technology uses a hybrid silicon laser integrated into the transmitter chip along with other components such as the modulator and multiplexer to combine several laser beams as separate channels for transmission over optical fibre. The design enables Intel to fabricate the transmitter and receiver using processes similar to those it uses to manufacture CPU chips.

“What could happen if we take the benefits of silicon manufacturing, the ability to do high-volume low-cost, highly-integrated silicon processing, and combine that with the laser? We can now start driving optical communications anywhere, everywhere, to any place,” Paniccia said.

The transmitter and receiver can also be integrated into equipment using standard circuit board assembly methods. Intel said it has developed a low-cost passive connector to attach the fibre optic cable.

The photonic data link prototype Chipzilla has developed uses four 12.5Gbps channels, multiplexed to create a 50Gbit/s link, but Paniccia claimed it can scale up to 25, 40 or 100Gbps channels and scale out to eight or more laser channels on a chip. He said this means that 1TBps optical links are easily within reach.

Paniccia speculated that high-speed photonic data links will revolutionise high-performance and cloud computing. Compute and storage elements will not need to be located close together, for example, but could be far apart. “This is just the beginning,” Paniccia predicted.

Intel said products based on this revolutionary technology might be produced within three to five years. µ

CREATOR OF FASHIONABLE GADGETS Apple has graced its fanbois with an update to its range of desktop computers and the release of a pointing device.

Earlier today the firm shuttered its online store to prepare for the update, which had been rumoured for some time. Many of the rumours dreamt up by over-eager fanbois were incorrect, however Apple did announce that its Imac range will feature Intel’s Core i3 processors. There is also a quad-core Core i5 model for those not happy about spending a grand on a desktop machine that has a chip intended for bargain basement tin boxes.

The overpriced Mac Pro, often the butt of Apple jokes, received major surgery with hexa-core Intel Xeon chips mated with an AMD Radeon HD 5770 graphics card as standard. Take a moment to realise that a £2,000 machine that is pitched as a workstation doesn’t even have a workstation graphics card, nor is the ‘consumer grade’ Radeon HD 5770 graphics card the top of AMD’s graphics card range.

Apple has saved that as an optional extra, with the Radeon HD 5870 available at added cost. Still, at least it’s an option. Nvidia Fermi based GTX 4XX graphics cards are nowhere to be found on the Mac Pros.

For those feeling particularly flush, Apple announced the availability of a 512GB solid state drive (SSD) with the option of specifying up to four in a single Mac Pro. The firm claims that the SSDs provide up to “Two times faster than the average performance of a standard disk drive.” That’s absolutely great, if you happen to have your own gold mine.

Finally, Apple released the Magic Trackpad, a stand-alone trackpad control device. Akin to a laptop’s trackpad, the device will bring multi-touch interaction to desktop users. Clearly the firm realised it could not milk any more money out of redesigning its minimalist single button mouse over and over again. The slab of metal allows the firm to peddle it’s own battery charger, which no doubt will be snapped up by eager fanbois who want the toymaker’s label on every single object they own.

Those thinking of buying Apple’s latest products might want to hold off for a little while, as its online store hasn’t been updated yet to reflect all of the changes in its product line. µ