Police fight back on laser threat

There has been a "phenomenal" increase in the number of incidents in which aircraft are targeted by small hand-held lasers, according to UK police.

In 2008, there were 69 times as many such incidents as in 2003.

The Civil Aviation Authority has set up a task force to respond to the threat of pilots becoming disorientated.

The police have new devices designed to record and analyse laser "strikes" on their aircraft, tracking their source and leading to arrests of attackers.

The BBC gained exclusive access to an exercise trialling these "Laser Event Recorders" carried out by the air support unit of Greater Manchester Police.

Direct hit

In the cockpit the light can be blinding

"We had one yesterday," said veteran police helicopter pilot, Mike Briggs. "You're in no doubt when you've been targeted by one of these lasers."

An "attack" can come from any of the darkened streets over which the force's state of the art helicopter India 99 flies at night.

"You can't miss it. A sharp green beam of light shoots up from the ground, flashing around the helicopter, dazzling anyone on whom it scores a 'direct hit'," said Mr Briggs.

The police have had to learn to deal with the attacks -- about half of those reported are aimed at their helicopters. In 2003 just three incidents were recorded. Last year there were 207. So far this year, the tally is 76.

The culprits are usually bored youths, who have got hold of a laser pointer and amuse themselves by playing its beam over passing aircraft.

But from now on they are far more likely to get caught, and get sent to prison.

The Greater Manchester Police air support unit arranged an exercise for the BBC to show how their response has been stepped up.

COMBATING LASER POINTER ATTACKS 1 Police helicopter is targeted by laser pointer on the ground 2 Helicopter crew use hand-held Laser Event Recorder to locate pointer. It records wavelength to match beam to pointer - like matching bullet to a gun 3 GPS details enable helicopter's thermal image camera to find suspect and police patrol on ground is directed to address

After informing air traffic control and local police stations we lift off from the police helipad at Barton aerodrome and head for Bolton.

In a residential back garden there is an officer with a cheap laser pointer is waiting. We've agreed not to reveal where he bought it, but its beam is incredibly powerful.

As the helicopter flies by he switches it on, and aims for our windows. Inside the aircraft the light flickers eerily between the three crew members.

When it is right in your eyes, you simply can't see anything else. We are 1200ft (365m) up, but the beam is strong and sharp.

If we were within 500ft there would be a real possibility of eye damage, but at our altitude the risk is of distraction and disorientation.

Not helpful when flying a helicopter. The police also say it stops them concentrating on the job in hand, often a car pursuit on the ground with busy radio traffic.

But India 99's rear observer now has a secret weapon.

Eye in the sky

The Event Recorder logs everything

The Laser Event Recorder not only takes a picture of the attack and logs where it came from using GPS, but also analyses the wavelength of the laser being used.

It can also warn the police if the laser is powerful enough or close enough to cause physical damage to the eyes.

This can be compared with the specifications of the device used in the attack, providing vital new evidence. "It's a little bit like matching a bullet to a gun, " said Mr Briggs.

We turn in the sky and circle the house of the "suspect", with two observers on board to track him.

The rear observer has two large screens, one showing the image from the aircraft's camera, the other a moving map.

The camera uses thermal imaging to clearly show people and warm objects standing in gardens or on open ground. Even when the warm laser pointer is thrown into a bush it can often be seen from the air.

The rear observer can zoom in to show a glowing image of an offender, and then look at the moving map, where a cursor shows the spot on which the camera is focused.

The "offender" outline appears full screen and we watch as he tries to throw the pointer away. A dog team is called in and an arrest made.

Guided by the eye in the sky, the ground officers easily find the laser. The suspect may try to claim it hasn't been used, but it is still warm, and the police have the evidence of its wavelength from the Laser Event Recorder.

Not toys

Thermal imaging helps catch the culprits

Police currently have to prove a suspect recklessly or negligently endangered an aircraft. The Civil Aviation Authority is drawing up new laws of the air under which it will simply be an offence to shine a laser at an aircraft.

Many offenders regard what they've done as a prank, but a jail term for a first offence is now common.

Bob Jones, Head of Flight Operations at the CAA, said: "To those individuals targeting aircraft with laser devices the message is clear - don't. You will be caught and you will be prosecuted and you could spend up to five years in prison. These things are not toys, they pose a serious risk to all flight safety."

And the police insist they won't be turning a "blind eye" when they're attacked from the ground.

UK mobile operators told to share

By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter, BBC News website

The government may intervene in a dispute between UK mobile operators over the way spectrum is allocated.

At stake is the government's pledge to provide universal broadband to all areas of Britain.

The dispute hinges on the use of the 900MHz section of the airwaves, which the government has earmarked to provide wireless broadband in rural areas.

The government wants it to be shared among operators but owners Vodafone and O2 are not so keen.

The spectrum was divvied up between the two operators when they were the only players on the mobile scene.

Now rival mobile operators want a chunk of the spectrum, largely because it would provide a boost to their data services.

This is because it has better in-building coverage than the spectrum allocated for existing 3G.

"3G delivers a great service but it would be even better if it was running at the 900MHz frequency," said Forrester analyst Ian Fogg.

Lord Carter, minister for communications and author of the Digital Britain report, has also earmarked the spectrum as a way of delivering on his promise to provide universal broadband at a minimum speed of 2Mbps (megabits per second) across the UK.

UK regulator Ofcom has proposed that a small chunk of the spectrum be handed over to one other operator.

It has warned that a solution may be imposed if the mobile operators cannot hammer out an agreement by the end of April.

All five UK mobile operators were brought together for talks in February but so far no agreement has been reached.

Broadband ambitions

In response to Lord Carter's Digital Britain report, Orange has offered to set up a network to do it.

But, in return, it wants a share of the spectrum owned by Vodafone and O2.

Steve Blythe, head of spectrum strategy at Orange, explained how the firm views the issue.

"This has been a long standing problem. Unlike other European countries, where there has been some level of redistribution of spectrum, the UK government hasn't yet taken the opportunity to do that," he said.

"900Mhz is key for our mobile broadband ambitions and to ensure a level playing field. If it isn't released O2 and Vodafone will have considerable cost advantages," it told the BBC News website.

The 800Mhz band of spectrum, which is similar in nature to the 900MHz band, will be released as the switchover to digital TV frees up spectrum currently used by analogue services.

But, said Mr Blythe, it won't realistically be available until mid-2013.

"We think it will be a useful complement but it will not replace 900MHz in the short term and without that we cannot deliver on the Digital Britain agenda," he said.

Vodafone has remained tight-lipped on the issue. It has provided no public response to the Digital Britain report and a spokeswoman told the BBC News website: "While we are actively participating in discussions, we have made it clear that these remain behind closed doors."

Image problem

Andrew Ferguson, editor of broadband news site ThinkBroadband, wondered whether mobile is even the best technology for delivering universal broadband.

"Mobile has its own problem. Like ADSL, coverage is better the closer you are to the base station, which means they are going to have to put up quite a few new towers," he said.

There could also be issues with things such as the quality of images on websites.

"Mobile broadband passes images through a compression technology. It works but you might not necessarily feel that you are getting your money's worth," he said.

Finally he said there could also be performance issues.

"I live in London where all the operators say they have coverage and I can't always get it to work. It is not as reliable as my original ADSL connection that I had in 2000," he said.

The government has not yet confirmed that mobile will fill the gaps left by fixed line broadband.

But it appears to favour the idea, said Mr Ferguson.

"It seems almost as if the decision is made," he said.

Spam overwhelms e-mail messages

By Darren Waters Technology editor, BBC News website

More than 97% of all e-mails sent over the net are unwanted, according to a Microsoft security report.

The e-mails are dominated by spam adverts for drugs, and general product pitches and often have malicious attachments.

The report found that the global ratio of infected machines was 8.6 for every 1,000 uninfected machines.

It also found that Office document attachments and PDF files were increasingly being targeted by hackers.

Microsoft said people should not panic about the high levels of unwanted e-mail.

Cliff Evans, head of security and privacy for Microsoft in the UK, told BBC News: "The good news is that the majority of that never hits your inbox although some will get through."

Ed Gibson, chief cyber security advisor at Microsoft, said the rise in spam was due to traditional organised crime figures moving away from exploiting software vulnerabilities and "targeting the weak link that is you and me".

"With higher capacity broadband and better OS (operating systems), and higher power computers it is easier now to send out billions of spams. Three or four years ago the capacity wasn't there."

Malware ecosystem

See which countries are most infected

Paul Wood, senior analyst at e-mail security firm Message Labs, said he was surprised the Microsoft figure for unwanted e-mail was so high.

"Our own analysis shows that around 81% of e-mail traffic we were processing was identified as spam and unwanted," he said.

MessageLabs said spam rates had fallen at the end of 2008 as an ISP which had been hijacked to send out spam mails to users had been taken offline.

"As a result of that, a number of developers in botnet technology at the end of last year were trying to regain botnet control and increase capacity and return to previous spam levels.

"It wont be far off before we see return to those levels."

The report, which looked at online activity during the second half of 2008, also pinpoints the countries that are suffering from the most infections of malicious software, or malware.

Russia and Brazil top the global chart of infections, followed by Turkey and Serbia and Montenegro.

It said that the type of malware varied from country to country.

"As the malware ecosystem becomes more reliant on social engineering, threats worldwide have become more dependent on language and cultural factors," it reported.

In China, several malicious web browser modifiers are common, while in Brazil, malware that targets users of online banks is more widespread.

In Korea, viruses such as Win32/Virut and Win32/Parite are common.

Global average

The global average for infected machines is 8.6 for every 1,000 uninfected PCs.

The UK's infection rate is 5.7, according to the Microsoft report.

The report highlighted the need to keep operating systems, web browsers and applications up to date with the latest versions.

Increasingly, hackers are using common file formats, such as Microsoft Office documents and Adobe's PDF format as the carrier of malicious exploits or programs.

More than 91% of attacks exploiting vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office were using security holes that had been plugged by updates that had been available for more than two years.

Attacks using PDF files rose sharply in the second half of 2008, the report noted.

The vulnerabilities all of the attacks exploited had already been fixed by Adobe, and were not present in the most recent versions of the software.

Mr Gibson told BBC News people had to be aware that if they did not update their applications, such as Office and Adobe, they were not just putting themselves at risk, but others on the internet also.

"If you don't update your software you are not just a hazard to yourself, you are hazard to others because you can be part of a botnet [if your computer is hijacked]."

Mr Evans said Microsoft was very happy with the approach consumers were taking to updating applications via automatic updates.

"For consumers it is happening but for business less so. We have encourage businesses to make more use of automatic updates."

Scareware

Mr Woods said malicious hackers were exploiting Office document attachments and PDF files in order to make more targeted attacks.

"They tend to be used in selective attacks to named individuals in organisations.

"A lot of social engineering will be used to appear legitimate and convince a user to open the attachment

"Once opened, a vulnerability in the application used to open the document will be exploited and often a tiny piece of code will execute and then download a larger file from a rogue website.

"This program will then attempt to search the computer for a particular document or file and sent it to a remote PC."

The report also highlighted the rise in the use of so-called scareware, fake security programs which falsely tell people they need to install software which does nothing other than attempt to steal personal details from a users' PC.

"It's criminals playing on people's fears," said Mr Evans.

"The advice remains the same - ensuring you have up to date software, whether that's your applications, your browser or your OS."

Back to top

Virus battery could 'power cars'

Viruses have been used to help build batteries that may one day power cars and all types of electronic devices.

The speed and relatively cheap cost of manufacturing virus batteries could prove attractive to industry.

Professor Angela Belcher, who led the research team, said: "Our material is powerful enough to be able to be used in a car battery."

The team from MIT in the US is now working on higher power batteries.

Scientists at MIT used the viruses to build both the positively and negatively charged ends of a battery, the cathode and anode, the journal Science reports.

A battery typically has four key components - the anode and cathode, an electrolyte that flows between them and a separator to keep the anode and cathode apart.

Essentially, a battery turns chemical energy into electrochemical energy when an electron flow passes from the negative end to the positive end through a conductive chemical, the electrolyte.

Researchers constructed a lithium-ion battery, similar to those used in millions of devices, but one which uses genetically engineered viruses to create the negatively charged anode and positively charged cathode.

The virus is a so-called common bacteriophage which infects bacteria and is harmless to humans.

Three years ago the MIT scientists manipulated genes inside a virus that coaxed the particles to grow and self-assemble to form a nanowire anode one-tenth the width of a human hair.

The microbes are encouraged to collect exotic materials - cobalt oxide and gold - and because the particles are negatively charged, they can be formed into a dense, virus-loaded film which acts as an anode and "grows" on a polymer separator.

Researchers, including MIT Professor Gerbrand Ceder and Associate Professor Michael Strano, have now developed a highly powerful cathode.

The work was more difficult because the material had to be highly conductive in order to be effective and most candidate materials for cathodes are highly insulating.

The virus was coaxed into binding with iron phosphate and then carbon nanotubes to create a highly conductive material.

The batteries have the same energy capacity and power performance as rechargeable batteries used to power plug-in hybrid cars.

The prototype battery is currently the size of a coin but the scientists believe it can be scaled and be used to create flexible batteries that can take the shape of their container, which is perfect for mobile or small devices.

The scientists have also been able to create micro-batteries which could be used to power a future generation of tiny devices.

"The advantage of using genetics is that things can be made better and better," explained Professor Belcher.

"You are not stuck with a particular material; you have selection and evolution on your side because it can be genetically engineered."

The researchers are now looking for better materials to work with the viruses to create a next-generation battery, which is even higher powered.

"Scale is the issue," admitted Professor Belcher. "But we are not going to scale until we have the right material. We believe this is possible and has commercial implications otherwise we would not be researching in this area."

Currently, the virus battery can only be charged and discharged at least 100 times before it begins to lose its capacity to store a charge, but Professor Belcher said "we expect them to be able to go much longer".

The process to build the batteries uses no harmful or toxic materials and so is attractive from an environmental point of view.

Professor Belcher said: "To us, the environmental aspects are very important.

Robo-scientist's first findings

By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News

Scientists have created an ideal colleague - a robot that performs hundreds of repetitive experiments.

The robot, called Adam, is the first machine to have independently "discovered new scientific knowledge".

It has already identified the role of several genes in yeast cells, and is able to plan further experiments to test its own hypotheses.

The UK-based team that built Adam at Aberystwyth University describes the breakthrough in the journal Science.

Ross King from the department of computer science at Aberystwyth University, and who led the team, told BBC News that he envisioned a future when human scientists' time would be "freed up to do more advanced experiments".

Robotic colleagues, he said, could carry out the more mundane and time-consuming tasks.

"Adam is a prototype but, in 10-20 years, I think machines like this could be commonly used in laboratories," said Professor King.

Robotic planning

Adam can carry out up to 1,000 experiments each day, and was designed to investigate the function of genes in yeast cells - it has worked out the role of 12 of these genes.

Biologists use the yeast cells to investigate biological systems because they are simple and easy to study.

"When you sequence the yeast genome - the 6,000 different genes contained in yeast - you know what all the component parts are, but you don't know what they do," explained Professor King.

The robot was able to work out the role of the genes by observing yeast cells as they grew.

It used existing information about the function of known genes to make predictions about the role an unknown gene might play in the cell's growth.

It then tested this by looking at a strain of yeast from which that gene had been removed.

"It's like a car," Professor King said. "If you remove one component from the engine, then drive the car to see how it performs, you can find out what that particular component does."

Expensive assistant

Duc Pham from the Manufacturing Engineering Centre at Cardiff University described the robot scientist as "a clever application of robotics and computer software".

But, he added, "it's more like a junior lab assistant" than a scientist. "It will be a long time before computers can replace human scientists."

Professor King agreed that the robot was in its early stages of development.

Professor Ross King explains how robots Adam and Eve work

"If you spent all of the money we've spent on Adam on employing human biologists, Adam probably wouldn't turn out to be the cost-effective option," he said.

"But that was the case with the first car. Initially, the investment in the technology wasn't as cost-effective as sticking with horses."

He also pointed out that his robotic associate is able to express scientific findings in a clearer way than humans.

"It expresses its conclusions in logic," he said. "Human language, with all its nuances, may not be the best way to communicate scientific findings."

The same team is developing another, more advanced robot scientist called Eve, which is designed to screen new drugs.

Piracy law cuts internet traffic

Internet traffic in Sweden fell by 33% as the country's new anti-piracy law came into effect, reports suggest.

Sweden's new policy - the Local IPRED law - allows copyright holders to force internet service providers (ISP) to reveal details of users sharing files.

According to figures released by the government statistics agency - Statistics Sweden - 8% of the entire population use peer-to-peer sharing.

Popular BitTorrent sharing site, The Pirate Bay, is also based in Sweden.

The new law, which is based on the European Union's Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED), allows copyright holders to obtain a court order forcing ISPs to provide the IP addresses identifying which computers have been sharing copyrighted material.

Figures from Netnod, a Swedish firm that measures internet traffic in and out of the country, suggest traffic fell from an average of 120Gbps to 80Gbps on the day the new law came into effect.

Traffic lite

Speaking to the BBC, Christian Engstrom, vice-chairman of the Swedish Pirate Party - said the drop in traffic was a direct result of the new law, but that it would only be a temporary fall.

"Today, there is a very drastic reduction in internet traffic. But experience from other countries suggests that while file-sharing drops on the day a law is passed, it starts climbing again.

"One of the reasons is that it takes people a few weeks to figure out how to change their security settings so that they can share files anonymously," he added.

Mr Engstrom acknowledged that the new legislation would scare a number off file-sharing, and that the odds of getting caught had increased, but said that the risks to illegal file-sharers were still quite low.

"We estimate there are two million file-sharing [computers] in Sweden, so even if they prosecuted 1,000 people to make an example of them, for an individual user it is still a very small risk."

Prolific sharer

However, for some, that risk is already a reality.

A number of book publishers in Sweden have applied to the courts, on the day the law came out, forcing an ISP to disclose the details of one file-sharer who, the publishers claim, has more than 3,000 audio books on his server.

Speaking to the BBC, Kjell Bohlund - chair of the Swedish Publishers' Association - said that until the new law was passed, they were virtually powerless to act.

"Before 1 April, the only thing we could do about illegal file sharing was to refer it to the police, who were very reluctant to take it on.

"Now we can go get the courts to force ISPs to disclose the user information of an IP address.

"In two weeks time, we will know exactly who owns that IP. We can then do nothing, ask him to stop, or sue him for damages. We won't do this for small offenders, this is just for the big fish," he added.

Other companies are watching the case with interest, to determine what the court deems to be sufficient proof.

One action which began before the new legislation was the prosecution of four men accused of promoting copyright infringement via the hugely popular BitTorrent sharing site, The Pirate Bay.

The Pirate Bay hosts thousands of links to so-called torrent files, which allow for movies, TV programmes and applications to be shared online.

A verdict is expected later this month.

Public perception

Mr Engstrom said the new law was "a disaster", not just for file-sharers, but for Sweden as a whole.

"Dealing with illegal file-sharing is a job for the police. It is their job to enforce the law.

"Now we have given private corporations the legal right to go after our civilians. That's not how Western democracies work," he said.

Mr Bohlund acknowledged that cracking down on illegal file-sharing was not a long-term solution.

"In a study, 80% of people thought we shouldn't go after file-sharers.

"But ask them how they feel about taking money out of the pockets of musicians, authors or artists and that number falls by a significant amount," he said.