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Monday, January 30, 2012
Online rail ticket site 'hacked'
SHANGHAI - The difficulty of securing a train ticket online during the Spring Festival has prompted hackers to write computer programs that break into booking sites.
The official e-ticket channel 12306.cn opened for sales over the holiday period on Jan 8 and has received 100 million hits a day. The bombardment has led to thousands of requests being rejected every second.
Now would-be customers are resorting to a hacking tool known as "tag-on" software that disrupts a website's normal operations and allows unauthorized access. For buying train tickets it enables a computer to automatically and repeatedly try to access the site and was born out of the frustration with rejection that many have suffered.
Zhang Yu, 26, stayed up two nights in a row attempting to buy a ticket without success.
"I downloaded three different types of software," he said. "My friend used one of them to get a ticket. However, they all demand personal information and a link to an online banking site. I was worried about privacy so I stopped using them."
Nonetheless, key words such as "train ticket tag-on software" have become the latest hot searches on baidu.com, the country's most popular search engine. The past week has seen the churning out of dozens of such programs.
"This software saves the time and effort of constantly clicking the mouse out of desperation," Yao Wenhao, developer of one such program, told China Daily.
Xiao Yao, 24, worked in Shanghai as a software developer at a gaming company. His desire to visit his parents in Hunan during the holiday prompted him to put his knowledge to use.
Yao's tag-on is called "Go-Home". It is available for free download via major technology forums. Three days after Yao first posted it on Google Code, a sharing site for developer tools and technical resources, the 5-megabyte software had been downloaded more than 80,000 times.
Yao said the program successfully secured him a high-speed train seat after just a three-minute trial.
"The idea of writing a ticket-buying program came to me two months ago," Yao said. "My intention was to help myself but once I bought my ticket, I thought why not help others?"
Yao, who is a self-described geek, wrote a two-page instruction document which he attached to the software.
He said the biggest technical hurdle was to identify random numbers the website generated to strengthen security and automatically link the inquiry page to online payment. It took him 10 days to solve the challenge.
More than 100 variants of such programs have emerged on Taobao.com, a popular e-commerce site, priced from 1 to 5 yuan (79 cents) for each download.
While the likes of Yao claim their intentions were benign, others have been accused of being outright scams.
Wang Zhantao, an Internet security expert with anti-virus software provider Rising, said some malicious programs, in the guise of the tag-on software, unleashed malicious code on to victims' machines that gave hackers access to bank accounts and passwords.
Tag-ons have also been accused of compromising the ticketing system.
"The rocketing traffic generated by such software has in turn loaded an artificial burden on to the already vulnerable website, running the risk of completely jeopardizing the server," said Wang.
'The software fails to create a level playing field for all buyers. It only causes vicious circles."
Acer, Asustek enjoy highest growth in Asia-Pacific PC market
Taiwan-based PC makers Acer and Asustek recorded higher year-on-year PC shipment growth among the world's top five vendors in 2011 in the Asia-Pacific market excluding Japan, according to market intelligence and advisory firm International Data Corp (IDC).
PC shipments in the region grew 11% from 2010 to reach 119 million units in 2011, highlighting resilience in the Asian market despite the weak global economy that persisted throughout the year, IDC said in a report released Thursday.
Lenovo Group continued to lead the market with a 22.5% share, not just holding strong in its home market of China but also posting robust growth in the rest of the region. It was followed by Acer (11.6%), Dell(10.4%, Hewlett-Packard (9.9%) and Asustek (6.4%), the report said.
Acer, which had a management reshuffle in 2011, enjoyed the highest year-on-year unit growth of 38% among its peers last year, while Asustek boosted its shipments by 34% compared with 2010, the report said.
"The PC market took a number of punches last year, be it from the uncertain global economy or from tablets, which competed for consumer attention," said Bryan Ma, associate vice president of Asia-Pacific client devices research at IDC.
"PCs will still face disk-drive supply challenges in the early part of 2012, but IDC also expects the market to rebound quickly by the second half of the year to remain close to 10% growth for the year in the Asia-Pacific region," Ma said.
Both Acer and Asustek reported lower share prices last year in the worldwide PC market, where Acer accounted for 11.2% and Asustek took 5.9%, seizing fourth and fifth places, respectively, said research firm Gartner.
Worldwide PC shipments increased only 0.5% from 2010 to 352.8 million units in 2011, Gartner said, with weakening consumer demand in mature markets named as a major contributor to the stagnation.
CNNIC: China's Microblog Users Reached 250 Million In 2011
China Internet Network Information Center has published a new statistics report, stating that there were 250 million microblog users in China by the end of 2011, a year-on-year increase of 296%.
Meanwhile, the use of traditional Internet communication applications like email and forums saw significant declines. Microblogging has become one of the most important Internet applications in China in just one year, and it is claimed to used by nearly half of Chinese netizens.
According to the report, by the end of December 2011, the number of Chinese microblog users increased by 296% year-on-year to 250 million, and the usage rate by netizens reached 48.7%. At the same time, the usage of email decreased from 54.6% in 2010 to 47.9%; the usage of Internet forum decreased from 32.4% to 28.2%; and the usage of blog and personal space decreased from 64.4% to 62.1%.
The report also pointed out that the social networking sites in China are exploring various areas to increase user loyalty. The country's major social networking sites all made expansions or adjustments to their long-term strategies in 2011.
In regards to the development of microblogs in China, CNNIC analyzed that the current development of microblogs is diversified, and it focuses on the social networking functions and social media functions. Second, the profit models of microblogs is yet to be discovered; however, various attempts have been made to realize profits. Finally, supervision measures will have important influences on the development of microblogs in 2012.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Twitter Can Censor by Country
BEIJING—Twitter Inc. says it can now make content selectively available to users based on geography, and plans to use that ability to enter countries with "different ideas" about freedom of expression as a human right—reflecting the difficult ethical questions facing Internet companies.
The announcement, published on the official blog of the microblog operator, said Twitter is now able to withhold content from users in a specific country while keeping it available to the rest of the world.
The effort underscores thorny issues for Internet companies as their websites become more global and interconnected among different countries, and as they must cooperate with diverse views on Internet content control. For websites like Twitter as well as social-networking site Facebook, this has meant being blocked in countries like China where controls are more aggressive.
"As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression," the post said, adding that in Germany, pro-Nazi content is banned. It said the ability has not been put to use yet, however.
Twitter said in the post that it would take measures to notify users if it withholds posts. "If and when we are required to withhold a Tweet," or microblog post, "in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld, and why," it said.
Twitter will work with Chilling Effects, an Internet freedom advocacy website that compiles content take-down notices, to publish take-down notices. Such a practice would make it difficult for Twitter to operate in China, where Internet executives say prohibited keywords are treated like state secrets.
The company did not list countries in which it plans to use its new ability, but said that it would not be a solution for all. Some countries "differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there," the post said, an implicit reference to countries such as China that have banned Twitter.
China has more Internet users than any other nation. Local Web firms in China employ dozens or hundreds of staff to police user-generated content daily, and are required by law to take down a frequently updated list of banned keywords for varying lengths of time, including those related to calls for peaceful political action.
Internet giant Google Inc., which had operated in China for four years while cooperating with censorship requirements, made the controversial decision two years ago to cease censorship in the country and to move its Chinese-language Web search service to Hong Kong. The decision was the subject of much disagreement both in and outside the company, and even among Internet freedom advocates, with some believing censorship in any form was unethical, and others believing that being present, even if censored, in China would ultimately help make information flow more freely within the country.
Twitter has been blocked for more than two years in China by Web filtering technology. Some loyal users use circumvention tools to access the website, but most microblogging users in China now use Chinese services, including by Sina Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. Some loyal users use circumvention tools to access the website, but most microblogging users in China now use Chinese services, including by Sina Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd.
These websites have grown quickly and collectively have hundreds of millions of user accounts, despite censoring content, and new regulations that require users to register for their services using real-names.These websites have grown quickly and collectively have hundreds of millions of user accounts, despite censoring content, and new regulations that require users to register for their services using real-names.
Though the new system likely wouldn't allow Twitter back into China, initial reaction was negative among those who use it there through proxy services. "If Twitter starts censoring, then I'll stop tweeting," tweeted Ai Weiwei, the outspoken Chinese dissident artist and frequent tweeter.
Twitter has been instrumental in helping people to organize revolutionary or political protests in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, the U.K. and U.S.
Twitter, which has said it has more than 100 million active accounts around the world, is making a push to become an online-advertising giant like Google.
The San Francisco-based Twitter, created in 2006, currently has a handful of employees in the U.K. and Japan in addition to its more than 700 U.S. employees.
As it expands elsewhere, the company will have to comply with local law or its employees could potentially face prosecution or other legal action.
Twitter's general counsel, Alex Macgillivray, is a former Google lawyer who had a hand in crafting some of that company's censorship-related policies. He also has worked on ChillingEffects.org.
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has stated that the company is "the free speech wing of the free speech party."
More than a year ago, Twitter publicly disclosed that the U.S. government had obtained a court order requiring it to hand over information about four accounts of Twitter users in connection with an investigation of WikiLeaks, the website that published secret and classified information.
Twitter disclosed the request so that the account holders could "fight the request," Mr. Costolo said last year.
Twitter said in its post, "One of our core values as a company is to defend and respect each user's voice. We try to keep content up wherever and whenever we can, and we will be transparent when we can't."
Apple 'attacking problems' at its factories in China
Apple has defended its ethical standards after a newspaper reported factories in China rely on child labour, 24 hour days and unsafe conditions to manufacture iPhones, iPads and computers.
In an email reportedly sent to Apple's 60,000 or so employees, Tim Cook, the company's chief executive said that Apple "cares about every worker in its supply chain".
The letter appears to be in response to a series of articles in the New York Times cataloguing the company's problems in China and divisions within Apple about how to handle the issues.
The paper said more than half of the suppliers audited by Apple have broken at least one part of its conduct code each year since 2007 and have even broken the law in some cases.
"Most people would still be really disturbed if they saw where their iPhone comes from," one unnamed former Apple executive told the newspaper.
Mr Cook's letter, which was reproduced on the website 9to5mac.com, promised that Apple would "continue to dig deeper" into problems in China and that it would "undoubtedly find more issues". "What will not do, and never have done, is stand still or turn a blind eye to problems in our supply chain," he added.
"Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don't care is patently false and offensive to us. As you know better than anyone, accusations like these are contrary to our values. It's not who we are," he said.
As criticism has mounted of Apple, and threatened to tarnish the company's brand, its shares have risen to record highs, especially after the company said it had doubled its profits in the first three months to $13.1 billion (£8.35 billion) because of sales of its gadgets over Christmas.
Apple has monitored its factories in China since 2007, but has so far failed to significantly improve working conditions or safety. In fact, as sales of Apple's gadgets have soared, putting intense pressure on the company's suppliers to ramp up production, a spate of suicides, explosions and poisonings have occurred.
As Apple has improved and extended its monitoring, its annual reports have shown conditions worsening. In the company's latest report, it found at least 90 factories were asking workers to work for more than 60 hours a week, the company's own guidelines, which are themselves significantly over the 40-hour limit imposed by Chinese law. Apple also found five cases of child labour at factories.
In response to outside pressure, Apple this year published a list of its 156 suppliers, representing almost all its supply chain, for the first time. It also joined the Fair Labor Association, becoming the first technology company to do so. Apple has also worked with Chinese labour rights advocates, environmental groups, and has agreed to allow outside monitors into its suppliers' factories.
Nike, the athletic company, was a founding member of the FLA after it suffered intense criticism in the 1990s for using sweatshops in Asia.
Auret van Heerden, the president of the FLA, told Bloomberg that Apple is now going through a similar process. "Most big corporations have their 'Nike moment' at some stage, when they realise the difficulties of maintaining their standards, particularly in an increasingly global environment," he said.
However, Mr Van Heerden added that Apple's factories, including Foxconn, remained some of the best places to work as an unskilled labourer in the developing world. "If you are a 16-year-old girl in a developing country, your best chance of enjoying proper rights is if you get to work at a multinational company," said Mr Van Heerden. "The power of their contract is more powerful than the power of law".
Foxconn, which came under intense criticism for its "military" style working conditions, said 8,000 people apply to work at its factories every day. More than a million people work at Foxconn, but the Taiwanese company has a tin ear for public relations, with its chief executive having to recently apologise for comparing the management of his workers to the management of zoo animals.
One of China's leading labour advocacy groups, China Labor Bulletin, asked if Apple had the power to improve the lot of its workers. Only three companies in China - Foxconn, Pegatron and Quanta - have the ability to mass-manufacture Apple's products competently and on deadline. And they are being pushed to ever thinner profit margins for their work.
"It would seem that sharing profits with suppliers could be one way in which Apple could improve working conditions," wrote William Nee of CLB on his blog. "But then again, this voluntary step would fly against market dynamics and there is no guarantee that suppliers would pass the benefits onto the workers [...] What incentive does Foxconn have to improve standards if they know full well that Apple's entire business model relies on them?" Mr Nee said there were "no easy answers" to the problem.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reports on Apple have drawn a measured response inside China, with many commenters pointing out that other technology companies are equally guilty of worker abuse, and that further regulation could make lives for the workers worse.
"Construction workers and farmers are also living a harsh life in China, shall we also boycott housing and grains," asked Zhou Zhimei, one commenter. Another said the conditions in the factories should be better policed by the Chinese regulator, whose responsibility it was.
"If Foxconn were to abide by the labour law, the wages would be lower.
If workers establish a formal union, lots will be disappointed and return home to rural areas. The production cost of Chinese manufacturing will increase and Chinese factories will lose their competitive advantage. Who would be happy if that really happened?"
asked another commenter.
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