United Airlines will let you fly for free if you find bugs in its software (UAL) | ||
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Security researchers who locate bugs and vulnerabilities in United Airlines' software will be given free air miles, effectively allowing them to fly for free, ZDNet reports. Like many tech companies, United offers a bug bounty program that provides researchers with rewards for finding issues in critical software. It's a way to ensure the integrity of its systems — as ever-greater cybersecurity threats emerge, it can become more and more difficult to maintain secure software. Incentivising bug-finding means that independent security researchers can turn up flaws that might otherwise go unnoticed by the company's in-house software developers. Depending on the severity of the bug discovered, rewards can vary from less than 50,000 air miles up to 1 million. Example of eligible bugs include the ability to brute-force passwords, bypassing authentication, finding bugs on customer-facing sites, and remote code execution. But United also rules out rewards for testing for other potential flaws, warning that researchers who attempt to will be permanently disqualified from the program, "and possible criminal and/or legal investigation." These include denial-of-service attacks, compromising accounts that are not your own, "any testing on aircraft or aircraft systems," and threats, attempted coercion or physical attacks on United employees. The news of the bug bounty program is likely part of an effort by United Airlines to appear more "security-friendly." The airline has recently faced a slew of negative publicity in the cybersecurity community after refusing to allow researcher Chris Roberts on one of its planes after he joked on social media he could get make the oxygen masks deploy mid-flight. Roberts had previously been outspoken about potential vulnerabilities in airlines' on-board software, according to the Guardian. "Given Mr Roberts' claims regarding manipulating aircraft systems, we've decided it's in the best interest of our customers and crew members that he not be allowed to fly United," said a spokesperson for the company. Other companies offer more prosaic prizes to researchers who find vulnerabilities — typically cash. In February 2015, Facebook paid Laxman Muthiyah $12,500 (£8,000) for uncovering a bug that allowed him to delete any person's public photos on the social network without their permission. Google has even begun offering researchers grants to encourage them — paying them before they have actually found anything. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Here's The Latest Airline With An Insanely Fancy Business Class  | ||
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This is what happens to levels of piracy when police shut down an illegal site | ||
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A group of academics has published a paper that examines what happens to piracy levels when police shut down an illegal movie streaming site. Torrent Freak spotted the paper, which focuses on a German movie streaming site called kino.to. It was the biggest movie piracy site in the country, and the report calls it "the dominant platform providing access to unlicensed video streaming in 2011." Kino.to also brought in money from ads displayed on the site, and researchers say it was bringing in around €150,000 in ad revenue every single month. Kino.to was shut down on June 8, 2011. From there, researchers measured the number of clicks on pirate links to observe what effect a police seizure has on piracy. This chart shows the immediate effect that the kino.to shutdown had on levels of piracy:
The red line shows clicks to kino.to, the piracy site that was shut down. As expected, traffic plummeted. But what's interesting here is the immediate effect on total piracy — it saw a sudden decline, but then picked up again just weeks later. One of the reasons why piracy dipped and then picked up again following the kino.to shutdown is that multiple other piracy sites became more popular, and a new replacement site (kinox.to) appeared to fill the gap.
There was not a huge amount of people dissuaded from piracy due to the kino.to shutdown. The paper says that there was a "relatively limited substitution into licensed consumption" following the site's seizure. The paper's authors say that targeting one large site at a time "potentially makes future law enforcement interventions either more costly - as there would not be a single dominant platform to shutdown anymore." The paper makes it clear that it's incredibly difficult to make a significant, long-lasting dent in online piracy. Sure, police can shut down a popular site, causing a brief dent in levels of online piracy, but alternatives will always spring up. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 5 cool tricks your iPhone can do with the latest iOS update  | ||
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REPORT: The IMF's Europe chief says he can't even talk to Yanis Varoufakis | ||
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Greece's negotiations with the International Monetary Fund and its European creditors are still going on — but according to leaks out Friday morning, there are still massive roadblocks in place. Poul Thomsen, the IMF's European director is reportedly saying that he doesn't even have access to speak to Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, even though it looks quite possible that the country will default in less than a month. That's according to veteran Greek journalist Michael Ignatiou, on his own website. Thomsen reportedly referred to the situation as being "far from being ideal," Here's a rough translation of two of Ignatiou's crucial paragraphs: The picture presented by the Fund's official is not optimistic since the only progress is procedural, rather than on the important issues the resolution of which depends on the financial aid to Greece. "The situation is far from being ideal," Thomsen reportedly said... Worst of all, he said, is that the experts of the Brussels Group do not have access to ministers. They can not see ministers. The representatives of the three institutions can not know if what they are told by officials from Athens reflect the decisions taken by ministers or positions of civil servants who may not have political cover. According to the report the IMF and the Eurogroup have managed to compromise with the Greek government on tax issues and a reformed bankruptcy law. But there's still no consensus labour market and pensions reforms, which were always going to be the major sticking points. On Thursday the Financial Times reported a similar account of the stumbling blocks in negotiations, saying that Thomsen referred to the Greek pension system as "exceptionally generous." Meanwhile most analysts think Greece will struggle to get past June's debt repayments without a deal. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Here's how Floyd Mayweather spends his millions  | ||
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A British investment firm's bizarre takeover bid for Avon appears to have been a giant hoax | ||
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A supposed bid from an apparently British investment firm to buy Avon for three times its current market price, which sent shares of company soaring on Thursday, appears to have been a giant hoax, The New York Times reports. Before noon in New York on Thursday, a firm called PTG Capital Partners reported in an online regulatory filing that it was offering to buy Avon for $18.75 (£11.90)a share. At that price, the deal would be worth $8.2 billion (£5.2 billion). Shares of the cosmetic company were trading at about $6.60 (£4.19) ahead of the announcement. Shares of Avon shot up as much as 19% following the purported takeover bid, however, several oddities in the filing immediately raised suspicion about its legitimacy. Business Insider's Akin Oyedele noted that in the filing's about section, PTG Partners referred to itself as "TPG Partners," a large private equity firm that does not appear to be affiliated with PTG. There were also spacing issues and a typo. After the frenzy on Thursday, Avon issued a statement to Business Insider that it had not received "any offer or other communication" from PTG and that it was not able to confirm the firm's existence. The Security Exchange Commission, now investigating the offer, will be looking into whether the supposedly fake takeover bid was an attempt to manipulate the market, a person familiar with the matter told The New York Times. The Times points out that a similar incident occurred in 2012, when a takeover offer for Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory was filed by a firm called PST Capital Partners, also supposedly British. That bid turned out to be fake. Both events should raise concerns about how filings are made to the SEC's online database, known as Edgar, and what filters are in place to ensure that documents are credible, the Times said. “Investors and traders assume that Edgar is accurate because it is associated with the SEC,” University of Michigan professor Erik Gordon, told the Times. “The SEC will have to reconsider what lengths it should go to in order to provide a high level of assurance that filings are real." Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Here's how Floyd Mayweather spends his millions  | ||
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McDonald's slapped down for focusing its Happy Meal advertising on the toy and not the food (MCD) | ||
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| McDonald's has been told to change its advertising to focus on the food and not its Happy Meal toys to ensure its ads don't have the potential to enhance the appeal of its products to children. The warning, from the Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU) — a self-regulatory division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus — came after investigated a McDonald's TV ad from last year (watch it above.) The ad opened with two Happy Meal-shaped animated characters playing around with a tube of yogurt. It then cut to a girl walking towards the box, saying "I'm so excited to find out what's in here!" The meal — Chicken McNuggets, fries, and yogurt — wasn't situated inside the box, it was sitting beside it. The ad then showed scenes of other children gleefully pulling "Teenie Beanie Baby Boo" toys out of the Happy Meal box and showing them off to the camera. In its review, CARU ruled the ad's primary focus was on the "premium" — the toys — and that children would have difficulty distinguishing between the product — the food — and that premium. It recommended McDonald's "take care to assure future advertising directed to children that commercials focus on the advertised food product and not on the premium." In response to the investigation, McDonald's said in a statement: "The ad at issue is no longer running. Although we believe that the ad primarily focuses the child’s attention on the product, McDonald's respects the self-regulatory process and will take CARU’s comments into consideration when producing future ads." In some countries, including the UK, there is a ban on advertising foods high in fat, salt, and sugar to children. The UK's media regulator Ofcom introduced the ban in 2008 in a bid to tackle growing childhood obesity levels. In the US, however, advertising to children is self-regulated and monitored by the Better Business Bureau. The self-regulatory guidelines state that advertisers should not stimulate children's unreasonable expectations about product quality or performance. McDonald's is currently battling to turnaround its performance in the US. Same-store-sales in the region declined 2.3% in April.
SEE ALSO: There's a new ad out for the new McDonald's Hamburglar, and it's kind of weird Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 9 McDonald's menu items that flopped  | ||
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United Airlines will let you fly for free if you find bugs in its software (UAL) | ||
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Security researchers who locate bugs and vulnerabilities in United Airlines' software will be given free air miles, effectively allowing them to fly for free, ZDNet reports. Like many tech companies, United offers a bug bounty program that provides researchers with rewards for finding issues in critical software. It's a way to ensure the integrity of its systems — as ever-greater cybersecurity threats emerge, it can become more and more difficult to maintain secure software. Incentivising bug-finding means that independent security researchers can turn up flaws that might otherwise go unnoticed by the company's in-house software developers. Depending on the severity of the bug discovered, rewards can vary from less than 50,000 air miles up to 1 million. Example of eligible bugs include the ability to brute-force passwords, bypassing authentication, finding bugs on customer-facing sites, and remote code execution. But United also rules out rewards for testing for other potential flaws, warning that researchers who attempt to will be permanently disqualified from the program, "and possible criminal and/or legal investigation." These include denial-of-service attacks, compromising accounts that are not your own, "any testing on aircraft or aircraft systems," and threats, attempted coercion or physical attacks on United employees. The news of the bug bounty program is likely part of an effort by United Airlines to appear more "security-friendly." The airline has recently faced a slew of negative publicity in the cybersecurity community after refusing to allow researcher Chris Roberts on one of its planes after he joked on social media he could get make the oxygen masks deploy mid-flight. Roberts had previously been outspoken about potential vulnerabilities in airlines' on-board software, according to the Guardian. "Given Mr Roberts' claims regarding manipulating aircraft systems, we've decided it's in the best interest of our customers and crew members that he not be allowed to fly United," said a spokesperson for the company. Other companies offer more prosaic prizes to researchers who find vulnerabilities — typically cash. In February 2015, Facebook paid Laxman Muthiyah $12,500 (£8,000) for uncovering a bug that allowed him to delete any person's public photos on the social network without their permission. Google has even begun offering researchers grants to encourage them — paying them before they have actually found anything. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Here's The Latest Airline With An Insanely Fancy Business Class  | ||
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Google, ex-F1 boss Max Mosley settle orgy image row | ||
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Berlin (AFP) - Google and ex-Formula One boss Max Mosley have settled a dispute over images from a sadomasochistic orgy involving Mosley, the US tech company and Mosley's German lawyer said Friday. "The dispute is settled, to the satisfaction of both sides," Mosley's lawyer Tanja Irion told AFP, confirming a report by Spiegel news weekly. Google spokesman Klaas Flechsig also told AFP that "I can confirm that we have settled the dispute to the satisfaction of both sides in all countries" Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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This is what happens to levels of piracy when police shut down an illegal site | ||
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A group of academics has published a paper that examines what happens to piracy levels when police shut down an illegal movie streaming site. Torrent Freak spotted the paper, which focuses on a German movie streaming site called kino.to. It was the biggest movie piracy site in the country, and the report calls it "the dominant platform providing access to unlicensed video streaming in 2011." Kino.to also brought in money from ads displayed on the site, and researchers say it was bringing in around €150,000 in ad revenue every single month. Kino.to was shut down on June 8, 2011. From there, researchers measured the number of clicks on pirate links to observe what effect a police seizure has on piracy. This chart shows the immediate effect that the kino.to shutdown had on levels of piracy:
The red line shows clicks to kino.to, the piracy site that was shut down. As expected, traffic plummeted. But what's interesting here is the immediate effect on total piracy — it saw a sudden decline, but then picked up again just weeks later. One of the reasons why piracy dipped and then picked up again following the kino.to shutdown is that multiple other piracy sites became more popular, and a new replacement site (kinox.to) appeared to fill the gap.
There was not a huge amount of people dissuaded from piracy due to the kino.to shutdown. The paper says that there was a "relatively limited substitution into licensed consumption" following the site's seizure. The paper's authors say that targeting one large site at a time "potentially makes future law enforcement interventions either more costly - as there would not be a single dominant platform to shutdown anymore." The paper makes it clear that it's incredibly difficult to make a significant, long-lasting dent in online piracy. Sure, police can shut down a popular site, causing a brief dent in levels of online piracy, but alternatives will always spring up. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 5 cool tricks your iPhone can do with the latest iOS update  | ||
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A super-prominent Barclays FX trader just resigned and no one knows why | ||
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There was a mystery surrounding the whereabouts of Cartledge for the past week, and sources close to the bank told Business Insider that he was at home. The sources did not know the reason for his absence. However, Cartledge, global head of fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) electronic trading at Barclays, resigned to take time out from the business, a source close to the bank's operations tells us. Business Insider has repeatedly tried to get the bank's officials to comment on the information for the last 24 hours. Prior to his most recent role, Cartledge was the head of Barclays electronic currency trading (FX) platform Barx based in Singapore. He returned to London in 2013. He initially joined Barclays in 2004. Prior to that he worked at Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. There is no suggestion that Cartledge has done anything wrong, or that he has been accused of wrongdoing. But the sudden departure is a surprise that has staff within Barclays speculating as to why one of its more important executives isn't working there right now. Barclays declined to comment on the individual or on any information in this story. It is rare for any bank, including Barclays, to confirm an individual leaving an institution. Business Insider has tried calling Cartledge's team and emailed for confirmation of his departure. We also reached out to Cartledge via LinkedIn and Facebook for confirmation and comment over the supposed departure but have yet to receive a response. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Here's how Floyd Mayweather spends his millions  | ||
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Tim Cartledge, one of Barclays' most prominent foreign currency exchange executives, just resigned, sources tell Business Insider. Chuka Umunna withdraws from the Labour leadership race | ||
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Shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna has withdrawn his candidacy for the Labour leadership. Umunna was considered one of the favourites to succeed Ed Miliband following the party's disappointing performance in the General Election. The news comes only three days after Umunna announced his candidacy in a video on Facebook. His sudden withdrawal will come as something of a shock, with betting markets putting him in pole position. Andy Burnham, Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper will now vie for that accolade with Tristram Hunt, Stella Creasy and Mary Creagh also in the running. In a statement published on Twitter he attributed his decision to an "added level of pressure" since he declared his candidacy. He wrote: "Since the night of our defeat last week I have been subject to the added level of pressure that comes with being a leadership candidate. "I have not found it to be a comfortable experience. "One can imagine what running for leader can be like, understand its demands and the attention but nothing compares to actually doing it and the impact on the rest of one's life. "Consequently after further reflection I am withdrawing my candidacy." This story is being updated. Click here to refresh. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Female voices can be annoying, and the reason why is totally unfair  | ||
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Portman makes directorial debut at Cannes | ||
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Cannes (France) (AFP) - Oscar-winning US-Israeli actress Natalie Portman will on Friday unveil her directorial debut at the Cannes Film Festival with a movie close to her Jewish roots. The 33-year-old also acts in the film, "A Tale of Love and Darkness," about the early years of the founding of the state of Israel. It is based on the memoir of Amos Oz, a writer and advocate of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Portman has taken on tough roles ever since starting her big-screen career at age 11 in "The Professional," the tale of a hitman-for-hire (Jean Reno) who becomes her mentor. But her stubborn on-and-off-screen moral stance saw her turn down the lead in the 1997 remake of "Lolita" because she deemed the classic story, of a young girl seduced by a much older man, "sleazy". She also rejected 1996's "Romeo + Juliet" because of the age difference between her and Leonardo DiCaprio. She likewise initially snubbed "Anywhere But Here" with Susan Sarandon because of a nude scene, but Sarandon demanded the scene be dropped so Portman could sign on. "I value my private life and security way more than getting parts by flashing my boobs on some magazine or being a sex symbol in films," she said in a 2000 interview. Born June 9, 1981 in Jerusalem to a doctor father and an artist mother, Portman proudly brandishes her Israeli background. Legend has it that a model talent scout discovered her in a pizzeria, and the rest is history. After "The Professional," Portman appeared alongside Al Pacino in "Heat" and in Woody Allen's 1996 movie "Everyone Says I Love You". She has also had leading roles on stage in New York. Portman reached global audiences with appearances as Queen Amidala in the Star Wars prequels "The Phantom Menace" in 1999, "Attack of the Clones" in 2002 and "Revenge of the Sith" in 2005. She won a best actress Oscar for 2010's psychological ballet thriller "Black Swan". It was on the set of that film she met her future husband, French dancer and choreographer Benjamin Millepied. The following year, she lightened up with the release of "No Strings Attached," in which she co-stars with Ashton Kutcher in a tale of casual sex between friends. Portman has also starred in the big-budget "Thor" films as love interest Jane Foster. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Nepal army finds wreckage of missing US chopper | ||
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Kathmandu (AFP) - The wreckage of a US military helicopter that went missing with eight people on board while delivering aid in quake-hit Nepal has been found near the Chinese border, the Nepalese army said Friday. Major General Binoj Basnet said the helicopter, which disappeared on Tuesday, had been spotted from the air in a remote forest around 70 kilometres (40 miles) northeast of Kathmandu. "We don't know if there are any survivors, we have yet to confirm that," Basnet told AFP by telephone. "We have sighted the wreckage from the air, we are now trying to land in the area and get more information." The US military said earlier that the UH-1Y Huey was carrying six US Marines and two soldiers from the Nepalese army when it went missing during a relief flight in eastern Nepal. Relief teams from around the world have been working for weeks to provide water, food, shelter and medical assistance to Nepal after a 7.8-magnitude quake hit on April 25 quake, killing thousands and destroying more than half a million homes. The missing helicopter was among more than a dozen US military aircraft devoted to aid operations, including two other Huey choppers and four tilt-rotor Ospreys as well as cargo planes. Before it went missing, there was "some chatter about a fuel problem" on the radio from the helicopter crew, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steven Warren said on Tuesday. Army helicopters and hundreds of US and Nepalese ground troops had been deployed to scour the mountainous terrain where it disappeared on the same day a second earthquake -- with magnitude of 7.3 -- hit Nepal.
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