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Apple has announced details of a system to find child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on customers’ devices.

Before an image is stored onto iCloud Photos, the technology will search for matches of already known CSAM.

Apple said that if a match is found a human reviewer will then assess and report the user to law enforcement.

However there are privacy concerns that the technology could be expanded to scan phones for prohibited content or even political speech.

Experts worry that the technology could be used by authoritarian governments to spy on its citizens.

Apple said that new versions of iOS and iPadOS – due to be released later this year – will have “new applications of cryptography to help limit the spread of CSAM online, while designing for user privacy”.

The system works by comparing pictures to a database of known child sexual abuse images compiled by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and other child safety organisations.

Those images are translated into “hashes”, numerical codes that can be “matched” to an image on an Apple device.

Apple says the technology will also catch edited but similar versions of original images.

‘High level of accuracy’
“Before an image is stored in iCloud Photos, an on-device matching process is performed for that image against the known CSAM hashes,” Apple said.

The company claimed the system had an “extremely high level of accuracy and ensures less than a one in one trillion chance per year of incorrectly flagging a given account”.

Apple says that it will manually review each report to confirm there is a match. It can then take steps to disable a user’s account and report to law enforcement.

The company says that the new technology offers “significant” privacy benefits over existing techniques – as Apple only learns about users’ photos if they have a collection of known CSAM in their iCloud Photos account.

However some privacy experts have voiced concerns.

“Regardless of what Apple’s long term plans are, they’ve sent a very clear signal. In their (very influential) opinion, it is safe to build systems that scan users’ phones for prohibited content,” Matthew Green, a security researcher at Johns Hopkins University, said.

“Whether they turn out to be right or wrong on that point hardly matters. This will break the dam — governments will demand it from everyone.”

Blizzard Entertainment president J Allen Brack has “stepped down”, the World of Warcraft and Call of Duty game-maker says.

Parent company Activision Blizzard said Mr Brack was “leaving the company to pursue new opportunities”.

California is suing the company, alleging a workplace culture of sexism and harassment.

Activision Blizzard denies this allegation and has called the legal action “disgraceful and unacceptable”.

Many Activision Blizzard staff walked out in protest against the company’s culture and response to the allegations.

‘Bro culture’
In a statement, Blizzard Entertainment said Mr Brack would be replaced by Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra, who would co-lead the company.

While the statement made no reference to the allegations against Blizzard, it said the new leaders would, “ensure Blizzard is the safest, most welcoming workplace possible for women, and people of any gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or background”.

In an accompanying statement Mr Brack thanked the Blizzard community “for your passion and determination for safety and equality for all”.

The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which brought the case against Activision Blizzard, in court filings criticised Mr Brack for not doing enough in response to complaints.

In internal emails to employees obtained by Bloomberg, Mr Brack said he disdained “bro culture” and had spent his career fighting against it and called the behaviour of employees detailed in the allegations “completely unacceptable”.

Twitter will collaborate with two of the largest international news providers, Reuters and the Associated Press, to debunk disinformation on its messaging site.

The news agencies will help Twitter give more context and background information on events which create a high volume of tweets.

Twitter hopes this will counteract the spread of misleading information.

There has been renewed pressure to remove false content from the platform.

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Twitter said the partnership will enable it to ensure accurate and credible information is rapidly available “when facts are in dispute”.

“Rather than waiting until something goes viral, Twitter will contextualize developing discourse at pace with or in anticipation of the public conversation,” Twitter said.

Currently, when large or rapidly growing conversations happen on Twitter that may be noteworthy or controversial, Twitter’s Curation team finds and promotes relevant context from reliable sources in order to counter potentially misleading information posted by users.

In a blogpost, Twitter said the new programme would “increase the scale and speed” of this work by increasing their “capacity to add reliable context to conversations happening on Twitter”.

The post said material from Reuters and AP would improve information credibility on the platform when Twitter’s Curation team “doesn’t have the specific expertise or access to a high enough volume of reputable reporting on Twitter”.

It is the first time Twitter has formally collaborated with news organisations to promote accurate information on its site, according to a spokesperson from the social media firm.

Earlier this year, Twitter launched Birdwatch, a new community-moderation system which enabled volunteers to label tweets they found to be inaccurate.

Twitter will work separately with the two rival news agencies, and will focus initially on English-language content.

Hazel Baker, head of user-generated content newsgathering at Reuters, said that trust, accuracy and impartiality were at the “heart of what Reuters does every day,” and “drive” the company’s “commitment to stopping the spread of misinformation”.

Tom Januszewski, the AP’s vice president of global business development, said in a statement that the news company had a “long history of working closely with Twitter, along with other platforms, to expand the reach of factual journalism”.

“We are particularly excited about leveraging AP’s scale and speed to add context to online conversations, which can benefit from easy access to the facts,” he continued.

Both Reuters and AP also work with Facebook on fact checks.

Twitter added that this work would be independent of the work its Trust & Safety teams do to determine whether Tweets are in violation of the Twitter rules. The work of these teams includes labelling tweets which contain manipulated media, electoral misinformation and sensitive media that violates the platforms’ rules.

A 2020 report by NYU Stern suggested Twitter has about 1,500 moderators – with 199 million daily Twitter users worldwide.

Tesla doesn’t have a press office.

Its CEO, Elon Musk, says the company doesn’t need one.

Instead, in a similar way to Donald Trump, he uses Twitter rather than press releases to communicate.

And on Friday, he was in full Elon Musk tweet mode.

A new book is coming out about the Tesla CEO. One story is that in 2016 – when Tesla was in trouble – Musk reached out to Apple’s Tim Cook, who he thought might want to buy the company.

The story goes that Elon Musk insisted that as part of the deal, he be made CEO of Apple. Tim Cook told him where to go.

Without a press office to comment on the story, I asked Musk on Twitter whether this was true.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
View original tweet on Twitter
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Elon Musk said something similar last month whilst giving evidence in court.

Talking about being CEO of Tesla, he said: “I rather hate it and I would much prefer to spend my time on design and engineering.”

He also gave a reason for why he continues to be Tesla boss: “I have to or, frankly, Tesla is going to die.”

That he is repeatedly saying he doesn’t want to be CEO will worry some investors. Love him or loathe him, Musk’s vision and force of personality has driven Tesla’s incredible success.

Tesla is by far the most valuable car company in the world.

And yet it is striking that running that company isn’t enough for Musk.

He’s the boss of Space X – which was in April awarded a contract by NASA to put people onto the moon.

He also founded The Boring Company in 2016, which aims to revolutionise travel through advances in tunnelling technology. Perhaps tellingly, he is not CEO.

Musk gives the impression of a man trapped. He is clearly excited by ideas, innovation, engineering – the exciting start up part of a company.

But the transition from start up to large company turns the CEO position into a very different beast.

Apple’s Steve Jobs, Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Microsoft’s Bill Gates were all visionaries.

The current CEOs of those companies are very different people. Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella are more than capable leaders. But few would describe them as revolutionaries.

Elon Musk on the other hand projects the image of a swashbuckling entrepreneur. You get the feeling that the often administrative process of running a company does not excite him.

Along with tremendous growth, the Tesla boss has caused all sorts of headaches for Tesla shareholders.

He is currently being sued by shareholders who claim the carmaker’s money was wasted on buying SolarCity, which – they say – was running out of money.

At the time of the deal, Mr Musk owned a 22% stake in both Tesla and SolarCity.

And in 2018 he agreed to step down as Tesla Chairman after tweeting that he was considering taking Tesla off the stock market and into private ownership.

Elon Musk may be the second richest person on the planet, but, strangely, he doesn’t feel he has the freedom to do what he wants.

He’s living proof that you’re never too wealthy to be stuck in a job you don’t like.

A study by consumer watchdog Which? has found that branded printer ink remains “staggeringly” more expensive than third-party alternatives.

In some cases printer ink is pricier that some champagnes, its survey found.

Non-branded ink cartridges perform as well or better than their branded alternatives, it suggested.

Manufacturers are suggesting customers do not use third-party ink, with some even blocking them from doing so.

Home printers have become an essential piece of kit in homes over the pandemic, crucial for both home-working and home-schooling.

The watchdog surveyed 10,000 consumers who own inkjet printers, half of whom said they used their printer at least once a week,

It has done similar surveys in the past, and this year concluded that “staggering cost differences” still remain between own-brand and third-party ink suppliers.

Its findings include:

Ink bought from the manufacturer could be up to 286% more expensive
A multipack of colour ink for the Epson WorkForce WF-7210DTW printer cost £75.49 (or £1,369 per pint)
A multipack of ink for the Brother MFCJ5730DW cost £98.39
Cartridges for a Canon Pixma MX475 cost £80.98
Ink bought from the manufacturer could be up to 286% more expensive than third-party ink, it suggests
Cheaper alternatives can be as cheap as £12.95, saving thousands over a five-year period
It also found that 28 HP printers now use a system called “dynamic security” which recognises cartridges which use non-HP chips, and stops them from working.

Other manufacturers promote ‘approved’, ‘original’ or ‘guaranteed’ cartridges on their websites and in instruction manuals.

It has left consumers confused, said Which?. 56% said that they would only use branded ink, with 39% avoiding third-party ink over fears that they would not work in their printer.

But at the same time people gave similar print quality ratings for original and third-party inks, with 16 non-branded inks coming out ahead of Brother, Canon, Epson and HP.

‘Genuine’ ink
Adam French, Which? consumer rights expert, said: “Printer ink shouldn’t cost more than a bottle of high-end champagne or Chanel No 5.

“We’ve found that there are lots of third-party products that are outperforming their branded counterparts at a fraction of the cost.”

He added that deciding which ink to put in a printer should be “a personal choice and not dictated by the make of your printer”.

In response, HP said that customers had the option to use HP Instant Ink, a subscription service which it claimed can save customers up to 70%.

“HP offers customers the flexibility to use Original HP cartridges or third-party cartridges that retain the original HP chip or circuitry,” it said.

Epson also highlights its EcoTank printer models which it said come with enough ink to print for up to three years, with replacement bottles costing £7.99.

“As non-genuine inks are not designed or tested by Epson, we cannot guarantee these inks will not damage the printer,” it added.

Brother said that its own brand inks were of a “higher quality” but that customers had the choice of whether to use them or non-branded alternatives.

And Canon said that while third-party inks can work with its printers, “the technology inside is designed to function correctly with our genuine inks”.

A computer key that can unlock the files of hundreds of companies which were hacked in a large-scale cyber-attack has been obtained.

US IT firm Kaseya – which was the first to be targeted earlier this month – said it got the key from a “trusted third party”.

Ransomware is malicious software that steals computer data and scrambles it so the victim cannot gain access.

The hackers then ask for payment in return for releasing the files.

Kaseya’s decryptor key will allow customers to retrieve missing files, without paying the ransom.

The company’s spokeswoman Dana Liedholm declined to answer whether Kaseya had paid for access to the key.

She told tech blog Bleeping Computer that the firm was actively helping customers restore their files.

The “supply chain” attack initially targeted Kaseya, before spreading through corporate networks which use its software.

Kaseya estimated that between 800 and 1,500 businesses were affected, including 500 Swedish Coop supermarkets and 11 schools in New Zealand.

After the attack at the beginning of July, criminal ransomware gang REvil demanded $70m worth of Bitcoin in return for a key that would unlock the stolen files.

But members of the group disappeared from the internet in the days following the incident, leaving companies with no way of retrieving the data until now.

Who is the mystery gifter?

That’s the big question in the cyber-security world at the moment.

But really it is irrelevant for two reasons.

Firstly, giving away the key now is far too late for most of the victims of this massive ransomware attack.

The most desperate companies would have paid the gang already to get their operations back online, and others would hopefully be on their way to recovering by now without the help of the criminals.

Secondly, the mystery gifter was most probably linked to – or working with – the criminals directly.

It seems improbable that a well-run and experienced cyber-crime group like REvil would have accidentally leaked its most prized possession, or had it taken by some sort of secret law enforcement operation.

I’m told by a hacker who claims to be a part of the inner circle that it was “a trusted partner” who gave the key away on behalf of the group’s leader, who calls himself Unknown.

My contact says it’s all part of “a new beginning”.

So while some are calling this the end of the REvil group, it could well be the start of something else.

Artificial intelligence has been used to predict the structures of almost every protein made by the human body.

The development could help supercharge the discovery of new drugs to treat disease, alongside other applications.

Proteins are essential building blocks of living organisms; every cell we have in us is packed with them.

Understanding the shapes of proteins is critical for advancing medicine, but until now, only a fraction of these have been worked out.

Researchers used a program called AlphaFold to predict the structures of 350,000 proteins belonging to humans and other organisms.

The instructions for making human proteins are contained in our genomes – the DNA contained in the nuclei of human cells.

There are around 20,000 of these proteins expressed by the human genome. Collectively, biologists refer to this full complement as the “proteome”.

Commenting on the results from AlphaFold, Dr Demis Hassabis, chief executive and co-founder of artificial intelligence company Deep Mind, said: “We believe it’s the most complete and accurate picture of the human proteome to date.

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“We believe this work represents the most significant contribution AI has made to advancing the state of scientific knowledge to date.

“And I think it’s a great illustration and example of the kind of benefits AI can bring to society.” He added: “We’re just so excited to see what the community is going to do with this.”

Proteins are made up of chains of smaller building blocks called amino acids. These chains fold in myriad different ways, forming a unique 3D shape. A protein’s shape determines its function in the human body.

The 350,000 protein structures predicted by AlphaFold include not only the 20,000 contained in the human proteome, but also those of so-called model organisms used in scientific research, such as E. coli, yeast, the fruit fly and the mouse.

This giant leap in capability is described by DeepMind researchers and a team from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in the prestigious journal Nature.

AlphaFold was able to make a confident prediction of the structural positions for 58% of the amino acids in the human proteome.

The positions of 35.7% were predicted with a very high degree of confidence – double the number confirmed by experiments.

Traditional techniques to work out protein structures include X-ray crystallography, cryogenic electron microscopy (Cryo-EM) and others. But none of these is easy to do: “It takes a huge amount of money and resources to do structures,” Prof John McGeehan, a structural biologist at the University of Portsmouth, told BBC News.

Therefore, the 3D shapes are often determined as part of targeted scientific investigations, but no project until now had systematically determined structures for all the proteins made by the body.

In fact, just 17% of the proteome is covered by a structure confirmed experimentally.

Commenting on the predictions from AlphaFold, Prof McGeehan said: “It’s just the speed – the fact that it was taking us six months per structure and now it takes a couple of minutes. We couldn’t really have predicted that would happen so fast.”

“When we first sent our seven sequences to the DeepMind team, two of those we already had the experimental structures for. So we were able to test those when they came back. It was one of those moments – to be honest – where the hairs stood up on the back of my neck because the structures [AlphaFold] produced were identical.”Prof Edith Heard, from EMBL, said: “This will be transformative for our understanding of how life works. That’s because proteins represent the fundamental building blocks from which living organisms are made.”

“The applications are limited only by our understanding.”

Those applications we can envisage now include developing new drugs and treatments for disease, designing future crops that can resist climate change, and enzymes that can break down the plastic that pervades the environment.

Prof McGeehan’s group is already using AlphaFold’s data to help develop faster enzymes for degrading plastic. He said the program had provided predictions for proteins of interest whose structures could not be determined experimentally – helping accelerate their project by “multiple years”.

Dr Ewan Birney, director of EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute, said the AlphaFold predicted structures were “one of the most important datasets since the mapping of the human genome”.

DeepMind has teamed up with EMBL to make the AlphaFold code and protein structure predictions openly available to the global scientific community.

Dr Hassabis said DeepMind planned to vastly expand the coverage in the database to almost every sequenced protein known to science – over 100 million structures.

A group of cyber-security experts is urging companies to set up a way for people to report their workers behaving abusively online.

A number of companies have already signed up, two of Respect in Security’s founders say.

The initiative launched on Thursday.

Lisa Forte, of Red Goat Cyber Security, says she has received unsolicited explicit content from official accounts on LinkedIn and violent threats on Twitter and Instagram.

And they did not come from anonymous accounts.

‘Best solution’
Social-media platforms face regular criticism for the way they respond to reported abuse.

They use a combination of automation and human moderators to identify and respond to harassment.

“For a lot of people, it’s a no man’s land,” Ms Forte said.

“It can feel like the platforms do nothing, the police don’t do a lot, lawyers are expensive and the publicity legal action generates can be negative.

“The best solution we have, if the culprit is identifiable, is to approach their employer.

“We’re not saying a company is liable for the behaviour but it will be able to decide the most appropriate way to deal with it – which may be offering support rather than disciplinary.

“But there is a way of conducting yourself online.”

But companies are not formally liable for this behaviour.

‘Think twice’
Ms Forte’s co-founder, Rik Ferguson, from Trend Micro, said many companies had anti-bullying policies but they tended to focus on internal behaviour.

Companies signing up to the scheme are asked to commit to seven principles, including:

protecting the identity of the person who reports harassment, as far as possible
making the reporting pathway public and discussing it with employees
not “ignoring” any form of harassment
“If you know your organisation has made that commitment, it may make you think twice about doing it,” Mr Ferguson said.

“We need to take action.”

The scheme does not cover abuse sent from accounts created anonymously.

Proposed changes to EU law would force companies that transfer Bitcoin or other crypto-assets to collect details on the recipient and sender.

The proposals would make crypto-assets more traceable, the EU Commission said, and would help stop money-laundering and the financing of terrorism.

The new rules would also prohibit providing anonymous crypto-asset wallets.

The proposals could take two years to become law.

The Commission argued that crypto-asset transfers should be subject to the same anti-money-laundering rules as wire transfers.

“Given that virtual assets transfers are subject to similar money-laundering and terrorist-financing risks as wire funds transfers… it therefore appears logical to use the same legislative instrument to address these common issues,” the Commission wrote.

While some crypto-asset service providers are already covered by anti-money-laundering rules, the new proposals would “extend these rules to the entire crypto-sector, obliging all service providers to conduct due diligence on their customers,” the Commission explained.

Under the proposals, a company transferring crypto-assets for a customer would be obliged to include their name, address, date of birth and account number, and the name of the recipient.

David Gerard, author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, told the BBC: “This is just applying existing rules to crypto. This has been coming since 2019.”

He said that although these were European proposals their impact would reach much further.

“If you want to make real money, you have to follow the rules of real money,” he said.

To become law the proposals will need the agreement of member states and the European Parliament.

Video conferencing firm Zoom has struck a multibillion dollar deal to buy a cloud-based call centre operator in a bet on the future of hybrid working.

The firm announced the $14.7bn (£10.7bn) acquisition of Five9 in a blog post on Sunday.

Zoom boss Eric Yuan said the deal would allow its customers to “reimagine the way they do business”.

It marks the firm’s biggest takeover, and comes even though staff are beginning to return to the office.

Investors have been watching for clues as to how the firm would fare as social distancing restrictions lift and more people are vaccinated.

The pandemic, which prompted an abrupt shift to remote work for many businesses around the world, transformed Zoom into a household name practically overnight.

Zoom has said it does not expect growth to continue at the pace it enjoyed last year, but so far business remains strong.

The company expects sales to rise more than 40% this year, reaching more than $3.7bn (£2.66bn).

In the last three months of 2020, sales were up 370% compared to the same period in 2019, hitting $882.5m, it said in March.

The firm, which charges businesses for its remote meeting software in addition to more limited free use for the general public, said the acquisition of Five9 marked a shift in strategy. It is now prioritising its cloud-calling product Zoom Phone and conference-hosting product Zoom Rooms.

“This acquisition is… positioning us to accelerate Zoom’s growth and play an even stronger role in driving the digital future, bringing companies and their customers closer together,” its founder Eric Yuan said.

Five9’s call centre software is used by more than 2,000 clients such as Under Armour, Lululemon and Olympus, and the deal is expected to be completed in the first half of 2022 having been approved by the boards of both companies.

“This is a high-priced deal which appears to attempt to build out the Zoom Phone offering,” said Neil Campling, an analyst at Mirabaud Securities.

But he added: “Paying such a high price for a non-differentiated offering smacks of attempts to move into adjacent markets as Zoom fatigue sets in.”

A question mark has been raised over the future of hybrid working, although other tech firms such as Google and Microsoft have invested in their video-conferencing offer during the pandemic.

But others such as global workspace provider IWG have said that they expect working from home some of the time will become the norm – especially as firms will be looking to save money and be more environmentally-friendly by using less office space.