Cyberattack on South Korea was part of 4-year spying campaign

South Korea has been under a concerted cyberattack for the last four years, according to a comprehensive new report (PDF) released Monday by security firm McAfee. That means the hack that crippled three TV broadcasters and two banks in March was possibly just the tip of the iceberg.
What has been the goal of these hackers? To steal South Korean government and military secrets, according to McAfee.
"Our analysis of this attack -- known first as Dark Seoul and now as Operation Troy -- has revealed that in addition to the data losses of the MBR wiping, the incident was more than cybervandalism," McAfee's report reads. "The attacks on South Korean targets were actually the conclusion of a covert espionage campaign."
Initially, in March, it was revealed that servers in South Korea were victims of a massive coordinated attack that erased data from tens of thousands of computers. At first, the government blamed China for the hack, and then pointed the finger at North Korea.
According to McAfee, it's still not clear who was behind the stunt. But, the security firm has garnered far more information about the attackers and their methods.

Dubbing the hacking campaign "Operation Troy," McAfee says the attacks were a coordinated effort between two groups called the "Whois Team" and the "NewRomanic Cyber Army Team." It's possible, McAfee says, that these two teams may have been working for the same leadership. The malware used in Operation Troy included two Trojans and a wiper that installed themselves on users' computers via file transfers from online bulletin boards and discussion forums. According to McAfee, once the malware was installed, it could spy on users' computers and then destroy the hard drive.
"McAfee Labs can connect the Dark Seoul and other government attacks to a secret, long-term campaign that reveals the true intention of the Dark Seoul adversaries: attempting to spy on and disrupt South Korea's military and government activities," the report reads. "From our analysis we have established that Operation Troy had a focus from the beginning to gather intelligence on South Korean military targets."

Another Amazon victim -- this time it's Barnes & Noble's CEO

Barnes & Noble Chief Executive William Lynch has resigned, following the bookseller's long fight for a Nook tablet that rivals Amazon's Kindle.
It marks the departure of a tech-focused executive who rose to the company's helm from its online business, and puts more authority in the hands of Leonard Riggio, Barnes & Noble's chairman and biggest shareholder.
Through a wave of acquisitions, Riggio built the chain into the country's biggest bookseller, but the company has struggled to find its bearing as Amazon first undermined its traditional book business and then outgunned it on reading devices.

Barnes & Noble isn't searching for a CEO successor. Instead it is reviewing its strategy and will "update when appropriate." The heads of its Retail Group, college business, and Nook Media unit -- a position Michael P. Huseby will step out of the CFO role to take -- will all report to Riggio instead.
Barnes & Noble last month said it would pull out of color tablet design and production. Though it will to continue to design e-reading devices like the black-and-white Simple Touch, it will bring third-party manufacturers into a partnership for products like its Nook HD and Nook HD+.
That announcement came within a bleak quarterly report. Barnes & Noble's Nook sales fell 34 percent in the company's fourth quarter.

Graph Search: 3 things Facebook needs to get right

As core to Facebook as News Feed and Timeline, Graph Search is now rolling out to hundreds of millions of users in the U.S., bringing with it the promise of uncharted exploration and the potential for substantial advertising dollars.
First unveiled in January, Graph Search is a social-network search engine that ingests natural language queries on people, places, and things and spits out results previously hidden inside Facebook's world. The engine, referred to as a "third pillar" product by the company, finally gives people a way to surf through forgotten memories or locate shared moments with friends.
Really, though, Graph Search is less about helping you uncover old photos and more about taking you down a rabbit hole of discovery where your quest to know more about someone or something is never quite satisfied, and everything you find inspires you to go deeper into this underground world where people are intertwined by their connections, interests, photos, and adventures.
Despite speed and language comprehension improvements, this new dimension is still far too difficult to navigate, potentially very unsettling, and not yet available on mobile, where Facebook users are spending more of their time. Facebook has its work cut out for it if Graph Search is going to be a commercial hit that lives up to Wall Street's expectations.
Here's what Facebook needs to get right:
Make it intuitive

When you think of Facebook Graph Search you should imagine the endless types of queries you can perform. It's as if the social network has made available to you everything your curious and twisted self could ever want to know.
Forget scanning your crush's or ex's Timeline to indulge your crazy -- his or her Facebook relationships and activities are available for deeper dissecting with a little Graph Search know-how. Try a "friends of [crush] who live in [his/her city]" query or a "photos of [crush] in [his/her city]" query if you want a closer peek at this person's life. Both seemingly harmless searches can, depending on friends of friends' privacy settings, provide an interesting window into the life of your object of affection. It's a view you may not really want to see, but one you probably can't help yourself from taking -- once you know the option is there.
Graph Search as a stalker's paradise, innocent or otherwise, is one of the more compelling use cases of the search engine, at least in terms of upping member engagement, as it has the potential to keep people glued to the social network for hours as they investigate their way through little clues or torture themselves trying to find photographic evidence of liaisons. Though these self-indulgent options exist, Facebook does a lousy job at exposing the capabilities of its search engine to the average person. Newbies get a little tutorial that introduce them to the omni-search bar, but the crash course is generic and will be forgotten in a few days or weeks.
In my own experiences with Graph Search, I defaulted back to basic searches for people and Pages after just a few weeks, simply because the search engine forces you to think too much about what you want to find. Query suggestions have improved with the wider release, meaning that Facebook should be better at guessing what you want as you type. The search bar itself is also now more instructive with a prompt that reads: "Search for people, places, and things."
Still, Graph Search is not as obvious or intuitive as it should be. This is a problem. Graph Search will flop as a pillar product that engages users and generates revenue if the company doesn't make its unique advantages plainly apparent to the average Facebook user.
Facebook needs to make you safe

There's something unsettling about Facebook making an unexpected connection between you and something you've shown interest in, and then highlighting that behavior to an undefined group of people. "Friends of my friends who like weed," is one telling query where you can find potheads in your extended network who probably don't realize their extracurricular preferences are on display to strangers.
Sure, Graph Search obeys the privacy settings of your posts and Facebook encourages you to view and adjust what groups of people can see your stuff, but those measures won't prevent embarrassing revelations from surfacing.
Graph Search could act like a wake-up call that encourages people to pay more attention to their privacy settings, cut back on their likes or updates, or leave Facebook altogether. History tells us that a mass exodus won't happen, but there's plenty of evidence to suggest that member attention, especially the attention of tweens and teens, is shifting to other, more private applications, in part because of a fear of being held accountable for incriminating posts or photos.
Graph Search will only exacerbate this concern of being overexposed, so Facebook needs to figure out a way to ameliorate fears and make people feel safe, especially since the situation will become infinitely stickier once Graph Search is capable of surfacing old status updates.
Ads that make sense

For Facebook and its investors, Graph Search's greatest hope is to bring in substantial advertising dollars, perhaps on the scale of Google's search ad business. That hope, reflected in a small Monday gain for Facebook's otherwise sagging shares, is far from being realized.
While Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter initially pegged revenue from the curated search tool at between $3 billion and $4 billion by 2015, Facebook has set revenue expectations extremely low. "I do want to temper near-term expectations a little bit on revenue coming from other areas like Gifts or Graph Search," CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors and analysts in January.
Thus far, the company has only tested page-two advertising placements on Graph Search results pages, and the ads are not targeted to a person's queries, which makes them generic space-fillers. It also seems that sponsored results, a model Google employs, may not work with Facebook's search engine.
But by helping people locate nearby vegan restaurants or bars their friends like, Facebook is in a position to connect local businesses on the platform with would-be customers and capitalize on the local search market, an area dominated by Yelp. The company has partially laid a foundation for this by remodeling mobile Pages to highlight essential business information such as location and contact info.
Whatever revenue-generating tactic Facebook eventually tacks on to Graph Search, the company will need to be extra-sensitive given the personal nature of search results. Facebook hasn't always shown attention to detail when it comes to advertising. Recently, the company decided to remove ads appearing alongside controversial content on Pages and in groups after some advertisers threatened to suspend their advertising campaigns.
This puts Facebook in the tricky spot of needing to appease Wall Street with monetizing Graph Search while not alienating users or advertisers.

iOS 7 beta 3 brings bug fixes, other improvements

As expected, Apple on Monday released its third beta of iOS 7, exactly two weeks after it came out with the second iteration of the software for developers.
The release is in line with earlier speculation that the company planned to dole out betas in two-week cycles.
The new version includes some general performance improvements and fixes a number of issues that had cropped up in the second beta, including problems with iCloud, AirPlay, and the Messages application.
The user interface received a few tweaks as well, including more transparent folders, redesigned music controls, and the calendar now shows which days you have events on. The update also brought with it enhancements to FaceTime and a better Siri voice.
It's standard practice for Apple to release several beta versions of the software before it debuts it to the public. Apple has said iOS 7 will come to the public in the fall. iOS 6 had four different beta versions between its June debut and late September release last year, so we can expect at least one more beta to arrive for iOS 7.

BlackBerry 9720 alleged photos leak online

 

Alleged photos of the rumored BlackBerry 9720 phone have popped up online. A slew of photos hosted by Thai BlackBerry Club reveal a traditional phone equipped with the standard QWERTY keyboard. Outfitted with BlackBerry OS 7.1, the 9720 is apparently destined for emerging markets. And the specs so far would indicate a low-cost device. A User Agent Profile document discovered by tech blog site Ubergizmo points to a 480x360 pixel screen and 3G support. BlackBerry continues to be knocked around in a smartphone market dominated by Apple and Android. The company was hit by a dismal quarter in which smartphone sales were weak and more subscribers jumped ship to other platforms. BlackBerry has been pinning much of its hope on BB OS 10, which launched in January. But BB 7 devices continue to represent the majority of the company's smartphone sales. The obvious question is whether a 9720 phone could generate much consumer demand, even in emerging markets and even at a bargain-basement price?

Android still leads in U.S., but iOS grows stronger

Android remains the top dog for U.S. smartphone sales, though Apple's iOS is creeping up.
Google's mobile OS took home 52 percent of all U.S. smartphone sales from March through April, showing little gain from the same period last year, Kantar said on Monday.
At the same time, iOS grabbed 41.9 percent of smartphone sales in the U.S., an increase of 3.5 percent from a year ago. And Apple has T-Mobile to thank for at least some of that gain, according to Kantar.

"The highly anticipated release of the iPhone on T-Mobile has benefited iOS in the latest three-month period, though it has not yet impacted T-Mobile's share in the market," Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director for Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, said in a statement.
The iPhone 5 was the top-selling smartphone at T-Mobile over the three-month stretch ending May, even though the carrier had only just launched the phone in mid-April. T-Mobile also managed to lure in a lot of first-time smartphone buyers.
Among all T-Mobile subscribers who picked up an iPhone from March through May, 53 percent upgraded from a feature phone, Kantar said. That compares with the average of 45 percent of iPhone buyers who jump from a feature phone. The iPhone also stands to gain more T-Mobile customers down the road. Among T-Mobile subscribers who plan to change their phones over the coming year, 28 percent are eyeing an iPhone.
Windows Phone remained in third place among U.S. smartphone sales with a 4.6 percent share. That was up almost 1 percent from the same three-month period in 2012 but down from the sales seen in the three months ending in April.