EBay to acquire payments startup Braintree for $800 million cash

PayPal's parent company, eBay, plans to acquire payments startup Braintree for approximately US$800 million in cash to enhance PayPal's mobile capabilities.

Braintree offers a platform designed to make it easier for companies to accept payments in apps or on websites. Experienced developers should be able to integrate the platform in less than half an hour, allowing companies to start accepting payments quickly, according to the company.

EBay said that it hopes that PayPal and Braintree will be able to better support developers together. Once the acquisition is completed, Braintree will continue to operate as a separate service within PayPal, it said.

The Braintree service is used by companies like Web-based accommodation service AirBNB and taxi-hailing service Uber. It is used by merchants in more than 40 countries across North America, Europe and Australia. The merchants can accept payments in more than 130 currencies.

"By joining with PayPal, we'll be able to expand more quickly around the world. We'll have more tools to offer to our customers through our developer platform. The universe of consumers that we can reach with our services that make it easy for people to pay on a mobile device will expand significantly," Braintree's CEO William Ready said in a blog post.

Braintree's mobile application Venmo is part of the acquisition and will help to contribute to PayPal's mobile payments capabilities, eBay said in the release. PayPal's mobile payment volume is projected to be more than $20 billion this year, it added.

The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, and is expected to close late in the fourth quarter of 2013.

Loek is Amsterdam Correspondent and covers online privacy, intellectual property, open-source and online payment issues for the IDG News Service. Follow him on Twitter at @loekessers or email tips and comments to loek_essers@idg.com

Suitcase-size device may help save lifes of disaster victims

The device looks like a small piece of carry-on luggage, but it has a more important job than carrying a toothbrush, deodorant and a couple of pairs of underwear.

The suitcase-size device is a microwave transmitter designed by two U.S. government agencies to help rescue workers find living victims buried in rubble after disasters such as earthquakes, floods or bombings.

The groundbreaking technology, called FINDER or Finding Individuals for Disaster and Emergency Response, uses microwave signals to identify the breathing patterns and heart beats of disaster victims buried in rubble, has the potential to be one of the "biggest advances in urban search and rescue in the last 30 years," said John Price, program manager of the First Responders Group at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate.

The suitcase device sends a low-power microwave signal into rubble to look for heart beats and breathing patterns, and rescue workers see readouts on a tablet-size Panasonic Toughbook controller. The reflections of the microwave signal can show tiny movements in rubble piles, said Jim Lux, FINDER tax manager at the Communications Tracking and Radar Division at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The technology is based on NASA tools to measure movements of objects in space and ocean levels, Lux said.

FINDER can find living victims buried under 30 feet of crushed materials or behind 20 feet of solid concrete, and the device can distinguish between humans and animals, based on heart rates and breathing patterns, officials said.

DHS and NSA have been developing FINDER for more than a year, and this week, they tested a prototype at an urban search and rescue training site in Lorton, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. Rescue workers from search-and-rescue team Virginia Task Force 1 and the Fairfax County, Virginia, Fire and Rescue Department were able to find a woman hidden in a pile of concrete rubble within minutes.

Finding disaster victims quickly "greatly increases their chances of survival," Price said.

In previous tests of prototypes at the Lorton training center, rescue workers gave NASA and DHS some "painful" but necessary feedback, Lux said.

NASA and DHS plan to make FINDER available to search and rescue teams worldwide when it's fully tested, Lux said. The agencies are already getting suggestions from the public on other ways that the technology can be used, with a 9-year-old from India emailing Lux some suggestions recently, he said.

Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter at GrantGross. Grant's email address is grant_gross@idg.com.

Enterprises more accepting of Android, while Windows is losing ground

Enterprises are increasingly interested in developing apps for Android-based smartphones and tablets, showing how Google's OS is becoming more accepted, according to a poll. At the same time fewer are willing to spend resources on Microsoft's OSes.

For the second time, cross-platform tool company Appcelerator has queried IT directors, CEOs, development directors, CTOs and people in a number of other roles what their priorities are in the mobile market. The results hint at how the enterprise arena is slipping away from Microsoft, while at the same time acceptance for Android is growing and iOS is the number one priority.

As part of the survey, Appcelerator asked the 804 participants how interested they were in developing consumer and enterprise apps for the various mobile platforms. Apple was on top, with 80 percent saying they were very interested in developing applications for the company's smartphones and tablets, which is roughly the same response elicited by the first quarter version of the survey.

The third-highest priority was Android-based smartphones, which 71 percent of the respondents said they were very interested in, an increase of 7 percentage points from the first quarter. But unlike Apple, Google and its hardware partners have so far failed to convince enterprises that Android-based tablets are as important as smartphones based on the OS. Fifty-nine percent stated they were very interested, though that was an increase compared to 52 percent during the first quarter survey.

"Android interest is increasing ... there are probably a few reasons for that. One could certainly be because of Android's strong overall market share and with BYOD enterprises have to build apps for multiple platforms," said Nolan Wright, co-founder and CTO at Appcelerator.

After that there is a big gap down to Windows-based smartphones and tablets, at 26 percent and 25 percent, respectively, compared to 29 percent and 30 percent in the first quarter study. To add insult to injury more than 60 percent thought that Windows 8 would ultimately fail as a mobile platform.

"That is probably a reflection of market demand. I think Windows hasn't done too well in the market, and the interest for developing apps is following that. It will be interesting to see what happens with Nokia," Wright said.

Earlier this month Microsoft announced it would buy Nokia's Devices & Services business in an effort to beef up its mobility push. Wright thinks the deal could help change Windows' fortunes.

"From what we hear there is a genuine interest in the enterprise for Microsoft to have viable products. So it certainly still has an opportunity," Wright said.

But Microsoft isn't the only vendor struggling to drum up developer interest for its platform. Only 12 percent said they were very interested in developing apps for BlackBerry phones, which is two percentage points better than in the first quarter study but still a much smaller share than competing OSes.

On Friday, BlackBerry said it would as part of its efforts to stay alive refocus on enterprises. To succeed the company will have to convince them to use its devices, and an important part of that is making sure apps are available.

For enterprises that want to build applications for multiple platforms at the same time, HTML5 is an option. Sixty percent of the respondents said they were very interested in developing mobile, HTML-based Web apps, making them a higher priority than native applications for BlackBerry and Windows devices as well as Android-based tablets.

Send news tips and comments to mikael_ricknas@idg.com

Apple should be forced to conform to a standard charger, say EU politicians

Apple may be forced to abandon its proprietary 30-pin dock charger if European politicians get their way.

Members of the European Parliament's internal market committee on Thursday voted unanimously for a new law mandating a universal mobile phone charger. The MEPs want all radio equipment devices and their accessories, such as chargers, to be interoperable to cut down on electronic waste.

German MEP Barbara Weiler said she wanted to see an end to "cable chaos".

This is not the first attempt to set a standard for universal phone chargers. In 2009 the European Commission, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and leading mobile phone manufacturers drew up a voluntary agreement based on the micro USB connector.

However Apple, which sold nine million units of the iPhone 5s and 5c in just three days last week, has not adhered to the agreement despite signing up.

The draft law also lays down rules for other radio equipment, such as car door openers or modems, to ensure that they do not interfere with each other. The committee also cut some red tape, by deleting a rule that would have required manufacturers to register certain categories of devices before placing them on the market.

The committee is now expected to begin informal negotiations with the European Council in order to move the legislative process along quickly.

Follow Jennifer on Twitter at @BrusselsGeek or email tips and comments to jennifer_baker@idg.com.

Broadcom chipsets enable multiple, high-resolution in-car displays

Broadcom's latest line of wireless chipsets for cars can keep the kids quiet in the back seat, while allowing mom and dad to make calls in the front.

The new chipset family uses the fast 802.11ac Wi-Fi wireless standard for in-car connectivity, which provides the bandwidth required for multiple in-car displays and screen resolution of up to 1080p. Using the 5GHz band for video allows it to coexist with Bluetooth hands-free calls on 2.4GHz, according Broadcom.

There is also support for Wi-Fi Direct, Miracast and Passpoint. Wi-Fi Direct lets products such as smartphones, cameras and gaming devices connect to one another without joining a traditional home, office or hotspot network, while Miracast lets users stream videos and share photos among smartphones, tablets and displays.

Passpoint is a relatively new program from the Wi-Fi Alliance that aims to make it easier for users to securely connect to hotspots. Users should no longer have to search for and choose a network, request the connection to the access point (AP) each time and then in many cases re-enter their password. All that is handled by a Passpoint-compatible client.

The chipsets are also compatible with Bluetooth Smart, which can be used by devices to help obtain a specific piece of information, such as whether all the windows in a house are closed or what someone's blood glucose level is. Devices using the technology include heart-rate monitors, blood-glucose meters, smart watches, window and door security sensors, key fobs for cars, and blood-pressure cuffs, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group said on its website.

In a car, Bluetooth Smart can help monitor driver fatigue and blood alcohol content, according to Broadcom.

The BCM89335 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Smart Ready combo chip and the BCM89071 Bluetooth and Bluetooth Smart Ready chip are now shipping in small volumes. Broadcom didn't say when cars equipped with either chip would become available.

Send news tips and comments to mikael_ricknas@idg.com

Chinese 'Icefog' gang attacks Asian countries using 'hit and run' APTs

Kaspersky Lab has identified another Chinese APT campaign. Dubbed ‘Icefog’, the largely Japanese, Taiwanese and South Korean targets included a well-publicised attack on Japan’s House of Representatives in 2011.

Kaspersky Lab and others have released a steady stream of research on what is starting to look like a thriving mostly Chinese industry selling hacking expertise and espionage to governments.

In recent weeks, Symantec published a paper on a major hacking-for-hire group it called ‘Hidden Lynx’ responsible for a large number of attacks while Kaspersky itself has uncovered evidence that North Korea was trying its hand at the same chicanery with its ‘Kimsuky’ Trojan.

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Judging from Kaspersky’s latest research, Icefog looks like a smaller player than Hidden Lynx or the notorious Comment Crew/APT1 convincingly blamed for a hugely successful raid on defence contractor QinetiQ.

At first Icefog doesn’t look particularly innovative, pivoting on the same collection of tried and trusted spear-phishing and software exploit via email attacks techniques as every other APT campaign yet discovered.  The aim is to gather address books, user credentials, and documents, including those created by Office and the South Korean Hangul word processor.

One interesting variation is a ‘Macfog’ beta variant targeting 64-bit OS X users. Seeded through Chinese bulletin boards to several hundred victims and masquerading as a graphics application, Kaspersky speculates that this might be a test run for a more featured version designed to attack the platform in a future version.

The campaign’s defining characteristic is probably its command and control network, which uses a ‘hit and run’ model to set up an attack before disappearing in a month or two. This is an unusual tactic. Commercial criminals invest a lot of time and effort trying to protect their C&C; Icefog deliberately builds and dismantles it once the attack is over, a technique of obscuring its activities from security researchers.

This also makes it very hard to estimate the extent of Icefog’s activity, Kaspersky said. Dating back to 2011 at least, it had a slower year in 2012 before an uptick in 2013, but this could just be another consequence of its temporary C&C design.

“For the past few years, we’ve seen a number of APTs hitting pretty much all kinds of victims and sectors. In most cases, attackers maintain a foothold in corporate and governmental networks for years, exfiltrating terabytes of sensitive information”, said Kaspersky Lab’s director of global research, Costin Raiu.

“The 'hit and run' nature of the Icefog attacks demonstrate a new emerging trend: smaller hit-and-run gangs that are going after information with surgical precision. The attack usually lasts for a few days or weeks and after obtaining what they were looking for, the attackers clean up and leave,” he said.

“In the future, we predict the number of small, focused ‘APT-to-hire’ groups to grow, specialising in hit-and-run operations; sort of ‘cyber mercenaries’ of the modern world.”

Sectors targeted included the military, shipbuilding, maritime, computing, research, telcos, satellite firms and the media.  A range of Japanese and South Korean firms had been on the list including Lig Nex1, Selectron Industrial Company, Hanjin Heavy Industries, Korea Telecom, Fuji TV, and the the Japan-China Economic Association.

After sinkholing 14 of 70 detected C&C domains, the firm had discovered that 4,000 IP addresses had been infected, including 200 Windows PCs and 350 Macs. This was only a fraction of the true number of victims, Kaspersky said.

The motivation of the Icefog group was almost certainly commercial rather than ideological.

“In the future, we predict the number of small, focused APT-to-hire groups to grow, specializing in hit-and-run operations, a kind of 'cyber mercenaries' of the modern world,” Kaspersky’s report concludes.

Ericsson thinks small for a big solution to workplace wireless

Ericsson says it has a small solution to the big problem of weak mobile service in enterprises.

On Wednesday, the world's largest cellular network vendor introduced a radio that can fit in the palm of your hand and hook up to a full-size base station via conventional LAN cables. The so-called Radio Dot System, due to ship late next year, will let carriers fill large and medium-sized buildings with strong voice and data signals while keeping their equipment and management costs low, Ericsson said.

While traditional cellular networks are built around large outdoor "macro" cells, most mobile use happens indoors. To accommodate all that voice and data demand, mobile operators have long installed DAS (distributed antenna systems) throughout buildings and more recently have used small indoor cells, which are miniature versions of the macro cells on towers outside.

However, buying and installing the specialized DAS equipment is expensive, and managing and coordinating a collection of small individual cells around a building is complicated, Ericsson CTO Ulf Ewaldsson said. Among other things, small cells sharing the same spectrum with macro base stations have to turn down their power if they are in danger of interfering with the bigger cell, he said.

Ericsson plans to solve those problems by putting the core components of a macro cell into a building and spreading the radio parts of the cell throughout the rooms as Radio Dots. The Dots are disk-shaped units that weigh just 300 grams. The core unit, called the baseband, will be able to manage as many as 96 Radio Dots as one large cell. Another radio platform, called an IRU (indoor radio unit) will sit in between the dots and the baseband and house some other radio components. The system can be used for both 3G WCDMA and 4G LTE.

"We're splitting the radios in a new way," Ewaldsson said. "We put as little as possible in a radio dot that can do the radio transmission and the antenna piece on a wall."

As demand for coverage or capacity in the building grows, carriers will have many options for scaling up the system because all the dots are logically managed as one base station, Ewaldsson said. Also, the full-size macro baseband that the dots share will have a complete set of features, instead of the subset that's included in small cells, and can be more easily updated, he said.

Ericsson claims a Radio Dot System could cut installation time by 70 percent and capital cost by 60 percent compared with a DAS. For one thing, the links between elements will use the same type of Category 5, 6, and 7 copper cables used for conventional LANs, which are less expensive than the fiber-optic wiring typically used with a DAS, Ewaldsson said.

Enterprises may look to the Radio Dots when it comes time to replace a DAS, Ovum analyst Daryl Schoolar said. The system may also be an attractive DAS alternative because it could economically be deployed in just part of a building, rather than requiring the scale that a DAS needs, he said. But there are also other ripe opportunities for boosting indoor coverage, he said.

"It really could cover a lot of areas out there today," Schoolar said. "The prime real estate for the small cell is really going to be indoors ... because so much stuff goes on indoors."

However, the very BYOD trend that is bringing employees' own mobile devices into the workplace could make Radio Dots less attractive in some cases.

"What Ericsson is showing is a very operator specific solution, but if you have a deployment area where workers are spread out among four different mobile operators, the value of that solution is diminished," Schoolar said. "Also it locks a business into a specific operator, and that business may want more flexibility."

With a DAS, by contrast, it's typically easier to bring multiple carriers into the system, said Peter Jarich of Current Analysis. A Radio Dot System would be easier to install as an overlay, but in new construction, including a DAS is not as big a burden, Jarich said.

At least two major carriers are interested in Radio Dots. AT&T is participating with Ericsson in Wednesday's announcement, and Verizon Wireless also plans to test the system. "We have seen it, we like it and we look forward to testing and trialing it," Verizon spokesman Tom Pica said via email.

Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com