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Hackers working for Russia are behind ongoing attacks
against German state organisations, said the BfV boss
Germany's domestic intelligence agency has accused Russia of being behind a series of cyber attacks on German state computer systems.
The BfV said a hacker group thought to work for the Russian state had attacked Germany's parliament in 2015.
This week it emerged that hackers linked to the same group had also targeted the Christian Democratic Union party of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Russia has yet to respond publicly to the accusations made by the BfV.
Sabotage threat
BfV head Hans-Georg Maassen said Germany was a perennial target of a hacker gang known as Sofacy/APT 28 that some other experts also believe has close links with the Russian state. This group is believed by security experts to be affiliated with the Pawn Storm group that has been accused of targeting the CDU party.
Sofacy/APT 28 is believed to have been formed in 2004 and has been blamed for a wide range of attacks on both governments and financial institutions.
The attacks on German state organisations and institutions were carried out to gather intelligence data, Mr Maassen said.
He added that his agency had been monitoring the group for years. He said some of its hack attacks on Germany had been ongoing for more than a decade.
The attack on the German parliament sought to install software that would have given the attackers permanent access to computers used by staff and MPs. Other attacks involved gathering data about critical infrastructure such as power plants and other utilities, Mr Maassen said.
"Cyber space is a place of hybrid warfare," he said. "It opens up new operating areas for espionage and sabotage."
Mr Grayston said he took this photo of the house his
co-founder had built
Crowdfunding website Kickstarter is investigating claims that money given to a tech project was instead used to build a home.
One co-founder of the Peachy Printer scheme accused the other of stealing more than 324,000 Canadian dollars ($353,000; £174,000) and spending it.
Efforts to make the device have been halted. A confession video has been posted to the site as proof.
But the alleged thief told the BBC it had been filmed "under duress".
The loss is said to have come to light in 2014, but there had been no mention of it in the dozens of development updates posted to Kickstarter until now.
Missing money
The firm had marketed its tech as being the "world's
most affordable 3D printer"
The company Rinnovated Design had promised to build the first 3D printer and scanner costing $100.
It raised 651,091 Canadian dollars for the scheme via Kickstarter and a further 74,167 Canadian dollars via another crowdfunding site, Indiegogo. Both platforms let start-ups seek donations from the public, and offer backers rewards that correspond to the value of the pledges.
Rinnovated Design was co-owned by Rylan Grayston, who headed up technical development, and David Boe, who took care of financial matters.
In a lengthy statement on the business's website, Mr Grayston said the funds raised by the campaigns were initially put in Mr Boe's personal account, from which he took 324,716.01 Canadian dollars.
Mr Grayston said that when Mr Boe "came clean" he agreed to repay the sum, and a decision was taken not to make this public.
"He claims to have spent the Kickstarter funds on materials for his house, but he hadn't gotten the construction far enough to get that value back out through his mortgage draws," wrote Mr Grayston.
"As stated in the repayment agreement, the plan was that as David reached each stage of his build, he would payout a percentage [of] the draw to Peachy Printer.
"David made good on the first payment, and defaulted on the final two.
"The last of these payments was on March 2nd 2015, after which I was unable to contact him for months. When I finally did speak to him, I found that he had gotten a lawyer and quite drastically changed his tone."
Mr Grayston said he notified police in October 2015 after failing to resolve the matter.
Confession clip
A video posted to YouTube - said to have been filmed in 2014 but only made live on 10 May 2016 - appears to show Mr Boe confessing to the alleged crime.
Mr Boe - seen on the left - was questioned by his business
partner who filmed the interview
"I made a mistake, I apologise and I am trying to make it right," he said.
"Everyone knows it's wrong and I'm not trying to deny it."
When the BBC spoke to Mr Boe he was not aware that Mr Grayston had released the footage and other documents.
Mr Boe confirmed he had appeared in the video, but declined to comment about whether he had actually taken money.
"That was taken under duress, extreme duress, at that date," he said.
"They actually told me exactly what they wanted said in that.
"I'm not going to talk about [the allegations] right now."
Kickstarter said the matter under was investigation.
"Anyone who abuses our system and the trust of our community exposes themselves to legal action," said its spokesman David Gallagher.
"We're reaching out to the law enforcement officials who are already looking into this case, and will assist however we can."
But the Canadian police indicated the case was at an early stage.
"The Saskatoon Police Service received a complaint in November 2015 regarding the theft of crowdsourced funds from a 3D printer company," said its director of public affairs Alyson Edwards.
"Since then detectives from our economic crime section have conducted some preliminary investigation, however they are still waiting for more information from the company's owners.
"Once they receive that information the crown prosecutor will be consulted to determine if this is a criminal case, or if it should proceed through civil litigation."
'Mind-boggling'
Mr Grayston could not be reached for comment.
Funds for the Peachy Printer were also raised via the
Indiegogo service
But on his project's Kickstarter page he acknowledged some of the details were "mind-boggling".
"I fully expect that some people will think this is just a big conspiracy, but if that were true do you really think I'd be asking you to write to my local police?
"After looking at all the evidence, if you still think this is a scam - I encourage you to report that to my city police."
Several of the project's backers posted sympathetic messages to the page, but others wrote that they had more questions, including why it took so long for the alleged theft to be announced.
Mr Grayston has said that Rinnovated Design is now "broke" after spending the rest of the money on development and wages.
However, he added that he still intends to "spin operations back up" at a later date.
Facebook has adapted Moments to work around EU and Canadian
privacy laws
Facebook has launched its facial-recognition-powered photo-sharing app in the EU and Canada.
The program - Moments - was released in some countries in 2015, but withheld elsewhere because of local data privacy rules.
The company has created a different version of the software to get around these restrictions.
But it acknowledged the new edition required "a little bit of work" for users to get the most out of it.
Moment's core features are that it automatically groups together photos featuring the same friend or friends, and then makes it easy to share the pictures with them if they have installed the same app.
In the original version, the snaps are automatically tagged with people's names, because Facebook is able to match them to other photos in its wider database.
But data protection watchdogs in the EU and Canada had expressed concern their citizens would have no way to opt out of the process.
To address this, the adapted app now links together photos of similar-looking faces but requires the user to identify who they are.
Moments is not the only app to use facial recognition to sort images.
Google Photos is the most popular alternative to do so.
But the search giant has yet to extend the facility to Europe, to avoid falling foul of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner.
EU and Canada-based users will have to manually identify
each of their friends
'Private' sharing
Facebook has not disclosed how many people have signed up to Moments since its release on the US's iOS and Android stores 11 months ago.
However, the company has said more than 600 million pictures have been shared via the app so far.
"Our primary purpose is to solve a problem that we know that people have, where they never get the photos that their friends take of them," the app's product manager Will Ruben told the BBC.
"We view that as a pretty different type of sharing than might happen on Facebook, where people share photos more broadly with a large group of friends or even publicly.
Moments allows its users to keep track of whom they have
shared their pictures with
"Moments is closer to the type of sharing that might happen these days on Whatsapp or other [private] messaging apps - but it places the photos together into a collection."
Users decide which photos are shared with the people labelled in them, and can withdraw access at a later point.
They can also use the app to turn selected photos into slideshows that can be shared to their Facebook wall and elsewhere.
Local matches
The technique - which Facebook refers to as "facial clustering" - still relies on some processing being done beyond the user's handset, but Facebook said it had taken great lengths to comply with the EU and Canada's privacy rules.
Google's Photos app also identifies different friends - but
the facility is not offered in Europe
"A cropped low-resolution of the photo is uploaded [to the cloud] so that your phone gets a numerical representation of that face," Mr Ruben said.
"But that number is not stored anywhere on our servers, and it is only used to compare against the other photos on your phone.
"No comparison is being done on the server."
Copies of the images are, however, stored at Facebook's data centres as soon as they are shared with someone else.
"Facebook has notified this office of the Moments app and advised us that within the EU version of the Moments app they do not control or initiate the use of any feature recognition technology," said a spokeswoman for the Irish Data Protection Commissioner.
"Consideration of this development is ongoing and we will more closely look at the technical details of the app following its release."
Limited labelling
Mr Ruben said Facebook believed the original version of Moments remained the "best version" but the new edition was still "easy to use.
"You don't need to label all the faces on your phone," he said.
"The idea is to share with the people closest to you, so usually it's just the top 10 people or so."
Moments allows its users to keep track of whom they have
shared their pictures with
One industry-watcher said the lack of auto-tagging might slow the app's adoption.
"Any additional effort that people have to put into a service creates a barrier," said Ben Wood, from the tech consultancy CCS Insight.
"The seamless experience in other markets is therefore more compelling.
"However, once people invest a little time, they will see the benefits, and it could catch on, on that basis."
Facebook's use of facial recognition has, however, caused controversy in the US.
Last week, a US judge refused to block a class action case in which it is claimed the technology violates Illinois's Biometric Privacy Act.
The law states biology-based identifiers - including facial maps and fingerprints - cannot be collected without their owners' explicit consent.
Dr Wright said he did not "have the courage" to
prove he is Satoshi Nakamoto
The Australian entrepreneur who has claimed to be the inventor of Bitcoin has reneged on a promise to present new "proof" to support his case.
Craig Wright had pledged to move some of the virtual currency from one of its early address blocks, an act many believe can only be done by the tech's creator.
This would have addressed complaints that earlier evidence he had published online was misleading.
Dr Wright said that he was "sorry".
"I believed that I could put years of anonymity and hiding behind me," he blogged.
"But, as the events of this week unfolded and I prepared to publish the proof of access to the earliest keys, I broke. I do not have the courage. I cannot.
"When the rumours began, my qualifications and character were attacked. When those allegations were proven false, new allegations have already begun. I know now that I am not strong enough for this."
Dr Wright's claims were first reported by the BBC, the Economist and GQ magazine on Monday.
'Extraordinary proof'
Dr Wright had earlier indicated that he would transfer some bitcoins from "block 9" by using a private key thought to be known only to Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym used by the person or team that designed the crypto-currency.
Satoshi is known to have used the address in 2009 to send coins to a computer scientist.
On Monday, he had posted what seemed to be evidence that he had Satoshi's key by describing a process that led to the creation of a "digital signature".
But soon after, this was attacked by security researchers who linked the signature to an earlier Satoshi Bitcoin transaction that could be found via a search engine.
Dr Wright subsequently wrote that he was the victim of "false allegations" and would prove his case by both moving the coins and by sharing "independently verifiable documents".
Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright says he is Mr Bitcoin
Still convinced
Dr Wright's claims had initially been bolstered by the fact that two senior members of the Bitcoin Foundation - an organisation set up to protect and promote the virtual currency - had said they were convinced he was indeed behind the technology.
Dr Wright had shown Gavin Andresen and Jon Matonis other evidence in private.
He apologised to the two men in his latest blog.
"I know that this weakness will cause great damage to those that have supported me, and particularly to Jon Matonis and Gavin Andresen," he wrote.
"I can only hope that their honour and credibility is not irreparably tainted by my actions. They were not deceived, but I know that the world will never believe that now. I can only say I'm sorry. And goodbye."
Mr Matonis has tweeted that there "won't be another Satoshi".
Image copyrightTwitter
The BBC understands that this tweet signifies that Mr Matonis still believes Dr Wright is indeed Satoshi.
'Chutzpah'
"A lot more people in the Bitcoin community are going to be unconvinced of Dr Wright's claims than will believe he is Satoshi, based upon what's happened to date," commented Dr Garrick Hileman, an economic historian at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.
"But many of the doubters don't want to be convinced. Satoshi has been mythologised and if you pull back the curtain, you shatter a lot of people's fantasies.
"There are very credible people besides Gavin and Jon who still think he is Satoshi - people who are privy to other information and whose judgement I respect.
"But personally, I have more questions than answers at this point."
Security researcher Dan Kaminsky was more sceptical.
"I'm glad it's over," he said.
"I can't believe Wright's last scheme was to demand £5 be sent to the real Satoshi. I wouldn't call that courage but it's definitely chutzpah."
Dr Wright's website no longer contains his original blogs, but only his final message.
How Bitcoin works
Image copyrightGetty Images
Bitcoin is often referred to as a new kind of currency.
But it may be best to think of its units being virtual tokens rather than physical coins or notes.
However, like all currencies its value is determined by how much people are willing to exchange it for.
To process Bitcoin transactions, a procedure called "mining" must take place, which involves a computer solving a difficult mathematical problem with a 64-digit solution.
For each problem solved, one block of bitcoins is processed. In addition the miner is rewarded with new bitcoins.
This provides an incentive for people to provide computer processing power to solve the problems.
To compensate for the growing power of computer chips, the difficulty of the puzzles is adjusted to ensure a steady stream of several thousand new bitcoins a day. There are about 15 million bitcoins currently in existence.
To receive a bitcoin a user must have a Bitcoin address - a string of 27-34 letters and numbers - which acts as a kind of virtual post-box to and from which the bitcoins are sent.
Since there is no registry of these addresses, people can use them to protect their anonymity when making a transaction.
These addresses are in turn stored in Bitcoin wallets which are used to manage savings.
They operate like privately run bank accounts - with the proviso that if the data is lost, so are the bitcoins owned.
The man who has identified himself as the creator of Bitcoin plans to provide further proof to his claim.
Craig Wright's spokesman told the BBC that he would "move a coin from an early block" belonging to the crypto-currency's inventor "in the coming days".
The Australian entrepreneur announced he was behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto on Monday.
Critics have said that the evidence produced to date is unconvincing.
You can read the strongest case for the prosecution in this post on Github, where Wright's blog is described as "flimflam and hokum which stands up to a few minutes of cursory scrutiny, and demonstrates a competent sysadmin's level of familiarity with cryptographic tools, but ultimately demonstrates no non-public information about Satoshi."
Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright says he is Mr Bitcoin
The author goes on to speculate that Craig Wright "used amateur magician tactics to distract non-technical or non-expert staff of the BBC and the Economist during a stage-managed demonstration."
It's not completely unfair to describe me and Mark Ward - the other BBC reporter at the briefing - as non-technical or non-expert. Indeed, in yesterday's blog I said this: "What we saw seemed impressive - though it would need a far higher level of expertise than we possess to be certain."
But what I also said was that Jon Matonis - a senior director at the Bitcoin Foundation - was present at the briefing and actually talked us through the process being demonstrated by Craig Wright. He had told us earlier that he had first suspected Craig was Satoshi last year, after meeting him at a Bitcoin convention in Australia, and in recent weeks had spent a lot of time with him and seen evidence he found compelling.
We also knew that the Bitcoin Foundation's chief scientist Gavin Andresen, a respected figure I had interviewed a couple of years ago, was going to say that he believed Craig was Satoshi.
Media captionBitcoin scientist Gavin Andresen believes Craig Wright's claim
On Monday morning, conspiracy theories began to spread that Andresen had been hacked and these were not his views. I explained to a few people that we'd soon know as he was due to speak at a New York conference, and a few hours later up he popped to say, no, he hadn't been hacked, and yes, he was convinced by Craig Wright.
The trouble is that Dr Wright's blog has not convinced the wider public.
He had told me last week that he intended it to be convoluted. He wanted to show those who doubted his intellectual capabilities that he really knew what he was talking about - instead he has managed to make them more suspicious.
This morning, I have managed to reach Jon Matonis, who is at a cryptocurrency event in Kenya. He remains absolutely convinced by Craig Wright but agrees that the blog hasn't helped his case.
"It needs to be amended because it's not conclusive for the general public. But that does not take away from what I saw in private," he explained.
As far as I can see it, if Dr Wright can move one of Satoshi's bitcoins - as promised - that should convince many of the doubters.
It would constitute proof that he is who he says he is - although one suspects that even then some will never believe his story.
