NEW YORK, July 2: Twice in the space of six weeks, the world has suffered major attacks of ransomware — malicious software that locks up photos and other files stored on your computer, then demands money to release them.

It’s clear that the world needs better defenses, and fortunately those are starting to emerge, if slowly and in patchwork fashion. When they arrive, we may have artificial intelligence to thank.

Ransomware isn’t necessary trickier or more dangerous than other malware that sneaks onto your computer, but it can be much more aggravating, and at times devastating. Most such infections don’t get in your face about taking your digital stuff away from you the way ransomware does, nor do they shake you down for hundreds of dollars or more.

Despite those risks, many people just aren’t good at keeping up with security software updates. Both recent ransomware attacks walloped those who failed to install a Windows update released a few months earlier.

Watchdog security software has its problems, too. With this week’s ransomware attack , only two of about 60 security services tested caught it at first, according to security researchers.

“A lot of normal applications, especially on Windows, behave like malware, and it’s hard to tell them apart,” said Ryan Kalember, an expert at the California security vendor Proofpoint.

HOW TO FIND MALWARE

In the early days, identifying malicious programs such as viruses involved matching their code against a database of known malware. But this technique was only as good as the database; new malware variants could easily slip through.

So security companies started characterizing malware by its behavior. In the case of ransomware, software could look for repeated attempts to lock files by encrypting them. But that can flag ordinary computer behavior such as file compression.

Newer techniques involve looking for combinations of behaviors. For instance, a program that starts encrypting files without showing a progress bar on the screen could be flagged for surreptitious activity, said Fabian Wosar, chief technology officer at the New Zealand security company Emsisoft. But that also risks identifying harmful software too late, after some files have already been locked up.

An even better approach identifies malware using observable characteristics usually associated with malicious intent — for instance, by quarantining a program disguised with a PDF icon to hide its true nature.

This sort of malware profiling wouldn’t rely on exact code matches, so it couldn’t be easily evaded. And such checks could be made well before potentially dangerous programs start running.

MACHINE VS. MACHINE

Still, two or three characteristics might not properly distinguish malware from legitimate software. But how about dozens? Or hundreds? Or even thousands?

For that, security researchers turn to machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence. The security system analyzes samples of good and bad software and figures out what combination of factors is likely to be present in malware.

As it encounters new software, the system calculates the probability that it’s malware, and rejects those that score above a certain threshold. When something gets through, it’s a matter of tweaking the calculations or adjusting the threshold. Now and then, researchers see a new behavior to teach the machine.

AN ARMS RACE

On the flip side, malware writers can obtain these security tools and tweak their code to see if they can evade detection. Some websites already offer to test software against leading security systems. Eventually, malware authors may start creating their own machine-learning models to defeat security-focused artificial intelligence.

Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and chief technology officer at the California vendor CrowdStrike, said that even if a particular system offers 99 percent protection, “it’s just a math problem of how many times you have to deviate your attack to get that 1 percent.”

Still, security companies employing machine learning have claimed success in blocking most malware, not just ransomware. SentinelOne even offers a $1 million guarantee against ransomware; it hasn’t had to pay it yet.

A FUNDAMENTAL CHALLENGE

So why was ransomware still able to spread in recent weeks?

Garden-variety anti-virus software — even some of the free versions — can help block new forms of malware, as many are also incorporating behavioral-detection and machine-learning techniques. But such software still relies on malware databases that users aren’t typically good at keeping up to date.

Next-generation services such as CrowdStrike, SentinelOne and Cylance tend to ditch databases completely in favor of machine learning.

But these services focus on corporate customers, charging $40 to $50 a year per computer. Smaller businesses often don’t have the budget — or the focus on security — for that kind of protection.

And forget consumers; these security companies aren’t selling to them yet. Though Cylance plans to release a consumer version in July, it says it’ll be a tough sell — at least until someone gets attacked personally or knows a friend or family member who has.

As Cylance CEO Stuart McClure puts it: “When you haven’t been hit with a tornado, why would you get tornado insurance?”-AP

SAN FRANCISCO: Supply issues have snarled the U.S. rollout of Samsung Electronics Co Ltd’s latest flagship smartphone, which will go on sale at carriers Sprint and T-Mobile later than expected, the wireless service providers said on Wednesday.

Samsung attributed the disruption to unexpectedly strong demand for the Galaxy S4, the South Korean company’s direct challenge to Apple Inc’s iPhone.

“Due to overwhelming global demand of Galaxy S4, the initial supply may be limited. We expect to fulfill inventory to meet demands in the coming weeks,” the company said in a statement.

At T-Mobile, online orders will now begin April 29 instead of Wednesday as initially planned because of “an unexpected delay with inventory deliveries.” Sprint will take online orders starting Saturday as planned, but the phone will be sold at retail outlets only as it becomes available.

“We had planned to launch this next generation of the award-winning Samsung Galaxy line-up on Saturday,” Sprint said in a statement. “Unfortunately, due to unexpected inventory challenges from Samsung, we will be slightly delayed with our full product launch.”

AT&T, on the other hand, said everything was on track and the S4 would go on sale this Saturday as planned.

“Demand is far stronger than we had expected and as a result we are having difficulties in fully meeting initial supply requests,” Lee Don-joo, head of sales and marketing at Samsung’s mobile business, told reporters in Seoul.

He said the global launch would go ahead as planned on Saturday with carriers which had agreed to receive the initial supply. The phones would be shipped to other operators once network tests had been completed.

News of the patchy rollout came a day after Samsung, in one of its signature marketing strategies, took out an eight-page, full-color insert in the Wall Street Journal heralding the arrival of the device.

And by early summer, it will have set up Samsung “Experience” stores in about 1,400 Best Buy locations, designed to showcase its line-up of mobile and other electronics devices.

It was unclear what specific issues Samsung had encountered with the Galaxy S4 debut.

Supply shortages often plague the global launches of popular smartphones. iPhone buyers once routinely waited weeks or even months to receive their purchases.

Samsung’s “S” line of smartphones spearheaded its assault against Apple in past years and was instrumental in helping the company claim top-spot in the global smartphone market.

The new S4, which sports a host of software-enabled features, is seen as stealing a headstart on what’s widely expected to be an upgraded iPhone later this year. But the phone, which Samsung has said will be available in over 150 countries by the end of April, has drawn mixed reviews so far.

The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, a widely followed gadget impresario, said the S4 was a good phone, just not a great one.

Industry watchers have said the success of the S4 could hinge on a supply back-up plan aimed at preventing a repeat of costly problems encountered in the launch of its premium smartphone last year.

Some analysts predict the new Galaxy could top 10 million unit sales in the first month after its launch, so any hiccups in the smooth delivery of core components could be disastrous.

The risks are high. A simple manufacturing error involving unsatisfactory design of handset cases cost Samsung 2 million units of lost sales in just a month after it launched the S III in May last year.

Shares in Samsung fell 0.5 percent in early Asian trade, lagging a 0.4 percent gain in the wider market.

Paul Ceglia, 39, a one-time wood pellet salesman from Wellsville, New York, was charged with mail and wire fraud over what federal prosecutors and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service said was fabricated evidence to support his claim to a large stake in Facebook through a 2003 deal with Zuckerberg.

Ceglia’s accusations against Zuckerberg had marked a bizarre twist to Facebook’s march toward its highly anticipated initial public offering in May. Facebook’s origins were also the focus of a separate legal challenge by Zuckerberg’s Harvard University classmates, the twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, in a saga chronicled in the 2010 film, “The Social Network.”

Ceglia sued the Silicon Valley company and its chief executive in 2010, claiming that a 2003 contract he signed with Zuckerberg entitled him to a stake in the social media network. Zuckerberg had done programming work for Ceglia’s company, StreetFax.com, while at Harvard University.

This past March, as part of that case, Facebook attorneys released emails sent by Zuckerberg to show Ceglia’s claims were false. The attorneys cited work by forensic experts who found that Ceglia had typed text into a Microsoft Word document and declared it was the text of emails with Zuckerberg.

Ceglia sought “a quick pay day based on a blatant forgery,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan said in a statement announcing the criminal charges. “Dressing up a fraud as a lawsuit does not immunize you from prosecution.”

A lawyer for Ceglia could not immediately be reached for comment.

“Ceglia used the federal court system to perpetuate his fraud and will now be held accountable for his criminal scheme,” Orin Snyder, a partner at law firm Gibson Dunn who is representing Facebook and Zuckerberg in the civil case, said in a statement.

PARTNERSHIP CLAIMS

In his lawsuit, filed in federal court in Buffalo, New York, Ceglia had claimed that Zuckerberg shared his plans for a social networking site with him while working at StreetFax. He contended that their contract granted him part ownership in Zuckerberg’s project in exchange for a $1,000 investment.

To build his case, Ceglia submitted what he said were emails from Zuckerberg that proved the pair had discussed the project that would eventually become Facebook.

But Zuckerberg said he had not even conceived of the idea for Facebook until December 2003, and submitted his own emails to prove his version of the timeline.

Ceglia went through a string of lawyers from prominent firms, including DLA Piper and Milberg, who worked with him on the case but later withdrew.

Ceglia was arrested at his home on Friday morning and appeared in federal court in Buffalo in the afternoon. In the hearing, a federal judge set bail at $21,000 and stayed the bail order until Monday at noon to give prosecutors a chance to appeal it, authorities said.

Each of the charges against him carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Investigators for the Postal Inspection Service, which is conducting the probe, made the arrest following Ceglia’s return to the United States this week after spending time out of the country, according to a source familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly on the case.

The judge in Friday’s hearing ordered Ceglia and his family to surrender their travel documents.

Separately on Friday, Massachusetts fined Citigroup Inc $2 million to settle charges that two bank analysts improperly released confidential information about Facebook’s financials before the technology company went public.

The case is USA v. Paul Ceglia, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.

(Additional reporting by Nate Raymond; editing by Martha Graybow, Bernadette Baum and Matthew Lewis)

SEATTLE (Reuters) – U.S. shoppers woke up with mild Surface fever on Friday, lining up in moderate numbers to buy Microsoft’s groundbreaking tablet computer designed to challenge Apple’s iPad.

The global debut of the Windows 8 operating system was greeted with pockets of enthusiasm, but not the mania reserved for some previous Apple Inc launches.

Microsoft is positioning the slick new computing device, which runs a limited version of Windows and Office with a thin, click-on keyboard cover, as a perfect combination of PC and tablet that is good for work as well as entertainment.

“I like the flexibility of having the keyboard and the touch capability,” said Mike Gipe, 50, who works in sales for bank Barclays, and was planning to buy a Surface tablet at Microsoft’s pop-up store in Times Square in New York.

“It’s the combination of having the consumer stuff and the work stuff,” he said, looking forward to using Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations on the new device.

The Times Square store was the first to sell the Surface — Microsoft’s first ever own-brand computer — and other Windows 8 devices late on Thursday and will be open through the holiday shopping season. On Friday morning it was crowded with a mix of tourists and local office workers, but the cash tills were not jammed.

“With the other tablets you’re a consumer. With this you can have input,” said Peter Townsend, on vacation in New York from Australia with his wife, who bought a Surface tablet because he liked the keyboard.

Mark Pauluch, 28, who works for a New York private equity firm, said he would like a Surface because he does not want to take a laptop on a plane, but was disappointed when the sales representative told him the wifi-only Surface would not work with Cisco VPN networking.

“I can’t use this to replace my work laptop unless it supports VPN,” he said.

MIDWEST, WEST COAST

Elsewhere in the United States, there was solid but not overwhelming interest for the Surface.

“It’s a good tablet. I am not a huge i-anything fan, I like Windows,” said Matt Shanahan, a software developer who drove four hours to the tiny Michigan Avenue pop-up store in Chicago from Grand Rapids, Michigan to buy a Surface. “My friend and I are software developers and this gives us an opportunity to develop new apps,” he said.

In a pop-up store at the San Francisco Centre mall about 50 people lined up to buy the new Surface.

“On an iPad you have to use half the screen for a keyboard, or buy an accessory. I love that the Surface is so integrated, that you can type and use Word and all my other programs,” said Malte von Sehested, a textbook creator who bought a Surface.

“With the Surface you get a steeper learning curve — I had to get someone to show me how to side-swipe, swipe out to get the menus for instance,” he said. “It may take a week, before it all becomes natural. That could be a problem for Microsoft. My old dad, he would get hit by that steeper learning curve.”

ANALYSTS PATIENT

Wall Street and tech industry experts failed to show great enthusiasm for Windows 8, but were prepared to give Microsoft time to succeed.

“Microsoft did not come out with Windows 8 thinking it will be an overnight success,” said Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets. “But there’s hope that this could be the silver bullet of growth (for Microsoft) as well as giving the PC industry some optimism that there’s better days ahead.”

The next six to 12 months is a “crucial period” for Microsoft to get traction with consumers, added Ives.

Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at tech research firm Forrester, said consumers may be best served waiting for tablets running the full Windows 8 Pro and Intel Corp chips, which are due out early next year.

“Windows 8 has a lot of great features, but RT has a long way to go,” she said, citing a lack of apps and poor video performance on the Surface.

“It’s not really a PC. RT is too restricted. Some people will be happier with the full Windows 8,” she said.

Microsoft shares were up 33 cents at $28.21 on Nasdaq on Friday. Apple shares were down slightly after disappointing earnings on Thursday.

(Reporting By Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Chicago, Sinead Carew and Nicola Leske in New York, Edwin Chan in San Francisco; Editing by Alden Bentley)

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Apple Inc.’s pencil-thin, smaller iPad will cost much more than its competitors, signaling that the company isn’t going to get into a mini-tablet price war.

The company unveiled the iPad Mini on Tuesday, with a screen about two-thirds the size of the full model, and half the weight. Customers can begin ordering the new model on Friday. In a surprise, Apple also revamped its flagship, full-sized iPad just six months after the launch of the latest model.

Apple’s late founder Steve Jobs once ridiculed a small tablet from a competitor as a “tweener” that was too big and too small to compete with either smartphones or tablets. Now Apple’s own Mini enters a growing small-tablet market dominated by Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle Fire.

Apple is charging $329 and up for the Mini — a price that fits into the Apple product lineup between the latest iPod Touch ($299) and the iPad 2 ($399). Company watchers had been expecting Apple to price the iPad Mini at $250 to $300 to compete with the Kindle Fire, which starts at $159. Barnes & Noble Inc.’s Nook HD and Google Inc.’s Nexus 7 both start at $199.

“Apple had an opportunity to step on the throat of Amazon and Google, yet decided to rely on its brand and focus on (profit) margin,” said Bill Kreher, an analyst with brokerage Edward Jones.

Apple shares fell $20.67, or 3.3 percent, to close at $613.36 after the price was announced. Shares of Barnes & Noble jumped 88 cents, or 6.1 percent, to $15.32. Shares of Amazon rose 53 cents, or 0.2 percent, to $234.31.

Apple has sold more than 100 million iPads since their debut in April 2010. Analysts expect Apple to sell 5 million to 10 million iPad Minis before the year is out.

Apple starts taking orders for the new model on Friday. The iPad Mini will be competing for the attention of gadget shoppers with the release that same day of computers and tablets running Windows 8, Microsoft’s new operating system.

Wi-Fi-only models will ship on Nov. 2. Later, the company will add models capable of accessing cellular, LTE data networks.

The screen of the iPad Mini is 7.9 inches on the diagonal, making it larger than the 7-inch screens of the competitors. It also sports two cameras, on the front and on the back, which the competitors don’t.

The iPad Mini is as thin as a pencil and weighs 0.68 pounds, half as much as the full-size iPad with its 9.7-inch screen.

The screen resolution is 1024 by 768 pixels, the same as the iPad 2 and a quarter of the resolution of the flagship iPad, which starts at $499.

The new model has better apps and is easier to use than competitors such as Google’s Nexus, said Avi Greengart, a consumer electronics analyst with Current Analysis.

“This really is not in the same category as some of the other 7-inch tablets,” he said. “And that’s before you consider that it has a premium design — it’s made of metal that’s extremely lightweight.”

Jobs attacked the whole idea of smaller tablets in his last appearance on a conference call with analysts in October 2010.

“The reason we wouldn’t make a 7-inch tablet isn’t because we don’t want to hit a price point. It’s because we don’t think you can make a great tablet with a 7-inch screen,” Jobs said. “The 7-inch tablets are tweeners, too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with an iPad.”

Job’s chief objection was that a smaller screen would make it hard to hit buttons on the screen with the fingers — never mind that Apple’s iPhone, with an even smaller screen, was already a hit at the time.

Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue started working on changing Jobs’ mind. In an email sent to other Apple managers in January 2011, Cue said the CEO had started warming to the idea of a smaller tablet. The email surfaced as part of Apple’s patent trial against Samsung Electronics Co. this year. Jobs died last October.

Company watchers have been expecting the iPad Mini for a year and most of the details, except the price, had leaked out.

Apple also said it’s upgrading its full-size iPad, doubling the speed of the processor. Previously, the company has updated the iPad once a year.

The fourth-generation iPad will have a better camera and work on more LTE wireless data networks around the world. Apple is also replacing the 30-pin dock connector with the new, smaller Lightning connector introduced with the iPhone 5 a month ago.

The price of the new full-size model stays the same as the previous version, starting at $499 for a Wi-Fi-only version with 16 gigabytes of memory.

Apple also introduced a 13-inch MacBook Pro laptop with a Retina display sporting four times the resolution of the older model.

The new model, which follows a 15-inch MacBook Pro with a Retina display introduced in June, goes on sale Tuesday for $1,699.

The old MacBook Pro will still be sold, starting at $1,199.

The new model dispenses with an optical disc drive and a traditional hard drive. Instead, it uses solid-state flash memory. This makes it 20 percent thinner and at 3.75 pounds, nearly a pound lighter than the previous model.

Apple also eliminated the optical drive from its new iMac desktop computer, helping slim the edges down to 5 millimeters, one-fifth the thickness of the old model. That makes the edges thinner than most stand-alone computer monitors. It bulges in middle of the back, however.

An iMac model with a 21.5-inch screen will start shipping in November for $1,299 and up. A 27-inch version will start at $1,799.

___

Svensson contributed from New York.

Apple refreshed its lineup of Mac computers on Tuesday. It unveiled a 13-inch MacBook Pro with a sharper screen and introduced an iMac storage drive that combines the speed of flash memory and the capacity of traditional hard drives. Here are prices and other details on the new products.

MODELS AND PRICES:

Apple Inc. introduced a new MacBook Pro with a 13-inch screen measured diagonally. It sports a sharper, Retina display, which has a resolution of 2560 by 1600 pixels. That is slightly lower than the 2880 by 1800 pixels of its 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina, but is far better the 1280 by 800 resolution of the existing, 13-inch MacBook Pro without a Retina display.

Prices vary depending on how much flash memory the computer comes with and the speed of the Intel processor. The base model comes with a 2.5 gigahertz dual-core Intel i5 processor.

— 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, i5 processor with 128 gigabytes of flash storage, $1,699

— 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, i5 processor with 256 GB flash storage, $1,999

These were the models unveiled in June and still available:

— 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, 2.3 GHz quad-core i7 processor with 256 GB flash storage, $2,199

— 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, 2.6 GHz quad-core i7 processor with 512 GB flash storage, $2,799

— Non-Retina 13-inch MacBook Pro, 2.5 GHz dual-core i5 processor with 500 GB hard drive, $1,199

— Non-Retina 13-inch MacBook Pro, 2.9 GHz dual-core i7 processor with 750 GB hard drive, $1,499

— Non-Retina 15-inch MacBook Pro, 2.3 GHz quad-core i7 processor with 500 GB hard drive, $1,799

— Non-Retina 15-inch MacBook Pro, 2.6 GHz quad-core i7 processor with 750 GB hard drive, $2,199

Apple also introduced a new line of iMacs. The computers have a super-thin edge that is 5 millimeters (0.2 inch) thick, although the unit is more bulbous at the point where it connects with the stand. The new model achieves its severe thinness in part by eliminating the optical disc drive. Apple has been leaving those drives out of its most recent laptop models as well.

Prices vary by screen size, the amount of storage and the processor speed. The base model comes with a 1 terabyte hard drive and a 2.7 gigahertz quad-core Intel i5 processor. Apple also introduced its Fusion Drive, which combines flash and hard drive storage in one interface. Apple says it’s nearly as fast as flash memory on its own and is available as an option instead of the regular hard drive.

— 21.5-inch iMac, 2.7 GHz quad-core i5 processor, 1 terabyte hard drive, $1,299

— 21.5-inch iMac, 2.9 GHz quad-core i5 processor, 1 TB hard drive, $1,499

— 27-inch iMac, 2.9 GHz quad-core i5 processor, 1 TB hard drive, $1,799

— 27-inch iMac, 3.2 GHz quad-core i5 processor, 1 TB hard drive, $1,999

Apple updated its Mac Mini computer as well with the following specifications:

— 2.5 GHz dual-core i5 processor, 500GB hard drive, $599

— 2.3 GHz quad-core i7 processor, 1 TB hard drive, $799

— 2.3 GHz quad-core i7 processor, two 1 TB hard drives, $999

AVAILABILITY:

The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display is available immediately online, at Apple stores and other retailers. The 21.5-inch iMac will be available in November and the 27-inch iMac will be available in December. The Mac mini is available immediately.