5G Rollout By 2020 In South Korea

The government of South Korea is seeking to establish the country as a world leader in 5G technologies and has pledged 1.6 trillion won (£905 million) to rollout the next generation of mobile data services by 2020.

The Ministry of Science has said in a statement to AFP, “We helped fuel national growth with 2G services in the 1990s, 3G in the 2000s and 4G around 2010. Now it is time to take pre-emptive action to develop 5G…Countries in Europe, China and the US are making aggressive efforts to develop 5G technology … and we believe there will be fierce competition in this market in a few years.”  The new 5G networks could allow users to download an 800 MB film in one second and would allow passengers on bullet trains travelling at speeds of 500 kph (310mph) to access Internet services, (the current limit is 300kph).

The government hopes to establish a trial of 5G in the next 3 years and priority will be given to developing features such as hologram transmission and Ultra HD Video.  The government claims that related industries will benefit from the rollout and they predict that operators, equipment makers and manufacturers could generate sales of 331 trillion won in the first 6 years after rollout.

The Ministry of Science hopes to enlist the support of tech giants Samsung and LG, but also wants to help the nation’s network equipment industry, which commands a far smaller worldwide market share than its device makers, which control 30 percent of the market – mainly through the Samsung brand.  Samsung itself are working on 5G technology and last year announced it had achieved speeds of 1Gbps using millimetre wave bands (these are frequencies around 28GHz), using adaptive array transceivers.

South Korea is already one of the most connected countries on the planet and has been a world leader in 4G adoption rates; now the Ministry of Science says it is taking “pre-emptive” action to gain a head start over its Asian, European and US rivals in 5G developments.

Programmer Claims Responsibility For Malware Used In Target Data Theft

A programmer from Saratov, Russia, has claimed responsibility for arming the Kaptoxa malware used to steal personal details of about 110 million customers of the US retail chain Target and other stores.

In a recent interview with the Russian website lifenews.ru, Rinat Shabayev has admitted that he modified Kaptoxa (also known as BlackPOS), a tool that can be used to test computer systems for vulnerabilities. Apparently he later sold the malware on an open market, with the knowledge that it may be used for criminal purposes.

Shabayev says he never used Kaptoxa to steal data himself. He is currently looking for a well-paid job and has already received an offer. The story seems to side with with earlier reports that part of the Kaptoxa code was written in the Russian language.

According to Shabayev, Kaptoxa (Russian for potato, written in ‘volapuk’ code) was created for sale through subversive hacker communities. While working on a modification, the programmer known online as ‘ree4’ had collaborated with an anonymous partner whom he met online. The two people did not stay in touch and Shabayev says he doesn’t even know where the other contact resides.

Shabayev told lifenews.ru. “If the software is used with bad intentions, you can earn decent money, but that’s illegal. I didn’t want to do this kind of work, simply wrote it for sale, so I didn’t have to use it myself. Other people can use it, and it will be on their conscience.”

Between 27 November and 15 December, 40 million card details and 70 million personal records including names, mailing addresses and phone numbers of Target customers were compromised. The attack was specifically aimed at Point-Of-Sale (POS) payment systems.

To apologise, the retailer offered one year of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection to all guests who shopped in its US stores. Despite this gesture, multiple lawsuits have been filed across the United States by Target customers in regards to the information theft.