Worldwide Tech Issues

Worldwide tech issues have evolved this past week: India reopens tax queries with HP and Infosys; A Wyoming building may have played a part in the massive Internet outage in China; and South Korea is investing into 5G technology.

India’s Tech Complaints

Photo Credit: Business Insider

Tax authorities in India are claiming that HP and Infosys owe them a countless number of unpaid taxes.
India is bewildered from the claims made for software and manpower.

It was been reported, “developed and deployed on clients’ premises.”  If the deductions relate to the clients’ premises, they are disqualified and the only valid work must be carried out on their own grounds.

HP and Infosys challenged India’s tax claims and prospered from the .  Now these cases are being revisited.  The new complaint is that Infosys submitted expenses pertaining to landscaping.

A price has not been confirmed on how much the companies might be asked to pay back, but reports say Infosys’ tab is $68 million US dollars.

Wyoming Played a Part in Chinese Outage

The mystery of the Chinese Internet power outage baffles many.  There is a recent discovery that most of the Internet traffic was redirected to a company in Cheyenne, Wyoming on Tuesday.

China’s 500 million Internet users were unable to load any websites that ended in .com, .net, or .org for almost eight hours.

The China Internet Network Information Centre, a state-run agency in which they deal with Internet affairs, said they had traced the problem to the country’s domain name system.

One of China’s biggest anti-virus software vendors, Qihoo 360 Technology, admitted the problem affected three-quarters of the country’s domain name system servers.

Some servers acted as a switchboard for Internet traffic from China’s Great Firewall rerouted traffic from Baidu and Sina, to a block of Internet address registered to Sophidea.  The company in Cheyenne, a small brick two-story building on a residential street.

Baidu is the company behind China’s largest search engine.

 The discrete destination of China’s Internet Traffic in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Photo Credit: SMH

The building above is home of 2000 companies on paper.  Reuters held an investigation in 2011 and found that the Prime Minister of Ukraine was also registered to the address.

The Ukraine Prime Minister was charged with helping online poker operations evade an Internet gambling ban.  The ban from the government were contracts from  selling counterfeit truck parts to the Pentagon.

Wyoming Corporate Services that were registered for Sophidea, moved to a different building on Pioneer Avenue in Cheyenne last year.

The owner of Wyoming Corporate Services, Gerald Pitts, said they could not disclose any details about Sophidea without any “due process”.  Gerald Pitts said the Wyoming Corporate Services acted as a registered agent for nearly 8000 businesses.

“What they do I’m not 100 per cent sure.” – Gerald Pitts, Wyoming Corporate Services

It is still not clear about what caused the traffic shift on Tuesday.  A Chinese newspaper had suspected the cyber attack.  But by Tuesday, technologists came to an alternate theory, a backfiring of China’s own Internet censoring system.

The company Sophidea, redirects traffic from one address to another to mask a person’s whereabouts, evading the firewall.

Technologists have summarized that the disruption may have been caused by Chinese Internet censors who attempted to block traffic to Sophidea’s websites but unknowingly redirected traffic to the service instead.

South Korea Invests

Photo Credit: Techinasia

South Korea’s science ministry announced it was investing $1.5 billion in order to have 5G Internet by 2020.
The 5G network enables users to download an 800-megabyte film in one second.  This is compared to taking 40 seconds with the nation’s 4G network.

South Korea is known to have the world’s fastest Internet speeds and is unquestionably one of the world’s tech-savviest nations.

More than three-quarters of the 50 million people in South Korea use smartphones.  In comparison, the US’s smartphone users tops out at only 50.4 percent.

These are some of the worldwide tech issues I have found.  What tech issues have you seen that may be interesting for us to read.  Please tell us below!


Don’t miss out on the latest tech news and computer security alerts! Follow us on Twitter at @hyphenet,  “Like” us on Facebook or add us to your circle on Google+.


References:

India’s Tech Tax Complaints Deepen – Tech News World
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Indias-Tech-Tax-Complaints-Deepen-79849.html

Large chunk of Chinese internet traffic redirected to small Wyoming building – The Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/security-it/large-chunk-of-chinese-internet-traffic-redirected-to…