Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, May 16

• Uber Engineer Barred From Work on Key Self-Driving Technology, Judge Says: Uber, the ride-hailing company, sidestepped a full shutdown of its self-driving car efforts on Monday when a federal judge stopped short of issuing a temporary injunction against the program. But the court mandated that Anthony Levandowski, a star engineer leading the program, be prohibited from working on a critical component of autonomous vehicle technology for the duration of the litigation, a setback that could hamper Uber’s development efforts. The decision was in a case that has underlined the increasingly bitter fight between Uber and Waymo, the self-driving car business that operates under Google’s parent company. The companies have been competing in the development of autonomous vehicles, which many consider the future of transportation. The outcome of the case may affect who wins or loses in the technology, which has also drawn other tech companies, automakers and start-ups. In the ruling on Monday, Judge William Alsup of Federal District Court in San Francisco, said, “Waymo L.L.C. has shown compelling evidence that its former star engineer, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded over 14,000 confidential files from Waymo immediately before leaving his employment there.” He added, “Significantly, the evidence indicates that, during the acquisition, Uber likely knew or at least should have known that Levandowski had taken and retained possession of Waymo’s confidential files.” Judge Alsup also ruled that Waymo significantly “overreached” when it asked for protection on more than 120 patents it called trade secrets. “General approaches dictated by well-known principles of physics, however, are not ‘secret,’ since they consist essentially of general engineering principles that are simply part of the intellectual equipment of technical employees,” Judge Alsup wrote. He directed Uber to produce a timeline of the events leading to Mr. Levandowski’s hiring, including all oral and written discussions between the parties about an important self-driving technology called lidar, short for light detection and ranging, which Mr. Levandowski has been accused of stealing. The judge also ordered Uber to do what it could to ensure the return of the files to Waymo, including the possibility of terminating Mr. Levandowski’s employment at Uber.Despite the judge’s ruling on Mr. Levandowski, Uber also had cause for celebration because its self-driving research program was not shut down, which would have been a more serious blow.

• Hardly Anyone Paying the Hackers? Because Using Bitcoin Is Hard: An unprecedented cyberattack swept across the globe over the weekend, but so far the majority of victims haven’t paid hackers a ransom. After the ransomware began infecting users on Friday, they were given 72 hours to pay $300 in bitcoin -- chosen by the hackers because the crypto currency is harder to track than conventional payments -- or pay twice as much. If they refused to pay after seven days, their computer would be permanently locked -- a serious problem for those who haven’t backed up their data. As of early Monday, only about $50,000 had been paid in ransoms, according to Elliptic Enterprises Ltd., a London-based company that tracks illicit use of bitcoin. The company calculated the total based on payments tracked to bitcoin addresses specified in the ransom demands, adding that it expects the total to rise.  Paying a ransom isn’t like buying something from Amazon by entering their credit or debit card information. Even though the hackers provided a helpful link for those new to paying in bitcoin, the crypto currency is a black box for most people. "If you’re presented with something that says pay this amount in bitcoin, most people don’t know where to start with that," said James Smith, the CEO and co-founder of Elliptic. There are several steps. First, a person or business has to obtain the bitcoins by registering with one of the various online exchanges and going through its verification process. After that, money can be deposited into the exchange. For those living in countries that don’t have an exchange, including the U.K., money must be converted into another currency. Once the money is deposited on the exchange, the bitcoins can be sent to the address provided by the extortionist. "It looks like a long garbled string of text," Smith said. After the fee is paid, the hackers supposedly free the affected computer. "A large amount of bitcoin is actually somewhat difficult to source quickly," said Alex Sunnarborg, an analyst at bitcoin research company CoinDesk, adding it might take a few days to create an account at a bitcoin brokerage or exchange, connect a bank account, and then receive the bitcoin. One notable difference with this attack is that the perpetrators demanded a relatively small amount of money but from a large number of people, said James Chappell, chief technology officer and co-founder of U.K. security company Digital Shadows. More typically, he said, hackers demand one large ransom to unlock all the infected machines. "Quite often they’re in the thousands rather than the hundreds of dollars," he said. "It is unusual to see this piecemeal approach, computer by computer."