Cambridge graduates' tech firm raises $500m

University correspondent(wp):

A five-year old British virtual simulation startup, co-founded by Cambridge computer science graduates, has been valued at more than $1bn after raising $502m (£390m) from Japan’s SoftBank.

The investment in the London-based firm Improbable is thought to be the largest made in a fledgling European tech firm.

Improbable uses cloud-based software to create virtual worlds for use in games as well as large-scale simulations of the real world. The capabilities of the company’s technology have been likened to The Matrix, in which humans plug into a simulated world powered by computers.

The business was co-founded in 2012 by Herman Narula, 29, and Rob Whitehead, 26, who met while studying computer science at the University of Cambridge, and Peter Lipka, 28, an Imperial College graduate who worked at Goldman Sachs before launching Improbable.

The three co-founders hold a majority equity stake in Improbable – meaning they share a paper fortune of more than half a billion dollars – with Narula holding enough voting rights to control the company. They are not taking any cash out of the business as a result of the investment.

SoftBank, which has put its managing director, Deep Nishar, on Improbable’s board, will have only a minority stake in the business. Narula, Improbable’s chief executive, said the company held talks with multiple investors but after a trip to Tokyo it was decided that Softbank had an “alignment of vision that made them the obvious choice”.

Narula and Whitehead, the chief technology officer, met at a dissertation review at Cambridge’s computer lab, where they discovered “a mutual interest in multiplayer games and virtual worlds” that put them on the path to creating the software that underpins Improbable.

“We talked about so many games and so many ideas about how games are made and run,” Narula said. “We believe the next major phase in computing will be the emergence of large-scale virtual worlds.”

Narula was born in Delhi, India; he moved to the UK when he was three and attended Haberdashers’ Aske’s boys school. He taught himself to write code using C++ at 12 and chose to pursue a career in computing rather than entering the family construction business.

After meeting Whitehead, a Liverpudlian who bolstered his student funds by making virtual weapons and selling them on the now defunct world of Second Life, he launched Improbable in 2012, months before graduating from university.

Improbable’s early days followed a familar tech startup path: credit cards were maxed out to buy equipment and a friends and family loan got them through the first couple of years in a converted barn next door to Narula’s family home in north London. Staffers ate, slept and coded there, with Narula and Whitehead reportedly holding interviews in the shower room.

The firm – which is now based in Farringdon, close to the so-called “silicon roundabout” tech hub in Shoreditch, east London – employs about 200 staff. It recently opened offices in San Francisco.

Narula is keen to distance the firm from the stereotypical US tech startup, as satirised in the TV show Silicon Valley, saying the founders seek to cultivate a distinctive British culture.

However, Improbable does offer perks including unlimited holidays, free breakfast and lunch, and a so-called life concierge to “relocate families, organise parties, order pizza and service bikes”.

Before SoftBank’s investment, Improbable raised $20m in 2015 from backers, including US venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz, which supported Facebook and Twitter, valuing the firm at $100m.

Improbable’s other investors include Horizon Ventures, and a fund run by British tech investor Saul Klein and David Rowan, editor-at-large at Wired magazine.

Improbable’s technology SpatialOS, which enables the creation of massive simulations – “virtual worlds” – is still in beta mode and has not been publicly launched.

The company is working with Bossa Studios on launching a giant multiplayer game called World’s Adrift with one virtual area “the size of Wales”.

The company made a loss of £8m in the year to the end of May 2016, according to the most recently available figures at Companies House. This was up on a 2015 loss of £3.9m. Improbable’s assets were valued at £20m in 2016, up from £10.2m in 2015.

Softbank

Japan’s SoftBank, founded by Masayoshi Son, has developed a taste for UK tech firms after controversially buying Arm Holdings, the Cambridge-based chip designer , after the Brexit vote last year for £24.3bn.

Son, 59, is a serial dealmaker who has never shied away from ruffling feathersin his three decades building the tech to telecoms conglomerate. In 2012, he faced criticism when the company revealed a $22bn plan to take control of US mobile phone network Sprint, in what was the biggest foreign acquisition by a Japanese company at the time.

Son, Japan’s richest man with a $21bn fortune, has built a Softbank investment portfolio that includes Vodafone’s Japanese business, Yahoo Japan and a humanoid robotics unit.

A prescient move to take a $20m position in Jack Ma’s Alibaba paid off after it grew to be worth $65bn after the Chinese e-commerce’s site’s IPO in 2014.

Son, born in Japan and of Korean heritage, shocked investors last year and abruptly lost his heir apparent, former Google high-flyer Nikesh Arora, after reneging on an agreement to hand over the reins on his 60th birthday this August.

He plans to stay on at least another five to 10 years. “I asked myself whether I have run out of energy and ambition,” Son said.

On Friday, it emerged that SoftBank, Sprint’s largest shareholder, and Sprint have had informal contact with T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom about a potential merger.

Corbyn sets out a ‘better way to live together’ in foreign policy revamp

Political reporter(wp):

Jeremy Corbyn has urged Britain to “walk the hard yards to a better way to live together on this planet” as he set out Labour’s foreign policy in an election campaign speech.

Corbyn said a Labour government would pursue what he called a “triple commitment” to defence, development and diplomacy, and seek to resolve potential conflicts through political action rather than relying on military force.

Speaking to an audience of foreign policy experts at the Chatham House thinktank in London, the Labour leader and longtime peace campaigner described how his personal views on armed conflict had been fuelled by hearing from his parents about the horrors of the second world war, and seeing graphic images of the Vietnam war.

“My generation grew up under the shadow of the cold war. On television, through the 1960s and into the 70s, the news was dominated by Vietnam. I was haunted by images of civilians fleeing chemical weapons used by the United States.

“I didn’t imagine then that nearly 50 years later we would see chemical weapons still being used against innocent civilians. What an abject failure. How is it that history keeps repeating itself?”

With Theresa May’s Conservatives painting Labour as soft on defence, party strategists are keen to avoid the perception that Corbyn would refuse to use armed force in any circumstances.

But they believe his record of opposing ill-fated military interventions, including in Iraq, will play well with many voters. He criticised what he called “regime-change wars”, many of which he said had not worked.

Corbyn reconfirmed Labour’s commitment to renewing the Trident nuclear weapon system – which was agreed by the party’s conference last September – but underlined his own personal concerns about their use.

“I am often asked if as prime minister I would order the use of nuclear weapons. It’s an extraordinary question when you think about it: would you order the indiscriminate killing of millions of people? Would you risk such extensive contamination of the planet that no life could exist across large parts of the world? It would mean world leaders had already triggered a spiral of catastrophe for humankind,” he said.

Asked to confirm whether that would mean like-for-like replacement of the four nuclear-armed submarines required to maintain a continuous at-sea deterrent, he said: “That is the decision we will inherit as a Labour government and that is what the position is.”

But he went on to say Labour would hold a defence review, which he did not want to pre-empt. “We cannot obviously decide what a review would decide or it wouldn’t be a review.”

Asked after his speech whether there were past armed conflicts he believed had been justified, Corbyn said few people would argue against the second world war. He also referred to President Dwight Eisenhower’s final television address in 1961, which warned of the “unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex”.

He added that the world was now a more dangerous place than at the height of the cold war.

Corbyn also pledged a Labour government would immediately review the presence of troops in Estonia, as well as the UK’s role in the conflict in Syria.

The Labour leader accused the US president, Donald Trump, of recklessly escalating geopolitical tensions, including with North Korea, and criticised Theresa May for forming what he called a “coalition of risk and insecurity with Donald Trump”.

“The new US president seems determined to add to the dangers by recklessly escalating the confrontation with North Korea, unilaterally launching missile strikes on Syria, opposing President Obama’s nuclear arms deal with Iran, and backing a new nuclear arms race,” he said, suggesting that a Labour government would have a more cautious relationship with the Trump White House.

The event was an effort to get Labour’s general election campaign back on track after a chaotic two days in which a draft of the party’s manifesto was leaked wholesale to newspapers.

Corbyn was accompanied at Chatham House by key frontbench figures including the shadow attorney general, Shami Chakrabarti, and the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry. However, the shadow defence secretary, Nia Griffith, was not present – she had earlier clashed with the Labour leadership over the drafting of the party’s manifesto.

NHS hospitals across England hit by large-scale cyber-attack

Staff reporter(wp):

Hospitals across England have been hit by a large-scale cyber-attack, the NHS has confirmed, which has locked staff out of their computers and forced many trusts to divert emergency patients.

The IT systems of NHS sites across the country appear to have been simultaneously hit, with a pop-up message demanding a ransom in exchange for access to the PCs. NHS Digital said it was aware of the problem and would release more details soon.

Details of patient records and appointment schedules, as well as internal phone lines and emails, have all been rendered inaccessible.

NHS Digital said: “A number of NHS organisations have reported to NHS Digital that they have been affected by a ransomware attack which is affecting a number of different organisations.

“The investigation is at an early stage but we believe the malware variant is Wanna Decryptor. At this stage we do not have any evidence that patient data has been accessed. We will continue to work with affected organisations to confirm this.

“NHS Digital is working closely with the National Cyber Security Centre, the Department of Health and NHS England to support affected organisations and to recommend appropriate mitigations.

“This attack was not specifically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organisations from across a range of sectors.

“Our focus is on supporting organisations to manage the incident swiftly and decisively, but we will continue to communicate with NHS colleagues and will share more information as it becomes available.”

According to reports, affected hospitals include those run by East and North Hertfordshire NHS trust, Barts Health in London, Essex Partnership university NHS trusts, the university hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS foundation trust, Southport and Ormskirk hospital NHS trust and Blackpool teaching hospital NHS foundation trust.

More reports of affected hospitals are continuing to stream in, as well as claims that GP surgeries are coming down with the virus, which demands a payment of $300 to release files it claims have been encrypted. The NHS has been unable to give a full list of the sites affected.

British law enforcement believes the attack is criminal in nature, as opposed to be a cyber attack by a foreign power, and is being treated as serious but without national security implications.

The National Crime Agency, which is Britain’s version of the FBI, was taking the lead in dealing with the investigation into the attack. Investigators believe the attack is significant with many computers affected across the country.

A spokesman for the National Cyber Security Centre said: “We are aware of a cyber incident and are working with NHS digital and the NCA to investigate.”

In a message to a WT reporter, one NHS IT worker said: “At approximately 12.30pm we experienced a problem with our email servers crashing. Following this a lot of our clinical systems and patient systems were reported to have gone down.

“A bitcoin virus pop-up message had been introduced on to the network asking users to pay $300 to be able to access their PCs. You cannot get past this screen. This followed with an internal major incident being declared and advised all trust staff to shut down all PCs in the trust and await further instructions.

“This is affecting the east of England and number of other trusts. This is the largest outage of this nature I’ve seen in the six years I’ve been employed with the NHS.”

Another NHS worker, who works at an Essex hospital but asked to remain anonymous, said: “We got some ransomware that came through on the computers at about two o’clock. We were told to shut down, take out network cables and unplug the phones. A message came up for just one of our team about the fact that all the files would be wiped in two hours unless we $300 in bitcoins.”

She confirmed that the image that appeared on her colleague’s screen was the same as one that has already been circulated on Twitter, which says: “Ooops, your files have been encrypted!

“Many of your documents, photos, videos, databases and other files are no longer accessible because they have been encrypted. Maybe you are busy looking for a way to recover your files, but do not waste your time. Nobody can recover your files without our decryption service.”

The screen tells users to send $300 worth of bitcoin to a bitcoin wallet address. It adds: “You only have three days to submit the payment. After that the price will be doubled. Also if you don’t pay in seven days, you won’t be able to recover your files forever.”

One person who appeared to be an NHS worker posted an image purportedly of the message that the virus was showing on affected computers.

A Barts spokesman said it was experiencing “major IT disruption” and delays at all four of its hospitals, The Royal London, St Bartholomew’s, Whipps Cross and Newham. He said: “We have activated our major incident plan to make sure we can maintain the safety and welfare of patients.

“We are very sorry that we have to cancel routine appointments, and would ask members of the public to use other NHS services wherever possible. Ambulances are being diverted to neighbouring hospitals.”

GP surgeries across Liverpool and parts of Greater Manchester also appeared to have been affected by the cyber-attack.

The NHS Liverpool clinical commissioning group said: “Please be aware the NHS is experiencing serious IT problems today. Please only contact your GP surgery or hospital in a genuine emergency.”

One Liverpool GP, John Caldwell, said he had “no access to record systems or results” and described the disruption as “very limiting”. Dr Chris Mimnagh, a GP in Liverpool, told the Guardian that his surgery had “severed links” to the wider NHS network as a precaution.

He said: “Unable to access our clinical system – as a precaution our area has severed links to the wider NHS, which means no access to our national systems, no computers means no records, no prescriptions, no results, we are dealing with urgent problems only, our patients are being very understanding so far.”

A spokesman for the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen university hospitals trust said it was “aware that there’s an issue nationally and we’re reviewing our IT systems”.

A spokeswoman for Central Manchester university hospitals, the largest NHS trust in Greater Manchester, said she was “genuinely not sure” if they had been affected and that they were investigating.

A GP surgery in Bury, Greater Manchester, said all networks in the region had been affected. Peel GPs said on Twitter: “All Greater Manchester networks down – we cannot access any patient info plz RT @NHSBuryCCG.”

Doctors have been posting on Twitter about what has been happening to their systems.

A screengrab of a instant message conversation circulated by one doctor says: “So our hospital is down … We got a message saying your computers are now under their control and pay a certain amount of money. And now everything is gone.”

East and North Hertfordshire NHS trust said in a statement: “Today (Friday, 12 May 2017), the trust has experienced a major IT problem, believed to be caused by a cyber attack.

“Immediately on discovery of the problem, the trust acted to protect its IT systems by shutting them down; it also meant that the trust’s telephone system is not able to accept incoming calls.

“The trust is postponing all non-urgent activity for today and is asking people not to come to A&E - please ring NHS111 for urgent medical advice or 999 if it is a life-threatening emergency.

“To ensure that all back-up processes and procedures were put in place quickly, the trust declared a major internal incident to make sure that patients already in the trust’s hospitals continued to receive the care they need.”

The attack comes as several Spanish companies, including the telecoms giant Telefónica, have also been targeted by a “massive ransomware attack”, according to Spain’s national cyber-security centre. The attack appears to present the same message to users as those targeting the NHS.

In a statement released following an apparent wave of attacks on Friday morning, the National Cryptology Centre said a cyber assault had been launched “against various organisations”, affecting Windows systems and corrupting networks and archives.

A message from hackers warned that files would be deleted on 19 May unless a ransom of $300 in bitcoins was paid per targeted computer. It also said that the ransom would rise if payment had not been received by 15 May.

The ransomware used in the Spanish attacks is a version of the WannaCry virus, which encrypts sensitive user data, the National Cryptology Centre said. Telefónica confirmed there had been “a cybersecurity incident” affecting the intranet of some computers at its Madrid headquarters.