Cyber Secure Pakistan 2013: Dealing with Hackers and Threats

Since last few years we do get regular news about hacking attempts and defacements. Here are few example stories ProPakistani covered lately:

• Google’s Pakistan site, 284 others hacked by Turkish hacker group Eboz
• 2000 Pakistani websites Hacked By Indian United Hackers
• 20 Pakistan websites Hacked and defaced by jaguar for 26/1
• Top Pakistani Government & other 250 Websites Hacked by Indishell
• Pakistan’s Punjab Assembly Website Hacked
• Bangladeshi hackers defaced top Pakistani websites
• Pakistani websites are experiencing massive hacking attempts by Israeli hackers

And the list goes on and on.

Is seems like a cyber-war is going on and there is an immense need of creating awareness about data and information security at all levels i.e. from government to an individual level to secure our cyber fronts.

It was last year in May that Pakistan Information Security Association (PISA) took an initiative to pull up a Flagship Conference on Cyber Security to spread awareness at all levels involving relevant stakeholders of the industry. You can recap the archives of the conference here.

After an year, when the threats have only increased, there is another conference planned on April 20th, 2013 with a focus on to creating awareness about cyber security amongst the general public and corporate sector about Information Security issues.

CSP 2013 will continue to evolve the tradition of securing industrial and organizational data transactions.

At Cyber Secure Pakistan 2013, additional director general FIA, project director NR3C, Minister of IT and Telecom along with Secretory IT will grace the conference with their presence. Dignitaries from Google, Microsoft, Interpol, Cyber Secure Malaysia, EC-Council USA, Oman CERT and Australian Federal Police along with other organizations will be there to discuss their point of views and experiences.

Besides discussions by experts, the conference incorporates different sessions like training and competition in order to pull out the right talent from industry. For that reason NTFS Forensic Analysis training will be given by the CERT team from Malaysia in collaboration with NIMIS. ‘Capture the Flag’ hacking competition with exciting giveaways for the winners is also set in place in collaboration with Tranchulas.

The conference is pertinent for all professionals working in the field of Information or Data Security.

Cyber Secure Pakistan 2013 is carrying the following objectives:

• Bridging the gap between local and global Information Security practices;
• Educating about adapting new streams (tracks) of Information Security for bringing positive change in the IT industry;
• Improving our infrastructure according to the current immediacy of global threat;
• Highlight the hidden talent of professionals working in the back end to bring Pakistan back on the global talent map;
• Bring academia and industry closer to each other for bringing change and solving our collective problems.

You can get yourself registered at:http://www.cybersecurepakistan.com/registration.php

Just to mention, ProPakistani is the official Blog Partner for the conference and we will be brining you all the updates from the conference.

Internet Speeds Get Back to Normal as Repair of Undersea Cable Gets Completed

IMEWE  Segment 1  repair  has  been  completed after almost one month and cable has been powered  up  for  the  traffic,  said a statement issued today.

Statement said that post repair system performance has been verified and undersea cable is now functioning in full throttle. Repeaters performance and splice loss all are as per the acceptable values.

Reportedly, the shunt fault was located at  116.7 KM from Mumbai link where the cable was observed to be dragged on sea bed by fishing liners.

It maybe recalled that IMEWE got damaged on March 10th, after which PTCL and other Pakistani ISPs had to route traffic to other under-sea cables connected to the country.

During  the  cable  fault  Pakistani Internet Service Providers took  necessary actions to minimize the impact  on  the  services  to  customers in Pakistan, by making alternate arrangement for internet capacity.

This has been made possible because of multiple submarines cable systems facility in Pakistan.

It merits mentioning here that SMW4 – another undersea cable connected to Pakistan – was also damaged during last month, but was soon repaired.

Currently the internet speeds in Pakistan are fully up and powered in full throttle.

Etisalat arranges $8 billion loan for stakes in Maroc Telecom

The Dubai state owned and PTCL’s parent company,Etisalat has lined up $8 billion loan in order to finance its bid to acquire Vivendi’s stake in Maroc Telecom. The French media group Vivendi is selling its 53 percent shares in the Moroccan Telecom company in order to pay off its debts. The bidding of Maroc Telecom is expected to take place on April 22, 2013 and the bidding companies are required to arrange finances for the stake purchase ahead of making final offers to Vivendi.

The overall estimate of Vivendi’s stake has been valued at around $6 billion and it is expected that the winning company will be bidding for minority shares as well, having full control over the company. Etisalat is reported to have been working with BNP Paribas as financial adviser, which is putting together the $8 billion loan, split equally between a term loan and a bridge loan, which will be refinanced later through a bond sale.

Qtel of Qatar had announced on March 18 that they were negotiating with banks to get a loan approved to help them in bid for Vivendi’s Maroc Telecom stakes. ST Corp. of South Korea will also be a part of bidding.

1.7 million US documents published on WikiLeaks

The famous whistle blower website WikiLeaks has crossed the mark of 1.7 million United States diplomatic and intelligence reports on every country in the world. Most of the work behind arranging and publishing these sensitive documents was done by Julian Assange, at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where he has taken refuge since last summer.

The Ecuadorian Government has given him political asylum as Assange was afraid of being sent to United States if he was extradited to Sweden to face sexual offence charges.

The data contained on the WikiLeaks site shows the “vast range and scope” of US diplomatic records from 1973 to 1976, including cables, intelligence reports and other correspondence and has been termed as Public Library of US Diplomacy (PlusD) by Assange. Most of the reports contained in the PlusD were written by Henry Kissinger.

Mr. Assange said WikiLeaks had undertaken a detailed analysis of the communications, and claimed the information eclipsed Cablegate, a set of more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks from November 2010 onwards after being anonymously leaked.

The collection published today has not been leaked, but Mr. Assange said WikiLeaks had been working for the past year to analyze a vast data hoard from the US national archives before releasing it in a searchable form.

Apple’s new “Spaceship” campus exceeds its initial budget by $2 billion

Apple’s new campus, which is being built, was estimated to cost around $3 billion to the Cupertino giant. However spending is obviously not going according to plan as the budget is said to have risen from $3 billion to $5 billion, according to a report from Bloomberg Businessweek.

This means Apple Campus 2 will be more expensive than the under construction World Trade Center complex. The Cupertino’s project was expected to be completed by 2015, but it’s apparently running behind schedule and it’s not said to open doors not earlier than 2016. The additional time would give the architects and the partners to cut the unnecessary cost, preventing the construction cost from rising even further.

Apple’s Spaceship campus was announced way back in 2011 by the late Steve Jobs who wanted the new headquarter to be the best office building in the world. The exteriors of the campus is said to be made up of “six square kilometres of glass”.

The Apple Campus 2 will be a “net-zero energy” complex and is being built using the advanced skylights and an airflow design, which helps to keep the building cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Furthermore, the campus will have 700,000 square feet of solar panels, which will generate 8 megawatts of power. However, the power generated from the panels will not be sufficient to power the whole complex so Apple is said to be working on deals with solar and wind generated power suppliers.