Author: xaurav

Hackers who broke into the International Monetary Fund’s computer system may have been backed by a nation state, according to security experts.

They point to the sophisticated nature of the attack and the resources needed to develop it.

Malicious software, designed to steal confidential files, was installed on at least one IMF computer.

Although government involvement is widely suspected, the IMF has not released enough details to be sure.

Based on the limited information made public, it appears that the attack came from a specific PC that had been deliberately infected.

Hacker software was likely to have been installed on it in what is known as a spear-phishing attack, which sees highly targeted scam e-mails sent to specific victims.

A memo circulated internally at the IMF reported that “suspicious file transfers” had been detected.

Tom Kellerman, a security expert who has worked for the IMF and now sits on the board of the International Cyber Security Protection Alliance told Reuters news agency that it was “a targeted attack” with code written specifically to give a nation state a “digital insider presence” on the IMF network.

Graham Titherington, a security analyst with research firm Ovum agreed with the nation state theory.

“Any attack that shows money, time and resources went on it points to a state attack. States and their intelligence agencies have far more resources than criminal gangs,” he said.

The information held by the IMF would be clearly be most valuable to a country, he added.

“It has masses of economic information from the performance of countries to the state of their balance sheets. For countries deciding where to invest it is invaluable,” he said.

State-sponsored hacking has gained prominence in recent months.

“Google shifted the debate by going public on a hack attack believed to be by China,” said Mr Titherington.

The Chinese government has denied involvement in the recent attack on Google’s e-mail accounts.

The incident compromised the personal Gmail accounts of hundreds of top US officials, military personnel and journalists.

Google said that the campaign to obtain passwords originated in the Chinese city of Jinan and was aimed at monitoring e-mail.

According to Mark Darvill, director of security firm AEP Networks, many countries are involved in cyber espionage but China remained at the “forefront”.

“China has recently set up a cyber terrorism unit which is very likely to be looking at opportunities rather than to stop attacks,” he said.

Not everyone is convinced that state-sponsored attacks or Advanced Persistent Threat (APTs) are the cause of the IMF hack.

Tal Be’ery, a web Research Team Leader at the Application Defense Center (ADC) said it could be a “convenient excuse”.

“It is easier for organisations to hide under this excuse when really it is something lacking in their defences.

“We don’t have enough credible information about the IMF attack. It needs to provide good evidence that it was a APT. It is just as likely to be a lone hacker acting out of curiosity,” he said.

The most high profile state-sponsored attack to date remains the Stuxnet worm, which targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Experts believe the complex malicious code originated from either the Israeli or US governments.

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A holidaymaker who broke his neck while diving into the sea in Turkey is being flown back home to south Wales.

Michael Lonergan, of Maesteg, was injured last week, but an insurance underwriter would not meet the £43,000 cost of his treatment or flight home.

But the hospital treating him agreed to release him without payment and Monday’s flight home has been paid for by his employers Harsco and Tata Steel.

His father, John Lonergan, said it would be a big relief to get him home.

Mr Lonergan told BBC Radio Wales he would be flown home by a firm called Air Medical Ltd.

“It’s a relief because we didn’t have that sort of money to hand so there was no way that we could pay for it ourselves.”

Mr Lonergan said his son, 30, who is paralysed from the neck down, is expected to arrive in Cardiff at about 2000 BST, and he will then be taken by ambulance to the University Hospital of Wales for assessment by a consultant.

Mr Lonergan said he hoped to be allowed to see him on Monday night for the first time since he was injured.

“It’s going to be a very emotional meeting,” he said. “He’s in a particularly poor condition at the moment.”

Mr Lonergan said the past week had been a difficult time for his family.

“What made it more difficult was that initially everything was been taken care of by the insurance company and then on Wednesday last week they decided they weren’t going to cover any costs whatsoever,” he said.

Michael’s insurance company refused to pay, saying clients should not expose themselves to “needless risk”.

Insurance underwriter ETI Travel Protection declined to discuss his case, but said most policies had exclusions.

In an earlier statement, spokesman Adrian Lawrence said: “It is very rare that we will make a decision not to pay out when one of our policy holders has been admitted to hospital whilst on holiday.

“Each case is considered individually and the vast majority of claims made are resolved quickly and in the customer’s favour.”

Mr Lonergan said the Turkish hospital would liaise with his son’s nsurance company over his treatment, costing up to £30,000.

But he added that it was not out of the question that the costs could end up back with his family.

The insurance company has been criticised by the Lonergans’ local MP Huw Irranca Davies for showing “no compassion”.

‘Knocked unconscious’

Mr Lonergan, his partner Debbie, and their children Jack, five, and Grace, one, were on their first family holiday, staying at the Didim Beach resort in Altinkum on the west coast of Turkey, when the incident happened.

His partner said in jumping 3ft from a pier into the sea he misjudged the depth of the water and hit his head on the sand.

She said Mr Lonergan, a keen boxer who works at Corus steel works in Port Talbot, was knocked unconscious after hitting his head before being rescued from the sea by a member of the public.

He was taken to hospital before being transferred to the private Ozel Gazi hospital in Izmir, around two hours away, through the insurance company and underwent surgery.

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Southern Cross has reached a deal with its landlords under which no care homes will be closed in a transition period that will last until at least October.

The landlords also told the BBC that they were prepared to make “significant financial concessions”.

They said that it was likely that the company would survive under a different name and the number of homes would fall from 751 to 500 or fewer.

They have been in talks with Southern Cross, which is unable to pay its rent.

The landlords’ committee represents the 80 landlords who own the company’s 751 care homes.

“Our overriding concern at this time remains minimising disruption and concern for residents and their families,” the committee said in a statement.

There will be a crucial meeting between landlords, the government and Southern Cross on Wednesday.

It is expected to discuss proposals from the landlords under which they will accept long-term reductions in rent as long as the government and banks write off some of the money they are owed by Southern Cross.

The proposals may also allow for landlords to take back their properties and find other operators for them.

Southern Cross is the UK’s largest care home operator, employing 44,000 staff caring for 31,000 residents.

Earlier, the chairman of Southern Cross reassured residents that they would continue to receive care and defended the business model which many argue has pushed the company towards collapse.

Christopher Fisher told the BBC care “will be sustained” across its homes, by Southern Cross or another operator.

He added that the company would be in a worse position if it had borrowed money to buy homes, rather than renting them.

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Fighters in the Libyan rebel enclave of Misrata have been continuing efforts to try to break out of the port through army lines.

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SDLP MLA Patsy McGlone has said the demotion of a senior civil servant after a disciplinary hearing is a “totally insufficent sanction”.

Paul Priestly, who was DRD permanent secretary, was suspended last August when the minister, Conor Murphy, said his position was untenable.

Mr Priestly had helped draft a complaint letter to an Assembly committee probing DRD and NI Water.

He has now been demoted to deputy secretary.

He had been involved in appointing Peter Dixon, a director at Phoenix Gas, to an independent review of governance at NI Water.

When four NIW directors were subsequently sacked for the improper awarding of contracts, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) at Stormont began scrutinising the review team.

Mr Dixon was not happy with his treatment by the committee and Mr Priestly helped him draft a letter of complaint.

It is thought likely that Mr Priestly’s salary will drop by around £15,000 but Mr McGlone said he should have been punished more severely.

“There must be a clear duty on highly paid public servants to co-operate with accountability bodies acting on behalf of the public purse, and those who seek to frustrate accountability should be dealt with harshly in order to deter anyone else,” he added.

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Italians have firmly rejected Silvio Berlusconi’s plans to revive nuclear power and his right to skip his trial hearings, in a popular referendum which the prime minister had urged voters to boycott.

Two weeks after the people of Milan, Naples and other towns and cities gave him a bloody nose in elections for mayors and local councils, Mr Berlusconi could be forgiven for thinking he has just been hit by a runaway train.

Italian voters seem to have learned the lessons of the local elections. In particular, they may just have rediscovered some faith in their political system – if not in their ageing political leaders.

It has become de rigueur to say it – but the new media have played a key part in this.

The lesson was there for all to see in Milan during the local elections. Across town, images of Mr Berlusconi’s candidate, Letizia Moratti, were splashed across billboards with photoshop-perfected portraits of a woman at the top of her game.

Her party leader himself used his domination of Italian TV to get himself a blitz of relatively tame prime-time interviews.

It did not work. The still fledgling new left used Facebook, Twitter, emails and blogs. Their victory was not just a protest vote – it was a victory of new media over old, in a country where, as everyone knows, the old media are dominated by one man and his family.

It was the same before the referendums. Across cyberspace a new generation of Italians – the 30-somethings forced to live with their parents because they cannot get a steady job and cannot afford a home of their own – were texting, Tweeting and emailing each other encouragement to vote.

Their opponents, too, made full use of social media, to justify – for example – a voter’s right to abstain from the electoral process.

If the new media look like game-changers, the oldest team in town – the Roman Catholic Church – has been influential too.

Milan’s Corriere della Sera newspaper featured a photograph of the city’s archbishop, Dionigi Tettamanzi, leaving a polling booth after casting his vote on Sunday.

He was not alone – and he and his fellow bishops did not just vote. They spoke out – sometimes forcefully – on the issues on which Italians faced a choice at the polls.

Pope Benedict XVI himself subtly touched on one of the key issues on the ballot paper when he referred obliquely to March’s tsunami in Japan and the risks of a reliance on nuclear power, going on to demand – more trenchantly – a new way of life that respected the environment and protected “the legacy of God’s creation”.

Failed gamble

The past two weeks may yet come to be seen as the moment that ordinary Italians realised that they could indeed have a say in the way their country is run.

The current crop of politicians – Italy’s gerontocracy – remains trapped in the post-war division between left and right, with its provincial loyalties to family, city and region.

Their successors need not be. They are well-travelled – in reality as well as in cyberspace – and are familiar with different societies and different ways of doing politics.

Italians seem to have rediscovered the referendum. Ignored, and considered almost a joke for years, it could now – in tandem with the new media – have given Italian democracy a new lease of life.

Mr Berlusconi and his key ally, Umberto Bossi of the regionalist Northern League, made clear their contempt for the referendums – and encouraged their supporters to stay at home, confident in the knowledge that the vote would count for nothing if fewer than 50% of Italians bothered to turn out.

The old guard’s gamble failed. The disenfranchised young have had their say. They may just have got a taste for it.

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Microsoft tycoon Bill Gates pledges $1bn to help vaccinate children around the world against preventable diseases like pneumonia.

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Serena Williams speaks of her joy at returning to tennis after a traumatic year in which she felt like she was on her “death bed” at one point.

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Royal Ascot ready for Frankel – the equine Usain Bolt

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Labour leader Ed Miliband is to signal a change in his party’s approach to high executive pay and to people who abuse the benefits system.

In a speech to community leaders in central London later, Mr Miliband’s theme will be responsibility.

He will say Labour is seen by some as representing those ripping off society.

Mr Miliband will argue the party has been too tolerant of those at the top and bottom of society who fail to take responsibility for their actions.

The speech comes the day after his brother David called for the Labour Party to unite behind its leader, following press stories of a feud between the two.

Ed Miliband will say a future Labour government would require companies to publish the pay gap between their boardrooms and the average earnings of their workers.

He will say that welfare must reward people who make a contribution to society, by arguing that, for instance, people who work or volunteer should get priority on council house waiting lists.

Mr Miliband is expected to say: “For too many people at the last election, we were seen as the party that represented these two types of people – those at the top and the bottom who were not showing responsibility and were shirking their duty to each other.

“From bankers who caused the global financial crisis to some of those on benefits who were abusing the system because they could work – but didn’t.

“Labour – a party founded by hard-working people for hard-working people – was seen by some, however unfairly, as the party of those ripping off our society.”

BBC political correspondent Ben Wright says after a weekend of sniping in newspapers from unnamed critics, Mr Miliband will try to convince sceptics he has the right strategy to return his party to power.

A book serialised by the Mail on Sunday claims David Miliband is unhappy about Labour’s direction under Ed’s leadership and is barely on speaking terms with him.

Senior figures are said to fear a return to the infighting of the Blair/Brown years.

However David Miliband responded with a statement on Sunday that read: “I have moved on from the leadership election and so should everyone else.

“Ed won, I stand fully behind him and so should everyone else. I called for unity last October and I repeat that now.”

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Security experts say the hacking of the International Monetary Fund bears the hallmarks of a national attack.

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Manchester United seal a five-year deal for Blackburn defender Phil Jones in a deal believed to be worth up to £17m.

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A man who denies rubbing methadone on his newborn baby’s gums also rejects a court claim that he tricked her mother into smoking heroin.

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Senior civil servant Paul Priestly is demoted from his job at the Department of Regional Development after a disciplinary hearing.

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A woman from Merseyside has admitted failing to bury her dead mother and then dishonestly claiming her benefits.

Olive Hazel Maddock prevented burial of her 95-year-old mother, also called Olive, between January and August 2010, Liverpool Crown Court heard.

The 61-year-old is due to be sentenced at a later date.

Her daughter Jasmine, 35, is also charged with preventing the burial of Olive Snr. Her case is still to be heard in court.

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