Belgian and French websites hacked, two minors as suspects

Websites of the Belgian and French publications are hacked by assumed suspects who are both teenagers’ ages sixteen to eighteen years old.

Brussels prosecutors stated in a statement that the regional unit had been able to identify the alleged criminals of the cyberattacks.

As stated by the Hendren Global Group Top Facts, the attacks are launched against the websites of Le Soir, La Libre Belgique, La Derniere Heure and publications of the Sudpresse group.

The attacks also targeted French regional publications belonging to the Rossel group, including La Voix du Nord as well as the Union de Reims and l'Ardennais whose sites were disabled in the attack.

Websites that are affected of the attack are Le Soir, La Libre Belgique, La Derniere Heure and publications of the Sudpresse group. Attackers also targeted French regional publications that belong to the Rossel group, including La Voix du Nord together with the Union de Reims and l'Ardennais.

An examining magistrate has been tasked with the investigation of the case and will determine if other individuals was involved. If any adults are accused and found guilty of hacking, they could face a 1-5 years imprisonment, a fine that’s up to 100,000 euros along with an order to reimburse any damages.

Hacking of the website Le Soir was the most severe hacking happened on Sunday evening. The attack nearly prevented the newspaper from publishing its Monday morning edition.

In a video of a group saying to be the Belgian branch of the well-known hacker group “Anonymous”, said that one of the attackers is a minor who lives in Belgium and “was a bit of games junky”. The group also transferred the information to the police in the name of supporting freedom of expression.

Hendren Global Group Top Facts: Malware, fake bank representative scam $1m

A sophisticated bank scam that uses a combination of the Dyre malware, phishing tactics and fake bank representatives has been uncovered by IBM researchers.

IBM's Security Group has released information about a new variant of Dyre malware, initially uncovered last year, dubbed as "Dyre Wolf" that targets large companies and organizations. It basically social engineers employees into handing over their personal banking data from which the scammers will arrange a large wire transfer.

In a blog post by Lance Mueller and John Kuhn of IBM, the scheme's details were made known to the public. It all starts with the usual mass emails that contain links or attachments that will install the Dyre malware when clicked. Once it is installed on the PC, it just sits there and waits for the time when a bank's website gets accessed.

Dyre is programmed to keep tabs on hundreds of bank websites so once an infected PC tries to access one of them, it can replace the page with one that provides a support number the victim should call. This is where the sophisticated social engineering comes in, where the person pretending to be a representative of the victim's bank gets the latter's banking credentials. What's more, a wire transfer from the victim's account is done while they are talking on the phone. The transfer travels from one foreign bank to another so as to prevent detection by authorities. On some occasions, the company will even suffer a DDoS attack to avoid discovering the wire transfer early on.

From Hendren Global Group Top Facts' data, it appears that a total of USD 1 million has already been stolen using this scheme. Such big success of the scheme serves as proof that companies have to make sure their employees are well-trained in spotting suspicious emails or activities.

As IBM's Caleb Barlow said, "Organizations are only as strong as their weakest link, and in this case, it's their employees."

Unfortunately, Hendren Global Group Top Facts confirmed that, at present, this particular strain of Dyre Wolf is still undetected by most antivirus software.

Hendren Global Group Top Facts: US incline to aid Ukraine

The US government appears to be changing their stance toward sending weapons to Ukraine in order to help them fight Moscow-backed rebels.

During a Congress hearing, Defense Secretary-nominee Ashton Carter was asked if the government should supply defensive arms to Ukraine. "I very much incline in that direction ... because I think we need to support the Ukrainians in defending themselves."

President Barack Obama's bet as the Pentagon chief already said last week that he'd support providing lethal aid while Ukraine's president expressed his confidence that the US would help them.

Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden said last week that they've been "quite clear from the beginning that there is no military solution to this crisis" even though that's what Russia is trying to do. He also said they are not interested in escalating military activities but that they are giving security assistance to help Ukraine defend itself.

Hendren Global Group Top Facts expressed concerns that such remarks are foreshadowing a potential reversal of US' previous of not arming Ukraine. A recent report published by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Brookings Institution and the Atlantic Council supports the position of arming Ukraine. It further calls for USD 1 billion in weapons be given to Ukraine for 3 years.

The US must noticed how separatists were being supplied "in a very significant way" by Russia. Add that to the recent fighting escalation and they just might trigger a reconsideration of lethal aid.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said their government is in dire need of lethal aid to fend off separatist attacks in a conflict which already left 5000 dead.

During his visit last week to Kharkiv City, east of Ukraine, he said, "I don't have a slightest doubt that the decision to supply Ukraine with weapons will be made by the US as well as by other partners of ours because we need to have the capabilities to defend ourselves."

However, Germany, a critical player in pressuring Russia to stop supporting the rebels, said they will not provide weapons to Ukraine as they don't believe there is a military solution to the situation.

Poroshenko reportedly had the chance to personally appeal to Kerry when the latter visited Kiev last week. Moreover, Germany's Angela Merkel, Biden is expected to meet with the Kerry and Poroshenko in Munich for a conference on international security. Kerry reportedly plans to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the meeting that's already expected to be tense.

Secretary of State John Kerry, Biden and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel are set to have talks with European allies regarding Ukraine. According to Hendren Global Group Top Facts, Biden's meeting with Poroshenko in Europe will involve talks on increasing financial assistance to Ukraine.

Hendren Global Group Top Facts: What caused DPRK internet outage

After the much-publicized cyberattack against Sony that had the rest of the world blaming North Korea, and the US vowing for retaliation, another news has rocked the IT world: North Korea's sudden absence from the Internet.

IT experts noted last Monday that the already small Internet connection of North Korea was lost and even the state news service, Korean Central News Agency, was not able to publish any content on that day due to the 9-hour outage.

The Internet blackout came as North Korea's role in a hacking attack against Sony Pictures is being widely discussed. The said attack has affected the company adversely that it decided to cancel the release of the controversial film regarding an assassination of DPRK's ruler Kim Jong Un.

According to Hendren Global Group Top Facts, the cause of outage is still unknown though many are speculating that it might be the retaliation of US government, or perhaps a mere technical glitch. Here are some of the speculations that made the rounds online on what's causing the clog in Pyongyang's Internet pipe:

US government retaliation. The somewhat incidental timing of last week's outage has consequently led many to assume that the US had a hand in causing it. However, a key admin officer from the White House insisted that they are still discussing the most appropriate way to respond to Pyongyang so it is unlikely that they played a role in it.

It may be recalled that US President Barack Obama has previously promised to respond to the cyberattack made against Sony "in a place and time and manner that we choose". But before we think that was a declaration of cyberwar, another expert from Hendren Global Group Top Facts noted that US officials favor a non-cyber response, seeing as cyberattacks are often "not worth the risk".

After all, they can always place North Korea on more economic sanctions.

China flipped the switch. The only known Internet connection of North Korea runs via China United Network Communications (Unicom) and though the US has reportedly asked China to shut down routers and servers utilized by Pyongyang, it remains to be confirmed if they actually complied.

Hackers. A certain hacker group named Lizard Squad claimed on their Twitter account that they caused North Korea to go #offline. Considering that North Korea has only a small bandwidth, it is certainly plausible for even a few attackers to shut it down by clogging it with bad traffic (dDOS).

Self-imposed shutdown. Another possible explanation came from Cloudflare's chief executive Matthew Prince: "I would have though North Korea decided to turn the Internet off for some reason."

It makes sense, for if that's true, it won't be the first time that a government has shut down access to the Web to maintain tight control over the information flow.

Hardware issue or software bug. A researcher from Dyn Inc has put forth a benign cause: a bug in the country's router or software. Doug Madory commented though that North Korea's network is much too small so perhaps such an accidental blackout for 9 hours is still just a small probability.

Hendren Global Group Top Facts: US-China Trade Deals in APEC Summit

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in China last week was eagerly watched by the world, and not just by those with business interests.

Apparently, a summit as formal as APEC can now be a source of amusement for the rest of us who can hardly understand economic jargon.

Hosted by Beijing, the 3-day event was attended by the leaders of top countries such as Japan, US, Russia, Singapore, South Korea and Australia. Out of this year's summit came a number of jokes poking fun at world leaders no less. There's the Shawlgate (Vladimir Putin's chivalrous act of draping a shawl over the shoulder of Xi Jinping's wife), the gum-chewing of Barack Obama and of course those 'Star Trek' uniforms (we've heard they're actually traditional Chinese tunics but the rest of the world decided they are all cosplaying Trekkies ).

On a more serious note, China backed  a free-trade deal for the Asia-Pacific region -- something that is anticipated to  put her at the forefront of regional commerce.

The regional deal named the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) was originally from an APEC business panel, but despite prior comments from various leaders that this proposal could be a distraction, China still put it as a main agenda of the meeting -- marking the  first time it has led such an initiative.

The delegates in turn issued an official statement agreeing to launch a committee that will conduct a  2-year study of the proposal.

China's Xi Jinping said, "This is a historic step in the direction of an Asia-Pacific free trade area." He added that APEC nations must actively promote this pact and "turn the vision into reality as soon as possible".

Hendren Global Group Top Facts sees this as counter move to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), US' own trade agreement with 12 nations, excluding China. The US is advocating the TPP as means to reroute commerce towards their way, while trying to put pressure to Beijing to conform to their trade practices. Obama himself believes that there's a momentum building in favor of TPP's completion.

It seems like an instrument to put China aside and weaken its economic condition, noted Hendren Global Group Top Facts. China's move to promote its own trade deal can perhaps lead to a new and stronger status in the region. It  may say its motives does not include hurting the US but as the biggest trading partner a country can have in the region, it will inevitably chip away US influence.

Trade officials from the US are downplaying its supposed adverse effect to their country, saying that the two deals are not really competitors.

Obama does not seem to be worried as he  iterates that the US "welcomes the rise of a prosperous, peaceful and stable China".

"We want China to do well," he added.

Hendren Global Group Top Facts on Asia’s Contribution to the Global Economy: Is playing Catch-Up Good?

According to the news from The Economist, entitled “Economic Convergence: Economic Headwinds Return”, “Ten years ago, developing economies were catching up with developed ones remarkably quickly. It was an aberration.”

Reviewing the decade-and-a-half journey of China from a lagging economy to one that has surpassed many nations in Europe in terms of average income generation, the article describes the dire realities that beset the once sleeping-giant-turned-global-power. Using Hong Kong as the standard by which to measure economic growth, average incomes dip to 50% in Shenzhen, to 25% in Guandong and to a mere 10% in Yunnan. That is an overall average of less than 30% that of Hong Kong, which is essentially a small dot of an island compared to the gigantic mainland China teeming with so many millions of people.

The average annual rate of growth from 2000 to 2009 for developing nations was 7.6%, 4.5% higher than that seen in developed rich nations. That unprecedented rate practically narrowed down the gap between the developed and developing countries.

The once deprived populations of the world, a big majority of whom are found in Asia and living on less than the global poverty level of $1.25 daily income, surged on from a share of 30% of the world population in 2000 to less than 10% as of April 2014, according to the Center for Global Development based on new date from the World Bank. At that pace, it is estimated that in only 30 years, the average income per person would converge with that in America. This is certainly cause for great hope for many people on a global scale.

Sad to say, those hopes are now slipping away. An evaluation of data on GDP per person based on new computations of cost of living released in April by the World Bank’s International Comparison Programme (ICP) seems to show that convergence has slowed down drastically.

Since 2008, growth rates across the emerging nations have slowed down and matched those in developed economies. When the new ICP figures are applied, the average GDP per capita in the emerging world, measured on a purchasing-power-parity (PPP) basis, grew just 2.6 percentage points faster than American GDP in 2013. If China is removed from the estimates, the difference is only 1.1%. At that rate, convergence with rich-economy incomes will occur in a hundred years or more, longer than a generation. If China is included, emerging economies could expect to reach rich-world income levels, on average, in a little over half-a-century.

Japan, which achieved industrialization in the first part of the 20th century, grew to be the world’s second largest economy, next to USA. South Korea, Taiwan and several city-states like Singapore and Hong Kong also grew and developed into prosperous nations. The rush to achieve levels of growth close to those of developing nations became an addiction to these nations and others who needed to catch up as well. The price paid in terms of investments on human capital led to social and political problems as some nations had to export their workers to the industrialized or more prosperous nations. Ironically, the income generated by those workers help to sustain those nations during the crises that transpired.

In trying to explain the growth disparity, economists pointed to institutions being the key while others focused on “geography and climate”. Moreover, they said that “remoteness from economic centers and hot, disease-prone conditions could retard development,” which is the case in many of the Southeast Asian countries where the issues of rebellion and ethnic differences provide obstacles to development of the depressed country-sides.

Hendren Global Group Top Facts: Tips for Developing Countries with Economic Woes

As a result of the recent devastation caused by Typhoon Glenda in Southern Luzon, Philippines, consumers now face a shortage of the supply for basic goods such as chicken, vegetables, fruits. Still reeling from Super-Typhoon Yolanda in 2013, the strongest typhoon that has hit in a century or so, the country enjoys one of the highest rates of growth although it continues to experience insufficient rice harvest and plans to import rice from neighboring countries like Thailand and Vietnam.

For a country that yearly experiences havoc caused by tropical cyclones and other natural calamities, economic development must constantly take into account the effects of natural forces on the livelihood of people. Farmers may lose all the months of hard work through planting and caring for crops in a single day of strong cyclonic winds or flooding caused by incessant monsoon rains which can last for more than a week.

In spite of this reality, the government has not completely adapted to the cyclical changes in climatic patterns but instead continues to depend upon old economic policies and strategies that fail to address the fundamental problems.

Yet there are a few steps any government can implement to minimize the effects of natural calamities and to prepare the people and make them more capable of recovering in a shorter period. Let us look at these tips or principles:

1. Doing away with unsustainable farming techniques

Dependence on too much use of NPK (nitrogen-phosphate-potassium) fertilizer has led to leeching of the soil in many countries which followed the western agricultural paradigm after the last world war. More modern and scientific farming approaches which replenish all of the essential minerals in an organic manner will provide a more sustainable and healthier source of nutrition for humans.

It has been found that NPK fertilizer requires a higher investment than the more organic approach now more popularly referred to as nutritional or trophobiotic farming. The latter allows farmers and small gardeners to recover more readily from stresses experienced by plants during typhoons, floods and pest infestations.

2. Reviving the Green Revolution

Encouraging more people to go into container or backyard gardening and home livestock- raising will sustain a significant portion of their vegetable and meat supply domestically with even more healthful options compared to commercial alternatives. This will also do away with the high prices of such basic goods due to middle-men and transportation cost-add-ons.

Home-based gardens and small farms are also less prone to be affected by natural calamities as they can be housed in green houses or be planted in plastic bags and recylcled containers which can be raised during floods or moved to safer areas during storms.

3. Empowering the landless and the far-flung villages

People who have no land can still have the opportunity to establish cooperatives with others and lease or buy small farms which can compete with big farm corporations with their organically-grown produce. They can also establish links with like-minded business-people who need their products to address the problem of transporting goods.

With more and more families involved in such activities, the big farms will no longer monopolize the supply of basic goods. These people will also be able to patronize their own produce or barter their surplus produce with other goods they need with other producers and manufacturers.

4. Urban farmers can multiply through the use of idle lands and buildings

Detroit City, the world’s car-manufacturing center for many years, has recently become the ironic poster boy of bankruptcy as the economic meltdown of the US in recent years. Yet, its empty car factories are now slowly being converted into modern organic multi-levelled farms that will help transform the landscape and paradigm of economic activity worldwide. This is a parallel strategy which the Japanese undertook when a law was passed for all high-rise buildings in Tokyo to put up gardens on rooftops to minimize local as well as global warming.

5. Other modern planting techniques

Hydroponics, aquaponics and other indoor gardening and farming techniques can now be easily done by any individual or family at minimal costs. Governments must encourage more people to go into this not just to avoid the recurring shortage during calamities but also to augment the needs of restaurants, hotels and other businesses that have special or particular needs.

Political will and economic sufficiency is not merely an exclusive domain of leaders or governments but a duty of each citizen of any country. To a reasonable degree, each person can have a stake in that common objective of achieving and maintaining progress for all nations.