A hacker brought down the websites of Israel’s national carrier El Al and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) on Monday, raising fears of a wave of politically motivated cyber attacks.
Both sites were affected early in the day, posting messages saying they had been taken down for “maintenance.” By early afternoon the El Al site was back up, although the TASE website was still inaccessible. The websites of two small banks were also attacked, Israeli media reported.
A spokeswoman for the stock exchange confirmed the site had come under attack but said only the website and not the trading systems had been affected.
“There is someone that has been attacking the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange website since this morning,” Idit Yaaron told AFP, describing what appeared to be a distributed denial of service attack (DDOS). The sites crashed several hours after a hacker who calls himself “0xOmar” warned he was going to target both websites, Israeli media reported. It was the latest incident in a series of attacks over the past two weeks, which have seen details of tens of thousands of Israeli credit cards posted online and websites defaced by hackers claiming to be from Saudi Arabia or Gaza. The cyber attacks were hailed by Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Gaza’s Hamas rulers, who said it was “a sign of the Arab youth’s creativity in inventing new forms of Arab and Islamic resistance against the Israeli occupation. “Hamas praises the Arab hackers and calls on the Arab youth to play their role in cyberspace in the face of Israeli crimes,” he said. Danny Dolev, professor of computer science at the Hebrew University, said Monday’s attacks were unlikely to have any serious impact.

A pair of motorised shoes that can propel the wearer at 10mph are expected to become a hit with commuters. The £415 battery powered creations are strapped to the owner’s shoes and controlled via a wireless remote control.

Hackers are bombarding the world's computer controlled energy sector, conducting industrial espionage and threatening potential global havoc through oil supply disruption.Oil company executives warned that attacks were becoming more frequent and more carefully planned."If anybody gets into the area where you can control opening and closing of valves, or release valves, you can imagine what happens," said Ludolf Luehmann, an IT manager at Shell Europe's biggest company ."It will cost lives and it will cost production, it will cost money, cause fires and cause loss of containment, environmental damage - huge, huge damage," he told the World Petroleum Congress in Doha.Computers control nearly all the world's energy production and distribution in systems that are increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks that could put cutting-edge fuel production technology in rival company hands.

"We see an increasing number of attacks on our IT systems and information and there are various motivations behind it - criminal and commercial," said Luehmann. "We see an increasing number of attacks with clear commercial interests, focusing on research and development, to gain the competitive advantage."

He said the Stuxnet computer worm discovered in 2010, the first found that was specifically designed to subvert industrial systems, changed the world of international oil companies because it was the first visible attack to have a significant impact on process control.

But the determination and stamina shown by hackers when they attack industrial systems and companies has now stepped up a gear, and there has been a surge in multi-pronged attacks to break into specific operation systems within producers, he said.

"Cyber crime is a huge issue. It's not restricted to one company or another it's really broad and it is ongoing," said Dennis Painchaud, director of International Government Relations at Canada's Nexen Inc . "It is a very significant risk to our business."

"It's something that we have to stay on top of every day. It is a risk that is only going to grow and is probably one of the preeminent risks that we face today and will continue to face for some time."

Luehmann said hackers were increasingly staging attack over long periods, silently collecting information over weeks or months before attacking specific targets within company operations with the information they have collected over a long period.

"It's a new dimension of attacks that we see in Shell," he said.

NOT IN CONTROL

In October, security software maker Symantec Corp published a report on a mysterious virus, discovered and named Duqu by Hungary's Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security, that contained a code similar to Stuxnet.

Experts said it appeared to be designed to gather data to make it easier to launch future cyber attacks.

Other businesses can shut down their information technology (IT) systems to regularly install rapidly breached software security patches and update vulnerable operating systems.

But energy companies cannot keep taking down plants to patch up security holes.

"Oil needs to keep on flowing," said Riemer Brouwer, head of IT security at Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations

(ADCO).

"We have a very strategic position in the global oil and gas market," he added. "If they could bring down one of the big players in the oil and gas market you can imagine what this will do for the oil price - it would blow the market."

Hackers could finance their operations by using options markets to bet on the price movements caused by disruptions, Brouwer said.

"So far we haven't had any major incidents," he said. "But are we really in control? The answer has to be 'no'."

But the threat of a coordinated attack on energy installations across the world is also real, experts say, and unlike a blockade of the Gulf can be launched from anywhere, with no U.S. military might in sight and little chance of finding the perpetrator."We know that the Straits of Hormuz are of strategic importance to the world," said Stephan Klein of business application software developer SAP."What about the approximately 80 million barrels that are processed through IT systems?," said Klein, SAP vice president of oil and gas operations in the Middle East and North Africa.Attacks like Stuxnet are so complex that very few organizations in the world are able to set them up, said Gordon Muehl, chief security officer at Germany's SAP, but it was still too simple to attack industries over the internet.Only a few years ago hacking was confined to skilled computer programmers, but thanks to online video tutorials, breaking into corporate operating systems is now a free for all."Everyone can hack today," Shell's Luehmann said. "The number of potential hackers is not a few very skilled people -- it's everyone." (Reuters)

The representatives of the 128 multinational and national vendors and automobile companies, displaying their products in the Pakistan Auto Show, have proposed that the rates of domestic motorcycles and other small and heavy vehicles can be reduced significantly if the government declares a long-term persistent auto policy.
They said that local auto industry’s growth depended upon consistent policies and if government kept changing its import and export policies every six months, how the industry would grow and how the foreign investor will be attracted.
On the concluding day of the three days auto exhibition the PAAPAM organizers demanded of the government to ensure adequate and exclusive support for the promotion of auto engineering sector.
They announced that the next exhibition will be held in Karachi.
The PAAPAM Chairman Nabeel Hashmi said that local auto industry is constantly investing in the country amid critical economic turmoil in Pakistan while other industries pulled out, Govt should formulate policies that support the industry to create more employment opportunities.
He said the PAAPM plans to arrange such mega exhibition on annual bases and the second show will be held in Karachi next year. He said that today’s overwhelming response from investors and business leaders convinces us that we are on the right path and Pakistan is a strong contender to win the confidence of companies from around the world.
He said that the exhibition was leveraged with different seminars and conferences. The other side events offered valued guests an opportune moment to not only see first hand what Pakistan has to offer but also the learn about our people, customs, arts and crafts that have a history, tradition and richness of heritage.
The PAPS 2011 convener Iftikhar Ahmed urged the government to focus on polices which encourage more investments in country and create more jobs for increasing population of Pakistan. He said that providing employment opportunities to the masses should be on top of priorities of the industry and policy makers to ensure equitable growth and social justice.
He said that the auto industry is fully documented and pays taxes regularly and doesn’t demand anything from the government apart from stable and long term policies to help develop the engineering base in the country for the sake of localization.
Chief Executive of Indus Motor Company, Parvez Ghias, while addressing concluding ceremony at Pakistan Auto Parts Show 2011 said that India has progressed from closed economy to a deregulated one and its policies have attracted global players to invest in India if they want access to Indian markets which created job opportunities for millions of people. Moreover, India is protecting its local industry by placing non-tariff barriers on imports.
He said that auto industry is a growth driver in several countries like USA, Japan, Korea, Thailand and now India. In Pakistan too, he said, it provides jobs to millions of local youth, contributes 5 percent to the national exchequer (Rs. 98 billion), transfers modern technology; provides means of mobility for goods and people besides enabling other associated industries to run.
Addressing a reception at the Pakistan Auto Show LCCI President Irfan Qaiser Sheikh said that local auto industry has exported spare parts of over $80 million, and it can extend this export to $500 million in two years in case the government provides complete support to this sector. He asked the government to adopt a policy, matched with the needs of local industry, and should consider views of stakeholders.
LCCI President Irfan Qaiser Sheikh congratulated PAAPAM Chairman Syed Nabeel Hashmi and organisers for holding Pakistan Auto Show and said that he was completely impressed to see significant display of auto products in large scale. Besides improving Pakistan’s image at international level, he said that this show will definitely boost local auto industry as well.

The recent ban on hundreds of Google AdSense accounts had given many people the impression that Pakistani publishers were being targeted, however, many local bloggers says this has not been the case. A number of bloggers in Pakistan have not been affected and in some cases the ban has been placed for genuine reasons. Intellectual property theft is one of the problems that Google has been trying to clear out.
The ban may have been imposed partly because a lot of bloggers have been exploiting AdSense by illegally using copyrighted content from other sites.
The crackdown has affected a lot of legitimate bloggers with genuine content.
Badar Khushnood, Google’s representative in Pakistan, is trying to tackle the problem faced by blogs with exclusive content, but bloggers are unsure if he will be able to have them reactivated.
Google had disabled the ad serving after violations of policies. This included layouts designed in a way that can cause accidental clicks by placing ads near flash games or navigation bars, or placing ads and site links extremely close together. Google also has issues with ads being placed on non-content based pages.
“It’s not a conspiracy against Pakistan. A lot of sites produce low quality content, they look like clones of each other, or they simply use dodgy methods of maximizing their ad revenues,” said Shoaib Taimur, owner of a blog named Enterakt.
“Google obviously had its reasons for banning a number of accounts and I doubt that it’s some sort of elaborate conspiracy since we are merely small fish. People who allegedly conspire should seriously reassess their blogs/sites to see what they did wrong. I guess Google will reinstate accounts if they reevaluate them,” he explained.
He said that some people did not deserve to be on the list because their content was original. However, Taimur pointed out that a lot of websites remained unaffected like blogger Hammad Dar’s “Koolmuzone”.
One more thing that results in an AdSense account getting suspended is that people use “botnets” on rival sites so that their accounts get suspended, a situation that has been faced by a few bloggers.
However, bloggers whose accounts were suspended say that Google does not listen to any such reasons and needs to devise a mechanism to prevent unprovoked suspensions.

Google and the various websites it owns were used by more than a billion people for the first time in May. The landmark figure, revealed in new data from ComScore, shows an 8.4 per rise year on year. Microsoft remained the second most popular destination with 905 million unique visitors in May. This was up approximately 15 per cent over the year, but Facebook rose by 30 per cent to 714 million unique users. Yahoo, which was overtaken by Facebook in October, saw an 11 per cent yearly rise to 689 million users.
A “global measurement panel” of 2million users helps ComScore to compile its estimates, and the data is then refined with page-view data it receives from more than 90 of the 100 publishers of web content. Google is one of the few publishers that does not contribute. The company declined to comment.
When ComScore first measured traffic, in 2006, Google had slightly fewer than 500million unique users per month, with Microsoft taking the top spot with 539 million. The addition of users to Gmail and Google has also been helped by the company’s purchase of video site YouTube. Users, however, spend more time on Facebook than Google; the social network’s users browsed the site for 250 billion minutes in May, compared to Google’s 200 billion.

At a time when the government is taking desperate measures to bridge the fiscal deficit by offering exchangeable bonds of Rs50 billion of its blue chip entity Oil and Gas Development Corporation Limited, the auditors have pointed out that the lethargy of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) in auctioning available frequencies during the last calendar year has resulted in a massive loss of Rs67 billion to the national exchequer.
This was revealed by the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) in the audit report 2010-11 on the accounts telecommunication sector. The report reveals that due to sluggishness on part of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the national exchequer sustained a loss of Rs67 billion as the PTA failed to carry out auction process causing huge loss to government kitty despite frequencies made available by the Frequency Allocation Board (FAB) in January 2010. “PTA presented proposal regarding auction of available Wireless Local Loop (WLL) spectrum in 1900 MHz Band during the 35th meeting held on January 11, 2010. The board approved the auction of the available spectrum of 5 MHz (1885-1890/1965-1970 MHz) in all 14 telecom regions, 10 MHz in NTR-II and 15 MHz in HTR in 1900 MHz Band.
The Board further approved the requirement of Pakistan Army to be considered in other frequency bands to meet their future requirements; and it was further decided that the committee already formulated on agenda item 3, will also set base price for auction of this spectrum within 30 days,” says the report.
The AGP pointed out that the available WLL spectrum in 1900 MHz was not auctioned as decided in the Board meeting which resulted into loss of Rs66,112 million (around 66 billion) to national exchequer. “The decision of the Board was not implemented within 30 days. The loss was calculated on the basis of previous auction of WLL frequencies.
The FAB made these frequencies available for auction but PTA did not carry out the auction process causing loss to national exchequer,” the report adds. The report points out towards another similar case where the government sustained a loss of Rs1,048 million (around 1 billion) due to non-auction of available WLL spectrum in 3.4-3.6 GHZ band and the PTA also refused to produce the record before audit authorities. “In this case too, the FAB made these frequencies available for auction but PTA did not carry out the auction process causing loss to national exchequer,” the report says.

It looks like a giant art project. But this symmetrical, circular pattern of mirrored panels is the world's first solar power station that generates electricity at night. The Gemasolar Power Plant near Seville in southern Spain consists of an incredible 2,650 panels spread across 185 hectares of rural land.
The mirrors - known as heliostats - focus 95 per cent of the sun's radiation onto a giant receiver at the centre of the plant. Heat of up to 900C is used to warm molten salt tanks, which create steam to power the £260m station's turbines. But, unlike all other solar power stations, the heat stored in these tanks can be released for up to 15 hours overnight, or during periods without sunlight.
The regular sunshine in southern Spain means the facility can therefore operate through most nights, guaranteeing electrical production for a minimum of 270 days per year, up to three times more than other renewable energies.
The project, a joint venture between Abu Dhabi energy company Masdar and Spanish engineering firm SENER called Torresol Energy, took two years to construct at a cost of £260m. It is expected to produce 110 GWh/year - enough to power 25,000 homes in the Andalucia region.
Miguel Domingo, spokesman for SENER, said, “The on-schedule and on-budget completion of the construction and commissioning of the Gemasolar plant is a milestone for SENER. Currently, SENER is the only company in the world that has developed and built a commercial plant with central tower molten salt receiver technology that has already started operation.”

Kazakhstan has announced that it will supply 2100 tonnes of uranium to India's nuclear plants by 2014.
Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbaev made the announcement after talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at Astana in Kazakhstan, PTI reported.
Singh said that India intended to increase its energy production five-fold in the near future.
The two leaders noted the need for expansion of mutually beneficial cooperation in this area while adhering to their existing obligations under multilateral nuclear regimes, a joint statement said.
India and Kazakhstan already have civil nuclear cooperation since January 2009 when Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) and Kazakh nuclear company KazAtomProm signed an MoU during Nazarbaev's India visit.
Under the contract, KazAtomProm supplies uranium which is used by Indian nuclear reactors. Kazakhstan has already supplied 200 tonnes uranium to India.
India is also exploring possibilities of joint exploration of uranium in Kazakhstan.

  Microsoft Corp. has announced the launch of the latest version of the world’s most-used browser with the release of Windows Internet Explorer 9 in 40 languages.

Internet Explorer 9 is Microsoft’s most-downloaded browser beta of all time, with more than 40 million downloads, and it has already gained more than 2 percent usage on Windows 7. Already more than 250 top sites including www.rozee.pk, www.wi-tribe.pk, Jang Group websites (GEO, Jang, The News ) and www.propakistani.pk from around the globe are taking advantage of the capabilities in Internet Explorer 9 to deliver differentiated experiences to their customers, with many featured on http://www.BeautyoftheWeb.pk.Together, these partners reach more than 1 billion active Internet users on the Web.

“The true potential of the web can now be explored through Internet Explorer 9” said Kamal Ahmed, Country General Manager, Microsoft Pakistan. “The internet browser is critical for giving users the right online experience – one which is fast, secure, user-friendly and quite intuitive. IE9 has all these qualities and provides the optimal use of hardware. It is also most suitable for countries with low bandwidth like Pakistan. IE9 is not only a product of technological advancement but also based on customer feedback obtained by releasing the beta version.”

Internet Explorer 9 is designed to bring sites to the front and center through Windows 7, enabling a more immersive, more beautiful Web experience. Features such as Pinned Sites and JumpList features enable people to put their websites directly on the Windows 7 Taskbar, as though they were native applications, and then to quickly and easily perform tasks related to those websites, such as check their inbox, change the music station, accept a friend invitation or see breaking news. These sites include some of the largest sites on the Web such as Facebook, Amazon, eBay and Twitter.

VP Sales & Marketing at wi-tribe Pakistan, Wahib Aslam, says, “Wi-tribe is very excited about partnering with Microsoft for the global launch of Internet Explorer 9, a cutting-edge browser promising a captivating and superior web browsing experience for customers and developers alike. We are confident that this alliance will bring a host of value additions to our own community of users, ultimately elevating their online experience to an entirely new and refreshing level.”

News website partners in the U.S. include the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the Huffington Post,as well as dozens of leading news sites globally across all major geographies.


“As a blogger who remains online 16 hours a day, I see IE9 changing the web surfing experience all together. With lot better speed, enhanced graphical processing and the clearer feel, IE9 is surely going to make the web a beautiful place to stay,” said Aamir Attaa, Editor, ProPakistani.PK, a top technology blog from Pakistan.

The new version of Internet Explorer takes advantage of the power of modern Windows PC hardware to improve all around Web browsing performance. Internet Explorer9 is also designed to be the most trusted browser because it contains a robust set of built-in security, privacy and reliability technologies that keep customers safer online.

"IE9 brings out the best of the web by giving users seamless access to their favorite websites through its unique pinning options, better tab management, performance improvements and powerful HTML5 support for rich in-browser applications" said Monis Rahman, CEO, Naseeb Networks.

Recent statistics show that more than 39 million people have already downloaded the beta version of IE9.This has no doubt given the product a significant share of the global web browser market even before it was officially launched. Microsoft confirmed that this is the highest and fastest adoption rate of any beta product ever