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.

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.

Senator Richard Blumenthal (D -Conn) foreslår at den føderale regjeringen utfører periodiske, dybden av personlige gjennomføring av alle i fotball, baseball, basketball og hockey ligaer, i et forsøk på å dempe vold.

Under ny lovgivning fra Blumenthal, kan Kongressen vil fjerne disse ligaene deres ulike antitrust unntak hvis de ikke gjør nok for å hindre denne volden.

Regningen er den nyeste reaksjonen på en rekke vold hendelser, spesielt i National Football League. Tidligere i år, dukket en video viser Baltimore Ravens kjører tilbake Ray Rice punching sin da-finans bevisstløs.

Mange var kritisk til NFLS svar, som var å utsette ris for to spill, og NFL svarte ved å foreslå en livstid ban. Denne uken, vunnet ris sin klage på at tøffere beslutningen.

Sinne over at hendelsen og andre har ført til økt interesse over om Kongressen bør tøyle i noen av frynsegodene som profesjonell idrett ligaer gis av regjeringen. For eksempel NFL og NHL har skattefritaksstatusen, og noen har foreslått ender denne statusen.

Blumenthal forslaget ville gjelde for NFL og NHL, samt Major League Baseball og National Basketball Association. Det ville ende permanent antitrust unntak som alle fire av disse ligaene nyte og solnedgang dem hvert femte år.

Om tre måneder før de unntakene utløper, ville en komité som regjeringen sendt en rapport til Kongressen detaljering personlige gjennomføring av personer i hver liga. Kongressen vil da få til å stemme på om å utvide unntak, basert på innholdet i hver rapport.

Major League Baseball er fullt unntatt fra alle antitrustlover, som gjør det enklere for at liga for å kontrollerer franchising og spillere. De andre ligaene har delvis unntak som la dem selge kringkasting rettighetene til alle lagene til ett enkelt nettverk uten å krenke antitrustlovene.

Blumenthal sa koble unntak til vold forebygging ville legge nødvendig press på pro idrett ligaer å sikre sine spillere og ansatte er sette et godt eksempel.

"Når unge ser idrettsutøvere begå voldshandlinger, og når de handlingene blir fritatt, glattet over, og gitt patetisk svak straff, de lære at vold ikke er tatt alvorlig," sa Blumenthal.

"De lærer at de ikke vil bli tatt seriøst hvis de rapportere misbruk," sa han. "De lærer at de kan slippe unna med begår overgrep mot andre. Landet gir disse lagene spesiell status på grunn av sin spesielle rolle i amerikansk kultur, men som ikke gir dem rett til å misbruke denne rettigheten.

Representanter for alle fire store Idretter ligaer dukket opp i en handel senatskomiteen høring å diskutere deres innsats for å bekjempe vold. Troy Vincent og fotballspiller som nå er konserndirektør for fotball operasjoner for NFL, brøt ned i tårer som han beskriver det innenlandske overgrep han vitne som barn.

Vincent sa NFL gjennomgår sin personlig gjennomføre politikk, og oppretter en komité for å sikre at visse standarder er oppfylt av spillere, trenere og ansatte. "Målet er intet mindre enn en rekke klare regler til å styre ansvarlighet for misbruk og en rettferdig prosess for spilleren og ansatt disiplin," sa han i han utarbeidet merknader.

Representanter fra andre sport ligaer tilsvarende skissert hvordan de jobber med å trene og råde sine spillere og ansatte.

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.