Friday, August 5, 2011

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Sehwag out early in Northants game

Posted: 05 Aug 2011 04:52 AM PDT

It was a forgettable return to the cricket field for someone considered India's [ Images ] biggest hope for a revival against England [ Images ].
Virender Sehwag [ Images ] was dismissed early in India's tour game against Northamptonshire at the County Ground on Friday.
- Team India's younger lot must show more zeal
The 32-year-old opener was trapped leg before by Dave Burton in the seventh over of the morning. The batsman paid the price for not offering a shot to an incoming delivery. He scored only eight.
Sehwag, who had not played any form of cricket in three months, was making his first appearance on the tour, having missed the first two Tests because of injury.
The swashbuckling batsman is expected to reignite the Indian challenge, beginning with the third Test at Birmingham next week.
Meanwhile, Gautam Gambhir [ Images ] and Zaheer Khan [ Images ] were also included in the team for the two-day game, in a bid to get them match fit for Edgbaston.
Opener Gambhir is leading the side even though skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni [ Images ] is part of the team. He is unlikely to keep wickets for entire duration of the match, as reserve 'keeper Wriddhiman Saha is also in the team.
Sachin Tendulkar [ Images ], Rahul Dravid [ Images ] and Praveen Kumar [ Images ] are rested.
Pragyan Ojha [ Images ] and Virat Kohli [ Images ], who replaced the injured Harbhajan Singh [ Images ] and Yuvraj Singh [ Images ], however, were not fielded for the game
The game assumes importance for leg-spinner Amit Mishra [ Images ], who is likely to take Harbhajan's place in the third Test.
The match is a 100-over-a-side game with 90 scheduled to be bowled during the day. Each team can field 12 players.
Indians: Gautam Gambhir (capt), Virender Sehwag, Abhinav Mukund, mahendra Singh Dhoni, vvS Laxman, Suresh Raina [ Images ], Wriddhiman Saha, Sreesanth [ Images ], Zaheer Khan, Amit Mishra, Munaf Patel [ Images ] and Ishant Sharma [ Images ].
Northamptonshire:  MB Loye, NJ O'Brien, RA White, RI Newton, DJG Sales (capt), Dj Willey, D Murphy, PM Best, D Burton, LM Daggett, L Evans and T Brett.

“Shady Rat” hack raises computer security concerns

Posted: 05 Aug 2011 04:50 AM PDT

A recent surge in high-profile hacker attacks is raising fresh concerns about computer and government security, as well as questions about the limits of an older generation of security software.
This week security company McAfee, released details of a five-year long cyber attack campaign that targeted the networks of 72 organizations, governments, and businesses around the world.
The United Nations, governments in Canada, the U.S., Taiwan, India, South Korea, the World Anti-Doping Agency, the International Olympic Committee, and an array of defense contractors and high-tech firms were victims of the attacks, which McAfee has dubbed "Operations Shady Rat."
"I'm glad they published the paper because the general public probably doesn't really understand how pervasive these attacks are," said Chester Wisniewski, senior security adviser with the IT security company Sophos.
"This is happening to everywhere, even to people who have the resources and knowledge that they should be able to defend themselves."
California-based McAfee expressed surprised at the scope and sophistication of the attack.
What is being done with the data is still unknown, but if even a fraction of it is used to copy or steal intellectual property, "the loss represents a massive economic threat," Dmitri Alperovitch, wrote in a 14-page report released Wednesday.
The Montreal-based Anti-Doping Agency later issued a statement expressing skepticism that its system had been hacked.
"At this stage, WADA has no evidence from its security experts of the intrusions as listed by McAfee and the Agency has yet to be convinced that they took place," the group said in a release.
"Lots of organizations have been hacked and don't realize it," said David Skillicorn, professor at the Queen's University school of computing
"You're not getting attacked by kids who live in their parents' basements but by sophisticated well-trained experts who have a lot of time and energy to devote to finding a way in."
McAfee said it obtained material from a command and control server, a kind of central hub where the hackers store their ill-gotten information.
The attack used a method known as spear-phishing. Hackers select a high-level target in an organization and then craft a personalized email, perhaps with reference to an upcoming vacation or meeting, which would prompt him or her to open an attachment, which contains malware.
"Lots of people now know you shouldn't open an attachment on a random email. But this looks like an email that they should open the attachment on and they do," Skillicorn said. "There's nothing that McAfee or anyone else can do to prevent that. It's not a technical problem."
Without question, human behaviour is the weakest link in the computer security chain, Wisniewski said. Our willingness to share details of our lives on social media sites such as Facebook exacerbates the problem.
"The lack of privacy today makes it easier for people to trick us," he said.
"These are tools and you still have to be a craftsman and know how to use them," Wisniewski added, referring to security software. "This area is growing so quickly that a lot of people moving into the security and technology business don't know how to use the tools properly, and that's a good hole for the hackers to take advantage of."
None of the recent attacks tied to hacker groups such as Anonymous and Lulz Security could have been repelled by traditional antivirus programs or firewall software, experts say. That's giving a boost to upstart rivals, which are developing new ways to safeguard data.
"It sure feels like security Armageddon, and that's what we're hearing from a lot of customers," said George Kurtz, chief technology officer at McAfee, now part of Intel Corp.
Startups such as Q1 Labs Inc. and Palo Alto Networks Inc. are working on more advanced approaches to firewalls, early intrusion detection and around-the-clock systems monitoring.
"Security 1.0 was about locking down fixed devices," said Brent Bracelin, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Oregon. Now that everyone brings their own device to work, companies have to adapt, he said. "We don't see an easy path for the Symantecs and the Intel/McAfees of the world to evolve beyond the security 1.0 technology to the next-generation market."
The choice of targets led McAfee to speculate that the hack was orchestrated by a single country bent on more than simple economic gain.
Speculation immediately centred on China, which has routinely been blamed for and denied involvement in state-sponsored hacking campaigns.
In February, the federal Finance Department, the Treasury Board, and Defence Research and Devleopment Canada, a civilian arm of Canada's Department of National Defence, were thought to have been compromised by China-based hackers.
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