Pakistanis create rival Muslim Facebook

ISLAMABAD: Pakistanis outraged with Facebook over “blasphemous” caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed have created a spin-off networking site that they dream can connect the world's 1.6 billion Muslims, reports AFP.

A group of six young IT professionals from Lahore, the cultural and entertainment capital of Pakistan, Launched www.millatfacebook.com on Tuesday for Muslims to interact online and protest against blasphemy.

The private venture came after a Pakistani court ordered a block on Facebook until May 31, following deep offence over an “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day” page considered “blasphemous” and “sacrilegious”.

“Millatfacebook is Pakistan's very own, first social networking site. A site for Muslims by Muslims where sweet people of other religions are also welcome,” the website tells people interested in signing up.

Dubbed MFB, after Facebook's moniker FB, its founder says professionals are working around the clock to offer features similar to those pioneered by the wildly popular California-based prototype.

Each member has a “wall” for friends to comment on. The site offers email, photo, video, chat and discussion board facilities.

The Urdu word “Millat” is used by Muslims to refer to their nation. The website claims to have attracted 4,300 members in the last three days — mostly English-speaking Pakistanis in their 20s.

The number of aficionados may be growing, but the community is a drop in the ocean of the 2.5 million Facebook fans in Pakistan and there have been some scathing early reviews of the start-up.

Neither has Facebook been immediately reachable for comment.

“We want to tell Facebook people 'if they mess with us they have to face the consequences',” said Usman Zaheer, the 24-year-old chief operating officer of the software house that hosts the new site.

“If someone commits blasphemy against our Prophet Mohammed then we will become his competitor and give him immense business loss,” he told AFP, dreaming of making “the largest Muslim social networking website”.

Once signed up, members are a click away from debate on the bulletin board.

For example, “Enticing Fury” wrote: “The reason is that this forum must be reserved for ALL MUSLIMS OF THE WORLD and not only Pakistan. So using the word MILLAT is very good!

“Well done guys. You have made a great alternative for the whole Muslim ummah (nation)!”

But the nascent quality of the work-in-progress website has preoccupied and dismayed some, as well as drawn at least one damning newspaper review.

One member wrote: “they need 2 have more info”.

Another posted a mournful: “need games here as well. I miss cafe world” referring to the popular Facebook page where members can run their own virtual cafe.

“It was a good idea... as it can give us a forum to connect, but its reach is too limited,” Mohammad Adeel, a 31-year-old pharmacist told AFP in Karachi, who joined to keep up with friends he missed due to the Facebook ban.

Local newspaper was crushing. “The quality of user experience is so abysmal that it does not merit the humble title, 'Facebook clone',” it wrote online.

“To sum up, MillatFacebook is a bold effort... but it is unlikely to capture a large audience, judging by the online experience it offers currently.”

But Zaheer is pleased with his handiwork, saying the site has already attracted members living in Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.

Pakistani law student Rana Adeel, 21, signed up to MillatFB in Lahore after receiving invites through SMS and email from friends.

“In two days, I got more than seven friends. If the Facebook ban is lifted, I'll keep networking on both,” he told AFP.

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Text messages save pregnant Rwandan women

KIGALI:  At midnight Valentine Uwingabire's back began to hurt. Her husband ran to tell Germaine Uwera, a community health worker in their village in the fertile foothills of Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park.

 

Equipped with a mobile phone from the local health center, Uwera sent an urgent SMS text message and within a quarter of an hour, an ambulance had whisked Valentine to hospital. Minutes later Uwingabire's third child was born.

"We called our child Manirakoze, which means 'Thank God'," she told reporters, sitting outside her mud and bamboo house pitched in the shadow of Karisimbi volcano, home to some of the world's few remaining highland mountain gorillas.

Had it not been for Rwanda's new Rapid SMS service, Valentine would have been carried in agony, down the hill to the nearest town on an improvised stretcher.

As is the case in much of Africa, fixed-line telephone networks are virtually non-existent outside of the capital and major cities.

The Rapid SMS scheme - a joint initiative between three U.N. organizations - is being tested in the Musanze District where 432 health workers have received mobile phones.

Health workers register pregnant women in their village via free SMS text messages and send regular updates to a central server in the capital, Kigali. They are monitored during the pregnancy, and those at high risk brought in for check-ups.

Rwanda, Africa's most densely populated nation, is ranked among the world's worst for maternal mortality, according to U.N. data, and it is an important target for the global body's goal to reduce maternal deaths by 75 per cent globally by 2015.

"No Maternal Deaths"

John Kalach, director of the nearest hospital in Ruhengeri, says since Rapid SMS launched in August 2009, his hospital has had no maternal deaths, compared to 10 the previous year.

"We used to get ladies coming here with serious complications just because they delayed the decision because the journey was very long," he says.

Kalach says authorities can use the data to work out which diseases affect women during pregnancy, the causes of death for children below five years, the volume and type of drugs required, and to monitor population growth rates.

Friday Nwaigwe, UNICEF's country head of child health and nutrition, says the next step is to give mobile phones to 17,500 maternal health workers across the country and eventually to all 50,000 community health workers.

"In Rwanda we have 750 out of every 100,000 pregnant women die every year. It's a very big problem," Nwaigwe says.

Still, in a nation where only six percent of its 10 million-strong population has access to electricity, a country-wide expansion of the scheme may run into problems.

Germaine says to charge her phone she has to walk 20 minutes to the nearest charging booth, and Kalach says some remote areas of the hilly country do not yet have network coverage.

But surrounded by trees heaving with chandeliers of green bananas and fields bursting with beans, Uwera and Uwingabire agree a simple text message has had a big impact on their lives.

"We used to use a traditional ambulance made of mats, like a stretcher made of papyrus and sticks. It takes one hour by walking - or five minutes in a car," Germaine says, cradling baby Manirakoze and proudly brandishing her mobile telephone.

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iPad-mania as thousands queue for global roll-out

PARIS: Thousands of die-hard Apple fans mobbed shops in parts of Europe and Asia on Friday after the iPad, touted as a revolution in personal computing, began its global launch.

Long queues of customers snaked outside Apple shops in Australia and Japan hours before the opening and similar huddled masses of gadget lovers turned out at stores in six European countries including Britain and France.

The iPad - a flat, 10-inch (25-centimetre) black tablet - was also going on sale in Canada as part of a global roll-out that was pushed back by a month due to huge demand in the United States.

One million iPads were sold in 28 days after the product's US debut in early April, forcing the firm to delay its foreign launch.

At Apple's flagship store in Paris, set in the prestigious underground mall of the Louvre museum, 24-year-old engineer Audrey Sobgou beamed as she walked away with one of the prized tablets.

Sobgou travelled 205 kilometres (127 miles) from her home town in Lille, northern France, and waited nearly two hours before stepping inside the busy Apple store to make her purchase.

“I'm not a victim of hype,” she insisted. “I know Apple products and it's about the quality, the interface, how it's designed and what it can do. With elegance and style.”

Hundreds of people had already queued outside of the Paris Apple store hours before it opened at 8:00 am (0600 GMT) and the launch made the front page of major newspapers.

The free-sheet Metro daily in Paris showed a full-page picture of the tablet under the polemical question “iPad: gadget or revolution?”

About 40 enthusiasts were already waiting outside the flagship Apple store in central London, at 3:00 am (0200 GMT) Friday to get their hands on the iPad when the store opened at 8:00 am.

Most of them were sitting on deck chairs and some were wrapped in sleeping bags and blankets.

Staff escorted the first group of customers one by one up to buy their iPad after they opened the doors, whooping, chanting and cheering.

“I queued overnight for about 20 hours since midday yesterday but it was very, very worth it,” Jake Lee, a 17-year-old student from Essex, told AFP, clutching his treasured iPad.

“I wanted the iPad since it was announced, I'm just really excited about it,” he told AFP.

The iPad also went on sale in Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland and will be followed in July by a launch in Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

About 30 people waited under a driving rain in Frankfurt outside the Apple store while 19-year-old student Claudio Roccario was among some one hundred customers waiting to buy his iPad in Milan.

“I wanted to be among the first,” he said, echoing the sentiment of most die-hard Apple fans who turned out for the first day of the launch.

Many Apple aficionados in Zurich camped out overnight in front of the store to be among the first to buy the tablet and download some of the 5,000 available apps.

Prices in Japan and Australia for the basic 16GB iPad are comparable to US prices, once sales tax is included, although a significant markup by Apple in Britain and continental Europe has triggered some grumbling.

In France, wifi models sell for between 499 and 699 euros (620 and 969 dollars) with the 3G models going for between 599 and 799 euros.

The multi-functional device is tipped by some pundits to revitalise media and publishing, with many major newspapers and broadcasters launching applications.

Newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch has said the iPad has the potential to save the newspaper industry but in France, that enthusiasm is not shared by President Nicolas Sarkozy's minister for the digital economy.

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet last month dismissed the “marketing frenzy” surrounding the iPad launch and declared that it was “a bit heavy” compared to the Archos tablet, made in France.

Other than the five other European countries, California-based Apple plans to bring the iPad to Hong Kong, Mexico, New Zealand and Singapore in July.

Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky estimated that Apple is selling more than 200,000 iPads a week - more than estimated Mac computer sales of 110,000 a week, and vying with iPhone 3GS sales of 246,000 a week.

Apple has declined to reveal the number of pre-orders received for the iPad internationally, but Abramsky put it at around 600,000.

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Face-off with Facebook

Of late, Facebook, the global social networking site, has been experiencing a series of glitches on its path to world conquest. With over 400 million users, and revenues in excess of a billion dollars, it is one of the Internet’s biggest success stories. And no, Pakistan’s decision to impose a ban on the site has nothing to do with Facebook’s current woes.

The big story is about the site’s privacy policy, and it is scrambling to undo the harm it did to its reputation by making data about its users widely accessible. Pakistan, with around 2.5 million users, is a drop in the ocean for Facebook. The people inconvenienced by the ban are the Pakistanis who were able to keep in touch with their family members and friends around the world. While younger, tech-savvy users can easily circumvent this ban with a few clicks on their computers, people of my generation will struggle to connect with their children or friends living and working abroad.

Frankly, I have never got into the whole social networking scene because I already spend too much time on my computer, writing, reading newspapers and researching articles, as well as replying to emails from friends and readers. Every once in a while, I log on to Facebook to see pictures of my grandson Danyaal posted by my son. But other than that, I generally avoid opening my Facebook page, so the ban has not affected me in the least.

In an excess of regulatory zeal, the Pakistan Telecom Authority has also slapped a ban on YouTube, Flickr, and several chunks of Wikipedia, the universal encyclopaedia. Is a total ban on the Internet next? All these childish measures only serve to remind us how out of step we are with the rest of the world. The truth is that it would have been a simple matter to block the offending Facebook page that was carrying the blasphemous drawings of the Holy Prophet [PBUH]. For PTA to take such an extreme step, there is something more to it than a desire to protect Pakistanis from sacrilegious Internet content. I suspect this decision echoes a controversy that took place last year when legislation was going to be moved to ban the use of cellphones and the Internet to spread jokes and allegations against the president and the government. The proposal became a joke itself around the world, and was quietly shelved. To my cynical eyes, PTA has used the indignation whipped up against the offending Facebook page to slap a total ban.

Interestingly, no other Muslim country has taken a similar measure, indicating that Pakistanis are more easily upset by any hint of blasphemy than our brethren elsewhere. And yet, according to Google, the popular search engine, the word ‘sex’ is typed in more often by Pakistanis than by Internet users in any other country. Clearly, we are not entirely consistent in our attachment to religious edicts.

Some five years ago, the Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten caused a worldwide furore by publishing a dozen cartoons of the Holy Prophet [PBUH]. Buildings were torched in riots and many lost their lives. The Danish embassy in Islamabad was attacked by a suicide bomber who killed several Pakistanis. Those who were so worked up at the time will no doubt be distressed to learn that the price of one of the offending images drawn by Kurt Westergaard has gone up to $150,000 for the original, while 870 copies have sold for $250 each.

TV coverage of the recent demonstrations in Pakistan against Facebook showed angry, bearded faces of men who, it must be said, would be hard pressed to describe what the social networking phenomenon is about. In their ignorance, they were similar to the mobs who rioted, burned and killed to protest against Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. In both cases, the protesters had no clue what they were so worked about, excepting that they had been told that somebody somewhere had blasphemed against the Holy Prophet [PBUH].

Such knee-jerk reactions actually boomerang against protesters. Rushdie’s book sales rocketed, while lots of people were driven by curiosity to check out the offending Facebook page after being alerted to its contents. Had Justice Ijaz Ahmad Chaudhry passed a less draconian order, it would have met the fate it deserved: complete indifference from the vast Internet community. As it is, the page is getting far more hits for its crude drawings than its creators could have dreamed of.

We all need to realise that the Internet is an unregulated and largely uncharted universe with literally billions of pages, and it is growing larger by the day. Among this enormous body of material, there are bound to be bits that offend somebody or the other. Equally, there is much of value on the Web. This is true of all media: while books, films and television all contain entertainment and information, they also carry pornography and other offensive material. Should we then ban libraries, cinema houses and TV broadcasts?

Within the last two decades, the Internet has transformed our lives in ways that were unthinkable before its advent, and the world is a far richer place as a result. Patterns of work, communication and entertainment have been altered forever, usually for the good. Those who set up the Internet and those who maintain it are determined to keep it as regulation-free as possible. Thus far, they have resisted attempts by governments to control how it is used, and to my view, this free-wheeling philosophy is to be welcomed and supported.

Once regulators step in to avoid offending one section of users or another, there is no telling where political correctness ends and censorship begins. The Chinese government has tried to censor and control the Internet, to little avail. In the aftermath of the Iranian elections, Tehran attempted to curb access to Twitter and many Internet sites following the protests, but again failed to block news from spreading.

Governments need to understand that their monopoly over news and information is now a thing of the past. In Pakistan, when both radio and TV were tightly controlled by the government, news could be twisted in a way that is no longer possible. We really need to grow up and understand that knee-jerk bans and restrictions end up only harming ourselves and nobody else.

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Facebook founder out to fix "a bunch of mistakes"

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Sunday said the social networking service has made blunders that it hopes to fix with coming changes to its privacy controls.

Zuckerberg issued a mea culpa in an email exchange with popular technology blogger Robert Scoble, who shared it at his website after purportedly getting Zuckerberg's permission.

“I want to make sure we get this stuff right this time,” said a message attributed to Zuckerberg.

“I know we've made a bunch of mistakes, but my hope at the end of this is that the service ends up in a better place and that people understand that our intentions are in the right place and we respond to the feedback from the people we serve.”

Zuckerberg, who turned 26 years old on May 14, said Facebook would start talking publicly this week about privacy control modifications.

“We've been listening to all the feedback and have been trying to distill it down to the key things we need to improve,” Zuckerberg wrote.

“We're going to be ready to start talking about some of the new things we've built this week.”

Facebook on Saturday said it plans to simplify privacy controls at the popular social-networking service to appease critics.

Facebook contended that members like new programs rolled out at the California-based Internet hotspot but want easy ways to opt out of sharing personal information with third-party applications or websites.

Features introduced last month include the ability for partner websites to incorporate Facebook data, a move that would further expand the social network's presence on the Internet.

Facebook has been under fire from US privacy and consumer groups, US lawmakers and the European Union over new features that critics claim compromise the privacy of its more than 400 million members.

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Facebook ban drives Rehman Malik to Twitter

ISLAMABAD: After Pakistan banned Facebook in a bid to stop it hosting “blasphemous” pictures of Prophet Mohammad, the country's interior minister found a new way to get his online fix. He jumped on Twitter.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said his son told him that if he couldn't get on Facebook, where he has his own page which hosts pictures of dignitaries and has 691 fans, he should Tweet.

“Only a few days back I came in (as a Twitter user). I like it,” Malik told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. “There are lots of questions, are you real, are you fake?”

Malik already has more than 270 followers, according to his page (including this correspondent), far less than the “countless” ones he said he had after only a few days.

Many people writing to him question if indeed the account is real (it is) or complain that he should be governing instead of tweeting. Malik's tweets give no hint the digital hecklers bother him. He calls for unity in the face of violence in Karachi and comments on how nice it is to meet so many women parliamentarians from around Asia. He also freely engages with his followers, an unusual practice in Pakistan's stratified political culture.

“Thank you for your appreciation,” Malik wrote to one well-wisher. “I will hunt the terrorists to their demise.”

“I do not devise economic or monetary policy,” he replied to another, questioning an increase in fees and taxes.

While he declined to criticise the decision to ban Facebook and other websites, he said he hoped that a solution could be worked out soon that pleased most people. “I think we should be open-minded,” he said.

Pakistan last week blocked the popular social networking site Facebook indefinitely because of an online competition to draw Prophet Mohammad. Any representation of the Prophet Mohammad is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous by Muslims.

YouTube and about 1,000 other sites have been blocked for the same reason.

The publications of cartoons of the prophet in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked deadly protests in Muslim countries.

About 50 people were killed during violent protests in Muslim countries in 2006 over the cartoons, five of them in Pakistan.

Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on the Danish embassy in Islamabad in 2008, killing six people, saying it was in revenge for publication of the caricatures.

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Pakistan blocks YouTube over “blasphemous” material

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has blocked the popular video sharing website YouTube indefinitely in a bid to contain “blasphemous” material, officials said on Thursday.

The blockade came hours after the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) directed Internet service providers to stop access to social network site Facebook indefinitely on Wednesday because of an online competition to draw the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

Any representation of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous by Muslims.

Wahaj-us-Siraj, the CEO of Nayatel, an Internet service provider, said PTA issued an order late on Wednesday seeking an “immediate” block of YouTube.

“It was a serious instruction as they wanted us to do it quickly and let them know after that,” he told Reuters.

YouTube was also blocked in the Muslim country in 2007 for about a day for what it called un-Islamic videos.

PTA spokesman, Khurram Ali Mehran, said the action was taken after the authority determined that content considered blasphemous by devout Muslims was being posted on the website.

“Before shutting down (YouTube), we did try just to block particular URLs or links, and access to 450 links on the Internet were stopped, but the blasphemous content kept appearing so we ordered a total shut down,” he said.

He regretted that the administrators at the Facebook and YouTube had not taken the content off despite Pakistan's protests.

“Their attitude was in contravention to international resolutions and their own policies advertised on the Web for the general public,” Mehran said.

The PTA issued a statement Thursday saying, “PTA would welcome the concerned authorities of Facebook and YouTube to contact the PTA for resolving the issue at the earliest which ensures religious harmony and respect.”

The PTA decision to block all of Facebook also cut Pakistanis off from groups and pages dedicated to opposing the competition, which have thousands more supporters than the competition does.

Along with the ban, some popular websites, including Wikipedia and Flickr, have been inaccessible in Pakistan since Wednesday night. But the spokesman said it happened purely due to a technical reason and no orders were passed against them.

He said the authority was monitoring other websites as well.

“BLACKBERRY SERVICES”

Siraj said the blocking of the two websites would cut up to a quarter of total Internet traffic in Pakistan.

“It'll have an impact on the overall Internet traffic as they eat up 20 to 25 per cent of the country's total 65 giga-bytes traffic,” he said.

After the PTA's directives against Facebook and YouTube, Pakistani mobile companies blocked all Blackberry services on Wednesday night but restored services used by non-corporate users later on Thursday.

“We have intimated to the Blackberry service administrators in Canada to block them and once it's done, the service will be restored fully,” said Farhan Butt, an official at Pakistan's biggest cellular company, Mobilink.

The closure of services worried Blackberry users.

“The biggest concern for us ... is the delay in decision making,” said Zahid Sheikh, head of information technology department at National Foods Limited in Karachi city.

“Our top officials and senior management are not always in office. They do travel and work from remote locations, and with this shut down, they can't access emails.”

Publications of similar cartoons in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked deadly protests in Muslim countries. Around 50 people were killed during violent protests in Muslim countries in 2006 over the cartoons, five of them in Pakistan.

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Denmark's embassy in Islamabad in 2008, killing six people, saying it was in revenge for publication of the caricatures.

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Science to turn deserts into farms

This is apropos of the news item, ‘Gulf states look to science to turn deserts into farms’ (May 18).

Farming in semi-arid and arid zones with little water supply, high soil salinity and in extreme heat is becoming a serious problem in sustaining agricultural productivity in Sindh and Balochistan.

Dr Rajindra Pachuri, Director-General, Energy and Resource Institute, India, said that Qatar and Quwait have been trying to increase their domestic agricultural supplies through the use of selected types of fungus that enhance the growth of plants in arid areas.

By mixing these special groups of fungi (mycorrhizas) in soil farmland they were able to convert 40,000 square metres in hyper saline wasteland into productive areas where vegetables and grain plants can now grow. Similar projects in Kuwait, India, Oman and the UAE are in progress.

In this regard, I would like to point out that the application of mycorrhizas in soil was carried out by us through a research project. The results of the research work submitted as thesis earned a PhD degree for the research officer in 1992 under the supervision of the scribe.

Another research project, funded by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan on the application of mycorrhizal biotechnology in sunflower (2007-2010) showed an increase in yield, in resisting roof rot attack and in drought mitigation by inoculating the compatible mycorrhizas in soil before sowing sunflower seeds.

On a global basis, more than 90 per cent plants are mycorrhizal. In order to draw benefits accruing from the symbiotic association of mycorrhizas with food, fodder, fibre, horticultural and medicinal plants; the status of mycorrhizal propagules in soil should be enhanced.

There is a good scope for the betterment of sustainable agricultural system in semi-arid and arid regions of Pakistan on the application of mycorrhizal biotechnology.

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Facebook furore

There is no doubt that a Facebook member’s invitation to users on the social networking site to draw the Holy Prophet (PBUH) was in poor taste and deserving of strong condemnation. It is debatable whether freedom of expression should extend to material that is offensive to the sensibilities, traditions and beliefs of religious, ethnic or other communities.



Nevertheless, the Lahore High Court’s instructions to the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority to block Facebook constituted an example of Pakistan’s tendency for knee-jerk reactions. Soon after the judgment, users found that PTA had blocked the entire site and later resorted to shutting down other popular sites as well. If the authorities feared a violent public reaction, would it not have been enough to block just the offending section, rather than depriving millions of Internet surfers in Pakistan of the use of one of the most popular sites on the web? In fact, many users have been able to circumvent the restrictions by accessing the blocked material through proxy servers. After all, many users feel, and rightly so, that they can decide for themselves what is or is not offensive, and choose not to access material that is repugnant to their beliefs.

Meanwhile, we must ask ourselves why Pakistanis have reached a juncture where they have played right into the hands of those who think nothing of displaying or publishing material that denigrates their beliefs. By reacting the way we do we only harm ourselves and, in the process, even become a subject of derision. The irony was evident in the protests over the Danish newspaper caricatures some years ago. The fallout was arson and looting of our own assets. In the present case, while other Muslim countries, Egypt, Bangladesh and Turkey among them, have witnessed resentment against the Facebook competition the site was not blocked, nor were there reports of violence. The war on terror has divided the world, and the misuse of technology to deride beliefs and hurt feelings will not stop. Pakistanis should learn to protest peacefully, and in a manner that does not deprive other Pakistanis of their rights.

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Google teams with Sony, Intel on 'smart' Web TV

SAN FRANCISCO: Google believes it has come up with the technology to unite Web surfing with channel surfing on televisions.

To reach the long-elusive goal, Google has joined forces with Sony, Intel and Logitech.

The companies were unveiling their much-anticipated plan for a ''smart'' TV on Thursday during a Google conference for about 5,000 software programmers.

The TVs are expected to go on sale in the fall. Pricing wasn't immediately announced.

Sony will make the TVs, which will rely on an Intel microprocessor. Google will provide the software, including its Android operating system and Chrome Web browser. Logitech will supply a special remote control and wireless keyboard.

Other companies have tried to turn televisions into Internet gateways with little success during the past decade. — AP

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Pakistan blocks YouTube over “blasphemous” material

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has blocked the popular video sharing website YouTube indefinitely in a bid to contain “blasphemous” material, officials said on Thursday.

The blockade came hours after the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) directed Internet service providers to stop access to social network site Facebook indefinitely on Wednesday because of an online competition to draw the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

Any representation of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous by Muslims.

Wahaj-us-Siraj, the CEO of Nayatel, an Internet service provider, said PTA issued an order late on Wednesday seeking an “immediate” block of YouTube.

“It was a serious instruction as they wanted us to do it quickly and let them know after that,” he told Reuters.

YouTube was also blocked in the Muslim country in 2007 for about a day for what it called un-Islamic videos.

PTA spokesman, Khurram Ali Mehran, said the action was taken after the authority determined that content considered blasphemous by devout Muslims was being posted on the website.

“Before shutting down (YouTube), we did try just to block particular URLs or links, and access to 450 links on the Internet were stopped, but the blasphemous content kept appearing so we ordered a total shut down,” he said.

He regretted that the administrators at the Facebook and YouTube had not taken the content off despite Pakistan's protests.

“Their attitude was in contravention to international resolutions and their own policies advertised on the Web for the general public,” Mehran said.

The PTA issued a statement Thursday saying, “PTA would welcome the concerned authorities of Facebook and YouTube to contact the PTA for resolving the issue at the earliest which ensures religious harmony and respect.”

The PTA decision to block all of Facebook also cut Pakistanis off from groups and pages dedicated to opposing the competition, which have thousands more supporters than the competition does.

Along with the ban, some popular websites, including Wikipedia and Flickr, have been inaccessible in Pakistan since Wednesday night. But the spokesman said it happened purely due to a technical reason and no orders were passed against them.

He said the authority was monitoring other websites as well.

“BLACKBERRY SERVICES”

Siraj said the blocking of the two websites would cut up to a quarter of total Internet traffic in Pakistan.

“It'll have an impact on the overall Internet traffic as they eat up 20 to 25 per cent of the country's total 65 giga-bytes traffic,” he said.

After the PTA's directives against Facebook and YouTube, Pakistani mobile companies blocked all Blackberry services on Wednesday night but restored services used by non-corporate users later on Thursday.

“We have intimated to the Blackberry service administrators in Canada to block them and once it's done, the service will be restored fully,” said Farhan Butt, an official at Pakistan's biggest cellular company, Mobilink.

The closure of services worried Blackberry users.

“The biggest concern for us ... is the delay in decision making,” said Zahid Sheikh, head of information technology department at National Foods Limited in Karachi city.

“Our top officials and senior management are not always in office. They do travel and work from remote locations, and with this shut down, they can't access emails.”

Publications of similar cartoons in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked deadly protests in Muslim countries. Around 50 people were killed during violent protests in Muslim countries in 2006 over the cartoons, five of them in Pakistan.

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Denmark's embassy in Islamabad in 2008, killing six people, saying it was in revenge for publication of the caricatures.

Read more...

Facebook access blocked on LHC order

LAHORE: The government blocked on Wednesday access to Facebook after the Lahore High Court ordered closure of the social networking website until May 31 for holding a competition of blasphemous drawings. Justice Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry asked Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Director Mudassar Husain to file a detailed report on the matter.

The judge also sought assistance of petitioner Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ahmed and other lawyers on relevant international laws.

The PTA director told the court that the closure of the website would damage the national economy. He said the country could lose the internet facility after blocking access to the website.

He said the PTA had already blocked links to the controversial webpage which had hosted the competition, instead of blocking the whole website. He said the link had been blocked on Tuesday evening.

The official’s remarks infuriated many lawyers present in the courtroom and Advocate Mohammad Azhar Siddique said that Muslims were ready to suffer any loss to curb blasphemy.

The judge asked both parties to sit together, find a solution to the dispute and return to the court after break.

Consultations held in the deputy attorney general’s office remained inconclusive and the matter was left for the court to decide.

When the hearing resumed, the judge ordered that the website be blocked till May 31, the next date of hearing.

Chaudhry Zulfiqar of the Islamic Lawyers’ Forum had said that Article 2-A of the Constitution envisaged that no practice against religion could be allowed in the country. He said the website having various features against the injunctions of Islam was banned in a number of Muslim countries.

After the court’s decision, the PTA ordered all the operators in the country to block the website, www.facebook.com, until further orders. It said the directives had been issued by the ministry of information technology and telecommunication in view of the LHC’s order.

On Tuesday, the PTA had instructed all concerned to block the objectionable link/URL on Facebook which was immediately blocked.

The authority has set up a crisis cell to monitor such contents and announced that toll free number 0800-55055 and email address complaint@pta.gov.pk can be used to notify it of URLs where objectionable material is available.

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Facebook may make disputed page inaccessible in Pakistan

WASHINGTON: Facebook is disappointed at being blocked in Pakistan over a contest that encourages users to post caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and may make the offending page inaccessible to users there, the social network said late Wednesday.

“We are very disappointed with the Pakistani courts’ decision to block Facebook without warning, and suspect our users there feel the same way,” Facebook said in a statement to AFP.

“We are analyzing the situation and the legal considerations, and will take appropriate action, which may include making this content inaccessible to users in Pakistan,” it said.

Pakistan blocked access to Facebook on a court order over a competition created by a Facebook user who set up a page called “Draw Mohammed Day,” inviting people to send in caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) on May 20.

Islam strictly prohibits depictions of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) as blasphemous and Muslims around the world staged angry protests over the publication of satirical cartoons of the prophet in European newspapers in 2006.

The statement from the Palo Alto, California-based social network said “we want Facebook to be a place where people can openly discuss issues and express their views, while respecting the rights and feelings of others.

“With now more than 400 million users from around the world, we sometimes find people discussing and posting about topics that others may find controversial, inaccurate, or offensive,” it said.

“While some kinds of comments and content may be upsetting for someone — criticism of a certain culture, country, religion, lifestyle, or political ideology, for example — that alone is not a reason to remove the discussion,” it said.

“We strongly believe that Facebook users have the freedom to express their opinions, and we don't typically take down content, groups or pages that speak out against countries, religions, political entities, or ideas.”

The statement noted that “Nazi content is illegal in some countries” but said “that does not mean it should be removed entirely from Facebook.”

“Most companies approach this issue by preventing certain content from being shown to users in the countries where it is illegal and that is our approach as well,” it added.

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Pakistan blocks YouTube over “blasphemous” material

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has blocked the popular video sharing website YouTube indefinitely in a bid to contain “blasphemous” material, officials said on Thursday.

The blockade came hours after the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) directed Internet service providers to stop access to social network site Facebook indefinitely on Wednesday because of an online competition to draw the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

Any representation of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) is deemed un-Islamic and blasphemous by Muslims.

Wahaj-us-Siraj, the CEO of Nayatel, an Internet service provider, said PTA issued an order late on Wednesday seeking an “immediate” block of YouTube.

“It was a serious instruction as they wanted us to do it quickly and let them know after that,” he told Reuters.

YouTube was also blocked in the Muslim country in 2007 for about a day for what it called un-Islamic videos.

PTA spokesman, Khurram Ali Mehran, said the action was taken after the authority determined that content considered blasphemous by devout Muslims was being posted on the website.

“Before shutting down (YouTube), we did try just to block particular URLs or links, and access to 450 links on the Internet were stopped, but the blasphemous content kept appearing so we ordered a total shut down,” he said.

He regretted that the administrators at the Facebook and YouTube had not taken the content off despite Pakistan's protests.

“Their attitude was in contravention to international resolutions and their own policies advertised on the Web for the general public,” Mehran said.

The PTA issued a statement Thursday saying, “PTA would welcome the concerned authorities of Facebook and YouTube to contact the PTA for resolving the issue at the earliest which ensures religious harmony and respect.”

The PTA decision to block all of Facebook also cut Pakistanis off from groups and pages dedicated to opposing the competition, which have thousands more supporters than the competition does.

Along with the ban, some popular websites, including Wikipedia and Flickr, have been inaccessible in Pakistan since Wednesday night. But the spokesman said it happened purely due to a technical reason and no orders were passed against them.

He said the authority was monitoring other websites as well.

“BLACKBERRY SERVICES”

Siraj said the blocking of the two websites would cut up to a quarter of total Internet traffic in Pakistan.

“It'll have an impact on the overall Internet traffic as they eat up 20 to 25 per cent of the country's total 65 giga-bytes traffic,” he said.

After the PTA's directives against Facebook and YouTube, Pakistani mobile companies blocked all Blackberry services on Wednesday night but restored services used by non-corporate users later on Thursday.

“We have intimated to the Blackberry service administrators in Canada to block them and once it's done, the service will be restored fully,” said Farhan Butt, an official at Pakistan's biggest cellular company, Mobilink.

The closure of services worried Blackberry users.

“The biggest concern for us ... is the delay in decision making,” said Zahid Sheikh, head of information technology department at National Foods Limited in Karachi city.

“Our top officials and senior management are not always in office. They do travel and work from remote locations, and with this shut down, they can't access emails.”

Publications of similar cartoons in Danish newspapers in 2005 sparked deadly protests in Muslim countries. Around 50 people were killed during violent protests in Muslim countries in 2006 over the cartoons, five of them in Pakistan.

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Denmark's embassy in Islamabad in 2008, killing six people, saying it was in revenge for publication of the caricatures.

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SC Magazine Names WatchGuard Vendor of The Year

WatchGuard® Technologies, a global leader of business security solutions, today announced that it has been named Vendor of The Year at the 2010 Secure Computing (Australia) Awards for outstanding achievement in information technology (IT) security.

The award was announced at this week’s annual AusCERT conference on the Gold Coast and recognises the vendor which has increased customer satisfaction, improved profitability or IT security, been a leader in innovation and is seen as an influencer of industry best practice.

“The overall high and uniform levels of satisfaction among its Australian users and channel partners influenced the panel’s decision to hand WatchGuard the gong for the SC Awards Vendor of the Year.  In the past year, the vendor has refitted its local channel programme to strengthen its partners against the headwinds caused by the global economic slowdown while working to integrate its Borderware acquisition into the fabric of its lineup and refining its offerings,” said Nate Cochrane, Editor-in-Chief, SC Magazine Australia. “The SC Awards panel was impressed with the depth of WatchGuard’s Australian presence in a broad range of industries and the public sector. “                 

The award was adjudicated by an expert panel of consultants, chief technology officers, lab directors and former law enforcement officers.  These judges are hand-picked by SC Magazine’s editorial team for their breadth of knowledge and experience in the information security industry.  They include Keith Price, National Director of the Australian Information Security Association; Joel Hatton, Senior Computer Security Analyst with AusCERT; Ajoy Ghosh, Chief Information Security Officer at Logica; Tim Ebringer, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft; and security industry consultants, including Phil Kernick who holds CISSP and Cisco CCSP security certifications, and Nigel Phair, Senior Fellow within the Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention.

Scott Robertson, Regional Director ANZ, WatchGuard Technologies, said, “We are both honoured and thrilled to win Vendor of the Year.  This award is testament to the success of both our Australian channel partners and our employees in their combined ability to drive success for customers with our offering of high-performance security solutions that protect mission critical networks, application and data.  The award validates what thousands of customers already benefit from in choosing WatchGuard - the best value, performance, capability and functionality for IT security needs.”

As the industry’s pre-eminent awards program, the annual SC Awards have recognised security’s key contributors and outstanding products for the past two years.  The SC Awards honour the professionals, companies and products that help fend off the myriad of security threats confronted in today’s corporate world. Individuals, brands and solutions recognised in the program address not only the security challenges prominent today, but also the emerging threat landscape of tomorrow.

For more information about WatchGuard’s business security solutions, go to: http://www.watchguard.com/products>

About SC Magazine
SC Magazine provides IT security professional with in-depth and unbiased information through timely news, comprehensive analysis, cutting-edge features, contributions from thought-leaders and the best, most extensive collection of product reviews in the business.  By offering a consolidated view of IT security through independent product tests and well-researched editorial content that provides the contextual backdrop for how these IT security tools will address larger demands put on businesses today, SC Magazine enables IT security pros to make the right security decisions for their companies. 

About WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.
Since 1996, WatchGuard® Technologies, Inc. has been the advanced technology leader of business security solutions, providing mission-critical protection to hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide.  The WatchGuard family of wired and wireless unified threat management appliances, messaging, content security and SSL VPN remote access solutions provide extensible network, application and data protection, as well as unparalleled network visibility, management and control.  WatchGuard products are backed by WatchGuard LiveSecurity® Service, an innovative support, maintenance, and education program. WatchGuard is headquartered in Seattle and has offices serving North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America.

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AARNet trials free student videoconferencing

Australia’s Academic and Research Network, AARNet, plans to launch a free videoconferencing service for students, researchers and academics in 37 Australian universities and the CSIRO before the end of the year.The organisation today announced that it had partnered with ViVu, a US based videoconferencing and collaboration start-up, and launched a beta version of AARNet Anywhere.  It has a handful of early trial participants, but is looking for 200-300 beta users of the system to help iron out any kinks.

AARNet has for many years offered its users a national videoconferencing service, but slots on that need to be booked – the intent with AARNet Anywhere is to allow anyone access to ad hoc videoconferencing for free.

ViVu was selected in part because of its relatively light and inexpensive approach to videoconferencing according to AARNet. It has developed VuRoom, which is an application that runs on Skype and allows up to eight people at a time to participate in a videoconference and collaborative work space.

According to the company’s ceo Sudha Valluru: “If you have a browser and a webcam, and can watch YouTube, you are video ready.”

Guido Aben,  AARNet director of e-research, said that the organisations were working together on the project intended to “democratise videoconferencing” and promote inter and intra university collaboration.

Although the ViVu software can be downloaded for $US9.95 a month, AARNet hasn’t had to pay for the software as the two organisations are working together on how to scale the product over massive networks. Valluru, speaking to iTWire from the US, said that “We are looking at hundreds of thousand of users and want to scale up to millions.”AARNet is likely to provide a perfect test bed, with its fat 10Gbps communications network rolled out to key cities in Australia, and a 10 Gbps connection to the US West Coast. Video is now eating into bandwidth on many networks – but Aben was confident AARNet would not be challenged by the rollout of AARNet Anywhere.

“A good ViVu call might take 2-5Mbps. Aspirationally we’d like to look at even better quality, and the best of breed high definition runs on 8Mbps,” he explained. This meant AARNet would have sufficient bandwidth to support hundreds or thousands of concurrent videoconferences.

Although it will be up to individual universities to decide what their student population can do with the videoconferencing capability Aben said it was not AARNet’s intent to rigorously control what the service could be used for, only to provide the underpinning foundation for increased collaboration.

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Kill a Rockstar

Red Dead Redemption hits shelves today.  Developer RockStar Games is challenging all low-down dirty hombre’s to try to take out roving bands of outlaw Rockstars.The wild-west themed Red Dead Redemption from Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar Games has burst through the saloon doors and onto the streets today.

As part of the continued hype build-up RockStar has announced the Kill a RockStar Earn Eternal Fame promotion.  The details are:

Rockstar Games is happy to announce the ‘Kill a Rockstar’ Red Dead Redemption multiplayer challenge.  Beginning today through June 1,  players who track down roving posses of Rockstar employees on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live have the chance to earn the coveted “Red Dead Rockstar” Trophy/Achievement by directly taking down a Rockstar, or someone who has already killed a Rockstar.  Once securing the Trophy/Achievement, players already enrolled in the Rockstar Game Social Club will automatically be entered for the chance to have their likeness on a unique Multiplayer character in upcoming Red Dead Redemption downloadable content. 

Point, aim and fire if you see the following Gamertags/IDs:

PlayStation Network IDs for 'Kill A Rockstar'
RedDeadDev1, RedDeadDev2



Xbox LIVE Gamertags for 'Kill A Rockstar'
RedDeadDev1, RedDeadDev2


PlayStation Network IDs for 'Play with Rockstar San Diego'

RedDeadDev13, RedDeadDev14, RedDeadDev15, RedDeadDev16, RedDeadDev17, RedDeadDev_18



Xbox LIVE Gamertags for 'Play with Rockstar San Diego'

RedDeadDev13, RedDeadDev14, RedDeadDev15, RedDeadDev16, RedDeadDev17, RedDeadDev18



PlayStation Network IDs for 'Rockstar Social Club Multiplayer Event'

RedDeadDev3, RedDeadDev4, RedDeadDev5, RedDeadDev6, RedDeadDev7, RedDeadDev_8, RedDeadDev9, RedDeadDev10, RedDeadDev11, RedDeadDev12, RedDeadDev13, RedDeadDev14, RedDeadDev15, RedDeadDev16, RedDeadDev17, RedDeadDev_18



Xbox LIVE Gamertags for 'Rockstar Social Club Multiplayer Event'

RedDeadDev3, RedDeadDev4, RedDeadDev5, RedDeadDev6, RedDeadDev7, RedDeadDev8, RedDeadDev9, RedDeadDev10, RedDeadDev11, RedDeadDev12, RedDeadDev13, RedDeadDev14, RedDeadDev15, RedDeadDev16, RedDeadDev17, RedDeadDev18



PlayStation Network IDs for 'Rockstar Posse Challenge'

RedDeadDev19, RedDeadDev20, RedDeadDev21, RedDeadDev22, RedDeadDev23, RedDeadDev24, RedDeadDev25, RedDeadDev26



Xbox LIVE Gamertags for 'Rockstar Posse Challenge'

RedDeadDev19, RedDeadDev20, RedDeadDev21, RedDeadDev22, RedDeadDev23, RedDeadDev24, RedDeadDev25, RedDeadDev26

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Mr X cranky about latest Facebook outrage

South Australian independent senator Nick Xenophon has renewed calls for the creation of a government Online Ombudsman to respond to public concerns about offensive or illegal postings on social networking sites.And he is cranky with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for not following through on the Online Ombudsman proposal after initially making supportive comments out the idea.

Senator Xenophon says the issue had been raised again after a Facebook page had been created mocking the death of a teenage girl killed in a car accident a week ago in Queensland.

He has asked the recently established Joint Select Committee on Cyber Safety to look specifically at issues related to offensive materials on social networking sites and the creation on the ombudsman position. The committee was set up a week ago to access online risks to kids.

He said the position of Online Ombudsman should respond to public complaints about offensive social networking material and to be an public advocate and to lobby web 2.0 companies to immediately remove such material.

Senator Xenophon says sites like Facebook have been too slow to respond to public complaints about specific sites. He says the latest outrage, involving the death of Kirstin Deguara, had caused friends and family unnecessary anguish.

While Facebook had removed a page lampooning the teenager's death after numerous requests, another had replaced it within a day and Facebook needed to be alerted again to the problem. Senator Xenophon first called for the establishment of an Ombudsman after the sites featured offensive postings concerning murdered Bundaberg girl Trinity Bates a month ago.At that time the Prime Minister had made broadly supportive statements about the proposal, but the Government had gone silent since.

Senator Xenophon said social networking sites, though useful, presented unique social challenges and problems – not least issues of cyber-bullying about kids.

"Hopefully an Ombudsman with the full backing of the Australian government might have more sway over these overseas companies."

He said sick and offensive postings were symptomatic of a broader issue concerning social networking sites.

"If you wouldn't say it to somebody's face, you shouldn't say it on Facebook," Senator Xenophon said

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UPDATE - New attack bypasses EVERY Windows security product

Are you a Windows user? Do you make sure that your antivirus program is updated regularly? Do you feel safe? You shouldn’t! Read on to find out why …

Security researchers at Matousec.com have come up with an ingenious attack that can bypass every Windows security product tested and allow malicious code to make its way to your system.

Yes, you read that right - every Windows security product tested. And the list is both huge and sobering:

* 3D EQSecure Professional Edition 4.2
* avast! Internet Security 5.0.462
* AVG Internet Security 9.0.791
* Avira Premium Security Suite 10.0.0.536
* BitDefender Total Security 2010 13.0.20.347
* Blink Professional 4.6.1
* CA Internet Security Suite Plus 2010 6.0.0.272
* Comodo Internet Security Free 4.0.138377.779
* DefenseWall Personal Firewall 3.00
* Dr.Web Security Space Pro 6.0.0.03100
* ESET Smart Security 4.2.35.3
* F-Secure Internet Security 2010 10.00 build 246
* G DATA TotalCare 2010
* Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 9.0.0.736
* KingSoft Personal Firewall 9 Plus 2009.05.07.70
* Malware Defender 2.6.0
* McAfee Total Protection 2010 10.0.580
* Norman Security Suite PRO 8.0
* Norton Internet Security 2010 17.5.0.127
* Online Armor Premium 4.0.0.35
* Online Solutions Security Suite 1.5.14905.0
* Outpost Security Suite Pro 6.7.3.3063.452.0726
* Outpost Security Suite Pro 7.0.3330.505.1221 BETA VERSION
* Panda Internet Security 2010 15.01.00
* PC Tools Firewall Plus 6.0.0.88
* PrivateFirewall 7.0.20.37
* Security Shield 2010 13.0.16.313
* Sophos Endpoint Security and Control 9.0.5
* ThreatFire 4.7.0.17
* Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2010 17.50.1647.0000
* Vba32 Personal 3.12.12.4
* VIPRE Antivirus Premium 4.0.3272
* VirusBuster Internet Security Suite 3.2
* Webroot Internet Security Essentials 6.1.0.145
* ZoneAlarm Extreme Security 9.1.507.000
* probably other versions of above mentioned software
* possibly many other software products that use kernel hooks to implement security features

The attack is a clever “bait-and-switch” style move. Harmless code is passed to the security software for scanning, but as soon as it’s given the green light, it’s swapped for the malicious code. The attack works even more reliably on multi-core systems because one thread doesn’t keep an eye on other threads that are running simultaneously, making the switch easier.

The attack, called KHOBE (Kernel HOok Bypassing Engine), leverages a Windows module called the System Service Descriptor Table, or SSDT, which is hooked up to the Windows kernel. Unfortunately, SSDT is utilized by antivirus software.

Note: The issue affecting SSDT have been known for some time but as yet haven’t been leveraged by attackers. However, as multi-core systems make this attack more reliable, and they are now becoming the norm, this is now a much greater threat.

Oh, and don’t think that just because you are running as a standard user that you’re safe, you’re not. This attack doesn’t need admin rights.

However, it does require a lot of code to work, so it’s far from ideal for attackers. That said, its ability to completely neuter security software is quite frightening. I assume that security vendors the world over are now scrambling to come up with a fix for this issue.

[UPDATE: Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, has this to say:

The dramatic headlines might make you think that this is TEOTWAWKI*, but the truth is somewhat different.

Because KHOBE is not really a way that hackers can avoid detection and get their malware installed on your computer. What Matousec describes is a way of "doing something extra" if the bad guys' malicious code manages to get past your anti-virus software in the first place.

In other words, KHOBE is only an issue if anti-virus products such as Sophos (and many others) miss the malware. And that's one of the reasons, of course, why we - and to their credit other vendors - offer a layered approach using a variety of protection technologies.

While Cluley has a point here in that AV companies will still be able to add signatures to detect any KHOBE-like package in the wild, thus labeling the whole thing as malware and preventing it from getting a foothold on a system in the first place. But this still doesn't change the fact that there's one vulnerability here that basically "rules them all."

Paul Ducklin, Sophos's Head of Technology, has this to add:

So the Khobe "attack" boils down to this: if you can write malware which already gets past Sophos's on-access virus blocker, and past Sophos's HIPS, then you may be able to use the Khobe code to bypass Sophos's HIPS - which, of course, you just bypassed anyway. Oh, and only if you are using Windows XP.

In short: Sophos's on-access anti-virus scanner doesn't uses SSDT hooks, so it's fair for us to say that this isn't a vulnerabilty for us at all. But what about other anti-virus software? Though I'm not usually an apologist for our competitors, I feel compelled to speak out in this case.

The fuss about Khobe is in my opinion unwarranted, and the claims that it "bypasses virtually all anti-virus software" is scaremongering.

While I agree with the majority of what Ducklin has to say, I take issue with two points. First, that throwaway "Oh, and only if you are using Windows XP" line belittles the fact that while Vista and 7 users are safe, some 60% of PCs still use XP, and quite a lot of these are multi-core equipped. Secondly, while Sophos's own on-access scanner might not use SSDT hooks, it's clear that a lot of products do.

F-Secure has the following on KHOBE:

This is a serious issue and Matousec's technical findings are correct. However, this attack does not "break" all antivirus systems forever. Far from it.

First of all, any malware that we detect by our antivirus will still be blocked, just like it always was.

So the issue only affects new, unknown malware that we do not have signature detection for.

To protect our customers against such unknown malware, we have several layers of sensors and generic detection engines. Matousec's discovery is able to bypass only a few of these sensors.

We believe our multi-layer approach will provide sufficient protection level even if malicious code were to attempt use of Matousec's technique.

And if we would see such an attack, we would simply add signature detection for it, stopping it in its tracks. We haven't seen any attacks using this technique in the wild.

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