Pakistani techies stealing European credit card data

European law-enforcement officials have uncovered a highly-sophisticated credit-card fraud that funnels account data to Pakistan from hundreds of grocery-store card machines across Europe, the Wall Street Journal reported quoting the US intelligence officials and other people familiar with the case.

Specialists say the theft technology is the most advanced they have seen, and a person close to the British law enforcement said it affected big retailers, including a British unit of Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Tesco Ltd.

The account data have been used to make repeated bank withdrawals and Internet purchases, such as airline tickets, in several countries, including the US. Investigators haven’t pinpointed the culprits. Early estimates of the losses range of $50 million to $100 million, but the figure could grow, said the person close to the British law enforcement.

The scheme uses untraceable devices inserted into credit-card readers that were made in China. The devices selectively send account data through a wireless connection to computer servers in Lahore and constantly change the pattern of theft, so it is hard to detect, officials say.

“Pretty small but intelligent criminal organisations are pulling off transnational, multi-continent heists that only a foreign intelligence service would have been able to do a few years ago,” said Joel F Brenner, the US government’s top counter-intelligence officer. The US intelligence officials, including senior National Security Agency officials, are monitoring the case in part because of ties with Pakistan. The scheme comes on the heels of the August indictment of a fraud ring that stole more than 40 million credit-card numbers from the US companies, including TJX Cos, the parent company of the TJ Maxx.

In March, the security officials at the MasterCard Inc saw a pattern of potential fraud in northern England. Meanwhile, a security guard at a UK grocery store noticed suspicious statistics on his cell phone and alerted authorities. The Scotland Yard learned of the report and eventually connected it with the warning from the MasterCard, according to the person close to the British law enforcement. Examining the store’s credit-card readers, investigators discovered a high-tech bug tucked behind the motherboard. It was a small card containing wireless communication technology.

The bug would read an individual’s card number and the corresponding personal identification number, then package and store the data. The device would call a number in Lahore once a day to upload the data to the servers there and obtain instructions on what to steal next.

A MasterCard spokesman declined to discuss details of the case but said safeguarding the financial information was a top priority for the company. There is no obvious visual indication that a machine has been altered, but those with the bugs weigh about four ounces more. For the past several months, teams of investigators have been weighing thousands of machines across Europe with a precision scale.

So far, investigators have found hundreds of machines in five countries: Britain, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark. They have turned up at European grocery chains, including Asda, which is owned by Wal-Mart; Tesco; and J Sainsbury PLC, according to the person close to the British law enforcement.

A spokeswoman for Asda said: “It’s subject to a police investigation, so we can’t comment.” A spokeswoman for the Sainsbury denied its stores were hit by the scheme. A spokeswoman for the Tesco said: “We’re aware that this was an issue for retailers.” She said the Tesco tested its devices and was confident that they were secure now.

The device can be told to copy certain types of transactions — for example, five Visa platinum cards or every tenth transaction. It can also be instructed to go dormant to evade detection. On average, only five to 10 card numbers would be phoned in to Pakistan, the person close to the British law enforcement said.

Source : News

Pakistan and Green IT

Few days back I attended the event which was organized by Al-Futtaim Technologies Pakistan (formerly known as Alcatel-Lucent Pakistan) about “Green IT” and recently I have come to know about IBM’s event “Paint Your IT Green” organized in Lahore and Islamabad few days back. As being the World’s Leading IT Innovator and Business Solutions Provider IBM is providing Services to the Pakistani Organization from many decades and IBM is uniquely capable of Integrating Industry and Technology Expertise to help businesses meet their urgent energy, environment and sustainability Challenges and also same goes with the Al-Futtaim Technologies they are the leading Technology Solutions Provider in UAE ………………………Both the event which were conducted was primarily focused on the importance of Green IT ……

For those who don’t know what Green IT is? It means that

“How to use the computer resources in such an efficient way by adapting the friendly environmental habits such as Power Consumptions, Recycling, and Virtualization etc.”

Let me clarify what Green IT is in more detail ……By keeping in mind that we want to implement Green IT in our organization we have to follow some approaches about it. As I have mentioned in the above definition that we have to adapt Friendly environmental habits such as Power Consumptions, Recycling, Virtualization.

The approaches which I was talking about earlier in my point of view are as follows

1) Recycling

2) Virtualization

3) Power Management

4) Data Storage Systems

5) Telecommunication Techniques

The above said approaches in others mind might be different but this is what I feel that we can follow in order to implement Green IT infrastructure in our working Organization.Now what are those approaches let me define them one by one in much broader terms

1) Recycling: As well know that all know that Computers parts are being made from the materials such as of Lead , Mercury , Gold and other related materials , so when we go for recycle them we need such kind of facilities where we follow the standards being followed to recycle any type of computer parts . As currently we can see in our Country the prices of Desktop Computers have fallen down so drastically have you ever think why it is all because of the fact that we don’t have any kind of rules and regulations in our country for maintain and taking care of our People’s Health and Safety. Neither have we had the so called Recycling Facility nor do we care about it or having some awareness about what recycling is. We have to educate our people in this regard. Correct me if I am wrong in relation with the activities and policies about RECYCLING.So Importers of Personal Computers and Parts, in my point of view, are not taking care of this point and they just keep one thing in their mind that is making Profit. May be I am wrong but this is what I observed and feel about it. Yes it’s good to have Personal Computers at each home of Pakistan for the progress of IT Industry but at the cost of this thing? Where our coming generation at the stake of getting ill by using such kind of Products Usage which might be injurious to their health….. Does it feel sensible to all of you? You might be against me on this point. But that’s what I feel so I said it…….

2) Virtualization: Virtualization is a concept which enables you to work on one computer to do the job of multiple ones being residing on one physical hardware by sharing it resources for doing work across multiple operating environments, which makes easy for you to control your machine locally or remotely. So by using this concept Computer Professionals are utilizing this in combining several Physical Computer Systems into one single logical machine……. This makes them enable to monitor the power consumptions, Server Utilization, Temperature/Cooling Controls ………

3) Power Management : As being an IT Professional and specially related to the purchasing and selection of hardware , I have observed that we have to really look into this matters because it all depends upon the services and utilization requirements of ours that we choose any computer hardware. In Power Management we have to look what are the things (hardware such as Processors, Monitors , RAM’s, Hard Drives) are being used at what time and if they are underutilizing then we have to use ACPI ( Advance Configuration and Power Interface) which allows the Operating Systems, likes of Windows XP, Windows 2000, AIX , Linux(Any Distribution of it) .. are to name of the few, to directly control the power savings features.

4) Data Storage Systems: hmmm Well on this side, I can say that we really have to take care of all the data whether it’s personal or of organization. For storing the data we take our backups on Floppy Disk, Flash/USB Drives , CD , DVD, Zip Drives, Tape Cartridges and even on some complex structures too likes of Storage Area Networks … all the devices being used for taking backups and for storing does use some power whether it is on small scale or large ones……

5) Telecommunication Techniques: In today’s world the boom of telecommunication enabled us to connect in any part of world at any time regardless of boundaries…. That’s why today’s corporate organizations are utilizing this format in such a way by adapting the latest telecommunication techniques which are not only environment friendly but also helps them to reduce their over head costs and increase their profits ……..

In Pakistan we do lag such kind of facilities where we can adapt the state of the art practices and feel proud of them. There is no such kind of policies and Regulations from the Government side. At least there is some interest being showed by the local Government bodies who are taking participation in making this fact and idea to some what real ………….. For the implementation side, we do need to learn the facts, techniques and governance based upon our culture and society.As we all know that we really are lagging of such professional who have those kind of vision in relation of Green IT ………..

My Question to all of you is that… Are we ready for implementing Green IT? As we are going through the power crisis, economic crisis, political crisis …..Do Comment

Challenges in IT Industry of Pakistan

Pakistan and its Industry… hmmmmm… Pakistan being the sixth populated nation but on the education wise we are really far behind from the other countries of our region. As I was going through the article on the Internet I get to know that Pakistan has lagged dangerously behind other regional countries in

exploiting Information Technology as a catalyst for economic revival. Yet though in the past 8 years or so the steps have been taken by the earlier governments on the setup of IT industry but still we are lagging behind. We all know that which steps have been taken by reducing the Internet bandwidths rates, Deploying SMEs, students going for PHD’s abroad and coming back. But still we are on the development phase.

As being IT Professional myself , and what ever experience I had and observed that we are very much talented as nation but we are lagging the integration between are educational sectors and industrial sectors. As I have faced this situation by myself. As in 1999 I have graduated from the one of the most prestigious university of my country and when I go for job interviews the person sitting there asked me do you know what is this and when I said never been thought they said then you are of no use , I do ask them what is wrong with me they told me that you didn’t know what we are asking , but I told them and you being sitting in the industry it is the responsibilities of personnel like yours to collaborate with the EDUCATION sectors to help young graduates to learn the leading technologies and guide them what they need to do when they passed out and ready to enter in the market. However I got the chance in one of leading automotive manufacturing of PAKISTAN where I have learned a lot with great zeal. THANKS TO ALMIGHTY ALLAH I got the boss of such a kind who is True Professional , he turned me into one of his kind , HATS OFF TO MY BOSS – THANKS ONCE AGAIN ALMIGHTY ALLAH … He told me that look if you want to be successful in you career do your work with full passion and commitment and never loose your interest in that work , if you loose then all the hardwork which you do will be lost. And learned the good set of practices which are current and being followed in IT Industry and share them with your fellow peers and by the grace of ALLAH I am following his advice , my boss is in Canada now but still I keep bugging him to know what is being followed there and when he told me what is nbeing followed I searched and learned about it and tell my fellow peers too,

I have observed few of the stuffs which I like to share all of you. I feel that the explosive growth of the Internet and the coming tidal wave of E-Commerce still provide immense possibilities for Pakistan to exploit their potential and use these for accelerating its economic revival. As far as I know MCB is the first in Pakistan who exploit these conditions and even went to London Stock Exchange to get registered to become first Pakistani Organization to be registered there. By implementing the Huge investments in the IT side. Do keep in mind that IT is not just used for Personal computers only. It also covers the machines like which tells you the data how much bank balance you have which we used to say ATM Machines . Now after hugs investments in IT side we are getting results of it by the private sectors. And utilizing it as people getting to learn about it day by day its all because of the awareness thing.

I also feel that we are agonizingly conscious of the fact that the hyper speed of change in the Information Technology domain means that the IT year is equivalent to one month in conventional terms. This fact dictates that any meaningful action or decisions for the IT industry in Pakistan has to be implemented immediately. Pakistan and similar countries hoping to exploit the inherent potential of Information Technology must act immediately and decisively to restructure their domestic Information Technology industries to become effective role players within the global IT scenario.

· Any meaningful IT scheme in Pakistan will necessarily have to be a PRIVATE-PUBLIC PARTNERSHIP. Bold but unconventional and strategically corrective actions and decisions are needed because we all that what needs to be and cater down so that we donot get influence by others to implement any sort of decision.

· We need to have such kind of managers with the right mix of vision and managerial competence that help us out to implement the decision (IN THAT AREA WE ARE LAGGING AS BEING PAKISTANI WHICH IS MY OBSERVATION).

· Huge amounts of financing are needed in domestic resources and foreign exchange.

· Above all, the will to prevail will be needed from the government of Pakistan to chart the right course for the national Information Technology initiative and then stay the course in spite of innumerable hurdles which are sure to bedevil the path to success.

This is the part of series of my writing

WebTrend – StumbleUpon

Stumble upon means to come across or to meet in general sense …. This idea has been brought into the World Wide Web first by four persons namely Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, Justin LaFrance, and Eric Boyd in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. They first established the company on test basis before finalizing the product “Stumble Upon” from the five or six ideas which they have in their mind. StumbleUpon have their head office in USA.

How it Works?

StumbleUpon works on the principle of toolbar that does not mean that it’s an ordinary toolbar which sits on your web browser, what ever you Stumbleupon during your browsing u can add it on you stumble upon favorites. It acts as a service that gives you help to Stumbleupon the websites you like. Its basically a tool that can takes the aspects of social bookmarking like we used to read the book and put bookmarks for some special points and references and then Stumbleupon wraps them up for you in a button that will take you to the random sites based upon your interests .

For having StumbleUpon on your computer, you will need to install a toolbar onto your web browser. This takes around 5- 10 minutes and also your internet connection speed to download its Installation file and then execute it for the installation on your PC. During the installation it will asked you to create the profile there and pick your interests which enables the StumbleUpon toolbar to make the database which you find interesting as you browse.

What’s in it for me?

StumbleUpon is not like the standard social news/tool site it’s basically a surfing tool which helps you to goes easily on your favorite’s websites easily. Like me, you have certain websites you visit on a regular basis like for instance Pakspectator.com, whenever I got free time for example during my lunch break in office read a few blogs and comments their if necessary, and then go to some technology related blogs or websites or news articles where I am a regular. By using the Stumbleupon it makes for me my life bit easier in a way that I don’t have to look for the web addresses of my favorite websites here and there in one click I can easily go there. StumbleUpon also has some social networking features where you can add friends and stumble through pages they submitted but it doesn’t mean that it’s purely social networking site. There are much better places then this likes of orkut, hi5, facebook, myspace etc etc. The social networking features of StumbleUpon are best used to help teach the tool how to stumble better by adding friends who go to the same type of sites you like to visit.

Why should I join?

1. With less effort you can browse the websites of your interests.
2. Add friends based upon mutual interests.
3. Join and be a part of 5.5 million users who have collectively stumbled 5 billion websites so far.

What to do next?

Go to there and Start enjoying the use of StumbleUpon