American to kill Osama, detained in Pakistan

Islamabad, Jun 16: A US national trying to cross into Afghanistan in search of Osama Bin Laden, was arrested in Pakistan on Tuesday, Jun 15.

Gary Brooks Faulkner, coming from California, was trying to go to the Afghan province of Nooristan on the mission to decapitate the al Qaeda leader and his four accomplices. He was heading for the Afghan province of Nooristan.

Police said that he has no connection to any US law enforcement agencies. Police recovered a one-metre sword, a pistol, a dagger and night-vision goggles from this person.

Faulkner came to Chitral district, 270 km north of Islamabad on Jun 3 and went on missing from his hotel room on Sunday, Jun 13 night. He was caught by police in the district's Kalash Valley.

“He told us that the terrorists had harmed Americans and he himself wanted to search for and kill Osama. He is just a tourist who is not associated with any U.S. agency. Possibly he only wants revenge for the 9/11 attacks,” reported the police official. He was being moved to Peshawar for further inquiry in connection with the attempted illegal border crossing. He has not been formally charged, informed the officials.

Pak doesn't allow hot pursuit of Osama

Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan and he has not been caught because Pakistan does not allow hot pursuit of terrorists, a senior Afghanistan official has said.

"I think the reason is political constraint in the region. I think there is enough military power, intelligence gathering in the region, but from the very beginning, from the days of Tora Bora, Pakistan have not allowed hot pursuit of terrorists into their territory," Afghanistan's Ambassador to the United States Said Jawad said in a television interview.

"I think by having more than 30,000 international forces in Afghanistan and increasingly building the capability of Afghan intelligence forces, we are certain that he is spending most of his time in Pakistan..."Jawad said on Sunday.

"He might be able to slip into Afghanistan here and there but he is mainly spending most of his time in Pakistan...If he were in Afghanistan, there's no constraint whatsoever, political, military or intelligence-wise, to go after him, to find him and to bring him to justice," he said.

Asked where Osama's two top deputies Ayman al Zawahiri and Mullah Omar were, the top Afghan diplomat said: "There's been very recent reports about the fact that Mullah Omar is in Quetta, Pakistan. Zawahiri, I really don't know exactly, but he is spending a lot of time in close area with Osama bin Laden."

"...A lot of these people require connectivity to the outside world, which is not available in a cave in Afghanistan. And we also should consider the fact that a lot of the friends and associates of Osama bin Laden were found in major metropolitan centers, not necessary in caves or in the tribal areas, so the search should be expanded" Jawad said.

Indonesia jails pop star over Internet sex tape

An Indonesian pop star whose sex tapes with his celebrity girlfriends spread wildly on the internet was jailed on Monday for three and a half years, in a case that led to a wide crackdown on Internet porn in the country.

The trial highlighted a divide between a youthful Indonesia set against censorship on the internet and conservative pressure groups in the world's most populous Muslim country who rallied outside the court demanding a harsher penalty.

Nazril "Ariel" Irham, 30, was jailed under a controversial pornography law, which was passed in 2008 to ban public displays of nudity and behaviour that could incite lust.

"The defendant is legitimately and convincingly guilty of giving chances for others to spread, make and provide pornography," said judge Singgih Budi Prakoso in a west Javan court where 1,000 police tried to control a rowdy crowd.

Police said earlier a friend of Irham's had taken the sex tape off his computer and posted it on the Internet. Irham denied it was him on the tape.

The crowd at the court included teenaged female fans of Irham's band, Peterpan, wearing T-shirts with the word "freedom", and skullcap- and headscarf-wearing members of Islamic groups.

Members of both groups were angered by the verdict. Irham was also fined 250 million rupiah ($27,692).

Under the pornography law, anyone who produces, makes, copies, circulates, broadcasts, offers, trades, loans or provides pornography can be jailed for between six months and 12 years and can be fined up to six billion rupiah ($665,900).

The law was seen by many as a step back in democratic and officially secular Indonesia, where foreign investors are hoping for more openness and pro-market reforms to increase its allure as an emerging market investment destination.

After the Irham case blew up, Communications and Information Minister Tifatul Sembiring, of the Islamic PKS party, called for tighter internet controls, including requiring providers to stop access to pornography or browsing services could be closed.

Research in Motion, makers of the popular Blackberry telephone and messaging system, said two weeks ago it would comply with the government's order to block access to pornographic sites via its devices.

"What is an issue here is not Ariel, but rights supporters versus morality enforcers. Tough choice: porn star or oppressors?" said political commentator Wimar Witoelar on Twitter.

US will trust Pakistan less: Armitage

The United States will have less trust in Pakistan following the discovery of Osama bin Laden near its capital, a former top ranking US foreign affairs official says.

The al-Qaeda leader was killed in a luxury compound on the outskirts of Islamabad. The compound was also near a military academy.

Richard Armitage, who served as US deputy secretary of state from 2001 to 2005, said the discovery of bin Laden in Pakistan would make it hard for the US to trust its notional ally in the war on terror.

"You can follow the old Reagan dictum of `trust but verify'," he told ABC Television on Wednesday night.

"From here on out, it will clearly be a lot more of the verification and and a lot less of the trust end."

Mr Armitage said it should not have taken almost a decade, after the September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, to find bin Laden.

"Who knew what, when? If someone in the Pakistan government knew about this, it's horrible," he said.

"If they did not know about it, it's stupid and embarrassing.

"The first question would be: `Who knew what? Who in the intelligence services knew what and for what reason were they harbouring Osama bin Laden?'"

Mr Armitage said bin Laden was likely to have had an extensive support base outside the compound."It does strain credulity to think he was alone in that compound for as long as five or six years without having some outward sign of support beyond simply a courier or two to show up once in a while

Sony takes down PC gaming site amid security concerns

Sony's PlayStation Network is still down after being hacked, and now its PC gaming service has been turned off, the company citing an 'undisclosed issue.' Photo / AP

Sony says it has taken down its online PC gaming service due to a problem it found while investigating the security breach at its PlayStation service last month.

Sony said on the Sony Online Entertainment website that it has temporarily suspended service because of an undisclosed issue. A spokesman says it's not due to a second attack.

The site matches up players for PC games such as Free Realms and DC Universe online.

The company says it found the issue while investigating the recent security breach.

Sony executives apologised on Sunday for the PlayStation Network security breach.

The breach compromised the personal data of some 77 million player accounts.

Username/Password for sale at Internet

There's a full-fledged underground marketplace on the Web for all things considered most secure: your email IDs and banking and passwords, online banking passwords, mobile numbers and related authentication details. And what's more the 'merchandise' can be custom-ordered too. Here's a product'-wise rate list: credit card CVVs; dates of birth and fraudulent phone call service; flooding software, and a full trojan making set.

The underground e- Commerce crackers' marketplace

CVV2 Data Sets: $1.50 - $3.00

The CVV2 data set consists of a credit card's 16-digit PAN, CVV2 code, expiration date, billing address and embossed name.

SSN (Social Security Number)
DOB (Date of Birth)
$1.50 - $3.00 per query
SSN: $1.00 -$3.00
DOB: $1.00 -$3.00

These personal details are very often used by banks to authenticate an individual's identity.

Online Banking Logins
$50 - $1,000 per account, depending on the account balance
After obtaining these credentials, fraudsters would normally attempt to cash the account out by completing wire transfers to accounts.

'Fulls' Data Sets
$5.00 - $20.00 per set
'Fulls' information includes the full details, username and password), mailing address, card number, CVV2 code, card's expiration date, MMN, DOB, SSN.

Fraudulent Phone Calls
$10.00 - $15.00 per call (Prices vary according to the destination of the call)
Completed by Fraudster Call Centers, fraudulent phone services are offered to cybercriminals as a means to overcome language barriers for those who need to impersonate the account holder.

SMS or Phone-Flooding Services (aka Telephony DoS/ TDoS)
$25.00 - $40.00 per 24 hours of phone-flooding
Phone-flooding is usually performed in order to render a consumer's mobile phone unavailable for incoming authentication calls or SMS text messages sent from the bank.

DDoS Attack Service
$50.00 per 24 hours of website-flooding.
A 'Distributed Denial of Service' attack is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users by overloading, or "flooding" its bandwidth with an overwhelming volume of web traffic.

CC Checking/ Verification
$0.40 per check
Prices may vary widely.
$20.00 for 50 checks

CC (credit card) checkers are used by cybercriminals to verify the validity of the compromised payment cards.

Bulletproof Hosting
$87-$179 per month
Bulletproof hosting is a hired service used by cybercriminals to host malicious content on web. Bulletproof sites are much harder for law enforcement to take down.

Track 2 Data (aka "Dumps")
Classic/ Standard cards: $15 - $20
Gold/ Platinum cards: $20 - $80
Worldwide/ Business/ Corporate/ Signature: $30 - $40

'Track-2' information is found on a payment card's magnetic stripe. By purchasing 'dumps', fraudsters can produce counterfeit payment cards that can be used in stores.

Zeus Trojan Kit
Backconnect $1,500
Firefox form grabber $2,000
Jabber ( IM) chat plug-in $500

It is one of the most pervasive banking Trojans with an infection rate of thousands of computers per day. Zeus Kit: $3K - $4K

SpyEye Trojan Kit
Basic kit- $1,000
Firefox Injection tool $1,000-$2,000
One of the most advanced Trojans. It has its own IE and Firefox HTML injections, pre-defined bank triggers and a growing list of unique features. SpyEye has been 2010's biggest Trojan innovation.

Source: RSA'S fraud action intelligence team; Online Fraud Report 2010

VTB Bank takes over Moscow

The state extended its control over the banking sector with the addition of former bank Yury Luzhkov. VTB Bank takes over Moscow Photo: Fotoimedia And the second largest Russian bank, state-owned VTB Bank further improved its position in April to take over the Bank of Moscow, the country's fifth-largest commercial bank. Some analysts fear that the agreement increases the State's share of Russia's banking sector, but others say it will reduce corruption. The Bank of Moscow was established in mid 1990 as the Bank of pocket for the Moscow city government. However, after the expulsion of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, last September, the bank's future was uncertain. In November, the Kremlin made a movement. Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin announced that VTB was interested in buying the bank. VTB-24 retail operations and VTB Bank is a leading provider of consumer credit and mortgages, and the addition of branches of Bank of Moscow over 500 would VTB in its own league, just behind her sister Sberbank, which has most of Russia's retail banking business. But the agreement was not passed without problems. At first, the Bank of Moscow Management, said they were willing to sell their 20.3 percent of VTB, but then in March filed a lawsuit to block the purchase of VTB a small share of U.S. Goldman Sachs and announced a rival offer from the Moscow game. Bank of Moscow, President Andrew Borodin was also implicated in a corruption investigation of 440 million U.S. dollars in loans made to sketch a property company controlled by Luzhkov's wife, Yelena Baturina. When summoned for questioning in April, Borodin fled to London and checked into a hospital for treatment. A week later, agreed to sell its stake in what analysts report was below market rates. "It's clear what really happened," said a banking source. "The old management were not happy with being expelled from the bank and were extended for a high price for their participation at a price of VTB was not prepared to pay. So the management tried to play hard, but more than what could chew. " The VTB takeover significantly increases the state share of the banking sector and closely follows the inauguration Sberbank of Russia's leading investment bank Troika Dialog in February. Both banks have become noticeably more aggressive in building its business after the 2008 crisis. Several foreign banks have withdrawn from Russia due to increasing competition, the last was HSBC, which announced April 26 it was abandoning a two-year journey to build a sale at retail in Russia. "The recession was more difficult for foreign banks that have operated only in the Russian market for a few years that foreign banks were established in late 2000 during the period of rapid economic growth. Banks were the most recently arrived affected by the recession, if not to increase market share enough to overcome the crisis, "said Seija Lainela, an analyst at Bank of Finland. The Kremlin said that increased participation in the banking sector is temporary and can not do anything to stop it. "Technically, this agreement has increased state involvement in the banking sector, but the plan is to sell the State's actions in [VTB and Sberbank] and increase competition in the sector. The other side of the coin is that the state Sberbank may not restrict the market place, how can we say to the minority shareholders, there is no limit to the bank's ability to compete? "Arkady Dvorkovich, economic adviser to President Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview. And the state has been busy selling shares in both banks. VTB Group raised eight billion U.S. dollars with an initial public offering in May 2007 from the sale of a 22.5 per cent and the bank sold another 10 percent in February, raising another $ 3 billion. The state has said it wants to sell another 10 percent as soon as possible. Similarly, the government owns 60.25 percent of Sberbank, and shortly after the purchase of Troika Dialog, Russia's National Banking Council signed a decision to sell another 7.58 percent to the public, probably later this year . Investors are happy to see both banks grow in size and power. "On one hand, the state is making it more difficult for private banks to operate, but on the other, we're starting to see the beginning of much-needed consolidation in the banking sector. Take charge of banks clearly do not run in commercial lines, but for the benefit of the owners is all said and done a good thing, "said Roland Nash, chief information officer of Capital Verno.