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Palace: Prince William’s wife Kate in labor
Palace: Prince William’s wife Kate in labor (AP) / 22 July 2013 Prince William’s wife, Kate, was admitted to the hospital in the early stages of labour on Monday, palace officials said. Kate — also known as the Duchess of Cambridge — is expected to give birth in the private Lindo Wing of the hospital, where Princess Diana gave birth to William and his younger brother, Prince Harry. She will be looked after by a top-notch medical team led by royal gynecologist Dr. Marcus Setchell. Britain’s Prince William stand next to his wife Kate.- AP Kate and William, who spent the weekend at Kensington Palace, travelled to the hospital without a police escort just before 6 a.m., their spokesman said. “Things are progressing as normal,” he added. The baby will be third in line for the British throne, and should eventually succeed grandfather Charles and father William as king or queen of Britain and 15 other countries including Canada and Australia. But little else is known about the eagerly awaited royal baby, from how it will arrive to its gender or its name. Kate — formally known as the Duchess of Cambridge — is expected to deliver in the Lindo Wing, where Princess Diana gave birth to William and his younger brother, Prince Harry. It is not clear if she will have a natural birth or deliver by a planned caesarean section. Royal watchers must wait to be told of the baby’s arrival from the palace, which is planning to reveal the news through a mixture of tradition and social media. Palace officials have said that the first hint will come when a royal aide emerges from the hospital with a signed bulletin carrying the Buckingham Palace letterhead. The bulletin will be given to an official who will be driven to Buckingham Palace, where it will be posted on an easel in public view in front of the building. At the same time the bulletin is posted, there will be an official announcement on Twitter and the media will be formally notified. The document will give the baby’s gender, weight and time of birth. It could be some time before the baby’s name is made public. When William was born, a week passed before his name was announced. Charles’s name remained a mystery for an entire month. But it is the baby’s gender that is of particular interest because the prospect of Kate’s pregnancy prompted a change to laws of succession to ensure a daughter would not be passed over for the crown by a younger brother. Boy or girl, the child will be third in line to the throne and the prospective future monarch. The birth of a new heir to the throne has been breathlessly anticipated since William and Kate wed on April 29, 2011, in a lavish ceremony at Westminster Abbey. When news of a royal pregnancy was announced, there was rejoicing in many households in Britain and throughout the world. Despite a rough start to the pregnancy, when she was hospitalized for acute morning sickness, the 31-year-old Kate made a number of public appearances that were halted only near the end of her term. Since the duchess has cut back on her royal duties, media outlets have been clamoring for position outside of the hospital in anticipation of the birth, jockeying to secure the best vantage point for filming William and Kate emerging, babe in arms. Officials have said that William plans to take two weeks’ paternity leave and then return to his military duties as a search-and-rescue helicopter pilot in Wales. His tour of duty is scheduled to wrap up around September, and he and Kate are expected to move from their isolated cottage on the island of Anglesey off the coast of Wales to Kensington Palace in central London. But major refurbishment works at the palace likely won’t be finished until at least a month or two after the infant is born — meaning that William and Kate will most likely have to make do with their current temporary home in London, a two-bedroom property at the palace. Come autumn, however, the family will be able to move into their permanent London home, Apartment 1a at Kensington Palace — a four-story house with a nursery, 20 rooms and a private garden. Continue reading
UAE thwarts Egypt-originated cyber attacks
UAE thwarts Egypt-originated cyber attacks (Wam) / 22 July 2013 The Telecommunications Authority (TRA) said on Sunday that it had successfully thwarted Egypt-originated attempts by cyber-hackers to damage some government websites on Friday. The TRA said its Computer Emergency Response Team (aeCERT) succeeded in neutralising the danger and repairing the limited damage caused by the attack. Mohammed Nasser Al Ghanim, Director-General of TRA, said the authority had from the beginning, worked on protecting the targeted sites and at the same time, worked hard on tracing the source of danger. TRA contacted the relevant Egyptian authorities in order to coordinate the efforts of the two countries on this matter. “We agreed to provide the Egyptian authorities with a list of IP addresses from which the cyber-infiltration attempts originated,” Al Ghanim added, expressing hopes that measures will be taken to stop further attempts and to identify the perpetrators. Continue reading
500m phones under threat: UN warns of mobile bugs
500m phones under threat: UN warns of mobile bugs (Reuters) / 22 July 2013 A United Nations group that advises nations on cybersecurity plans to send out an alert about significant vulnerabilities in mobile phone technology that could potentially enable hackers to remotely attack at least half a billion phones. The bug, discovered by German firm, allows hackers to remotely gain control of and also clone certain mobile SIM cards. Hackers could use compromised SIMs to commit financial crimes or engage in electronic espionage, according to Berlin’s Security Research Labs, which will describe the vulnerabilities at the Black Hat hacking conference that opens in Las Vegas on July 31. The UN’s Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union, which has reviewed the research, described it as “hugely significant.” “These findings show us where we could be heading in terms of cybersecurity risks,” ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré told Reuters. He said the agency would notify telecommunications regulators and other government agencies in nearly 200 countries about the potential threat and also reach out to hundreds of mobile companies, academics and other industry experts. A spokeswoman for the GSMA, which represents nearly 800 mobile operators worldwide, said it also reviewed the research. “We have been able to consider the implications and provide guidance to those network operators and SIM vendors that may be impacted,” said GSMA spokeswoman Claire Cranton. Nicole Smith, a spokeswoman for Gemalto NV, the world’s biggest maker of SIM cards, said her company supported GSMA’s response. “Our policy is to refrain from commenting on details relating to our customers’ operations,” she said. BECOMING THE SIM Cracking SIM cards has long been the Holy Grail of hackers because the tiny devices are located in phones and allow operators to identify and authenticate subscribers as they use networks. Karsten Nohl, the chief scientist who led the research team and will reveal the details at Black Hat, said the hacking only works on SIMs that use an old encryption technology known as DES. The technology is still used on at least one out of eight SIMs, or a minimum of 500 million phones, according to Nohl. The ITU estimates some 6 billion mobile phones are in use worldwide. It plans to work with the industry to identify how to protect vulnerable devices from attack, Touré said. Once a hacker copies a SIM, it can be used to make calls and send text messages impersonating the owner of the phone, said Nohl, who has a doctorate in computer engineering from the University of Virginia. “We become the SIM card. We can do anything the normal phone users can do,” Nohl said in a phone interview. “If you have a MasterCard number or PayPal data on the phone, we get that too.” iPHONE, ANDROID, BLACKBERRY The mobile industry has spent several decades defining common identification and security standards for SIMs to protect data for mobile payment systems and credit card numbers. SIMs are also capable of running apps. Nohl said Security Research Labs found mobile operators in many countries whose phones were vulnerable, but declined to identify them. He said mobile phone users in Africa could be among the most vulnerable because banking is widely done via mobile payment systems with credentials stored on SIMs. All types of phones are vulnerable, including iPhones from Apple Inc, phones that run Google Inc’s Android software and BlackBerry Ltd smartphones, he said. BlackBerry’s director of security response and threat analysis, Adrian Stone, said in a statement that his company proposed new SIM card standards last year to protect against the types of attacks described by Nohl, which the GSMA has adopted and advised members to implement. Apple and Google declined to comment. CTIA, a US mobile industry trade group based in Washington, D.C., said the new research likely posed no immediate threat. “We understand the vulnerability and are working on it,” said CTIA Vice-President John Marinho. “This is not what hackers are focused on. This does not seem to be something they are exploiting.” Continue reading
