High-tech extortion schemes nearly doubled in the first three months of the year, while attacks on Adobe Flash software used in streaming media and casual game sites quadrupled, a global report said yesterday.
Intel Corp’s McAfee Labs Threats Report for May found that ransomware surged 165 percent in the first quarter, rebounding from a slight dip last year, when police agencies worldwide staged a coordinated crackdown to knock out a major ransomware network.
Ramsomware is malware that cybercriminals use to seize control of computers and mobile phones when unwitting users click on an infected link or download a tainted document, locking them out of all access to their devices unless they make ransom payments.
The scheme, which first took root in Russia last decade, has spread globally in the past four years. People typically face extortion demands of anywhere from US$150 to US$500 to regain access to the encrypted files.
Newer, “sleeper” versions that seize control of storage drives when data backups are made are on the rise, said Raj Samani, chief technology officer for the company’s Europe, Middle East and Africa region.
Intel Security found 700,000 samples of ransomware on computers, phones and networks of its customers in the latest quarter, Samani said in an interview.
Ransomware has evolved using “crime as a service” business techniques, in which coders lease out variants of the malware to uncounted thousands of criminals, who use them to launch virtual extortion schemes in return for a cut of the action, he said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day