The Middle East and North Africa region loses about $21 billion each year because of an inadequate supply of water and sanitation, the World Bank said Tuesday, warning that urgent action is needed to prevent ripple effects on stability and growth.

Poor management of water resources and sanitation in the world’s most water-scarce region costs about 1 percent of its annual gross domestic product, with conflict-hit states losing as much as 2 to 4 percent each year, the bank said in a report issued at the World Water Week conference in Stockholm, Sweden.

Deaths due to unsafe water and sanitation in some parts of the region, particularly countries affected by conflict, are higher than the global average, it added.

“As the current conflict and migration crisis unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa shows, failure to address water challenges can have severe impacts on people’s well-being and political stability,” the report said.

Peril in Yemen

In Yemen, which is reeling from more than two years of conflict, water supply networks serving its largest cities are at risk of collapse due to war-inflicted damage and disrepair, and about 15 million people have been cut off from regular access to water and sanitation, the U.N. children’s agency (UNICEF) said in a separate statement Tuesday.

In Syria, where the conflict is well into its seventh year, water has frequently been used as “a weapon of war,” with pumps deliberately destroyed and water sources contaminated, and about 15 million people are in need of safe water, including an estimated 6.4 million children, UNICEF said.

Overall, 183 million people lack access to basic drinking water in countries affected by conflict, violence and instability around the world, it added.

Better management

With the urban population in the Middle East and North Africa expected to double by 2050 to nearly 400 million, a combination of policy, technology and water management tools should be used to improve the water situation, the World Bank report said.

“Water productivity — in other words, how much return you get for every drop of water used — in the Middle East in general is the lowest on average in the world,” said Anders Jägerskog, a specialist in water resources management at the World Bank and one of the report’s authors.

Middle Eastern and North African countries are using far more water than can be replenished, said the report.

To reverse the trend, technology and innovation are “essential but not enough,” Jägerskog told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Water governance — in particular, water tariffs and subsidies — must also be addressed, he said.

The region has the world’s lowest water tariffs and spends the highest proportion of GDP on public water subsidies. Such policies lead to excessive use of already scarce water supplies and are not sustainable, said Jägerskog.

Untreated wastewater

Another challenge is that more than half of the wastewater collected in the region is fed back into the environment untreated.

“Along with better water management, there is room for increasing the supply through nonconventional methods such as desalination and recycling,” Guangzhe Chen, senior director of the World Bank’s global water practice, said in a statement.

Improved water management could bring considerable financial returns, the report noted.

Governments could gain $10 billion annually by improving the storage and delivery of irrigation water to users, while increasing agricultural production by up to 8 percent, the report said.

Egypt, Syria and Iran — which have the largest proportion of irrigated land in the region — are the countries that could benefit most.
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From: MeNeedIt

A United Nations human rights panel called on the Russian Federation on Monday to step up prosecutions of racist attacks by ultra-nationalists and neo-Nazis and of hate speech by politicians.

Russian authorities must intensify measures to “vigorously combat racist behavior in sports, particularly in football, and ensure that sports regulatory bodies investigate manifestations of racism, xenophobia and intolerance,” the U.N. Committee against Racial Discrimination (CERD) said.

Fines or administrative sanctions should be imposed for such cases. The panel, referring to “the upcoming (2018) World Cup, expresses its concern that racist displays remain deeply entrenched among football fans, especially against persons belonging to ethnic minorities and people of African descent.”

Russia has pledged to crack down on racism and fan violence as it faces increased scrutiny before hosting the World Cup finals next summer. Russian Premier League champions Spartak Moscow and rivals Dynamo Moscow were each fined 250,000 rubles ($4,250) over fans’ racist behavior, the Russian Football Union (RFU) said last month.

The 18 independent experts, who reviewed Russia’s record and those of seven other countries at a session that ended on Friday, issued their findings on Monday.

Igor Barinov, head of the Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs of the Russian Federation, told the panel on Aug. 4 that Moscow had taken measures against the propagation of racist ideas.

Russia consistently combats the glorification of Nazism — made a crime in 2014 — the propaganda of Nazi ideas and attempts at racial hatred or discrimination, he said. In 2016, officials had identified 1,450 extremist crimes, 993 had been sent to court and 934 people were found guilty, he said.

The U.N. panel said violent racist attacks had decreased in recent years, but added: “Violent racist attacks undertaken by groups such as neo-Nazi groups and Cossack patrols, targeting particularly people from Central Asia and the Caucasus and persons belonging to ethnic minorities including migrants, the Roma and people of African descent, remain a pressing problem.”

It called for an end to “de facto racial profiling by the police,” decrying arbitrary identity checks and “unnecessary arrests.”

“Racist hate speech is still used by officials and politicians, especially during election campaigns, and remains unpunished,” it said, recommending investigations.

Russia still lacks anti-discrimination legislation and the definition of extremist activity in its federal law “remains vague and broad,” it said.

Regarding Crimea, seized by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, the panel voiced concern at the fate of Crimean Tatar representative institutions, such as the outlawing of the Mejlis, the Crimean Tatar’s semi-official legislature, the closure of several media outlets, and “allegations of disappearances, criminal and administrative prosecutions, mass raids, and interrogations.”

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Peru expects a “very ambitious” free trade deal with Australia that covers goods, services and investments to be implemented as early as next year, Peru’s deputy trade minister said on Monday.

The two countries resumed free trade talks in Australia on Monday following a first round of negotiations in July in which “a lot of progress was made,” said Deputy Trade Minister Edgar Vasquez.

“This is going to be an agreement that we should be able to implement as soon as possible, starting in 2018,” Vasquez said by telephone in Lima. “That’s what we’d like to happen and what we think is viable.”

Peru and Australia are important global producers of minerals and their bilateral trade is relatively small.

Forging a free trade deal so quickly would mark one of the first steps toward reducing trade barriers in the Pacific region after U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, which Australia and Peru had signed onto.

The remaining signatories to the TPP are in Australia this week discussing ways to salvage the deal. The 11 countries, which include Japan, Canada and Mexico, have a combined gross domestic product of $12.4 trillion.

Vasquez said the experience of negotiating the TPP had put Peru and Australia on solid footing for quickly hashing out a bilateral agreement.

“We also both have very open economies, so we’re really going to see a broad inclusion of sectors that will benefit from it – goods as well as services and investments,” Vasquez said.

Peru’s trade ministry said last month that rules of origin, migration and e-commerce were also under discussion and that Peru was eager to increase agricultural exports to Australia while spurring trade of mining and other professional services.

Australian trade officials were not immediately available for comment.

Peru’s exports to Australia amounted to $260 million last year, according to Peru’s trade ministry.
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From: MeNeedIt

Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto will travel to China next week to discuss trade and investment, as Mexico looks for ways to decrease its dependence on NAFTA, especially trade with neighboring United States.

He will hold a bilateral meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping and participate in a summit of the BRICS nations, a grouping that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, on Sept. 4 and 5, Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Pena Nieto’s visit comes as U.S., Mexican and Canadian negotiators meet Sept. 1 to 5 in Mexico City for a round of talks to revamp the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Mexico is trying to increase trade with Latin America and Asia, and on Monday took part in the first of three days of talks in Australia aimed at reviving the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, disrupted by the withdrawal of the United States.

On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump renewed his threat to scrap NAFTA, which he has cast as killing jobs and exacerbating the U.S. deficit, and ripped into trading partners Canada and Mexico.

Pena Nieto is scheduled to participate in a dialogue on emerging markets and a BRICS business forum, “where over 800 business leaders are expected to discuss opportunities for investment, trade, connectivity, financial cooperation, development and the blue economy, or sustainable use of marine resources,” said the ministry.

On Sept. 6, Pena Nieto will visit the offices of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, China’s top e-commerce firm and one of Asia’s most valuable companies.

Mexico’s government is working to get Mexican products and services, especially from small- and medium-sized firms, onto Alibaba’s platform.
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From: MeNeedIt

Country music star Chris Young is donating $100,000 for disaster relief efforts in Texas.

Nashville-based Monarch Publicity says in a news release that Young lived in Arlington, Texas, before signing with RCA records and has family and close friends in Hurricane Harvey’s path.

Young says in the statement that communities in Texas “are going to be dealing with so much damage and loss of life for a long time to come.”

Young’s donation through his foundation will benefit the Red Cross and other disaster relief groups.  He says during tough times, “you turn to your friends to help those in need and that’s exactly what I’m doing.” He asked others to join his fundraising effort.

Young is a native of Murfreesboro, about 25 miles southeast of Nashville.
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From: MeNeedIt

Massive flooding caused by Tropical Storm Harvey along Texas’ refinery-rich coast could have long-standing and far-reaching consequences for the state’s oil and gas industry and the larger U.S. economy. The storm’s remnants left much of Houston underwater on Sunday, and the National Weather Service says it’s not over yet: Some parts of Houston and its suburbs could end up with as much as 50 inches (1.3 meters) of rain.

With the heavy precipitation expected to last for days, it’s still unclear how bad the damage will be, but there is already evidence of widespread losses. Key oil and gas facilities along the Texas Gulf Coast have temporarily shut down, and flooding in the Houston and Beaumont areas could seriously pinch gasoline supplies. Companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico have evacuated drilling platforms and rigs, crimping the flow of oil and gas.

Experts believe gasoline prices could increase as much as 25 cents a gallon.

Harvey’s toll on air travel in the U.S. is set to extend into Monday, with the tracking service FlightAware.com reporting that more than 1,400 flights already have been canceled. That’s in addition to more than 2,000 canceled over the weekend.

Economy watchers were looking to oil futures markets Sunday night and stock trading in the U.S. Monday morning for further indications of fallout.

Here’s what was known as of Sunday night:

Refineries

Nearly a third of U.S. refining capacity sits in low-lying areas along the coast from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Lake Charles, Louisiana. Beyond the shutdown of refineries at risk of a direct strike from high winds, there’s the threat of flooding and potential power outages for gasoline supplies.

Refinery outages continued to spread Sunday, with about 2.2 million barrels per day of refining capacity down or being brought down, according to analysts at S&P Global.

Valero Energy Corp., whose two big Corpus Christi refineries escaped damage, said it was working with federal and Texas agencies and its business partners to determine what infrastructure was needed to resume refinery operations.

Even before Harvey hit, the prospect of supply disruptions sent gasoline futures to $1.74 a gallon, their highest level since April, before they retreated to around $1.67 by Friday afternoon. At the pump, experts see gasoline increasing 10 cents to 25 cents a gallon.

Given the strictures faced by the refineries, “This is the dominoes starting to fall,” Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst for Gas Buddy, said Sunday. “This is sort of slowly turning out to be the worst-case scenario.”

Oil and gas

Companies have evacuated workers from oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said Sunday that workers had been removed from 105 of the 737 manned platforms used to pump oil and gas from beneath the Gulf.

The agency estimated that platforms accounting for about 22 percent of oil production and 26 percent of natural gas output in the Gulf had been shut down.

“After the storm has passed, facilities will be inspected,” the agency said in a news release. “Once all standard checks have been completed, production from undamaged facilities will be brought back on line immediately. Facilities sustaining damage may take longer to bring back on line.”

Shipping

The shipping industry also is expected to be disrupted by the worst hurricane to hit the Texas coast in more than 50 years. Shipping terminals along the Texas coast shut down as the storm approached. Port operations in Corpus Christi and Galveston closed, and the port of Houston said container terminals and general cargo facilities closed around midday Friday. Rates increased for carrying freight between the Gulf and the U.S. East Coast.

Travel

More than 1,400 flight cancellations are reported for Monday, according to FlightAware.

Houston’s two airports were closed to all flights except those connected to relief efforts. Houston Bush Intercontinental Airport was not expected to reopen Monday until noon at the earliest. Houston International Airport was scheduled to remain closed until Wednesday morning.

Airlines were offering customers the chance to reschedule trips that would take them to Houston, San Antonio or Austin from Friday through the weekend.

Utilities

                   Researchers at Texas A&M University estimated that the storm would knock out power for at least 1.25 million people in Texas. They said the hardest-hit areas will include Corpus Christi, which is on the coast, and San Antonio, which is about 140 miles (225 kilometers) inland.

Insurance

A firm that does forecasts for insurance companies expects wind-damage claims in the low billions of dollars, and possibly reaching as high as $6 billion.

Risk Management Solutions Inc. said storm surges and inland flooding could be an even bigger source of losses. If the firm is correct, that would put homeowners and the government-backed National Flood Insurance Program at risk.

The flood program is run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which owes the Treasury about $23 billion in funds borrowed to cover the cost of past disasters, according to a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Homeowner policies offered by insurance companies typically don’t cover flood damage, yet a relatively small percentage of homeowners have flood insurance through the federal program.

Property data firm CoreLogic estimated that insured losses for home and commercial properties, as of Friday, would be $1 billion to $2 billion from wind and storm-surge damage.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has been named Uber’s top executive, taking the difficult job of mending the dysfunctional ride-hailing giant and turning it from money-losing behemoth to a profitable company.

Uber’s fractured eight-member board voted to hire Khosrowshahi late Sunday, capping three days of meetings and the withdrawal of once-top candidate Jeffery Immelt, former CEO and still chairman of General Electric, two people briefed on the decision said. They didn’t want to be identified because the decision had not been officially announced as of Sunday night.

Khosrowshahi has been CEO of Expedia since August of 2015. The online booking site is one of the largest travel agencies in the world.

Self-driving cars

He’ll replace ousted CEO Travis Kalanick and faces the difficult task of changing Uber’s culture that has included sexual harassment and allegations of deceit and corporate espionage. Uber also is losing millions every quarter as it continues to expand and invest in self-driving cars.

The company currently is being run by a 14-person group of managers and is without multiple top executive positions that will be filled by Khosrowshahi.

Khosrowshahi has served as a member of Expedia’s board since it was spun off from IAC/InterActiveCorp. two years ago. An engineer who trained at Brown University, Khosrowshahi helped to expand IAC’s travel brands which were combined into Expedia, the company’s website says. He also serves on the boards of Fanatics Inc. and The New York Times Co.

Many problems to solve

He immediately will face troubles on many fronts, including having to deal with multiple board factions that had once pushed Immelt and Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman. Several factions of the board are suing each other.

Whitman, an investor in Uber, denied multiple times publicly that she was interested in the job. Although she spoke to some board members remotely Friday night, they could not guarantee an end to their infighting or that Kalanick would not become board chairman, said another person with knowledge of the board discussions. That person also didn’t want to be identified because board discussions are supposed to be private.

Khosrowshahi also must bring together a messy culture that an outside law firm found was rampant with sexual harassment and bullying of employees. He also must deal with driver discontent, although Uber already has started to fix that by allowing riders to tip drivers through its app.
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From: MeNeedIt

An Emirati filmmaker is pushing boundaries and bypassing state censors by delicately unraveling a story about a traditional Arab family grappling with issues of homosexual love, gender identity, sectarianism and women’s rights.

The movie focuses on a conservative Iraqi family who begin seeing and unearthing one another’s secrets after the family matriarch goes blind and dies.

What makes the film “Only Men Go To the Grave” particularly avant-garde is that the homosexual characters are not simply supporting characters or portrayed as Westernized or globalized elites, like past characters in other famous Arabic films. Rather, the film’s stars are homosexual lovers who are also traditional Arab mothers, wives and caretakers.

The movie, by filmmaker Abdallah Al Kaabi, also reveals its central male character to be struggling with his masculinity and gender. In possibly the movie’s boldest scene, the character dresses in full makeup, a wig, jewelry and a dress.

Most surprisingly, the Arabic film passed state censors to screen at major movie theaters across Dubai this month. The United Arab Emirates, and Dubai specifically, are more liberal and seen as more tolerant than other parts of the Gulf, such as Saudi Arabia, where there are no movie theaters.

Al Kaabi says he believes the film’s handling of homosexuality and gender identity helped propel it to the big screen.

“A movie in the end is a story and people don’t really have a problem with what you talk about in the story, but they have a problem with how you expose it,” he told The Associated Press after a screening of the film.  “I think you need to show good taste when you talk about controversial and taboo issues,” he said.

The lovers in his film are never shown being physically intimate.

Egyptian cinema — the oldest and most revered film industry in the Arab world — has tackled homosexuality in film since the 1950s, though often portraying it as something that exists among a progressive minority. Gay characters have also been portrayed in some films as psychologically ill or are punished in some way.

Tunisian cinema has also depicted homosexuals in movies since the 1970s, while a genre of so-called queer cinema is currently surfacing among Lebanese filmmakers.

Egyptian film critic Joseph Fahim said Al Kaabi’s film appears to be the first made by an Arab Gulf filmmaker to tackle the issue of homosexuality in such a candid manner.

“It shows that this is coming from within, especially that the director casts no judgmental eye on it … he treated it in a matter-of-fact way, not as a disease. That is also a major stepping stone,” Fahim said.

Watch the film’s trailer:

​

It took Al Kaabi six years to complete the ambitious project, which was awarded best Emirati film at the Dubai International Film Festival in 2016 — the year it was produced.

Al Kaabi grew up in the smaller emirate of Fujairah along the Gulf of Oman. With little entertainment around him, he would venture out to the emirate’s only video store and rent VHS tapes. It sparked in him a love for cinema.

“My pastime was to travel and dream through movies so I was watching a lot of Hollywood movies, Egyptian movies and Bollywood movies,” he said.

After vacationing in Iran, Al Kaabi was awed with the country’s vibrant film scene in the southern city Ahvaz, known for its ethnic diversity. He decided to shoot his debut feature film there using Iranian actors of Arab heritage and actors from Iraq.

Across the Gulf, there are varying degrees of censorship and support for independent filmmakers like Al Kaabi.

Despite there being no theaters in Saudi Arabia, a handful of films have been shot there in recent years. In Kuwait, which once held the mantle for Gulf theatrical productions, censors pulled Disney’s new Beauty and the Beast from theaters this year after the public’s reaction to what Disney called its first “gay moment” for a character.

Homosexuality and cross-dressing are forbidden in the predominantly Muslim Gulf. A popular transgender social media star said she was denied entry to Dubai by airport officials last year because her passport still listed her as “male.”

In Saudi Arabia, homosexuals and cross-dressers can be imprisoned, fined and lashed. Earlier this year, Saudi police raided a gathering of men dressed in women’s clothing outside the capital, Riyadh. A Pakistani arrested in the raid later died in police custody under unclear circumstances.

Though rare, judges in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and a handful of other countries can issue the death penalty in cases of same-sex relations.

Possibly for this reason, Al Kaabi prefers to describe the relationship between the women in his film as “alternative love.”

Still, throughout most of the Middle East, there is a narrow margin of acceptance for transgender individuals and homosexuality so long as it isn’t visible to the public. More recently, some Gulf countries have begun considering laws that would permit gender reassignment.

In the UAE, two Emirati women are petitioning the courts to be recognized as males. Last year, the UAE approved a law that would allow gender reassignment surgery for those who psychologically identify as the opposite sex.

The scene of the male character dressed as a woman, shocking for its raw and rare portrayal of a transgender character, left one young Emirati college student perplexed.

“There are things I really didn’t understand in the movie, like the man. Why was he wearing these kinds of clothes like woman clothes?,” Mahra Al-Nuaimi said after watching the movie.

Her cousin, Moza Al-Hamrani, appeared less confused by the filmmaker’s motives. As a student of film, she said she hoped to one day have the chance to produce similarly groundbreaking work.

“The issues to do with gender identity and sexuality — I thought like `Whoa, did he really do that?”‘ But I was also proud that someone finally spoke out about it, because these issues exist but everybody turns a blind eye,” she said.
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From: MeNeedIt

Floyd Mayweather Jr. figured out a 50th opponent, letting Conor McGregor have the early rounds before stalking him late and leaving the mixed martial artist defenseless and exhausted on the ropes.

Mayweather battered McGregor around the ring in the later rounds, finally stopping him at 1:05 of the 10th round Saturday night with a flurry of punches that forced referee Robert Byrd to stop the fight.

Before a pro-McGregor crowd that roared every time the UFC star landed a punch, Mayweather methodically broke him down after a slow start to score his first real stoppage in nearly a decade. He did it in what he said would be his final fight, against a fighter who had never been in a professional boxing match.

McGregor boxed surprisingly well early. But after landing some shots in the first three rounds, his punches seemed to lose their steam, and Mayweather went on the pursuit. McGregor backpedaled most of the way, stopping only to throw an occasional flurry as Mayweather wore him down.

“I think we gave the fans what they wanted to see,” Mayweather said. “I owed them for the (Manny) Pacquiao fight.”

McGregor had vowed to knock Mayweather out within two rounds, and he won the early rounds with movement and punches to the head. But the tide of the fight turned in the fourth round as Mayweather seemed to figure out what he had to do and began aggressively stalking McGregor.

“I turned him into a Mexican tonight,” McGregor said. “He fought like a Mexican.”

In a fight so intriguing that it cost $10,000 for ringside seats, McGregor turned in a respectable performance for someone in his first fight. But Mayweather’s experience and his ring savvy paid off as he executed his game plan to perfection.

“Our game plan was to take our time, go to him and take him out in the end,” Mayweather said. “I guaranteed everybody this fight wouldn’t go the distance.”

Mayweather was widely criticized for not going after Pacquiao in their megafight, and he didn’t make the same mistake this time. In a fight that could make him $200 million he seemed to stagger McGregor with a series of punches in the ninth round, then came back in the 10th eager to finish it off.

McGregor went over and hugged Mayweather. He seemed almost happy in the ring afterward, secure that he had given a good performance even in losing.

“I was a little fatigued,” he said. “He was composed in there, that’s what 50 pro fights can give you.”

Mayweather ran his record to 50-0, surpassing Rocky Marciano’s 49-0 record and giving himself a great parting gift. He repeated afterward that he was not going to fight again.

“This is my last fight for sure. 50-0 sounds good, I’m looking forward to going into the Hall of Fame,” Mayweather said. “I picked the best dance partner to do it with.”

Irish fans arrived by the thousands in the days before the fight, filling the arena for the weigh-in and boisterously cheering for their man. They even went off in the middle of the night and spray painted an Irish flag and “49-1” on a billboard on Interstate 15 promoting Mayweather’s businesses.

The capacity crowd at the arena cheered McGregor on, but they quieted as the fight progressed and Mayweather showed his dominance.
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From: MeNeedIt

American workers are facing a paradox – many of them cannot find work while a lot of companies say they cannot find suitable candidates for job openings. Experts say the problem is in the so-called ‘skill gap,’ the incompatibility between available skills and job requirements. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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From: MeNeedIt

Spotify says Taylor Swift has set a new global first day streaming record.

The music delivery site said Saturday it had logged more than 8 million same-day streams for her new single, “Look What You Made Me Do.”

The 27-year-old singer dropped the much-anticipated song late Thursday to streaming platforms and iTunes.

She wrote and produced it with frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff, who performs in the bands Bleachers and fun. It’s the first single from her sixth album, “reputation,” set to be released Nov. 10.

The video for the song will premiere Sunday on the MTV Video Music Awards. A clip previewed Friday on “Good Morning America.”

YouTube said Saturday the song’s lyric video broke a record for that site, with more than 19 million same day views.
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From: MeNeedIt

From power grids, to major corporations, nothing in the world is immune to cyberattacks. The reason, said cyber security experts, is the growing dependence on the internet.

“The internet is becoming more and more integrated into our lives every single day, and we as citizens and we as corporations and governments are becoming more interconnected and using the internet as part of that backbone of communication and collaboration. This means that there’s increased attack surface for those who wish to be malicious,” said Jonathan Homer, with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center.

Homer works with a team that supports federal agencies, local governments and those who are part of the critical infrastructure within the U.S. to help them get back online and help prevent future attacks.

“On a weekly basis, we fly out and respond to organizations that are going through the once in a lifetime cyberattack,” Homer said.

Greater financial gain

More digital information on the web means greater financial gain for criminals. In the last year, there has been an increase in cases of ransomware, an attack that locks a computer until a payment is made. 

“It’s becoming easier and easier in part because the tool kits needed to break into many of these systems are becoming more readily accessible on the dark web,” said Clifford Neuman, director of the University of Southern California Center for Computer Systems Security. 

Tracking down the criminals has not been easy for law enforcement.

“We do think that reporting cyber intrusions is underreported to law enforcement, whether it’s the FBI, Secret Service or another entity,” said John Brown, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Los Angeles office.

“I think it’s a business decision. They’re concerned about the publicity, which we completely understand. There they have customers, et cetera that may not do business with them if like, hey, there’s an issue with their cyber defense,” Brown said.

Federal laws on reporting breaches are vague and many state laws require reporting when personal information is compromised, but there are gray areas.

“Much of what happens in the case of businesses is they don’t necessarily know what information has been disclosed, and they sort of, perhaps intentionally, lay a blind eye to that to say, ‘Well, we don’t know personal identifiable information has been disclosed. All that we know is someone got into our system,’” Neuman said.

Range of online perpetrators

The FBI says the online perpetrators range from criminals who want money to hackers with geopolitical motivations. 

“Clearly there are nation states that are involved in cyber activity who are interested in stealing our trade secrets, our proprietary information that our companies are developing, our secrets within our government,” Brown said.

A Chinese national, Yu Pingan of Shanghai, was arrested and charged this week for allegedly distributing malicious software known as Sakula. The malware has been linked to hacks against U.S businesses.

Sakula has also been linked to the 2014 and 2015 cyberattacks at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), where personal information of millions of  federal employees was stolen. The federal court filing, however, against Yu does not mention the OPM hacks.

U.S. officials have blamed the Chinese government on those attacks.

“Most cyberattacks require multiple weaknesses or vulnerabilities of some form in order to be able to reach the final goal of the attacker.One of the greatest weaknesses of any corporate network is the human element,” said Homer.

Neuman said it is not a matter of if an attack will happen, but when.

“I think that most companies are not prepared to handle the zero day, the newest attack that occurs because it’s like fighting the last war. You don’t know what the particular new techniques are that are going to be applied,” Neuman said.

Critical partnership

For the FBI, building partnerships with private industry is critical. 

“It’s really about building those relationships before the intrusion. So, what we ask companies to do is to call us and to basically just say, ‘Hey, let’s talk about what would happen if we did have an intrusion. Let’s work through that,’” Brown explained.

Another way to prepare for a cyberattack is to rethink how systems on the web are designed, Neuman said.

“Where we really need to be going is in a way where we design our systems to be more resilient against the inevitable hack,” he said. “Understand that individuals are going to get in, but make sure that the structures of the systems are designed to contain the damage that can occur. And that’s a much more difficult problem to solve because it requires changing the way we design our systems overall.”
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From: MeNeedIt