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AN Abney Associates News Flash Phishing sites, which masquerade as genuine websites to steal users' personal information, are on the rise in Hong Kong, Microsoft warned on Thursday. Some 6.23 phishing sites were found per 1,000 hosts in the fourth quarter last year, up from 6.01 in the third quarter, according to Microsoft's latest Security Intelligence Report. However, the number of malware infections remained low in the same period. Every 1,000 computers had 2.2 malware infections on average, the report found. Tim Rains, director of product management in Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group, said the rise could be because Hong Kong is a financial centre and phishing sites masquerade as banking websites to steal information. "The fact that we have a low malware infection rate in Hong Kong, but slightly elevated level of phishing is actually interesting," he said. He said the reason could be that the attackers were using a smaller number of compromised systems in Hong Kong to do more phishing than other attacks. Roy Ko Wai-tak, manager of Hong Kong Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Centre, said websites of small and medium enterprises were often hijacked by attackers to build phishing sites - which pose as big corporations - because of poor cyber security. Rains also said the most common malware is called keygen, which comes with key generators that produce serial numbers required to run piracy software. Ko said it showed that Hong Kong people still continue to use piracy software. The report, which also found that 2.5 out of 10 computers on average did not have up-to-date antivirus software in the city, was based on data from over 600 million computers worldwide using Microsoft's products. The number of Hong Kong computers was unknown at the time of going to press. AN Abney Associates News Flash READ MORE: http://mariahabney.weebly.com/ http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xz5ub4_online-attempts-to-steal-personal-information-on-the-rise-i

Nigeria has been pitched among countries that lose yearly to cyber fraud. The country is said to have lost well over N 7.5billion in 2012 owing to cybercrime, while the global loss is estimated at $1trillion (about N155 trillion) for 2012. According to the research by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the rising profile of cybercrime is causing great havoc globally. The report also maintained that out of the $1 trillion loss, only $390 billion was reported for obvious reasons. Following this disclosure, Nigeria's First Lady, Mrs. Patience Jonathan, will lead about 700 leaders including Mr. Ehud Barak, a former Prime Minister of Israel, Dr. Salma Abbasi, founder/CEO eWorldWide, USA, a high level team both from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to the third World Cyber security Conference next week in Abuja. Among the 700 select leaders include top government functionaries, state governors and National Assembly members. Also expected are CEOs of Corporate Nigeria, Military and Intelligence chiefs and the diplomatic community, among others. The cyber security conference will map out new strategies to secure government and business assets, personal security including Child Online Protection and online e-commerce transaction on the cyberspace. With the theme: 'Cyber Insecurity- A latent threat to national security and economic development'. Dame Jonathan, who is also the ITU-IMPACT champion on child online protection (COP), would host the global forum as part of her yearly programmed for Nigeria and the entire World with regards to Child Online Protection and cyber security. She has been working actively with stakeholders to ensure minors are protected on the internet especially from online predators and the cashless economy on CBN policy is strengthened. Ehud Barak, Israel's most decorated soldier will speak on Cyber, Physical Terrorism and Economic Development: My Experience as Israel