Tomorrow Liam Malone will graduate with a Bachelor of Commerce from Victoria University adding another another hard earned award to his growing list of acheivments.
There were a few distractions on the way, not least competing in the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
Liam’s next step is to become the fastest person on the planet. “I’m going to be the fastest person on the planet, legs real or not. It’s important to do things that shape the future and this would be one of those things,” Liam said in a recent Victoria University press release.
So technology around the running blades will no doubt play a role in helping Liam acheive his goals so it was interesting to have a look back at just how these blades came about and where from.
The Flex-Foot, as the blades are called, are made in the USA by Össur an organisation whose aim is to improve peoples mobility and provide prosthetic solutions.
This weekend the largest ever ransomware attack in the world has been hitting computer systems of private and public organisations in hundreds of countries, NZTech chief executive Graeme Muller says.
Spread via phishing emails where an email that appears to come from someone people know encourages them to open an attachment or click on a link, only to deposit a small piece of malicious code on your system. The bug looks for machines running unpatched versions of Microsoft Windows and then spreads across your network infecting other machines as it goes, Muller says.
“Called a ransomware as it locks people out of their files and demands a ransom before they can access them again. While the ransom is relatively small at around $NZ430 per computer, the criminals who are collecting the ransom will be making millions having successfully taken down large organisations such as the NHS (UK’s National Health Service), Telefonica and FedEx as well as thousands of smaller businesses.
“As a result, the recently launched New Zealand Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) is getting its first real test this weekend and have provided excellent advice for Kiwis.
“First, don’t open suspicious emails or emails from unknown people. Secondly, ensure that you keep your computer updates up to date. In this case ensure the Microsoft patch (MS17-010) released in March has been installed by running an update. Finally, you can also reduce the risk by blocking international emails for a few days until the wave passes.
“If you do get attacked the only option you have is to pay the ransom or throw away your computer. If you get attacked disconnect from any network you are on to prevent it attacking someone else. If you are running a computer with Microsoft XP or 2003 operating systems turn it off now as there are no patches available for these older systems.
“For organisations that require further support or more specified advice, we appeal Kiwis and NZ organisations log an incident on the CERT website at cert.govt.nz.
“Cyber-attacks by ransomware have increased by 50 percent in the past year, according to a study by Verizon and the total cost of cyber-attacks has been estimated to worth over $NZ400 billion a year now.”
This is a very low risk yet highly profitable form of crime but Muller says not to expect it to go away. In fact, it will only get worse until we learn how to be better at keeping our systems up to date and not responding to random emails, he says.
| A MakeLemonade release || May 14, 2017 |||
Science and Innovation and Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment Minister Paul Goldsmith will travel to China tonight to represent New Zealand at the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing.
“Attending the first Belt and Road Forum will allow us to add a distinctly New Zealand voice and perspective. New Zealand’s best interests lie in participating in international initiatives that have the potential to benefit our economy and society,” says Mr Goldsmith.
New Zealand’s participation in the Forum follows on from Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s successful visit to New Zealand in March, where he and Prime Minister Bill English witnessed the signing of a number of arrangements that reinforced the strength of the New Zealand-China bilateral relationship, including committing to working with China on its Belt and Road Initiative.
“We have a great record of advocating for open, rules-based systems that make trading, investment and people movements flow more easily,” Mr Goldsmith says.
Following the Forum, which runs from 14 to 15 May, Mr Goldsmith will undertake a series of meetings and events relating to his ministerial portfolios.
“China is an important research partner for New Zealand and the bilateral relationship between the two countries has continued to thrive in recent years, particularly with the signing of several major research partnership agreements in the last 12 months,” says Mr Goldsmith.
While in China Mr Goldsmith will also:
Mr Goldsmith will return to New Zealand on 20 May.
| A Beehive release || May13, 2017 |||
Incident Points up Danger of Microsoft Windows Standardisation, Dependence.
The failure of the global extortion cyber attack to get a foothold in New Zealand vindicates the value of the continuous system upgrades that from the outset of the information technology era has been a characteristic of the institutional information technology scene here, notably that of governmental services.
The ransomware attack, as it is known, notably attacked Britain’s National Health Service. Here it penetrated especially the service-to-patient delivery systems in health trusts. Services affected include picture archiving communication systems for x-ray images, pathology test results, phone and bleep systems and patient administration systems.
Institutional systems upgrades have long been considered to be conducted at twice the frequency in New Zealand as in the United Kingdom.
In addition to the routine and enforced upgrade of distributed systems here is the long-standing centralised structure of New Zealand health services.
Healthcare it can be clearly seen now is a natural target for computer-freezing extortion malware just because if someone’s life depends on something such as an operating theatre functioning or not functioning then there will be a greater readiness to pay the ransom to restore the computer systems driving it.
The disturbing aspect of this most recent attack is that the various ransom demands have been payable via bitcoin, the virtual liquid money technique. This means that the ransom payments are to a substantial extent untraceable,
All the indications so far lead to the cyber extortion attack being targeted on Microsoft systems that are no longer in fact officially supported by Microsoft. The pressures on Britain’s National Health Service continues to lead to budget cuts of which information technology savings have been foremost, leaving a large proportion of legacy systems vulnerable.
The freezing of targeted systems so that users cannot in fact use them ramps up the cyber war notably in the demand for the untraceable bitcoin ransom payments.
New Zealand’s reliance on the overwhelming global standard Microsoft Windows means that there are few grounds for complacency.
Internationally this latest attack has renewed the call for operating system diversity such as into independent operating systems especially in the open source sphere, notably Unix and Linux.
On this occasion Russia has not been blamed for the cyber attack and indeed is a victim of it probably because of its very large proportion of legacy systems vulnerable to precisely this type of hack.
Indeed Russian resident and fugitive CIA sleuth Edward Snowden has rounded on the popularly-supposed originator of the cyber implant, the United States National Security Agency. The NSA points out Snowden should have alerted its allies to its systems-paralysing device, especially at the time that it suspected, knew, that it had been filched.
This in turn leads to the supposition that in fact the cyber-sharing Five Eyes alliance, an English speaking union which includes New Zealand, had in fact been notified of the piratage and had taken steps to avoid it.
This does not explain though how Five Eyes signals intelligence-sharing member the UK got such a bad hit?
In turn this can be explained by the signals intelligence community failing to identify the vulnerability of Britain’s once admired but now ramshackle and sprawling public health system and also to comprehend how it would present such a tempting target to the pirated and now modified interference penetration weapon.
The quick response to the attack in the United Kingdom is substantially credited to a lone cyber security buff who got into the back of it, and discovered a sink-hole which now acted as a decoy into which the systems crippling onrush dumped itself and was smothered and drowned.
This could well be a part of the story.
But it is unlikely to be the full story. Which should also encompass the notion that with the systems paralysing genie out of the bottle, and still assuming that it had its genesis in a national security agency, that someone quickly produced an antidote to it.
| From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk || Sunday 14 May 2017 |||
Palace of the Alhambra, Spain
By: Charles Nathaniel Worsley (1862-1923)
From the collection of Sir Heaton Rhodes
Oil on canvas - 118cm x 162cm
Valued $12,000 - $18,000
Offers invited over $9,000
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
Mount Egmont with Lake
By: John Philemon Backhouse (1845-1908)
Oil on Sea Shell - 13cm x 14cm
Valued $2,000-$3,000
Offers invited over $1,500
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242