Day: September 13, 2021

Britain’s chief medical officer (CMO), Professor Chris Whitty, recommended Monday that children between the ages of 12 and 15 be offered the COVID-19 vaccine, saying they would benefit from reduced disruption to their education.

More than a week ago, Britain’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization, the panel that advises British health departments on immunization policies, issued a statement saying the “margin of benefit” to inoculating children of those ages was too small for them to recommend the government do so.

But Monday, Whitty, along with his counterparts from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, told reporters they are recommending to their respective health ministers that the age group be given a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. They have yet to decide on whether to give the students a second dose.

Whitty stressed the vaccinations should be “an offer,” not a mandate, adding, “We do not think this is a panacea. This is not a silver bullet … but we think it is an important and potentially useful additional tool to help reduce the public health impacts that come through educational disruption.”

Whitty said the CMOs have shared their recommendations with their ministers, and it is now up to the ministers to decide how to respond.

The United States, Israel and some European countries have rolled out vaccinations to children more broadly, putting pressure on the British government to follow suit.

Britain has experienced more than 134,000 deaths from COVID-19, and a rapid start to its immunization rollout has slowed, with 81% of those over 16 receiving two vaccine doses.

Source: Voice of America

A cyber surveillance company based in Israel developed a tool to break into Apple iPhones with a never-before-seen technique that has been in use since February, internet security watchdog group Citizen Lab said Monday.

The discovery is important because of the critical nature of the vulnerability, which requires no user interaction and affects all versions of Apple’s iOS, OSX, and watchOS, except for those updated Monday.

The vulnerability developed by the Israeli firm, named NSO Group, defeats security systems designed by Apple in recent years.

Apple said it fixed the vulnerability in Monday’s software update, confirming Citizen Lab’s finding. An Apple spokesperson declined to comment regarding whether the hacking technique came from NSO Group.

In a statement to Reuters, NSO did not confirm or deny that it was behind the technique, saying only that it would “continue to provide intelligence and law enforcement agencies around the world with life-saving technologies to fight terror and crime.”

Citizen Lab said it found the malware on the phone of an unnamed Saudi activist and that the phone had been infected with spyware in February. It is unknown how many other users may have been infected.

The intended targets would not have to click on anything for the attack to work. Researchers said they did not believe there would be any visible indication that a hack had occurred.

The vulnerability lies in how iMessage automatically renders images. IMessage has been repeatedly targeted by NSO and other cyber arms dealers, prompting Apple to update its architecture. But that upgrade has not fully protected the system.

“Popular chat apps are at risk of becoming the soft underbelly of device security. Securing them should be top priority,” said Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had no immediate comment.

Explosion in attacks

Citizen Lab said multiple details in the malware overlapped with prior attacks by NSO, including some that were never publicly reported. One process within the hack’s code was named “setframed,” the same name given in a 2020 infection of a device used by journalists at Al Jazeera, the researchers found.

“The security of devices is increasingly challenged by attackers,” said Citizen Lab researcher Bill Marczak.

A record number of previously unknown attack methods, which can be sold for $1 million or more, have been revealed this year. The attacks are labeled “zero-day” because software companies had zero days’ notice of the problem.

New cybersecurity focus

Along with a surge in ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure, the explosion in such attacks has stoked a new focus on cybersecurity in the White House as well as renewed calls for regulation and international agreements to rein in malicious hacking.

As previously reported, the FBI has been investigating NSO, and Israel has set up a senior inter-ministerial team to assess allegations that its spyware has been abused on a global scale.

Although NSO has said it vets the governments it sells to, its Pegasus spyware has been found on the phones of activists, journalists and opposition politicians in countries with poor human rights records.

Source: Voice of America

COTONOU, BENIN – Benin set up a service early in the COVID-19 pandemic to allow people to register their business online, and now the West African country is the world’s fastest place to start a business, according to a U.N. agency.

Sandra Idossou, owner of a store selling art in Cotonou, Benin, submitted her business application online and received approval and legal documents within three hours.

She said if the e-registration system did not exist and she instead had to go stand in line to start a business, she never would have done it.

To create her business, Idossou went online to monentreprise.bj, a platform in Benin to create and formally start a business. The site was launched in February 2020 by the country’s Investment and Export Promotion Agency, which did not want people to come into their offices during the pandemic.

Applicants fill out the required information, download the required documents and make a payment online. The documents arrive at the agency’s headquarters, where staff verify the information and mail business certificates to those who are approved.

Laurent Gangbes, general manager of the Investment and Export Promotion Agency, said in 2019 the agency was at 28,000 businesses created. In 2020, the figure went to over 41,000. He said the agency now processes an application in about three hours.

The online service helped make Benin the fastest place in the world to start a company, according to the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development.

The businesses must be located in Benin; however, people abroad can use the service if they are in the process of setting up a business inside the country.

Economists like Albert Honlonkou see big benefits for entrepreneurs.

He said the online service reduces costs, reduces delays and avoids corruption. It also avoids carrying papers around and, in the COVID period, it avoids contacts.

The Investment and Export Promotion Agency said it will continue to review the procedures and work with the private sector to further improve the process.

Source: Voice of America