Asia

Terracotta VPN hijacks servers for commercial gain

LAS VEGAS – The Terracotta commercial VPN, marketed in China under a number of different brand names, uses hacked servers to power its network and the network has become popular with advanced persistent threat groups, according to research released today by RSA Security.

“We don’t usually see commercial networks hacking into servers,” said Peter Beardmore, RSA’s senior consultant for threat intelligence marketing.

Terracotta also stands out because it keeps adding new IP addresses, and not publishing the data, he added. This is one of the things that makes it popular with cybercriminals.

“Most commercial VPN services publish their IP addresses,” Beardmore said. “And enterprises and governments can restrict access from those IP addresses.”

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Hold the phone: retailers eye payments via smartphone

Near Field Communication (NFC) will enable contactless mobile payments at the register An emerging technology called Near Field Communication will soon give new meaning to the phrase “tapped out.” Once NFC systems become widespread, which could happen as soon as next year, consumers will be able to pay for purchases at the checkout counter by […]

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Australia’s Commonwealth Bank Unveils Mobile-Payment Platform

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia on Oct. 26 unveiled a mobile-payment platform to enable iPhone-owning customers to do online banking, instantly send funds to Facebook friends or to anyone’s email address or telephone number, and, with the use of a special cover, make contactless payments. The service, called Commbank Kaching, will be available for download

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New Chinese Social Security Card To Include Payment, Banking Applications

China’s new multifunction contactless social security card will support yuan-denominated cash withdrawals, funds transfers and other consumer-oriented banking applications, government officials told reporters at a press conference Aug. 30. However, it will not support a credit card function, officials said, not explaining why. Earlier this month, China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security announced

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The Great Risk Race

As Asia’s dynamic markets demand risk management attention and expertise, financial firms rush to fill a talent gap, with particular urgency in China. Three years ago, when Yang Haitao, an experienced financial risk manager, moved to Shanghai to join Nanyang Commercial Bank (China), he knew it was going to be more than a routine job

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Two paths from DabbleDB

Over the past few years, my company has become very dependent on DabbleDB, an online relational database run by a Canadian startup — since sold to Twitter. We run our workflow systems, our accounting and billing, our recruiting, and our customer relationship management on DabbleDB. We use it as a back-end database for the China

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Working in the sun

I do not, normally, consider myself a low-energy person — I am, after all, running two companies (Trombly International and the China Speakers Bureau) and starting a third (Hyperica). But I do notice that my energy flags at certain times — such as when I’m in Moscow. And I’m full of energy in other locations,

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