Archives for September 2021

A ransomware attack by the BlackMatter gang forced New Cooperative, an association of Iowa corn and soy farmers, to take their systems offline but it said it created workarounds to receive grain and distribute feed, a person close to the business said.

Member-owned New Cooperative said in a statement that the attack was “successfully contained” and that it had quickly notified law enforcement. It said it took its systems offline out of “an abundance of caution” and was working with data security professionals to quickly remedy the situation. It did not specify when the ransomware was activated.

The attack hit just as Iowa’s corn and soy harvesting is getting under way,

Security researcher Allan Liska of Recorded Future said the criminals demanded a $5.9 million ransom for a decryptor key to unlock files they scrambled. He said a sample of their malware was uploaded to a research site either late Friday or early Saturday.

Security researchers believe BlackMatter may be a reconstituted version of the ransomware syndicate DarkSide that disrupted the Colonial Pipeline last spring then announced it was disbanding. BlackMatter claims on its darkweb site not to target critical infrastructure, though many would argue that New Cooperative is exactly that because it provides feed to livestock.

In a post on its darkweb site, BlackMatter threatened to publish 1 terabyte of data it claimed to have stolen from New Cooperative if its ransom demand was not paid by Saturday.

The person close to New Cooperative with knowledge of the case, speaking on condition they not be further identified, would not say whether a ransom was paid.

Based in Fort Dodge, Iowa, New Cooperative stores and markets the grain it collects and offers feed, fertilizer, crop protection and seed, according to its LinkedIn site.

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JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian authorities have found no evidence that the country’s main intelligence service’s computers were compromised, after a U.S.-based private cybersecurity company alerted them of a suspected breach of its internal networks by a Chinese hacking group, an official said.

The Insikt Group, the threat research division of Massachusetts-based Recorded Future, said it discovered the hack in April when it detected malware servers operated by the “Mustang Panda” group communicating with hosts inside Indonesian government networks.

The activity targeted the Badan Intelijen Negara, or BIN, intelligence agency as well as nine other Indonesian government agencies, Recorded Future said.

“We assess that this activity is very likely linked to the Chinese state-sponsored threat activity group Mustang Panda based on our continued tracking of Chinese state-sponsored cyberespionage activity,” the company said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Chinese government offices were closed Monday for the Mid-Autumn Festival and could not be reached, but authorities have consistently denied any form of state-sponsored hacking and said China itself is a major target of cyberattacks.

Recorded Future said its experts traced the hack back to as early as March, and the last observed date of the intrusion was Aug. 20.

“We have not seen additional activity targeting BIN since that date,” the company said.

After being notified by Recorded Future, BIN investigated the suspected breach together with other agencies and related stakeholders, but found “our server is safe and under control, there is no indication that it was hacked by suspected Chinese hackers,” said Wawan Hari Purwanto, a deputy chief and spokesman for the agency.

BIN coordinates information sharing and operations for Indonesia’s other intelligence agencies, as well as conducting its own operations. Because of its work, Purwanto said BIN’s computers are an attractive target for hackers, and the agency conducts regular checks and maintenance on its systems as a precaution.

He said BIN cooperated with Indonesia’s National Cyber and Encryption Agency, the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology and other government agencies to ensure “our network is safe and free from hacking.”

The Cyber and Encryption Agency referred all questions to BIN.

Purwanto dismissed the Insikt Group’s findings and urged people not to worry that the agency’s data had been compromised.

“BIN calls on people to not believe the rumors of hacking of BIN and other government institutions, and to keep checking, rechecking and crosschecking information circulating on internet and social media,” he said.

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Rising reported from Bangkok.

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GENEVA (AP) — The U.N.’s intellectual property agency said Monday that innovation marched forward last year despite the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. Technology, pharmaceuticals and biotech industries boosted their investments, even as hard-hit sectors like transport and travel eased back on spending.

The World Intellectual Property Organization, which helps coordinate and approve international patents, trademarks and other intellectual property, also warned that change in the overall “innovation landscape” was happening too slowly, saying a broader array of countries should benefit from it as the world rebuilds after the pandemic ebbs.

The findings released Monday emerged from WIPO’s latest innovation index report for 2020, which ranked Switzerland, Sweden, the United States, Britain, and fast-climber South Korea — driven partly from creativity like K-Pop music — as the most innovative economies. China and France edged up in the rankings, which continue to be dominated by Asia, Europe and North America.

“Innovation is resilient — and even more resilient than we expected,” said WIPO Director General Daren Tang.

“What COVID has done is that it has disrupted certain industries, but it has accelerated certain industries,” Tang said in an interview in his office overlooking Lake Geneva. “It comes as no surprise that communications, hardware, software, ICT, these are sectors have done well” as well as the medical and biotech sectors.

The index ranks 132 countries, plus economies such as Hong Kong, and comes a year after WIPO said investments in innovation hit a record high in 2019 — an annualized rate of gain of 8.5 percent.

Top technology companies like Apple, Microsoft and Huawei increased investment on average about 10 percent last year, and venture capital investment surged — a trend that is continuing this year, WIPO said.

While the United States and China have largely driven the rise in R&D in recent years, other countries like Turkey, Vietnam, India and the Philippines — the so-called TVIP countries — have been rising consistently in the rankings over the past five years. Switzerland has consistently led the rankings for the past five years.

Overall, the WIPO report on the index said, “the global innovation landscape is changing too slowly. … There is urgent need for this to change.”

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Li Zhanguo’s two children, ages 4 and 8, don’t have their own smartphones, but like millions of other Chinese children, they are no strangers to online gaming.

“If my children get their hands on our mobile phones or an iPad, and if we don’t closely monitor their screen time, they can play online games for as long as three to four hours each time,” he said.

Not anymore.

Like many other parents, Li is happy with new government restrictions that limit children to just three hours weekly of online gaming time — an hour between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday most weeks.

The restrictions, which took effect earlier this month, are a tightening of 2019 rules that banned children from gaming overnight and limited them to 90 minutes most weekdays.

Experts say it’s unclear if such policies can help prevent addiction to online games, since children might just get engrossed in social media instead. Ultimately, they say, it’s up to parents to nurture good habits and set screen time limits.

The new rules are part of a campaign to prevent kids from spending too much time on entertainment that communist authorities consider unhealthy. That also includes what officials call the “irrational fan culture” of worshipping celebrities.

The technology restrictions reflect growing concern over gaming addiction among children. One state media outlet has called online games “spiritual opium,” an allusion to past eras when addiction to the drug was widespread in China.

“Adolescents are the future of the motherland, and protecting the physical and mental health of minors is related to the vital interests of masses, and in cultivating newcomers in the era of national rejuvenation,” the Press and Publications Administration said in a statement, alluding to a campaign by Chinese President Xi Jinping to cultivate a healthier society for a more powerful China.

Government reports in 2018 estimated that one in 10 Chinese minors were addicted to the internet. Centers have sprung up to diagnose and treat such problems.

Under the new regulations, the responsibility for ensuring that children play only three hours a day falls largely on Chinese gaming companies like NetEase and Tencent, whose wildly popular Honor of Kings mobile game is played by tens of millions across the country.

Companies have set up real-name registration systems to prevent young users from exceeding their game time limits, and have incorporated facial recognition checks that require users to verify their identities.

In some cases, companies will do sporadic facial recognition checks while people are playing, and they’ll be booted out of the game if they fail.

Regulators also ordered gaming companies to tighten examination of their games to ensure they don’t include harmful content such as violence.

And they’ve set up a platform that allows people who hold Chinese ID cards to report on gaming companies they believe are violating restrictions.

It’s unclear what penalties companies may face if they fail to enforce the regulations.

And even if such blanket policies are enforced, it is also unclear whether they can prevent online addiction, given that game companies design their products to entice players to stay online and come back for more, said Barry Ip, a senior lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire in England who has researched gaming and addiction. Children may just switch to other apps if they are forced to stop playing games.

“There are many forms of digital platforms that could potentially hold a young person’s attention just as well as gaming,” Ip said. “It’s just as easy for a young person to spend four hours on TikTok in the evening rather than play games if their time is uncontrolled.”

Short-video apps such as Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, are extremely popular in China and are not subject to the same restrictions as games, though they do have “youth mode” features enabling parents to limit what children watch and for how long.

Douyin and TikTok developer ByteDance announced recently that users under 14 in China will automatically be in youth mode and limited to 40 minutes a day on Douyin. They also won’t be able to access the app between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

“Many parents attribute their children’s suffering grades to gaming, but I disagree with this sentiment,” said Liu Yanbin, mother of a 9-year-old daughter in Shanghai. “As long as children don’t want to study, they will find some way to play. Games may be restricted now but there’s always short video, social media, even television dramas.”

Tao Ran, director of the Adolescent Psychological Development Base in Beijing, which specializes in treating internet addiction, expects about 20% of kids will find workarounds for the rules.

“Some minors are too smart, if you have a system in place to restrict them from gaming they will try to beat the system by borrowing accounts of their older relatives and find a way around facial recognition,” Tao said.

The new rules, he said, are a “last resort.”

Instead of relying on the government to intervene, parents need to take responsibility for limiting time spent on games, social media or the internet, experts say.

“The focus should be made on prevention, for example, informing parents about how games function, so that they are in a better position to regulate the involvement of their children,” said Joël Billieux, a psychology professor at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Li, the father of two young children, said he plans to arrange piano lessons for his daughter, since she has shown an interest in learning the instrument.

“Sometimes due to work, parents may not have time to pay attention to their children and that’s why many kids turn to games to spend time,” he said. “Parents must be willing to help children cultivate hobbies and interests so that they can develop in a healthy manner.”

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Associated Press researcher Chen Si in Shanghai and video producer Caroline Chen in Beijing contributed to this story.

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Few retirement decisions are as critical, or as easy to get wrong, as when and how to take your Social Security benefits. The rules can be so convoluted that many people rely on what they’re told by Social Security employees, but that could prove to be an expensive mistake.

Certified financial planner Kate Gregory of Huntington Beach, California, uses sophisticated Social Security claiming software to recommend strategies that maximize clients’ lifetime benefits. Gregory advised one of her clients, a widow, to apply for her own small retirement benefit first so that her survivor benefit could grow, then switch to the larger benefit later. When the woman contacted Social Security, however, she was told she could get the survivor benefit only.

“That left her really flustered,” Gregory says.

The widow eventually was able to get the benefits she’s entitled to in the correct order, but Gregory and other financial planners worry about people who don’t get professional advice and who could be led astray.

“Most people are going to say, ‘Well, that’s what the government told me’ and let it drop. And that’s unfortunate,” says CFP Mary Beth Franklin, author of “Maximizing Social Security Retirement Benefits” and a contributing editor for Investment News.

THE COST OF MISTAKES

A lot of money is potentially at stake. The difference between the best claiming strategies and the worst could add up to $100,000 over the lifetime of a single person and $250,000 for married couples, says William Meyer, CEO of Social Security Solutions, a claiming strategies website.

Even seemingly small decisions can have outsize consequences. People who apply for benefits may be told they’re eligible for six months of back payments and that claiming the lump sum reduces their monthly benefits only slightly. Over time, though, that reduction adds up, especially when cost-of-living increases are factored in.

“The agents are saying, ‘Hey, your monthly income only goes down $50,’ or whatever it is,” Meyer says. “They don’t tell you, ‘Hey, over your lifetime, that could be a reduction of $20,000.’”

A 2016 study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that applicants “were not consistently provided key information that people may need to make well-informed decisions.” A 2018 report from Social Security’s Office of the Inspector General estimated that 9,224 widows and widowers age 70 and older were underpaid by about $131.8 million because they weren’t properly informed of their options.

EDUCATION, NOT ADVICE

Social Security employees aren’t supposed to give advice, just education, Franklin says. But she and other financial planners can relate many stories of people being encouraged to sign up early when waiting was a better strategy, or receiving bad information such as being told they weren’t eligible for certain benefits or that they couldn’t take actions that were in fact allowed.

William Reichenstein, Social Security Solutions’ head of research, was eligible for a since-discontinued strategy called a restricted application that allowed him to receive spousal benefits based on his wife’s earnings record while his own benefit was left to grow. The Social Security agent who processed the application ignored Reichenstein’s directive and signed him up for retirement benefits instead. Reichenstein was able to withdraw the incorrect application and get the spousal benefits, but mistakes are often irreversible. He advises applicants to be informed and to respond quickly if Social Security makes a mistake.

“Find out what you’re eligible for and make sure you get that,” Reichenstein says.

To be fair, many people have no idea how complicated the claiming decision can be and may not understand what they’re being told by Social Security representatives, Franklin says.

Social Security administers several different types of benefits — retirement benefits based on your own work record; spousal and survivor benefits based on the work record of a current or former spouse; child benefits for the minor children of people receiving Social Security and various kinds of disability benefits. Each benefit comes with its own regulations, and the best strategy may depend on your marital status, your longevity, your tax situation and many other factors.

WHERE TO GET INFORMATION

People can educate themselves by visiting Social Security’s recently redesigned site and learning how the various benefits work, Franklin says. AARP has a free Social Security claiming calculator that allows people to model different strategies. Or you can spend $20 to $40 and up to use paid software, such as Social Security Solutions or Maximize My Social Security, that allows you to model more complicated situations, including those involving a minor child or a pension from a job that didn’t pay into Social Security. Consulting a financial planner who uses similar software also can be a smart move.

Franklin urges people to learn as much as they can before approaching Social Security, then keep a record of all interactions with the agency, including the names of representatives and their direct phone numbers, in case they need to appeal or correct a decision.

“I’m not here to bash Social Security representatives because most of them work very, very hard,” Franklin says. “But the rules are so complex.”

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This column was provided to The Associated Press by the personal finance website NerdWallet. Liz Weston is a columnist at NerdWallet, a certified financial planner and author of “Your Credit Score.” Email: lweston@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @lizweston.

RELATED LINK:

NerdWallet: 8 Ways to Increase Social Security Benefits https://bit.ly/nerdwallet-social-security

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