Month: May 2019

Towards the eradication of hepatitis C in Quebec City thanks to SABSA? | Health | News | The sun

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Lhe cooperative is participating in a pan-Canadian hepatitis C “microelimination” project funded by the pharmaceutical company Gilead. Of the 11 Canadian clinics and organizations that participated in the program this year, SABSA did the best – that is, the one that succeeded in identifying the greatest number of people with hepatitis C in the inside a community in the country.

In just one year, psychosocial worker Simon Vermette, nurses Isabelle Têtu and Marie-Christine Leclerc, in collaboration with medical specialists and various community organizations in Quebec, have successfully identified more than 220 people infected with the virus. Of this number, 193 patients have started treatment, and, among them, 71 received services of accompaniment to medical appointments and support, according to data transmitted to the Sun.

“When we started in 2011, there was really a gap in the treatment and support for people with hepatitis C, who are mainly people who use injection drugs,” explains the SABSA coordinator. , Amélie Bédard.

Faster treatments

About ten years ago, recalls Ms. Bédard, treatments for hepatitis C lasted over a year and were difficult for patients to bear. “There were a lot of side effects, it was almost like chemotherapy. Today, treatments are given over 12 weeks and patients have fewer side effects, ”she emphasizes.

It is estimated that 250,000 Canadians are living with the chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV), and that almost half (44%) would not be aware of their infection. In Quebec, between 40,000 and 75,000 people could be infected with HCV, according to the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec. People who are infected can live with the virus for several years before experiencing symptoms. Untreated, HCV can lead to very serious consequences, such as cirrhosis and, in some cases, liver cancer.

Today, treatments for the virus can provide a complete cure for the disease. “This is what we explain to our patients to convince them to follow the treatments, which they can cure. Obviously, they can reinfect themselves if they continue to use drugs by injection and to engage in risky behavior ”, hence the importance for the SABSA team to also teach, explains Amélie Bédard. .

According to the coordinator of the cooperative, if SABSA manages to treat so many patients with HCV, it is because it can count on indispensable allies in its community. “We are in the field, we have links with shelters and organizations such as PECH, Point de repères and PIPQ, and we work in close collaboration with a nurse and doctors, who can refer patients to us. It is by working on all fronts that we manage to reach and treat so many people, ”she emphasizes.

Ms. Bédard mentions that year after year, SABSA identifies and treats more and more people with hepatitis C. “I don’t know if it’s because there are more cases or because they are being identified more. , but we hope to get to the end of the list, ”she said.

In February, Le Soleil reported that the rue Saint-Vallier cooperative had also been participating since March 2018 in the PIHVOT program, a “sustained support” program for HIV patients. Of the fifty or so patients followed by the worker Marilyn Rochette, 95% adhere to their antiretroviral treatment as part of the project.

Baltimore taken hostage by hackers

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Bernard C. “Jack” Young undoubtedly dreamed of a smooth entry into office. On May 2, he replaced Catherine Pugh at the head of Baltimore town hall, who resigned after an unusual scandal: she had made the city buy its own children’s books for several tens of thousands of dollars. Five days after being inducted mayor of this city in Maryland, Bernard C. “Jack” Young was faced with an extraordinary attack: the paralysis of 10,000 computers in the municipality.

Since May 7, Baltimore and its 620,000 inhabitants have been the victims of one of the largest cyberattacks by extortion software, also called ransomware or ransomware. Its principle is simple: it completely paralyzes computers by displaying only one thing on their screen, a demand for ransom. In this case 13 bitcoins, or the equivalent, on Friday, of around 108,000 francs. For hackers, the advantage of being paid in bitcoin is that they can get the money back with virtually no risk of being caught.

“I say no”

But Bernard C. “Jack” Young does not fold. At least for now. “Right now I’m saying no. However, to allow the city to move forward, I might think about it. But I haven’t made a decision yet, ”he said at the beginning of May, when the value of bitcoin, then lower, established the price of the ransom at around 75,000 francs.

Read also: The biggest cyberextortion in history will leave its mark

Baltimore is not giving in. But Baltimore is crippled by software that is almost impossible to eradicate. In an emergency, to prevent the ransomware from spreading further, most of the city’s computers were disconnected. As a result, public administration emails, house sales, the ticket management system or water bills no longer work and are paralyzed. The city is thus idling and the costs of the attack keep rising. The city has already spent 5 million dollars (as much in francs) to try to restore its computer system and the overall bill could exceed 18 million dollars. No one knows when computers will be rid of this software.

Two major mistakes

The hackers allegedly used software called Robinhood to carry out their attack. An attack that could not have been carried out without two major errors. The first comes from the NSA, the US national security agency, which had stolen the EternalBlue system, on which Robinhood is based. Since 2017, this ransomware has been circulating on the internet.

The other mistake was made by the city of Baltimore, which would not have sufficiently updated its computers, Robinhood exploiting vulnerabilities in Windows XP and Vista. “Basic cyber hygiene, if it had been put in place, could have significantly reduced the damage in Baltimore or even ended the attack. RobinHood only works because the computers in town had not applied freely available software patches. Moreover, they worked without effective backup ”, criticized this week, in the Washington Post, Tyler Moore, professor of cybersecurity at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma.

Notre interview de Rich Fennessy, de Kudelski Security: “Cyber ​​attacks driven by artificial intelligence will appear”

To console himself, Bernard C. “Jack” Young can tell himself that Baltimore is not an isolated case. There was of course the ransomware WannaCry, which had infected tens of thousands of computers worldwide in 2017. Since then, attacks against so-called “soft” targets have followed one another. “These attacks tend to select victims who rely heavily on information technology resources, who have relatively weak cybersecurity operational practices, and who can afford to pay large ransoms,” said Tyler Moore.

Targeted hospitals

According to the American cybersecurity company Recorded Future, more than 170 ransomware attacks have been carried out since 2013 against public entities in the United States. The cities of Atlanta, Newark and Swansea have already been targeted, as well as several hospitals – also in the United Kingdom.

Boston Orchestra concert “wow kid” found

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The American ensemble Handel and Haydn Society has found the child who made the rounds of social networks with his “wow” released at the end of a performance of Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music.

In early May 2019, a child’s reaction to the end of an orchestra concert Handel and Haydn Society, in Boston, was touring social networks. A big ” wow Spontaneous echoed in the room just after the Masonic funeral music by Mozart.

Particularly touched by this enthusiasm, the president and executive director of the ensemble, David Snead, wished to find the child, by soliciting Internet users and by contacting the spectators who attended the concert by email. And he got there! Ronan Mattin is 9 years old, it is his grandfather, Stephen Mattin who brought him to the concert. And he was particularly surprised by this exclamation since, autistic, Ronan speaks only very rarely, reports the American press. He will be invited by the ensemble very soon to meet the musicians and the conductor of the orchestra, Harry Christophers.

Katy Perry reveals how Orlando Bloom asked her to marry

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Katy Perry answered “yes” when her fiance, Orlando Bloom, asked her to marry him, on February 14, 2019. This May 31, 2019, the American singer revealed a little more about this proposal in marriage during a British radio interview Capital. At 34, she admitted it was “a big moment“, said that her fiancé had bought her hundreds and hundreds of flowers …

That evening, Orlando Bloom was very stressed when he arranged to meet him in an Italian restaurant. “I worked the day and he asked me to join him in this restaurant. I just wanted to stuff myself with pasta but when I arrive, I see that it’s all ready. I say to myself ‘there is something wrong’. He was so nervous“, explains the interpreter of California Girl. After this simple dinner, over which the actor shows himself more and more stressed, he takes his beauty to do something very special. “He asked me to follow him, I thought we were going somewhere else but he took me in a helicopter and asked me to marry him!“, continues the 34-year-old singer.

“We land on the roof of a building. We get off the plane and there are my family, my friends and the largest amount of flowers I have ever seen. I felt like when Kanye did the same thing with flowers for Kim, I was like ‘oh my god’. It was great, I love him so much“, concludes the one who surprised recently at the MET Gala. A magic request that she will never forget.

Everything seems to be going well in the life of Katy Perry, who unveiled this new song on May 31, 2019, Never Really Over.

sound and music

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Christophe Dilys takes us on a sound journey with the writer Virginia Woolf and her fascination for the relationship between music, words and narrative diagram.

Musical programming

Richard Wagner
Parsifal: Nein lasst ihn unenthüllt (Act I) Air d’Amfortas
Berlin Philharmonic
Bryn Terfel, baritone
Management, Claudio Abbado
DG

Ludwig van Beethoven
String quartet n ° 12 in E flat Maj op 127: 2. Adagio ma non troppo e molto cantabile
Mosaic Quartet
NAIVE

Franz Schubert
Quintet for piano and strings in A Maj op posth 114 D 667 Trout: 2. Andante
Silesian Chamber SoloistsDUX

Philip Glass
The hours (film): The poet acts
MIRAMAX

Max Richter
Orlando: Modular Astronomy
Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg
Management, Robert Ziegler
DG

How companies avoid their own “Baltimore”

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The American city of Baltimore has been shut down because of a Windows security vulnerability. In order to defend against cyber attacks, it is important to install patches and updates in good time.

However, it does not protect against unknown malicious code. Application isolation with the help of micro-virtualization is the better solution, says Jochen Koehler, Regional VP Sales Europe at the security provider Bromium.

Ransomware is a perfidious cryptography application: the software encrypts data and demands a ransom to decrypt it. The latest victim of such an attack is Baltimore, the American city has been in a state of emergency since May: Cyber ​​criminals have infected around 10,000 computers in offices and municipal facilities with “Robin Hood”, and the encryption Trojan is blocking access to the computers.

Other parts of the infrastructure were shut down as a precaution to prevent the spread of the ransomware. Since then, the city’s e-mail system has been paralyzed, invoices can no longer be sent or property sales can be processed, and the healthcare system only functions to a limited extent. While Robin Hood, hero of English ballads, is seen as a champion of social justice who takes the rich and gives to the poor, cyber criminals are only interested in their own profit. They are blackmailing the city with ransom demands that are to be paid in Bitcoin. The mayor does not want to respond to the demands. “That’s good, because there is no guarantee that the data or devices concerned will actually be released again after payment,” explains Jochen Koehler, Regional VP Sales Europe at the security provider Bromium. On the contrary: Those who signal willingness to pay are often blackmailed with even higher monetary claims.

According to a report in the New York Times, the perpetrators used the NSA tool “EternalBlue” for the attack on Baltimore. EternalBlue is the name of a bug in the programming of Windows operating systems that the American foreign secret service exploited for its own purposes for years. In 2016, however, the NSA lost its own burglary tools as well as other espionage programs and was published piece by piece by a group of anonymous hackers who called themselves “The Shadow Brokers”. Since then, the tools have been used repeatedly for attacks. Perhaps the best-known example is the “WannaCry” encryption Trojan, which infected more than 300,000 computers in around 150 countries in May 2017. In Great Britain, for example, there were significant disruptions in medical care, while in this country display boards and ticket machines at train stations failed.

“Hackers using a stolen NSA tool is one thing. The bigger question is: How can it be that cities, authorities, but also companies have not yet secured their systems against this weak point? ”Emphasizes Jochen Koehler. Microsoft already made updates available for the affected Windows versions in April 2017. “The security gap has long been closed and yet hackers were able to paralyze the city of Baltimore administratively in 2019, two years later.” The reasons for this are different: convenience, lack of capacities or an IT infrastructure that has grown over time and thus become confusing. The administrators in Baltimore also seem to be struggling with a tangle of software, outdated servers and networks scattered across the city.

“Now you have to honestly admit that even a perfectly implemented vulnerability patch management does not offer one hundred percent protection in view of the horrific number of potential security gaps”, Jochen Koehler continues. “This is due to the fact that conventional solutions can only detect known malicious code. Rather, companies should therefore think about letting the attackers run nowhere. ”This is made possible by application isolation using micro-virtualization. Individual tasks such as a browser query or opening an e-mail attachment take place in a separate micro-virtual machine (VM) – strictly separated from each other, from the actual operating system and the connected network. This means that possible damage is always limited to the respective micro-VM, regardless of how new, old or aggressive the malware is. In addition, the VM is simply deleted after an activity has ended, such as closing a file or a browser tab.

The current ransomware attack shows how vulnerable digital systems are. When cyber criminals target critical infrastructures, it is often no longer a question of extorting money, but of sabotaging it: turning off the electricity, manipulating the water supply, disrupting communication. The consequences are dramatic. “But even normal companies have a lot to lose: If business operations stand still for a long period of time because you can no longer access important data, in the worst case, their existence is destroyed,” explains Jochen Koehler. “In no case should you feel safe, according to the motto ‘nothing will happen to me’. Everyone can have their own ‘Baltimore’. “

www.bromium.com

Rooney Mara secretly engaged to Joaquin Phoenix? This unmistakable sign

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Together for more than three years, have Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix gone into high gear? There are clues that do not deceive. Friday, May 24, 2019, the award-winning actress at the 2015 Cannes Festival was spotted leaving a supermarket in Los Angeles (California, United States). One detail intrigued: a massive ring worn on the left ring finger, which very frankly resembles an engagement ring.

Contacted by the American magazine People, representatives of the couple declined to comment. In January 2017, we told you that Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix had started their beautiful relationship. A source close to the stars confided to Page Six that they were “fell in love with each other“on the set of the film Mary Magdalene. They formalized their relationship a few months later, appearing together at the Cannes Film Festival. They have lived together for more than two years, in a house located in Hollywood Hills.

If this engagement rumor turns out to be true, it will be the first time that the actors get engaged. Joaquin Phoenix was already in a relationship with Liv Tyler, from 1995 to 1998, and more recently, with the top model Topaz Page-Green in the 2000s, then DJ Allie Teilz. Rooney Mara had an romance with director Charlie McDowell from 2010 to 2016.

In the United States, the city of Baltimore paralyzed for three weeks by a cyber attack

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After San Antonio and Atlanta, Baltimore is in turn the target of a cyber attack. Since the beginning of May, the American city of Baltimore has been the victim of a massive attack perpetrated by hackers, which paralyzes part of its digital infrastructure.

On May 7, the city discovered that hackers had infiltrated its system. Having succeeded in encrypting critical files remotely, they asked in exchange for a ransom valued at 100,000 dollars to be paid in Bitcoin (this is called a “ransomware” attack), details the “New York Times”.

To avoid the spread, Baltimore then decided to take several tens of thousands of computers off its network offline, rendering various municipal services unusable, such as that for issuing driver’s licenses, or the housing sales register. As “The Verge” recalls, Google has also taken anti-contagion measures by blocking Gmail’s access to certain employees of municipal services.

NSA software

To carry out their attack, the hackers used EternalBlue, a hacking tool developed by the NSA, the American intelligence agency. Discovered by a group of hackers in April 2017, the latter exploits a flaw in the operating systems of Microsoft, Windows XP and Vista.

Having discovered it in 2017, the American giant quickly released a security update. But for this fix to be effective, it still had to be downloaded and implemented on the computer network in question. A cyber hygiene operation that was lacking for many companies and administration in 2017, allowing the worldwide spread of the WannaCry virus which notably used EternalBlue.

Bernard Young, the mayor of Baltimore, told the media earlier this week that he would not pay the ransom demanded. “We are making progress, we are not out of the woods yet,” he added, hoping that the network would be restarted “within a reasonable time”.

Negligence of the administration

The city’s official will also ask the NSA, headquartered less than 20 miles from Baltimore in the state of Maryland, to cover part of the repair costs. “It’s a smart virus,” said the mayor. “Whenever the NSA does something, it does it well. I just wish she had a key to get us out of there. ”

But in the United States, not everyone is of the same opinion as Bernard Young. The ransomware (called Robin Hood) used in the attack thanks to the flaw caused by EternalBlue could only have had its effects thanks to the negligence of the administration, which did not take care to install the new update according to some IT experts.

Robert Graham, analyst for Errata Security, recalls that Microsoft has provided its customers with a EternalBlue parade since 2017. “To remain two years without a patch is a serious fault and it is difficult to attack the NSA”, he explains on his blog, spotted by AFP. In 2018, ransomware attacks in the United States cost up to $ 1.2 billion, according to figures consolidated by the FBI.

Source AFP

Hackers paralyze the city of Baltimore

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Hackers use software developed by the NSA. (Photo: National Security Agency / Bryan Shindledecker)



No time right now?

The administration of a city in the USA has been under the control of hackers since May. They used a security hole discovered by the NSA for the takeover.

No emails, no bills, no phones – except for emergency calls. The digital administration of the US city of Baltimore has been paralyzed since the beginning of May. Hackers are said to have attacked thousands of computers with ransomware. You are asking for 13 Bitcoin, around 100,000 euros.

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As the New York Times now reports, the city administration has been attacked with software that is based, among other things, on the Eternalblue exploit. This solution exploits a vulnerability in Microsoft’s Windows XP and Vista operating systems and allows the attacker to access the computer. What is particularly explosive is that the Windows security hole was discovered years ago by the US foreign secret service NSA and kept secret. Instead of communicating it to the company, the service used the loophole in espionage missions.

Again and again new attacks

However, in 2016, Eternalblue got into the hands of hackers and was published online. Since then, there have been numerous attacks carried out using this vulnerability and the tool developed by the NSA. In addition to the latest attack on the Baltimore administration, these included the Wannacry ransomware attack or the Notpetya attack.

The NSA informed Microsoft about the security gap after the leak. The tech company responded promptly with updates to fix the vulnerability. But the attacks around Eternalblue, which have been recurring for three years, show that there are still enough unsecured systems. According to the New York Times, attacks are mounting.

Tornadoes in the United States: One dead and injured in Ohio and Kansas

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In the US state of Ohio, tornadoes wreaked havoc, killing at least one person.

In the town of Celina in the west of the state, with a population of 10,000, an 81-year-old was killed when a vehicle was thrown into his house, said the town’s mayor, Jeffrey Hazel. In addition, several people were injured. In the state of Arkansas, a 64-year-old man is believed to have drowned in the floods, according to a CNN report.

Many houses were damaged or completely destroyed, and there were major power outages. In addition to Ohio, other states were hit by tornadoes, such as Indiana. A total of 55 tornadoes were registered in eight US states on Monday and Tuesday, the broadcaster CNN reported. Tornado warnings have been issued for parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York City.

A school building in New Jersey was damaged by storms. More than 14,000 people were temporarily without electricity.

In Brookville, Ohio, 59-year-old Michael Sussman was injured Monday night when the storm tore away the front door of his home. “I was hit in the head by rubble. I looked up and I had no roof. I was standing in the middle of the hall and I didn’t know if I would survive,” Sussman told CNN. His house was destroyed within 20 seconds, Sussman himself suffered a concussion but is on the mend.

A storm uprooted trees and destroyed power lines in the Kansas City area. Dozens of people were injured and had to be treated in hospitals. Kansas City International Airport temporarily ceased operations, and passengers were brought to safety in parking garages.

A whole dozen storms in a row raged in Kansas, according to the National Weather Service. After a few quiet years, the frequency of tornados has increased immensely in recent weeks.

Damage has also been reported from the cities of Bonner Springs, Linwood, and Pleasant Grove, Kansas.

Mark Duffin from Linwood, about 30 miles west of Kansas City, was able to save himself from injury with a quick-witted reaction: The 48-year-old heard on TV that a tornado was on its way when a wall of his house collapsed.

Duffin said he grabbed a mattress and ran into the basement with his 13-year-old son and wife. There the family waited under the mattress and watched their house collapse. The mattress protected her.

“I’m just glad I found my two dogs alive,” Duffin told the Kansas City Star. “My wife lives, the family lives, I live. That is the most important thing.”

The violent storms tore houses from their foundations and left a desert of rubble in some residential areas. Snow plows were on the Ohio highways clearing the lanes.

Dayton, Ohio, was particularly hard hit. “I just got on all fours and covered my face with my hands,” said Francis Dutmers, who was on his way to the basement of his home in Vandalia, about six miles from Dayton, when the storm hit his house . The window panes were crushed, the rooms filled with rubble, and almost all the trees were uprooted.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine declared a state of emergency for three counties. Series of up to 50 tornadoes are not uncommon in the USA, three times there have been a hundred in a row. According to experts, the current accumulation is considered unusual because it extends over a particularly large area.

Last week, tornadoes and violent storms had caused floods and damage in several states in the US Midwest. Several people were killed.

Icon: The mirror