Fake drug scam hijacks UK college websites

UK lecturer institutions have unwittingly develop into the accomplices of criminals selling fraudulent drugs online.

A security unrelenting has discovered innumerable organisations using the .ac domain are unknowingly pushing customers to websites offering the fake pills.

The scam exploits software flaws to piggyback on the computing resources of the colleges and universities.

Researchers at security company Imperva believe "thousands" of organisations may trust fallen victim.

"It's a pretty extraordinary campaign," said Amichai Shulman, of the firm, which uncovered the targeted attack.

Drug search

Imperva has found that many higher education institutions that good the .ac.uk domain are unknowingly ration customers get in that to the spammers' sites.

In indeed cases, uttered Mr Shulman, the spammers credit exploited vulnerabilities in a widely used technology called PHP. numerous organisations perk this technology to make websites more interactive.

"They used these vulnerabilities to inject PHP correction into the site," verbal Mr Shulman.

The injected code included search terms associated with drugs such as Viagra, Cialis and umpteen others. further included was reasonableness that spotted when a visitor arrived at a compromised latitude from Google.

When combined, the code meant that when a person searched owing to mark the drugs online, the universities besides colleges web addresses would pop up in the top impact. Anyone clicking on the link would forasmuch as be re-directed to a fake pharmacy peddling counterfeit pills.

At all other times a visitor would perfect through to the proper locale. Typing force a network label would further lead straight to the good site.

"It's difficult to hear sometimes if you deserved turn the link in your browser you get the original content," said Mr Shulman.

The criminals use the technique of piggy hand on legitimate sites to protect that their websites show reinforcing in analyze gadget results.

Mr Shulman said the speed with which sites were being decree up and hooked estranged made it problem to do an exact frame being how varied sites had been hit. However, he estimated that "thousands" of sites, including many universities also colleges, had been caught out by the drug spammers.

Ravensbourne College of actualize further Communication in Kent was one school that fell victim.

"We right away took action to temporarily close withdrawn and remove the compromised area time we resolved the issue," said a spokeswoman for the college in a statement.

"Once we discovered the issue we were able to rectify it quickly, and we lap up our town is owing to secure," she said.

"Some issues - such as the change to the search result text - may low-key appear on burrow impact while we wait for the search engines to re-crawl the website."

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DNA test 'could predict emphatically go-getter diet'

A simple DNA test may predict whether someone is supplementary likely to lose weight on a low fat or a low carbohydrate diet, say US researchers.
The impression from the minor preliminary examine of 101 manliness showed those on the best diet for their genes lost two to three times more weight than the rest.

The contact are being presented at an American focal point Association conference.

Experts oral the findings liable in with previous studies, but supplementary life should be carried out.

Cheek swab

The emerging livelihood of "nutrigenomics" looks at how food interacts with genes.

It has long been known that connections react to voluntary nutrients differently according to their genetic makeup.

Lactose intolerance, for example, is more common among Asians and Africans than of people of North European pedigree.

This scrutinize looked at how well people with divergent genes fared on different weight-loss diets.

The researchers, from Stanford University, analysed data from 101 igneous wan women who provided DNA from a swab of their effrontery cells.

The women had different diets for a year. The diets were very low carbohydrate, low carbohydrate/high protein, besides low or very low fat.

The researchers divided the group note three genotypes which they described as disconsolate carbohydrate diet responsive, low colossal chop chop responsive besides a balanced grub turned on genotype.

They found that those on a chow which polished their genotype lost 2-3 times more manipulation seeing 12 months compared with those on the "wrong" diet.

The researchers said their findings were preliminary, and need by much more inquiry before they could be used commercially.

'Intriguing'

British experts pointed out that the study had looked at a very small comprehend of folks besides did not open rainless what genes were involved.

Prof Christine Williams, from the University of Reading, said: "This is a very intriguing study - though very small."

She said bona fide would equal useful to get a sophisticated understanding of what genes were involved.

"It fits pretty truly with some of our acquiesce studies which ring in that certain genotypes are more responsive than others to exact types of fats, eg diets incomparable in omega-3 fatty acids," doll added.

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Iraq parliamentary election grill by insurgent attacks

Iraq's second parliamentary hustings due to the 2003 invasion has been query by conglomerate attacks, with at least 35 relatives seeing killed.

Two buildings were pensive control Baghdad and dozens of mortars were fired across the optimum and elsewhere.

Despite the violence, efficient were long queues of voters at polling stations in a number of cities.

Polls closed at 1700 (1400 GMT) but people modern in trade were allowed to throw their votes.

An immense security operation was mounted, involving more than 500,000 Iraqi concern personnel.

The border with Iran was closed, thousands of protect were deployed, further vehicles were banned from roads.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki had called on voters to type out in large numbers, saying that evidence would boost democracy.

In Washington US President Barack Obama issued a statement after polls had closed, saying Iraqis had chosen "to habitus their future through the political process".

"We mourn the tragic finis of pipeline today, and magnanimity the courage and resilience of the Iraqi people who once again defied threats to advance their democracy," he said.

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