Pakistan Participated in APCERT Cyber Drill, It wasn't a Competition By the way

I am sure you must have read of this news recently, mainly on Facebook and blogs, claiming that Pakistani hackers won a hacking competition beating hackers hailing from 28 different countries. Well, that’s not true. There wasn't any competition at all, yes there was a Cyber Drill and it was related to Incident Response in which PISA (Pakistan Information Security Association) participated to represent Pakistan. Just to let you know, incident response is an organized approach to address and manage the aftermath of a security breach or attack (also known as an incident). Event was for Education purpose and to polish Incident Response practices to fight against Cyber Crimes. This event was organized by Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team (APCERT). Participants were given some specific task, specifically designed to test Incident Response time, Methodology, Reporting, Accuracy and identification of incidents. In short there was a scenario in which confidential documents were stolen from a Company and was shared to public. All Teams had to response such Security Breaches according to International Standard. It merits mentioning here that Pakistani team participated in the event for the first time and successfully completed every task which was given to them. This is of course an achievement, which we all should share with others but without exaggerating it. Following is the official press release for the event: APCERT embarks on global coordination to mitigate advance persistent threats (Kuala Lumpur) – The Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team (APCERT) today has successfully completed its annual drill to test the response capability of leading Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRT) from Asia Pacific economies. For the first time, APCERT involved the participation from the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation – Computer Emergency Response Team (OIC-CERT) in the annual drill, following a Memorandum of Understanding on collaboration signed in September, 2011. The theme of the APCERT Drill 2012 is “Advance Persistent Threats and Global Coordination”. The objective is for participating teams to exercise incident response handling arrangements locally and internationally to mitigate the impact of advance persistent threats that involved large scale malicious software propagation and attacks capable of impairing the critical infrastructure and economic activities. This exercise reflected the strong collaboration amongst the economies, and it also enhanced the communication protocols, technical capabilities and quality of incident responses for assuring Internet security and safety. 22 CSIRT teams from 17 economies (Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, People’s Republic of China, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Macao, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam) of APCERT and 3 CSIRT teams from 3 economies (Tunisia, Egypt and Pakistan) of OIC-CERT participated in the drill.

HEC Announces Ranking of Pakistani Universities

A statement issued by HEC said that the primary purpose of the ranking exercise is to share with the general public a comprehensive data on the key issues that determine the state of higher education in a particular institution.

The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has announced the ranking of Pakistani universities on the basis of quality teaching and research, during a press conference held yesterday.

Institutions established after December 2008 as well as distance education universities are excluded from the ranking lists.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Laghari, Chairperson HEC,  said that ranking is a quality indicator and this information will help shed light on key indicators of higher education institutions in Pakistan to allow students, parents, potential employers and all other stakeholders to make informed decisions regarding higher education institutions.

Ranking criteria for the universities include student intake as well as graduates produced at BS, MS and PhD levels, number of qualified faculty members, student-teacher ratio, quality of research produced and published in journals of international repute, physical and technological infrastructure, international collaborations, resource generation and sports facilities.

The universities have been ranked specifically by category/area of specialization to make it logical. The sector-wise sorting has not been done to provide equal reflection to both the public and private sector institutions. Universities can only be comparable within the assigned category, comparisons to be made among different categories based on the above list will not be logical.

Top 10 Universities in Pakistan:

1. Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad
2. Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences
3. Aga Khan University, Karachi
4. University of Agriculture, Faisalabad
5. University of The Punjab, Lahore
6. National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST)
7. Pir Mehr Ali Shah Arid Agriculture University
8. University of Health Sciences, Lahore
9. COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT)
10. Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore

Category wise Ranking:

Agriculture/Veterinary

1. University of Agriculture, Faisalabad
2. Pir Mehr Ali Shah Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi
3. University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Lahore
4. KPK Agriculture University, Peshawar
5. Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam

Art & Design

1. National College of Arts, Lahore
2. Indus Valley School of Arts and Architecture, Karachi

Computer Sciences & IT

1. COMSAT Institute of Information Tech Islamabad
2. National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences , Islamabad
3. Qurtaba University D.I.Khan
4. Balochistan University of Information Technology and Management Sciences, Quetta
5. City University, Peshawar

Engineering & Technology

1. Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Science, Islamabad
2. National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad
3. Ghulam Institute of Engineering and Technology , Swabi
4. University of Engineering and Technology , Taxila
5. Institute of Space Technology, Islamabad

Business Education

1. Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore
2. Institute of Business Administration, Karachi
3. Iqra University, Karachi
4. Sukkur Institute of Business Administration
5. National College of Business Administration & Economics, Lahore

Medical

1. Aga Khan University, Karachi
2. University of Health Sciences, Lahore
3. Dow University of Health Sciences, Karachi
4. Isra University, Hyderabad
5. Khyber Medical University, Peshawar

General Universities (Large)

1. University of the Punjab, Lahore
2. University of Karachi, Karachi
3. Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan
4. University of Peshawar, Peshawar
5. International Islamic University, Islamabad

General Universities (Other)

1. Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad
2. Government College University, Lahore
3. Gomal University, DI Khan
4. Kohat University of Science and Technology
5. The University of Azad Jammu & Kashmir

ICT R&D to Finance National URL Filtering and Blocking System a.k.a National Firewall

National ICT R&D Fund has asked for proposals from academia/research institutions, companies, organizations for the development, deployment and operation of a national level URL Filtering and Blocking System. This URL Filtering and Blocking system will work as a country firewall and will potentially be able to block the access of any URL, throughout the country. According to RFP (Request for Proposal), available at ICT R&D Fund website, system should be capable of URL filtering and blocking, from domain level to sub folder, file levels and file types – in addition to have ability of blocking a single IP or range of IPs. It said that solution should be able to handle bandwidth of 85Gbps, with scalability for 40-50 percent growth every year. You can view RFP here, and FAQs here. Pakistani authorities have long urged to have a country-level firewall in place to block specific URLs countrywide, such as those which are blasphemous in nature. PTA even asked for quotations for blocking system from international players – those who are offering services in UAE or KSA, but couldn’t buy the solution due to higher prices. Vendors in China were also contacted but deal didn’t go through with any of them. It merits mentioning here that PTA recently asked ISPs to block as many as thirteen thousand websites, which were of explicit in nature. Activists, on the other hands, fear that such firewall can be misused by the government for political and other obvious reasons. They demand that list of blocked websites should be made public, possibly through PTA website, detailing the blockade reason for each website.

MIT offers Free Online Electronics Course

World famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology or MIT has now announced the launch of an online course, which won’t only be free but will be accessible for anyone with internet availability.

Evaluation for this course will be arranged online while MIT will offer certificates for the candidates who will successfully complete the course.

Starting this March, an Electronics course offered online will be part of a pilot programme for online education, namely MITx with an aim to offer higher education to seekers throughout the world.

MITx will be interactive online course that will:

• organize and present course material to enable students to learn at their own pace
• feature interactivity, online laboratories and student-to-student communication
• allow for the individual assessment of any student’s work and allow students who demonstrate their mastery of subjects to earn a certificate of completion awarded by MITx
• operate on an open-source, scalable software infrastructure in order to make it continuously improving and readily available to other educational institutions.

Upon successful completion of this course, MIT plans to eventually host a virtual community of millions of learners around the world with more courses to be included in MITx project.

MIT says that it will make the MITx open learning software available free of cost.

Frequently asked questions about MITx are available here.