The Lebanese banks infected by the “Gauss” virus are Bank of Beirut, EBLF, Blom Bank, Byblos Bank, FransaBank and Credit Libanais.

The malware, which steals system information but also has a mysterious payload that could be destructive against critical infrastructure, has been found infecting at least 2,500 machines, most of them in Lebanon, according to Russia-based security firm Kaspersky Lab, which discovered the malware in June and published an extensive analysis of it on Thursday.

The spyware, dubbed Gauss after a name found in one of its main files, also has a module that targets bank accounts in order to capture login credentials. The malware targets accounts at several banks in Lebanon, including the Bank of Beirut, EBLF, BlomBank, ByblosBank, FransaBank and Credit Libanais. It also targets customers of Citibank and PayPal. [Article]

More info on the malware [Here].

via BeirutSpring

According to an article from L’Orient-Le Jour, Lebanese athlete Gretta Taslakian was banned from the Olympic Village in London for wearing the Irish team’s uniform during a training session and flew back to Lebanon on Tuesday.

L’Orient-Le Jour contacted Gretta who denied that she was wearing the Irish uniform and said it was simply a green Nike jacket. She added that she still has the jacket and it has nothing to do with the Irish team except the color maybe.

Now the interesting part is that Gretta’s coach, Vahé Abrahamian who is still in London, apparently informed the Olympic committee that Gretta was indeed wearing Ireland’s uniform during a training session and showed them pictures. I don’t have any of the pictures but why the hell would a coach do something like that? Why didn’t he simply inform her that she shouldn’t be wearing the uniform or a jacket of the same color?

Last but not least, so what if she wore another country’s uniform? Doesn’t that fall under the “Olympic spirit” slogan? I don’t recall that happening in any of the previous Olympics. Actually according to L’Orient-Le Jour, it may be the first time ever an athlete is banned for such a reason. They also pointed out on how the Kenyan runner Kemboi, winner of the 3000m race, wore the French uniform while parading around the stadium and no measures were taken against him.

Gretta is a great athlete and has won gold medals for Lebanon in Asian and Arabic tournaments and deserves much better than that!

Read the full article [Here]

PS: Antoine Chartier, president of the Lebanese Olympic delegation, did not yet comment on the matter.

Andrea Paoli is our last hope for a medal at the Olympics as we haven’t had luck with any of our other Lebanese athletes. She will be competing at 11:30am in the Women’s -57kg Preliminary Round (Taekwondo). [Schedule]

Update1: Andrea is through to the quarter finals! She beat Nidia Munoz frmo Cuba 4-2. Quarter Final game scheduled at 5pm Lebanon Time.

NASA team showing Lebanese Charles al-Achi, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

It’s a great honor to have a Lebanese at such a high position especially that this is the first time NASA has successfully put together a video of a landing on Mars.

NASA’s latest adventure to Mars has given the world more than just glimpses of a new alien landscape. It opened a window into the trip itself, from video footage of the landing to a photo of the rover hanging by a parachute to a shot of discarded spacecraft hardware strewn across the surface. And the best views — of Mars and the journey there — are yet to come. [Link]

[YouTube]
NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover descent

First Pictures from NASA’s Mars Curiosity over [Link]

I’ve been very pleased with the connection and speed ever since I switched from Wise to DSL few months back, but I’ve been having some weird issues that I was only able to figure out on Sunday.

When Ogero first came to install the modem, they put filters on all the phones in the house to prevent any internet disruption, mainly on handy-phones for some reason. This however did not stop the connection from going down occasionally but I always thought it was a problem with Ogero as we are used to frequent short internet outages.

However, internet was down all day on Saturday and on Sunday as well. It would go up randomly then go down few minutes later. I called the support like ten times and they would re-assure me every time that there’s no problem from their side and that my connection is working fine. They would also ask me to check the cables or unplug everything and plug them back. I tried everything and the connection was still dropping until I noticed something. Every time I placed a call with the living room’s handy phone, the internet signal on the DSL modem would go off. I thought it was a coincidence at first but then I tried it 4 times and it would disconnect over and over again.

As a result, I unplugged the phone line from this specific handy phone and the connection stopped dropping. Noting that the phone has a filter, and we barely use it, I don’t understand why it would cause a drop in the internet connection and have no clue on how to proceed to fix it. I guess I will have to call back support today.

Is there any reason why someone would put his/her cell number on the back of their car?

[YouTube]

Anghami is a digital music service/app that offers users unlimited Arabic & Western music to stream and download.

Animation was done by the one and only Maya Zankoul. If you don’t know who Maya is, click [Here].

[YouTube]

Nicholas Dawoud, a Lebanese expatriate in Massachusetts, putting up a fights against a couple of burglars at his mini market when they tried to rob him on Friday.

I love how he called his mini-market St.Elias. Typical Lebanese!

via +961

Ahmed will take part in Round1 of the Men’s 110m Hurdles scheduled at 12:31 Lebanon time. [Round1]

Update: Ahmed Hazer finished unfortunately last. [Results]

I just got a reply back from the Customer Service department for the London 2012 Olympics apologizing for the mistake they did with Katya Bachrouche’s image caption. I went in to check the image and they already had corrected the mistake. Thumbs up for the professional work!

Katya finished second in Heat2 of the Women’s 800m Freestyle Swimming which is an excellent result but her time wasn’t good enough to advance to the finals. She ended up in 19th position overall (Out of 35) which is an encouraging result.

Picture taken from NowLebanon

Following the national uproar in Lebanon when large amounts of rotten meat and dairy were found at some of Beirut’s top restaurants and supermarkets, researchers at the American University of Beirut (AUB) carried out a study on levels of bacterial contamination in Lebanon’s meat and dairy products. The lead researcher and environmentalist Rabih Kamleh explains how the findings reveal worrying levels of harmful pathogenic microorganisms such as Salmonella , Listeria and Escherichia Coli in Lebanese food. As far as dangers go, cheese “smells” the worst.

Water is at the base of any type of consumption or production process, especially for food supplies. If this source is highly contaminated Lebanon risks a severe public health hazard, as the food supply now becomes a potential vehicle for the transmission of many resistant bacterial pathogens .

Read the full report [Here]. Sahten Jamee3an!

This picture was posted by YasaLebanon earlier this morning. While this accident may be due to recklessness from the driver, the public works that are being undertaken on the Dora highway are highly dangerous and clumsy.

In fact, they decided to take down the trees in the middle part that separates both sides of the highway for some reason and as a result, they are dropping rubble on both sides and leaving them as they are. Plus the bulldozers are stationed there in the middle part without any separators or warning signs for drivers. This driver is lucky for not crashing into one of them.

At some spots, the rubble is inside the lane as well.

LBCI: The families of the pilgrims who were abducted in Syria have blocked the airport road to protest the state’s failure to secure their release.

Just like I’ve been saying for months now, Lebanon needs a new airport. It is unacceptable that whomever feels like it can go down and block a vital road such as the airport road.

Gretta will take part in Round1 of the Women’s 200m scheduled at 21:36 Lebanon time. [Round1]

Update: Gretta did not qualify to the semi-finals and ended 50th. Hard luck and keep up the great efforts! [Results]

I’ve had the Nokia Lumia 900 for a few days now and so far I must say it’s been more than a pleasant experience. With its Windows-powered OS, its great build quality and gorgeous design, the Lumia 900 is one of the best smartphones out there and a strong contender to Apple’s iPhone 4/4s, Samsung’s S2 and S3. Its release date was a few months back but the Lumia 900, 800 and 710 models will be available for sale in Lebanon this week. The Lumia 900 will be priced around 600$ from what I’ve heard.

There are a lot of technical and detailed reviews of the Nokia Lumia 900 online that you can check on [CNET], [TechRadar], [Engadget] and [T3]. So, not wanting to come about this review in the same way I will pinpoint the key features, advantages and disadvantages that I noticed and are relevant to me.

Operating system & Performance

The Windows Phone OS is quite intriguing and very different from the iOS and Android systems. It provides easy e-mail access, social network integration, task-switching, office tools, and voice and Bing searches among other things and organizes the key functionalities in big shiny and colorful tiles. What surprised me the most is how quick and smooth the phone is despite the fact that it’s running on a single-core 1.4GHz processor clocked with a mere 512MB of SDRAM. I thought the tiles were a bit too big and there’s a lot of wasted space around them, but that ought to be fixed with the 7.8 version. Nevertheless, the two big advantages of the tiles are that you can pin not just apps but specific features and even groups of people as well, and the personalization is very easy to do. I downloaded and used Wiztiles to configure the Batman theme and organize its tiles as shown below.

Last but not least, if you are worried about piling up more than 50 apps on the main screen, Microsoft has figured that out and displays letters of the alphabet (Once you reach 45 apps) to separate the lists. [7.8 version]

Note that you need a valid Windows Live account to be able to log in to the “People” tile and setup your social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Outlook, and Google) and other email accounts. You also get 25 GB of free cloud storage (SkyDrive).

Design & Hardware

Almost all the reviews mentioned how beautifully designed is the Lumia 900 and I can’t agree more. It feels wonderful when held in your hand and is tougher, yet heavier, than the iPhone and Samsungs. The 4.3-inch screen is protected by a Corning Gorilla Glass which has passed the Hammer test. [YouTube]

One thing I did not feel comfortable with at first was the arrangement of buttons. In fact, there are only buttons on the right side, two for controlling the volume, the power/lock button in the middle and below it the camera button. When you hold the phone with the right hand, you need to twist the phone in your hand a bit to hit the power/lock or the camera key which is a bit annoying.

In terms of size, it matches the Samsung S2, is smaller than the S3 and bigger than the iPhone 4/4s. [Iphone 4s vs. Lumia 900] [Samsung S3 vs. Lumia 900]

The Lumia comes in three colors, black, white and blue.

Apps & Maps

Since the Lumia 900 is a Windows phone, you get the Bing-powered Nokia maps instead of Google maps, however there’s an additional free of charge navigation app provided, the Nokia Drive which could come in very handy and offers a wide variety of languages and worldwide maps in 2D and 3D. The good thing about Nokia Drive is that it doesn’t require a data connection to render maps, and could save you some time and precious Mbytes especially with the lousy mobile connection and low cellular data quotas in Lebanon.

I downloaded the English navigation voice and tried the turn-by-turn navigation system between Jounieh and Beirut and it wasn’t bad at all considering that we don’t have proper road maps. I will try uploading a video later on showing how it works maybe with the Arabic navigation voice.

Read the rest of this entry »