PTA Officers Visit Telcos to Confirm Blocking of Unverified SIMs

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has started to confirm blocking of unverified SIMs by inspecting the Home Location Registers (HLRs) of the Cellular Mobile Operators (CMOs), said a statement issued by the regulator.

PTA team headed by Director General (Enforcement) visited CMOs’ offices during last week to confirm the blocking of SIMs that could not be re-verified beyond September 2013.

During the visit, progress made by CMOs on identifying and blocking “not re-verified” SIMs was checked by PTA. CMOs assured PTA to continue their efforts against identity theft wherein SIMs were activated without the knowledge of CNIC holders, said the statement.

It was, however, not mentioned in the statement that how many unregistered SIMs were blocked during the process. It also didn’t clarify if all the unregistered SIMs were blocked or if there were still any unregistered byt unblocked SIMs remaining.

It is pertinent to mention here that PTA has set up a system called “SIM Information System – 668” in order to ensure that the SIMs are registered against the CNIC of the authorized (legitimate) user.

A customer can get the count of each mobile company’s SIMs registered against his/her CNIC by sending his/her CNIC number to short code “668”. In case of any data mismatch, the customer can remove extra SIMs against his/her CNIC by requesting respective operator.

Users of all such disowned SIMs are then approached by respective mobile operator to get the SIM registered against his/her CNIC. Otherwise, the same is blocked after 15 days’ time period. General public is requested to support PTA and CMOs by using this system and disown extra SIMs registered on their CNICs without their consent.

PTA is following the policy guidelines of the government on blocking and verification of SIMs. It is hoped that the issue of un-authorized SIMs will be resolved through a joint effort by all stakeholders including the general public.

Viber is Reportedly Blocked in Pakistan

Another day, another service banned in the country. This time its Viber.

We are widely getting reports that Viber calls are not getting through, however, Viber text messages are working fine, we have checked.

As per reports that we are getting, Viber calls are not connecting on various ISPs in almost all major cities, meaning that, this is not ISP specific ban, rather its a country wide ban.

It is assumed that service has been blocked due to a recent proposal by Sindh government to ban Skype, Viber, WhatsApp and other IM services due to security situation in Karachi.

However, we suspect that this Viber ban has to do something with the VoIP calling facility, which was hurting the revenues of telecom operators. Just to mention, VoIP calling services are not legal in Pakistan, unless you are call centre or if you have special authorization from PTA.

It maybe recalled that Skype (PC to Phone) calling is already blocked on various ISPs in Pakistan.

We have confirmation from PTA for not issuing any directive regarding the blockade of Viber.

Through a tweet, Viber has hinted that the company suspects inaccessibility of its services in Pakistan

This is a developing story, where we are still uncertain about the source of directions for the banning of Viber in Pakistan.

Google Malaysia Gets Hacked by Pakistani Hackers

Google’s homepage for its Malaysian ccTLD  (Country-code Top Level Domain), i.e. google.com.my and google.my got hacked today by Pakistani hackers.

The group called MadLeets has accepted the responsibility of this major defacement through a message shown on Google’s home page for Malaysia.

Apparently the hackers DNS poisoned the domains and redirected them to their own web-server. Both the domains were hacked till the filing of this report.

Google hadn’t updated the DNS for the domains till the filing of this report. After DNS updation, domains will still remain inaccessible (or defaced) as name server propagation takes some time (from few minutes to 24 hours).

Both the websites are to remain defaced till the original DNS are propogated across the web, which is likely to take at least 10-12 hours.

It maybe recalled that a Turkish hacker had hacked Google Pakistan and 300 other Pakistani domains using the same technique.

Here is the message left on defaced page:

Google Malaysia STAMPED by PAKISTANI LEETS

We are TeaM MADLEETS

H4x0r HuSY – KhantastiC HaXor – H4x0rL1f3 – InvectuS – Shadow008 – r00x – Don – MindCracker – Dr.Z0mbie – phpBuGz – MaD GirL
MaDCoDe – Sn!p3r_GS – DeXter – Neo Haxor – Darksnipper – Pain006 – b0x – R3DL0F – Sahrawi – 3thicaln00b – Hmei7 – MakMan – Sniffer – AL.MaX HaCkEr – Ch3rn0by1
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www.MaDLeeTs.com
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Pakistan Zindabad