SINGAPORE: Larger-than-life light displays, fashioned after traditional Malay icons, will be at the heart of the annual Hari Raya Light Up when it returns to Geylang Serai later this month, organisers of the light-up said on Wednesday (May 15).

The centrepiece of the light-up will incorporate a kampung, “as if welcoming visitors to a traditional Malay home of yesteryear,” the organisers said in a media release. 

Other installations include a 4.4-metre-tall wau, or Kelantanese kite, as well as a 12-metre-wide kelong and sampan, which will form the main stage area for free weekend performances and movie screenings.

The 2.25km light-up, which spans Sims Avenue and Changi Road, will comprise over 900,000 LED lights in all.

In addition to the 13-metre-high main arches, there will be 55 sub-arches, each nine metres high, as well as decorations on two overhead bridges.

There will also be a temporary exhibition, housed in a structure that mimics the weave of a ketupat, or rice dumpling, to educate the public about the history of Hari Raya and of the Geylang Serai area. 

The annual Geylang Serai bazaar will return as well, with more than 1,000 shops selling snacks including candy floss burritos, “poke bowls” and “rainbow planet” ice cream buns, organisers said. 

The bazaar spans the areas around Geylang Serai market, Joo Chiat Complex and along Haig Road, and runs from May 25 to Jun 24.

There will also be cultural performances every weekend between May 20 and Jul 7 near Kampong Kembangan Community Club, as well as free screenings of P Ramlee films.

Another highlight is a mass break fast session on 17 Jun, in which new citizens will be invited to break fast alongside the locals to better understand the meaning behind Hari Raya, organisers said.

“While being a platform for commemorating Ramadan, the annual Hari Raya Light-Up also provides an opportunity for local and international visitors alike to explore the precinct and understand more about the Malay culture in Singapore,” chairman of Hari Raya Light-Up 2017 organising committee Dr Teo Cheng Swee said in the media release.

The annual light-up runs from May 20 to Jul 7.

LONDON: Oil hit its highest in more than three weeks on Monday, topping US$52 a barrel after Saudi Arabia and Russia said that supply cuts need to last into 2018, a step towards extending an OPEC-led deal to support prices for longer than first agreed.

Energy ministers from the two countries said on Monday that supply cuts should be prolonged for nine months, until March 2018. That is longer than the optional six-month extension specified in the deal.

Global benchmark Brent crude was up US$1.45 at US$52.29 a barrel by 1405 GMT (10.05 a.m. ET), having touched US$52.63, the highest since April 21. U.S. crude rose by US$1.46 to US$49.30.

Oil traders were surprised by the strong wording of the announcement, though it remained to be seen whether all countries participating in the deal would agree with the Saudi-Russian stance. Some analysts doubted that producers would stick to a prolonged curb.

“Extending the cuts until March 2018 would take account of the fact that demand in the first quarter of a year is lowest for seasonal reasons,” said Commerxbank analyst Carsten Fritsch.

“That said, we are skeptical about Russia’s willingness to actively participate in any extended cuts.”

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other producers originally agreed to cut output by 1.8 million barrels per day in the first half of 2017, with a possible six-month extension.

Oil has gained support from the deal but inventories remain high and rising output from other producers, such as the United States, is keeping prices below the US$60 that top exporter Saudi Arabia would like.

The ministers said they hoped other producers would join the cut, which would initially be on the same volume terms as before. Kazakhstan, however, said it could not join a prolonged reduction on the same terms.

“When the two biggest oil producers of the world reach a consensus on the extension of a supply cut, the market will listen,” Tamas Varga, of oil broker PVM, said in a report.

“Rhetoric is doing its job but this must be backed by action in less than two weeks’ time.”

Ministers from OPEC and non-OPEC countries meet to decide policy on May 25 in Vienna. Two small producers not involved in the original deal, Egypt and Turkmenistan, have also been invited.

(Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Dale Hudson and David Goodman)

SINGAPORE/HANOI: The WannaCry ransomware worm that hobbled big institutions and businesses at the weekend, including FedEx and Britain’s National Health Service, also indiscriminately caught many smaller victims across Asia, from hoteliers to Chinese students.

When MediaOnline, a firm that operates digital displays in Singapore shopping malls, noticed its displays were showing the ransomware’s pop-up window on Saturday, it sent engineers to two malls, director Dennis So told Reuters.

In the end, the company said it managed to beat the ransomware attack without having to pay the US$300 or so in bitcoin that hackers demanded in return for a decryption key to unfreeze their computers.

MediaOnline’s So said only 12 computers were affected as the network was isolated from both the firm’s office network and those of the company running the malls, and its tenants. By replacing all the hard drives, reinstalling the operating system and downloading all Microsoft Windows updates, the computers were back up and running by early Monday, with So saying “no money or bitcoin was paid to the hackers”.

At some larger organisations, it took longer.

At Jakarta’s Dharmais Hospital, Indonesia’s biggest cancer centre, up to 200 people packed waiting rooms after cyber attacks hit scores of computers. By late Monday morning, some visitors were still filling out forms manually, though the hospital said 70 per cent of its systems were back online.

The unknown hackers behind WannaCry don’t appear so far to have been well rewarded for their global blitz, with about US$50,000 worth of bitcoin transferred to the online wallets listed in the recent and earlier versions of the malware, according to bitcoin transaction tracker Elliptic Labs.

This may be partly because many of those infected, like MediaOnline, chose to restore their computer data from back-ups or by reinstalling the operating system. Others just held their breath.

LOST WORK

Yang Lin, a journalism student at China’s Zhejiang University of Media and Communications, told Reuters she had just finished revising her thesis late on Friday and was closing Word on her desktop when all the Word icons blanked out, her screen went black and the hackers’ message appeared.

“I was connected to the university network. I didn’t open any link,” she said. “I just cried. I was afraid to believe it, but had to accept it.”

Yang said she thought about paying the ransom to unfreeze her computer, but gave up when she found out how much this would cost. Via a chat platform, she discovered many of her friends faced the same problem.

She said she lost her literature review, foreign translations and thesis proposal, as well as films she had made over four years at college.

In Vietnam, hotel and restaurant manager Ngo Viet Yen said he was given 24 hours to pay 5 bitcoin (worth around US$9,000) to save his files after his systems were infected on Friday. He didn’t pay, and reckons he’s lost around US$2,000, and possibly more, as his staff revert to taking bookings, writing receipts and managing stock manually.

He noted that copyright infringement is widespread in Vietnam, and little is spent on system security.

“The number of computers updated to the latest version is very low,” he said. “And the server is rarely updated because there will be more issues and it often slows the system. It’s like: You only build a cage after losing your cows.”

Others found that even paying the ransom didn’t guarantee they’d get their data decrypted.

“We’ve seen some of our customers from the energy and health services who made the payment did not receive the decryption key in return,” said Budiman Tsjin, senior technical consultant at RSA, the security division of EMC Corp.

(US$1 = 6.8915 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting and writing by Jeremy Wagstaff, with additional reporting by Agustinus Da Costa in JAKARTA, Eric Auchard in FRANKFURT, Masuyuki Kitano in SINGAPORE, Engen Tham and SHANGHAI Newsroom, Jemima Kelly in LONDON and Mai Nguyen in HANOI; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

SINGAPORE: Singapore’s critical information infrastructure (CII) remained unaffected by the global hacking attacks that affected governments and large organisations elsewhere, the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) said on Monday (May 15).

Known as WannaCry, the ransomware exploits known vulnerabilities in old Microsoft operating systems. Cyber security experts cautioned that more machines could be affected by the virus as people around the world returned to work at the start of a new week. 

“As of this afternoon, no critical information infrastructure has been affected,” said Dan Yock Hau, director of Singapore’s National Cyber Incident Response Centre, which is a unit of the CSA.

Mr Dan added that the unit would continue to track the situation closely and that it was working with the CII sectors to monitor their state of readiness.

“We are also tracking other sources of intelligence and have reached out to offer assistance to those (cases) that were brought to our attention,” he said.

Electronic signboards in malls like Tiong Bahru Plaza and White Sands and as well as a Desigual outlet at Orchard Central have been hit. Jerry Tng of cyber security firm Ivanti, noted that the signboards likely ran on systems that had not been updated with the latest security patches.

“There are many unpatched signages and point-of-sales (terminals) running embedded Windows OS,” Mr Tng said, referring to a version of the Microsoft operating system that is designed for use in embedded systems.

Cyber security researchers elsewhere have likewise drawn attention to the difficulty of patching such devices, which could include medical devices such as those used by hospitals in Britain that were affected by last Friday’s cyber attack.

“CSA’s National Cyber Security Monitoring Centre also monitors the developing global situation and track the technical indicators to assess the potential implication to Singapore so that we are able to work on the necessary responses and measures to take,” Mr Dan said on Monday.

He added that the National Cyber Incident Response Centre is working with internet service providers (ISPs) Singtel and StarHub to expand the ways in which they can help those affected.

Singtel and Starhub customers can contact their ISPs if they are affected, said Mr Dan, adding that businesses and members of the public can also refer to SingCERT’s advisory on WannaCry or seek help from SingCERT by contacting singcert@csa.gov.sg or 6323 5052.