This past month on 03-06 March, the global industry sub-group that exists at the center of 5G security met virtually. It is known as SA3 within the 3GPP organization, and it met over a period of five days to deal with some of the most important 5G security requirements. 3GPP is a "partnership" created among all the world's major standards bodies, which over several decades has cooperatively developed and evolved by far the largest and most successful global electronic communications network. more
In part three of this series of posts looking at emerging internet content relating to coronavirus, we turn our attention to mobile apps - another digital content channel that can be used by criminals to take advantage of people's fears about the health emergency for their own gain.One of the most common attack vectors we have found in our analysis is the use of apps purporting to track global progression of COVID-19, or provide other information, but which instead incorporate malicious content. more
At first glance, the COVID-19 pandemic would seem to be great news for tech companies. Depending on which set of statistics you look at, internet usage has spiked by up to seventy percent over the past month as people around the globe are forced to work, socialize, and entertain themselves at home. However, it's not all good news for tech companies. more
In early April, I had a routine consultation with my electrophysiologist at Nuvance Health via telehealth. Nuvance uses telehealth technology from American Well. In preparation for the consult, I took my blood pressure with a Qardio cuff and my iPhone, weighed myself on the Fitbit scale, and took a 30-second ECG with the Apple Watch. A nurse called 15 minutes before my appointment and took the information for input to the Electronic Health Record. more
The final numbers are in for 2019 and the largest cable providers collectively lost over 5.9 million customers for the year - a loss of almost 7% of customers. The numbers below come from Leichtman Research Group which compiles these numbers from reports made to investors, except for Cox which is estimated. The numbers reported are for the largest cable providers, and Leichtman estimates that these companies represent 95% of all cable customers in the country. more
Nobody loves a good crisis more than a hacker and, by anyone's definition, coronavirus is a big, fat stinking crisis that almost everyone on earth is sitting in the middle of. For most of us, a crisis brings out the best. First responders and the healthcare systems are replete with stories of superhuman sacrifice and commitment to others. Unfortunately, it is this commitment to the work at hand that puts cybersecurity on the back burner and increases the chance of a breach, break-in, or general mischief. more
In the midst of the coronavirus crisis and the partial or total quarantines happening around the world, more people are turning to eCommerce for their purchases. This, combined with the increased demand for healthcare and healthcare-related products, is causing surges of activity on online marketplaces. Perhaps least surprising is the growth in the number of listings for cleaning and hygiene products (e.g., hand sanitizer), as well as facemasks... more
When I want to go to a website, I just type in the URL, and I'm there. Sure, we had to get a subscription from a service provider and set up our devices, but that was a one-time thing. As we move into a world of many connected devices, it's no longer a one-time thing. Today, creating connected devices and services requires thinking about all the mechanics and networking and onboarding and providers. more
In recent weeks we've seen a range of press articles, security blogposts and public statements addressing real or perceived issues with network capacity and the domain name system (DNS) in particular. These range from concerns about the resilience of the DNS with questions on the impact of the number of registrations to news indicating that a tidal wave of fraud and abuse is hitting the world. more
A little over 25 years ago, the Internet Society proposed that they assume responsibility for the DARPA Internet Protocol (IP) specifications Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) that were being evolved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to facilitate their use by the mainstream network communication standards bodies and providers. Last week, the IETF, in an attempt to fend off alternative Internet Protocols emerging in the 5G ecosystem and create a standards monopoly, asserted... more
Zoom programmers made elementary security errors when coding, and did not use protective measures that compiler toolchains make available. It's not a great stretch to assume that similar flaws afflict their server implementations. While Mudge noted that Zoom's Windows and Mac clients are (possibly accidentally) somewhat safer than the Linux client, I suspect that their servers run on Linux.Were they written with similar lack of attention to security? more
All of the major ISPs that were enforcing data caps have lifted those caps in response to the COVID-19 crisis. This includes AT&T, Comcast, Cox, Mediacom, and CenturyLink. All of these companies justified data caps as a network management tool that was in place to discourage overuse of the network. That argument no longer holds water if these ISPs eliminate them during a crisis that is overtaxing networks more than we are likely to ever see again. more
It is a well understood scientific fact that Internet voting in public elections is not securable: "the Internet should not be used for the return of marked ballots. ... [N]o known technology guarantees the secrecy, security, and verifiability of a marked ballot transmitted over the Internet." But can legislatures (city councils, county boards, or the U.S. Congress) safely vote by Internet? Perhaps they can. To understand why, let's examine two important differences between legislature votes and public elections. more
As news of the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to emerge, CSC has undertaken the first in a series of studies looking at how the development of the crisis has affected online content. This first article looks at the numbers of registered domains with names containing coronavirus-related strings - "coronavirus" or "covid(-)19" (optional hyphen) - and analyzes the types of content present on the associated websites. more
There are new threats that you may have already been exposed to. Here are some of the new threats and advice on how to protect yourself. During this pandemic, Zoom has emerged as a very popular teleconferencing choice for companies and educational institutions, but a new weakness for Zoom was also discovered. Some online conferences and classes that had not password protected their sessions fell victim to eavesdroppers using the screen sharing feature to "Zoom Bomb" those sessions with graphic images. more
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