News Briefs

FCC to Block China Mobile From Gaining Access to the U.S. Market

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has opposed China Mobile's Application to provide telecom services in the United States. more

Irland Leads Europe’s .eu Domain Registrations in Q2

The latest report released by EURid, the operator of Europes .eu domain, has attributed 18% of the growth of the European domain to Ireland followed by Portugal with 16.1% and Norway with 10.8%. more

Spam Bouncing Back to Original Levels Despite Major Shutdowns

Average level of spam in the second quarter of 2009 has risen by 53 percent, as compared to the first quarter of this year, according to latest report from Google's email security and archiving services group, Postini. The report foresees unpredictable pattern of drops and spikes for the rest of the year... more

FCC Expected to Propose Regulation of Internet as Utility

Sources are reporting that Tom Wheeler, the Federal Communications Commission chairman, is widely expected this week to propose regulating Internet service similar to a public utility -- a move certain to unleash another round of intense debate and lobbying about how to ensure so-called net neutrality, or an open Internet. more

Alphabet Inc.‘s Google Sells Domain Business to Squarespace for $180 Million

Squarespace Inc., a design-driven platform for building online businesses, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the assets of Google Domains, a business owned by Alphabet Inc. The deal, valued at approximately $180 million, includes the transfer of around 10 million domains hosted on Google Domains, serving millions of customers. more

$300 Million Annual Loss Due to Non-Cooperation in Fight Against Phishing

During a presentation today at the eCrime Researchers Summit in Atlanta, Georgia, security researchers revealed that average lifetime of malicious websites are often longer than they should be due to lack of communication and cooperation between security vendors. According to results, website lifetimes are extended by about 5 days when "take-down" companies -- often hired by Banks -- are unaware of the site. "On other occasions, the company learns about the site some time after it is first detected by someone else; and this extends the lifetimes by an average of 2 days," says Richard Clayton. more

Teenager Arrested for Launching Accidental DDoS Attack on 911 Systems via Twitter

Cyber Crimes Unit of Maricopa County, Arizona went into full force on October 23, after reports of serious disruptions into the emergency 911 system for the entire Phoenix metro area. more

Cybercrime Losses Overestimated, Say Researchers

Cybercrime losses may be erroneously overestimated as most information available on cybercrime losses are derived from surveys, argue two researchers in a recent paper titled, "Sex, Lies and Cybercrime Surveys". Dinei Florencio and Cormac Herley from Microsoft Research examine some of the difficulties of forming an accurate cybercrime estimate by survey. more

Most Cyberattacks Are From Hostile States, Reports U.K.‘s National Cyber Security Centre

A report from the U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre blames hostile foreign states for the majority of the 1,167 attacks dealt with in the past two years. more

Malware Increasingly Uses DNS As Command and Control Channel to Avoid Detection

Number of malware threats that receive instructions from attackers through DNS is expected to increase, and most companies are not currently scanning for such activity on their networks, security experts said at the RSA Conference 2012 on Tuesday. While most malware-generated traffic passing through most channels used for communicating with botnets (such as TCP, IRC, HTTP or Twitter feeds and Facebook walls) can be detected and blocked, it's not the case for DNS (Domain Name System) and attackers are taking advantage of that, said Ed Skoudis, founder of Counter Hack Challenges and SANS fellow. more

Net Neutrality Is a Smashing Success by FCC’s Preferred Metric, Reports Free Press Researcher

"If investment is the FCC's preferred metric, then there's only one possible conclusion: Net Neutrality and Title II are smashing successes," says Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner, author of a new report released by the consumer advocacy group. more

Experts Predict Mobile as Main Online Access by 2020, Voice-Recognition, Internet Structure Advances

The Pew Internet Project has just released its third report on its "The Future of the Internet" series where it has surveyed experts about the future social, political, and economic impact of the Internet. In this latest web-based survey, 578 leading Internet activists, builders, and commentators and 618 additional stakeholders (1,196 respondents) were asked to assess thought-provoking proposed scenarios for the year 2020, which include the following quantitative results... more

Trump Signs Cybersecurity Executive Order, Experts Weigh in on the New Draft

The long-waited cybersecurity executive order expected to launch sweeping reviews of the federal government's digital vulnerabilities, was signed today by President Trump. more

Verisign Given Approval to Restrict .COM and .NET Domains In Various Countries

"Verisign has been given approval to start restricting who can and cannot register .com and .net domain names in various countries," Kevin Murphy reporting in Domain Incite. more

Internet Usage by Time Zone, China Biggest Contributor

Pingdom has conducted a study on how today's two billion internet users around the world are spread over different time zones. Study found two time zones stand head and shoulders above the others in terms of the amount of Internet users they contain: UTC+8, which passes through eastern Asia, and UTC+1, which passes through Europe and Africa. more