News Briefs

Twitter Reschedules Critical Maintenance to Avoid Down Time for Demonstrators in Iran

cores of Twitter users around the world thanked the social networking site, Twitter, today for its decision to postpone a scheduled maintenance which would take the service down for 90 minutes tonight at around 9:45 pm PST. Twitter has become a lifeline for Iranian demonstrators as the microblogging service is providing a vital means of communication amongst protesters as well as the outside world. In response to a large number of users on Twitter pleading the company to reconsider the timing of its scheduled maintenance -- given the sensitive timing in the Iran -- Twitter decided to reschedule the maintenance to a later time. more

AusRegistry Celebrates 30th Anniversary of .au

It's been 30 years since the .au country code top-level domain was first deployed to give Australians their own national TLD. Over 3 million .au domain names have since been registered. more

Canada Becoming the New Cybercrime Hub, Quickly Replacing China, Eastern Europe

A recently conducted analysis of Canada's cyber security risk profile by Websense has detected trends indicating Canada is becoming the new launchpad for cybercriminals. Sr. Manager, Security Research at Websense in a blog post writes: "Cybercriminals are on the move again. And, this time, Canada is the prime target. IP addresses in China and Eastern Europe are highly scrutinized and undergoing intense evaluation. So hackers are on a quest to move their networks to countries, like Canada, that have better cyber reputations." more

Escalating Violence in Iraq Leads to Internet Shutdown

The escalating violence in Iraq has resulted in government shutting the the local Internet access according to a report by Renesys today. From the report: "Renesys has observed two large Internet outages this week that our sources confirmed to be government-directed outages. These interruptions appear to coincide with military operations, amid concerns that ISIL forces are using Internet websites to coordinate their attacks." more

New Bill Bans Internet Companies From Offering Unbreakable Encryption

Companies such as Apple, Google and others will be banned from offering encryption so advanced that even they cannot decipher it when asked to under the UK's Investigatory Powers Bill. more

US Ambassador and US Commerce Dept Assistant Secretary Defend Transition of IANA Oversight

In an article entitled "Celebrating and Protecting the Global Internet" in Bloomberg BNA, US Ambassador Sepulveda and US Commerce Dept Assistant Secretary Strickling defend the transition of IANA oversight to the global multistakeholder community. more

John Crain Named ICANN’s New Chief Security, Stability and Resiliency Officer

John Crain has been named ICANN's new Chief Security, Stability and Resiliency Officer. In this newly created position Crain will assume the responsibilities of Jeff Moss, who announced he is stepping down from his position as Chief Security Officer at the end of the year. more

Rwanda Gets Control Over Its Domain .RW

After a seven-year long process of transferring Rwanda's Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), ".rw" from Belgium, finally Rwandans can now manage their national identity, reports AllAfrica. more

ICANN Releases 5th Round of Initial Evaluation Results - 169 TLDs Pass

Mary Iqbal writes to report that ICANN has released the fifth round of Initial Evaluation results, bringing the total number of applications that have passed the Initial Evaluation phase to 169. ICANN is targeting completing Initial Evaluation for all applicants by August 2013. more

Duqu Reported as Precursor to a Future Stuxnet-Like Attack

Virus researchers at Symantec Corp. have revealed a variant of the Stuxnet worm, named Duqu, that is found to be stealing information about industrial control systems. Symantec reports: "Duqu's purpose is to gather intelligence data and assets from entities, such as industrial control system manufacturers, in order to more easily conduct a future attack against another third party. The attackers are looking for information such as design documents that could help them mount a future attack on an industrial control facility... Parts of Duqu are nearly identical to Stuxnet, but with a completely different purpose." more

Kaspersky Lab to Shut Down U.S. Operations Amid Federal Ban

Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab has announced the closure of its U.S. division, resulting in layoffs for its U.S.-based employees. The decision follows a recent U.S. Commerce Department ban on the sale of Kaspersky software, effective from July 20, due to national security concerns. more

Google Fiber Expanding to Four More Cities

According to news sources Google's fiber-to-the-home service is expanding to four additional cities: Atlanta; Nashville, Tennessee; Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Google Fiber currently is available in Kansas City, Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah. At a price tag of $80 per month, the service offers speeds around 10 times greater than that of the average Internet connection. more

Internet Three Strikes Laws Violate International Law, Says UN Report

Michael Geist reporting in his blog: "The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression has released an important new report that examines freedom of expression on the Internet. The report is very critical of rules such as graduated response/three strikes, arguing that such laws may violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Moreover, the report expresses concerns with notice-and-takedown systems, noting that it is subject to abuse by both governments and private actors." more

New Ways Cybercriminals are Thwarting Security

M86 Security today released it's bi-annual security report for the first half of 2010, highlighting the evolution of obfuscation through combined attacks. From the report: "This threat trend is the latest to emerge as cybercriminals seek new ways to limit the effectiveness of many proactive security controls. Because existing techniques for 'covering their tracks' are becoming less effective, cybercriminals have begun using combined attacks, which are more complex and difficult to detect. By splitting the malicious code between Adobe ActionScript language - built into Adobe flash - and JavaScript components on the webpage, they limit the effectiveness of many of the the proactive security detection mechanisms in place today." more

Domain Registrations on Decline, Google and Lower Ad Spendings Blamed

According to recent reports, the total number of new domain name registrations in the third quarter of 2008 reached 11.5 million, pushing the total number of domain names registered in total across all Top-Level Domain Names (TLDs) to 174 million. While the growth continues, the newly released Domain Report by Verisign, indicates a "a decline of new registrations by 2%t from second quarter and 2% from third quarter 2007, driven by declines in both gTLD and ccTLD growth." The decline in new domain name registrations are found to be partly due new changes made by Google to its AdSense program -- the report explains... more