News Briefs

ICANN Makes Urgent Call for Full Deployment of Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC)

In light of increasing reports of malicious activity targeting the DNS infrastructure, ICANN is calling for the full deployment of the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) across all unsecured domain names. more

Over a Billion Email Addresses of Major Spam Operation Exposed via Unprotected Backups

A spamming group called River City Media (RCM) has had its database of 1.4 billion records leaked. This was revealed today by MacKeeper Security Researcher, Chris Vickery in cooperation with CSO Online and Spamhaus. more

Vint Cerf Has Tested Positive for Coronavirus

Internet pioneer and vice president of research at Google, Vint Cerf, said in a tweet this morning that he has tested positive for coronavirus (COVID-19). more

IBM’s $34B Red Hat Aquisition Makes It the World’s Largest Hybrid Cloud Provider

International Business Machines Corp (IBM) on Tuesday announced the completion of its $34 billion acquisition of the software company Red Hat Inc making it IBM's largest acquisition ever in its 100-year-plus history. more

Advanced AI Is Reshaping the Cybercriminal Landscape at Alarming Speed

A new report has shed light on how advanced artificial intelligence is reshaping the cybercriminal landscape. The latest threat intelligence assessment by Anthropic details how its AI model, Claude, was misused in a string of global cyberattacks that mark a sharp escalation in both scale and sophistication. more

IETF Appoints Its First Executive Director

IETF today announced that Jay Daley is appointed as the first permanent Executive Director of the organization. IETF had 134 applicants for the position since it began the hiring process in May of this year. more

Cyberattacks Spur Boom in Insurance Demand Amid Rising Global Threats

A wave of high-profile cyberattacks is reshaping the global insurance industry, creating both risk and reward for major players. According to a new Bloomberg report, firms like Munich Re and Chubb are capitalising on surging demand for cyber insurance as artificial intelligence makes digital breaches more frequent and destructive. more

Nigerian Cable Company Takes Blame for Misrouting Google’s Global Traffic Through China

Much of Google's traffic yesterday appeared to be re-routed through Russia and dropped at China Telecom. The issue raises serious concerns as a possible traffic hijacking incident. more

Russia Demands Facebook to Store Citizens’ Data on Russian Servers or Be Blocked

Russia threatens to block access to Facebook next year unless the company complies with a law that requires websites which store the personal data of Russian citizens to do so on Russian servers. more

DNS Abuse Institute Launches Centralized DNS Abuse Reporting Service

The DNS Abuse Institute (DNSAI), the entity created by Public Interest Registry (PIR), today announced the launch of NetBeacon, a centralized DNS Abuse reporting service. NetBeacon was developed in collaboration with CleanDNS, an anti-abuse solution developer, which has donated the development and technology behind NetBeacon. more

Study Finds IPv6 Adoption Still Lagging in U.S. Federal Agencies

IPv6 adoption across federal government websites has been less than aggressive across the survey period conducted by Oracle Dyn's Internet Research & Analysis Unit; many agencies failing to deploy public websites on IPv6 by the end of FY 2017. more

Entire Broadband Industry Sues California Over New Net Neutrality Law

Lobby groups representing U.S. broadband industry today filed a lawsuit against California to stop the state's new net neutrality law. more

NTIA Issues RFC, Asks for Input on Dealing With Botnets and DDoS Attacks

NTIA issued a Request for Comments today asking for broad input from "all interested stakeholders, including private industry, academia, civil society, and other security experts," on actions against botnets and distributed attacks. more

More Targeted Phishing, Spam and Mobile Attacks; IBM Reports 150K Security Events Per Second

IBM today released the results from its annual X-Force 2010 Trend and Risk Report, identifying more targeted phishing, spam and mobile attacks. The report also finds cloud security continuing to evolve. "From Stuxnet to Zeus Botnets to mobile exploits, a widening variety of attack methodologies is popping up each day," says Tom Cross, threat intelligence manager, IBM X-Force. "The numerous, high profile targeted attacks in 2010 shed light on a crop of highly sophisticated cyber criminals, who may be well-funded and operating with knowledge of security vulnerabilities that no one else has. Staying ahead of these growing threats and designing software and services that are secure from the start has never been more critical." more

The Pace of Domain Growth Has Slowed Considerably, Reports CENTR

The global Top-Level Domain market is currently estimated at 348 million domains across all recorded TLDs. Although the overall domain count has continued to grow in all regions and types, the Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries (CENTR) reports that the pace of growth has slowed considerably. more