Cybercrime

Extreme Vulnerability at the Edge of the Internet - A Fresh New Universal Human-Rights Problem

By design, the Internet core is stupid, and the edge is smart. This design decision has enabled the Internet's wildcat growth, since without complexity the core can grow at the speed of demand. On the downside, the decision to put all smartness at the edge means we're at the mercy of scale when it comes to the quality of the Internet's aggregate traffic load. Not all device and software builders have the skills - and the quality assurance budgets - that something the size of the Internet deserves. more

IP Addresses and Privacy Sensitive Data - A Level Playing Field Needed

Reading Peter Olthoorn's book on Google (a link is found here), I ran into a passage on IP addresses. Where Google states that it does not see an IP address as privacy sensitive. An IP address could be used by more than one person, it claims. The Article 29 Working Party, the EU privacy commissioners, states that it is privacy sensitive as a unique identifier of a private person. It got me wondering whether it is this simple. Here is a blog post meant to give some food for thought and debate. I invite you to think about the question 'how private is an IP address'? more

Microsoft Launches AI-driven’ Security Copilot’ to Help Companies Fight Hacking Attempts

Microsoft continues to integrate new artificial intelligence technology into its products and today announced a cybersecurity "copilot" to help companies track and defend against hacking attempts. This tool is part of Microsoft's attempt to dominate the fast-growing field of "generative" AI. more

Gary Warner: We Are Well Past Time to Declare a Spam Crisis in China

In a blog post last week, Gary Warner, director of research in computer forensics at the University of Alabama's (UAB) computer and information sciences department, wrote that it is well past time for someone to declare a "Spam Crisis in China". The warning comes along with UAB's reports that most of the spam they receive has ties to China. "It is very normal that more than one-third of the domain names we see each day in spam messages come from China," Warner wrote. "When one also considers the many '.com' and '.ru' domain names which are also hosted in China, the problem is much worse. More than half of all spam either uses domain names registered in China, is sent from computers in China, or uses computer in China to host their web pages." more

Chanel’s Message On Fakes: We Take It Seriously and So Should You

Chanel's warning to counterfeiters: "we are watching and we are taking action." That's the literal message you will see when visiting around 40 websites that used to sell counterfeit goods (such as mychanelshop.com) that now redirect to the Chanel-owned website chanelreplica.com. These domains were transferred to Chanel as a result of a favorable decision rendered in May 2010 against two counterfeiters. more

The Rising Cost of Digital Theft and Espionage in Germany

The German digital association, Bitkom, recently announced that the cost of IT equipment theft, data breaches, digital and industrial espionage, and sabotage is expected to reach a staggering 206 billion euros ($224 billion) in 2023.  more

How Frequently Do Botnets Reuse IP Addresses?

I wonder how much botnets reuse IP addresses. Do they infect a system and spam, get blocked, discard the IP and move onto the next (new) one? This means that they have a nearly unlimited supply of IP addresses. Or do they infect a system and spam, get blocked, and then let it go dormant only to awaken it some time later? I decided to take a look. more

The World of the Subdomain

A web domain name is the foundational piece of internet property allowing its owner (registrant) to construct and host an associated website. On a domain, the owner is also able to construct whatever subdomains they wish -- a process that is technically achieved via the configuration of records on the authoritative domain name system (DNS) server. more

The Digital Decade – A Look Back

With 2019 coming to a close, we're not just saying goodbye to the past 365 days, we're also saying goodbye to an entire decade. As we bid farewell to the 2010s, we're taking this opportunity to look back and reflect on the digital decade as well as consider what the future might have in store for us all. The past ten years were a whirlwind of change, with new advances in technology exploding onto the market at a faster pace than ever before. more

ESP Compromises and Their Lack of Security

Over at Word to the Wise, Laura Atkins has a post up where she talks about the real problem with ESPs and their lack of internal security procedures which resulted in the breach of many thousands of email addresses (especially Epsilon). However, Atkins isn't only criticizing ESP's lack of security but also the industry's response wherein they have suggested countermeasures that are irrelevant to the problem.  more

Breaking Down Silos Doesn’t Come Easy

"We need to break down silos", is a phrase often heard in national and international meetings around cyber security and enforcing cyber crime. So it is no coincidence that at the upcoming NLIGF (Netherlands Internet Governance Forum), the IGF, but also an EU driven event like ICT 2013 have "Breaking down silos" and "Building bridges" on the agenda. But what does it mean? And how to do so? more

Mind the Step(-function): Are We Really Less Secure Than We Were a Year Ago?

In January 1995, the RFC Editor published RFC 1752: "The Recommendation for the IP Next Generation Protocol"... The Internet is a security officer's nightmare -- so much openness, so easy to capture packet traffic (and/or spoof it!) and send all manner of unwanted traffic. It was built as a research network, hosted by institutes that were 1/ professionally responsible and 2/ interested in working together collegially. So, in the 19 years since the publication of that statement, have we really failed to address the stated goal? more

2012: The Year of Securing Websites?

In a seemingly never-ending row of news on hacks of websites now the news in which 2.3 million individual cases of privacy sensitive data were accessible through a leak in the websites of most public broadcasting stations in the Netherlands. To make the news more cheerful, the accessible data was, if compiled, sufficient to successfully steal a complete identity. What were thoughts that came to my mind after hearing this news on Friday? more

X-Force Report: Corporations Becoming No. 1 Security Threat to Their Own Customers

With the alarming increase in cyberattacks, criminals are literally turning businesses against their own customers in order to steal consumer's personal data, warns the latest annual X-Force Trend and Risk report from IBM. "The security industry puts a lot of effort into the technical evaluation of security threats, examining, sometimes at great length, the potential threat that each issue might present to corporations and consumers. Criminal attackers out for profit, however, have considerations that the security industry does not always take into account, such as monetization cost and overall profitability." more

How to Donate Safely to Charity

Please share this post. After a tragedy, many of us want to donate to funds and charities to show our support for a community. However, scam charities immediately pop up, looking to steal your well intentioned donations. There are at least 30 newly-registered domains over the past 48 hours related to the tragic shootings at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut: Most, if not all are scams and rip-offs. How then, to donate so that your funds make it to the deserving victims? more