Cybercrime

NCA Launches Campaign to Curb DDoS-for-Hire Website Use, Warns of Legal Risks

The United Kingdom's National Crime Agency (NCA) has been running a series of campaigns focused on reducing the use of DDoS-for-hire websites. These websites offer people the opportunity to purchase powerful tools to launch cyber-attacks, which can be used to knock websites or users offline. more

US Copyright Office Expands Security Researchers’ Ability to Hack Without Going to Jail

The Librarian of Congress and US Copyright Office has updated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act extending some essential exemptions ensuring that computer security researchers won't be treated like nefarious criminals for their contributions to society. more

M3AAWG, London Action Plan Release Best Practices to Address Online and Mobile Threats

A cooperative international report was released last week outlining Internet and mobile best practices aimed at curtailing malware, phishing, spyware, bots and other Internet threats. It also provides extensive review of current and emerging threats. "Best Practices to Address Online and Mobile Threats" is a comprehensive assessment of Internet security as it stands today... more

Cyber and Telecommunications Defence One of the Fastest Growing Industries in the World

In the past five years, cyber and telecommunications defence has left its niche market to become one of the fastest growing industries in the world. In 2011, governments, industry and ordinary computer users spent roughly £65 billion shoring up their computer networks, a figure that is predicted to double within five years. more

ACMA: 30,000 PC’s Infected in Australia Per Day

Anti-spam and malware enforcement agency ACMA reports on this (shocking high?) figure. Keep this up and ca. 50% of the Australian population is infected within a year. I remember a presentation from Sweden only a few years ago, that there were only a little over a thousand infected pc's in Sweden. (Reactions were: that can't be correct. Too low) Do you know what the numbers are for your country and maybe more importantly what your government and/or Industry is/are doing about it? more

Carpet Bombing in Cyber Space - Say Again?

I was pointed to an article in the Armed Forces Journal where Col Charles W. Williamson III argues that the US Air Force needs to develop a BOTnet army as part of the US military capability for retaliatory strikes. The article brings up some interesting issues, the one that I believe carries the most weight is the argument that we (well, people living on the Internet) are seeing an arms race. It is true that more and more nations are looking into or developing various forms of offensive weapons systems for the use on the Internet... more

Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies Honors Leading Companies at ICANN

Last week the Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies (ASOP Global; www.BuySafeRx.pharmacy) presented its inaugural Internet Pharmacy Safety E-Commerce Leadership Award to two organizations during the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Joint Meeting of the Registries and Registrars Stakeholder Groups at ICANN58 in Copenhagen, Denmark, it was announced on Tuesday. more

Correlation Between Country Governance Regimes & Reputation of Their Internet Address Allocations

We recently analyzed the reputation of a country's Internet (IPv4) addresses by examining the number of blacklisted IPv4 addresses that geolocate to a given country. We compared this indicator with two qualitative measures of each country's governance. We hypothesized that countries with more transparent, democratic governmental institutions would harbor a smaller fraction of misbehaving (blacklisted) hosts. The available data confirms this hypothesis. A similar correlation exists between perceived corruption and fraction of blacklisted IP addresses. more

DK Hostmaster Wins Award for Transparency and Trust Online

The nonprofit Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies (ASOP Global) presented its annual Internet Pharmacy Safety E-Commerce Leadership Award to .DK Hostmaster at the 2018 ICANN63 today in Barcelona, Spain. The domain name administrator for Denmark, DK Hostmaster, was selected for the award based on their commitment to ensuring citizen safety by maintaining transparent WHOIS data, proactively enforcing identity accuracy policies to increase consumer trust and safety online. more

Coronavirus Online Threats Going Viral, Part 5: Social Media

For our final blog in this series, looking at the online risks associated with COVID-19, we focus on social media. The popularity of social media channels means that they are extremely susceptible to exploitation by cybercriminals and other infringers, particularly during the coronavirus crisis. In an earlier post in this series, we discussed the use of social media for the distribution of phishing-related content, but CSC has also noted marked activity relating to the creation of fake accounts. more

It’s Up to Each of Us: Why I WannaCry for Collaboration

WannaCry, or WannaCrypt, is one of the many names of the piece of ransomware that impacted the Internet last week, and will likely continue to make the rounds this week. There are a number of takeaways and lessons to learn from the far-reaching attack that we witnessed. Let me tie those to voluntary cooperation and collaboration which together represent the foundation for the Internet's development. more

US-CERT Says They Are Aware of DNS Exploit Code, Emphasizes Urgent Patching

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has acknowledged that they are aware of the publicly available exploit code for a cache poisoning vulnerability in common DNS implementations. US-CERT is re-emphasizing the urgency of patching vulnerable DNS systems. more

Good Samaritans with Network Visibility

In a big open office 30 feet from me, a team of US Veterans speak intently on the phone to businesses large and small, issuing urgent warnings of specific cyber security threats. They call to get stubborn, confused people to take down hidden ransomware distribution sites. They call with bad news that a specific computer at the business has malware that steals login credentials. 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

New Research Finds Over 80% of Domain Names Used by Phishers Are Legitimate Domains

New research from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) has found that up to 81% of domain names used for phishing are legitimate domains that have been hacked. More specifically, out of the 30,454 phishing domains under observation, only 5,591 domain names (18.5%) were registered by phishers according to APWG. The remaining small percentage of the domains used in phishing belonged to subdomain resellers such as ISPs and other web-based services. more