Cybersecurity

Wikileaks DDoS of Spamhaus: Political Activism at Its Dumbest

A week ago, Paul Vixie wrote a thoughtful piece on the morality of DDos, for both sides of the equation of the Wikileaks issues. In it he summarizes things nicely: "Denial of service is not merely a peaceful protest meant to garner attention for a cause. Denial of service is forcible and it is injurious. It is not like any form of civil disobedience, but rather it is criminal behaviour more like looting." Well said, Paul... more

Industry Makes Rapid Progress on DNSSEC

DNSSEC is being rolled out quickly in top-level domain registries around the world, but there's still some way to go to encourage other Internet stakeholders to adopt the new security technology. That was one of the key takeaways from a day-long, comprehensive session on Domain Name System Security Extensions implementation worldwide, held during ICANN's public meeting in Cartagena, Colombia, last week. more

Institutionalizing Consumer Trust and Public Interest at ICANN

For an organization where people argue for hours over arcane minutiae, it's remarkable that virtually everyone agrees that ICANN should serve the "global public interest" and build "consumer trust" in the Internet. Although it's only three pages long, ICANN's Affirmation of Commitments (AoC) cites "public interest" five times and "consumer trust" eight times. So at the ICANN meeting today in Cartagena, Colombia, a group of participants explored ways to "institutionalize" these concepts within the organization. more

eco: 100K PCs Cleaned Through Anti-Botnet Center

eco, the German ISP association, mentions on its website today that the 100,000^th PC was cleaned from infection through its PC cleaning program. Since 15 September, German account holders could visit the website to download tools to clean up computers from digital infections. Botfrei ("botfree", translation WdN) is a cooperation between eco and the German government. First figures seem to prove that this is a successful public-private partnership, worth looking into for other countries as a best practice. more

Cyber Crime: It’s All About Data (Part 2)

In this part I want to focus on the gathering of cyber crime data. Are there best practices in the world on how cyber crime data is reported to law enforcement and aggregated to show the impact of said crime? Previously the discussion focused on the fact that cyber crime = crime and on a basic cyber (crime) training for every police officer. From the reactions this received, it is clear that some people see this as a possible solution. more

WikiLeaks and Stuxnet - Smart Grid Wakeup Calls

The past couple of weeks have been pretty seminal for anyone concerned about the state of Internet security and the bigger picture as to how much we could - do - and should - trust the Web. These two strange words - WikiLeaks and Stuxnet - have suddenly entered our lexicon and there is a lot to be concerned about in the world of smart grid. more

Remembering the Good Times

The most effective early email-borne viruses didn't need botnets. They didn't change your computer settings, or steal your login credentials. And they somehow convinced regular users to help them spread. The first warnings about the Good Times virus began to appear in November of 1994, and by December the warnings were seen all over as people did what the warning said, and forwarded it to all their friends. There was another outbreak the following March... more

The Threat from Within - US v. Fowler, SDFL 2010

The security vendor-phobe at the head of the conference bangs on the podium with his shoe declaring that "The greatest threat comes from within! (buy our product for your network's salvation)." Fear as a marketing strategy can never be underestimated. Particular when the fear is of the misunderstood. Media helps stoke the flames of fear-marketing with stories of fired or disgruntled IT staff who reportedly effectuate their revenge on former employers by bricking systems. 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

DNS: The Basis for Billions

In the midst of "Cyber Monday", the day traditionally seen as one of the year's busiest days for online shopping, it is only appropriate to examine the importance DNS plays for online economies. With DNS being at the heart of Internet connectivity it is easy to understand why DNS is important to the growing health of economies whose online health in dollars and euros rest in the billions. more