Cybersecurity

In Which We Consider the Meaning of ‘Authorized’: GIVAUDAN FRAGRANCES CORPORATION v. Krivda

What does authorized access mean? If an employee with authorized access to a computer system goes into that system, downloads company secrets, and hands that information over to the company's competitor, did that alleged misappropriation of company information constitute unauthorized access? This is no small question. If the access is unauthorized, the employee potentially violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) (the CFAA contains both criminal and civil causes of action). But courts get uncomfortable here. more

Phishing: A Look Into the E-Crime Landscape

At the recent Anti-Phishing Working Group meeting in San Francisco, Rod Rasmussen and I published our latest APWG Global Phishing Survey. Phishing is a distinct kind of e-crime, one that's possible to measure and analyze in depth. Our report is a look at how criminals act and react, and what the implications are for the domain name industry. more

Is the Risk Real With the New gTLD Program? (An Interview with Verisign)

It's late in the new gTLD day and the program looks to be inching ever closer to the finish line. Yet last minute hiccups seem to be a recurring theme for this ambitious project to expand the Internet namespace far beyond the 300 odd active TLDs in existence today (counting generics and country codes). A drive for growth which is already underway, with 63 gTLD contracts now signed as of mid September... But will those users find themselves at greater risk because of this namespace expansion? That's what several parties have been asking in recent months. more

Keep Your Pants On: Governments Want Suspenders for Secure Routing

The difficulty of applying a hierarchically organized PKI to the decentralized world of Internet routing is being fully exposed in a new Internet-draft. The document represents a rational response to an RPKI that closely ties address resources to a handful of Internet governance institutions, nicely illustrates how governments and national security policy are influencing Internet security, and portends substantial costs for network operators and beyond if adopted widely more

ICANN and Your Internet Abuse

In spite of the material we were presented with in Durban something has gone very wrong inside of ICANN Compliance. KnujOn has published a report which demonstrates that ICANN Compliance appears to completely collapse between September 2012 and December 2012. Following December 2012, ICANN seems to stop responding to or processing any complaints. It is around this time certain compliance employees start disappearing. This was not limited to the Sydney office as some would have us believe... more

DNS Amplification Attacks: Out of Sight, Out of Mind? (Part 3)

Previous posts (Part 1 and Part 2) offer background on DNS amplification attacks being observed around the world. These attacks continue to evolve. Early attacks focused on authoritative servers using "ANY" queries for domains that were well known to offer good amplification. Response Rate Limiting (RRL) was developed to respond to these early attacks. RRL, as the name suggests, is deployed on authoritative servers to rate limit responses to target names. more

Neustar Analysis Shows ICANN Study Overstates Risk of Harmful Domain-Name Collision

As we blogged about recently, Neustar is committed to ensuring that the domain name system is secure and stable and has been operating top-level domains (TLDs) for over a decade. Tuesday, Neustar submitted comments to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in response to ICANN's proposal to delay the launch of hundreds of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). ICANN's decision to delay the launch is based on a study it commissioned that measured the potential frequency of domain-name collision. more

On the Time Value of Security Features in DNS

There are some real problems in DNS, related to the general absence of Source Address Validation (SAV) on many networks connected to the Internet. The core of the Internet is aware of destinations but blind to sources. If an attacker on ISP A wants to forge the source IP address of someone at University B when transmitting a packet toward Company C, that packet is likely be delivered complete and intact, including its forged IP source address. Many otherwise sensible people spend a lot of time and airline miles trying to improve this situation... The problems created for the Domain Name System (DNS) by the general lack of SAV are simply hellish. more

More than 85% of Top 500 Most Highly-Trafficked Websites Vulnerable

Over the last 5 years, hacktivists have continued the practice of redirecting well-known domain names to politically motivated websites utilizing tactics such as SQL injection attacks and social engineering schemes to gain access to domain management accounts -- and that, in and of itself, is not surprising. But what IS surprising is the fact that less than 15% of the 500 most highly trafficked domains in the world are utilizing Registry Locking. more

IETF Chair’s Statement On Security, Privacy And Widespread Internet Monitoring

This weekend Jari Arkko, Chair of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and Stephen Farrell, IETF Security Area Director, published a joint statement on the IETF blog titled: "Security and Pervasive Monitoring"... They go on to outline some of the IETF's general principles around security and privacy as well as some of the new developments. They also point out a vigorous (and still ongoing) discussion within the IETF around how to improve the security of the Internet in light of recent disclosures. more