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Last week, my colleagues over at Sunbelt Software discovered a bogus Windows domain being registered earlier this month (where the "w" in "windows" is actually two "v"s). Today, I've been alerted to the fact that are several additional Windows domains which have registered where the "w"s have been also been replaced with "v"s... more
One of my staff members pointed me to an article by Mikko Hyppönen in Foreign Policy. In this article Mikko argues that a new top level domain (TLD) like .bank for some reason would prevent on-line fraud, at least partially. Mikko seems to be arguing that with a dedicated TLD registry for financial institutions and a fee high enough to act as an entry barrier you would have a trustworthy bank domains that would be immune against today's phising attempts... more
Since Skype has an open client-side API, why not use it as a transport to tunnel VPN traffic and blow through firewalls to connect you to a remote system? That's the idea raised by Peeter P. Mõtsküla in his Skype Developer Blog entry: "Idea: skypetunnel". For instance, have a Skype client running on your home machine logged in as one account. Have Skype on your laptop on another account. Initiate a connection between the two of them and wind up with secure, encrypted access through the firewall from wherever you are. Being peer-to-peer, there would be no central servers or infrastructure required (outside the usual Skype p2p cloud.) This would require, of course, a yet-to-be-created "extra" that connected into the Skype client API and was installed on both systems...but that was the point of the article... more
With my post earlier this month about the possibility of SIP botnets [also featured here on CircleID], I've had a number of people asking about more information and wondering about the possible impacts. And while I will write more on botnets in general, as far as the potential impact of "botnets" in general, one need only look over at the current situation in Estonia... Now, perhaps Russia is behind the attack... perhaps not. There are obviously much larger political issues going on between the two states. more
Fergie replied on NANOG to my recent post on the subject of broadband routers insecurity: "I'll even go a step further, and say that if ISPs keep punting on the whole botnet issue, and continue to think of themselves as 'common carriers' in some sense -- and continue to disengage on the issue -- then you may eventually forced to address those issues at some point in the not-so-distant future..." He is right, but I have a comment I felt it was important - to me - to make. Not just on this particular vulnerability, but on the "war"... more
The only Cyber law passed in Pakistan till date is the famous ETO-2002 (Electronic Transaction Ordinance - 2002). It required Ministry of IT&T to set up a Central Repository for all digital certificates and in addition to set up a body to be named as Electronic Certification Accreditation Council (ECAC) to accredit Electronic Certification Authorities to be established in the country... In this regard, government has not only closed its eyes and has blindly trusted the only certificate authority (CA) in the country operated by a private business group, it has also mandated the citizens and business to trust it. Case in point is Central Board of Revenue (CBR) that has told all taxpayers to digitally sign the emails using the certificates issued by this private party... more
In this post I'd like to discuss the threat widely circulated insecure broadband routers pose today. We have touched on it before. Today, yet another public report of a vulnerable DSL modem type was posted to bugtraq, this time about a potential WIRELESS flaw with broadband routers being insecure at Deutsche Telekom. I haven't verified this one myself but it refers to "Deutsche Telekom Speedport w700v broadband router"... more
A story... ZZZ Telemarketing (not a real name) is locked in a heated fight with their bitter rival, YYY Telemarketing (also not a real name), to win a very large lead generation contract with Customer X. Customer X has decided to run a test pitting the two companies against each other for a week to see who can generate the most leads. The ZZZ CEO has said to his staff that it is "do or die" for the company. If they fail to win the contract, they will have to shut down -- they need to do "whatever it takes" to win over YYY. A ZZZ staffer discovers that part of why YYY has consistently underbid them is because they are using SIP trunks to reduce their PSTN connection costs. But the staffer also discovers that YYY is using very cheap voice service providers who run over the public Internet with no security... more
From "Last Call for Whois Comments", a recent opinion piece by eWeek's Security Center Editor Larry Seltzer: "It's not a good sign when the criminals and the lawyers are on the same side of an issue; there may be no good solution to the problems of Whois service rules. Who would have imagined that so much business and so much abuse would center around Internet domain names? Certainly not the designers of the system, including those of the Whois service, which reports on ownership and some other data on domain names... more
The DoC seems to have finally realized it went too far by using ICANN to serve the interests of some conservative groups, as mentioned in a previous post. The new story is now that the ICANN board did not reject the .XXX application as such, but only the agreement negotiated between ICM Registry and the ICANN staff at that time. How subtle these things are... more
In a recent article at TechWeb, the following observations were made: "Internet addresses that appeal to identity thieves eager to rip off consumers are being posted by major domain resellers... Finnish-based F-Secure has identified more than 30 registered domain names for resale that would be of interest only to the legitimate holder of the trademark or to phishers..." more
Though the "Techies" have been heavily involved in many initiatives like Internet Governance, Internationalized (Multi-lingual) Domain Names, Identity Management, Information Security, Access Rights Management etc., they still have to correctly apply the technologies at hand to be able to replicate many accepted norms that have matured in the physical world such as federated identities, non-repudiation, notarizing, witnessing, co-signing etc. more
Last month, there was an exchange of letters between a gTLD administration and ICANN about DNSSEC deployment. This gTLD administration is PIR or Public Interest Registry, the gTLD administration for the .org TLD. Interestingly, PIR is a non-profit organization that makes significant contributions to ISOC (Internet Society) initiatives: thus, both ICANN and PIR are organizations dedicated to the well-being of the Internet. more
The United States' reluctance to invest in IPv6 makes it more likely that China will be in a position to gain the first-mover advantage it seeks. ...Liu Dong, president of the Beijing Internet Institute sums it up succinctly: "We think we can develop the killer applications," he says. China plans to show the rest of the world just how advanced its Internet is at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. CNGI will control the facilities -- everything from security cameras to the lighting and thermostats -- at the Olympic venues, and events will be broadcast live over the Internet. Even the taxis in Beijing's snarled traffic will connect to CNGI via IPv6 sensors so that dispatchers will be able to direct their drivers away from congestion. more
The UK today is one of the main attack targets by phishing organized crime groups, globally. Phishing damages will amount to about two billions USD in 2006 worldwide -- not counting risk management measures such as preventative measures, counter-measures, incident response and PR damages. In most cases, phishing is caused by the fault of the users, either by entering the wrong web page, not keeping their computers secure or falling for cheap scams. Often this is due to lack of awareness or ability in the realm of Internet use rather than incompetence by the users... more
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