Cybersecurity

CNN Spam Outbreak Quickly Morphing Into a New Breed

This past week we have been seeing some heavy CNN spam -- that is, spam in the form of breaking news stories from CNN.com... These all look like legitimate news stories, and indeed, they probably are taken straight from an actual CNN news bulletin (I don't subscribe so I wouldn't know). Indeed, the unsubscribe information and Terms of Use actually link to actual CNN unsubscribe pages. However, if you mouse-over all of the news links, they go to a spam web page wherein the payload is either a spam advertisement or you click on another link to download a file and flip your computer into a botnet. more

Is Anti-Virus Dead?

Each SANSFIRE, the Handlers who can make it to DC get together for a panel discussion on the state of information security. Besides discussion of the hot DNS issue, between most of us there is a large consensus into some of the biggest problems that we face. Two come to mind, the fact that "users will click anything" and that "anti-virus is no longer sufficient". These are actually both related in my mind... more

Study Finds 75% of Malicious Websites from Legitimate, Trusted Sources

New report released today finds 75 percent of malicious websites are from legitimate, trusted sources with "Good" reputation scores. According to the report, 60 percent of the top 100 most popular websites either hosted malicious content or contained a masked redirect to lure unsuspecting victims from legitimate sites to malicious sites. more

CNN.Com, Politically Motivated DDoS, and Asymmetric Warfare

Once again I find myself thinking about the nature of the asymmetric warfare threat posed by politically motivated DDoS (Estonia in 07, Korea in 02, and now China vs. CNN in 08). I keep thinking about it in terms of asymmetric warfare, a class of warfare where one side is a traditional, centrally managed military with superior uniformed numbers, weaponry, and skill. On the other we have smaller numbers, usually untrained fighters with meager weapons, and usually a smaller force. Historical examples include the North Vietnamese in the 20th century and even the American Revolution in the 18th century. Clearly this can be an effective strategy for a band of irregulars... more

Domain Name Price Jump: Moore’s Law or Parkinson’s Laws?

As expected, VeriSign raised the price of domain names, effective in October. New prices wholesale prices (to the registrar) for .com domain names are going from $6.42 to $6.86, while .net will increase from $3.85 to $4.23. This news came a few days ago in a letter to registrars. (Hint to consumers: renew your domains now.) ...So, basically, many if not most of VeriSign's registry costs have been falling at an exponential rate. Hard disk storage, computing performance, bandwidth, RAM storage... yet the cost is going up. How is this justified? more

Pakistan Hijacks YouTube: A Closer Look

A few hours ago, Pakistan Telecom (AS 17557) began advertising a small part of YouTube's assigned network. This story is almost as old as BGP. Old hands will recognize this as, fundamentally, the same problem as the infamous AS 7007 from 1997, a more recent ConEd mistake of early 2006 and even TTNet's Christmas Eve gift 2005. Just before 18:48 UTC, Pakistan Telecom, in response to government order to block access to YouTube, started advertising a route for 208.65.153.0/24 to its provider... more

As IPv6 Deploys, Will We Look Back on NAT as the Ugly Step Sister or Unsung Hero?

The debates are raging over whether or not we should migrate to IPv6. The strongest argument is the enormous address space that will allow for everyone and everything to have a unique public address, many addresses actually. It is often said that the shortage of public IPv4 addresses has limited our capabilities because it led to the pervasive use of private addressing, Network Address Translation (NAT) and Port Address Translation (PAT). Though these technologies remain critical, they are often regarded as stop-gap measures, and they sometimes create problems. In some circles, NAT has acquired a very bad name. But is that a fair perspective of the technology? Let's review the positives and negatives. more

Homeland Security Department Was Warned About DNSSEC Key Ownership and Trust Issues

The Internet Governance Project has unearthed a consultancy report to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that makes it clear that the issue of root signing and DNSSEC key management has been recognized as a political issue within the US government for long time. more

On the Hunt for “Critical Internet Resources”

I'm writing this column in November, and that means that it is time for the traveling circus known as the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to come down to earth, unpack its tents and sell tickets for its annual song and dance routine. The script for this year's show has been changed, and after being excluded from the main arena last year at the Athens gig, the headline act of "Critical Internet Resources" is taking a starring role this year in Rio. Some folk are even saying that it is the single most contentious issue to be scheduled at this year's IGF show. So what are "Critical Internet Resources" anyway? If folks are going to spend all this time, energy and carbon emissions traveling to Rio to talk on this topic, then wouldn't it be helpful to understand what it means in the first place? There are probably a number of ways to answer this question, so in this heavily opinionated column I'd like to look at the range of possible answers to this question. more

NANOGGING

There are many network operator group meetings being held these days. Even in the backwater of the South Pacific where I live there is now AUSNOG, and NZNOG is just next door in New Zealand. We now have MENOG in the Middle East and AFNOG in Africa. The original NOG was the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG), and they have the T-Shirts to prove it! NANOG meets three times a year, and I attended NANOG 41 in October 2007. NANOG meetings cover a broad variety of topics, from operational tools, measurement, and peering practices through to a commentary on the state of the Internet industry. Here are my impressions of the meeting. more

Ameritrade Leaks User Information Yet Again, Blames Hacker X

OK, you know things are getting bad when Ameritrade leaks its customer information yet again, and I don't even bother to report it because it's not news anymore. Well, recent updates to the story have prompted me to correct that omission. Yes, it happened again. Roughly a month ago, correspondents began to receive pump-n-dump spam to tagged email addresses which they had given only to Ameritrade... This now marks the third major confirmed leak of customer information from Ameritrade. In addition, the Inquirer reported the loss of 200,000 Ameritrade client files in February 2005. One correspondent informs me that this has happened to him on four or five previous occasions. more

The Case Against DNSSEC

I was talking to my good friend Verner Entwhistle the other day when he suddenly turned to me and said "I don't think we need DNSSEC". Sharp intake of breath. Transpired after a long and involved discussion his case boiled down to four points: 1. SSL provides known and trusted security, DNSSEC is superfluous, 2. DNSSEC is complex and potentially prone to errors, 3. DNSSEC makes DoS attacks worse, 4. DNSSEC does not solve the last mile problem. Let's take them one at a time... more

Defending Networks Against DNS Rebinding Attacks

DNS rebinding attacks are real and can be carried out in the real world. They can penetrate through browsers, Java, Flash, Adobe and can have serious implications for Web 2.0-type applications that pack more code and action onto the client. Such an attack can convert browsers into open network proxies and get around firewalls to access internal documents and services. It requires less than $100 to temporarily hijack 100,000 IP addresses for sending spam and defrauding pay-per-click advertisers. Everyone is at risk and relying on network firewalls is simply not enough. In a paper released by Stanford Security Lab, "Protecting Browsers from DNS Rebinding Attacks," authors Collin Jackson, Adam Barth, Andrew Bortz, Weidong Shao, and Dan Boneh provide ample detail about the nature of this attack as well as strong defenses that can be put in place in order to help protect modern browsers. more

Transition to IPv6 Address

Last month's column looked at the exhaustion of the IPv4 unallocated address pool and the state of preparedness in the Internet to grapple with this issue... There has been a considerable volume of discussion in various IPv6 and address policy forums across the world about how we should respond to this situation in terms of development of address distribution policies. Is it possible to devise address management policies that might both lessen some of the more harmful potential impacts of this forthcoming hiatus in IPv4 address supply, and also provide some impetus to industry to move in the originally intended direction to transition into an IPv6 network? more

Spam: You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby

According to the majority of the testimony at this month's "Spam Summit," held by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the state of the fight against spam is pretty much the same as it has been for the last several years. The two days of presentations can largely be boiled down to the following bullets: Spam volumes continue to increase, being driven by the growth of "botnets"... Oh, and the spam wars are a lot less exciting than they used to be. Case in point: unlike last time, there were no fist-fights at this year's shindig. more