Cybersecurity

FBI Agent Thomas X. Grasso Receives First J.D. Falk Award for Establishing DNS Changer Working Group

Convincing competitors, disparate business entities and researchers to collaborate - many donating their services and resources - to protect millions of end-users worldwide is no small feat. Yet FBI Supervisory Special Agent Thomas X. Grasso did just that by quietly working behind the scenes to create the DNS Changer Working Group that saved an inestimable number of end-users from losing access to the Web over the last two years. more

Close to 200K Phishing Domains Discovered in a 5-Month Span, 66% Targetted Consumers, Akamai Reports

Between December 2, 2018 and May 4, 2019, 197,524 phishing domains were discovered, 66% of which directly targeted consumers according to the latest State of the Internet report by Akamai. more

Is Secured Routing a Market Failure?

The Internet represents a threshold moment for the communications realm in many ways. It altered the immediate end client of the network service from humans to computers. It changed the communications model from synchronized end-to-end service to asynchronous and from virtual circuits to packet switching. At the same time, there were a set of sweeping changes in the public communications framework... more

Are We Ready to Defend Our Freedom? Book Review: “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”

It is not often that you read a book where afterward nothing seems the same again. Like Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Shoshana Zuboff's book: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power,, puts what we do in these times into a context and gives a focus to ongoing issues of privacy and governance with regard to the Domain Name System. This is even more astonishing as the book does not even mention the DNS, the Internet ecosystem or even Internet Governance directly. more

Routing Without Rumor: Securing the Internet’s Routing System

The Domain Name System has provided the fundamental service of mapping internet names to addresses from almost the earliest days of the internet’s history. Billions of internet-connected devices use DNS continuously to look up Internet Protocol addresses of the named resources they want to connect to - for instance, a website such as blog.verisign.com. Once a device has the resource’s address, it can then communicate with the resource using the internet’s routing system. more

Recommendations for Adding Cybersecurity Intelligence to the Smart Grid

Over the last few years, there has been an increased effort to modernize the U.S. electric grid. Building a "Smart Grid" has been central in the effort to help utilities better manage their resources, minimize power outages and reduce energy consumption. However, adding more electronic devices and sensors to the grid's network has made it a prime target of cyberattacks, like Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which if successful, could cause wide-spread disruption of services affecting many other sectors. more

Bluetooth-Based Attack Vector Dubbed “BlueBorne” Exposes Almost Every Connected Device

Security firm, Armis Labs, has revealed a new attack vector that can target major mobile, desktop, and IoT operating systems, including Android, iOS, Windows, and Linux, and the devices using them.

 more

The World of the Subdomain

A web domain name is the foundational piece of internet property allowing its owner (registrant) to construct and host an associated website. On a domain, the owner is also able to construct whatever subdomains they wish -- a process that is technically achieved via the configuration of records on the authoritative domain name system (DNS) server. more

A Closer Look at the Flame/Flamer/sKyWIper Malware

The world is abuzz this week with some flaming malware - well "Flame" is the family name if you want to be precise. The malware package itself is considerably larger than what you'll typically bump into on average, but the interest it is garnering with the media and antivirus vendors has more to do with the kinds of victims that have sprung up - victims mostly in the Middle East, including Iran - and a couple of vendors claiming the malware as being related to Stuxnet and Duku. more

Lessons Behind the Microsoft 3322.org Takedown

The Microsoft action against 3322.org, a Chinese company, started with the news that computers were infected during the production phase. Stepping away from the controversy surrounding the approach, there are important lessons that cyber security officials and upper management, deciding on the level of and budget for cyber security in organisations should learn and take into account. I'm writing this contribution from a premise: China uses the fact that most IT devices are built in China to its advantage. Allow me to start with an account from personal memory to set the stage. more

The ITRs and Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is a top-of-mind issue with calls for individual vigilance, national legislation, and international treaties to address gaps that are exploited causing significant harm and financial loss on a daily basis. The vast majority of these calls are well-intentioned though even among the best-intentioned, some are poorly directed. Such is the case with all of the proposals that would introduce security into the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). more

‘Notorious Hosting Providers’: An Overview of the Highest-Threat Hosts From IP-address Blacklist Analysis

One major element of many brand-protection programmes is the use of an algorithm to sort the findings identified through monitoring, according to their relevance or level of potential threat. This prioritisation process offers a number of benefits, including the identification of priority targets for further analysis, content tracking, or enforcement. more

5G Real Security Threats Lost in Trump’s Twitter Diplomacy

A new report on 5G and geopolitics by Oxford Information Labs details the complex landscape of 5G security. Importantly, it draws out how a variety of proven technical concerns around the quality of Huawei security practices and equipment are drowned out by the US' Twitter diplomacy. Critical international dialogue on genuine cybersecurity concerns relating to 5G and Huawei are being lost in the noise of the US-China trade war. more

.trust Technical Policy Launch

Whenever I examine the technical elements of the various Internet security certifications and standards that organisations are clamouring to achieve compliance against, I can't help but feel that in too many cases those businesses are prioritising the wrong things and wasting valuable resources. They may as well be following a WWI field guide on how to keep cavalry horses nourished and bayonets polished in a world of stealth aircraft and dirty bombs. more

Going Dark: How the Increasingly Dark Network Is Creating Some Pretty Ugly Choices for Site Security Administrators

I'd like to reflect on a presentation by Dr. Paul Vixie at the October 2022 meeting of the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) on the topic of the shift to pervasive encryption of application transactions on the Internet today. There is a view out there that any useful public communications medium needs to safeguard the privacy and integrity of the communications that it carries.  more