Cybersecurity

A Three-Step Process to Chase Compulsive Domain Brand Squatters

Domain brand squatting can be defined as the unauthorized or dishonest use of a brand or company identifiers in domain names. It is often linked to the use of look-alike domains in bad faith, and we see it all the time. The threat actors behind these domains are called different names, though a prevalent one would be “typosquatters.” The Hot on the Trail of Compulsive Brand Squatters webinar showcased how these people are infiltrating the Internet. The first page of PhishTank’s valid phish search alone as of this writing tells us that domain brand squatting is a real and present danger. more

The Sportsmanship of Cyber-warfare

As a bit of a history buff I can't avoid a slight tingling of déjà vu every time I read some new story commenting upon the ethics, morality and legality of cyber-warfare/cyber-espionage/cyberwar/cyber-attack/cyber-whatever. All this rhetoric about Stuxnet, Flame, and other nation-state cyber-attack tools, combined with the parade of newly acknowledged cyber-warfare capabilities and units within the armed services of countries around the globe, brings to the fore so many parallels... Call me a cynic if you will, but when the parallels in history are so evident, we'd be crazy to ignore them. more

What Mobile Malware Looks Like

Last month at the Virus Bulletin Conference in Barcelona, I took in one of the sessions on mobile malware. This type of malware is foreign to me because I mostly stay in the email space at work (and even then, I am focusing more on day-to-day issues of running a large mail provider than I am on spam and abuse). What's mobile malware like? What are the threats? How do users get infected? more

A Dangerous Buzz, and Opt-In Isn’t Just for Email

Google is great at generating buzz, and they've done it again with their new social vitality tool, appropriately named Google Buzz. Buzz takes all of your Gmail contacts (and presumably other connections from elsewhere within the Googleplex), and makes them all your "friends" by default; it then shares your activity from Google Reader, YouTube, and other tools with all of them, and vice versa... more

CircleID Launches the First in a Series of Community Dialogues on COVID-19 and the Internet

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the rapid migration of the world's workforce and consumer services to virtual spaces, has amplified the Internet governance and policy issues including infrastructure, access, exponential instances of fraud and abuse, global cooperation and data privacy, to name but a few. The need for practical, scalable and efficient solutions has risen dramatically. more

Anonymous, LulzSec, and the Option of Internet Security

As hacking groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec continue to make headlines, many of us in the Information Security field can only sit back and shake our heads. The large number of successful system breaches, web site defacements, and the publication of confidential data is not at all surprising, and for the most part was only a matter of time. more

Cyber Security Word Salad

Two months ago, the Trump White House published its National Cyber Strategy. It was followed a few days ago with the release of its draft NSTAC Cybersecurity "moonshot." The Strategy document was basically a highly nationalistic America-First exhortation that ironically bore a resemblance to China's more global two-year-old National Cybersecurity Strategy. more

Domain Name Resale Market a Haven for Phishers?

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

IP Addresses and Privacy Sensitive Data - A Level Playing Field Needed

Reading Peter Olthoorn's book on Google (a link is found here), I ran into a passage on IP addresses. Where Google states that it does not see an IP address as privacy sensitive. An IP address could be used by more than one person, it claims. The Article 29 Working Party, the EU privacy commissioners, states that it is privacy sensitive as a unique identifier of a private person. It got me wondering whether it is this simple. Here is a blog post meant to give some food for thought and debate. I invite you to think about the question 'how private is an IP address'? more

Taking a Closer Look at the Recent DDoS Attacks and What it Means for the DNS

The recent attacks on the DNS infrastructure operated by Dyn in October 2016 have generated a lot of comment in recent days. Indeed, it's not often that the DNS itself has been prominent in the mainstream of news commentary, and in some ways, this DNS DDOS prominence is for all the wrong reasons! I'd like to speculate a bit on what this attack means for the DNS and what we could do to mitigate the recurrence of such attacks. more

Nothing to See Here

Three parallel events in US communications policy today, all reported on widely - but with a common thread. ... Law enforcement and national security officials want to make sure that they have the same ability to execute warrants and surveillance orders online that they had in the switched-telephone-circuit age -- which will mean substantial government design mandates for new software, hardware, and communications facilities. more

How to Move Cybersecurity Forward in a More Positive Way

In 2013 I wrote a blog Telecoms as a spying tool, in which I mentioned that those who use the internet to spy indiscriminately will have to face the reality that such activities will only start a cat-and-mouse game -- the technology will always be able to stay one step ahead of those who are using the internet for criminal purposes. Since that time some very significant developments have taken place that have confirmed our prediction. more

Deploying DNSSEC: Lessons from Domain Registrar Implementation

As a registrar at the front end of the DNSSEC deployment effort, our technical team has made a sustained investment in DNSSEC deployment so that our customers don't get overwhelmed by this wave of changes to the core infrastructure of the Domain Name System. Along the way, we've learnt a lot about how to implement DNSSEC which might hold useful lessons for other organizations that plan to deploy DNSSEC in their networks. more

The Digital Decade – A Look Back

With 2019 coming to a close, we're not just saying goodbye to the past 365 days, we're also saying goodbye to an entire decade. As we bid farewell to the 2010s, we're taking this opportunity to look back and reflect on the digital decade as well as consider what the future might have in store for us all. The past ten years were a whirlwind of change, with new advances in technology exploding onto the market at a faster pace than ever before. more

Debilitating Cyber Attack: Not If, But When?

We all know how easy it can be to ignore or underestimate the possibly, or even likelihood, of a terrorist attack; just remember what happened on 9-11. That seems to be just what the U.S. is doing when it comes to a possible Cyber-Attack, no not in other countries, but right here at home where targets like private sector companies, who provide vital economic and emergency services to our population using broadband infrastructure, and are woefully under-secured for such attacks. more