Cybersecurity

LAC, the DNS, and the Importance of Comunidad

The 1st Latin American & Caribbean DNS Forum was held on 15 November 2013, before the start of the ICANN Buenos Aires meeting. Coordinated by many of the region's leading technological development and capacity building organizations, the day long event explored the opportunities and challenges for Latin America brought on by changes in the Internet landscape, including the introduction of new gTLDs such as .LAT, .NGO and others. more

What Your ISP (Probably) Knows About You

Earlier this week, I came across a working paper from Professor Peter Swire - a highly respected attorney, professor, and policy expert. Swire's paper, entitled "Online Privacy and ISPs", argues that ISPs have limited capability to monitor users' online activity. The paper argues that ISPs have limited visibility into users' online activity for three reasons: (1) users are increasingly using many devices and connections, so any single ISP is the conduit of only a fraction of a typical user's activity; (2) end-to-end encryption is becoming more pervasive, which limits ISPs' ability to glean information about user activity; and (3) users are increasingly shifting to VPNs to send traffic. more

Death of the PKI Dragons?

The recent attack on the Comodo Certification Authority has not only shown how vulnerable the current public key infrastructure is, but also that the protocols (e.g., OSCP) used to mitigate these vulnerabilities once exploited, are not in use, not implemented correctly or not even implemented at all. Is this the beginning of the death of the PKI dragons and what alternatives do we have? more

Cybercrime and “Remote Search”

According to news reports, part of the EU's cybercrime strategy is "remote search" of suspects' computers. I'm not 100% certain what that means, but likely guesses are alarming. The most obvious interpretation is also the most alarming: that some police officer will have the right and the ability to peruse people's computers from his or her desktop. How, precisely, is this to be done? Will Microsoft and Apple – and Ubuntu and Red Hat and all the BSDs and everyone else who ships systems – have to build back doors into all operating systems? more

Protecting an Enterprise from Cyber Catastrophe

We are suffering an epidemic of cyberattacks while in a viral pandemic. This post is for those who have responsibility for assuring that the IT-based services offered by their enterprise can quickly recover in the case of successful cyber-attack or other disaster. University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMMC) is an excellent hospital. I owe my life to treatment there and am grateful for both the skill and the kindness of UVMMC staff. They have been devastated by a cyber-attack. more

NIS2 Article 28 Guidance: A Positive Step Toward Reducing DNS Abuse Across Europe

The European Union (EU) has set a high bar by tackling domain name system (DNS) abuse head on via government regulation and seems to have successfully resisted attempts to water down DNS stewardship obligations. Recent guidance from a key European Commission cooperation group (the NIS Cooperation Group) handling sections of the Network and Information Security Directive (NIS2) intends for a robust implementation of Article 28, which will go a long way toward helping to mitigate some of the longstanding problems that persist in the DNS. 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

What Does Trump’s Cuba Policy Memorandum Say About the Internet?

I recently reviewed Trump's Cuban policy speech and its implications for the Internet. The speech was accompanied by a national security memorandum on strengthening US-Cuba policy, which was sent to the Vice President, Cabinet Secretaries, and heads of various departments. The first thing that struck me about the memorandum was that it was a "national security" memorandum. Does Trump think Cuba poses a threat to our national security? 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 Does the Future Hold for the Internet?

This is the fundamental question that the Internet Society is posing through the report just launched today, our 2017 Global Internet Report: Paths to Our Digital Future. The report is a window into the diverse views and perspectives of a global community that cares deeply about how the Internet will evolve and impact humanity over the next 5-7 years. We couldn't know what we would find when we embarked on the journey to map what stakeholders believe could shape the future of the Internet... more

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

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

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

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

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