Cybersecurity

The Distribution of Botnets Since Rustock Went Down

I pulled together some statistics on my collection of botnet statistics for the period of time between Rustock being shut down and Wednesday, April 6. I wanted to see the distribution of botnets per country - now that Rustock is down, which country has the most botnet infections (as measured by unique IP addresses that send us spam)? more

Digital Geneva Convention: Multilateral Treaty, Multistakeholder Implementation

Microsoft's call for a Digital Geneva Convention, outlined in Smith's blog post, has attracted the attention of the digital policy community. Only two years ago, it would have been unthinkable for an Internet company to invite governments to adopt a digital convention. Microsoft has crossed this Rubicon in global digital politics by proposing a Digital Geneva Convention which should 'commit governments to avoiding cyber-attacks that target the private sector or critical infrastructure or the use of hacking to steal intellectual property'. more

Record Number of Malware Variants Detected in Q4 of 2014, Retail/Service Most Targeted

During the 4th quarter of 2014, a record number of malware variants were detected -- an average of 255,000 new threats each day, according a recent report by Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG). The group further reports that the number of unique phishing reports submitted to APWG during Q4 was 197,252 -- an increase of 18 percent from the 163,333 received in Q3 of 2014. more

More Provocative Reasons for a Mandatory National Breach Disclosure

I read, with some small amount of discomfort, an article by Bill Brenner on CSO Online, wherein he interviewed several other CSOs and other "Security Execs" on their opinions on the firing of Pennsylvania CISO Robert Maley. For those who haven't heard about this, Mr. Maley was fired for talking about a security incident during the recent RSA conference without approval from his bosses. more

UDRP and the ACPA Differences, Advantages and Their Inconveniences

The ACPA and the UDRP provide two separate and distinct methods for resolving domain name disputes. Both alternatives have many critics and proponents, but the true value of each will ultimately be determined by how well each combats cyber-squatting. Separately, the UDRP and the ACPA will probably work well to defuse most of the cyber-squatting that is currently invading the Internet. If combined together the UDRP and the ACPA can be a cost saving and effective way to prevent cybersquatting... more

A Seattle Woman Charged With Capital One Data Theft Affecting 106 Million People

Major US bank Capital One Financial Corporation confirmed Monday evening that unauthorized access was made by an outside individual who obtained "certain types of personal information" on credit card products and Capital One credit card customers. more

More Privacy for Domain Registrants – Heightened Risk for Internet Users

A recent exchange on CircleID highlighted a critical need for data to inform the debate on the impact of ICANN's post-GDPR WHOIS policy that resulted in the redaction of domain name registrant contact data. A bit of background: in my original post, I made the point that domain name abuse had increased post-GDPR. A reader who works with a registrar (according to his bio) commented: "Can you back up that statement with data? Our abuse desk has actually seen a reduction in abuse complaints." more

Worming Our Way Out of Trouble

The Conficker worm will be active again on April 1st, according to an analysis of its most recent variant, Conficker.C, by the net security firm CA. This malicious piece of software, also known as Downup, Downadup and Kido, spreads among computers running most variants of the Windows operating system and turns them into nodes on a multi-million member ‘botnet’ of zombie computers that can be controlled remotely by the worm’s as yet unidentified authors. more

Navigating the “Pentest” World

The demand for penetration testing and security assessment services worldwide has been growing year-on-year. Driven largely by Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) concerns, plus an evolving pressure to be observed taking information security and customer privacy seriously, most CIO/CSO/CISO's can expect to conduct regular "pentests" as a means of validating their organizations or product's security. more

Searching for Truth in DKIM: Part 1 of 5

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is the leading email authentication technology, supported by major ISPs including Google, AOL, and Yahoo! (who invented its predecessor), popular mail server software like Sendmail, and many of the best minds in email technology. But if you peruse the archives of the IETF DKIM mailing list, or start up a conversation at MAAWG, it might appear that there's still a lot of disagreement about what a DKIM signature actually means. more

Latest Makadocs Malware Uses Google Drive Viewer As Proxy to Command and Control Server

Security researchers have found a new variant of the Macadocs malware to be using Google docs as a proxy server and not connecting to a command and control server directly. In a blog post on Friday, Symantec researcher Takashi Katsuki, wrote... more

Bypassing Geo-Locked BYOD Applications

In the wake of increasingly lenient bring your own device (BYOD) policies within large corporations, there's been a growing emphasis upon restricting access to business applications (and data) to specific geographic locations. Over the last 18 months more than a dozen start-ups in North America alone have sprung up seeking to offer novel security solutions in this space - essentially looking to provide mechanisms for locking application usage to a specific location or distance from an office, and ensuring that key data or functionality becomes inaccessible outside these prescribed zones. more

Say YES to DNSSEC

With the latest "DNSpionage" attack, ICANN astutely prompted domain name holders to fully deploy DNSSEC on their names. Afilias absolutely supports this and encourages the same. In this post, I remind you of why DNSSEC is important and our continued role. Afilias has a long history in the development and advocacy of DNSSEC. In 2007, we partnered with Public Interest Registry to help found dnssec-deployment.org. more

RIPE 71 Meeting Report

The RIPE 71 meeting took place in Bucharest, Romania in November. Here are my impressions from a number of the sessions I attended that I thought were of interest. It was a relatively packed meeting held over 5 days. So this is by no means all that was presented through the week... As is usual for RIPE meetings, it was a well organised, informative and fun meeting to attend in every respect! If you are near Copenhagen in late May next year I'd certainly say that it would be a week well spent. more

Designing Secure Networks with Cisco Technology, Part 1

In this multipart series I will be presenting some of the leading industry-standard best practices for enterprise network security using Cisco technologies.... "Wisdom consists in being able to distinguish among dangers and make a choice of the least harmful." That quote is quite possibly the most accurate depiction possible of the never-ending struggle between network security and corporate budget. Providing a mechanism to defend the enterprise network from every conceivable threat is impossible in terms of both technology and funding. more