Cybersecurity

Major Russian Banks Under a Multi-Day Cyberattack

The attack began Tuesday afternoon, and continued for two days straight, according to a source close to Russia’s Central Bank quoted by RIA Novosti. Sberbank confirmed the DDoS attack on its online services. more

Why I Wrote ‘Thinking Security’

I have a new book out, Thinking Security: Stopping Next Year's Hackers. There are lots of security books out there today; why did I think another was needed? Two wellsprings nourished my muse. (The desire for that sort of poetic imagery was not among them.) The first was a deep-rooted dissatisfaction with common security advice. This common "wisdom" -- I use the word advisedly -- often seemed to be outdated. Yes, it was the distillation of years of conventional wisdom, but that was precisely the problem: the world has changed; the advice hasn't. more

Have You Reviewed Your Domain Lock Portfolio?

Domain names give your intellectual property visibility, as well as provide function for your company's infrastructure. Vital domain names are simply too important to be left exposed. To protect them, you can add extra layers of security to your digital brand with easy, secure, server-level protection in addition to multi-level locks that combat domain name system (DNS) hijacking and protect against unauthorized changes and deletions to your critical domain names. more

Hackers in Possession of Over 312K Files, 516GB Financial Data of Some of World’s Largest Companies

A report broke today revealing hackers have successfully breached a German internet infrastructure firm that provides services to several large companies, including Ericsson, Leica, Toshiba, UniCredit, British Telecom, Hugo Boss, NH Hotel Group, Oracle, Airbus, Porsche, and Volkswagen. more

What is ‘On-Tap’ at ICANN 38 - Brussels (There’s More to Belgium than Beer!)

As the shorter of the ICANN interregnums comes to a close and the ICANN faithful finalize their dinner reservation agendas for Brussels, it is time again for a preview of what will be 'on-tap' at next week's ICANN meeting. While, as always, there is a lot going on in ICANN Land, a scan of the blogosphere and ICANN list serves suggests that the four most discussed topics will be... more

Study Assesses Potential Impact of DNSSEC on Broadband Consumers, Results Not Good

Recent collaborative test by Core Competence and Nominet have concluded that 75% of common residential and small SOHO routers and firewall devices used with broadband services do not operate with full DNSSEC compatibility "out of the box". The report presents and analyzes technical findings, their potential impact on DNSSEC use by broadband consumers, and implications for router/firewall manufacturers. Included in its recommendations, the report suggests that as vendors apply DNSSEC and other DNS security fixes to devices, consumers should be encouraged to upgrade to the latest firmware. more

Call for Participation - DNSSEC Workshop at ICANN 59 in Johannesburg

Do you have ideas about DNSSEC or DANE that you would like to share with the wider community? Have you created a new tool or service? Have you found a way to use DNSSEC to secure some other service? Do you have new statistics about the growth or usage of DNSSEC, DANE or other related technology? If so, and if you will be in Johannesburg, South Africa, for ICANN 59 in June 2017 (or can get there), please consider submitting a proposal to speak at the ICANN 59 DNSSEC Workshop! more

The State of RPKI as We Enter 2022

Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) is a method to secure internet routing traffic by cryptographically verifying routes. As we begin 2022, we look back at 2021 and see how the year saw another significant step towards its adoption. High-profile issues with the old trust-based model of Border Gateway Protocol, designed several decades ago, have shown the continued importance of protecting popular networks from mistakes or hackers. more

In Which We Consider the Meaning of ‘Authorized’: GIVAUDAN FRAGRANCES CORPORATION v. Krivda

What does authorized access mean? If an employee with authorized access to a computer system goes into that system, downloads company secrets, and hands that information over to the company's competitor, did that alleged misappropriation of company information constitute unauthorized access? This is no small question. If the access is unauthorized, the employee potentially violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) (the CFAA contains both criminal and civil causes of action). But courts get uncomfortable here. more

Twitter, DDoS and the Motivations Behind the Attack

As we all know by now, last week, on Thursday, August 7, Twitter was hit with a denial-of-service attack that took it down for several hours. Other social networking sites like Facebook, LiveJournal, Youtube and Blogger were also hit. They managed to repel the attack although Facebook was not quite as successful as the other larger players. The theory floating about at the moment is that this was a politically oriented play designed to target one guy: a blogger. We are nearing the 1-year anniversary of a the Russian/Georgian 2008 war. There is a pro-Georgian blogger by the username of "Cyxymu" who had accounts on all of these services. more

Outlawing Botnets

The European Commission is apparently considering the promulgation and adoption of a directive that would, at least in part, criminalize botnets. As I understand it, the premise behind adopting such a directive is that since botnets are capable of inflicting "harm" on a large scale, we need to separately criminalize them. I decided to examine the need for and utility of such legislation in this post. more

A Cancerous Computer Fraud and Misuse Act

As I read through multiple postings covering the proposed Computer Fraud and Misuse Act, such as the ever-insightful writing of Rob Graham in his Obama's War on Hackers or the EFF's analysis, and the deluge of Facebook discussion threads where dozens of my security-minded friends shriek at the damage passing such an act would bring to our industry, I can't but help myself think that surely it's an early April Fools joke. more

The Next New Media: Typewriters and Handwritten Letters

Who would have thought that typewriters and handwritten letters would ever be back in fashion? But back in 2013 it was reported that Russia was buying large quantities of typewriters. When this was further investigated the country denied that this was for security reasons. Since the Snowden revelations there has been a further rush on typewriters, both by government officials and by a range of, mainly corporate, businesses. more

Google Begins Publicly Sharing National Security Letters

In a note released this week, Google announced that it will begin publicly sharing National Security Letters (NSLs) it receives that have been freed of nondisclosure obligations either through litigation or legislation. more

The Antivirus Uncertainty Principle

The antivirus industry has been trying to deal with false positive detection issues for a long, long time - and it's not going to be fixed anytime soon. To better understand why, the physicist in me draws an analogy with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle - where, in its simplest distillation, the better you know where an atom is, the less likely you'll know it's momentum (and vice versa) - aka the "observer effect". more