Cybersecurity

NIS2: A New Cyber Jurisdiction Paradigm

The approval on 13 May by the European Council and Parliament of a near-final draft Directive on European Cybersecurity (NIS2) brings the world's most far-reaching cyber regime closer to realization. What is generally unknown, however, is the broad scope and global extraterritorial jurisdiction reach of the Directive. It applies to almost every online service and network capability that exists as infrastructure or "offered" anywhere in Europe. more

The Sins of the Flash

Recent news stories (based on research by Stanford student Feross Aboukhadijeh) state that an Adobe bug made it possible for remote sites to turn on a viewer's camera and microphone. That sounds bad enough, but that's not the really disturbing part. more

The New Hong Kong Anti-Spam Law, and a Small Fly in the Ointment

Well, it has been quite a while since first the Hong Kong OFTA (in 2004) and then CITB (in 2006) issued requests for public comment about a proposed UEM (Unsolicited Electronic Messaging) bill to be introduced in Hong Kong, for the purpose of regulating unsolicited email, telephone and fax solicitations. We're a large (worldwide) provider of email and spam filtering - but we're based in Hong Kong, and any regulation there naturally gets tracked by us rather more actively than laws elsewhere. We sent in our responses to both these agencies... The bill is becoming law now - and most of it looks good... There's one major fly in the ointment though... more

Sinowal Trojan May Be One of the Worst Crimeware Ever Created

A sophisticated cybercrime group that has maintained an especially devious Trojan horse for nearly three years has stolen login credentials of close to 300,000 online bank accounts and almost as many credit cards during that time, according to reports released today by RSA FraudAction Research Lab. The spyware is called Sinowal Trojan, also known as Torpig and Mebroot. RSA reports that their findings are based on data collected on this Trojan over the course of almost three years -- including information regarding its design and its infrastructure. Findings indicate that this may be one of the most pervasive and advanced pieces of crimeware ever created by fraudsters, say RSA experts. more

United Nations Establishes Working Group on Internet Governance

Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced today the members of the United Nations Working Group on Internet Governance, which is to prepare the ground for a decision on this contentious issue by the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society in 2005. The establishment of the Working Group was requested by the first phase of the Summit, held in Geneva last December. At that time, countries agreed to continue the dialogue on the management of the Internet, at both the technical and policy levels. more

Preventing Future Attacks: Alternatives In DNS Security Management - Part II

In Part I of this article I set the stage for our discussion and overviewed the October 21st DDoS attacks on the Internet's 13 root name servers. In particular, I highlighted that the attacks were different this time, both in size and scope, because the root servers were attacked at the same time. I also highlighted some of the problems associated with the Domain Name System and the vulnerabilities inherent in BIND. Part II of this article takes our discussion to another level by critically looking at alternatives and best practices that can help solve the security problems we've raised. more

CircleID’s Top 10 Posts of 2013

Here we are with CircleID's annual roundup of top ten most popular posts featured during 2013 (based on overall readership). Congratulations to all the participants whose posts reached top readership and best wishes to the entire community for 2014. more

.hk the “Most Unsafe” Domains?

Hong Kong domains are the most dangerous in the world; this little factoid from a recent McAfee report generated quite a bit of media coverage, and even made TIME magazine's top stories list. But all is not as it seems, and aspects of the report may have been out of date before the report was even published. McAfee's study seems to be based on a year's worth of data, and last year was a particularly bad year for the Hong Kong domain, thanks to a gang of botnet spammers registering thousands of domains under the .hk ccTLD. These domains were most likely registered using stolen credit cards... more

.MS: Alternate Root and Monoculture as Good Things

Why shouldn't there be a .gadi TLD? Why not one for Microsoft? This post is not about alternate roots or why they are bad, this post is about something else. We do need to go over some background (from my perspective) very quickly though. ICANN has a steel-fist control over what happens in the DNS realm. They decide what is allowed, and who gets money from it. Whether it's VeriSign for .com or any registrar for the domains they sell. They decide if .gadi should exist or not. ...What I am here to discuss is why Microsoft, as a non-arbitrary choice this time, indeed, of all the world, should kick it aside, creating an alternate root while at the same time not disturbing the world's DNS. more

Internet Governance: Countdown to Tunis

In a paper entitled "DNS Détente", written in the authors' personal capacities, Tricia Drakes (a former member of the ICANN Board) and Michael D. Palage (a current member of the ICANN board) have attempted to address some of the unresolved issues of the recent Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) 3 session in Geneva as discussions head to the final phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis (Nov 16 to 18, 2005). More specifically, the paper focuses on one of the "fundamental stumbling blocks to the continued evolution of Internet Governance"; The insistence of the United States Government (USG) that it retain its historically exclusive role in connection with authorizing changes to the Root A server, particularly with respect to country code top-level domains (ccTLDs). Shared further is the content of this paper. more

Phone Always Busy? Must be DDoS on VoIP Network

Amidst the fascinating news from the SCO saga, preparing for SANS London and contributing to the Unix timeline project at Grokline my eyes caught a piece of rather distressing news on the BBC. It appears that BT (British Telecom) intends to move its current phone network to an IP-based network by 2009 thereby sending the circuit-switched technology off to the attic. The real question is: can we guarantee the same level of reliability on VoIP as we had on circuit-switched telephony when the stated aim is to carry both voice and data traffic down the same cables (or fibres more likely)? more

WHOIS: How Could I Have Been So Blind?

A colleague was recently commenting on an article by Michele Neylon "European Data Protection Authorities Send Clear Message to ICANN" citing the EU Data Commissioners of the Article 29 Working Party, the grouping a determinate factor In the impending death of WHOIS. He is on point when he said: What the European Data Protection authorities have not yet put together is that the protection of people's mental integrity on the Internet is not solely due to the action of law enforcement... more

Privacy Matters: Is It Time To Abolish The WHOIS Database?

Recently, I entered my domain name in a "WHOIS" database query to test the results of the database by using WHOIS on a number of domain name registrar websites. WHOIS is a database service that allows Internet users to look up a number of matters associated with domain names, including the full name of the owner of a domain name, the name of the domain name hosting service, the Internet Protocol or I.P. number(s) corresponding to the domain name, as well as personally identifying information on those who have registered domain names. I was astonished to find... more

The Internet is Dead - Long Live the Internet

Back in the early 2000s, several notable Internet researchers were predicting the death of the Internet. Based on the narrative, the Internet infrastructure had not been designed for the scale that was being projected at the time, supposedly leading to fatal security and scalability issues. Yet somehow the Internet industry has always found a way to dodge the bullet at the very last minute. more

Root Scaling Study Report is Out

Earlier this year, ICANN began to seriously consider the various effects of adding DNS protocol features and new entries into the Root Zone. With the NTIA announcement that the Root Zone would be signed this year, a root scaling study team was formed to assess the scalability of the processes used to create and publish the Root Zone. Properly considered, this study should have lasted longer than the 120 days -- but the results suggest that scaling up the root zone is not without risk -- and these risks should be considered before "green-lighting" any significant changes to the root zone or its processes. I, for one, would be interested in any comments, observations, etc. (The caveats: This was, by most measures, a rush job. My spin: This is or should be a risk assessment tool.) Full report available here [PDF]. more