Cybersecurity

Chinese Cloud Vendors Benefitting from Home-Field Advantage While Expanding Globally

China's home grown firms are not only grabbing domestic businesses but also venturing to different countries across the world. On the other hand, foreign players face regulatory walls that make it difficult to tap businesses in China." Saibal Dasgupta reporting today in VOA more

Spam Peaked at 200 Billion per Day in 2008, Botnets Nexus of Criminal Activity, Says Cisco

In a 52 page security report released by Cisco, the company has confirmed what has been consistently been observed through out this year: "the Internet-based attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and specialized as profit-driven criminals continue to hone their approach to stealing data from businesses, employees and consumers." The 2008 edition of the report has specified the year's top security threats and offers recommendations for protecting networks against attacks that are propagating more rapidly, becoming increasingly difficult to detect, and exploiting technological and human vulnerabilities. more

What’s in Your DNS Query?

Privacy problems are an area of wide concern for individual users of the Internet -- but what about network operators? Geoff Huston wrote an article earlier this year concerning privacy in DNS and the various attempts to make DNS private on the part of the IETF -- the result can be summarized with this long, but entertaining, quote. more

Internet Week Guyana Advances Caribbean Tech Development Agenda

Around the world, the growing sophistication of cyber criminals is challenging the capacity of governments, businesses and individuals to defend themselves. In the Caribbean, governments are forging strategic partnerships with regional actors like the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) and the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG), the region's largest volunteer-based community of network engineers, computer security experts and tech aficionados. more

AI-Powered Malware Evolves: Google Uncovers Live Use of Generative Models in Active Intrusions

Google's Threat Intelligence Group reveals that hackers are integrating AI models directly into malware, enabling live code mutation, stealthier operations, and dynamic payload execution while exploiting AI tools through deceptive prompts and underground marketplaces. more

Did Russian Cyber Attacks Precede Military Action?

The RBNexploit blog states that the website 'president.gov.ge' was under DDoS attack since Thursday. That site is now hosted out of Atlanta, Georgia (don't you love coincidence?) by Tulip Systems who is prominently displaying an AP story... "Speaking via cell phone from Georgia, Doijashvili said the attacks, traced to Moscow and St. Petersburg, are continuing on the U.S. servers." Rusisan military surrogates in the form of the criminal Russian Business Network are engaged in attacks against servers on US soil. This point should be brought up as the Group of 8-1 discusses appropriate responses to Russia's attack on Georgia. more

The Latest OEWG on ICTs Report: Thoughts and Recommendations

At the end of July, the Open-ended Working Group (OEWG) on ICTs -- which is currently discussing how states should and shouldn't behave in cyberspace - concluded its third meeting, which falls in the middle of its four-year mandate (ending in 2025). Below, we provide a summary of what happened, reflections on the outcomes and implications (the good and the bad), and some practical recommendations for stakeholders and governments to consider ahead of the next meeting. more

The Life Cycle of Digital Certificates Reduces Again

Recently, there were news articles about a large software provider who experienced a global outage due to an expired digital certificate - and this is not the first time this kind of issue has hit the news. Digital certificate outages, when an organization forgets to replace an expiring certificate for a business-critical domain name, continues to cause business disruption and security risks. more

Spin Doctoring from FBI in the Apple Case

It is rather amazing to follow the reporting on the FBI vs Apple case in relation to the FBI's order to Apple to provide them with software that would allow them to crack the security code on all Apple phones. In some of those reports spin doctoring from the FBI -- especially through the public media -- led you to believe that Apple is not willing to assist the FBI in the San Bernardino murder case. This is, however, blatantly false. more

How to Evaluate Performance of a DNS Resolver

Ten years ago everyone evaluating DNS solutions was always concerned about performance. Broadband networks were getting faster, providers were serving more users, and web pages and applications increasingly stressed the DNS. Viruses were a factor too as they could rapidly become the straw that broke the camel's back of a large ISP's DNS servers. The last thing a provider needed was a bottleneck, so DNS resolution speed became more and more visible, and performance was everything. more

Security Through Obscurity as an Institution

One of my staff members pointed me to an article by Mikko Hyppönen in Foreign Policy. In this article Mikko argues that a new top level domain (TLD) like .bank for some reason would prevent on-line fraud, at least partially. Mikko seems to be arguing that with a dedicated TLD registry for financial institutions and a fee high enough to act as an entry barrier you would have a trustworthy bank domains that would be immune against today's phising attempts... more

WSIS+10 Consultations at the U.N. Next Week: The Negotiations Are Accelerating

Next Monday the WSIS+10 Second Informal Interactive Consultations will take place at the UN Headquarters in New York. Much of the discussions will focus on what is called the "zero draft", which is the draft outcome document of the overall ten-year Review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). As it stands, the text is an effort from the negotiators to collect multiple perspectives, reconcile differences and hopefully make progress towards consensus before the UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting in December. more

DNSSEC Rally

In late August the White House mandated that all of the agencies in the US government have functioning DNSSEC capabilities deployed and operational by December 2009. I am suggesting here that we, as a community, commit to the same timetable. I call upon VeriSign and other registries to bring up DNSSEC support by January 2009. more

US Government and Businesses Need Collaborative Procedures Against Major Cyberattacks, Warns Report

A new report warns that unless government and private sector decision makers begin developing specific procedures and trust now against cyber-enabled economic warfare (CEEW), the United States will find itself flat-footed during a major cyber event. more

Researchers Demonstrate Serious Privacy Attacks on 4G and 5G Protocols

A group of academic researchers have revealed a design weakness in the 4G/5G protocol which can be exploited by an attacker to identify the victim's presence in a particular cell area just from the victim's soft-identity such as phone number and Twitter handle. more