Cybersecurity

A Survey of DNS Security: Most Vulnerable and Valuable Assets

The following provides and introduction to a study by Venugopalan Ramasubramanian and Emin Gun Sirer, called "Perils of Transitive Trust in the Domain Name System". The paper presents results from a large scale survey of DNS, illustrating how complex and subtle dependencies between names and nameservers lead to a highly insecure naming system... "It is well-known that nameservers in the Domain Name System are vulnerable to a wide range of attacks. We recently performed a large scale survey to answer some basic questions about the legacy DNS." more

On the Hunt for “Critical Internet Resources”

I'm writing this column in November, and that means that it is time for the traveling circus known as the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to come down to earth, unpack its tents and sell tickets for its annual song and dance routine. The script for this year's show has been changed, and after being excluded from the main arena last year at the Athens gig, the headline act of "Critical Internet Resources" is taking a starring role this year in Rio. Some folk are even saying that it is the single most contentious issue to be scheduled at this year's IGF show. So what are "Critical Internet Resources" anyway? If folks are going to spend all this time, energy and carbon emissions traveling to Rio to talk on this topic, then wouldn't it be helpful to understand what it means in the first place? There are probably a number of ways to answer this question, so in this heavily opinionated column I'd like to look at the range of possible answers to this question. more

New Study Revealing Behind the Scenes of Phishing Attacks

The following is an overview of the recent Honeynet Project and Research Alliance study called 'Know your Enemy:Phishing' aimed at discovering practical information on the practice of phishing. This study focuses on real world incidents based on data captured and analyzed from the UK and German Honeynet Project revealing how attackers build and use their infrastructure for Phishing based attacks. "This data has helped us to understand how phishers typically behave and some of the methods they employ to lure and trick their victims. We have learned that phishing attacks can occur very rapidly, with only limited elapsed time between the initial system intrusion and a phishing web site going online..." more

Russia in Talks to Create Independent DNS

The Russian Security Council has proposed development of an independent DNS which would continue to work in the event of global internet malfunctions, according to a report from RT. more

A European Perspective on the Equifax Hack: Encouraging Data Security Through Regulation

The Equifax hack is understood to have compromised the personal data of over 140 million individuals. Although recent hacks of other businesses have affected more individuals, the personal data held by Equifax is significantly more sensitive than the data compromised in other hacks and includes Social Security numbers, birth dates, current and previous addresses and driver licence details... (Co-authored by Peter Davis and Brendan Nixon.) more

Petya Ransomware Spreading Rapidly Worldwide, Effecting Banks, Telecom, Businesses, Power Companies

A large scale ransomware attack today is spreading rapidly worldwide, shutting down computers at corporates, power supplies, and banks across Russia, Ukraine, Spain, France, UK, India, and Europe and demanding $300 in bitcoins. more

Accountability, Transparency, and… Consistency?

ICANN Compliance now has two conflicting answers on record concerning the enforceability of RAA 378 on WHOIS inaccuracy. This is a topic of extreme importance and one we are trying to get to the bottom of. ...inconsistency needs to be resolved as it directly impacts the current RAA negotiations and certainly before new gTLDs are deployed. more

Internet Economics

One year ago, in late 2017, much of the policy debate in the telecommunications sector was raised to a fever pitch over the vexed on-again off-again question of Net Neutrality in the United States. It seemed as it the process of determination of national communications policy had become a spectator sport, replete with commentators who lauded our champions and demonized their opponents. more

Testing IDNs

Internationalized (non-ascii) domain names (IDN) are a key issue for ICANN. Yesterday, the Board completed two days of workshop presentations about various matters (IANA, security, GAC relationships), and we were briefed on the IDN testing that is planned. I thought it might be useful to make clear the distinction between the tests (which are testing mechanisms for IDNs) and the very difficult policy questions that confront ICANN. As several people explained to me yesterday, they're different. more

1.3 Tbps DDoS Attack Against GitHub is Largest Attack Seen to Date, Says Akamai

According to Akamai, the incident was the largest attack seen to date, "more than twice the size of the September 2016 attacks that announced the Mirai botnet and possibly the largest DDoS attack publicly disclosed." more

Leaked Documents Reveal Xi Jinping’s Communist Chinese Plan to Control the Internet’s Root

Yesterday, The Epoch Times reported on leaked internal Chinese government documents revealing that premier Xi Jinping has "personally directed the communist regime to focus its efforts to control the global Internet, displacing the influential role of the United States." Xi's ultimate aim is for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to wield "discourse power" over communications and discussions on the global geopolitical stage by controlling content on the Internet. more

A Review of the 2024 Threat Landscape and Implications for Domain Security

The cybersecurity landscape in 2024 has been characterised by unprecedented complexity and rapidly evolving threats, presenting significant challenges for organisations across all sectors. As the digital attack surface expands and threat actors employ increasingly sophisticated techniques, domain security has emerged as a critical component of a robust cybersecurity strategy. more

Arrest Made in Connection to Spamhaus DDoS Case

According to a press release by the Openbaar Ministerie (the Public Prosecution Office), a dutch man with the initials SK has been arrested in Spain for the DDoS attacks on Spamhaus. more

The End of End-to-End?

One of the major principles of the architecture of the Internet was encapsulated in a paper by Saltzer, Reed and Clark, "End-to-End Arguments in System Design". This paper, originally published in 1981, encapsulated very clearly the looming tension between the network and the application: "The function in question can completely and correctly be implemented only with the knowledge and help of the application standing at the end points of the communication system. Therefore, providing that questioned function as a feature of the communication system itself is not possible." At the time this end-to-end argument was akin to networking heresy! more

Why Brands Need Their Own TLD - The Mulberry-Sale Site that Scammed Me

As a seasoned internet user, even an old 'Domainer', I was there when ICANN launched the first round of New TLDs. I remember the criticism we received from the media back then. We were invited to countless roundtable discussions, press conferences, and local internet events at which we were expected to answer the key media question: "Why are new TLDs necessary?" Dot BIZ, .INFO, and four more were the test bed new TLDs -- I represented .BIZ in EMEA. more