Cybersecurity

Hypertext Mail Protocol (a.k.a. Stub Email): A Proposal

Back in the days of dial-up modems and transfer speeds measured in hundreds of bits per second, unwanted email messages were actually felt as a significant dent in our personal pocketbooks. As increases in transfer speeds outpaced increases in spam traffic, the hundreds of unwanted emails we received per week became more of a nuisance than a serious financial threat. Today sophisticated spam filters offered by all major email providers keep us from seeing hundreds of unwanted emails on a daily basis, and relatively infrequently allow unwanted messages to reach our coveted Inboxes. So, to some degree, the spam problem has been mitigated. But this "mitigation" requires multiple layers of protection and enormous amounts of continually-applied effort. more

Defending Networks Against DNS Rebinding Attacks

DNS rebinding attacks are real and can be carried out in the real world. They can penetrate through browsers, Java, Flash, Adobe and can have serious implications for Web 2.0-type applications that pack more code and action onto the client. Such an attack can convert browsers into open network proxies and get around firewalls to access internal documents and services. It requires less than $100 to temporarily hijack 100,000 IP addresses for sending spam and defrauding pay-per-click advertisers. Everyone is at risk and relying on network firewalls is simply not enough. In a paper released by Stanford Security Lab, "Protecting Browsers from DNS Rebinding Attacks," authors Collin Jackson, Adam Barth, Andrew Bortz, Weidong Shao, and Dan Boneh provide ample detail about the nature of this attack as well as strong defenses that can be put in place in order to help protect modern browsers. more

CircleID’s Top 10 Posts of 2018

It is once again time for our annual review of posts that received the most attention on CircleID during the past year. Congratulations to all the 2018 participants for sharing their thoughts and making a difference in the industry. more

A Balkanized Internet Future?

Joi Ito has an important post [also featured on CircleID] on how the internet is in danger of becoming balkanized into separate "internets". He's not the only person who's concerned. Greg Walton worries about Regime Change on the Internet. My friend Tim Wu, a law professor specializing in international trade and intellectual property, has written an article for Slate: The Filtered Future: China's bid to divide the Internet... 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

IP or NAT IP: Mostly IP

There seems to be a heated debate on this site about NAT (network-address translation). What came as a surprise to me is that a lot of the arguments seem to reside in ideological point of views which obscure the real issues at hand -- IP addressing, IP security -- and have little to do with NAT's actual merits or drawbacks. more

The Impact of the NIS2 Directive’s Article 28 on the DNS Industry

The European Union's Network and Information Security Directive (NIS1), introduced in 2016, aimed to strengthen cybersecurity among Member States. However, market fragmentation and growing digital threats led to the enactment of the NIS2 Directive.  more

Cybersecurity, an Essential Weapon in the Cyberwarfare to Protect Our Democracy

We see the problems that we are facing within an increasingly digital society and economy. We cannot go backward; the only way forward is to ensure that this new digital environment is made as safe as possible from a personal, social, political and economic perspective. We are currently struggling on these fronts. Unfortunately, we have now clearly entered a situation of cyber warfare. States now use digital technologies to impose and undermine ideologies. more

Fight Spam With the DNS, Not the CIA

It seems like spam is in the news every day lately, and frankly, some of the proposed solutions seem either completely hare-brained or worse than the problem itself. I'd like to reiterate a relatively modest proposal I first made over a year ago: Require legitimate DNS MX records for all outbound email servers.

MX records are one component of a domain's Domain Name System (DNS) information. They identify IP addresses that accept inbound email for a particular domain name. To get mail to, say, linux.com, a mail server picks an MX record from linux.com's DNS information and attempts to deliver the mail to that IP address. If the delivery fails because a server is out of action, the delivering server may work through the domain's MX records until it finds a server that can accept the mail. Without at least one MX record, mail cannot be delivered to a domain.
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In Bad Taste

So-called domain tasting is one of the more unpleasant developments in the domain business in the past year. Domain speculators are registering millions of domains without paying for them, in a business model not unlike running a condiment business by visiting every fast food restaurant in town and scooping up all of the ketchup packets. Since 2003, the contract between ICANN and each unsponsored TLD registry (.biz, .com, .info, .net, .org, and .pro) has added an Add Grace Period (AGP) of five days during which a registrant can delete a newly registered domain and get a full refund. Although this provision was clearly intended to allow registrars to correct the occasional typo and spelling error in registrations, speculators realized that this allows them to try out any domain for five days for free... more

CircleID’s Top 10 Posts of 2016

The new year is upon us and it's time for our annual look at CircleID's most popular posts of the past year and highlighting those that received the most attention. Congratulations to all the 2016 participants and best wishes to all in the new year. more

Some Notes on the .XXX Top-Level Domain

Yesterday the ICANN board discussed and approved ICANN staff to enter into negotiations with ICM Registry, Inc. for the .XXX Top Level Domain (TLD). I'm sure there will be a longer more complete presentation from ICANN later about this, but as an individual board member I thought I'd post a quick note before people got carried away with speculation based on a lack of information. more

6 Ways to Strengthen DNS Security

The domain name system (DNS) grew to prominence during the initial, innocent days of the internet. During that time, early internet users tended to work for government or education organizations where trust was assumed, and security was not even a consideration. Since the online community was small and the internet was sparsely used, the importance of DNS was not widely understood, and as a consequence, left undefended. more

EFF and Its Use of Propaganda: Could Karl Rove do better? Probably

The latest post on DearAOL's blog, by EFF activist coordinator Danny O'Brien, is titled "The Shakedown Begins". In short, Danny receives email from overstock.com on an AOL mailbox -- email that he apparently paid overstock $29.95 to receive. And that email arrives with Goodmail certification that AOL recognizes and flags as such. Danny seems to think this is not the sort of email that should be certified by Goodmail, and that AOL should not suddenly turn on Goodmail certification. Suddenly? more

What Are the Connections to Identified Hafnium Malicious IP Addresses?

Cyber attackers are very skilled at infiltration. They'd find ways into a house through cracks and holes that the homeowner doesn't know about. Analogically speaking, that's what the new cyber attack group dubbed "Hafnium" did when they identified several zero-day Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities to get into target networks. With thousands of users for every Microsoft Exchange server, the attack has far-reaching implications. First, it establishes the presence of a new threat actor group in town. What else could they be up to? more