Cybersecurity

Demand for Cybersecurity Workers in the United States Has Nearly Doubled Since 2013

Cybersecurity job postings in the United States has nearly doubled since 2013 and is growing three times as fast as other IT roles, according to a new report from the labor market analytics firm Burning Glass Technologies. more

Networks and Nationalization

This post isn't about -- or isn't only about -- the use of computer technology to commit crimes. It's more about the use of computer technology to commit war. A few weeks ago, I was part of a conversation about the legal issues cyberwarfare raises. We were talking about various scenarios -- e.g., a hostile nation-state uses cyberspace to attack the U.S. infrastructure by crippling or shutting down a power grid, air traffic control systems, financial system, etc. Mostly, we were focusing on issues that went to the laws of war, such as how and when a nation-state that is the target of a cyberattack can determine the attack is war, rather than cybercrime or cyberterrorism. more

ICANN’s Last Call for Whois Comments

From "Last Call for Whois Comments", a recent opinion piece by eWeek's Security Center Editor Larry Seltzer: "It's not a good sign when the criminals and the lawyers are on the same side of an issue; there may be no good solution to the problems of Whois service rules. Who would have imagined that so much business and so much abuse would center around Internet domain names? Certainly not the designers of the system, including those of the Whois service, which reports on ownership and some other data on domain names... more

IP Address Blocking

A network can fence its own IP addresses or block specific external ones from access. Administrators frequently block access to their own IP addresses to bar unwanted access to content. Individual IPs or blocks of IPs may also be blocked due to unwanted or malicious behavior. IP address blocking prevents a specific IP address or group of IP addresses from connecting with a server, computer, or application. more

Cyber Terrorism Is a Real Threat, and for the First Time Both Russia and the US Acknowledge It

Eugene Kaspersky, CEO and co-founder of Internet security giant Kaspersky Lab said last week that "terrorists could build a botnet that could bring down the entire Internet structure". Mr. Kaspersky ended his speech with the statement that "a global cyber police force, and global cooperation between law enforcement agencies and governments is needed". This goes very much in accordance with some of the conclusions in the Cyberspace Policy Review more

Mobilizing Russian Population Attacking Georgia: Similar to the Estonian Incident?

It seems like the online Russian population is getting mobilized. Like a meme spreading on the blogosphere, the mob is forming and starting to "riot", attacking Georgia. This seems very similar to the Estonian incident, only my current guess is natural evolution rather than grass-roots implanted -- but I am getting more and more convinced of the similarities as more information becomes available. Determining exactly when the use of scripts by regular users started, is key to this determination. more

Officially Compromised Privacy

The essence of information privacy is control over disclosure. Whoever is responsible for the information is supposed to be able to decide who sees it. If a society values privacy, it needs to ensure that there are reasonable protections possible against disclosure to those not authorized by the information's owner. In the online world, an essential technical component for this assurance is encryption. If the encryption that is deployed permits disclosure to those who were not authorized by the information's owner, there should be serious concern about the degree of privacy that is meaningfully possible. more

Was the ClimateGate Hacker Justified? Join the Debate!

A few days ago a story broke where someone hacked into a global warming research institute and stole all emails from the past 10 years, proving a conspiracy. In the vast amount of emails stolen, some emails were also found with clear-cut lies, showing how some scientists conspired to deceive in scientific research about data that did not fit their agenda of proving global warming. I am opening the subject for debate... more

Shouting ‘Bug’ on a Crowded Internet…

In the last few weeks we've seen two very different approaches to the full disclosure of security flaws in large-scale computer systems. Problems in the domain name system have been kept quiet long enough for vendors to find and fix their software, while details of how to hack Transport for London's Oyster card will soon be available to anyone with a laptop computer and a desire to break the law. These two cases highlight a major problem facing the computing industry, one that goes back many years and is still far from being unresolved. Given that there are inevitably bugs, flaws and unexpected interactions in complex systems, how much information about them should be made public by researchers when the details could be helpful to criminals or malicious hackers? more

DDoS Attacks: What’s in Store for 2012?

According to Kaspersky Lab, 2011 has seen "numerous DDoS attacks with a variety of motives," many of which will "go down in the annals of cybercrime." As we look ahead to 2012, it's worth examining some of those motives to see what they portend. more

The Term Web3 Has Been Seized by the Crypto Market: An Internet Governance Perspective

In late 2021, the term Web3 began to increasingly appear in mainstream media outlets. This does not refer, however, to a sudden increase in interest in the Semantic Web as defined by Tim Berners-Lee, but rather to something entirely different. Enthusiasts of cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) seized this term and changed its meaning to reflect a supposed new stage of the Web, running on top of blockchains and having decentralization as its core value. To summarize the narrative being spun, the first generation of the Web afforded independence to the owners of websites, but this did not extend to the average user... more

More Targeted Phishing, Spam and Mobile Attacks; IBM Reports 150K Security Events Per Second

IBM today released the results from its annual X-Force 2010 Trend and Risk Report, identifying more targeted phishing, spam and mobile attacks. The report also finds cloud security continuing to evolve. "From Stuxnet to Zeus Botnets to mobile exploits, a widening variety of attack methodologies is popping up each day," says Tom Cross, threat intelligence manager, IBM X-Force. "The numerous, high profile targeted attacks in 2010 shed light on a crop of highly sophisticated cyber criminals, who may be well-funded and operating with knowledge of security vulnerabilities that no one else has. Staying ahead of these growing threats and designing software and services that are secure from the start has never been more critical." more

Backlash Over Potential Firing of U.S. Election Cybersecurity’s Top Official

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), along with over forty other cybersecurity experts and organizations, are urging the White House to keep politics out of securing this month's election in the U.S. more

Enterprise Networks Are Being Impacted by Unwanted and Unidentified Cryptomining Activity

Researchers at security service provider, Zscaler, are reporting that in the past six months they have blocked over 2.5 billion web-based cryptomining attempts within their cloud service. more

A New Project Called Handshake Wants to Decentralize DNS, Says It’s Unlike Previous Attempts

An entity called the Handshake Network claims its newly developed open source project offers advantages over the traditional naming and signature systems. more