Cybersecurity

Updates on the Georgian Cyber Attacks

This is an update of my previous post on the subject. To be honest here, no one truly knows what's going on in Georgia's Internet except for what can be glimpsed from outside, and what has been written by the Georgians on their blog (outside their country). They are probably a bit busy avoiding kinetic bombing... more

Cryptominers Infected 10x More Organizations Than Ransomware in 2018

A new security report reveals cryptominers infected ten times more organizations than ransomware in 2018, but only one in five IT security professionals were aware their company's networks had been infected by mining malware. more

Thoughts on the Open Internet - Part 5: Security

Any form of public communications network necessarily exposes some information about the identity and activity of the user's of its services. The extent to which such exposure of information can be subverted and used in ways that are in stark opposition to the users' individual interests forms part of the motivation on the part of many users to reduce such open exposure to an absolute minimum. The tensions between a desire to protect the user through increasing the level of opacity of network transactions to third party surveillance, and the need to expose some level of basic information to support the functions of a network lies at the heart of many of the security issues in today's Internet. 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

Introduction: ICANN’s Alternative Path to Delegation (Part 1 of 4)

As widely discussed recently, observed within the ICANN community several years ago, and anticipated in the broader technical community even earlier, the introduction of a new generic top-level domain (gTLD) at the global DNS root could result in name collisions with previously installed systems. Such systems sometimes send queries to the global DNS with domain name suffixes that, under reasonable assumptions at the time the systems were designed, may not have been expected to be delegated as gTLDs. more

The Story of Conficker and the Industry Response

On November 2, 2009, Microsoft released its seventh edition of the Security and Intelligence Report (SIR). The SIR provides an in-depth perspective on the changing threat landscape including software vulnerability disclosures and exploits, malicious software (malware), and potentially unwanted software. Using data derived from hundreds of millions of Windows computers, and some of the busiest online services on the Internet, this report also provides a detailed analysis of the threat landscape and the changing face of threats and countermeasures and includes updated data on privacy and breach notifications. The following is an excerpt from the SIR, pp 29-32, about the Conficker worm and the industry response that showed an incredible amount of collaboration across vendors. more

Who Broke the WHOIS?

As Internet services go, WHOIS held a lot of promise but has repeatedly failed to live up to its potential; raising the question "is it time to retire WHOIS?" The concept behind WHOIS was simple. For each and every registered domain name, provide the facility for querying details about who owns it, who administers it, when was it created and when it will expire. Unfortunately the service lost its way practically from day one after failing to agree upon or adhere to any formal structure of the content it provides. more

DNS RPZ, Malicious Domains… Bring Your Own Policy. Dress Casual.

Paul observed that most new domain names are malicious. Are they? Since the "dawn of tasting", some 30 million domain names have been created for the purposes of interposition on existing name to resource mappings. That is a third of the .COM historical growth, and mostly in the last five years. ... It is difficult not to conclude that interposition on persistent, public referents is without malice, and that the malicious parties are advertisers seeking to transform public referents into private property, as promotional devices... more

Equifax Hacked, Nearly Half of US Population Affected

In an announcement today, credit reporting giant Equifax revealed a cybersecurity incident potentially impacting approximately 143 million U.S. consumers. more

Dissecting the 2022 UK Cyber Security Strategy: The ‘Whole of Society’ Approach

The UK government launched its 2022 Cyber Security Strategy on 15 December 2021, outlining its ambitious plans to improve the resilience of UK institutions and businesses while protecting the country's interests in cyberspace. The strategy signals a more involved approach by the government, which previously relied heavily on the private sector for leadership. The government's stated commitment to a 'whole of society' approach sounds really good on paper, but what exactly does it really mean? more

Encryption and Securing Our Digital Economy

As G20 leaders from around the world gather this week, Germany wants them to agree to a concrete plan -- one that includes affordable Internet access across the world by 2025, common technical standards and a focus on digital learning. Today, the G20 economies, like so many other economies around the world, are digital and interconnected. Digital services have opened up new avenues for sustainable economic growth. more

VoIP/IP Telephony in Estonia: Disrupted by Botnets?

With my post earlier this month about the possibility of SIP botnets [also featured here on CircleID], I've had a number of people asking about more information and wondering about the possible impacts. And while I will write more on botnets in general, as far as the potential impact of "botnets" in general, one need only look over at the current situation in Estonia... Now, perhaps Russia is behind the attack... perhaps not. There are obviously much larger political issues going on between the two states. more

The Path to Combatting Domain Abuse

Completely eradicating malware, botnets, phishing, pharming, and spam from the Domain Name System is not possible. That may be an odd statement from someone who just took the leadership position at the DNS Abuse Institute, but it's meant to underscore the scope of the work ahead of us. There will always be bad actors exploiting the DNS for their own criminal purposes, but working together, we can mitigate their impact. more

Notes from NANOG 69

NANOG 69 was held in Washington DC in early February. Here are my notes from the meeting. It would not be Washington without a keynote opening talk about the broader political landscape, and NANOG certainly ticked this box with a talk on international politics and cyberspace. I did learn a new term, "kinetic warfare," though I'm not sure if I will ever have an opportunity to use it again! more

Lessons to Be Learned from the Armada Collective’s DDoS Attacks on Greek Banks

'It could've been worse' is a fascinating expression. It implies that the incident in question obviously could have been worse than expected, however it also implies that it could have been better, ultimately leading to the conclusion that it was at least somewhat bad. So both fortunately and unfortunately for three Greek banks, the ransom DDoS attacks levied against them by hacker group the Armada Collective could have been worse. more