Google’s Project Zero Team Discovers Critical Vulnerabilities in Symantec and Norton

"These vulnerabilities are as bad as it gets," says Google's Information Security Engineer, Tavis Ormandy, in reference to multiple critical vulnerabilities discovered affecting Symantec, a popular vendor in the enterprise security market. more

Internet Society Applauds Plan to Transition Oversight of Key Internet Resources

The Internet Society (ISOC) Board of Trustees today passed a resolution to strongly support the plan developed by the global Internet community presented to the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration to transition oversight of key Internet resources. more

Cable Companies Tout Speed Increases

Last month, NCTA -- The Internet and Television Association -- posted an article on its website touting the big increases in broadband speeds since the start of the pandemic. NCTA is the industry trade and lobbying association for medium-sized and large cable companies. The article touts that the average U.S. download speed has grown from 138 Mbps in March 2020, the first month of the pandemic, to 226 Mbps in June 2022. more

Independent Show 2015: Out-of-the-Box Lessons in the Digital Age

This year's Independent Show summer conference was held in Boston, a place where the accents are strong and you hear great quotes like... If I had to sum up this year's conference with one phrase, it would have to be: out-of-the-box thinking. The keynote speech was given by Professor Bharat Anand of the Harvard School of Business, whose expertise is in the areas of digital strategy, corporate strategy, and media strategy -- in other words, digital marketing. The title was "Lessons from the Digital Transformation of Media". more

Brits Targeted by 3.7 Billion Phishing Scams in Past 12 Months

More than 420,000 scam emails are sent every hour in the UK according to a report published by Card Protection Plan Limited (CPP). The study estimates that Britons were targeted by 3.7 billion 'phishing' emails in the last 12 months alone. And a quarter of people admit to falling victim to e-fraudsters, with the average victim losing over £285 each. more

Turkey Blocks Access to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and WhatsApp

Access to multiple social media services including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been reported throughout Turkey beginning Friday Nov 04 2016 1:20AM local time – ongoing as of Friday noon. more

Malware Production Continues at Record-Setting Pace; 6000 Unique Pieces Per Day

Security researches report seeing as much unique malware in the first half of 2009 as seen in all of 2008. "This is quite something when you consider that in 2008 we saw the greatest ever growth in malware," says David Marcus of McAfee Avert Labs. More specifically, Marcus in a blog post writes that the numbers add up to an average of 200,000 unique pieces malware monthly or more than 6,000 a day. "Bear in mind these are malware we consider unique (something we had to write a driver for) and does not count all the other malware we detect generically or heuristically... When you add in the generic and heuristic detections the number becomes truly mind boggling," writes Marucs. more

What’s Happening With Aug. 13 Applicant Auction to Resolve gTLD Contention?

The second Applicant Auction is coming up on August 13, and after a great round of workshops at the ICANN Conference in Durban, we've started to finalize all of the details. Any applicants who haven't indicated their intention to participate can still do so! more

Obama: From Now On Digital Infrastructure Treated As Strategic National Asset

In a speech today from the White House, President Obama declared that the United States' computers and digital networks are strategic national assets and that he will personally appoint a cybersecurity coordinator to oversee the effort to protect this critical infrastructure. more

Will the UN Step Up Transparency on the Tech Envoy Selection Process?

A few weeks ago, a new vacancy was added to the UN Webpage for Senior Leadership Positions, inviting applications to become the new Tech Envoy. This position has a long and unfortunate backstory. It was created in 2019 as a new role, as an outgrowth of the UN's High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation and the UN Secretary General's Roadmap for Digital Cooperation -- with a vague remit to "advise senior leadership of the United Nations on key trends in technology and... more

Third Round of Evaluation Results for New TLDs

Mary Iqbal writes to report that ICANN has released the third round of initial evaluation results, bringing the total number of applicants to pass Initial Evaluation to 93. ICANN has now completed the initial evaluation of all but 13 IDN Top Level Domains. more

Virtualizing the Gateway - How CSPs Are Revolutionizing the Network Edge

Software-defined networking (SDN) itself represents a deconstructed view of current switching and routing architectures providing the abstractions of control from dataplane. With this newfound control, the industry is leveraging multiple virtualization strategies to build out public, private, and hybrid cloud architectures, delivering multiple new application services to the market. more

China Mobile Is Reporting 15M 5G Contracts, 8.7M Joined in February

5G is growing by millions per month in China, although the exact status is unclear. The telcos are reporting "contracts," which continue to be far higher than the separately reported 5G phone sales. more

Working Group Gets Cold Shoulder in Talks to Formally Appoint Internet Community Within ICANN

Kieren McCarthy reporting in the Register: "The process to bring greater accountability to domain-name overseer ICANN descended into farce last week when the organization's board tried to skewer plans to force it to answer to the internet community while simultaneously claiming it supported the idea. more

Decoding Internet Governance Stakeholders, Part 2: Private Sector

The "Decoding Internet Governance Stakeholders" series of articles invites the community to ponder what underlies the labels that define our interactions, roughly 20 years after the "Tunis Agenda for the Information Society" called for the "full involvement of governments, business entities, civil society and intergovernmental organizations", as well as to "make full use of the expertise of the academic, scientific and technical communities". more