Sophisticated Maleware Found Aimed to Target Energy Companies

"The threat uses sophisticated techniques to evade detection and prepares the ground for more malware components," Lucian Constantin reporting in CIO: "Security researchers have discovered a new malware threat that goes to great lengths to remain undetected while targeting energy companies." more

Survey Says Internet Won’t Make Us Stupid

Or at least majority of 895 technology stakeholders' and critics' that were recently surveyed by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center. Some of the quantitative results from the expert group include the following... more

Facebook’s Chief Sympathetic to Apple’s Position in Clash with FBI

Facebook's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg made comments at the Mobile World Congress tech show in Barcelona today stating he is sympathetic to Apple's position in its clash with the FBI. more

The History of Broadband Price Competition

It's sometimes easy to forget that the broadband business is just over twenty-five years old. The telephone companies had a monopoly on copper-based technologies until Congress passed the Telecommunication Act of 1996, which forced the big telephone companies to allow competition for copper-based broadband services. more

Internet Capacity Is Keeping Pace With Traffic Growth, Says Research Firm

According to new data from TeleGeography research group, international Internet traffic grew 53% between mid-2007 and mid-2008, down from 61% the preceding year. Traffic growth between the US and Latin America was especially fast, surging 112%. In contrast, traffic on internet backbones between major cities in the relatively more mature US market rose a modest 47%. For the second consecutive year, according to the study, total international Internet capacity grew faster than total Internet traffic, leading to lower utilization levels on many internet backbones. Between 2007 and 2008, average traffic utilization levels decreased from 31% to 29%... more

Energy Industry Number One Target by Cyber Criminals, According to New Study

Web security company, ScanSafe reports that, in the past quarter, companies in the Energy industry faced the greatest risk of Web-based malware exposure, at a 196% heightened risk compared to other verticals. The Pharmaceutical and Chemicals industry faced the second highest risk of exposure at 192% followed by the Construction & Engineering industry at 150%. The Media and Publishing industry were also among those at highest risk, with a 129% heightened risk compared to other verticals. more

Data on Nearly 200 Million Potential Voters in U.S. Found Fully Exposed

According to reports released today, databases containing information on close to 200 million potential U.S. voters were found unsecured and exposed to the Internet, allowing anyone to download it without a password. more

Diagnosing Load Test Errors - Where to Start for Holiday Success

Picture this: you just completed hours of internal Web services preparations with your system administrative team prior to the holidays. You discovered possible points of failure and made appropriate modifications with the expectation of a perfect load test. You take a few minutes to relax, refill the coffee mug sitting in front of you, and connect to the conference bridge where real-time discussion about the load test will occur. Things go well for the first 20 minutes of the test... Then it happens: one of the simulated users logs an error stating that it has timed out. more

How .eco Domain Was Won, Vancouver Team Behind the TLD

In the high-stakes world of internet domains, .eco was a dream green prize -- and is now finally going online, Lisa Johnson reporting in CBC News. more

Cyberattacks Listed as High-Impact Threat to North American Electric Grid

In a report released today by The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), cyber attacks are among the top high-impact risks -- "with potential to significantly affect the reliability of the North American bulk power system." Certain protections and mitigations are already in place to address these risks, and this study has been released to help public utility commissions, and the federal government to further prepare for these potential risks. more

Granular Regulation: A Future-Ready Framework for Effective AI Governance and Beyond

Granular regulation offers a new governance framework for AI, blending flexibility with enforceability. By translating broad principles into risk-sensitive, technical mandates, it overcomes the rigidity of rule-based models and the vagueness of principle-based approaches. more

Global Panel Releases Report on How to Evolve Internet Governance Ecosystem

The Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms - a global Panel of stakeholders from various organizations and governments - today released key recommendations on how to evolve the Internet governance (IG) ecosystem to accommodate global needs for collaboration, interconnectivity and Internet growth. The report also presents a roadmap and timeline for the future management of the Internet. more

Over 1,100 Communities Request for Google’s High-Speed Broadband Program

Google has received over 1,100 community requests in response to their up coming experimental, "ultra high-speed broadband networks," according to the company. Google plans to announce their target communities by the end of the year. "Of course, we're not going to be able to build in every interested community -- our plan is to reach a total of at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people with this experiment," says Google's Product Manager, James Kelly, in a blog post. more

UK to Implement Broadband Tax

Millions of households in UK will be paying a "broadband tax" in order to fund increase and improvement of broadband access in the country according to the Digital Britain white paper launched yesterday. BBC today reports: "One of the biggest surprises in the Digital Britain report was the news that everyone with a fixed line telephone would pay a broadband tax. At 50p a month the amount is unlikely to break the bank but experts are already questioning what it will buy." more

EFF Announced New Service to Let You Know When Terms-of-Serivce of Popular Sites Change

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched a new site to keep track of 'Terms of Service' for major websites such as Google, Facebook, eBay and others. The new website called TOSBack has been created to help users easily find privacy policies of various websites and to alert them when those policies are changed. "Some changes to terms of service are good for consumers, and some are bad," says EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "But Internet users are increasingly trusting websites with everything from their photos to their 'friends lists' to their calendar -- and sometimes even their medical information. TOSBack will help consumers flag changes in the websites they use every day and trust with their personal information." more