Cyber Espionage Group, Snowbug Targets South American Foreign Policy

Cyber espionage group targets South American and Southeast Asian governments using custom Felismus malware. more

Key Members of Congress Call for Permanent ICANN-US Tie

Philip Corwin of the Internet Commerce Associations reports: "In a stunning rebuke of ICANN's assertion that it had achieved sufficient accountability and professional stature to justify termination of its unique relationship with the U.S. government, the Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce as well as the Chairman of its Internet Subcommittee, along with eight other Committee members, dispatched a joint letter on August 4th to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke urging that the relationship between ICANN and the U.S. be made permanent and strengthened." more

How Much Are You Losing to Internal Fraud?

Think your organization is exempt from in-house network abuse? Think again. A CFCA Global Fraud Survey of communication service providers found that dealer fraud was one of the top five methods of fraud, costing $US 3.35 billion annually. In this scenario, customer service representatives (CSRs) or administrators with access to account information may upgrade friends or family to a premium service package or even provide free access to services. more

Can Cellphones Capture the Broadband Market?

Linda Hardesty wrote an interesting article in FierceNetwork that asks the question, "What if, in ten years, young people don't subscribe to fixed broadband at all?" Her story is based on a U.K. research group that predicts that within ten years, there will be a lot of young people who will never have subscribed to a landline broadband product. more

São Paulo Multistakeholder Guidelines: A Blueprint for Inclusive Digital Governance

The São Paulo Multistakeholder Guidelines adopted at last week's NETmundial +10 conference (Sao Paulo, 29-30 April 2024) provide a breath of fresh air in the current digital debates. They untangle quite a few confusions and offer a pragmatic path forward. The NETMundial statement resolves terminological confusion between internet and digital by combining two terms in the phrase 'internet governance and digital policy'. more

SpaceX Starlink Comes to South America

SpaceX has roughly 90,000 Starlink beta test customers in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand and now they have one in South America -- in Sotomó, an isolated town at 41.6° South in Chile's Lake Region. Chile's second terminal will be online at a school in Caleta Sierra in a few days and other pilot locations will follow. Twenty families live in Sotomó and it is only accessible by private boats or subsidized services that navigate the Reloncaví Estuary on which it is located. more

Liberia’s Internet Brought to a Halt After Facing Multiple Mirai-Based Attacks

The entire internet infrastructure of the African nation of Liberia is distributed by the same weapon used to cause the historic cyberattack just two weeks ago. more

Domain Name Variants Still Won’t Work

ICANN has spent years trying to figure out what to do with domain name variants, strings that look different but mean the same thing, for some definition of "the same." They've been trying to deal with them in second level domains for a decade, and are now working on rules to allow variant top-level domains. Unfortunately, variants don't work. The problem isn't putting them in the DNS; it's that once they're in the DNS, they don't work anywhere else. more

Brussels Mandate: Community-Developed Tmch Gains Ascendancy

ICANN has tentatively agreed to proceed with the community-developed Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) model following two days of discussions at a specially organised informal meeting in Brussels last week. I believe this is an important breakthrough for the intellectual property, registry and registrar communities as it provides the best harmony between technical implementation and best practice trademark protection policy. more

FCC Gives Final Approval to Broadband Label Requirements, with Minor Modifications to 2022 Rules

At the end of August, the FCC gave final approval to the requirement that ISPs must provide broadband labels. The FCC had originally approved the broadband labels in November 2022 but then received three petitions to further modify the rules. The recent order makes a few minor changes to the original order but largely leaves the original broadband label rules intact. more

Why ‘Trust Me’ is a Bad Model for Internet Governance

"Trust me" is not a model for good governance of the Internet or anything else, says Daniel Castro, vice president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). "With the U.S. government relinquishing control of Internet governance, ICANN -- the global nonprofit organization responsible for managing key Internet functions -- will be operating independently without serious checks and balances..." more

Google Gets Green Light to Acquire Motorola; $12.5B Deal is Company’s First Foray In Hardware

European Union antitrust regulators today approved Google's acquisition of the U.S. cellphone maker Motorola Mobility without conditions, but added a stern warning: Play fair in markets for smartphones and tablet computers, or face tough sanctions. The $12.5 billion deal represents Google's first foray into hardware. more

Stop Propagating False Information About the .ORG Transaction

We were disappointed to see The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette publish a recent editorial on February 13 about the sale of Public Interest Registry (PIR, the company that operates .ORG) that propagates false information about the transaction, including runaway prices, censorship and lack of experience. Runaway prices? Ethos Capital and PIR have committed to capping price increases to no more than ten percent per year on average. more

Hacking Group Anonymous Claims Responsibility for Massive Cyberattack on Turkey

The hacking group Anonymous has claimed responsibility for a massive cyberattack on Turkish internet servers over the past week, saying it will continue its assault if Turkey "doesn't stop supporting" Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil). more

The Reverse Donut

A lot of rural areas are going to get fiber over the next five years. This is due to the various large federal grant programs like ReConnect and RDOF. New rural broadband is also coming from the numerous electric cooperatives that have decided to build broadband in the areas where they serve rural electric customers. This is all great news because once a rural area has fiber it ought to be ready for the rest of this century. more