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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Broadband and Food Safety

I recently saw a presentation that showed how food safety is starting to rely on good rural broadband. I've already witnessed many other ways that farmers use broadband like precision farming, herd monitoring, and drone surveillance, but food safety was a new concept for me. The presentation centered around the romaine lettuce scare of a few months ago. The food industry was unable to quickly identify the source of the contaminated produce and the result was a recall of all romaine nationwide. more

FCC Chair Kevin Martin Makes His Departure Official, Announces Resignation

In his last meeting today, Federal Communication Commission (FCC) chairman Kevin J. Martin, announced that he will be leaving the commission and will not be staying in the Obama administration. While the chairman had previously declined commenting on his future plans, the departure did not come unexpected. In the statement after announcing his departure at the FCC meeting, Martin also mentioned that he would depart Jan. 20 to become a Senior Fellow at the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C. This announcement follows reports that President-elect Barack Obama will nominate Julius Genachowski to be the next FCC chairman. more

Malware Decrease in February, Trojans Continue to Be Most Prolific

Only 39 percent of computers scanned in February were infected with malware, compared to 50 percent last month, according to recent data gathered by Panda Security. Trojans were found to be the most prolific malware threat, responsible for 61 percent of all cases, followed by traditional viruses and worms which caused 11.59 percent and 9 percent of cases worldwide, respectively. more

China Takes on SpaceX: 13,000 Satellites to Compete With and Monitor SpaceX’s Starlink Constellations

China plans to send almost 13,000 satellites into low-Earth orbit to compete with and monitor SpaceX's Starlink constellations. The project, codenamed "GW," is being run by a newly established group called China Satellite Network Group Co, whose goal is to launch a total of 12,992 small satellites into orbit quickly. more

From Localization to Globalization: Challenges and Evolution of LEO Satellite Communication on RIR Geographic Allocation Principles

Low Earth Orbit satellite networks are dismantling traditional IP address allocation models. As signals defy borders, Regional Internet Registries face challenges in geolocation accuracy, routing security, and the definition of digital territory itself. more

China’s Internet Users Pass Half a Billion

The number of Chinese Internet users has surpassed 500 million, with nearly half of them using microblogs, or Weibo, according to latest official figures. About 55.8 million Chinese people became new Internet users last year, bringing the country’s Web population to 513 million, representing an Internet penetration rate of 38.3 percent, according to a report released by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). more