EFF’s Emerging Alignment With Offshore Internet Pharmacies

The last few years have been challenging ones for members of the Canadian International Pharmacy Association. First, in 2010, they lost their ability to advertise in the US search space after the US Department of Justice noted that many seemingly "Canadian" pharmacy websites "sell drugs obtained from countries other than Canada" when shipping medicines into the US, and major search advertising programs tightened their policies, effectively excluding CIPA's members from advertising in the US. more

UDRP Failure Endangers Consumers

Yesterday I participated in a panel at the International Consumer Product Safety Conference sponsored by the International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organization (ICPHSO) held at the European Commission in Brussels Belgium. This conference brings together the global community of product safety engineers, manufacturers, retailers, regulators, inspectors, and counterfeiting investigators. The role of online fraud and illicit product traffic is clearly one of the conference priorities. more

Why App Stores Won’t Survive

The recent news that online retailing giant Amazon.com would open an app store to compete with Google's Android Market has set off a flurry of speculation about the future app store landscape. Within the next few months there will be no fewer than three major Android app stores... Several other major players have announced app store intentions though specifics are lacking. And of course, there are existing independent app stores that publish Android apps, such as GetJar, SlideMe and Appbrain. more

2009 Domain Name Year in Review

To say that it's been quite a year in the world of domain names would be an understatement. From compromised country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLD) registries, to the delay of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs), some of the events of the past year have been surprising, while others could easily have been predicted. Regardless of whether you could have seen these coming, please find below my list of 2009's most important domain name events...at least, as I see them. more

Ukraine’s Leading Mobile Operator Struck by War’s Largest Cyberattack

In the largest cyberattack since Russia's invasion in February 2022, Ukraine's leading mobile network operator, Kyivstar, faced severe disruptions. more

FCC Approves White Space Usage for “Super Wi-Fi” Technologies

In a unanimous vote today, the FCC has given a green light for the use of "white spaces" in order to deliver broadband connections as super "WiFi". From today's announcement: "The Federal Communications Commission today took steps to free up vacant airwaves between TV channels -- called "white spaces" -- to unleash a host of new technologies, such as "super Wi-Fi," and myriad other diverse applications. This is the first significant block of spectrum made available for unlicensed use in more than 20 years. TV white space spectrum is considered prime real estate because its signals travel well, making it ideally suited for mobile wireless devices." more

The Value of Trust in 2007

Applications and devices like cell phones, email, search engines, and automated programs handle the error messages differently; it would be naive for VeriSign to think only humans with browsers rely on DNS. When a user enters a non-exist domain name on their cell phone the DNS error message would prevent downloading. Now cell phones download VeriSign's SiteFinder webpage and Service Providers bill the cell phone user for that extra usage. SPAM prevention programs also rely on this error message to check to see if the domain is real. more

Crack the Code: That’s a Direct Challenge

I had quite an interesting experience recently. I was hired by a company to perform a vulnerability assessment and penetration test on their network. During the initial meeting, one of the key technical staff presented me with a challenge; He handed over the NTLM hash of the domain Administrator account and challenged me to decipher it. He explained that the complexity and length of the password would prevent me from deciphering it during the time allotted for the project. He was actually quite confident in my impending failure... more

ICANN Explains Why Judge Should Dismiss VeriSign’s Lawsuit

In a 33-page motion filed on Monday, April 5, 2004, ICANN has asked a federal judge in Los Angeles to dismiss VeriSign's recent lawsuit filed against the non-profit organization. More specifically, the filed motion has asked the court to "dismiss VeriSign's first six claims for relief with prejudice," which are... more

Just How Big is China’s Cable and TV market?

The numbers are big. Official figures quoted at the recent 21st annual China Content and Broadcasting Network (CCBN) conference indicate that China has 400 million TV households, of which 210 million subscribe to cable TV (CATV). Of these cable subscribers, 140 million receive digital service while the rest are still on analog systems. This means that the country's CATV network is still largely a one-way network, limiting the growth of on-demand and interactive services. more

Contributory Cybersquatting and the Impending Demise of Domain Name Proxy Services?

This case involves an alleged domain name theft. Solid Host is a web host and initial owner of the domain name solidhost.com, which it registered through eNom in 2004. Solid Host claims that in 2008, a security breach at eNom allowed an unknown interloper (Doe) to steal the domain name and move the registration to NameCheap. Doe also acquired NameCheap's "WhoisGuard" service, a domain name proxy service that masked Doe's contact information in the Whois database. Solid Host contacted Doe and sought the domain name; Doe asked for $12,000, and Solid Host took a pass... more

Fitting .JOBS Into the Marketplace

There have been several posts over the last 48 hours in response to the new dot jobs domain on both sides of the argument. John Sumser from The Electronic Recruiting News provides a balanced view of the new domain and in the end determines that then new domain will not help job seekers. Gerry Crispin has a slightly different view on The CareerXroads, which is not surprising as Gerry was a advocate of the new domain from the beginning. Joel Cheesman provides a fantastic top 10 thoughts on the new domain as well... more

How to Build an Internet Governance Forum

Public consultations on the new "Internet Governance Forum" being created by the United Nations will be held in Geneva February 16-17. The Internet Governance Project has released a new discussion paper explaining how the Forum could work. The Forum must be as open as possible and give all stakeholders equal participation rights. Its deliberations must be wide-ranging and resist politically motivated barriers to discussion. And its products must feed into other, more authoritative Internet governance forums. more

The Internet of Things: When Sci-Fi Becomes Reality

In my last blog post I shared some of the general security challenges that come with the Internet of Things (IoT). In this post, I will focus on one particular security risk: distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Even before the age of IoT, DDoS attacks have been turning multitudes of computers into botnets, attacking a single target and causing denial of services for the target's users. By "multitudes" we can be talking about thousands or even millions of victim devices. Now add IoT into the equation... more

Universal White Spaces: Moving Beyond the TV Bands

The FCC's recent decision allowing license-exempt access to TV White Spaces, i.e. unused TV channels, is a small but very important step in spectrum policy. But, more important than the TV bands, is the policy approach and the fact that it was adopted in the face of extreme lobbying by well established vested interests. more