Many have heard of botnets, but for those that aren't certain what they are: Botnets are armies of hacked zombie computers that have malware on them, and send spam email at the command of operators anywhere in the world. They can also be told to deploy denial of service attacks, by all hitting the homepage of a given company, or attacking the DNS server or a service or country. more
At the Internet Governance Forum in Baku, I made an intervention on behalf of NL IGF, reporting on the recommendations given by the participants of Workshop 87... I concluded that more regulatory and law enforcement bodies need to become part of the IGF discussions, as they are an integral part of governing the Internet from a safety and security perspective. Mr. Cerf responded with a one-liner: "I can't help observing, if we keep the regulatories confused, maybe they will leave us alone". more
Over the past days a lot has been said and written on counter hacking by enforcement agencies. The cause is a letter Dutch Minister I. Opstelten, Security & Justice, sent to parliament. Pros and cons were debated and exchanged. Despite the fact that I perfectly understand the frustration of enforcement agencies of having to find actionable data and evidence that gets criminals convicted in a borderless, amorphous environment, a line seems to be crossed with this idea presented to Dutch parliament. Where are we? more
ICANN is clearly changing with the new CEO making immediate changes to the organizational structure and Compliance announcing a number more effective tools and procedures at Sunday's At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) and Regional Leadership Meetings. It seems very ambitious and they will need to be because our year-long research, publicly distributed here for the first time, shows a complete breakdown in ICANN's Compliance functions on every level possible. more
The Microsoft action against 3322.org, a Chinese company, started with the news that computers were infected during the production phase. Stepping away from the controversy surrounding the approach, there are important lessons that cyber security officials and upper management, deciding on the level of and budget for cyber security in organisations should learn and take into account. I'm writing this contribution from a premise: China uses the fact that most IT devices are built in China to its advantage. Allow me to start with an account from personal memory to set the stage. more
Today I released a report on 'National cyber crime and online threats reporting centres. A study into national and international cooperation'. Mitigating online threats and the subsequent enforcing of violations of laws often involves many different organisations and countries. Many countries are presently engaged in erecting national centres aimed at reporting cyber crime, spam or botnet mitigation. more
I will first begin this post by emphasizing that this article is entirely my personal viewpoint and not to be considered as endorsed by or a viewpoint of my employer or any other organization that I am affiliated with. Neither is this to be considered an indictment of the sterling work (which I personally value very highly) that several people in Microsoft are doing against cybercrime. Microsoft's takedown of 3322.org to disrupt the Nitol botnet is partial and will, at best, have a temporary effect on the botnet itself... more
Reading this morning's blog from Microsoft about "Operation b70" left me wondering a lot of things. Most analysts within the botnet field are more than familiar with 3322.org - a free dynamic DNS provider based in China known to be unresponsive to abuse notifications and a popular home to domain names used extensively for malicious purposes - and its links to several botnets around the world. more
A few weeks ago, the New York Times published an article saying that the Stuxnet worm, which infected a large number of Iran's nuclear power plants, was a joint effort between the United States and Israel. The program began under former president George W. Bush and continued under President Obama. Last month, the Washington Post ran an article saying that the US and Israel collaborated in a joint effort to develop Flame and that work included Stuxnet. more
This morning M3AAWG announced the creation of the J.D. Falk award to recognize and honor people like J.D. who work to make the Internet safer for all users... J.D. was a legend in the abuse prevention world when I first started learning about spam and abuse prevention back in the late 90's. more
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