A Copycat Canadian Privacy Suit Against Gmail

In July, several people filed attempted class action suits against Google, on the peculiar theory that Gmail was spying on its own users' mail. One of the suits was in Federal court, the other two in California state court, but the complaints were nearly identical so we assume that they're coordinated.Now we have a similar suit filed in provincial court in British Columbia, Canada. more

Trust - The Key to Cloud Computing Growth in Europe

The European Commission is optimistic about the future of cloud computing in the region and predicts it will not only save on data storage costs, but create new jobs and boost GDP. The European Union's cloud computing strategy was finally unveiled last week and is expected to boost GDP by around AUD$200 million (about 1 per cent) and create almost four million jobs in just under a decade. This is the first concerted effort by the EU to increase the popularity of cloud computing among businesses. more

Measuring the Cost of Cybercrime

Last week at Virus Bulletin in 2012, Tyler Moore of Southern Methodist University (SMU) gave a talk entitled "Measuring the cost of cyber crime." It was a study done in collaboration with multiple individuals in multiple countries. The study sought to answer this question - How much does cyber crime cost? Up until this point, nobody really knew. more

Cyberattackers Targeting Iranian Infrastructure and Communications Companies

Internet based attacks have targeted Iranian infrastructure and communications companies, disrupting Internet access across the country, according to today's reports. Country's secretary of the High Council of Cyberspace, has been quoted telling the Iranian Labour News Agency: "Yesterday we had a heavy attack against the country's infrastructure and communications companies which has forced us to limit the Internet. ... Presently we have constant cyber attacks in the country." more

The Tale of Thousands of Hacked Modems in Brazil, Affecting Millions

Kaspersky Lab Expert, Fabio Assolini, has provided detailed description of an attack which as been underway in Brazil since 2011 using 1 firmware vulnerability, 2 malicious scripts and 40 malicious DNS servers, affecting 6 hardware manufacturers, resulting in millions of Brazilian internet users falling victim to a sustained and silent mass attack on DSL modems. more

Dot UK, A No-Brainer!

British registry Nominet has launched a consultation on whether .UK should be opened up at the top level under a scheme called direct.uk. Currently, registrations are only allowed at the second level, .CO.UK being Britain's main Internet suffix. The question really isn't should this be done. The question is: why has it taken so long to get here? more

A Short History of ITU Network Security Activity

Since the inception of ITU precursors in 1850, its various bodies have treated the subject of telecommunication network security as both an obligation of signatories to the treaty instruments as well as an ongoing collaborative activity. However, what it actually did in those activities was constrained by its jurisdiction and participant competency -- which encompassed international public telecommunication services provided primarily by designated government agency service providers known as PTTs. more

Most U.S. Agencies Expected to Miss IPv6 Deadline

Most federal agencies are expected to miss the September 30 deadline that requires their public-facing websites to support IPv6. An official weekly snapshot provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology showed that as of September 26, just 11 percent of the 1,498 government external domains tested had operational IPv6 support, Federal Computer reports.  more

No Virginia, You Have No Duty to Secure Your WiFi Access Point

Every now and again a report flies across the network about the police breaking down someone's door and attempting to arrest the home owner for bad things online - assuming that whatever happened from that person's Internet connection is their fault. Now there are lots of problems with this - lots of problems. But one of the big ones is that anyone can access an open access point... more

Understanding the Brazilian Court Decision to Arrest Google’s Representative

Brazil has been on the news lately, and not for good reasons: an electoral judge order the arrest of Google's Director in Brazil for not complying with a court decision that ordered the removal a YouTube video with allegedly defamatory content. A lot has been said about this, but it seems that many people got it wrong, so let's recap some of the misinterpretations that circulated, specially those at the EFF website. more

Community Support Required for Alternative Trademark Clearinghouse Solution

It's time for the community to demonstrate its resolve to see ICANN implement a successful and effective Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH). Let's be clear here. The current ICANN implementation model and approach is flawed and needs attention. Following more than three months of consultation and negotiation, today I'm pleased to be able to present the domain name and trademark protection industries with an alternative solution for the operation of ICANN's Trademark Clearinghouse for the new Top-Level Domain (TLD) program. more

Letter to ICANN on Big Brands Proposed Usage of Generic Domain Extensions

We have been taking an active interest in the development of the new TLD program by ICANN and excited by the many opportunities and challenges that this "opening up" will bring to us, our customers and the internet ecosystem as a whole. However, we also have our concerns about how some entities wish to use generic domain name extensions as "walled gardens". more

Rebalancing Telco Infrastructure Investments

One of the reasons telecommunications has been so successful for more than 160 years is that it adopted a strategy that resulted in a seamless network all around the world. You can pick up a phone anywhere in the world and, with little or no instruction, make a call to anybody else in the world without worrying what phones and technology they are using on the other end of the line... But during that process the nature of the network operators changed. more

Unclear on the Concept, Sanctions Edition

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is an advocacy group that, among other things, tries to isolate Iran by pressuring businesses and organizations to stop doing business with Iran. This week they turned their attention to ICANN and RIPE to try to cut off Internet access to Iranian organizations. Regardless of one's opinion about the wisdom of isolating Iran (and opinions are far from uniform), this effort was a bad idea in an impressive number of both technical and political ways. more

National Broadband, Leadership or Procrastination

There is no doubt that any national infrastructure plan of the magnitude of national broadband networks as they are currently rolled out in 9 countries and which policies have been put in place in another 110 countries will have questions attached to it. Furthermore, this infrastructure is being developed for the digital economy, which, in itself, is a fast-moving world. Five years ago there were no smartphones, tablets, mobile apps or smart TVs. more