Good News from Three Spam Cases in the U.S.

They say (whoever "they" are) that good things come in threes, and that certainly seems true for law enforcement against spammers this week. In New York, Adam Vitale was sentenced to 30 months in prison and ordered to pay $183,000 in restitution for a week of spamming AOL back in 2005... In Illinois, an FTC settlement requires Spear Systems and company executives Bruce Parker and Lisa Kimsey to give up $29,000, stop making "false or unsubstantiated claims about health benefits" of their products, and bars them from violating CAN-SPAM ever again... And finally, in Seattle, the Robert Soloway case continues... more

What is Google Up To?

The astonishing rise and rise of the fortunes of Google has been one of the major features of both social and business life of the early 21st century. In the same way that Microsoft transformed the computer market into a mainstream consumer product through its Windows and Office software products some 20 years ago, Google has had a similar transformative effect upon its environment. more

Another Day, Another Set of Hacking Attacks. News At 11.

While reading Reuters I came across a news article indicating that a number of high profile agencies - from the United Nations to the Canadian Government to government of Taiwan - were broken into over a period of the past five years. ... I'll say it right now, even though I haven't been briefed on it. It was China. more

Advanced AI Is Reshaping the Cybercriminal Landscape at Alarming Speed

A new report has shed light on how advanced artificial intelligence is reshaping the cybercriminal landscape. The latest threat intelligence assessment by Anthropic details how its AI model, Claude, was misused in a string of global cyberattacks that mark a sharp escalation in both scale and sophistication. more

Just Say No, to Your ISP Subverting Your DNS Queries

Over the past few weeks I have been seeing reports that some ISP's are actually subverting DNS queries to their own DNS server. Oh the humanity! What this means is that when you (your computer) does a UDP or TCP Port 53 DNS query the ISP is intercepting that and directing it to their own servers. Has anyone been told by their ISP that they are doing this? No? I didn't think so... more

A Review of Broadband Over Power Lines (BPL) or Power Line Telecommunication (PLT)

The OECD has published a detailed report, Broadband over Powerlines: Developments and Policy Issues, on what was once considered a potentially interesting and disruptive technology that might have rivaled DSL. It notes that having largely failed in that, it is instead being applied to "smart grid" applications. more

Takeaways from the DNS-OARC’s 28th Workshop

March has seen the first of the DNS Operations, Analysis, and Research Center (OARC) workshops for the year, where two days of too much DNS is just not enough! These workshops are concentrated within two days of presentations and discussions that focus exclusively on the current state of the DNS. Here are my impressions of the meeting. more

.BANK Launches With a Bang

The 30-day .BANK Sunrise Period just concluded this week and is notable for several reasons. The .BANK TLD is highly restricted to members of the banking industry. The .BANK Registry (which also has rights to .INSURANCE, launching this fall), was founded by 24 companies and organizations from the banking and insurance industries, The Registry's founders include industry leaders such as the American Banking Association, Citigroup, Dollar Bank, Independent Community Bankers of America, JPMorgan, Visa and Wells Fargo. more

How to Save the “Past” in the “Future of the Internet”: Principles, Procedures and Problems of the Washington Declaration

On April 28, 2022, a "Declaration on the Future of the Internet," initiated by the U.S. government, was signed by 60 governments at the White House in Washington, D.C. According to Jack Sullivan, National Security Advisor to U.S. President Joe Biden, the Declaration is intended to serve as a reference document for future international negotiations on Internet-related issues. Is there a reason why the U.S. government is launching an initiative on the "Future of the Internet" at this point in time? more

Current Difficulties With Displaying Internationalized Top-Level Domains

Earlier this week, we inserted eleven new top-level domains in the DNS root zone. These represent the term "test" translated into ten languages, in ten different scripts (Chinese is represented in two different scripts, and Arabic script is used by two different languages). This blog post is not about that. (If you're interested about it, read our report on the delegations.) What I would like to talk about is some of the difficulties we face today in expressing scripts in a consistent way over the Internet... more

Addressing 2010

It's January again, and being the start of another year, it's as good a time as any to look at the last 12 months and see what the Internet was up to in 2010. This is an update to the report prepared 12 months ago when looking at 2009, so lets see what has changed in the past 12 months in addressing the Internet, and look at how address allocation information can inform us of the changing nature of the network itself. more

New Innovations in Free Space Optics

I read an article on the Finley Engineering blog that talks about new research with free-space optics. For those not familiar with the term, this means communication gear that communicates directly using light without any wires. The article talks about a Chinese team of scientists who have used light to transmit ultrahigh-definition video signals between high-rise buildings. more

A Failed Whois Policy

ICANN's two-year effort to purportedly preserve the Whois public directory to the greatest extent possible while complying with GDPR has failed. Under the latest proposal, the Whois database, once a contractually-required directory of domain name registrants, will be gutted to the point of virtual worthlessness, as registrars, registries, academics, and hand-wringing others ignored the public interest and imposed ever-higher barriers to legitimate, GDPR-compliant access to registration data. more

Illusory Correlation and Security

Fear sells. Fear of missing out, fear of being an imposter, fear of crime, fear of injury, fear of sickness ... we can all think of times when people we know (or worse, people in the throes of madness of crowds) have made really bad decisions because they were afraid of something. Bruce Schneier has documented this a number of times. For instance: "it's smart politics to exaggerate terrorist threats" and ... more

Partnerships Can Enhance Security in Connected Health and Beyond

Like the poetic prose of Bob Dylan, the reality of modern technology cannot be ignored: "the times they are a-changin'." Transitioning from the novelty of the Internet, society is embracing connected technology as the new digital frontier. Dominated by the Internet of Things ("IoT"), the future will be one of increased interconnection of wireless and computing devices in everyday objects, allowing these devices to send and receive personal data. IoT's limits appear boundless, extending from physical devices and home appliances to vehicles and medical implants. more