Cryptographic Catastrophe Theory

Technologists and law enforcement have been arguing about cryptography policy for about 30 years now. People talk past each other, with each side concluding the other side are unreasonable jerks because of some fundamental incompatible assumptions between two conceptual worlds in collision. In the physical world, bank branches have marble columns and granite counters and mahogany woodwork to show the world that they are rich and stable. more

Restricting Anti-Virus Won’t Work

In a blog post, Stewart Baker proposed restricting access to sophisticated anti-virus software as a way to limit the development of sophisticated malware. It won't work, for many different and independent reasons. To understand why, though, it's necessary to understand how AV programs work. The most important technology used today is the "signature" - a set of patterns of bytes - of each virus. Every commercial AV program on the market operates on a subscription model... more

Update on IPv6 Address Distribution in the RIPE NCC Service Region

At the recent RIPE Meeting we presented some IPv6 address distribution statistics that we would like to share with a wider audience. In the article below, you can find recent statistics on IPv6 allocations and assignments. The first image shows the number of IPv6 allocations the RIPE NCC made to LIRs in each quarter, starting in 2008... Each year is depicted in a different colour, the last one showing the number of allocations made in Q3 2012. more

Beyond the Interweb

Today's Internet is a network of networks and seen through the lens of the web. We need to look beyond the engineering history to see the Internet in the context of the broader vision of JCR Licklider, an acoustic psychologist, and his vision of man/computer symbiosis... JCR Licklider would've been thrilled to see such a powerful man-machine symbiosis becoming so normal and having it work so well. Lick, as he was called, can be considered the grandfather of the Internet. more

Al-Jazeera, HuffPost Arabi Among 21 News Sites Blocked by Egypt, Plus Possible Legal Action

At least 21 news sites critical of the government in Egypt, including the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera and Huffington Post’s Arabic-language site HuffPost Arabi, have been blocked. more

About That Second, Third and Fourth Wireless “Attachment”

There is some good news about the decision by Verizon Wireless to offer shared monthly data plans. But there could be a lot more if the FCC applied its Carterfone policy. That policy gave consumers the power to decide what and how many devices to attach to a network connection. If Carterfone applied, consumers could use multiple devices to access a network subscription, albeit perhaps not at the same time. more

ICANN Gives .amazon Talks a March Deadline

ICANN's board of directors has voted to put a March deadline on discussions concerning .amazon top-level domain. more

Interplanetary Internet

We had a very interesting presentation and discussion regarding the topic of interplanetary internet with my international colleagues, of which Vint Cerf – one of the “fathers of the internet” – is also a member. As a partner of the Interplanetary Networking Special Interest Group (IPNSIG), he took us on a journey that he has been involved with over the last 20 years regarding communication networks in space. A true mind-broadening experience. more

Live Data Visualization of DDoS Attacks

Google Ideas in collaboration with Arbor Networks has released a data visualization that maps daily, global DDoS attacks. The tool shows anonymous data linked to these attacks, allowing users to explore historical trends and make the connection to related news events. "The data is updated daily, and historical data can be viewed for any country worldwide." By surfacing this data and providing insights on the global patterns of DDoS attacks, the companies hope that more informed decisions can be made that can reduce the threat of digital attacks. more

Ransomware Causes 15 Schools in Arizona To Stay Closed For a Second Day

The Flagstaff Unified School District (FUSD), in Arizona which consists of 15 schools and over 9,600 students, canceled classes on both Thursday and Friday after a ransomware virus was found on multiple servers. more

The Madness of Broadband Speed Tests

The broadband industry has falsely sold its customers on "speed", so unsurprisingly "speed tests" have become an insane and destructive benchmark... marketing departments at ISPs refuse to define what experience that actually intends to deliver (and what is unreasonable to expect), the network engineers are left with a single and simple marketing requirement: "make it better than it was". more

German High Court Says No to Retaining Telecom, Email Data for Tracking Criminal Networks

The highest court in Germany has ruled against telephone and email data retention used to track criminal networks. Melissa Eddy of the Global and Mail reports: "A law ordering data on calls made from mobile or landline telephones and e-mail exchanges be retained for six months for possible use by criminal authorities violated Germans' constitutional right to private correspondence, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled. In its ruling, the court said the law failed to sufficiently balance the need for personal privacy against that for providing security."
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How to Steal Reputation

The term "reputation hijacking" continues to spread through the anti-spam community and the press. It's intended to describe when a spammer or other bad actor uses someone else's system -- usually one of the large webmail providers -- to send their spam. The idea is that in doing so, they're hijacking the reputation of the webmail provider's IPs instead of risking the reputation of IPs under their own control. But I really have to laugh (though mostly out of sadness) whenever this technique is described as something new... more

Why the Fukushima Analogy Was Apt

A few days ago, CAUCE published a blog post entitled "Epsilon Interactive breach the Fukushima of the Email Industry" on our site, and the always-excellent CircleID. A small coterie of commenters was upset by the hyperbolic nature of the headline. Fair enough, an analogy usually has a high degree of probability that it will fail, and clearly, no one has died as a result of the release of what appears to be tens of millions of people's names and email addresses. But, the two situations are analogous in many other ways, and here's why. more

Why Passive DNS Matters in Cybersecurity

Imagine a scenario. Your website analysis shows that your page has stopped receiving visitors, yet there are no complaints that your domain is unreachable. Strange, isn't it? You are certainly wondering: What's going on? Where are my customers? You see, what happened is that you are facing the consequences of the lack of domain name system (DNS) security. more