Amidst reports of US, British and Canadian spying on the Latin American nation, Brazil has announced that it will host a global summit on Internet governance in April. President Dilma Rousseff made the announcement after a discussion in Brasilia with Fadi Chehadé, ICANN's CEO. Chehade heaped praise on Rousseff for using her UN General Assembly speech in September to demand measures to thwart the massive US cyber spying operation revealed by US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden. The summit will take place in Rio de Janeiro.
Rodney Joffe, Senior Technologist at Neustar, explaines that vehicles (beginning with 1998 models) are vulnerable to hacking, but manufacturers have been unable to fix the problem. In the video below, Joffe explains the challenge to cars and the possible threats that exist for other machines connected to a network.
Leaders of organizations responsible for coordination of the Internet technical infrastructure globally have met in Montevideo, Uruguay, to consider current issues affecting the future of the Internet.
Stephen Shankland reporting in CNET: "In a new effort to bring Internet access to the world's billions, Google, US and UK government organizations, and a raft of high-tech partners on Monday announced the Alliance for Affordable Internet..."
ICANN has announced that Paul Mockapetris, inventor of the Domain Name System (DNS), has agreed to serve as Senior Security Advisor to the Generic Domains Division and its President, Akram Atallah.
In support of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, DDoS Awareness Day is a virtual, global event focused on raising awareness and education around the threat of DDoS attacks. Hosted by Neustar with and exclusive media partner CSO, DDoS Awareness Day brings together top experts in global security to share their views, technical tips and from-the-trenches experience. Attendees will also be given access to a wealth of DDoS materials: white papers, surveys, presentations, best practices and more.
Symantec has disabled part of one of the world's largest networks of infected computers, according to reports today. About 500,000 hijacked computers have been taken out of the 1.9 million strong ZeroAccess botnet. The zombie computers were used for advertising and online currency fraud and to infect other machines. Security experts warned that any benefits from the takedown might be short-lived.
United States ranks 24th worldwide in the percentage of residents who use the Internet, according to the International Telecommunications Union's 2013 State of Broadband Report, released recently at a meeting of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development. Eighty-one percent of U.S. residents use the Internet, the ITU said. Countries with the highest percentage of people using the Internet was Iceland, where 97 percent of the people are Internet users. The top 10 countries all had usage rates above 88 percent.
Senior Research Engineer, Doug Madory at Renesys reports: "A few hours ago, we observed a total Internet blackout in Sudan and, as we publish this blog, the Internet remains largely unavailable. By count of impacted networks, it is the largest national blackout since Egypt disconnected itself in January 2011. The massive outage came as the government began a violent crackdown on protests triggered by the government’s decision to end fuel subsidies."
Council of European National Top level Domain Registries (CENTR) has released its latest quarterly Domain Name Stat Report stating that ccTLDs have continued increasing their market share against gTLDs -- this quarter rising from 44% to 45%. ccTLD IDNs continue to grow although at a slightly lower rate.
In a recent blog post, Dan Jaffe, Association of National Advertisers' Executive VP of Government Relations, shares some concerns about ICANN's "overly rapid Top Level Domain rollout".
A coalition, called StopWatching.Us, which includes over a hundred advocacy organizations and companies is working to organize "the biggest mass protest of the NSA's surveillance programs to date" in Washington, D.C. The coalition consists of organizations and companies such as ACLU, Access, Demand Progress, Electronic Frontier Foundation, FreedomWorks, Fight for the Future, Free Press, Mozilla, reddit, Restore the Fourth and Thoughtworks.
Verisign today has posted a letter as a public comment concerning ICANN's New gTLD Name Collision Risk Mitigation proposal. The letter, signed by Danny McPherson, Pat Kane (SVP Naming and Directory Services) and Tom Indelicarto (VP and Associate General Counsel), shares Verisign's analysis focused on identifying some of the systematic risks that will be exposed by the new gTLD program and who the impacted parties are likely to be. The letter takes into account details about a focused technical analysis of the .CBA applied-for string.
Edward Wyatt reporting in the New York Times: "In a momentous battle over whether the Web should remain free and open, members of a federal appeals court expressed doubt over a government requirement that Internet service providers treat all traffic equally. On Monday, the Federal Communications Commission and Verizon, one of the largest Internet service providers, squared off in a two-hour session of oral arguments -- three times as long as was scheduled."
Google reported today that it has filed an amended petition in the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The company, in a blog post, reports: "This petition [PDF] mirrors the requests made to Congress and the President by our industry and civil liberties groups in a letter [PDF] earlier this year. Namely, that Google be allowed to publish detailed statistics about the types (if any) of national security requests we receive under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, including Section 702." Request has also been made by Google for the court to hold its hearing in open rather than behind closed doors.