Threat Intelligence

DNSSEC Becomes a Reality Today at ICANN Brussels

Attendees at the public ICANN meeting in Brussels today heard from over two dozen companies that have implemented or are planning to support DNSSEC, the next-generation standard protocol for secured domain names. It is clearer than ever before that DNSSEC is becoming a reality. more

Officially Compromised Privacy

The essence of information privacy is control over disclosure. Whoever is responsible for the information is supposed to be able to decide who sees it. If a society values privacy, it needs to ensure that there are reasonable protections possible against disclosure to those not authorized by the information's owner. In the online world, an essential technical component for this assurance is encryption. If the encryption that is deployed permits disclosure to those who were not authorized by the information's owner, there should be serious concern about the degree of privacy that is meaningfully possible. more

Large Open-Source Data Set Released to Help Train Algorithms Spot Malware

For the first time, a large dataset has been released by a security firm to help AI research and training of machine learning models that statically detect malware. more

Web Server Botnets and Server Farms as Attack Platforms

Are file inclusion vulnerabilitiess equivalent to remote code execution? Are servers (both Linux and Windows) now the lower hanging fruit rather than desktop systems? In the February edition of the Virus Bulletin magazine, we (Kfir Damari, Noam Rathaus and Gadi Evron (me) of Beyond Security) wrote an article on cross platform web server malware and their massive use as botnets, spam bots and generally as attack platforms. Web security papers deal mostly with secure coding and application security. In this paper we describe how these are taken to the next level with live attacks and operational problems service providers deal with daily. more

Three Things Registrars Must Do to Enhance Security

If the rise of phishing has taught us anything, it's that on the Internet, if a digital asset has value, there's somebody out there who wants to steal it. Whether it's a bank account password, a credit card number, a PayPal login, or even a magic sword in an online game, there's a fraudster somewhere trying to misappropriate it for his or her own nefarious purposes. Domain names have always been a target for such criminals. more

The Name Collision Conference

Earlier this week Verisign sponsored a two day conference on name collisions in the DNS. Despite the very short time frame in which it was organized, only a month from announcement to meeting, there were some very good presentations. I'll just hit some highlights here; all of the papers and slides are on their web site at namecollisions.net. Sunday morning started with a keynote by Bruce Schneier, who is not a DNS expert (and doesn't claim to be) but had some interesting observations on names in general. more

Sophia Bekele: The AUCC Debate on Cybersecurity Needs to Involve All Stakeholders

The African Union's Convention on the Establishment of a Credible Legal Framework for Cyber Security in Africa (AUCC) has been the focus of debate recently.To shed light on online security issues in Africa, CIO East Africa sought the views of Ms Sophia Bekele, an internet security expert and international policy advisor over internet and ICT. more

Over a Billion Email Addresses of Major Spam Operation Exposed via Unprotected Backups

A spamming group called River City Media (RCM) has had its database of 1.4 billion records leaked. This was revealed today by MacKeeper Security Researcher, Chris Vickery in cooperation with CSO Online and Spamhaus. more

Mobilizing Russian Population Attacking Georgia: Similar to the Estonian Incident?

It seems like the online Russian population is getting mobilized. Like a meme spreading on the blogosphere, the mob is forming and starting to "riot", attacking Georgia. This seems very similar to the Estonian incident, only my current guess is natural evolution rather than grass-roots implanted -- but I am getting more and more convinced of the similarities as more information becomes available. Determining exactly when the use of scripts by regular users started, is key to this determination. more

The Internet as Weapon

One of the most striking and enduring dichotomies in the conceptualization of electronic communication networks is summed up in the phrase "the Internet as weapon." With each passing day, it seems that the strident divergence plays in the press -- the latest being Tim's lament about his "web" vision being somehow perverted. The irony is that the three challenges he identified would have been better met if he had instead pursued a career at the Little Theatre of Geneva and let SGML proceed to be implemented on OSI internets rather than refactoring it as HTML to run on DARPA internets. more

Dispersing a DDoS: Initial Thoughts on DDoS Protection

Distributed Denial of Service is a big deal -- huge pools of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as security cameras, are compromised by botnets and being used for large scale DDoS attacks. What are the tools in hand to fend these attacks off? The first misconception is that you can actually fend off a DDoS attack. There is no magical tool you can deploy that will allow you to go to sleep every night thinking, "tonight my network will not be impacted by a DDoS attack." more

ICANN Makes Urgent Call for Full Deployment of Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC)

In light of increasing reports of malicious activity targeting the DNS infrastructure, ICANN is calling for the full deployment of the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) across all unsecured domain names. more

A Closer Look at Apple and Location-Tracking

There's been a lot of media attention to a report that iPhones track your movements. It's even reached the U.S. Senate. I'm underwhelmed. I think that the threat is overhyped. What is happening is that these devices create a hidden file with your location... more

DNS Amplification Attacks: Out of Sight, Out of Mind? (Part 1)

Geoff Huston's recent post about the rise of DNS amplification attacks offers excellent perspective on the issue. Major incidents like the Spamhaus attack Geoff mentions at the beginning of his post make headlines, but even small attacks create noticeable floods of traffic. These attacks are easy to launch and effective even with relatively modest resources and we see evidence they're occurring regularly. Although DNS servers are not usually the target of these attacks the increase in traffic and larger response sizes typically stress DNS infrastructure and require attention from operation teams. more

How a Security Specialist Fell Victim to Attack

Our systems are protected by state of the art security systems. Our SPAM filter is a hardware device that is nearly 100% effective. It also helps in protecting against Spyware and other malicious code. Our Firewall is similar to those you would find in large corporations. Our Anti-Virus system has served us well and we've not had problems with virus for years. ...Two weeks ago, I received approximately twenty e-mails requesting the review and approval of Defending The Net articles published on other sites. I thoroughly review the e-mails to make sure they seem legitimate... more