DNS server problems at the U.S. National Security Agency have knocked the secretive intelligence agency site offline for several hours. Reports suggest various possible reasons including an internal routing problem of some sort on their side or errors in firewall or ACL [access control list] policy. Other possibilities are speculated to be a technical glitch or a hacking incident. The NSA is responsible for analysis of foreign communications, but it is also charged with helping protect the U.S. government against cyber attacks -- the outage is an embarrassment for the agency. ›››
Law, Spam
/ blogs
/ May 16, 2008 9:51 AM PST
Last September MySpace sued ur-spammers Sanford "Spamford" Wallace and Walt "Pickle Jar" Rines were for egregious violations of CAN SPAM. Neither responded, so as was widely reported, earlier this week the court granted a default judgement. Since they sent a lot of spam, the statutory damages came to an enormous $235 million. Even for Spamford, that's a lot of money. ›››
There is a germ of truth (perhaps a prion-sized germ or maybe just an amino acid) in the idea that transmitters in "white spaces" in the TV band *might* disrupt patient monitoring equipment if designed by a lunatic who believes in sending massive pulses of energy in a whitespace in the TV band (perhaps amplified by a large parabolic dish antenna the size of a trashcan lid or larger, aimed at the patient monitor system. But that risk is completely shared with zillions of other potential radiators of energy in the entire electromagnetic spectrum... GE, of course, owns NBC. There is a MAJOR conflict of interest at the corporate level of GE... ›››
Jonathan Zittrain's recent book, The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It, has spurred a lot of discussion both online and offline, with blog posts lauding his insights or criticising his over-apocalyptic imagination. The book itself makes fascinating reading for those who have watched the network grow from its roots in the research community into today's global channel for communications, commerce and cultural expression... One of the reasons that Zittrain puts forward for the growing popularity of closed or, as he prefers 'tethered', devices, is that they are less vulnerable to hacking, security flaws, malware and all the other perils that face any internet-enabled system. ›››
Law, Spam
/ news
/ May 14, 2008 12:52 PM PST
A federal judge in Los Angeles has awarded MySpace close to $230 million in its lawsuit against "Spam King" Sanford Wallace and his business partner Walter Rines. Judge Audrey B. Collins of United States District Court in the Central District of California ruled in MySpace's favor on Monday after the two men failed to show up in court, according to MySpace... While many spammers have been designated "Spam King," Wallace earned the title back in the late 1990s as a result of spam messages sent by his company Cyber Promotions. ›››
At the request of ICANN, Paul E. Black, a computer scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed an algorithm that may guide applicants in proposing new Top-Level Domains (TLDs). As new TLDs are added to the familiar .com, .info, and .net, the algorithm checks whether the newly proposed name is confusingly similar to existing ones by looking for visual likenesses in its appearance. ›››
Paul Twomey, chief executive of ICANN and member of the British-North American Committee, advises chief executives of the risks to business from cyber-espionage and how to deal with them... "There are reports of cyber-espionage against the US defense industry and the UK by China," said Twomey on Wednesday. ›››
Google search is available over IPv6 at ipv6.google.com (you'll need an IPv6 connection to view it)... From the official blog: "We hope that by allowing every computer and mobile device on the network to talk to each other directly -- an idea known as the "end-to-end principle" that was crucial to the original design of the Internet -- IPv6 will allow the continued growth of the Internet and enable new applications yet to be invented." ›››
Seven NATO nations gave their backing on Wednesday to a new cyber defense centre in Estonia, the ex-Soviet state which last year faced weeks of attacks on its Internet structure after a row with Russia. Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Spain agreed to help fund and staff the centre in the Estonian capital Tallinn. The United States will initially send an observer to the project, aimed at boosting defenses against such attacks. ›››
A recent story today about discussions for an official defense Botnet in the USA prompted me to post a question I've been asking for the last year. Are some of the world's botnets secretly run by intelligence agencies, and if not, why not? Some estimates suggest that up to 1/3 of PCs are secretly part of a botnet. The main use of botnets is sending spam, but they are also used for DDOS extortion attacks and presumably other nasty things like identity theft. But consider this... ›››
Researchers at Information Security Research Team (INSERT) have dissevered a serious flaw in Google's Gmail service. The group demonstrates how anyone with no special Internet access privileges other than being able to connect to SMTP (TCP port 25) and HTTP (TCP port 80) servers is able to exploit a single Gmail account in order to be granted nearly unrestricted access to Google's massive whitelisted SMTP relay infrastructure. Read more from the report... ›››
Public Interest Registry, the organization in charge of ".org" top-level domains, disclosed a planned fee increase in a May 1 letter to ICANN [PDF]. The fee increase does not require the ICANN's approval. PIR did not cite a reason in its letter. Earlier this year, VeriSign Inc., the company in charge of managing ".com" and ".net," also announced price increases. ›››
The new Clearwire could be game-changing, but the rules of the game may not be quite as Clearwire presents them. I have been wondering since last July whether something significant would happen in the Google/Sprint world. The deal announcement earlier this weekseems to be that key development... In a nutshell, Sprint will contribute its substantial spectrum licenses in the 2.5 GHz range and its WiMAX-related assets and intellectual property. Google, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks will invest a total of $3.2 billion. ›››
I see and hear a lot of confusion about next generation networks (NGN). In most cases people are using the term roughly as the ITU-T defines it: "A Next Generation Network (NGN) is a packet-based network able to provide services including Telecommunication Services and able to make use of multiple broadband, QoS-enabled transport technologies and in which service-related functions are independent from underlying transport-related technologies." but many people don't realize how little this has to do with the Internet... ›››
With IPv4 addresses in short supply, they could become increasingly interesting and marketable goods. This is a concern for Regional Internet Registries (RIR) that are in charge of managing IP address allocations. Heise Online reports: "If they officially permit transfers or sales in the future, they will be implicitly accepting commercialization and privatization. Any attempt to insist on the return of addresses to the RIRs could drive trading, which is probably inevitable, underground..." ›››
I saw an interesting news item that broke Monday courtesy of DomainNameNews and SlashDot that hasn't been broadly covered yet. I'm surprised no one has posted on this yet on CircleID, so here goes. Apparently VeriSign has been awarded a patent for the resolution of mis-typed domain names. This was at the heart of the controversy back in 2003 around their SiteFinder Service. Amidst a storm of criticism ICANN insisted VeriSign shut down the service, and the company eventually agreed. ›››