VeriSign CEO Resigns, Company Founder In Charge For Now

VeriSign's CEO, William Roper, has resigned from the company and its board. Roper has been president and CEO of VeriSign for a bit more than a year -- he was named in May 2007 after VeriSign's previous CEO, Stratton Sclavos, stepped down for undisclosed reasons. VeriSign announced today that its board elected the company's founder and first chief executive, Jim Bidzos, as interim chief executive and president and named him executive chairman. more»

Google Ordered To Release YouTube User Data to Viacom

On Wednesday night, a federal judge ruled that Google must turn over YouTube user activity which includes videos watched, IP addresses, and usernames, to the media giant, Viacom as part of a long-running copyright infringement case. Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says: "The Court's erroneous ruling is a set-back to privacy rights, and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube. We urge Viacom to back off this overbroad request and Google to take all steps necessary to challenge this order and protect the rights of its users." However, according to CNET News, there is a heavy protective order in place that will keep individuals' personal information protected in this ruling. Update: PDF download of court order here. more»

Lithuanian Government and Corporate Websites Attacked

Hundreds of Lithuanian government and corporate Web sites were hacked and plastered with Soviet-era symbols and other digital graffiti this week in what appears to be a coordinated cyber attack launched by Russian hacker groups, reports Brian Krebs of the Washington Post. According to reports, Lithuanian officials did not directly accuse Russian hackers of initiating the attacks which are said to have come from foreign computers. However, iDefense, a security intelligence firm, based in Reston, VA, as linked the attacks to nationalistic Russian hacker groups protesting a new Lithuanian law banning the display of Soviet emblems, including honors won during World War II. more»

Post IPv6 Mandate Resulted in No Significant Increase in IPv6 Traffic

A three-year-old mandate for IPv6 usage, put into place by the White House's Office of Management and Budget, went into effect June 30 -- an order requiring all U.S. government agencies to have the ability to transmit IPv6. But passing of the deadline doesn't mean that U.S. government agencies have actually begun using IPv6 for transit, reports Sean Michael Kerner of InternetNews. In fact, even with experts predicting that the current IPv4 Internet addressing scheme will be exhausted by 2010, the vast majority of all traffic in the U.S. remains IPv4. more»

Broadband Internet Adoption Stalls in United States, Says Report

Broadband growth in the United States has effectively stalled over the past five months, a possible victim of the economic slowdown, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Some 55 percent of all adult Americans now have a high-speed internet connection, or a broadband connection, in their home, according to the report, "Home Broadband Adoption 2008." That number compares with 47 percent of adult Americans with broadband in early 2007, and 54 percent in December 2007. Hence broadband growth over the previous 12 or 13 months has dramatically tapered off. more»

Give Web Browsers Expiry Dates, Say Security Researchers

Computer security researchers from ETH Zurich, Google, and IBM have suggested that computer software would be more secure if it were labeled with an expiration date -- similar to perishable food product. Firefox 2 is considered to be the most secure browser since 83.3% of its users worldwide are running the current version. The issue of browser security matters more these days because more and more malware is targeting Web browser vulnerabilities. Remotely exploitable vulnerabilities have been on the rise since 2000 and accounted for 89.4% of vulnerabilities reported in 2007, according to the study, which claims that a "growing percentage of these remotely exploitable vulnerabilities are associated with Web browsers." more»

Cloud Computing Services Increasingly Used by Spammers to Host Their Junk

The spam attacks which occurred this weekend and claimed to have come from Microsoft, are reported to have used Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) servers. Brian Krebs of Washington Post's Security Fix has investigated this issue -- from the report: "...to spammers and scammers accustomed to paying for all kinds of Web services with stolen credit cards, Amazon's service is another place to host their junk, said Suresh Ramasubramanian, head of anti-spam operations at Outblaze, a Hong Kong-based outfit that has listed all of Amazon's EC2 Internet space on its spam blacklists..." Also reported: "Anti-spam group Spamhaus also has flagged a large swath of Amazon's EC2 Internet address space on its "policy blocklist," which subscribers use to block e-mail from dynamic Internet addresses..." more»

U.S. Military Wants to Patrol the Internet

The U.S. military is looking for a contractor to patrol cyberspace, watching for warning signs of forthcoming terrorist attacks or other hostile activity on the Web. "If someone wants to blow us up, we want to know about it," Robert Hembrook, the deputy intelligence chief of the U.S. Army's Fifth Signal Command in Mannheim, Germany, told United Press International. "The purpose of the services will be to identify and assess stated and implied threat, antipathy, unrest and other contextual data relating to selected Internet domains," says the solicitation. more»

Wi-Fi Alliance Now Certifying Devices for Voice Over Wi-Fi Applications

The Wi-Fi Alliance has announced today its plans to make voice a part of Wi-Fi networks, and has introduced a program to certify products. According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Voice-Personal stamp of approval means a product is capable of making or handling good-quality voice calls in the home or a small office environment. Access points, wireless routers, handsets and laptops can all be tested and certified. more»

Turkish Hacker Group Strikes Again, This Time Victims are ICANN and IANA

The same Turkish Hacking Group, NetDevilz, responsible for the hacking and defacement of the popular photo sharing site, Photobucket, has been reported to have briefly succeeded in accessing ICANN and IANA domain names yesterday, June 26, 2008, and redirecting them to a page containing the message: "You think that you control the domains but you don't! Everybody knows wrong. We control the domains including ICANN! Don't you believe us?"... more»

Cloud Computing Has Potential to Change the IT Market, Says Gartner

Gartner says the confusion that surrounds the term "cloud computing" signifies its potential to change the IT market. Gartner defines cloud computing as scalable, IT-related capabilities provided as a service on the internet. "When organizations cross the threshold between the internet as a communications channel and the deliberate delivery of service over the internet, then we truly start to head for an economy based on consumption of everything from storage to computation to video to finance deduction management," said Daryl Plummer, a Gartner analyst. more»

Cisco, IBM, Intel, Juniper and Microsoft Announce Consortium to Address Global Security Threats

Five leading IT vendors have announced the creation of the Industry Consortium for Advancement of Security on the Internet (ICASI), a nonprofit organization that intends to let vendors and customers work together on global IT security threats and resolve them in a government-neutral way. ICASI's founding members include, Cisco, IBM, Intel, Juniper and Microsoft. ICASI will target "global, multivendor cyber threats" to reduce their impact on end users. The group's statement says these attacks target multiple products or protocols in products, giving them a broader impact. These attacks pose problems not only for end user customers, but also for vendors, the group says. more»