CircleID: News Briefs

Mobile Broadband Speeds Over 5 Times Faster as Early as 2009

2008-12-03T15:30:00-08:00

The idea seems far-fetched given that even the fastest dongles currently hover at around 7.2Mb/sec, but according to John Cunliffe, Ericsson's chief technology officer, the technology to smash that barrier is just around the corner.

Cunliffe acknowledges that while the technology to boost speeds exists, it may take another year or so for the dongles themselves to catch up. However, he doesn't think speeds will stop at 42Mb/sec. "We think even more in the future, we can probably squeeze that to 80Mb/sec, and that's before we even get to Long Term Evolution."

Read full story: External Source

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China Internet Cafes Forced to Switch Computers Running Microsoft to Chinese Operating System

2008-12-03T14:51:00-08:00

Authorities in the southeastern Chinese city of Nanchang are requiring all local Internet cafes to replace their Microsoft Windows XP operating systems with a Chinese-made system, Red Flag Linux, according to officials and Internet cafe owners.

An official with the Nanchang Cultural Discipline Team, which oversees the roughly 600 Internet cafes operating in Nanchang city, said the new operating systems were mandatory. "We have already started installing the new software in all Internet cafes. All of them must have this new one," the official said.

Read full story: External Source

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IGF: To Reach the Next Billion, Internet Needs Multilingual Support

2008-12-03T13:10:00-08:00

The Internet must support the large number of languages in the world at all levels, including content, hardware, software, and internationalized domain names if it is to reach the next billion people, according to speakers at an Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Hyderabad, India.

"When we talk about Internet for all, we have to go beyond the people who speak English," said Manal Ismail, vice chair of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), on Wednesday.

Read full story: Network World

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Internet Governance Forum Opens in Hyderabad, India

2008-12-03T12:47:00-08:00

The third meeting of the Internet Governance Forum officially opened today in Hyderabad, India, focusing on the overall issue of "Internet for all." Participants from government, the private sector, civil society and the Internet community are gathering for the next four days to share information, experiences and best practices and to explore how the Internet can be used to its full potential for the benefit of all while combating its use for harmful purposes.

The meeting will address five main themes: reaching the next billion; promoting cyber-security and trust; managing critical Internet resources; taking stock and the way forward; and emerging issues—the Internet of tomorrow.

Read full story: Government Technology Magazine

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New .tel Top-Level Domain Goes on Sale

2008-12-03T07:49:00-08:00

Telnic Limited, the Registry Operator and Sponsoring Organization for the new sponsored top-level domain (sTLD) .tel, has announced that domain name registrations are now being accepted (see previous coverage). "From today until February 2nd, trademark owners can register .tel domains for their brands and company names, providing them with a 'live' comprehensive listing in the first global, mobile-optimized online directory."

What has made .tel stand out from the rest of the newly launched top-level domains is that it uses the domain name system (DNS) to function as a repository for all a company's or individual's contact details. According to Khashayar Mahdavi, CEO of Telnic, .tel has some similarities to the ENUM projects that aimed at binding numbers and email addresses into a unified contact system. However, Mahdavi says that the flaw with ENUM is that it requires users to be on the web where as .tel works on multiple platforms such as mobile devices.

Read full story: External Source

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More under: DNS, Domain Names, Domain Registries, Enum, Top-Level Domains

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Microsoft Reveals Gen 4 Modular Data Center Strategy, Calls it Most Revolutionary in 30 Years

2008-12-02T15:22:00-08:00

In a blog post today, Microsoft has provided details of its Generation 4 Modular Data Center plan, which the company believes to be the foundation for its cloud data center infrastructure in the next five years.

Michael Manos, Microsoft's General Manager of Global Foundation Services, responsible for the global data center design writes: "We believe it is one of the most revolutionary changes to happen to data centers in the last 30 years… Our 'Gen 4' modular data centers will take the flexibility of containerized servers—like those in our Chicago data center --and apply it across the entire facility. So what do we mean by modular? Think of it like 'building blocks', where the data center will be composed of modular units of prefabricated mechanical, electrical, security components, etc., in addition to containerized servers."

Related Links:
Our Vision for Generation 4 Modular Data Centers - One way of Getting it just right... (Microsoft, 12/2/2008)
Video Illustration of Microsoft’s Generation 4 Data Centers (Microsoft, 12/2/2008)

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Ted Rogers, Canadian Communications Pioneer, Dies

2008-12-02T11:51:00-08:00

Ted Rogers, the Canadian who turned a Toronto radio station into a North American broadcasting, publishing and telecoms conglomerate, died this morning. He was 75.

He died just after midnight of heart failure at his home in Toronto, according to Jan Innes, a spokeswoman at Rogers Communications Inc., the company Rogers founded almost 50 years ago and turned into Canada's largest cable television and wireless carrier. He had suffered from deteriorating health recently, the company said.

Read full story: The Globe and Mail

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Canada Emerging as a Haven for Spammers

2008-12-02T09:14:00-08:00

Last month, a California court awarded social networking giant Facebook $873 million (U.S.) in damages arising from the activities of a single spamming organization.

The decision garnered headlines in Canada because the spammer targeted in the lawsuit operates out of Montreal. While Facebook acknowledges it is unlikely to recover much of the awarded damages, the case has put the spotlight on Canada's failure to introduce long-overdue antispam legislation.

Read full story: Toronto Star

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Linux Now Officially IPv6 Compliant

2008-12-01T10:58:00-08:00

The Linux kernel has had preliminary support for IPv6 since kernel version 2.1.8 in 1996, but only in the last week has the Linux Foundation officially stated that all major Linux distributions are now compliant with the US Department of Defense's requirements for IPv6 compatibility. This plan was set in motion in 2003 and specified that by mid-2008, all US government computing and networking equipment should be IPv6-capable.

The research was carried out by the Linux Foundation's IPv6 Working Group, led by Venkata Jagana from IBM, in association with HP, Red Hat, Novell and other companies.

Read full story: Heise Online

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FCC Pushing for Free Internet Plan, Called Most Controversial Issue in December

2008-12-01T10:16:00-08:00

Outgoing Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is pushing for action in December on a plan to offer free, pornography-free wireless Internet service to all Americans, despite objections from the wireless industry and some consumer groups.

The proposal to allow a no-smut, free wireless Internet service is part of a proposal to auction off a chunk of airwaves. The winning bidder would be required to set aside a quarter of the airwaves for a free Internet service. The winner could establish a paid service that would have a fast wireless Internet connection. The free service could be slower and would be required to filter out pornography and other material not suitable for children.

Read full story: Free Web Plan Being Pushed by FCC Head (WSJ, 12/1/2008)

Update: FCC's Free-Internet Plan Could Morph Into Free Airwaves (WSJ, 12/3/2008)

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More under: Access Providers, Broadband, Policy & Regulation, Wireless

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Hackers Penetrated Pentagon Computer Systems, Called Most Severe on US Military Network

2008-11-30T10:43:00-08:00

Computer hackers suspected of working from Russia successfully penetrated Pentagon computer systems in one of the most severe cyber attacks on US military networks, according to reports.

The electronic attack was so serious that Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint chief of staff, briefed President George W Bush and Robert Gates, the defense secretary. "This one was significant, this one got our attention," said an official, speaking anonymously.

Read full story: Telegraph.co.uk

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US Online Video to Reach 88% of Internet Users, Says New Report

2008-11-30T10:09:00-08:00

The online video audience is expected to reach 190 million people by 2012, 88% of the Internet user population, according to the recent report by market research firm, eMarketer. The future of the video industry depends largely on how stakeholders navigate technical challenges, infrastructure upgrades, the migration to mobile, and ongoing consumer resistance to ads and payments.

"After some false starts with ill-fated transactional experiments, online video content owners and distributors are pursuing a strategy that closely follows the standard TV business model," says Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst.

Read full story: External Source

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Microsoft Aggressively Investing in Supersize Cloud Data Centers

2008-11-27T11:06:01-08:00

Software giant Microsoft is fighting rival Google for a place in the clouds. The company thinks that more and more software services will take over or replace the tasks currently being handled by Microsoft applications on business and home PCs. In the past two weeks alone, Microsoft has unveiled several key products it thinks will accelerate the process of transition to cloud computing, or software services delivered over the internet.

To counter this, it will set up 20 new data centers over the next 20 years at a cost of a billion dollars each. Debra Chrapaty, Microsoft's VP of global foundation services, speaking to the US media, said "We're going to reinvent the infrastructure of our industry."

Read full story: Heise Online

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World Bank Removes CIO Following Recent Cyberattacks

2008-11-27T07:34:00-08:00

According to recent reports, The World Bank has effectively removed a vice president who served as its chief information officer while struggling to deal with a series of embarrassing cyberattacks. The World Bank Group's network, which had been raided repeatedly by outsiders for more than a year, is one of the largest repositories of sensitive data about the economies of every nation.

Servers in the institution's highly restricted Treasury unit were deeply penetrated with spy software, and the invaders also had full access to the rest of the bank's network for nearly a month in June and July, sources say. At least six major breaches have been detected at the World Bank since the summer of 2007, with the most recent breach occurring just last month.

Read full story: FOX News

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Microsoft Files New Cybersquatting Lawsuit

2008-11-27T07:09:00-08:00

A Florida company has been charged with cybersquatting in a new lawsuit filed Wednesday. Twenty three domain names have been listed in the suit containing Microsoft's trademarks or misspellings of the names. The domain names which are registered to an entity called Domain Investments, include windoesmobile.com, wwwhotmajl.com, microsoft-games.com and zunedrivers.com. Many of the websites under the domains listed include advertising for various products and services. The suit is one of several typosquatting and cybersquatting suits filed by Microsoft.

Read full story: PC World

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Criminals Regain Control of Srizbi Botnet, Spam Volume Rising

2008-11-26T12:58:00-08:00

Experts are that the spam volumes may spike significantly over the next few days now that one of the world's largest networks of compromised computers used for blasting out junk email has been brought back to life, reports Brian Krebs of the Washington Post.

"The Srizbi botnet, a collection of more than half a million hacked PCs that were responsible for relaying approximately 40 percent of all spam sent worldwide, was knocked offline two weeks ago due to pressure from the computer security community."

Source: Paul Ferguson / SpamCop.net

Related Links:
Spam Volumes Expected to Rise with Botnet Resurrection (Washington Post, 11/26/2008)
Massive Botnet Returns from the Dead, Starts Spamming (Computerworld, 11/26/2008)
Spam is Inching Up... (Fergie's Tech Blog, 11/26/2008)

Update:
Estonian ISP Cuts Off control Servers for Srizbi Botnet (NetworkWorld, 11/27/2008)

Read full story: Washington Post

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Feds Urged to Deploy DNSSEC and Signing of the Root Zone

2008-11-25T16:04:00-08:00

Security experts and leading vendors are urging the U.S. federal government for the rapid adoption of DNSSEC and signing of the root zone. In recent weeks, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has received 30-plus comments in favor of securing DNS root zone data. These comments are from the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and the Internet Society as well as ISPs and domain name operators such as PayPal, Akamai Technologies, NeuStar, Comcast and Afilias.

Read full story: Network World

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High-Profile Botnet Shutdowns Giving Rise to Virtual Malware Next Year, Experts Predict

2008-11-25T07:51:00-08:00

Virus writers are likely to unleash increasingly sophisticated strains of malware next year in an attempt to bounce back from some high-profile botnet shutdowns in 2008, according to new predictions from managed security provider MessageLabs.

The company predicted that hackers will launch new attacks in which malware will exist as a virtualisation layer running directly on the hardware and undiscoverable by the operating system.

Read full story: VNUnet

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US Concerned Over Chinese Cyber Espionage

2008-11-25T07:29:00-08:00

China is actively conducting cyber espionage as a warfare strategy and has targeted U.S. government and commercial computers, according to a new report from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

"China's current cyber operations capability is so advanced, it can engage in forms of cyber warfare so sophisticated that the United States may be unable to counteract or even detect the efforts," according to the annual report [PDF] delivered to Congress on Thursday.

Also see China dismisses US espionage report as misleading from the Associated Press.

Read full story: CNET News

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Cybercrime, Underground Economy Booming, Stolen Credit Card Data Main Driver

2008-11-24T10:44:00-08:00

Credit card information is the most advertised category of goods and services on the underground economy accounting for 31 percent of the total, according to recent data found by security experts. In a report released today by Symantec, stolen credit card numbers are reported to sell for as little as $0.10 to $25 per card with the average advertised stolen credit card limit at more than $4,000. According to calculations, the potential worth of all credit cards advertised during the reporting period was $5.3 billion.

The popularity of credit card information is likely due to the many ways this information can be obtained and used for fraud; credit cards are easy to use for online shopping and it is often difficult for merchants or credit providers to identify and address fraudulent transactions before fraudsters complete these transactions and receive their goods. Also, credit card information is often sold to fraudsters in bulk, with discounts or free numbers provided with larger purchases.

Underground economy channel screenshot: Advertisers on underground channels attempt to capture attention for their messages using techniques such as capitalization, multi-colored text, ASCII flares, and repeated sales pitches across multiple lines. (Source: Symantec Corporation)

The study estimates the value of total advertised goods on underground economy servers was over $276 million between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008.

Related Links:
New Symantec Report Reveals Booming Underground Economy (Symantec, 11/24/2008)
Symantec Takes Cybercrime Snapshot with 'Underground Economy' Report (Network World, 11/24/2008)

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