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DNS / blogs / May 07, 2008 10:11 AM PST

Coders, Crackers and Bots, Oh My!

There are more than just blue, black and white hat hackers. There are a few more types of folks out there that don't fit into the above categories. This article is taken from Stratfor with some commentary by myself... Many of the hackers described in my previous post are also coders, or "writers," who create viruses, worms, Trojans, bot protocols and other destructive "malware" tools used by hackers... ›››

DNS / blogs / May 07, 2008 9:45 AM PST

Black Hats, White Hats, Crackers and Bots

One of the other web sites I subscribe to is Stratfor. It's a global intelligence website and doesn't really have much to do with spam. But I like politics so I read it. They have some articles which you can get for free, but the better stuff you have to pay for. About two weeks ago, they ran a three-part series on Cyberwarfare. The first article was the title of this post, which you can access here (requires registration). In the article they described different types of cybercriminals and not-so-criminals which they referred to under the umbrella as "hackers." ›››

DNS / blogs / Apr 23, 2008 11:16 AM PST

CNN.Com, Politically Motivated DDoS, and Asymmetric Warfare

Once again I find myself thinking about the nature of the asymmetric warfare threat posed by politically motivated DDoS (Estonia in 07, Korea in 02, and now China vs. CNN in 08). I keep thinking about it in terms of asymmetric warfare, a class of warfare where one side is a traditional, centrally managed military with superior uniformed numbers, weaponry, and skill. On the other we have smaller numbers, usually untrained fighters with meager weapons, and usually a smaller force. Historical examples include the North Vietnamese in the 20th century and even the American Revolution in the 18th century. Clearly this can be an effective strategy for a band of irregulars... ›››

DNS / news / Apr 21, 2008 9:18 AM PST

Security Experts Disclose How ISPs’ Typo-Domain Ad Systems are Major Security Holes

Seeking to make money from mistyped domains, some of the United States' largest ISPs instead created a massive security hole that allowed hackers to use domain names of eBay, PayPal, Google and Yahoo, and virtually any other large site. The vulnerability was a dream scenario for phishers and cyber attackers looking for convincing platforms to distribute fake websites or malicious code. The hole was quickly and quietly patched last Friday after IOActive security researcher Dan Kaminsky reported the issue to Earthlink and its technology partner, a British ad company called Barefruit. Earthlink users, and some Comcast subscribers, were at risk. ›››

DNS / news / Mar 26, 2008 10:47 AM PST

Report Shows Substantial Rise in Phishing Attacks in 2008

According to a recent security report, the number of phishing attacks on financial services customers has increased dramatically this year, with fraudsters focusing on three banks whose customers they have judged to be particularly vulnerable. Just as phishing seemed to have slipped off the consumer radar, online fraudsters have leapt on the chance to capitalize on this false sense of security and have increased their phishing activity... ›››

DNS / news / Mar 13, 2008 1:36 PM PST

Escalating Attacks on U.S. Military Networks Linked to China

Numerous hacks from the Far East sure look like concerted attacks against U.S. military installations, but nobody's saying for sure... A Wall Street Journal article March 12 described how military networks are increasingly the targets of hackers. The targets are not limited to actual Department of Defense networks, but can also include defense industries and think tanks. ›››

DNS / news / Mar 12, 2008 8:05 PM PST

Security Experts Skeptic About ICANN’s Recommendations on Fast-Flux Hosting

While generally lauding ICANN's effort, experts say that more is needed to address the use of fast-flux hosting by bot herders to rapidly shift their malicious web servers and domain-name servers from machine to machine to evade detection. "People are being impacted because they are trying to shoehorn a solution that doesn't fit the problem. Where fast-flux causes a problem is when you are trying to police the internet through some outdated mode like honeypotting or blacklisting. That just doesn't work in this environment," says one security researcher. ›››

DNS / news / Mar 07, 2008 5:40 PM PST

CNN Interview with Chinese Hackers: “No Website is Safe”

CNN is reporting on a secret meeting with three Chinese hackers operating from a bare apartment on a Chinese island -- from the report: "They are intelligent 20-somethings who seem harmless. But they are hard-core hackers who claim to have gained access to the world's most sensitive sites, including the Pentagon. In fact, they say they are sometimes paid secretly by the Chinese government -- a claim the Beijing government denies." According to the leader of the group (nicknamed Xiao Chen), "no website is one hundred percent safe. There are Web sites with high-level security, but there is always a weakness." ›››

DNS / news / Mar 05, 2008 10:47 AM PST

Security Researchers Reveal New Detection Method for Finding Phishing and Malicious Domains

At a closed-door security summit hosted on Yahoo's Sunnyvale campus last week, a researcher demonstrated a new technique to more easily identify phishing and other malicious Websites. Dan Hubbard, vice president of security research for Websense, showed a tool their researchers have built that detects domains that were automatically registered by machines rather than humans... The tool is reported to have 99.9% rate of accuracy, and that automatically generated domains to date represent over 1 percent of the nearly 1 million domains registered each day -- and rising. ›››

DNS / blogs / Feb 28, 2008 12:52 PM PST

RIPE NCC Publishes Case Study of youtube.com Hijack

As you may be aware from recent news reports, traffic to the youtube.com website was 'hijacked' on a global scale on Sunday, 24 February 2008. The incident was a result of the unauthorised announcement of the prefix 208.65.153.0/24 and caused the popular video sharing website to become unreachable from most, if not all, of the Internet. The RIPE NCC conducted an analysis into how this incident was seen and tracked by the RIPE NCC's Routing Information Service (RIS) and has published a case study... ›››

DNS / blogs / Feb 25, 2008 2:17 PM PST

Pakistan Hijacks YouTube: A Closer Look

A few hours ago, Pakistan Telecom (AS 17557) began advertising a small part of YouTube's assigned network. This story is almost as old as BGP. Old hands will recognize this as, fundamentally, the same problem as the infamous AS 7007 from 1997, a more recent ConEd mistake of early 2006 and even TTNet's Christmas Eve gift 2005. Just before 18:48 UTC, Pakistan Telecom, in response to government order to block access to YouTube, started advertising a route for 208.65.153.0/24 to its provider... ›››

DNS / news / Feb 25, 2008 9:53 AM PST

Pakistan Blocks Worldwide Access to YouTube

Pakistan's attempts to block access to YouTube have been blamed for a near global blackout of the site on Sunday. Google, the owner of YouTube, blamed the outage on "erroneous internet protocols", sourced in Pakistan. According to BBC News, the nearly two-hour long blackout was almost certainly connected to Pakistan Telecom and internet service provider PCCW.  ›››

DNS / news / Feb 21, 2008 8:42 PM PST

Email Address Typosquatting Posing Serious Leakage Threat

During the Black Hat DC 2008 security conference, security researchers urged companies and political organizations to put more effort into registering mis-typed versions of their primary domain names. In addition to protecting visitors to websites, this is also to prevent emails from accidentally leaking out... As part of an investigation, researchers from Symantec registered 124 domains consisting of common misspellings of the primary domains of candidates in the U.S. presidential election. As reported, in a strictly controlled experiment, a mail server was used to count the number of email messages sent to the misspelled domains, finding 1,121 connection attempts from 12 distinct IP addresses in a 24-hour period. ›››

Broadband / news / Feb 19, 2008 12:46 PM PST

UN Agency: Undersea Cables Cuts Causing Major Internet Disruptions Possibly Sabotage

Damage to several undersea telecom cables that caused outages across the Middle East and Asia (see CircleID posts Jan 31, 2008 and Feb 07, 2008) could have been an act of sabotage, the International Telecommunication Union said on Monday. "We do not want to preempt the results of ongoing investigations, but we do not rule out that a deliberate act of sabotage caused the damage to the undersea cables over two weeks ago," the UN agency's head of development, Sami al-Murshed, said. ›››

DNS / blogs / Feb 14, 2008 1:55 PM PST

The Future of Cyber Warfare

Every now and then I get emails from readers of my blog. I mostly reply to them in private, but I recently got one question where I thought my reply might be of general interest. I took the liberty of editing the question somewhat, but in essence it was: "If you have any insight you can share with my class on cyber warfare and security, I would be delighted on hearing it." In general, I think that it's an obvious conclusion that both offensive and defensive actions with regard to national telecommunications infrastructure is becoming an integral part of a nations security assessments.... ›››

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DNS / May 06, 2008 12:16 PM PST

Oversee.net’s DomainSponsor Presents 3rd Annual DOMAINfest Global

The third annual DOMAINfest Global, the premier conference and networking event for the domain name industry, will be held at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel in Hollywood, California from January 28-30, 2009. Event registration will open later this year. ›››

DNS / May 02, 2008 12:21 PM PST

.NL Auction Sneak Peak!

Join Sedo for our much anticipated .NL auction, being held from May 2nd 4pm (EST) until May 9th at approximately 4pm (EST). As the worth of the .NL continues to increase, so does the demand. ›››

DNS / Apr 30, 2008 12:01 PM PST

dotMobi Requests Proposals for find.mobi

dotMobi today announced that is accepting proposals for find.mobi, a consumer-facing mobile search tool; find.mobi was created by dotMobi's research and development team to demonstrate an operational mobile search engine that made the most of the mobile web and needs of on-the-go users. ›››

DNS / Apr 28, 2008 4:08 PM PST

dotMobi Offers Prime Selection of Generic Domain Names to Spur Mobile Web Growth

As part of its ongoing series of unique methods of allocating Internet domain names, dotMobi is bringing 16 "premium names" to market at Moniker's T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East Auction on May 23, 2008. ›››

DNS / Apr 28, 2008 1:41 PM PST

Sedo’s Better-than-Ever Brokerage Service!

Sedo's brokerage services are being updated with a new process for submitting both buyer and seller side brokerage requests and enhanced communications tools.  ›››

DNS / Apr 18, 2008 11:50 AM PST

Sedo’s Matt Bentley a Featured Speaker at Internet World Conference

Direct Navigation a key theme at this year's conference. Sedo, the leading online market place for buying and selling Internet domain names and websites, will be a featured presenter at this year's Internet World conference. ›››

DNS / Apr 16, 2008 8:00 AM PST

dotMobi Joins Forces with DomainsBot to Help Businesses More Easily Find New .mobi Internet Addresse

DomainsBot, the leading domain name suggestion and search engine company, will now include .mobi in their domain name search and suggestion tool, used by the majority of the world's best-known Internet domain name retailers. ›››

DNS / Apr 10, 2008 10:45 AM PST

.NU and .SH Auctions Start Today! Join Sedo for Side by Side Auctions

Both auctions will start at 11AM CET on April 10th and end approximately one week later at 11AM CET on April 17th. ›››

DNS / Apr 08, 2008 9:02 AM PST

Oversee.net Names David Subar Chief Technology Officer

David Subar will be responsible for building and implementing technology that supports Oversee's core activities in its Domain Services and Marketing Services divisions, while aligning the Company's technology resources for further expansion. ›››

DNS / Apr 07, 2008 8:51 PM PST

Sedo Introduces New Customer Support Center

With almost a 180,000 customers across the US and Canada, this online Customer Support Center will enable our members to benefit from faster turnaround times and more accurate responses. ›››

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