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Amidst hype and anticipation of the Conficker worm which is expected to become active in millions of Windows system within the next few hours, IBM Internet Security Systems team reports they have been able to locate infected systems across the world by reverse-engineering the communications mechanisms. Holly Stewart, X-Force Product Manager at IBM Internet Security Systems, writes: "... the details are still unfolding, but we can tell you from a high level where most infections are as of today. Asia tops the charts so far. By this morning, it represented nearly 45% of all of the infections from our view. Europe was second at 31%. The rest of the geographies held a much smaller percentage overall." more
While most people I know are at either VoiceCon or CTIA this week, this one is worth staying home for. Also, I'm sure all the Skype followers are focused today on the news about working with the iPhone -- and that IS a big story. However -- for very different reasons -- I'm sure you'll find this one of interest too. This was a front page story in today's Globe and Mail, and no doubt many other Canadian dailies... more
A report released over the weekend by Information Warfare Monitor along with an exclusive story by the New York Times, revealed a 10-month investigation of a suspected cyber espionage network (dubbed GhostNet) of over 1,295 infected computers in 103 countries. 30% of the infected computers are labeled as high-value targets, including ministries of foreign affairs, embassies, international organizations, news media, and NGOs. Greg Walton, editor of Information Warfare Monitor and a member of the Toronto academic research team that is reporting on the spying operation, writes... more
Throughout this series of articles we've been talking about DKIM, and what a valid DKIM signature actually means. .. What this means for senders (of any type) is that with DKIM, you’re protected. On the internet, your domain name is a statement of your brand identity – so by signing messages with DKIM, you can finally, irrevocably tie those messages to your brand. more
The Internet as we know it and use it today -- is broken, badly broken. Yes broken so much so that we are really crazy to have any expectations of privacy or security. Yes, really. The Internet was conceived as somewhat of a utopian environment, one where we all keep our doors, windows and cars unlocked and we trust all the people and machines out there to "do the right thing...". more
ENUM (E.164 NUmber Mapping) is a technology that has been around for a little while that has promised much and, so far, delivered little to the average user. As Nominet has recently been awarded the contract to administer the UK 4.4.e164.arpa delegation, I thought it was time that I put my thoughts on this subject down in writing. I'm going to cover the potential of ENUM in the telecoms industry and what it could mean to you, along with how it is currently being used and what potential security issues surround ENUM. more
Once you've determined that you can trust the signer of a message, as we discussed in part 3, it's easy to extrapolate that various portions of the message are equally trustworthy. For example, when there's a valid DKIM signature, we might assume that the From: header isn't spoofed. But in reality, DKIM only tells us two basic things... more
In this multipart series I will be presenting some of the leading industry-standard best practices for enterprise network security using Cisco technologies... In Part 3 of this series I began to discuss Cisco technologies as a standard for enterprise data security. In this article we take a look at how Cisco firewall and packet filtering technologies can be used at the network perimeter to enhance enterprise security. more
The Conficker worm will be active again on April 1st, according to an analysis of its most recent variant, Conficker.C, by the net security firm CA. This malicious piece of software, also known as Downup, Downadup and Kido, spreads among computers running most variants of the Windows operating system and turns them into nodes on a multi-million member ‘botnet’ of zombie computers that can be controlled remotely by the worm’s as yet unidentified authors. more
The DNSSEC Industry Coalition conducted its first face to face meeting on Friday, March 13, 2009 at Google's Washington, DC office. Google's fun filled meeting room was packed with organizations that share a keen interest in DNS Security through the implementation of DNSSEC. more
StopBadware.org and Consumer Reports WebWatch have announced today the full launch of BadwareBusters.org, a new online community for people looking for help preventing and countering viruses, spyware, and other "badware" on their computers and websites. Maxim Weinstein, manager of StopBadware.org at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, says the site is not only a useful destination, but also a piece of a bigger puzzle. "BadwareBusters.org is part of StopBadware's strategy to bring together the people, the organizations, and the data that allow us to fight back against the spread of badware," Weinstein said. "The collective wisdom of the BadwareBusters community will inform not only individuals, but the entire technology industry." more
Last year, MAAWG published a white paper titled Trust in Email Begins with Authentication [PDF], which explains that authentication (DKIM) is “[a] safe means of identifying a participant-such as an author or an operator of an email service” while reputation is a “means of assessing their trustworthiness.”
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It has been beaten, butted, and batted around quite a bit in the past few weeks -- let's look at a rough timeline of political issues which bring me to this point. Let's look at the power struggle (I prefer to call it confusion) in the U.S. Government with regards to "Cyber Security" -- in a nutshell. In the latter part of 2008, the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee determined that DHS was not capable of providing proper critical infrastructure protection (and other Cyber protection capabilities) due to a number of issues. This may well be a political maneuver, or it may well actually have merit. more
In the world of DNS, there are two types of DNS servers, 'recursion disabled' and 'recursion enabled'. Recursion disabled servers, when asked to resolve a name, will only answer for names that they are authoritative for. It will absolutely refuse to look up a name it does not have authority over and is ideal for when you don't want it to serve just any query. It isn't, however, very useful for domains you don't know about or have authority over... more
It's been 15 long years since the standard for DNSSEC was developed and sadly adoption has been painfully low until recently, thanks to Dan Kaminsky, the infamous Internet Researcher who indentified that gaping hole in the DNS. The discovery of the fundamental flaw in DNS sparked industry wide attention! Every day, we move a little closer to widespread DNSSEC adoption, so I thought I'd take a moment and highlight some of the most notable milestones... more
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