Localizing Cybercrime

It's where you advertise your services, and how you position yourself that speak for your intentions, of course, "between the lines". There's a common misunderstanding that in order for a malware campaigner or scammer to launch a localized attack, they need to speak the local language. This misconception is largely based on the fact that a huge number of people remain unaware on how core strategic business practices have been in operation across the cybercrime underground for the last couple of years. more»

Why DNS is Broken, in Plain English

At ICANN's meeting in Egypt last week, I had the opportunity to try and explain to various non-technical audiences why the Domain Name System (DNS) is vulnerable to attack, and why that is important, without needing a computer science degree to understand it. Here is the summary. more»

The Harsh Reality of Spam and Online Security… Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Working in the anti-spam and online malware fight can be depressing or at best invoke multiple personality disorder. We all know things are bad on the net, but if you want a dose of stark reality, check out Brian Kreb's fantastic 'Security Fix' blog on the Washington Post site... Speaking to an old friend who asked me what I was doing these days, I recently likened the fight against this relentless onslaught to having one's pinky in a dyke, and there are days when I don't even think we have a dyke! more»

Proposal for Signing the DNSSEC Root

The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is soliciting comments on signing the DNSSEC root. Ignore the caption on the page: this is not about DNSSEC deployment, which is already happening just fine. It's about who gets to sign the root zone. more»

More on 'Researchers Hijack Storm Worm to Track Profits'

Always good for information on the spam economy, Brian Krebs of the Washington Post has just published a truly fascinating article: Researchers Hijack Storm Worm to Track Profits. Bottom line: a one-in-twelve-million conversion rate of spam to sales seems to be enough to keep the spam economy going. The article covers a project by researchers at UC San Diego and UC Berkeley, who managed to infiltrate the Storm Worm bot network and take over a small portion of it. more»

Domain Slammers Go Phishing

ICANN introduced a requirement for domain name registrars to send out annual notices to all their customers (registrants) to check the Whois on their domain names to ensure the information is correct. While this seemed fairly reasonable (if cumbersome), the fact is it confuses the heck out of people -- and creates a whole lot of confusion for registrants. But that was a problem we could deal with. Fast-forward to October, 2008... more»

Phishing Registrar Accounts: eNom is First Target

Criminals are now looking to use established domain names, via phishing targeted at domain registrars. This is possibly related to ICANN finally moving to stop the black hat registrars of the world. According to the first report on the matter sent yesterday to Registrar Operations (reg-ops) mailing list, the attacks seem to be run by gang of child pornography spammers. more»

Compromised Portfolios of Legitimate Domain Names for Sale

Is the demand for access to compromised legitimate portfolios of domain names -- where the price is based on the pagerank and is shaped by the number of domains in question -- the main growth factor for the increasing supply of such stolen accounting data? Or is it the result of cybercriminals data mining their botnets for accounting data that would provide them with access to such portfolios of high trafficked domains with clean reputation? more»

Co-Operation to Make the Domain Business More Secure

In order to provide more security for the Domain Name System (DNS), a group of large domain-name registries and registrars has got together with IT security providers and government agencies to launch a new workgroup: the "Registry Internet Safety Group" (RISG). The announcement was made by the Public Internet Registry, which operates the .org domain, and its backend provider Afilias. more»

Massive SQL Injection Attacks: The Chinese Way

From copycats and "localizers" of Russian web malware exploitation kits, to suppliers of original hacking tools, the Chinese IT underground has been closely following the emerging threats and the obvious insecurities on a large scale. They are either filling the niches left open by other international communities, or coming up with tools and setting new benchmarks for massive SQL injection attacks. more»