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The US government is being encouraged by various committees and "experts" to increase regulation of the Internet. The Internet is compared industry to the car industry before regulation was introduced to make cars safer. Apparently the "Internet Wild West" is over!

During a speech at the Media Institute in Washington [February 24, 2010], Larry Strickling, President Obama's top official at the Department of Commerce and administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), suggested that there should be policy discussions between government agencies, foreign governments and key Internet constituencies on issues such as privacy, child protection, cybersecurity, copyright protection and Internet governance. "It's now time to respond to all the social changes being driven by the growth of the Internet," Strickling said. "We need Internet Policy 3.0. We enter this new decade recognizing that we rely on the Internet for essential social purposes: health, energy efficiency, and education. It's also a general engine for economic and social innovation. We must take rules more seriously if we want full participation, but we must keep the need for flexibility in mind."

This is my blog post for the week regarding online security, in this blog I discuss who security is truly intended for when the issue of national security is presented regarding the Internet.

This article discusses the terminology "cyber" versus "online" as a method to frighten people. The manner in which we speak on the Internet has changed greatly, and as a result, this article ponders the legitimacy of the use of this word, for example, "cyberbully," "cyberwar," are terms or tactics to instill some sense of fear into the masses regarding the security on the Internet. "When that kind of fear-mongering is needed to loosen the purse strings for computer security, only one word will do...Cyber."

The findings of this article definitely portrays an extremist view of the internet. It shows the internet to be extremely dangerous which would add to the already growing nervousness which I think many parents experience in letting their children surf the web. While cybersecurity is an increasingly prominent issue I don't see how producing a bubble of fear around the online world can improve the situation. You generally cannot function without the internet and being fed these alarmist ideas only furthers the notion that people should be fearful and avoid the internet rather than be engaging with it and appreciating it for being an amazing tool to communicate and learn.

Well, Fox News is just unbelievable... guess who they consider their competitor, CNN or Comedy Central.

yayy for fear-mongering....

Ofcom has conducted a survey in the UK on the handling of personal data online. The result: In the light of recent news about privacy issues online (Facebook for example) people have become more weary about Internet privacy. The Scottish are the least worried. Also interesting: "about a quarter of internet users say they 'lack confidence' in installing filerting software or security features."

This article discusses how a simulated war game called "Cyber ShockWave" can turn any electronic item, for example, cell phone or computer can be "weapons" used to shut down the Internet during terrorist attack. The notion of privacy and civil liberties, should expect to be ceased for Americans during a crisis of that level. During this mock scenario, it was revealed that "[The United States] don't have the authority in this nation as a government to quarantine people's cellphones." Which during a state of emergency brings to question if Internet carriers should allow their networks to be monitored. How secure is online security, and who is the enemy, becomes difficult to discern, as any threat to national security arises.

Ilse Aigner, Germany's minister of food, agriculture and consumer protection, who usually concentrates on issues over rotten meat, genetically engineered corn and imitation cheese, recently took on a different kind of issue: the Internet and data privacy. Suddenly Aigner finds herself facing online giants Amazon, Facebook and, above all, Google. Soon Google plans to send cars equipped with cameras out onto Germany's roads once again for the company's Street View project. Aigner is now insisting that Google should ask permission before violating the privacy of German citizens. The minister's attack and the following discussions reveal just how divided the German government is when it comes to the online world. The debate revolves around questions of national security and individual self-determination on the Internet. But it also concerns the power of the large giants such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and MySpace, as well as the question of what these companies are doing with the records of our everyday data, and how they will be able to obtain information from us, influence us or perhaps even control us in the future. It seem like, once again, a German politician is exploiting the popular issue of internet privacy and censorship in a superficial way in the hope of scoring political points.

This article is dealing with the recent disclosure by Google that it had fallen victim to a cyber attack. It renews the growing sentiment that a global response to the issue of cybersecurity is needed with particular emphasis on the cooperation between the government and business sectors.

Interesting comparison was made in this article regarding President Obama's priorities. It stated that "Obama has made cyber security a top priority for his administration, and has listed the threat from cyber weapons along with other weapons of mass destruction - such as nuclear, chemical and biological weapons." Is it fair to make a comparison between the threat of nuclear weapons and threats which exist within the world of computers?

As per DeNardis, the first question is who is the board, then what are their interests, how are they funded, who do they represent, by what process are decisions made and implemented, are objections public etc. If, as the press release suggests, this is the first of many more simple and stringent security and safety features, then what are they and who decides? "The Facebook Safety Advisory Board comprises five leading Internet safety organizations from North America and Europe that serve in a consultative capacity to the company on issues related to online safety. The organizations on the board are Common Sense Media, ConnectSafely, WiredSafety, Childnet International and The Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI). "

The cybersecurity threat in India is demonstrated in Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report that outlined the latest threat for computers which involves the Trojan viruses sending confidential data to a host server. This information is then used by cyber mafia to carry out financial transactions in various countries resulting in identity theft.

Online censorship is growing in scale, scope, and sophistication around the world," said John Palfrey, Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. South Korea's filtering efforts are very narrow in scope, but heavily censor one topic, North Korea;

This is 5 years of global survey on political, social and national security filtering conducted May 18, 2007

The internet community has long been waiting for ICANN to deal with the evolving DNS issues inherent in the decentralised system. The appointment of Whit Diffie as Vice President for Information Security and Cryptography at ICANN should bode well amidst the criticisms of ICANN not doing enough in responding to domain name security hacks and attacks. The Canadian Press has said "While ICANN does not run many of these domain name servers directly, it can press for the use of a security protocol that is meant to verify that the directory information is authentic. The technology uses mathematical techniques similar to encryption.".

This article discusses how Michael McConnell (former director of national intelligence), has suggessted that "we need to re-engineer the Internet to make attribution, geo-location, intelligence analysis and impact assessment - who did it, from where, why and what was the result - more manageable." Under the guise of protecting the state, it deems the "netizens," as possible enemies of the state.

A phisher from Nigeria was discovered to be responsible for creating 1,100 phishing sites over 15 months. By studying the guy's online activity, it was obvious that he treated it like a 9-5 job. It is estimated that he earns $4 million a year with this scam!

India's government is planning to develop its own OS due to security reasons. They do not want to rely on foreign operating systems as they believe this makes them more susceptible to cyber attacks. 

Product alert - but this one is free! Symantec have released 'Norton Everywhere' which aims to provide a holistic security solution to all internet devices. What this means for DNS is rather than defaulting to the DNS server of your internet provider you can use choose to use the Norton DNS. This will filter insecure sites and guard against malicious DNS attacks. Symantec isn't the first to provide such a service. If Norton doesn't appeal there are other free DNS options such as Google Public DNS an OpenDNS. Changing your default DNS setting to one of these providers seems like a worthwhile thing to do.

This article discusses how a protest was organised against th Federal Government's Internet and Content filter plan in Australia. However, the attendance for this protest was lacking. Many arguements against the filter have stated that, it is simply a "false sense of security." Protesters continue to urge the public to write emails, make phone calls, and apply public pressure.

'Educause', a not for profit organisation supporting education in Information Technology, has released an excellent guide explaining DNS Security. It explains the primary benefit of incorporating DNSSEC, namely that it will '...expand the trustworthiness-and thus the usefulness-of the Internet as a whole.'.

Google announced to use SSL to secure user's data, keep it hard for hackers and government to spy on users' searches.