Group items tagged

The Pentagon receives thousands of attempts to from hackers/crackers to access their defense computers. They are deciding to fight fire with fire and train their employees to understand hacking so they can be prepared. Sounds like a good idea, just maybe one they should have had years ago...

Yahoo has made public its proposal to hack the domain name system (DNS) so as to resolve issues with migrating to IPv6 from IPv4. Internet protocol version 4 (IPv4) was the first widely deployed version of IP that supports 32 bit addresses (equating to 4,294,967,296). The issue of exhausting the 32 bit address allocation was identified in the 1990's, prompting the development of IPv6. IPv6 supports 128 bit addresses, obviously offering a more expansive address system. The article claims that a 'significant percentage of internet users have broken IPv6 connectivity'. Yahoo thus proposes to switch users to IPv4 connectivity once detection of broken IPv6 connectivity is realised. Yahoo will forward its proposal to the Internet Engineering Task Force, however questions of DNS trust and security will surely be the two topics of debate in testing this proposal.

In what appears to be a direct warning to the Australian founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange had his passport confiscated for a period of time at Melbourne Airport (on the basis that it looked worn) and then had his bags searched, being questioned on about his 1991 criminal record for hacking offences. Wikileaks published the confidential list of sites that would form the blacklist under the Australian government's proposed net filter. Coincidence? I think not.

Further, Assange was interrviewed on Dateline last night and said that Wikileaks was potentially going to be investigated by the Australian Federal Police over the leak. However, the AFP aren't pursuing it since it's out of their scope. http://www.zdnet.com.au/afp-called-to-investigate-wikileaks-339303208.htm

Julian Assange is hassled and detained by customs entering Melbourne airport. Then a Fed pulls him over again in arrivals and questions him on an old hacking charge. Punishment for the leaking the Black List perhaps? Surely not...

Most hacking activities are not reported by the websites that are victim to it, most probably so as not to scare the public. In this article, filmmaker Phillip Mora looks at the activities of hackers and cyber terrorists, likening the potentialities to the Holocaust and 9/11.

blog entry: it may seem as simple as eating here, but it's definitely not up there in China. Day after Google announced to resign China, couples of foreign reports' email accounts were either hacked or blocked. Coincident? !!!

Howard Schdmit, The Whitehouse's Cybersecurity coordinator has revealed the US Government's plans for tackling attacks on it's networks. He has promised transparency. The official announcement (this bookmark) is very vague in it's initiatives. It will be interesting to see whether their can really separate US government networks from other parts of the Internet.  Cyber attacks are definitely increasing and play a major part in conflicts between countries. China amongst others is said to have attacked & attempted to hack and launch DoS attacks on US government networks and Russia shut down the Georgian communications infrastructure during the last week between the two countries et. )

Censorhip is Chinea is taking to another lever? Some journalists' email account in Yahoo is hacked; though the result remain unclear, but it may imply the "freedom" in China is somehow lost.

With technology making it easier to for computer novices to steal user ids and data, now anyone can become a cybercriminal. This article showcases how easy it is to buy Zeus online, malware software which is used to steal information including online banking user ids and passwords and even security plans of US airports. Does accessibility turn you into a criminal? I still think if you're going to be a criminal you will find a way. Technology is certainly making it easier but you will only search for ways to hack into user info if you intend to steal in the first place.

This article discusses Austin Heap, a US citizen being awarded for his innovative program Haystack, which sidesteps Iran's heavy internet filtering through servers located elsewhere in the world. This article is important in today's internet censorship debate, as it promotes the awarding of individual's who openly seek ways around censorship.

Open Standards vs Cross Platform - it's starting to sound like politics. Confusing. Misleading. Impractical. Constrained.

A good discussion on Apple's view on Flash, following our class discussion on standards and the iPad not supporting Flash.

Came across this article the other day - basically saying that if Adobe wants to prove that Flash can run on iPhones without any major issues, they can simply use iPhones that have been "jailbroken" (meaning they've been hacked and any app can be downloaded - circumventing the App Store). Adobe could create a Flash app to run on the iPhones and prove its points about security and performance of Flash on mobile devices. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/may/18/apple-adobe-flash-player-solution

Australian government is planning to accedeto the concil of Europe's Convention on Cybercrim, to further govern online content. several opinons appeared, one is saying that "age-appropriate" filtering is more effective than compelling ISPs to provide access to stored electronic communications for foreign law enforcement pruposes.

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.".