How China swallowed 15% of 'Net traffic for 18 minutes. In a 300+ page report (PDF) today, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission provided the US Congress with a detailed overview of what's been happening in China—including a curious incident in which 15 percent of the world's Internet traffic suddenly passed through Chinese servers on the way to its destination.
Here's how the Commission describes the incident, which took place earlier this year: For about 18 minutes on April 8, 2010, China Telecom advertised erroneous network traffic routes that instructed US and other foreign Internet traffic to travel through Chinese servers. The Internet needs peacekeepers. Is Canada ready? It is a crime in progress, a cyber-fraud network that moves with blistering efficiency between servers in England, criminals in Russia and victims around the globe.
It is borderless, profitable and almost impossible to stop. Microsoft's Russia problem highlights a bigger problem. Many companies go on the defensive or go into denial mode, head-in-the-sand mode, and even petulant adolescent mode when confronted by reports like this one in the Sunday New York Times.
Not Microsoft. Des États de plus en plus méfiants envers la technologie. Photo: Indranil Mukherjee, AFP Les discussions entre les fabricants du téléphone Blackberry et l'Inde, l'Arabie Saoudite ou les Émirats arabes unis illustrent une sorte de jeu du chat et de la souris entre les autorités de nombreux pays et des technologies qui ont souvent une longueur d'avance.
«Ce que nous sommes en train de voir, c'est ce joli pas de deux auquel on assiste quand des pays pensent que leur souveraineté est menacée par de nouvelles technologies», estime Mark Rasch, qui a dirigé la cellule chargée de la criminalité informatique au sein du ministère américain de la Justice pendant neuf ans. «Les gouvernements sont facilement disposés à recourir à des technologies qui empiètent sur la vie privée, mais les technologies qui renforcent la vie privée les rendent nerveux», souligne l'expert. L'Inde a demandé jeudi aux opérateurs téléphoniques accès d'ici fin août aux données cryptées du BlackBerry, sous peine de bloquer ces services. Pentagon Asks WikiLeaks to ‘Do the Right Thing’ It's official: Saudi Arabia bans BlackBerrys. The rumors are true: Saudi Arabia has become the second country inside of a week to block access to Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices on grounds of national security.
Obama administration tweaks its cybersecurity plans. When it comes to cybersecurity, the Obama administration is taking the same approach to the policies of the Bush administration as it has in so many other areas: there are differences, but they're mainly matters of subtle emphasis and focus.
Take the Trusted Internet Connection initiative, which the Bush administration launched in late 2007, and which is aimed at securing the government's network infrastructure by routing all of its network traffic through a smaller number of access points. The original goals of the TIC program were to establish a baseline set of security practices for government systems that access the Internet, to consolidate all federal Internet access points into about 50 officially certified TICs, and to put in place an audit process to ensure that all government agencies stay in compliance with the program.
Iranian Government Bans Gmail. As the Iranian authorities attempt to stifle tomorrow's protests surrounding the anniversary of the Iranian revolution, they are going one step further: Iran is permanently suspending access to Google's Gmail.
Earlier this week, we wrote about failing Internet connections in Iran. The timing of these problems has been met with suspicion: February 11 (tomorrow) marks the anniversary of the Iranian revolution and gatherings are already being planned to protest against June's alleged election fraud. From the Wall Street Journal: China Alarmed by Security Threat From Internet. No rules: Internet security a Hobbesian "state of nature"
Life in cyberspace can be nasty, brutish, and short.
Cyberwar - The U.S. Studies the New Art of Cyberwar - Series. Google and China: the attacks and their aftermath. Yesterday's announcement that Google would stop censoring its search results in China, and that the company had been the victim of sophisticated Chinese cyberattacks, was a Big Deal; Secretary of State Hilary Clinton even felt the need to weigh in on it with an official statement.
And she wasn't the only one with an opinion, insight, or suggestion to share. Clinton weighs in. Her brief statement, in full, reads: "We have been briefed by Google on these allegations, which raise very serious concerns and questions. We look to the Chinese government for an explanation. In Shift, U.S. Talks to Russia on Internet Security - Series. Guardian Op-Ed: Cyberspace and Battlespace « ubiwar. Age of cyber warfare is 'dawning' Cyber war has moved from fiction to fact, says a report.
Compiled by security firm McAfee, it bases its conclusion on analysis of recent net-based attacks. Analysis of the motives of the actors behind many attacks carried out via the internet showed that many were mounted with a explicitly political aim. It said that many nations were now arming to defend themselves in a cyber war and readying forces to conduct their own attacks. While definitions of what constitutes cyber war are not shared, it was clear that many nations were preparing for a future in which conflict was partly conducted via the net.
"There are at least five countries known to be arming themselves for this kind of conflict," said Greg Day, primary analyst for security at McAfee Europe. The UK, Germany, France, China and North Korea are known to be developing their own capabilities. Internet & Democracy Blog » Russian Ministry Wants ISPs to Filter Internet. Evegeny Morozov over at Foreign Policy recently shared this story from the Russian site InfoX.ru, which reports that Russia is considering technical filtering options. ONI research has not found technical filtering in Russia to date, so if this plan goes through it could be one of the first known instances of technical filtering in Russia. The article quotes the head of the Russian Ministry of Communications at length, who argues that ISPs should filter the internet for ‘negative content’ at public access points in order to protect children, including one proposal to create white and black lists of sites.
Internet & Democracy Blog » US Loosens Internet Restrictions on Iran and Cuba. Cyberattacks: Espionage now, sabotage soon - Ars Technica. In April 2009, the US National Academies of Science suggested that it was time for the US to get serious about cyberwarfare, setting official policy for its offensive use and spearheading the development of international norms governing its deployment. Web’s Anonymity Makes Cyberattack Hard to Trace.