Category Archives: Icann

A Deep Dive on the Recent Widespread DNS Hijacking Attacks

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The U.S. government — along with a number of leading security companies — recently warned about a series of highly complex and widespread attacks that allowed suspected Iranian hackers to siphon huge volumes of email passwords and other sensitive data from multiple governments and private companies. But to date, the specifics of exactly how that attack went down and who was hit have remained shrouded in secrecy.

This post seeks to document the extent of those attacks, and traces the origins of this overwhelmingly successful cyber espionage campaign back to a cascading series of breaches at key Internet infrastructure providers. Continue reading A Deep Dive on the Recent Widespread DNS Hijacking Attacks→

Bad .Men at .Work. Please Don’t .Click

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Web site names ending in new top-level domains (TLDs) like .men, .work and .click are some of the riskiest and spammy-est on the Internet, according to experts who track such concentrations of badness online. Not that there still aren’t a whole mess of nasty .com, .net and .biz domains out there, but relative to their size (i.e. overall number of domains) these newer TLDs are far dicier to visit than most online destinations. Continue reading Bad .Men at .Work. Please Don’t .Click→

ICANN Files Lawsuit to Clarify WHOIS Data Collection Under GDPR

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ICANN filed a lawsuit in which it asks a German court for assistance in interpreting GDPR as it relates to WHOIS data collection. On 25 May, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced it had filed legal action against EPA… Continue reading ICANN Files Lawsuit to Clarify WHOIS Data Collection Under GDPR→

Security Trade-Offs in the New EU Privacy Law

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On two occasions this past year I’ve published stories here warning about the prospect that new European privacy regulations could result in more spams and scams ending up in your inbox. This post explains in a question and answer format some of the reasoning that went into that prediction, and responds to many of the criticisms leveled against it. Continue reading Security Trade-Offs in the New EU Privacy Law→

ICANN Still Working on Interim Compliance Model for GDPR

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The Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is still in the process of developing an interim compliance model to address concerns surrounding GDPR. In an earlier blog post, I mentioned that ICANN was scheduled to meet with European … Continue reading ICANN Still Working on Interim Compliance Model for GDPR→

White House pushing for research carveout in GDPR

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The White House is hoping to convince European regulators to protect security researchers in their General Data Protection Regulation so they can continue to scrape data that’s relevant for data breach and botnet investigations, according to White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Rob Joyce. GDPR, which mandates companies with European customers to have numerous data protections in place, goes into effect May 25, 2018. The law will have a significant impact on the billion dollar cybersecurity industry, but some of its privacy provisions could have a negative effect on security researchers’ work. One of the more concerning developments revolves around access to data published by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Whenever a domain name is registered, ICANN requires information like, a name, IP address and physical address to be submitted. While these details are sometimes forged, that information can provide clues about a cyberattack. ICANN stores all of […]

The post White House pushing for research carveout in GDPR appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading White House pushing for research carveout in GDPR→

Who Is Afraid of More Spams and Scams?

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Security researchers who rely on data included in Web site domain name records to combat spammers and scammers will likely lose access to that information for at least six months starting at the end of May 2018, under a new proposal that seeks to bring the system in line with new European privacy laws. The result, some experts warn, will likely mean more spams and scams landing in your inbox. Continue reading Who Is Afraid of More Spams and Scams?→