Hold on to your hats. In my last post I mentioned that the US and Russia were in complete agreement over one of the core problems of the Internet. From the same Times story: During a panel discussion on computer crime, Col. Gen. Boris N. Miroshnikov, an official with the Russian Interior Ministry, and Stewart […]
Governmental cyber officials from around the world met up in Germany this week to discuss international Internet security. The US hasn’t played a significant role in this hootenanny in the past. There are some huge differences between the US and Russia on the role of the Internet. We’re concerned about online crime, espionage and hacker […]
The Internet sure is good at misinformation. The saints at Snopes fix it one debunking at a time. Cyberwar Bingo! An awesome tongue-in-cheek look at CyberAlarmism. Michelle Bachmann (R-NUT) thinks the United States should keep the option of nuking nations who hit us with a cyber attack. The Guys with the Cool Robes in the […]
Looks like Bakiev’s government is out in Kyrgyzstan. Opposition Claims Control in Kyrgyzstan – NYTimes.com. This is wild and unexpected – your humble blogger spent a summer over there working with Internews, an independent free media advocate. It’s 5 years since they overthrew their last autocrat, but turned out to be a bummer of a […]
A bill by Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and co-sponsored by Olympia Snowe (R-ME) called the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (yes, I know, but remember the Senate is, well, a bit slow) just dropped out of committee and may see floor action soon.* It’s an interesting piece of work, and only 50 pages, so I’m actually going […]
The US isn’t the only target of Chinese hackers that-of-course-aren’t-government-sponsored-though-the-PLA-does-fund-hacking-research-in-their-school groups. That other rising Asian great power – the one that fought a couple of wars with China and is harboring their archnemisis – got pwned in a bad way. The NY Times has a story on it that makes for interesting reading. At the […]
Fellow FPBer Sarah Repucci has another perspective on the Google-China breakup from a government accountability angle.
Social networking makes for really, really targeted marketing possibilities. A bunch of advocacy groups dealing with Sudan are putting up Facebook ads aimed at people who work in Congress. Your employer is part of your Facebook profile. So if it happens to be Congress, bing! (erm, not that Bing™) there you go. They can also key […]
Things that are important or interesting that I haven’t written about: WikiLeaks is drumming up some hype before releasing video of a drone strike that claimed civilian lives. That’s not going to improve their relationship with the gummint. Viral social networking is transforming the ability to get groups together and make change happen. Yes yes, […]
The Marines are onboard with this whole Social Networking thing, following along with guidelines from On High. From Wired’s Danger Room It’s a remarkable about-face. A Marine Corps order last summer described such sites as “a proven haven for malicious actors and content.” And it warned that adversaries were using SNS [social network sites] as an “attack […]
Bloomberg (home to belovedly hard-to-use finance info terminals, as well as actual news) notes that the Taliban systematically destroys the mobile phone infrastructure of the (shrinking?) chunks of Afghanistan they control. Why? Afghanistan, with 29 million people, had as many as 12 million cellular-service subscribers in December, according to the Afghan government. Fifty-two percent of the population […]
GoDaddy, home of lousy Internet hosting and scandalous Super Bowl ads, has inexplicably been a success with their cut-rate domain registration and hosting. Meanwhile, in the Middle Kingdom the Chinese government continues grasp as many levers of control over Internet users as possible. To register your own web name in the Chinese domain name space (eg, […]
Game’s up. Google has shut down its web search on the mainland. Google blog post; NYT story. The company is attempting to route Chinese users to a simplified Chinese* Hong Kong site, where local legislation does not require them to censor their results. A clever attempt at an elegant face-saving solution, considering the fulmination about the necessity […]
Iran is playing for keeps on Internet censorship. More details have emerged on the activists arrested in conjunction with the hacking of US servers that took place last week. Via InsideIran: [T]he group arrested by Iranian authorities was the committee against censorship in Iran that goes by the name Iran Proxy. This group is composed […]
Things worthy of note that I haven’t written posts on: A fun blow-by-blow of a security researcher warning a bunch of execs about their hackability – and then pwning them. WikiBooks is writing the textbook on cryptography. Learn or contribue! h/t Schneier The Internet is radicalizing terrorists in the United States, too Uncivil society flourishes on the Intertubes. […]