Global Cyber News Bits, August 13, 2009 from CommunityDNS.
Provided by CommunityDNS, the information in this post consists of news items in the security-based Internet community.
Asian Web connections set to resume by end of Thursday
Up to 90% of all voice and Internet services were disrupted in parts of East Asia after typhoon Morakot damaged undersea cables. Service is to begin reaching normal levels again by end of day Thursday. Affected users were in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Philippines. It will take two months for the damage to be completely repaired. The destruction of the cables, due to undersea landslides, was slow, thus impacting users several days after the typhoon hit.
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Australian police charge banking Trojan suspect
Australian police arrested a man for creating a Trojan that infected 3,000 computers worldwide. This person also built up a BotNet consisting of 74,000 infected computers. The charges are creating computer crime offenses that include hacking and developing the capability to launch a DDoS.
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Virus arms race primes malware number surge
One security firm has noticed 52% of new malware strains last for 24 hours or less. Fast changing, short lasting malware is a way hackers can remain undetected, longer. Out of 37,000 new viruses, worms and Trojans per day, close to 19,240 last for 24 hours or less; too short of a time for security firms to develop a proper pattern file to fight the virus.
In 20 years of business this security firm has catalogued 18 million forms of malware; a count up to the end of 2008. In 2009 alone the same security firm has seen the number increase by 60%, reaching 30 million by the end of July.
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Denial-of-Service Attacks Hard to Kill
While last Thursday’s DDoS attack on Twitter, Facebook and Live Journal received attention, over 770 other DDoS attacks were also occurring on that day, with hundreds of such attacks occurring on any given day. Usually reserved for purposes of protest or extortion, DDoS attacks were typically aimed at overwhelming bandwidth and/or routers. Today DDoS attacks are taking aim at applications and services.
DDoS attacks are typically launched from smaller BotNets, such as those sporting around 35,000 to 40,000 compromised computers. The larger BotNets comprised of 100,000 – 300,000 compromised computers are used for the more lucrative spam and malware campaigns.
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China scales back censorship plans
Once to be compulsory for all computers in China, the Chinese government will only require the Green Dam filtering software on computers in public places, such as schools and public internet cafes. Individual PCs will not be required to run the filtering software.
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ICANN Says New Policy has Killed ‘domain Tasting’
Citing change in cost returns due to deletions during an Add Grace Period, ICANN has reported a 99.7% decrease in deletions between June 2008 and April 2009. What was once a $0.20 charge for deletions during the Add Grace Period now costs $6.75 or more per deletion. The article explains the pricing in greater detail.
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Wallet of the future? Your mobile phone
Within 5 years the mobile phone may replace the wallet. Such futuristic phone usage is becoming a reality for some in Japan and South Korea. In a survey of 963 Japanese citizens, 15% already make payments and purchase products in stores with their phones.
With 4 billion phone subscriptions worldwide at the end of 2008, 73 million are expected to make mobile payments; up 70%. By 2012 that number is expected to jump to 190 million who will make mobile payments. Only 3% of North Americans are expected to make payments via mobile device.
The mobile phone is expected to allow you to make payments instead of carrying cash or credit cards. The mobile phone is expected to open doors, access subways, clip coupons and possibly act as other forms of identification.
Comment: With mobile phones becoming an increasing target for hackers and their malware, might such adoption drop to lower numbers than expected?
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Tags: Anycast, Asia, Australia, Bot, Botnet, Business Continuity, Business resilience, China, Communications Infrastructure, Community DNS, CommunityDNS, DDoS, Denial of Service, Distributed Denial of Service, DNS, DNS Resolution, Domain Tasting, DoS, Filter, Global resolution, Green Dam, ICANN, Internet, malware, Mobile Phone, Resolution Service, Security, Spam, Trojan, Virus
