How a telecom investment in North Korea went horribly wrong

An Egyptian company that launched North Korea's first 3G cellular network and attracted as many as 3 million subscribers has revealed that it lost control of the operator despite owning a majority stake.The plight of Orascom Telecom and Media Technology in North Korea takes place against a backdrop of rapid telecom modernization and a public eager to adopt a new technology. It's ultimately a lesson in the perils of getting into bed with a government that's not known for respecting international law.When Orascom announced plans to launch the 3G service in 2008 it met with skepticism. The North Korean government severely limits its citizens' ability to communicate and has jailed or killed anyone who speaks out against the regime. The regime has regularly threatened war against its foes and was under sanctions at the time for a 2006 nuclear test.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Extreme tech positions of the presidential candidates

This is an election where extreme positions have become the norm, and the implications for science and technology may be huge.In some cases, the Republican and Democratic candidates have stated positions with clarity. But many of ideas are still vague, roughly sketched out and incomplete.+ ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD Techies back Democrats in Presidential race +These emerging proposals, the ones with the most impact on technology, deserve attention. The surviving candidates are certain to refine them in the months ahead. But here's a look at some tech implications of the 2016 contest.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Spearphishing Attacks Against Hostmonster Customers

I tend to see a lot of phishing emails. The message I received this morning caught my eye. It was fairly well crafted and obviously targeted. After searching the Internet, I found that some GoDaddy customers have received something similar. This seems to be making its way around the internet to website administrators. The most curious thing to me is how someone associated the email address with a Hostmonster account.

Phishing Email Message

Screen Shot 2015-11-18 at 6.58.02 AM

As can be seen above, the message read–

Your account contains more than 4035 directories and may pose a potential performance risk to the server. Please reduce the number of directories for your account to prevent possible account deactivation.

In order to prevent your account from being locked out we recommend that you create special temp directory.

The link goes to kct67<dot>ru.

Message headers also suggest a Russian origin–

Received: by 10.140.27.139 with SMTP id 11csp1084546qgx;
        Tue, 17 Nov 2015 20:25:39 -0800 (PST)
X-Received: by 10.25.161.211 with SMTP id k202mr1408853lfe.161.1447820739327;
        Tue, 17 Nov 2015 20:25:39 -0800 (PST)
Return-Path: <[email protected]>
Received: from bmx1.z8.ru (bmx1.z8.ru. [80.93.62.39])
        by mx.google.com with ESMTPS  Continue reading

Carrier Grade NAT and the DoS Consequences

Republished from Corero DDoS Blog:

The Internet has a very long history of utilizing mechanisms that may breathe new life into older technologies, stretching it out so that newer technologies may be delayed or obviated altogether. IPv4 addressing, and the well known depletion associated with it, is one such area that has seen a plethora of mechanisms employed in order to give it more shelf life.

In the early 90s, the IETF gave us Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR), which dramatically slowed the growth of global Internet routing tables and delayed the inevitable IPv4 address depletion. Later came DHCP, another protocol which assisted via the use of short term allocation of addresses which would be given back to the provider's pool after use. In 1996, the IETF was back at it again, creating RFC 1918 private addressing, so that networks could utilize private addresses that didn't come from the global pool. Utilizing private address space gave network operators a much larger pool to use internally than would otherwise have been available if utilizing globally assigned address space -- but if they wanted to connect to the global Internet, they needed something to translate those addresses. This is what necessitated the development of Network Address Translation (NAT).

NAT Continue reading

SentinelOne adds feature to restore files hit by ransomware

SentinelOne has added a feature to its endpoint detection products that can restore files encrypted by cybercriminals, a common type of attack known as ransomware. The "rollback" feature will be available in the 1.6 versions of its Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) and the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) products at no charge, said Dal Gemmell, director of product management. SentinelOne is among several vendors that are trying to displace traditional antivirus vendors with products that detect malware using deep analysis rather than signature-based detection. The company's products use a lightweight agent on endpoints such as laptops and desktops, which looks at the core of the operating system -- the kernel -- as well the the user space, trying to spot changes that might be linked to malware.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

In wake of Paris attacks, legislation aims to extend NSA program

A U.S. senator plans to introduce legislation that would delay the end of the bulk collection of phone metadata by the National Security Agency to Jan. 31, 2017, in the wake of security concerns after the terror attacks last Friday in Paris.Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, believes that the termination of the program, scheduled for month-end under the USA Freedom Act,  "takes us from a constitutional, legal, and proven NSA collection architecture to an untested, hypothetical one that will be less effective."The transition will happen in less than two weeks, at a time when the threat level for the U.S. is "incredibly high," he said Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How Cisco is trying to keep NSA spies out of its gear

Cisco is working to build the confidence of prospective customers in its products, two years after disclosures of spying by the U.S. National Security Agency seeded doubt, particularly in China. It is increasingly putting more stringent security requirements on its suppliers and has launched a beta program that allows customers to analyze its products in a highly secure environment before buying. The efforts are intended to introduce more transparency to allay growing concerns over how supply chains could be opportunistically used by spies and cybercriminals. "I worry about manipulation, espionage and disruption," said Edna Conway, chief security officer of Cisco's global value chain, in a recent interview. "We worry about tainted solutions, counterfeit solutions and the misuse of intellectual property."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Blackhole exploit kit makes a surprising encore appearance

The Blackhole exploit kit has made a surprising reappearance two years after cybercriminals stopped using it, according to security vendor Malwarebytes.Exploit kits are frameworks planted on Web pages that try to find software flaws on the computers in order to silently install malware.Blackhole was one of most popular exploit kits, but it faded from prominence after its alleged creator, who went by the nickname Paunch, was arrested in Russia. The kit was sold or rented to other cybercriminals in the underground economy for hacking tools.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Music cyberlocker downloads 36 months of jailtime

In the first criminal copyright infringement sentence imposed for a cyberlocker operator in the United States, the owner of the RockDizMusic.com got 36 months in prison and ordered to forfeit $50,851.05 and pay $48,288.62 in restitution.The US Department of Justice said Rocky Ouprasith, 23, of Charlotte, North Carolina operated RockDizMusic.com, a website originally hosted on servers in France and later in Canada, from which Internet users could find and download infringing digital copies of popular, copyrighted songs and albums.+More on Network World: 17 Real Big Sci/Tech projects+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network security primer: What is access control?

During its testimony on security weaknesses among federal agencies this week, the Government Accountability Office detailed a number of critical elements that make up effective protection systems.Among the systems the watchdog agency detailed was the key components in access control which is typically the technology an enterprise uses to regulate who has access to what resources.+ More on Network World: Watchdogs detail Federal security tribulations +To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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