Google is investigating a growing number of reports that hackers are breaking into legitimate Gmail accounts and then using them to send spam messages. The problem started about a week ago but seems to have escalated over the past few days.

"The Gmail team takes security very seriously and is investigating the reports we've seen in our user forums over the past few days," Google said Tuesday in an e-mailed statement. "We encourage users who suspect their accounts have been compromised to immediately change their passwords and to follow the advice at the following page: http://www.google.com/help/security/." Gmail accounts are often compromised after phishing attempts or via malicious programs, which can seek out and log online credentials from a hacked computer.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Four countries and two territories have won preliminary approval to have Internet addresses written entirely in their native scripts as early as this summer.

Rules are being developed to make sure that addresses in either script go to the same Web sites. Since their creation in the 1980s, Internet domain names such as those that end in ".com" have been limited to 37 characters: the 10 numerals, the hyphen and the 26 letters in the Latin alphabet used in English. Technical tricks have been used to allow portions of the Internet address to use other scripts, but until now, the suffix had to use those 37 characters.

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

Countries in Asia now face the same level and type of sophisticated cyber attack as countries in the West, according to a new report from non-profit US cyber-crime research organisation Team Cymru.

Countries in Asia now face the same level and type of sophisticated cyber attack as countries in the West, according to a new report from non-profit US cyber-crime research organisation Team Cymru. "We would expect to see high concentrations of compromised machines in areas with high concentrations of Internet saturation and urban population," said Team Cymru director, global outreach, and former Scotland Yard detective, Steve Santorelli.

 

(Source: IDG Connect)

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IDG Connect

Hollywood and Bollywood linked arms Thursday to fight piracy, with the announcement of a coalition among the Motion Picture Association of America and seven Indian companies to tackle counterfeiting in one of the world's largest film markets.

The alliance comes as Hollywood tries to tap global markets more aggressively and as Indian movie studios grow in size and stature — narrowing the gap between Indian and U.S. filmmakers, who have not always seen eye-to-eye on intellectual property issues. A year in the making, the coalition to fight film piracy in India will work with movie theaters to crack down on camcorder piracy — the source of 90 percent of all pirated DVDs — with police to tighten enforcement, with Internet service providers to fight Internet piracy and with politicians to create more effective laws.

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

More than three-quarters of people across the world believe access to the Internet is a fundamental right, a poll carried out for the BBC indicated Monday. The poll, which questioned more than 27,000 adults across 26 countries, suggested strong support globally for access to the web. The findings come as efforts are stepped up across the world to increase net access, with the United Nations leading a push for more people to be given the opportunity to get online. Countries including Finland and Estonia have already ruled it is a human right, said the BBC.

"The right to communicate cannot be ignored," Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, told the broadcaster. "The Internet is the most powerful potential source of enlightenment ever created."

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

Authorities have smashed one of the world's biggest networks of virus-infected computers, a data vacuum that stole credit cards and online banking credentials from as many as 12.7 million poisoned PCs. The "botnet" of infected computers included PCs inside more than half of the Fortune 1,000 companies and more than 40 major banks, according to investigators.

Spanish investigators, working with private computer-security firms, have arrested the three alleged ringleaders of the so-called Mariposa botnet, which appeared in December 2008 and grew into one of the biggest weapons of cybercrime. More arrests are expected soon in other countries.

 

(Source: The New Zealand Herald)

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The New Zealand Herald

China has issued new restrictions on Internet use, requiring those wanting to set up a website to meet regulators and provide identity documents, in a move slammed Wednesday by one rights group. The new rules come as the United States has stepped up pressure on Beijing to break down its vast system of web controls -- the so-called "Great Firewall of China" -- for the more than 380 million people now online in the country.

Washington issued those calls after US Internet giant Google said last month it was considering pulling out of China over cyberattacks and Chinese government censorship of its search results. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the new guidelines to local authorities on February 8 and lifted a ban imposed in December on individuals acquiring .cn domain names, state media said Tuesday.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

A new type of computer virus is known to have breached almost 75,000 computers in 2,500 organizations around the world, including user accounts of popular social network websites, according Internet security firm NetWitness. The latest virus -- known as "Kneber botnet" -- gathers login credentials to online financial systems, social networking sites and email systems from infested computers and reports the information back to hackers, NetWitness said in a statement.

A botnet is an army of infected computers that hackers can control from a central machine." The company said the attack was first discovered in January during a routine deployment of NetWitness software.

 

(Source: Reuters)

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Reuters

Deep inside millions of computers is a digital Fort Knox, a special chip with the locks to highly guarded secrets, including classified government reports and confidential business plans. Now a former U.S. Army computer-security specialist has devised a way to break those locks.

The attack can force heavily secured computers to spill documents that likely were presumed to be safe. This discovery shows one way that spies and other richly financed attackers can acquire military and trade secrets, and comes as worries about state-sponsored computer espionage intensify, underscored by recent hacking attacks on Google Inc.

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

China has closed what it claims to be the largest hacker training website in the country and arrested three of its members, domestic media reported on Monday.

The "Black Hawk Safety Net" website taught hacking techniques and provided malicious software downloads for its 12,000 members in exchange for a fee, the Wuhan Evening News newspaper reported this weekend, citing police in Huanggang, just east of Wuhan.

 

(Source: Reuters)

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Reuters

China will gradually move to cut censorship of the Internet, but it will take a long time, the man credited with inventing the World Wide Web said Wednesday.

Commenting on Google's threat to pull out of China, Tim Berners-Lee said Beijing was having to move "carefully" in opening up Internet openness, but said the "genie is out of the bottle" in terms of access. "I think that openness increases steadily. Every time you open it the genie comes out of the bottle and it's very difficult to put it (back) in the bottle," he told AFP. Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, he said: "The Internet has a tradition of bit by bit increasing openness.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

If Your Password Is 123456, Just Make It HackMe. Back at the dawn of the Web, the most popular account password was “12345.” Today, it’s one digit longer but hardly safer: “123456.”

Despite all the reports of Internet security breaches over the years, including the recent attacks on Google’s e-mail service, many people have reacted to the break-ins with a shrug. According to a new analysis, one out of five Web users still decides to leave the digital equivalent of a key under the doormat: they choose a simple, easily guessed password like “abc123,” “iloveyou” or even “password” to protect their data.

 

(Source: The New York Times)

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The New York Times

Hundreds of tech volunteers spurred to action by Haiti's killer quake are adding a new dimension to disaster relief, developing new tools and services for first responders and the public in an unprecedented effort. "It really is amazing the change in the way crisis response can be done now," said Noel Dickover, a Washington, D.C.-based organizer of the CrisisCamp tech volunteer movement, which is central to the Haiti effort. "Developers, crisis mappers and even Internet-savvy folks can actually make a difference."

Another volunteer project forged in the quake's aftermath is a cell phone text-messaging system that has helped the U.N., Red Cross and other relief groups dispatch rescuers, food and water.

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

The World Economic Forum today released its study on Scaling Opportunity: Information and Communications Technology for Social Inclusion, an analysis of how ICT is evolving to address the social and economic needs of the poor. The study notes that, as 4 billion people have access to the global communications infrastructure, the opportunity to create innovative and inclusively tailored solutions for connecting the unconnected is extraordinary.

Along with highlighting the rapid adoption rate of mobile phone usage within emerging economies, the report focuses on the question: “What’s next?”

 

(Source: eGov Monitor)

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eGov Monitor

Hackers are attacking consumers with an exploit of Internet Explorer (IE) that was allegedly used last month by the Chinese to break into Google's corporate network, a security company said Monday.

That news came on the heels of warnings by the information security agencies of the French and German governments, which recommended that IE users switch to an alternate browser, such as Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Opera, until Microsoft fixes the flaw. In a Monday alert Websense said it identified "limited public use" of the unpatched IE vulnerability in drive-by attacks against users who strayed onto malicious Web sites.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Violent video games have "a much bigger negative influence on kids" than pornography, a leading porn star has claimed. He said parents should be more worried about the harmful effects of such games. Mr Jeremy's comments were made at a session called the Great Porn Debate during the Consumer Electronics Show, CES, in Las Vegas. His comments angered gamers, who accused him of "ignorance".

Mr Jeremy also urged parents to play their part in preventing children from accessing adult websites. He said the industry already does all it can to protect youngsters. "Parents can block this stuff and need to stop blaming porn for a bad case of parenting," Mr Jeremy told BBC News.

 

(Source: BBC)

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BBC

A wireless industry group said mobile phone conversations are safe from eavesdropping, even after a German security expert released the code for unscrambling calls made using most of the world's cell phones. Concerns spread last week that cell phone calls could easily be intercepted after encryption expert Karsten Nohl unveiled his research at Europe's largest hacking conference, in Berlin.

The London-based GSM Association said on Thursday that it has spent the past few years figuring out ways to thwart hackers who might try to tap into wireless calls using Nohl's research, which it first learned of in 2007.

 

(Source: Reuters)

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Reuters

People who post intimate details about their lives on the internet undermine everybody else's right to privacy, claims an academic. Dr Kieron O'Hara has called for people to be more aware of the impact on society of what they publish online. "If you look at privacy in law, one important concept is a reasonable expectation of privacy," he said. "As more private lives are exported online, reasonable expectations are diminishing."

The rise of social networking has blurred the boundaries of what can be considered private, he believes - making it less of a defence by law. We live in an era that he terms "intimacy 2.0" - where people routinely share extremely personal information online.

 

(Source: BBC)

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BBC

Got an e-mail list of customers or readers and want to know more about each such as their full name, friends, gender, age, interests, location, job and education level? Facebook has just the free feature you're looking for, thanks to its recent privacy changes. The hack, first publicized by blogger Max Klein, repurposes a Facebook feature that lets people find their friends on Facebook by scanning through e-mail addresses in their contact list.

Using a simple scraping tool, a marketer could then turn a list of e-mail addresses into a rich, full-fledged set of marketing profiles, with names, pictures, ages, locations, interests, photos, wall posts, affiliations and names of your friends, depending on how users have their profiles set.

 

(Source: CNN)

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CNN

Chinese authorities caught nearly 5,400 suspects last year in a crackdown on online pornography and have vowed to strengthen Internet policing.

Beijing's pervasive policing of cyberspace and attempts to block the Internet are already among the world's most stringent. In a statement late Thursday, the Ministry of Public Security said the "purification of the Internet" and fighting of online crime are closely tied to the country's stability. "Lewd and pornographic content seriously pollutes the online environment, depraves social morals and poisons the physical and psychological health of the masses of young people," the statement said. "It must be firmly controlled."

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

A court in east China has handed down jail sentences of up to three years to 11 people for their roles in online gaming scams that netted them around 140,000 dollars, state media said. Lu Yizhong and Zeng Yifu wrote malicious Trojan horse viruses to steal 5.3 million user names and passwords from online gamers, which were then used for "illegal gains", the Xinhua news agency reported late Wednesday. Defendants Yan Renhai, his girlfriend Chen Huiting and other accomplices sold or used the viruses to steal online credits, the Gulou District People's Court in Jiangsu province found, according to Xinhua.

The number of Internet gamers in China reached 217 million at the end of June, or 64.2 percent of the nation's total online population.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

Internet users are being warned to watch out for a computer virus targeting popular social networking sites in the run up to Christmas.

Security experts say the new virus is "particularly nasty" and compels its victims to participate manually in creating a new Facebook account to help spread the worm. "The more people who use an application such as Facebook, or any other means of social networking, the more likely they are to be targeted by bad guys to send out malicious threats such as Koobface." The internet security company recommends that users do not reply to or follow links included in unsolicited Facebook messages and users should always carefully check that the URL they are entering is really that of the site they want to access.

 

(Source: FOX News)

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FOX News

Australia said Tuesday it would push ahead with a mandatory China-style plan to filter the Internet, despite widespread criticism that it will strangle free speech and is doomed to fail.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said new laws would be introduced to ban access to "refused classification" (RC) sites featuring criminal content such as child sex abuse, bestiality, rape and detailed drug use. Blacklisted sites would be determined by an independent classification body via a "public complaint" process, said Conroy, admitting there was "no silver bullet solution to cyber-safety".

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

ISO will develop a technical report (TR) to help emerging and developing countries implement a solid and internationally harmonized health informatics system. The report will present information in an accessible way to guide and facilitate the adoption of relevant International Standards by countries with limited resources and infrastructure.

International Standards can help by providing globally harmonized specifications for establishing the architectural framework used to design eHealth systems, plan implementation, make build-or-buy decisions, decide on acquisitions and undertake related activities.

 

(Source: ISO)

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ISO 

What do phishing, instant messaging malware, DDoS attacks and 419 scams have in common? According to Cisco Systems, they're all has-been cybercrimes that were supplanted by slicker, more menacing forms of cybercrime over the past year.

In its 2009 Annual Security Report, due to be released Tuesday, Cisco says that the smart cyber-criminals are moving on. "Social media and the data-theft Trojans are the things that are really in their ascent," said Patrick Peterson, a Cisco researcher. "You can see them replacing a lot of the old-school things."

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

The government is preparing to set up a National Identity Management Center (NIMC) to distribute National Identity Cards (NIDC) across the country. Government officials said that the center will be located in Kathmandu and will distribute cards through thousands of government employees mobilized across the country.

Government officials are making preparations to set up the center on the basis of the recently submitted recommendations of a task force formed to study the need and structure of such a center. “We have recommended to the government to set up NIMC to distribute NIDCs as committed in the national budget and government policy and programs," Lilamani Paudel, Secretary at the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers (OPMCM), told myrepublica.com.

 

(Source: Republica)

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BBC

The Taiwan government says it will spend 2 billion New Taiwan dollars ($65 million) to support its electronic-book industry and help makers cash in on the rapidly growing world market.

Companies can receive government subsidies of up to 40 percent of costs for programs developing related technologies, according to an Industrial Development Bureau report released Thursday. Taiwan is already a leading player in the digital book market, being the exclusive supplier of e-paper displays for Amazon's Kindle and Sony's e-Reader through collaboration with foreign firms that hold cutting-edge electronic ink technologies, officials said.

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

If your iPhone has been jailbroken, change your passwords now, advised Paul Ducklin, Sophos Australia's chief of technology. Ducklin said the writers of this virus included a program call "Duh", which added malicious capabilities not present in last month's ikee release.

The new password installed by this virus was "ohshit", which can be used to remove the threat of further remote attacks on an infected device. Ducklin said to clean up the device by searching the file "directory/private/var/mobile/home", type in "passwd" to initiate the command, and change the password. "Otherwise the buggers can get back in anytime they want," said Ducklin.

 

(Source: ZDNet Australia)

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ZDNet Australia

Online sales in China almost doubled in the first nine months of this year, official data showed Tuesday, as the nation becomes more switched on and confident in Internet shopping.

China's enormous Internet community spent 168.9 billion yuan (25 billion dollars), a 90 percent increase from the same period last year, the government data showed. And Di Jiankai, a director-general of the commerce ministry, told reporters the total figure for the whole year was expected to exceed 260 billion yuan. He did not providing a comparative figure for 2008. "The commerce ministry pays great attention to e-commerce," he added. "It is a very important business form we can use to boost consumption."

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

It’s not good news for IT cities. According to a report prepared by the Computer Emergency Research Team from the Union IT ministry, a total of 692 websites have been affected in September alone.

The unit has now asked the respective state governments to secure their own websites. “We have instructed all state governments to instal security measures, especially for those sites which contain sensitive data,’’ said a senior ministry official. Of the websites hacked, a whopping 74% belong to the dotin domain Most common hacking method is to steal password from administrator Hackers also enter web server and destroy the site Another method is to try and poison the URL.

 

(Source: The Economic Times)

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The Economic Times

A computer worm that China warned Internet users against is an updated version of the Panda Burning Incense virus, which infected millions of PCs in the country three years ago, according to McAfee.

The original Panda worm, also known as Fujacks, caused widespread damage at a time when public knowledge about online security was low, and led to the country's first arrests for virus-writing in 2007. The new worm variant, one of many that have appeared since late 2006, adds a malicious component meant to make infection harder to detect.

 

(Source: PC World)

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PC World

That television set you discourage your children from watching may not be the greatest threat to their wellbeing. Instead, the mobile phone is the gateway in introducing children to the world of cyberspace, posing a great risk to their safety, a lobby group said Tuesday.

According to The Cradle, the unmonitored use of technology is increasingly exposing youngsters to the risk of harm and violence. "Only 24 per cent of children in the study reported to their parents or an authority of online or cell phone harassment,” Cradle programme manager Brian Weke told journalists. The study also revealed that 77 out of the 96, who had the incidences reported to them, took no action and ignored the seriousness of the matter.

 

(Source: Daily Nation)

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Daily Nation

Four men, including the self-proclaimed "Godfather of Spam," were sentenced to prison on Monday for their roles in an email stock fraud scheme, the Justice Department said. FBI special agent said Ralsky, the self-proclaimed "Godfather of Spam," flooded email boxes with unwanted spam email and attempted to use a botnet to hijack computers to assist them in the scheme. A botnet is a network of computers infected by malicious software.

"Today's sentencing sends a powerful message to spammers whose goal is to manipulate financial transactions and the stock market through illegal email advertisements," said assistant attorney general Lanny Breuer.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

 

The world's biggest social networking site has brushed off criticism by a senior UK police officer responsible for preventing online bullying that it is failing to combat abuse.

Jim Gamble, head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (Ceop) Center, said Facebook and MySpace, which between them have more than 500 million users, could work harder to stamp out bullying. The initiative came as UK charity Beatbullying highlighted Bebo, owned by AOL, and Microsoft's instant messaging service as hotspots for bullying. In a poll of 2,094 young people across England conducted by the charity, 30 percent of 11 to 16-year-olds who had been "cyberbullied" had been targeted on Bebo.

 

(Source: CNN)

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CNN

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. "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.

 

(Source: BBC)

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BBC

The first applications were accepted on Monday for internationalised domain names (IDNs), in one of the most significant steps to making the Internet more accessible around the globe.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has opened the application process, ending the exclusive use of Latin characters for website addresses. On the first day, "we have already received six applications from around the world for three different scripts," ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom told an Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

Criminal gangs are making millions of dollars out of the H1N1 flu pandemic by selling fake flu drugs over the internet, a web security firm said on Monday.

Sophos, a British security software firm said it had intercepted hundreds of millions of fake pharmaceutical spam adverts and websites this year, many of them trying to sell counterfeit antiviral drugs like Tamiflu to worried customers. Tamiflu, an antiviral marketed by Switzerland's Roche Holding and known generically as oseltamivir, is the frontline drug recommended by the World Health Organization to treat and slow the progression of flu symptoms. GlaxoSmithKline makes another antiviral for flu, known as Relenza.

 

(Source: Reuters)

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Reuters 

For the last few days, some jailbroken iPhone users have found their home screen background a little different than they remembered. A hacker, going by the name "ikee," created a worm that changes the home screen background on jailbroken iPhones whose owners failed to change the default password after installing SSH.

Simply jailbreaking your iPhone will not make you vulnerable to this sort of hack. The iPhone OS, in general, is also immune to this hack. On jailbroken iPhones, SSH is installable with a package from Cydia that allows you to connect to your phone and make changes to the filesystem.

 

(Source: TUAW News)

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TUAW News

Australian internet provider BigPond has become the latest internet company to be targeted by hackers on Twitter, after one of its accounts was hijacked as part of a phishing scam.

Affected users received a private message from BigPondTeam saying "Hey, look at this," and directing them to follow a link that asked them to enter their Twitter password. The attack was part of an attempt to steal their credentials and potentially gain access to other services they use - such as their bank accounts or email services.

 

(Source: Guardian)

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Guardian

THE next world war could take place in cyberspace, the UN telecommunications agency chief has warned. "The next world war could happen in cyberspace and that would be a catastrophe. We have to make sure that all countries understand that in that war, there is no such thing as a superpower,'' Hamadoun Toure said.

"Loss of vital networks would quickly cripple any nation, and none is immune to cyberattack,'' added the secretary-general of the International Telecommunications Union during the ITU's Telecom World 2009 fair in Geneva. As the internet becomes more linked with daily lives, cyberattacks and crimes have also increased in frequency, experts said.

 

(Source: News.com)

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News.com

Pedophiles can exploit virus-infected PCs to remotely store and view their stash without fear they'll get caught. Pranksters or someone trying to frame you can tap viruses to make it appear that you surf illegal Web sites. Whatever the motivation, you get child porn on your computer — and might not realize it until police knock at your door.

An Associated Press investigation found cases in which innocent people have been branded as pedophiles after their co-workers or loved ones stumbled upon child porn placed on a PC through a virus. It can cost victims hundreds of thousands of dollars to prove their innocence.

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

China has issued rules banning the beating and confinement of youths being treated for Internet addiction after revelations of abuse at rehabilitation clinics, including the death of one teenager. The regulations posted on the health ministry's website Wednesday stressed that restraint must be used in dealing with such youngsters as "the concept of 'Internet addiction' has not been fully defined".

In August, the beating death of a teenage boy enrolled by his parents at an Internet addiction camp in southern China's Guangxi region provoked outrage across the country.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

China's police chief has called for a reinforced nationwide Internet security system, in the nation's latest effort to oversee the activities of the world's largest online population.

"The Internet is developing quickly, there are many loopholes in social management, and maintaining social stability faces unprecedented new challenges," public security minister Meng Jianzhu said in rare public remarks. Internet use has expanded at a dizzying pace in China, which now has the world's largest online population of at least 338 million users.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

If your cash card gets eaten by the automated-teller machine, it may not end up in the hands of a bank employee. European financial institutions are seeing a sharp rise in card "trapping," where criminals use various tricks in order to capture and retrieve a person's ATM card for fraudulent use.

For the first half of this year, financial institutions reported 1,045 trapping incidents, according to a new report from the European ATM Security Team (EAST), a nonprofit group composed of financial institutions and law enforcement. The figure, which covers 20 countries within the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), represents a 640 percent increase over the first half of 2008.

 

(Source: CIO)

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CIO

Twitter warned users Tuesday of a new phishing scam on the social networking site. It's the latest in a series of scams that have plagued the site over the past year, designed to trick victims into giving up their user names and passwords.

"We've seen a few phishing attempts today, if you've received a strange DM and it takes you to a Twitter login page, don't do it!," Twitter wrote on its Spam message page. The message reads, "hi. this you on here?" and includes a link to a fake Web site designed to look like a Twitter log-in page. After entering a user name and password, victims enter an empty blogspot page belonging to someone named NetMeg99.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Facebook outlined changes to its privacy policy on Thursday and asked for feedback from the social network's more than 300 million users. Members will have until November 5 to send in their comments about the proposed changes.

"This is the next step in our ongoing effort to run Facebook in an open and transparent way. After the comment period is over, we'll review your feedback and update you on our next steps." Some of the changes to Facebook's privacy policy are the result of pressure from Canada, whose privacy czar conducted an investigation into its handling of personal information.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

I am advised to "avoid giving my credit card online" and to be "careful when banking online" and to use random, complex passwords that I never repeat and never write down. So, as long as I refrain from commerce, stay indoors and have a superhuman memory, I should be fine!

I worry about identity theft and take measures, throughout the year, to defend my identity. So here's some identify defense advice that's actually practical: * Don't sign credit cards. I sign mine "See ID". Why give a card thief my signature too?

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

The 17-year-old’s body was dumped in a ditch after she sneaked out of her home on Sunday night to meet a boy she thought was 16, but who turned out to be 32. Her mother, Andrea Hall urged, “Tell your kids to be careful on the internet. Don't trust anybody and don't put your children on Facebook or other sites if they are under age. All we ask now is that people help the police in any way they can. We don't want any other child to be a victim.”

A 32-year-old man, of no fixed abode was due to appear at Newton Aycliffe Magistrates Court on Wednesday, charged with manslaughter and kidnap. The convicted sex offender was also charged with failing to notify a new address as required for sex offenders under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.

 

(Source: Telegraph)

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Telegraph

Nearly a decade after it introduced a program to internationalize domain names, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is expected to take another step on Friday. ICANN, during its annual meeting in Seoul, Korea, will vote on the internationalized domain names (IDN) initiative, better known as the Fast Track.

"In Seoul, we plan to move forward to the next step in the internationalization of the Internet, which means that eventually people from every corner of the globe will be able to navigate much of the online world using their native language scripts," said Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's CEO.

 

(Source: NewsFactor)

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NewsFactor 

Developing countries risk missing out on the benefits of information technology because of their lack of broadband infrastructure, a U.N. agency said.

Lack of broadband Internet access deprives countries of the possibility of building up offshoring industries, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said in a report late on Thursday. It also prevents people from tapping into all the advantages of mobile phones, whose use is exploding in poor countries. "What is known as the broadband gap for example is becoming a serious handicap for companies in many poor countries," he told a briefing to launch UNCTAD's Information Economy Report.

 

(Source: Reuters)

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Reuters 

The Internet is set for its biggest technical change in decades when a new multilingual address system is approved this week, a global regulatory body said Monday.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said it would declare an end to the exclusive use of Latin characters for website addresses on Friday -- the final day of its six-day conference in Seoul. When the change comes into force, it will be possible to use characters from other languages -- such as Chinese, Arabic, Korean and Japanese -- for a full Internet address, instead of for just part of an address as now.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

Networks of hacked computers are being used more than ever to click on advertisements, a scam known as click fraud that cheats search engines, publishers and ad networks out of revenue.

For the third quarter of the year, 42.6% of fraudulent clicks came from botnet-infected computers, according to Click Forensics, a company that produces tools to detect and filter out fraudulent clicks. The figure is the highest in four years, when Click Forensics began producing reports. For the same quarter a year ago, botnets accounted for 27.5% of bad clicks. Botnets are a powerful tool for hackers.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

China is building its cyberwarfare capabilities and appears to be using the growing technical abilities to collect U.S. intelligence through a sophisticated and long-term computer attack campaign, according to an independent report.

Released Thursday by a congressional advisory panel, the study found cases suggesting that China's elite hacker community has ties to the Beijing government, although there is little hard evidence. The Pentagon report described computer attacks believed to have originated in China, but concluded that "it remains unclear if these intrusions were conducted by, or with the endorsement of, the PLA or other elements of the PRC (People's Republic of China) government."

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

It is being billed as the largest-ever social change event on the Web and one which its organizers believe will unite the digital world in a wider conversation about climate change.

"I would say that 99 percent of our bloggers have never written about climate change before. I think there is a lot of power in people who usually don't write about this having conversations about a major issue like climate change." The scale of involvement in the day has been impressive. So far, over 8,000 blogs have registered in 144 countries and organizers predict that there will be around 15 million readers.

 

(Source: CNN)

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CNN

Microsoft admitted Hotmail users had been tricked into revealing their passwords, 10,000 of which had been published online.

The spam is being sent from users' accounts to contacts in their address books - so recipients will think it came from one of their friends. While the new spam is not malicious in itself, it does point the contact in the direction of something that is — a "shopping" website. The trick is, the shopping site is not a real one. The scam persuades victims to order goods online by credit card, leaving them vulnerable to identity theft and fraud.

 

(Source: Fox News)

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Fox News

Hotmail and several other Web e-mail providers were recently hit by phishing attacks that gleaned usernames and passwords.It's terribly insecure, but the string of digits 1234567 is a popular password on Hotmail, according to security researcher Bogdan Calin, who analyzed 9,843 stolen Windows Live Hotmail passwords that were posted on a Web site.

In a blog post, Calin said the following were the most common passwords in the Hotmail collection: 123456, 123456789, alejandra, 111111, alberto, tequiero, alejandro and 12345678.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Surfing the Internet just might be a way to preserve your mental skills as you age. Researchers found that older adults who started browsing the Web experienced improved brain function after only a few days.

"You can teach an old brain new technology tricks," said Dr. Gary Small, a psychiatry professor. With people who had little Internet experience, "we found that after just a week of practice, there was a much greater extent of activity particularly in the areas of the brain that make decisions, the thinking brain -- which makes sense because, when you're searching online, you're making a lot of decisions," he said. "It's interactive."

 

(Source: Health Day)

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Health Day

A 15-year-old girl who posted her profile on a vampire website was allegedly murdered by two men who created a "fictional internet alter-ego" a court heard.

Carly Ryan's body was found by a swimmer on an Australian beach in 2007. Yesterday a father and son appeared before the South Australian supreme court accused of setting a trap that led to her alleged murder. The girl posted personal details and photographs of herself on the Gothic website www.vampirefreaks.com and soon began an internet romance with a fictitious teenager called Brandon.

 

(Source: Telegraph)

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Telegraph

It’s the F word question that all parents now dread. “Can I go on Facebook?” your eleven year-old bullies you over dinner, declaring that absolutely everybody else in her class is not only on Facebook, but also on Twitter as well as Bebo and Orkut and other peculiarly named social networks.

So how should parents in today’s social media age deal with the F word question? Is social networking bad for children’s brains? Should we allow our kids to freely expose their identities on the Internet?

 

(Source: Telegraph)

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Telegraph

Cyber-crime just doesn't pay like it used to. Security researchers say the cost of criminal services such as distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks has dropped in recent months. The reason? Market economics.

Criminals have gotten better at hacking into unsuspecting computers and linking them together into so-called botnet networks, which can then be centrally controlled. Botnets are used to send spam, steal passwords, and sometimes to launch DDoS attacks, which flood victims' servers with unwanted information.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Twitter users should refrain from changing their log-in data until further notice or else risk getting locked out of their accounts. Twitter is investigating instances of users who have lost access to their accounts after modifying their usernames, passwords or e-mail addresses, the microblogging company said on Tuesday.

Until the problem is resolved, Twitter users shouldn't modify their log-in data, according to an official posting on Twitter's Status Web site. "This seems to affect new users as well as long term users," the note reads.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Studies on whether mobile phones can cause cancer, especially brain tumors, vary widely in quality and there may be some bias in those showing the least risk, researchers reported on Tuesday. So far it is difficult to demonstrate any link, although the best studies do suggest some association between mobile phone use and cancer, the team led by Dr. Seung-Kwon Myung of South Korea's National Cancer Center found.

Myung and colleagues at Ewha Womans University and Seoul National University Hospital in Seoul and the University of California, Berkeley, examined 23 published studies of more than 37,000 people in what is called a meta-analysis.

 

(Source: Reuters)

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Reuters 

About a third of UK employees throw sensitive documents in the bin instead of shredding them, research suggests. The study also found almost three-quarters of workers felt their organisations could do more to protect their customers' sensitive information.

The data was compiled for National Identity Fraud Prevention Week. Identity fraud costs the UK more than £1.2bn annually. The UK's Fraud Prevention Service says 60,000 people have fallen victim so far this year.

 

(Source: BBC)

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BBC 

Facebook has seen an impressive bump in traffic versus this time last year. For September 2009, the site claimed 58.6 percent of U.S. social networking tracking, a jump of 194-percent over the same period last year. Twitter's increase, meanwhile, was downright absurd, jumping 1,170 percent over the past year.

In September 2008, Facebook recorded a 19.94 share, which increased to 58.59 percent for Sept. 2009. MySpace, by contrast, dominated the social-networking sites last September, with a 66.8 percent share. Since then, however, MySpace's market share has plunged to 30.3 percent, still leaving it second in U.S. traffic.

 

(Source: PC Magazine)

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PC Magazine

For the fourth time this year, Adobe has admitted that hackers used malicious PDF documents to break into Windows PCs.

The bug in the popular Reader PDF viewer and the Acrobat PDF maker is being exploited in "limited targeted attacks," Adobe said yesterday. That phrasing generally means hackers are sending the rigged PDF documents to a short list of users, oftentimes company executives or others whose PCs contain a treasure trove of confidential information.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Security researchers are warning that Web-based applications are increasing the risk of identity theft or losing personal data more than ever before.

The best defense against data theft, malware and viruses in the cloud is self defense, researchers at the Hack In The Box (HITB) security conference said. But getting people to change how they use the Internet, such as what personal data they make public, won't be easy.

 

(Source: PCWorld)

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PCWorld 

Scammers have grabbed the Hotmail passwords that leaked to the Web and are using them in a plot involving a fake Chinese electronics seller to bilk users out of cash and their credit card information, a security researcher said.

"We've seen a 30% to 40% increase in these types of spam messages in the last several days," said Patrik Runald, senior manager of Websense's security research team. "By 'these types of spam,' I mean messages that are advertising great consumer electronics bargains, such as cameras and computers."

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Meet "network man." He has basic desires of his own, but has many arbitrary preferences, such as in music or clothes, that have been influenced by the people he knows. Network man's likes and dislikes, in turn, affect the behavior of his friends, and their friends, and their friends.

People have profound influences on each other's behavior within three degrees of separation, the authors find. That means that your friends, your friends' friends, and your friends' friends' friends may all affect your eating habits, voting preferences, happiness, and more. At the fourth degree, however, the influence substantially weakens.

 

(Source: CNN)

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CNN

The head of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has stopped banking online after nearly falling for a phishing attempt. FBI Director Robert Mueller said he recently came "just a few clicks away from falling into a classic Internet phishing scam" after receiving an e-mail that appeared to be from his bank.

In phishing scams, criminals send spam e-mails to their victims, hoping to trick them into entering sensitive information such as usernames and passwords at fake Web sites.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

IPhone lovers and other smartphone users should take heed: A security researcher showed ways to spy on a BlackBerry user during a presentation Wednesday, including listening to phone conversations, stealing contact lists, reading text messages, taking and viewing photos and figuring out the handset's location via GPS.

And ironically, Sheran Gunasekera, head of research and development at ZenConsult, said the BlackBerry is one of the most secure smartphones available, in some ways better than the iPhone.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Privacy and security are foundational to health care reform. Patients will trust electronic health care records only if they believe their confidentiality is protected via good security.

As vice chairman of the federal Healthcare Information Technology Standards Committee, I have been on the front lines in the debate over the standards and implementation guidance needed to support the exchange of health care information. Over the past few months, I've learned a great deal from the committee's privacy and security workgroup.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

The social networking site said that its security teams had noticed an increase in scams where people's login information is collected through phishing sites, and then their accounts are accessed without permission to ask friends for money.

"While the total number of people who have been impacted is small, we take any threat to security seriously and are redoubling our efforts to combat the scam," The attacks, known as 419 scams, involve a fraudster accessing Facebook accounts and posing as the account owner.

 

(Source: Telegraph)

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Telegraph

Microsoft blocked access to thousands of Hotmail accounts in response to hackers plundering password information and posting it online.

Cyber-crooks evidently used "phishing" tactics to dupe users of Microsoft's free Web-based email service into revealing account and access information, according to the US technology giant. Phishing is an Internet bane and involves using what hackers refer to as "social engineering" to trick people into revealing information online or downloading malicious software onto computers.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

"We were at a restaurant for my mom's birthday. I looked over and there are my daughter and my oldest son texting, holding their phones under the table," said the mom of four in Lewiston, Idaho. "I just came unglued. I was like, `Are you kidding? You're at your grandma's birthday party. Put those phones away now!'"

We all know teens love their gadgets — more for texting than talking. But the devices are posing some new challenges for parents. How can they teach their tech-savvy kids some electronic etiquette? So far, parents are learning on the fly, imposing new rules for their young offenders such as "no texting at dinner."

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

It's your birthday. And thanks to your Facebook profile, everybody knows that. Your wall fills up with well wishes from hundreds of "friends." Sure, it's nice to be noticed. But security experts are skeptical about whether sharing information, such as birthdays, with a broad audience is a bright idea. "It's all about providing the bad guy with intelligence," said Robert Siciliano, CEO of IDtheftsecurity.com.

Many people use their birthdate in passwords and personal identification numbers, and security questions often ask for it to resend a lost password. So broadcasting a birthdate could help cybercriminals pose as others as they log on to various Web sites, experts warned.

 

(Source: CNN)

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CNN

Cybersecurity researchers often scare the IT world with tales of brilliant and devious hacks: encryption cracking techniques, wi-fi booby-traps and undetected vulnerability data sold on the black market. But the most common path cybercriminals use to gain access to victims' PCs today, according to a new report, is far more mundane: buggy software that users and IT administrators fail to patch for months, long after fixes are publicly available.

The study to be released Tuesday by the security-focused SANS Institute states that the cybersecurity community is facing an epidemic of unpatched software, particularly widely used applications like Adobe Flash, Java and Microsoft programs like Word and PowerPoint.

 

(Source: Forbes)

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Forbes

Microsoft on Tuesday began serving up scam warnings with Bing search results for topics such as fixing credit scores or rescue from home foreclosure that are prime material for online cons.

Microsoft worked with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Postal Inspection Service, and Western Union to provide public service announcements (PSAs) in the form of advertising posted on relevant Bing results pages. Targeted in the campaign are key words related to searches for information about foreclosure rescue offers; promises to fix credit problems, and "lottery scams" in which people are told they've won prizes but must pay to collect.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

Web surfing is no longer a solo affair. Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks have quickly become an integral part of the online culture, and with them comes a whole new array of potential security threats.

Social networking is built on the idea of sharing information openly and fostering a sense of community. Unfortunately, an online network of individuals actively sharing their experiences and seeking connections with other like-minded people can be easy prey for hackers bent on social-engineering and phishing attacks. It's important to be aware of the threats, and to maintain a healthy skepticism in your online interactions.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

A network of Russian malware writers and spammers paid hackers 43 cents for each Mac machine they infected with bogus video software, a sign that Macs have become attack targets, a security researcher said yesterday.

In a presentation Thursday at the Virus Bulletin 2009 security conference in Geneva, Switzerland, Sophos researcher Dmitry Samosseiko discussed his investigation of the Russian "Partnerka," a tangled collection of Web affiliates who rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars from spam and malware, most of the former related to phony drug sites, and much of the latter targeting Windows users with fake security software, or "scareware."

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Next time you're recovering from trip to the emergency room, keep an eye on the young doctors tending to you. They might be chatting about your case on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and blogs.

A survey of medical schools published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 13 percent of respondents reported breaches of doctor-patient confidentiality, and 60 percent reported "unprofessional content" posted online.

 

(Source: PCWorld)

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PCWorld 

Many major social networking sites are leaking information that allows third party advertising and tracking companies to associate the Web browsing habits of users with a specific person, researchers warn.

That's the conclusion of a study on the leakage of personally identifiable information on social networks done at AT&T Labs and the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. "In some cases, the leakage may be unintentional, but in others, there is clever and surreptitious anti-privacy engineering at work," the EFF said.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Scammers are increasingly using machine-generated Twitter accounts to post messages about trendy topics, and tempt users into clicking on a link that leads to servers hosting fake Windows antivirus software, security researchers said Monday.

The latest Twitter attacks originated with malicious accounts cranked out by software, said experts at both F-Secure and Sophos. The accounts, which use variable account and user names, supposedly represent U.S. Twitter users. In some cases, the background wallpaper is customized for each account, yet another tactic to make the unwary think that a real person is responsible for the content.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Teens and texting is a subject that's often discussed in pathological terms. They're texting in class! They're sexting! They need thumb therapy! But texting isn't always bad. In some families, it's become a primary form of communication between parents and children. In fact, one of my favorite texts from kids is the earth-shattering query "Wuz4dina?"

Psychologist Thomas W. Phelan says one of the biggest problems with teens is getting them to communicate at all, so if they're willing to text their parents, we should embrace the trend. "Instead of seeing the whole text thing as an enemy, see it as an ally."

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

Decades of war and occupation have not provided an answer to that question -- but the social networking Web site now permits both options, sparking fears about an anti-Facebook cyber-war. The Golan Heights is Syrian territory that was captured by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967. Since then it has been internationally classified as Israeli-occupied territory.

Up until recently, Facebook fans in the Golan Heights could only choose Syria as their country of origin or else leave it blank. Pro-Israel Web site honestreporting.com sought to change that, starting a group called "Facebook, Golan residents live in Israel, not Syria."

 

(Source: CNN)

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CNN

A new botnet has caused a sharp spike in click fraud because it is skirting the most sophisticated filters of search engines, Web publishers and ad networks, according to Click Forensics. The company, which provides services to monitor ad campaigns for click fraud and reports on click fraud incidence every quarter, said on Thursday that the botnet's architects have figured out a way to mask it particularly well as legitimate search ad traffic.

Click Forensics is calling this the "Bahama botnet" because it was initially redirecting traffic through 200,000 parked domains in the Bahamas, although it is now using sites in Amsterdam, the U.K. and Silicon Valley.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Microsoft filed lawsuits against five companies Thursday, accusing them of using malicious advertisements to trick victims into installing software on their computers.

Typically, when a scareware ad pops up on a victim's screen, it looks like a Windows utility running some kind of security scan. It will then warn that it has found a critical security problem and direct the victim to a Web site where they can buy a product to fix the issue. DirectAd Solutions, Soft Solutions, qiweroqw.com, ote2008.info and ITmeter have used ads to "distribute malicious software or present deceptive websites that peddled scareware to unsuspecting Internet users".

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

In the economic downturn, teenagers around the world have focused their spending cuts on clothes, games and food, according to a survey by networking site Habbo Hotel.

The survey of 61,000 teenagers in more than 30 countries showed one teenager out of three is getting less money from their parents, with more than half of youngsters getting less to spend in the United States, Spain and Latin America. Some 19 percent of youngsters globally say the recession has most hurt their spending on console and computer games -- the industry for which teenagers are a key client group.

 

(Source: Reuter)

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Reuter

With many who bank online now wary of phishing attacks, criminals are adding fake live-chat support windows to their Web sites to make them seem more real. RSA Security spotted the first ever of these "chat-in-the-middle" attacks in the past few hours, according to Sean Brady, a manager with the security company's identity protection and verification group.

The phishers send e-mails that direct victims to a fake Web page designed to look like a banking site. That's a standard technique, but what's different in this case is that the phishing site comes with a fake online chat option, so that scammers can talk directly with their victims.

 

(Source: PCWorld)

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PCWorld

As millions of students across the world go back to school this month, 178 students from 49 countries will turn on their computers and step onto the virtual campus of the world's first global, tuition-free online university.

"Our mission is to change people's lives." Called University of the People, the non-profit comes from Israeli entrepreneur Shai Reshef who says he founded the school to provide higher education to those who might otherwise never have access to it. "We are creating a global classroom for science and allowing people to freely collaborate. We want to put high quality teaching and learning materials into the hands of anybody and everybody who wants to become a scientist,"

 

(Source: CNN)

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CNN

Cyber criminals are taking advantage of swine flu fears with e-mails promising news on the illness which then infect computers with a virus, a Spanish computer security firm warned Friday.

The e-mails invite recipients to open a document with information claiming the H1N1 flu virus was developed by pharmaceutical firms seeking to make huge profits from the outbreak, Pandasecurity said in a statement. But if the document is opened, a virus is installed on the person's computer which can steal personal information like bank account data.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

South Korea plans to train 3,000 "cyber sheriffs" by next year to protect businesses after a spate of attacks on state and private websites, a report said Sunday. The "cyber sheriffs" would be tasked with "protecting corporate information and preventing the leaks of industrial secrets," Yonhap news agency said.

In the event of cyber attacks, the National Intelligence Service, the country's main spy agency, would set up a taskforce including civilian and government experts to counter the online threats, it added. The country already has a military cyber unit. South Korea, where 95 percent of homes have broadband, is among the top countries in terms of access to the high-speed Internet.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

A third of Web users under 25 claim they don't care about their "digital tattoo" and the items they post online, says Symantec. Symantec said a "digital tattoo" is created by all the personal information web users post online and can easily be found through search engines by a potential or current employer, friends and acquaintances, or anyone who has malicious intent.

The security firm revealed that nearly two-thirds of all those surveyed had uploaded personal photographs, while 79 percent had at least part of their address online and nearly half had their mobile phone numbers online.

 

(Source: PCWorld)

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PCWorld

Hong Kong is under siege from legions of "zombies" attacking people with spam and leaving in their wake a trail of destruction costing millions of dollars a year, analysts have warned.

There are an estimated 4,000 zombies active in Hong Kong and their criminal puppet masters use them to fire off thousands of messages offering products ranging from jewellery to pornography. According to the 2008 Annual Security Report by Internet security firm MessageLabs 81.3 percent of emails sent to Hong Kong computer users last year were spam, more than in any other territory or country in the world.

 

(Source: INQUIRER)

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INQUIRER

Anonymous hackers have attacked a Taiwan film festival over plans to screen a documentary on the US-based leader of China's predominantly Muslim Uighur minority, festival organisers said Tuesday. A message, posted on a blog run by one of the organisers of the Kaohsiung Film Festival, blamed Rebiya Kadeer for recent bloody unrest in northwest China's Xinjiang region, which is home to the Turkic-speaking Uighurs.

The film festival, which takes place in Taiwan's second largest city Kaohsiung, is scheduled to show "Ten Conditions of Love" on World Uighur Congress leader Kadeer in October.

 

(Source: INQUIRER)

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INQUIRER

Parents who install a leading brand of software to monitor their kids' online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their children's chat messages - and sell the marketing data gathered.

Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games. The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids.

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

China approved of Google's efforts to filter porn from search results on its China portal following state-led criticism of the links, the former head of Google China said Sunday.

Google.cn has long filtered out some results for sensitive searches. The search engine displays a notice that some results have been filtered for search terms such as "Tiananmen," the square in Beijing around which soldiers killed hundreds to disperse a student democracy protest in 1989, or for the names of major political leaders. The search engine currently displays no search results at all for "Xu Zhiyong," the name of a human rights lawyer recently detained for about one month. The results screen says the search "may touch on content that does not conform with the related laws, regulations and policies"

 

(Source: PCWorld)

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PCWorld

In an age in which instant news and constant life streams from Facebook and Twitter change the way we communicate, the rules of etiquette surrounding these interactions are still evolving. What happens when I expected a phone call about something and read about it in a status update instead? What's the polite response to a distant friend posting bad news on Facebook? What to do with sensitive information?

Good etiquette on Facebook might not apply on Twitter or in an e-mail. These days, milestones like marriage, pregnancy, breakups and divorce are being described over more forms of communications than ever. Because it's so new, there is sort of a gray area of what the manners are,"

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

Facebook warned Thursday that members who buy "friends" from an Australian online marketing company could face banishment from the social network. The Brisbane-based firm, uSocial.net, offered this week to sell a Facebook user 1,000 friends for 177 dollars and 5,000 friends -- on a standard profile account -- for 654 dollars. USocial caused a stir earlier this year with a similar offer to users of popular micro-blogging service Twitter seeking to increase their number of followers.

Facebook fired back against uSocial on Thursday and issued a reminder that it was against its terms of service for a user to access an account belonging to someone else or to share a password.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

Ben Alexander spent nearly every waking minute playing the video game "World of Warcraft." As a result, he flunked out of the University of Iowa. He needed help to break an addiction he calls as destructive as alcohol or drugs.

Internet addiction is not recognized as a separate disorder by the American Psychiatric Association, and treatment is not generally covered by insurance. But there are many such treatment centers in China, South Korea and Taiwan - where Internet addiction is taken very seriously - and many psychiatric experts say it is clear that Internet addiction is real and harmful.

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

Google said Tuesday's widespread Gmail outage occurred when the company took some servers offline to perform routine maintenance, causing its remaining routers to become overloaded with traffic. "We know how many people rely on Gmail for personal and professional communications, and we take it very seriously when there's a problem with the service." wrote Ben Treynor, a Google vice president of engineering.

Gmail's problems were a top trending topic on Twitter, with users trading updates and posting links to blogs such as Mashable, which published a post called, "5 Things to Do While Gmail is Down." (No. 1: "Immediately flood Twitter with tweets alternately proclaiming 'Gmail is down!' and inquiring 'Is Gmail down?' ")

 

(Source: CNN)

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CNN

If Google Inc. digitizes the world's books, how will it keep track of what you read? That's one of the unanswered questions that librarians and privacy experts are grappling with as Google attempts to settle a long-running lawsuit by publishers and copyright holders and move ahead with its effort to digitize millions of books, known as the Google Books Library Project.

Librarians and the online world have different standards for dealing with user information. Many libraries routinely delete borrower information, and organizations such as the American Library Association have fought hard to preserve the privacy of their patrons.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Facebook has agreed to make worldwide changes to its privacy policy as a result of negotiations with Canada's privacy commissioner. Last month the social network was found to breach Canadian law by holding on to users' personal data indefinitely.

It will also make it clear that users can deactivate or delete their account. "These changes mean that the privacy of 200 million Facebook users in Canada and around the world will be far better protected," said Canadian privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart.

 

(Source: BBC)

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BBC

There's still plenty of room for innovation today, yet the openness fostering it may be eroding. While the Internet is more widely available and faster than ever, artificial barriers threaten to constrict its growth. Call it a mid-life crisis. A variety of factors are to blame. Spam and hacking attacks force network operators to erect security firewalls.

"There is more freedom for the typical Internet user to play, to communicate, to shop — more opportunities than ever before," said Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor and co-founder of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. "On the worrisome side, there are some longer-term trends that are making it much more possible (for information) to be controlled."

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

Users of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter could face higher insurance premiums because burglars may be using them to find out their personal details. The Digital Criminal report, which polled 2,000 social network users, found nearly two fifths had posted details of their holiday plans, with nearly two thirds of 16-24 year-olds doing so.

"I call it 'internet shopping for burglars'. It is incredibly easy to use social neyworking sites to target people, and then scope out more information on their actual home using other internet sites like Google Street View, all from the comfort of the sofa."

 

(Source: Telegraph)

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Telegraph

A vulnerability in Twitter Inc.'s popular microblogging service remains unfixed and can be used by criminals to hijack accounts or redirect users to malicious Web sites, a developer claimed today. The cross-site scripting bug in Twitter allows hackers to insert malicious JavaScript into tweets simply by adding code to a field of an API used by third-party Twitter application developers.

A software developer, a U.K.-based search optimization specialist, Slater recommended that, until Twitter patches the vulnerability, users should stop following any Twitterers they don't personally know or trust. "Who's to say they're not already stealing your details? If you don't see their tweets, they can't harm you,"

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Users of social networks are concerned about security but few are taking the steps necessary to protect themselves against online crime, according to a survey released on Wednesday.

Nearly 20 percent of those surveyed said they have experienced identity theft, 47 percent have been victims of malware infections and 55 percent have seen "phishing" attacks, in which hackers seek to capture password information. They also suggested that passwords be changed at least once a month and that friends or coworkers not be allowed to access one's personal computer.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

Fans searching for "Jessica Biel" or "Jessica Biel downloads," "Jessica Biel wallpaper," "Jessica Biel screen savers," "Jessica Biel photos," and "Jessica Biel videos" have a one in five chance of landing at a Web site that has tested positive for online threats such as spyware, adware, spam, phishing, viruses and other malware. McAfee's conclusion: Searching for the latest celebrity news and downloads can cause serious damage to personal computers.

"Consumers' obsession with celebrity news and culture is harmless in theory, but one bad download can cause a lot of damage to a computer."

 

(Source: NewsFactor)

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NewsFactor

Internet criminals might be rethinking a favorite scam for stealing people's personal information. A report being released Wednesday by IBM Corp. shows a big drop in the volume of "phishing" e-mails, in which fraud artists send what looks like a legitimate message from a bank or some other company. If the recipients click on a link in a phishing e-mail, they land on a rogue Web site that captures their passwords, account numbers or any other information they might enter.

To protect yourself against phishing, access sensitive sites on your own, rather than by following links in e-mails, which might lead to phishing sites.

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

The average gamer, far from being a teen, is actually a 35-year-old man who is overweight, aggressive, introverted — and often depressed, according to a report out this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The study also shows that when children and teenagers become game players, a trend toward physical inactivity and corresponding health problems extends -- and is exacerbated -- into adulthood.

"Among researchers, there is growing concern and uncertainty about the health consequences of video game playing," the CDC reported.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Facebook, for better or worse, is like being at a big party with all your friends, family, acquaintances and co-workers. There are lots of fun, interesting people you're happy to talk to when they stroll up.

Sure, Facebook can be a great tool for keeping up with folks who are important to you. But far more posts read like navel-gazing diary entries, or worse, spam. A recent study categorized 40 percent of Twitter tweets as "pointless babble," and it wouldn't be surprising if updates on Facebook, still a fast-growing social network, break down in a similar way. Here are 12 of the most annoying types of Facebook users:

 

(Source: CNN)

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CNN

A Canadian model has won a landmark case in a New York court after Google was forced to disclose the online identity of a blogger who anonymously posted derogatory comments about the Vogue covergirl. The ruling came after Liskula Cohen, 36, filed suit in a bid to unmask the identify of her tormentor, who posted suggestive photographs of Cohen on the blog and described her as a "ho" and a "psychotic, lying, whoring... skank."

Google said that while the company does not tolerate "cyber bullying" it is also respectful of privacy. "We sympathize with anyone who may be the victim of cyber bullying,"

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

The clock is ticking, people are dying and a flu virus is sweeping the globe -- that is the scenario of a new computer game designed to make people think about how to respond to the swine flu pandemic. In "The Great Flu", players must choose whether or not to stockpile anti-viral drugs and deploy research teams to new areas of outbreak as the number of infections and deaths rises and more countries are affected.

"The game is very realistic and has an educational value. It informs people how the virus spreads, what the flu is and on the ways to fight the pandemic."

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

A 14-year-old boy was in critical condition in hospital with kidney failure after repeated beatings at an Internet rehabilitation camp in southwest China, state media said Wednesday. The incident in Sichuan province took place just weeks after another teenage boy was beaten to death at a similar rehabilitation centre in the south of the country where his parents had sent him to cure his Internet addiction.

China has 10 million teenage web addicts, the China Daily said, citing data from the China Youth Internet Association. The association said last week that there are at least 400 private Internet rehabilitation clinics nationwide.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

A new hacking incident report warns there has been a steep rise in attacks at social-networking hotspots including wildly popular microblogging service Twitter. Hackers aren't just hunting for victims in the flocks of people at social networks, they're also using Twitter to command "botnet" armies of infected computers, according to Internet security specialists.

"A lot of Web 2.0 widgets, mashups and the like that users go for make it easy for all these guys to launch attacks." Facebook became an Internet star after opening its platform to widgets, mini-applications made by outside developers, and now boasts more than 250 million members.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

The Twitter micro-blogging service was knocked offline this morning for several hours as a result of a denial of service attack (DDoS). Twitter has confirmed and reported the attack in a post on its official blog earlier today: "We are defending against this [DDos] attack now and will continue to update our status blog as we continue to defend and later investigate." The company later reported that the service as been resumed but they are still continuing to defend against and recover from this attack. No further updates have been provided yet. Several sources are also reporting problems with Facebook today.

(Source: CircleID)

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CircleID

The 24-year-old Singaporean research analyst is constantly on the lookout for attack manuals, video clips of Islamist militants in training and fiery extremist chatter that could hint at an imminent assault somewhere.

Nur Azlin is one of five research analysts at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies who monitor extremist websites daily to get a sense of an emerging battleground in the fight against terrorism. There are an estimated 5,500-6,000 websites worldwide peddling extremist ideas, according to the researchers.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

A researcher looking into the attacks that knocked Twitter offline last week discovered another, unrelated security problem. At least one criminal was using a Twitter account to control a network of a couple hundred infected personal computers, mostly in Brazil.

Networks of infected PCs are referred to as "botnets" and are responsible for so much of the mayhem online, from identity theft to spamming to the types of attacks that crippled Twitter. A Twitter account that was used to send out what looked like garbled messages. But they were actually commands for computers in a botnet to visit malicious Web sites, where they download programs that steal banking passwords.

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

Foreign pornography producers are suing South Korean Internet users for breach of copyright by uploading their content onto local websites, police said Thursday. In an unusual case, a local law firm representing 50 US and Japanese porn producers has filed suit against about 10,000 heavy uploaders.

The lawsuit was filed simultaneously through 10 police stations in Seoul and the adjoining Gyeonggi province, a National Police Agency spokesman said, refusing to give details. "We selected about 10,000 user IDs that earned financial benefits from habitually uploading pornography on websites," an official of the unidentified law firm told local media.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

Children are using the Internet to watch YouTube videos, connect with friends on social network sites and look up "sex" and "porn", according to a study of the top Web searches by youngsters. The words "sex" and "porn" also made it into the top 10, ranked numbers four and six respectively.

"It also helps identify "teachable moments" when parents should be talking with their kids about appropriate online behavior and other issues in their kids' online lives," California-based Symantec's Internet safety advocate Marian Merritt said in a statement.

 

(Source: Reuter)

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Reuter

The investigation into the attacks against high-profile Web sites in South Korea and the U.S. is a winding, twisty electronic goose chase that may not result in a definitive conclusion on the identity of the attackers.

Computer security experts disagree over the skill level of the DDOS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks, which over the course of a few days in early July caused problems for some of the Web sites targeted, including South Korean banks, U.S. government agencies and media outlets. The DDOS attack was executed by a botnet, or a group of computers infected with malicious software controlled by a hacker. That malware was programmed to attack the Web sites by bombarding them with page requests that far exceed normal visitor traffic. As a result, some of the weaker sites buckled.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

A growing number of South Korean companies are opening Twitter accounts to better connect with consumers and generate buzz for their products. However, industrial heavyweights such as Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor, SK Group and Lotte Group are not among them. Should they decide to join the 140-word Web phenomenon, they will have to acknowledge that they will be unable to use their own corporate brands.

A Twitter account created under Samsung's name has been currently suspended by the Internet company due to "strange activity," which could mean anything from service violations, technical abuse and spam distribution.

 

(Source: The Korea Times)

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The Korea Times

Worried that your relationship is going south? Maybe it's time to get off Facebook. A study released by the University of Guelph in Ontario shows that the Facebook social network increases jealousy in users' romantic relationships. The study, which was published in the latest issue of CyberPsychology and Behaviour, concluded that the more time people spend on Facebook, the more jealous they get.

"This may include details about their partner's friendships and social exchanges, especially interactions with previous romantic or sexual partners." The simple availability of information -- whether it's a girlfriend's posts, or photos and details about her friends and exes -- seems to increase a person's desire to search for even more information, say researchers.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

The outage that knocked Twitter offline for hours was traced to an attack on a lone blogger in the former Soviet republic of Georgia - but the collateral damage that left millions around the world tweetless showed just how much havoc an isolated cyberdispute can cause.

"It told us how quickly many people really took Twitter into their hearts," Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, said Friday. Tens of millions of people have come to rely on social media to express their innermost thoughts and to keep up with world news and celebrity gossip. Twitter "is one of those little amusements that infiltrated the mass behavior in some significant ways, so that when it went away, a lot of people really noticed it and missed it."

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

A group of teenagers have reacted to warnings that using sites like Facebook, Bebo and Myspace can leave them traumatised. The Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, says the sites encourage users to value the number rather than quality of friends they have.

He’s worried this makes people get too many temporary friends instead of real, genuine ones. He said: “It’s an all or nothing syndrome that you have to have in an attempt to shore up identity. "Friendship is not a commodity, friendship is something that is hard work and enduring when it’s right.”

 

(Source: BBC)

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BBC

The distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks that knocked out Twitter for hours and affected other sites like Facebook, Google's Blogger, and LiveJournal on Thursday continued all day Friday and may persist throughout the weekend. In its latest update, posted to a discussion forum of its third-party developers at 11 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time on Friday, Twitter reports it's still fighting the attacks.

"The DDoS attack is still ongoing, and the intensity has not decreased at all," wrote Chad Etzel, from Twitter's application development platform support team.

 

(Source: PCWorld)

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PCWorld

Micro-blogging service Twitter and social networking site Facebook have been severely disrupted by hackers. Twitter was taken offline for more than two hours whilst Facebook's service was "degraded", according to the firms.

The popular sites were subject to so-called denial-of-service attacks on Thursday, the companies believe. Denial-of-service (DOS) attacks take various forms but often involve a company's servers being flooded with data in an effort to disable them.

 

(Source: BBC)

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BBC

Parents have been warned of a new teenage trend of "sexting", in which children exchange explicit photos of themselves by text. More than a third of secondary school children have been sent messages containing sexual content, a survey showed.

Researchers found youngsters were regularly being sent sex texts or "sexts" - often by their school friends. The messages contain images of sex acts involving young people but more generally of boys and girls exposing themselves. Material is sent to mobile phones via texts, transferred using Bluetooth or uploaded to social networking groups. Girls are bullied into taking, and sharing, explicit pictures of themselves, the charity warned.

 

(Source: Telegraph)

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Telegraph

A teenager was allegedly beaten to death by trainers at a rehabilitation camp in southern China where his parents had sent him to cure his Internet addiction, reports said Tuesday.

The three supervisors who allegedly beat Deng Senshan, 16, were arrested after the boy's death early Sunday, his father Deng Fei told the Global Times. "We are investigating a case where a high school student was beaten to death by his camp supervisors. The case is still under investigation," a police officer in Nanning, Guangxi region, was quoted as saying.

More than 10 million of the country's 100 million teenage web surfers are Internet addicts, the China Daily said, citing a survey by the China Youth Internet Association last year.

 

(Source: The Economic Times)

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The Economic Times

High-tech Japan is gearing up for elections, but you won't hear a tweet from Prime Minister Taro Aso or his main rivals. When election campaigning officially begins on August 18, a cyberspace ban will make it illegal for politicians to update their Internet blogs, share their political views by email or put new videos online.

It is an odd situation in one of the world's most wired countries, where more than 60 percent of the population regularly uses the Internet. Japanese politicians "are missing a real chance to try to generate interest among young voters by not allowing cyber campaigning," said Professor Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at Temple University in Tokyo.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

Chinese hackers crashed the website of Australia's biggest film festival, organisers said on Saturday, escalating tensions over a visit here by the exiled leader of the Uighur minority. Online bookings for the Melbourne International Film Festival had to be shut down after the site was bombarded with phony purchases which resulted in the entire program being sold out, said festival spokeswoman Asha Holmes.

A Chinese citizen living in the United States had alerted organisers to the viral campaign, which originated from a website in China titled "A Call to Action to All Chinese People", said Holmes.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

A powerful new type of Internet attack works like a telephone tap, except operates between computers and Web sites they trust.

Hackers at the Black Hat and DefCon security conferences have revealed a serious flaw in the way Web browsers weed out untrustworthy sites and block anybody from seeing them. If a criminal infiltrates a network, he can set up a secret eavesdropping post and capture credit card numbers, passwords and other sensitive data flowing between computers on that network and sites their browsers have deemed safe.

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites are inceasingly being targeted by cyber-criminals drawn to the wealth of personal information supplied by users, experts warn. Data posted on the sites -- name, date of birth, address, job details, email and phone numbers -- is a windfall for hackers, participants at Campus Party, one of the world's biggest gatherings of Internet enthusiasts, said.

A vicious virus Koobface -- "koob" being "book" in reverse -- has affected thousands Facebook and Twitter users since August 2008, said Asier Martinez, a security specialist at global IT solutions provider Panda Security.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

Microsoft released a security patch on Tuesday aimed at preventing hackers from exploiting a vulnerability in its Web browser, Internet Explorer.

The US software giant said that the security update would be automatically installed for Internet Explorer users who have automatic updating enabled on their computers but would need to be installed manually by other users. "These vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer," Microsoft said.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

China has banned Web sites from advertising or linking to games that glamorize violence, another step in China's censorship campaign aimed at ensuring social stability ahead of the 60th anniversary of communist rule on Oct. 1.

A notice posted on the Culture Ministry Web site on Monday said games that promote drug use, obscenities, gambling, or crimes such as rape, vandalism and theft are "against public morality and the nation's fine cultural traditions." "Such online games promote the glorification of mafia life ... and are a serious threat to the moral standards of society causing vulnerable young people to be adversely affected," the notice said. The ban on the Web sites starts immediately.

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

The number of Internet users in China is now greater than the entire population of the United States, after rising to 338 million by the end of June, state media reported Sunday.

China's online population, the largest in the world, rose by 40 million in the first six months of 2009, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing a report by the China Internet Network Information Center. The number of broadband Internet connections rose by 10 million to 93.5 million in the first half of the year, the report said.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

Federal agencies are facing a severe shortage of computer specialists, even as a growing wave of coordinated cyberattacks against the government poses potential national security risks, a private study found.

The study describes a fragmented federal cyber force, where no one is in charge of overall planning and government agencies are "on their own and sometimes working at cross purposes or in competition with one another." The report, scheduled to be released Wednesday, arrives in the wake of a series of cyberattacks this month that shut down some U.S. and South Korean government and financial Web sites.

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

The popularity of Facebook and other popular social networking sites has given hackers new ways to steal both money and information, the security company Sophos said in a report released on Wednesday.

About half of all companies block some or all access to social networks because of concerns about cyber incursions via the sites, according to the study. "Research findings also revealed that 63 percent of system administrators worry that employees share too much personal information via their social networking sites, putting their corporate infrastructure -- and the sensitive data stored on it -- at risk," the Sophos report said.

 

(Source: Reuter)

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Reuter

"Internet Addiction Disorder." According to Wikipedia, "IAD was originally proposed as a disorder in a satirical hoax by Ivan Goldberg, M.D., in 1995. He took pathological gambling as diagnosed by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) as his model for the description of IAD. However, IAD receives coverage in the press, and its classification as a psychological disorder is being debated and researched."

In China, it is considered to be an epidemic. Last year China estimated that of the country's 40 million underage Internet users, some 10% were "addicted" to the Web. Surveys discovered that about 42% of these kids said they felt "addicted" while only 18% of US children felt similarly.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

The popular social networking site Facebook is not doing enough to protect the personal information it gets from subscribers, and it gives users confusing and incomplete information about privacy matters, Canada's privacy commissioner said on Thursday.

"It's clear that privacy issues are top of mind for Facebook, and yet we found serious privacy gaps in the way the site operates," Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said in a report on an investigation into Facebook.

 

(Source: Reuter)

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Reuter

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the number of people using the online social networking service has climbed to 250 million.

Palo Alto, California-based Facebook was founded in 2004 and has become the most popular online social networking service, eclipsing News Corporation-owned MySpace.

"The rapid pace of our growth is humbling and exciting for us," Zuckerberg said in a message posted at Facebook's official blog. "For us, growing to 250 million users isn't just an impressive number; it is a mark of how many personal connections all of you have made."

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

The U.K. was the likely source of a series of attacks last week that took down popular Web sites in the U.S. and South Korea, according to an analysis performed by a Vietnamese computer security analyst. The address is registered to Global Digital Broadcast in the U.K. "Having located the attacking source in U.K., we believed that it is completely possible to find out the hacker," Nguyen wrote.

The results contradict assertions made by some in the U.S. and South Korean governments that North Korea was behind the attack. Security analysts had been skeptical of the claims, which were reportedly made in off-the-record briefings and for which proof was never delivered.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

The microblogging service Twitter is taking legal advice after hundreds of documents were hacked into and published by a number of blogs.

"We are in touch with our legal counsel about what this theft means for Twitter, the hacker and anyone who accepts...or publishes these stolen documents, " said Twitter's Biz Stone. In a blog posting he wrote that "About a month ago, an administrative employee here at Twitter was targeted and her personal email account was hacked.

 

(Source: BBC)

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BBC

As such, Facebook is quickly becoming a hotbed of activity for all kinds of malware and financial scams. With 200 million registered users, Facebook represents an ocean of fish which are all accessible in one convenient place. It helps that many Facebook users are relatively unsophisticated at the web and especially the complex security issues surrounding it, and are thus more susceptible to attacks delivered via the social network.

Facebook says it's doing its part to fight the problem, but it can't monitor every bit that passes through its servers. Less than 1 percent of its users have been victimized over the last five years, it says. That sounds good, until you realize that could be up to 2 million people, hardly a drop in the bucket.

 

(Source: Yahoo)

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Yahoo

Microsoft Corp warned that cybercriminals have attacked users of its Office software for Windows PCs, exploiting a programing flaw that the software giant has yet to repair. The world's largest software maker issued the warning on Tuesday as it released patches to address nine other security holes in its software.

Cybercriminals target Microsoft programs because they are so widely used, allowing them to go after the largest number of potential victims with one set of code. (Windows runs more than 90 percent of the world's PCs. Office has some 500 million users).

 

(Source: Reuter)

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Reuter

The number of botnets and of computers controlled by them in China has fallen in recent years, though the country remains a top host for the networks of compromised computers, according to the government and independent researchers.

Over 1.2 million computers in China were newly infected with software that enabled their control by a botnet last year, about one-third the figure for the previous year, according to a report published late last month by China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT). That followed an equally steep fall from 2006, when the team estimated there were 10 million new infections in China.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Cyber criminals are aping executives when it comes to sales, marketing and risk management in the world of online treachery, according to a report released by networking giant Cisco.

"A lot of techniques they are using today are not new; it is really about how they may be doing some of the same old things," said Cisco chief security researcher Patrick Peterson.

Criminals have taken to sending blanket text messages to numbers based on area codes of local banks directing people to call into a service center to address supposed concerns about their accounts.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

Computer security experts were divided Thursday on whether North Korea was behind the ongoing attacks on US and South Korean websites, an assault that highlighted the vulnerabilities of the Web.

The so-called distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack used an army of malware-infected computers known as a "botnet" in a bid to paralyze US and South Korean websites by overwhelming them with traffic.

Around a dozen websites in the United States, including those of the White House, State Department and Pentagon, and another dozen in South Korea were among those targeted in the attack which began on Sunday.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

New York's attorney general charged Thursday that Tagged.com stole the identities of more than 60 million Internet users worldwide — by sending e-mails that raided their private accounts. Andrew Cuomo said he plans to sue the social networking Web site for deceptive marketing and invasion of privacy.

"This company stole the address books and identities of millions of people," Cuomo said in a statement. "Consumers had their privacy invaded and were forced into the embarrassing position of having to apologize to all their e-mail contacts for Tagged's unethical — and illegal — behavior."

 

(Source: AP)

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AP

A denial of service attack that took down some of South Korea's highest profile Web sites on Wednesday is set to resume Thursday evening, according to computer security specialist AhnLab. The attack will restart at 6pm local time (9am GMT) and be directed at a smaller number of sites that those hit a day earlier. They will include government Web sites and the home pages of the Chosun Ilbo newspaper and Kookmin Bank.

A denial of service attack involves sending a massive volume of traffic to a Web site so that it becomes overloaded. While some users will occasionally be able to access the site being attacked most will see nothing until a network time-out message appears.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

A botnet comprised of about 50,000 infected computers has been waging a war against U.S. government Web sites and causing headaches for businesses in the U.S. and South Korea.

The attack started Saturday, and security experts have credited it with knocking the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's (FTC's) Web site offline for parts of Monday and Tuesday. Several other government Web sites have also been targeted, including the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT).

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

A series of cyber-attacks that targeted and paralyzed government networks and leading portal servers Tuesday and Wednesday are raising concerns that the world's self-proclaimed Internet powerhouse is prone to hacking and other cyber security threats.

The prosecution and police launched an investigation Wednesday to track the origin of hackers who hijacked a dozen local Internet sites, including those run by Cheong Wa Dae, the National Assembly, the Ministry of National Defense and top Web portal Naver, from Tuesday evening to Wednesday morning.

 

(Source: The Korea Times)

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The Korea Times

A U.S. district court has ordered key players in an international spam ring to give up $3.7 million that they made by sending out illegal e-mail messages pitching bogus hoodia weight-loss products and a “human growth hormone” pill they claimed reversed the aging process.

In a Federal Trade Commission law enforcement action, the court found that the five defendants, located in Canada and St. Kitts, violated the FTC Act and the CAN-SPAM Act by participating in the spam operation. The court order bars the defendants from violating the CAN-SPAM Act and from making false or unsubstantiated claims about the health benefits of any food, drug, or dietary supplement.

 

(Source: Federal Trade Commission)

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Federal Trade Commission

China has announced it would indefinitely postpone a mandate requiring all personal computers sold in the country to be accompanied by a controversial content-filtering application, state media reported.

A June 24 letter from the U.S. Department of Commerce to the Chinese government listed "numerous concerns raised by global technology companies, Chinese citizens, and the worldwide media about the stability of the software, the scope and extent of the filtering activities and its security weaknesses."

Despite such communication, there has been no indication so far from the Chinese government that the rule will be revoked, only delayed.

 

(Source: CNN)

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CNN

Within hours of the death of pop star Michael Jackson, spam trading on his demise hit in-boxes, a security firm said as it warned that more junk mail was in the offing. Just eight hours after news broke about Jackson, Abingdon, England-based Sophos PLC started tracking the first wave of Jackson spam, which used a subject line of "Confidential -- Michael Jackson."

The spam wasn't pitching a product or leading users to a phishing or malware Web site. Instead it was trying to dupe users into replying to the message in order to collect e-mail addresses and verify them as legitimate.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

Police in western Switzerland have broken a paedophile online network operating in nearly 80 different countries, the official Swissinfo.ch news website reported Sunday.

At least 32 people across Switzerland are now under investigation due to suspected connections with the case, the website quoted police in the canton of Vaud as saying.

A police official said cybercrime experts in Lausanne were alerted by Interpol more than a year ago that pornographic details were hidden on a website for hip-hop music run by a webmaster in western Switzerland.

 

(Source: Mathaba)

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Mathaba

China on Thursday stepped up accusations that Google is spreading obscene content over the Internet, a day after U.S. officials urged Beijing to abandon plans for controversial filtering software on new computers.

The growing friction over control of online content threatens to become another irritant in ties at a time the world is looking for the United States and China to cooperate in helping to pull the global economy out of its slump.

China's Foreign Ministry on Thursday accused Google's English language search engine of spreading obscene images that violated the nation's laws, less than 24 hours after disruptions to the company's search engines and other services within China.

 

(Source: Reuter)

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Reuter

Recently scammers have become more aggressive on the site. They will set up new accounts and post spam messages on hot topics in hopes of gaining clicks when people search through Twitter.

And while hacked Twitter accounts are still rare, they're a much more effective way to reach victims, according to Rik Ferguson, a researcher with Trend Micro. "If you can take over an account that has a couple of thousand followers then you can get a much better return on your investment."

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

China will limit the number of messages that a mobile number can send per day to battle rampant spam messages clogging cell phones, state media said on Friday.

Spam messages, largely consisting of real estate offers, ads for English lessons, fake tax receipts and other frauds have grown very quickly in China in recent years. It is not unusual to receive dozens of messages a day, including the odd gun ad.

One mobile number cannot send more than 200 messages per hour or 1,000 per day on weekdays, according to the agreement. On holidays, 500 messages per hour and 2,000 per day may originate from one number.

 

(Source: Reuter)

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Reuter

The US military announced a new "cyber command" designed to wage digital warfare and to bolster defenses against mounting threats to its computer networks. The move reflects a shift in military strategy with "cyber dominance" now part of US war doctrine and comes amid growing alarm over the perceived threat posed by digital espionage coming from China, Russia and elsewhere.

President Barack Obama has put a top priority on cyber security and announced plans for a national cyber defense coordinator. A recent White House policy review said that "cybersecurity risks pose some of the most serious economic and national security challenges of the 21st century." Obama has promised privacy rights would be carefully safeguarded even as the government moves to step up efforts to protect sensitive civilian and military networks.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

The United Nations has appealed to parents, the Internet industry and policy-makers to join hands to eradicate hate speech from cyberspace.

Addressing a day-long seminar titled "Unlearning Intolerance" on the danger of "cyberhate," UN chief Ban Ki-moon lauded the benefits of the Internet but regretted that "there are those who use information technology to reinforce stereotypes, to spread misinformation and propagate hate." "Some of the newest technologies are being used to peddle some of the oldest fears," he warned, decrying what he called "digital demonization... targeting innocents because of their faith, their raace, their ethnicity, their sexual orientation."

 

(Source: UN)

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United Nations

Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are exploding in popularity, bringing people from all walks of life together online. At the same time though, overall Internet use keeping family members apart.

Forty-three percent of all online users are involved with a social networking site, and that's up from just 27% a year ago, according to a report released today by The Conference Board, a non-profit research association. The report also notes that more than half of those who use social networks log on at least once a day, and the majority log on several times a day.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

An alleged spammer could face jail time in connection with a Facebook lawsuit after a judge referred him to the U.S. Attorney General's Office for criminal proceedings.

Judge Jeremy Fogel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California referred Sanford Wallace (who has been dubbed a "spam king" for his long and aggressive history in e-mail marketing) l to the U.S. Attorney General's Office for criminal proceedings for allegedly violating an injunction that prohibited him from accessing Facebook.

Facebook filed a lawsuit against Wallace and two other men in February for spamming and phishing schemes through the social-networking site. The following week, Judge Fogel issued a temporary restraining order barring Wallace and two other alleged spammers, Adam Arzoomanian and Scott Shaw, from accessing Facebook's network.

 

(Source: PCWorld)

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PCWorld

A federal grand jury in New Jersey today indicted three people, and five people were arrested in Italy, all in connection with hacking into the IT systems of thousands of companies around the world to gain free access to telephone services, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark, N.J.

A multinational team of investigators worked jointly to round up the alleged hackers and their financial backers in the scheme to gain access into the systems of many companies -- 2,500 in the U.S. alone -- to steal access codes that the victim companies used to route phone calls through telecom systems, the office said.

The value of all the stolen services was unclear, though the U.S. Attorney's Office said the thieves routed more than $55 million worth of telephone calls over telecommunications networks in the U.S. "This was an extensive and well-organized criminal network that worked across continents," said New Jersey's acting U.S. attorney, Ralph J. Marra Jr., in a statement.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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ComputerWorld

After a two weeks meeting in Bonn Germany, it appears that an ambitious and effective global pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is in sight.

“A big achievement of this meeting is that governments have made it clearer what they want to see in the Copenhagen agreed outcome,” said Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.The Copenhagen outcome is to follow on the first phase of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires at the end of 2012. The negotiating text under consideration covers issues of a shared vision for long-term cooperative action, enhanced action on adaptation, mitigation and finance, as well as technology and capacity-building.

The gathering in Germany, which brought together more than 4,600 participants from government, business and industry, environmental groups and research institutions, was the second in a series of five major UN negotiating sessions slated for this year ahead of Copenhagen. The next meeting is scheduled to be held from 10 to 14 August in Bonn, followed by sessions in Bangkok from 28 September to 9 October and Barcelona from 2 to 6 November.

Source: UN

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While most viruses target PC users, there has been rise in the number of attacks on Mac systems. Graham Cluley, a security expert with anti-virus firm Sophos, told the BBC that the small number of Mac viruses had made some users complacent.

Security experts have discovered two novel forms of Mac OS X malware. OSX/Tored-A - an updated version of the Mac OS Tored worm - and a Trojan called OSX/Jahlav-C were both found on popular pornographic websites. Users logging on to these sites are asked to download a "missing Video ActiveX Object" but are sent a virus payload instead.

 

(Source: BBC)

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BBC

A Chinese developer of pornography filtering software protested reports linking the program to China's broader Internet censorship on Wednesday, after the government ordered that his software be distributed with all PCs sold in the country.

The government edict requiring PC makers to distribute the program touched off concerns that it could be used to block access to politically sensitive material online in addition to pornography.

China says the initiative is meant to protect children from "harmful" online content. The software blocks only illegal materials such as pornography and some content related to gambling and drugs, said Bryan Zhang, the general manager of Jinhui.

 

(Source: PCWorld)

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PCWorld

Movie directors, composers, authors, legal experts, policy-makers and others are meeting in Washinton this week to discuss the "threats and opportunities" the Internet poses to copyright in the digital age.

Some 500 delegates from more than 55 countries are scheduled to attend the 2nd World Copyright Summit being held on Tuesday and Wednesday at the Ronald Reagan Convention Center. Web and software giants Google and Microsoft and representatives of movie, music and book rights societies are also among those attending the summit organized by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), whose president is Bee Gees brother Robin Gibb.

Organizer CISAC, listing the "key issues" for the summit, cited "How the digital media environment is providing common threats and opportunities to all creative repertoires."

French Culture Minister Christine Albanel, Hollywood director Milos Forman and US Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, are among the nearly 100 speakers slated to address the gathering. Looming over the summit is the threat posed to artists by digital piracy.

 

(Source: AFP)

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AFP

As many as 40,000 Web sites have been hacked to redirect unwitting victims to another Web site that tries to infect PCs with malicious software, according to security vendor Websense.

The affected sites have been hacked to host JavaScript code that directs people to a fake Google Analytics Web site, which provides data for Web site owners on a site's usage, then to another bad site, said Carl Leonard, threat research manager for Websense.

Those Web sites have likely been hacked via a SQL injection attack, in which improperly configured Web applications accept malicious data and get hacked, Leonard said.

 

(Source: ComputerWorld)

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An Australian woman who cyber-stalked an American Idol contestant was jailed for 26 months. Tanya Maree Quattrocchi pleaded guilty to stalking 2004 American Idol runner-up Diana DeGarmo by hacking into her My Space account and hijacking email accounts belonging to the singer, national news agency AAP reported.

Victorian County Court judge Lisa Hannan described Quattrocchi's offences as serious and said she had no option but to send her to jail. "It is important that you understand the fact you perpetrated your offending using cyberspace does not diminish its significance," Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper quoted Hannan as saying. She said the victims of such crimes had no doors to lock or alarms to activate, adding: "They are constantly vulnerable."

 

(Source: AFP)

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Accessing your bank account using your mobile phone might seem safe, but security experts say would-be hackers can access confidential information via a simple text message seemingly from your service provider.

People in the industry aware of the risk see it as extremely small, as only a few people use handsets to access their bank accounts, but it is growing as mobile Internet usage rises.

 

(Source: Reuters)

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Reuters website

ID theft victims are much more likely to get hit with fraudulent charges on their credit cards or debit cards, according to a new study from the Identity Theft Resource Center that tracks the effects of ID theft.

While repairing the damage from ID theft involves some cost for things like police reports, photocopying, travel, etc., ranging from an average of $739 for dealing with damage done to an existing account to $951 to fix the aftermath of a fraudulently opened new account, the real pain comes from the time spent dealing with the mess. It took 58 hours on average to deal with ID theft involving existing accounts, and a painful 165 hours for new accounts, the study found.

 

(Source: PCWorld)

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Spammers seem to be working a little bit harder these days, according to Symantec, which reported Tuesday that unsolicited e-mail made up 90.4 percent of messages on corporate networks last month. That represents a 5.1 percent increase over last month's numbers, but it's nothing out of the ordinary. For years, spam has made up somewhere between 80 percent and 95 percent of all e-mail on the Internet.

Symantec reported that nearly 58 percent of spam is now coming from so-called botnets --networks of hacked computers that can be misused by criminals to steal financial information, launch attacks or send spam. The worst of the spamming botnets -- called Donbot -- generates 18.2 percent of all spam, according to Symantec.

These botnet computers can be rented out on the black market by anybody, but in recent months some spammers have been moving away from botnets, experimenting with a new way to sneak their unwanted e-mail past corporate filters, according to Adam O'Donnell, a researcher with antispam vendor Cloudmark.

 

(Source: PCWorld)

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As part of this year’s focus on education, the UN Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technology and Development (GAID) presented the newly formed University of the People, a non-profit institution offering higher education to the masses.

For hundreds of millions of people around the world higher education is no more than a dream, Shai Reshef, the founder of the University of the People, told reporters. They are constrained by finances, the lack of institutions in their region, or they are not able to leave home to study at a university for personal reasons. Mr Reshef said that this University opened the gate to these people to continue their studies from home and at minimal cost by using open-source technology, open course materials, e-learning methods and peer-to-peer teaching. Admission opened just over two weeks ago; and without any promotion some 200 students from 52 countries have already registered, with a high school diploma and a sufficient level of English as entry requirements. Students will be placed in classes of 20, after which they can log on to a weekly lecture, discuss its themes with their peers and take a test - all online. There are voluntary professors, post-graduate students and students in other classes who can also offer advice and consultation.

Source: United Nations

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A Taiwanese man has been arrested for allegedly swindling more than 200 million Taiwan dollars (6.25 million US) from 50 women in one of the largest cyber scams in the country, police said.

The suspect, Chuang Shih-chung, claimed to be working for a Malaysian investment firm and encouraged the women he met on online dating sites to buy overseas stocks through him, said the Criminal Investigation Bureau. 

At least 50 women from across Taiwan have fallen victim to the 31-year-old, who was arrested on Tuesday with four accomplices, the bureau said, adding that more victims have subsequently contacted the police.

 

(Source: AFP)

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Experts on information and communication technology (ICT) from the United Nations, private industry, non-governmental organizations and government agencies have met in Geneva to look at ways to use the latest digital innovations to fight poverty and improve public health.

“The objective is to introduce cutting-edge, innovative knowledge, experiences, expertise and best practices” to the work of the UN, and the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development in particular, according to the UN Global Alliance for ICT and Development (GAID), which organized the one-day meeting. “New technologies can boost education through distance learning, content creation and delivery, and teacher training,” GAID noted in a news release. “They can help create new job opportunities for people living in poverty. These technologies can also empower women and the disadvantaged to increase their access to information and participate in the economy.”

The Alliance also noted that advances in health information systems based on ICT are improving patients care and healthcare providers’ productivity worldwide. However, developing countries lag behind in employing ICT to these ends. “While diseases in developing countries account for over 90 per cent of the global disease burden, it is estimated that only 10 per cent of the more than $100 billion spent annually on health research is allocated for health problems prevalent in these countries,” it stated.

Source: UNESCO

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A Chinese man who extorted virtual items and currency from a fellow Internet cafe user to improve his performance in online games was sentenced over the weekend, local media said.

With three friends, the man beat up the victim and forced him to turn over virtual currency worth 100,000 yuan (US$14,700), China's official Xinhua news agency reported late Sunday. The attackers also extorted virtual equipment for online games from the victim, local media said. The men were each fined and the main attacker sentenced to three years in prison by a court in northeastern Liaoning province.

Selling in-game weapons, armor and other items to players for real-world cash is a common way for China's online gaming companies to a turn a profit. Internet cafes in China are often packed with chain-smoking teenagers who play World of Warcraft or similar Chinese games for long hours.

 

(Source: PCWorld)

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A new Vatican website, www.pope2you.net, has gone live, offering an application called "The pope meets you on Facebook", and another allowing the faithful to see the Pope's speeches and messages on their iPhones or iPods.

The Vatican's World Communications Day this Sunday is devoted to communicating the gospel with new technologies. "We recognise that a church that does not communicate ceases to be a church," said Monsignor Paul Tighe, secretary of the Vatican's Social Communications department. "Many young people today are not turning to traditional media like newspapers and magazines any more for information and entertainment. "They are looking to a different media culture, and this is our effort to ensure that the Church is present in that communications culture."

Users of the new site can select from more than a dozen "virtual postcards" with pictures of the pope and messages from him on faith, love and life specifically aimed at young people, and send them to other users.

 

(Source : Reuters)

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China has targeted cybercrime in three new sets of regulations issued this month as the activity starts to look like an established industry in the country.

Cybercrime in China has grown such that attackers often divide the labor needed to design malware, distribute it and turn the resulting access to remote PCs into monetary gain, security analysts say.

Over 1.2 million computers in China in 2008 were infected by software that let an attacker control them as part of a botnet, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

 

(Source : PCWorld)

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Identity thieves that hit Facebook last week with a new round of phishing attacks are harvesting passwords for profit.

The newest Facebook attacks resemble previous phishing rounds in their tactics: A compromised account sends a malicious link to friends. That link leads to a site that mimics the legitimate log-in page. But users duped into entering their usernames and passwords are likely giving away more than just their Facebook credentials.

"It's not surprising that they're targeting Facebook," said Kevin Haley, a director on Symantec's security response team. "Facebook has, what, 200 million-plus users? The bad guys always go where's there's a lot of people."

 

(Source : PCWorld)

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"In a document that outlines a Digital Japan Creation Project, dubbed the ICT Hatoyama Plan, Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications revealed plans to build a massive cloud computing infrastructure to support all of the government’s IT systems. Called tentatively the Kasumigaseki Cloud, the new infrastructure will be built in stages from now until 2015."

"The goal of the project consolidate all government IT systems into a single cloud infrastructure to improve operation efficiency and reduce cost. 'The Kasumigaseki Cloud will enable various ministries to collaborate to integrate and consolidate hardware and create platforms for shared functions,' according to MIC. 'Efforts will be made to efficiently develop and operate information systems with the aim of greatly reducing electronic government–related development and operating costs while increasing the pace of processing by integrating shared functions, increasing collaboration among systems, and providing secure and advanced governmental services.'

According to the MIC, the Kasumigaseki Cloud will eliminate the need for individual ministries to maintain their own IT systems by consolidating current data centres, and allow each ministries to use only the computer resources necessary through the cloud platform. Additional proposals were put forth to develop and implement ubiquitous Green ICT solutions, including initiatives like the Kasumigaseki Cloud, boost ICT human resources, and the creation of 'safe and secure networks' for the public.

Read the full story on Green Telecom here.

This blog entry was shared through Bill St Arnaud's blog spot

The ITU Regional Cybersecurity Forum for Africa and Arab States, dedicated to “Connecting the World Responsibly”, aims to identify some of the main challenges faced by countries in Africa and Arab States in enhancing cybersecurity and securing critical information infrastructures.

It will consider best practices, information sharing mechanisms and concrete actions for cybersecurity development, taking into consideration the key principles of matching the borderless, transnational nature of cyber-threats with meeting specific national and regional requirements. The Forum will consider initiatives at the regional and international levels to increase cooperation and coordination amongst different stakeholders. The forum programme will include interactive sessions on the projects and related tools that ITU is working on to assist Member States in developing and implementing cybersecurity capabilities.

Capacity building activities will be undertaken in the following main areas:

Development of a legal framework;

Development of watch and warning and incident management capabilities, including the establishment of a national computer incident response team (CIRT); and,

Actions to be considered when developing a national cybersecurity strategy and harmonization within the key principles of international cooperation.

The event is expected to bring together government representatives, industry actors, and other stakeholder groups from countries on the African continent and the Arab States to discuss, share information, and collaborate on the elaboration and implementation of national policy, regulatory and enforcement frameworks for cybersecurity. It will benefit information and communication policy makers from ministries and government departments; institutions and departments dealing with cybersecurity policies, legislation and enforcement; and representatives from operators, manufacturers, service providers, industry and consumer associations involved in promoting a culture of cybersecurity.

The forum will be conducted in English, Arabic and French with simultaneous interpretation. Participation in the Forum is open to all ITU Member States, Sector Members, Associates, and other interested stakeholders, including representatives from regional and international organizations.

More detailed information about the event (including the draft forum agenda, online pre-registration, fellowship requests (for eligible LDCs) can be found on the ITU Regional Cybersecurity Forum for Africa and Arab States website at www.itu.int/ITU-D/cyb/events/2009/tunis/.

Register for the ITU Regional Cybersecurity Forum for Africa and Arab States here.

We look forward to seeing you at the event!

"Digital technologies, or Information and Communications Technologies as they are commonly known, offer massive opportunities: Innovation and technology are "the backbone of the modern economy," says Senator the Hon Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy and the deputy leader of the Government in the Senate.

As part of the Government of Australia's efforts at reducing carbon emissions by 2020, the energy sector providers plan to use broadband to improve the way they monitor and manage power distribution. Using broadband to connect power consumers with power generators will allow them to harness means of distribution in a more efficient and reliable manner. Smart grids connected by broadband will also raise the potential to not only monitor energy use but to allow remote adjustment of lights or temperature. This implies the very real possibility of significant carbon emission reductions for the country. 

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Following earlier reports of users not being able to delete their personal information, Facebook has now allowed voters to decide on the best way to proceed. In reviewing their policies with users, the popular social networking site has agreed to allow its users greater control of their personal data.

After a vote, 75% of responders were in favour of these proposed changes, which will allow users to own their own information and also have the right to remove it if they so choose.

Founder, Mark Zuckerberg explained that the networking site was aiming for a more "...transparent and democratic approach"

(Source: Telegraph)

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The Guardian reports that, in one of the first cases of its kind, images of a UK man sexually abusing Thai girls were used to identify him despite the fact that he had taken steps to hide his face.

Photographs were uncovered during a police search of Dean Hardy's home, where images were stored on memory cards from cameras and the hard drive of a computer.

A forensic anthropologist examined the freckles and blemishes visible in the images and found them to be identical with those on Mr Hardy's left hand.

Judge Stone, sentencing, referred to this case as "...sex tourism of the most offensive kind."

(Source: Guardian)

 

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ITU is pleased to announce the launch of its 2009 Cybersecurity and ICT Applications Essay Competition.

The 2009 ITU Cybersecurity and ICT Applications Essay Competition is open to current students and recent graduates in economics, political science, law, literature, telecommunications, computer science, information systems and related fields between the ages of 20 and 30 years old. The winners of the 2009 Essay Competition will be offered the opportunity of a consultancy contract within the ITU Development Sector's ICT Applications and Cybersecurity Division for three months. The winners will be given a contribution towards the cost of an economy class flight from their place of residence. In addition, they will be paid the sum of CHF 6000 towards living expenses for the duration of the contract.

To enter the competition you need to submit an essay on one of the following essay topics:

• Mobiles for Development: Enabling Low-Cost e-Applications for Rural and Remote Areas (e-Health, e-Government, e-Environment)
• Protecting Children and Youth in the Internet and Mobile Age: Innovative Technical and Social Solutions
• Connecting the World Responsibly: Empowering Women and Girls Through Creative Uses of ICTs
• Personal Information Online (internet/mobiles): Responding to User Safety Concerns

All applications should be submitted online through the competition website.

The deadline for applications is 14 June 2009.

We look forward to reviewing your applications and wish you the best of luck in the competition!

 

Students and Teachers in Andhra Pradesh will now have access to an online learning platform that enables teachers to integrate learning projects into their classroom curriculum and students to develop critical 21st century skills, including creativity, communication, teamwork, and technology skills. This is made possible by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Oracle Education Foundation (OEF) and Institute for Electronic Governance (IEG), a non-profit organization under the government of Andhra Pradesh, India.

Through this link-up, 500 government schools and over 25,000 students and teachers will gain access to the ThinkQuest online learning platform over the next two years. In the first phase of the rollout, IEG and OEF will train 120 teachers from 60 schools on the ThinkQuest platform and instruct them how to best integrate 21st century skills instruction and project learning into their curricula.

First launched in India in 2004, ThinkQuest currently supports over 146,000 students and teachers in 1,100 schools across the country, including Kendriya Vidyalayas, Navodaya Vidyalayas, DPS, DAV, and other schools.

Read the full text here.

 

The ITU has launched new partnerships to help 13 Pacific Island countries develop information and communications technology (ICT) in the region.

In a joint communiqué issued at the end of the Pacific ICT Ministerial Forum, held in Tonga, senior officials from the 13 countries called for greater coordination to minimize overlap in ICT initiatives and maximize the impact of investments in development projects. The ministers, including two Prime Ministers, called for rapid implementation of regional connectivity projects and for reinforced efforts to create more ICT professionals and a workforce with technical skills.

“The Pacific Island countries have clearly stated their objectives and priorities,” said Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau, Sami Al Basheer Al Morshid. “ITU is fully committed to work with our partners in delivering results for the Pacific Island States,” added Mr. Al Basheer, who announced several new partnerships to assist the countries. “We are building on the expertise and resources of all interested partners to reinforce our collective impact on ICT development in the Pacific.” The Pacific Island ministers also directed officials to work towards establishing a shared regulatory resource centre and encouraged regional States to make full use of ICT for early warning and response systems to improve disaster preparedness.

See the full ITU press release here.

A new report from ITU, highlights some harsh realities for the global ICT industry. The report, Confronting the Crisis: Its Impact on the ICT Industry, considers how the industry can position itself for recovery in the future.

Confronting the Crisis: Its Impact on the ICT Industry draws on analysis from leading industry experts and international institutions. As the established order is overturned, it says, convergence in the ICT industry will accelerate, with the emergence of new players with new business models. Firms’ ability to weather the economic storm will depend on their ability to invest for the future and explore new opportunities to benefit from the eventual upturn. For an industry founded on innovation, the current turmoil will create openings for nascent ICT companies.

Confronting the Crisis finds that although credit is now less abundant and more expensive, with financing costs for operators on average 3 − 4 per cent higher year-on-year, savvy operators can take advantage of the economic turmoil to reposition their services for the upturn. Funding is still available for players with sound business models, established demand and early projected cash flows. Alternative sources of financing are now needed, with a growing role for government financing and economic stimulus packages.

Many analysts contributing to Confronting the Crisis underlined the need for ICT as vital services and suggested that fixed-mobile substitution and consumers’ decision to switch to mobile telephony may gain momentum in developed markets during a prolonged recession. The report also notes that long project lead times for the satellite industry mean that it has been less affected in the short term, with strong recent growth in demand from developing countries. The financial difficulties facing the private sector could add to pressure for government intervention in the financing of national backbone infrastructure. Governments are already stepping in to diminish the impact on the transition to next-generation networks (NGN), which can carry voice, data and media services simultaneously. Several administrations have announced commitments to invest in their national backbone infrastructure, while others, such as the European Union, have included the roll-out of broadband networks in their economic stimulus packages. Although the financial crisis may delay investment in NGN, it has also led to a widespread reaffirmation of the importance of building advanced telecommunication infrastructure as part of an economic stimulus package.

See the full press release from 16 February 2009.
The report is available for download here.

According to a article in the Indian Hindustan Times, "Indian diplomats now cannot open a Facebook account, use external e-mail services, or write blogs, thanks to new rules and much stricter firewalls aimed at preventing cyber attacks and leakage of classified information. Over the past eight months, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs has been overhauling its computer network security, putting up layers of barriers against intrusions into the network, officials associated with cyber security said. There are almost 600 computers at its headquarters at South Block, about half of which are connected to the Internet. Classified work is typically done on stand-alone computers, usually with the external drives removed. "We have set up a unified threat management system for the ministry. This simultaneously uses eight levels of protection like firewalls and spam mail filtering," said a senior official.

"We are also requesting and encouraging more responsible behaviour from our staff when working online," the official told IANS, requesting anonymity. A circular issued last week asked officials not to log on to social networking sites, specifically citing Facebook, Orkut and Ibibo as examples. The other prohibited practices include download of peer-to-peer music using sites like Kazaa and sharing of photos through Flickr and Picasa. The circular also discourages using services like G-mail, Yahoo! or Hotmail for official communication. A similar circular, officials said, had been issued in the Prime Minister's Office in December. But the matter is even more critical for the foreign office as officials posted in Indian missions abroad or on foreign tours tend to use web-based mail rather than the ministry's own mail system. "We have had cases of senior officers using G-mail or other similar accounts abroad for official work, only to find some form of tampering when they return," the official said, adding people have been told to change their web-mail passwords if they had opened the account during foreign tours. The missions have been told to use their official mail ID issued by the National Informatics Centre for communication. But several missions have complained that the mail home page was inaccessible due to port blocks by local Internet service providers. They have been asked to contact their service providers to unblock the site. "We want to secure communications with Indian missions through private networks. This may be implemented in the next few months," said an official working with the technical team in the ministry.

Read the full article here.

Press release issued simultaneously by ITU and European Commission.

Geneva, 10 February 2009 — ITU and the European Commission have joined forces to mark Safer Internet Day. This year, the focus is on protecting children online.

Children are among the most active — and most vulnerable — participants online. According to recent surveys, over 60 per cent of children and teenagers talk in chat rooms on a daily basis. Three in four children online are willing to share personal information about themselves and their family in exchange for goods and services. One in five children will be targeted by a predator or paedophile each year. Protecting children in cyberspace is, therefore, clearly our duty.

"Children are very resourceful in making the most of online services such as social networking sites and mobile phones," said Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media. "But many still underestimate the hidden risks of using these, from cyber-bullying to sexual grooming online. Today, I call upon all decision-makers, from both the public and the private sector, to listen and learn from children and to improve awareness strategies and tools to protect minors." Ms Reding added: "The Internet binds the whole world together. The safety of children who use it is a concern for everyone. I am therefore very happy that ITU is associated with us in doing this, today on Safer Internet Day, and all year round."

"Child online safety must be on the global agenda," said ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré. "We must ensure that everyone is aware of the dangers for children online. And we want to promote and strengthen the many outstanding efforts that are being made around the world, such as the Safer Internet Programme, to limit these dangers." This year, the 6th edition of Safer Internet Day includes more than 500 events in 50 countries worldwide. ITU and the European Commission will collaborate on this and future events, such as World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, 17 May 2009, which is dedicated to "Protecting Children in Cyberspace". The European Commission’s Directorate General for Information Society and Media has declared its full support for ITU’s Child Online Protection (COP) Initiative. The EC’s Ins@fe Network will launch a Safer Internet Day virtual exhibition which will host pavilions where visitors can learn more about initiatives undertaken by the 50 participating countries. ITU will host an online pavilion in support of EC’s efforts to raise awareness among youngsters aged 12 to 17 regarding the risks they may face online.

ITU and Child Online Protection (COP)

ITU’s motto is "committed to connecting the world", but we are also committed to connecting the world responsibly. That means working together to ensure cybersecurity, enable cyberpeace, and — more importantly — protect children online. While child online protection programmes exist in many developed countries, there are very few in the developing world today — and very little coordination between them. ITU established the Global Cybersecurity Agenda (GCA) and launched the Child Online Protection (COP) initiative. COP aims to bring together partners from all sectors of the global community to ensure a safe and secure online experience for children everywhere.

See the press release here.

ITU launched a new initiative today to safeguard children, the most vulnerable users of the Internet. Addressing ITU’s high-level meeting on cybersecurity by video message, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, "We have to protect against cyberthreats, especially when they target children. I welcome the ITU’s Child Online Protection (COP) initiative and urge all States to support it."

The Child Online Protection initiative brings together partners from all sectors of the international community with the aim of creating a safe and secure online experience for children everywhere. While the virtual world offers unlimited opportunities in many respects, it is also the hunting ground for cybercriminals and paedophiles. Recognizing that a concerted global effort would be required to ensure that the cyberworld becomes a safe place for young people to work, learn and play, ITU is working with other UN agencies, including UNICEF, UNICRI and UNIDIR.

Building confidence and security At the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2005, ITU was entrusted by leaders of the international community with Action Point C5: "building confidence and security in the use of ICTs". As an intergovernmental organization with a network of 191 Member States and more than 700 Sector Members and Associates, ITU was a logical choice. In 2007, in answer to this responsibility, Dr Hamadoun Touré, ITU Secretary-General, launched the Global Cybersecurity Agenda (GCA), an international framework that addresses 5 main aspects: legal measures technical and procedural measures organizational structure capacity building international cooperation The WSIS outcomes also specifically recognized the needs of children and young people and their protection in cyberspace.

The Tunis Commitment recognized "the role of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the protection of children and in enhancing the development of children" and the need to "strengthen action to protect children from abuse and defend their rights in the context of ICT". The COP initiative is in line with ITU’s mandate to establish the foundation for a safe and secure cyberworld for future generations. The need for COP is clear. A decade ago, there were just 182 million people using the Internet globally — and almost all of them lived in the developed world. By the end of 2008, however, there will be over 1.5 billion Internet users worldwide, and more than 400 million of them will have broadband access — vastly increasing the dangers online, especially for children. With over 600 million users in Asia, 130 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 50 million in Africa, the Internet is a growing common resource. 

"ITU is the lead UN agency on ICT for Development," said Mr Sami Al-Basheer, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT). "In working towards an all-inclusive information society we must ensure that children everywhere can enjoy the benefits of ICTs while being protected from the risks posed by inappropriate use."

Read the full press release for the COP initiative here.

The ITU Regional Cybersecurity Forum for Asia-Pacific, and related Seminar on the Economics of Cybersecurity was held in Brisbane, Australia, 15-18 July 2008.

The regional cybersecurity forum, which was hosted by the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE), Government of Australia, aimed to identify the main challenges faced by countries in the region in developing frameworks for cybersecurity and CIIP, to consider best practices, share information on development activities being undertaken by ITU as well as other entities, and review the role of various actors in promoting a culture of cybersecurity. The forum also considered initiatives on the regional and international level to increase cooperation and coordination amongst the different stakeholders. The forum, one in a series of regional cybersecurity events organized by the ITU Development Sector (ITU-D), was held in response to ITU Plenipotentiary Resolution 130: Strengthening the role of ITU in building confidence and security in the use of information and communication technologies (Antalya, 2006) and the 2006 World Telecommunication Development Conference Doha Action Plan establishing ITU-D Study Group Question 22/1: Securing information and communication networks: Best practices for developing a culture of cybersecurity. 

Approximately 90 people from 27 countries participated in the event, from the Asia-Pacific region, the Pacific Islands, as well as from other parts of the world. Full documentation of the forum, including the final agenda and all presentations made, is available on the event website. The meeting report available on the event website summarizes the discussions throughout the three days of the ITU Regional Cybersecurity Forum for Asia-Pacific, provides a high-level overview of the sessions and speaker presentations, and presents some of the common understandings and positions reached at the event.

The day prior to the start of the ITU Regional Cybersecurity Forum for Asia-Pacific, 15 July 2008, was dedicated to an ITU Tariff Group for Asia and Oceania (TAS) Seminar on the Economics of Cybersecurity. Throughout the seminar the participants learned about the pervasive incentives and the new revenue streams that are created from malware and spam, how they enable legitimate business models (e.g., anti-virus and anti-spam products, infrastructure, and bandwidth) as well as fraudulent and criminal ones (e.g., renting out of botnets, bullet proof hosting, commissions on spam-induced sales, pump and dump stock schemes). Distinguished experts in this area explained how malware and spam create mixed and sometimes conflicting incentives for stakeholders, which complicate coherent responses to the problem. An ITU Study on the Financial Aspects of Network Security: Malware and Spam was presented and discussed at the event.

See the event website for more information.

According to China's Computer Emergency Response Team (CN-CERT)'s 2007 annual report released last week, the greatest threat to the nation's portion of the internet are Trojan horse programs and bot software. Based on CN-CERT's findings, "the number of Chinese Internet addresses with one or more infected systems increased by a factor of 22 in 2007... [and] of 6.23 million bot-infected computers on the Internet, about 3.62 million are in China's address space." The report alse reveals that "domain name registration in the nation had almost tripled in the past year, attacks that tampered with legitimate Web sites grew 1.5 times, and malicious drive-by attacks jumped 2.6 times."

The report is currently only available in Chinese.
Read the full article here.

The first ITU Symposium on ICTs and Climate Change (15-16 April in Kyoto, Japan, co-organized and hosted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) will be available as a webinar in order that remote participants can see and hear presentations from wherever they are in the world. Provision will also be made for remote participants to submit comments and questions. Space is limited.

Reserve your seat for

- Day 1 at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/862573173.

- Day 2 at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/540961252.

A live audio stream will be provided at: mms://stream.icckyoto.ne.jp/ict/.

Full Programme (times in JST, London -8, New York -13)

ITU Background Paper on ICTs and Climate Change

System requirements

The Australian federal Government's plan to have internet service providers filter pornography and other internet content deemed inappropriate for children is going full-steam ahead. The Government wants to evaluate content filters in a controlled environment. Trials are to be conducted soon in a closed environment in Tasmania. Enex TestLab was selected more than six months ago after the Australian Communications and Media Authority closed a tender for an organisation to test ISP-based content filters. ISP-based filters will block inappropriate web pages at service provider level and automatically relay a clean feed to households. To be exempted, users will have to individually contact their ISPs. The trial will evaluate ISP-level internet content filters in a controlled environment while filtering content inappropriate for children, Enex said. "We invite vendors of all types (hardware appliances, software - proprietary or open-source) of ISP-based internet content filters to participate." The testing is slated for completion by July and will be followed by live field trials.

The internet sector has consistently voiced concern about the Government's ISP filters. Internet Industry Association chief executive Peter Coroneos has said any clean feed policy would have to be balanced against the likely financial and performance costs, and ACMA's first annual report to Senator Conroy confirmed his fears. On the performance impact of filters, ACMA said: "In the case of personal computers the cost of upgrading processing power may be modest (although significant in terms of household income). "However, for ISPs the cost of upgrading or augmenting the expensive hardware that they typically deploy may be substantial, particularly for small providers."

Read the full article on the Australian IT.

According to a report from vendor Mcafee, the growing number of cyber criminals in areas of Asia and Eastern-Europe is the result of a lack of IT jobs for qualified professionals. Joe Telafici, vice president of operations at Mcafee says that "the motivation to engage in illegal behavior is strong in Eastern Europe where technical skills were widely taught during the Cold War but economic opportunities are limited. The same is true in Asia, where population growth has stretched strong economic performance to the limits." In China, 43 per cent of IT graduates are unemployed, and hacker "training" web sites are creating a pool of effective malware authors and paying them like a legitimate business.

Read the full article here.

Technology Review provides a detailed analysis of the recent Internet outage in the Middle East and Asia. The report recounts how the undersea cable damage largely affected the ISPs in the region as well as outsourcing companies who increasingly rely on these connections. It also briefly discusses how undersea cable repairs are done, and further emphasizes the concerns related to these kinds of damage. "In the wake of the fiber breaks, [ISP Association of India secretary R. S.] Perhar says that his organization is encouraging ISPs and companies dependent on fast connections to continue diversifying their bandwidth sources as much as possible, and to lobby for new cable to be laid." Tim Strong, analyst at Telegeography Research adds that "with more cables, it's getting better over time, but there will still be a lack of physical, geographical redundancy."

Read the full article here.

The Guardian reports on how tens of millions of internet users across the Middle East and Asia have been left without access to the web due to a fault in a single undersea cable believed to be a major internet pipeline connecting to Europe. The outage was said to have first struck yesterday morning and has severely restricted internet access in India, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

"The line in question runs under the Mediterranean, from Palermo in Italy to Alexandria in Egypt. It is not clear what caused the break. The cable is one of only a handful of connections, and part of the world's longest undersea cable, 24,500 miles long, running from Germany, through the Middle East and India before terminating in Australia and Japan... Egyptian officials said that around 70% of the country's online traffic was being blocked, while officials in Mumbai said that more than half of India's internet capacity had been erased, which could have potentially disastrous consequences for the country's burgeoning hi-tech industry. 'There has been a 50% to 60% cut in bandwidth,' Rajesh Charia, president of the Internet Service Providers' Association of India told Reuters."

According to the report, the outage will take several days to fix, and could have a drastic impact on communications, businesses and the hi-tech industry as well as banks and stock market trading around the region and across the globe.

More details on the digital blackout here.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported on 26 November about the launch of 20 broadband-enabled teacher resource centres in the Maldives to help the Ministry of Education to provide quality education to every child of a population spread across 1,000 small islands.

Using information and communication technologies (ICTs) enables administrators and teachers to be part of one learning community across the country. Teachers can simultaneously receive online training, access and exchange information through the common network. Moreover, the internet and state-of-the-art technologies are aimed to enhance interactive education and to increase motivation of both students and teachers, as UNICEF noted.

ITU, in collaboration with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of the Republic of Indonesia, is hosting a workshop on 28-30 November 2007 entitled ITU Regional Workshop on ICT Applications for Rural Communication Development. The workshop is held in Bali, Indonesia.

The description of the event, draft agenda, invitation letter, and practical information for meeting participants are available on the event website.

Microsoft releases the Asia Pacific Legislative Analysis: Current and Pending Online Safety and Cybercrime Laws, a study providing a high-level snapshot of the status of computer security, privacy, spam and online child safety legislation in the Asia Pacific region. Detailed analyses of these laws specific to Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, The Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam are also provided in this paper. For more information regarding this document, contact Julie Inman Grant, Regional Director, Corporate Affairs of Internet Safety and Security at Microsoft Asia Pacific. More Cybersecurity Legislation and Enforcement related resources are available at the CYB website.

"Buses equipped with wi-fi are being used to deliver web content to remote rural villages in the developing world. In rural India and parts of Rwanda, Cambodia and Paraguay, the vehicles offer web content to computers with no internet connection." United Villages is an initiative that provides communties in Asia, Africa, and Latin America with a digital access to locally-relevant products and services using a low-cost, store-and-forward "drive-by WiFi" technology. Mobile Access Points (MAPs) are installed on existing vehicles (e.g. buses and motorcycles) and automatically provide access for WiFi-enabled Kiosks along the roads. Whenever a MAP is within range of a real-time wireless Internet connection, it transfers the data from and for those Kiosks. The United Villages project also allows users to request specific information or content for a few additional rupees. The wi-fi vehicles also deliver as well as collect e-mails, and brings e-Commerce to the villagers.

Read the full article on BBC News.
More on United Villages on their website.

HKDNR, together with the Office of Telecommunications Authority (OFTA), HK Police Force, Hong Kong Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Centre (HKCERT) and other agencies, dedicates much effort in implementing all possible measures to strike .hk domain names that are related to phishing or spamming sites.

"HKDNR is kept updated daily on a spamvertised domain list so that more comprehensive monitoring can be maintained and immediate action can be carried out against these domains. Any domains that are verified as phishing / spamming will be suspended immediately. According to the information published in mid June in AbuseButler on the top 800 spamvertised domains worldwide over the previous 4 weeks, the number of reports on .hk spamvertised domains accounted for 2.3 % of the total reports received. In early August, the number of reports on .hk spamvertised domains dropped to 0.3 % of the total reports received."

Read the full article at the HKIRC Newsletter (September 2007).

The VietNamNet Bridge yesterday published an interview with the Ministry of Information and Communications of Vietnam. According to the Deputy Minister, developing e-government would support the government to operate more effectively, more transparently and to better serve citizens.

Planned activities based on experiences in Vietnam and other countries would aim to integrate ICT applications into public administration agencies by 2010. Doing so would require digitalizing administrative systems and procedures, and providing ICT training. To overcome the reluctance to change, the programme would seek the support and involvement of civil society, private industry and local and regional administrations.

To read more, click here.

Australia announced a national strategy on deploying health records available over the internet to every citizen, as The Canberra Times reported yesterday. Patients would be able to securely access their medical claims and rebates over public networks as of 2008. Later on, patients would have online access to their pharmaceutical benefits schemes claims. Eventually, Australians would have access to their individual digital files, which would be automatically updated by health service providers.

A parallel initiative is focusing on ensuring effective follow-up medical care for indigenous children in remote areas. Depending on the patient’s or their parents’ authorization, health professionals would be able to access their digital records to support ongoing care.

(The full article "Aust health histories to be accessible on internet" by Danielle Cronin health reporter, Canberra Times, 21 August 2007, is not available freely online.)

Information technology flourishes in northern Indian states, as the Financial Express reports on 13 August 2007. In order to better evaluate the capacities of using information and communication technologies (ICTs) in India to participate in a globally networked economy, the department of information technology and the National Council of Applied Economic Research released its latest e-Readiness Assessment report in January 2007.

States and union territories ranked at the top have implemented, among others, some e-Governance initiatives for land and property records, transportation, birth and death registration, and ICT applications for agriculture. Further activities to boost the level of e-Readiness as well as e-Governance are mentioned in the article such as providing an enabling political and regulatory environment, infrastructure, capacity building and sharing experiences with other states.

To learn more of the national e-Governance plan, click here.

The first Global Information Society Watch 2007 report was released at the United Nations' Palais des Nations in Geneva on 22 May 2007 and during the The Third Annual SANGONeT "ICTs for Civil Society" Conference and Exhibition in Johannesburg, South Africa on 18 July 2007. The report discusses the state of the field of information and communication technology (ICT) policy at local and global levels and particularly how policy impacts on the lives of people living in developing countries.

Studies of the ICT policy situation in twenty-two countries from four regions are featured: Africa (Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda); Asia (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and the Philippines); Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru); and Eastern Europe (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania), with one report from a Western European country (Spain).

The report concludes that when it comes to ICTs for development, there are some conspicuous similarities between the countries. Excluding Spain, the other twenty-one countries each show obvious evidence of the "digital divide" which impacts on the majority of people negatively. The report also includes provocative, analytical essays on five international institutions (including ICANN and the World Intellectual Property Organisation) questioning the extent to which they allow all stake-holders to participate in their processes. There is a special section on how to measure progress as well.

Read more on the Global Information Society Watch.

On Sydney Morning Herald's Veto for Parents on Web Content, it was announced that ISPs in Australia will be obligated to filter web content at the request of parents. This is part of the $189 million Federal Government crackdown on online bad language, pornography and child sex predators. According to the Prime Minister, John Howard, the Government would increase funding for the federal police online child sex exploitation team by $40 million to aid investigators to track those who prey on children through chat rooms and sites such as MySpace and Facebook. The Government is also expected to pay $90 million to provide every concerned household with software to filter internet content.

According to the article, the more efficient compulsory filtering of internet service providers (ISPs) was proposed in March last year by the then Labor leader, Kim Beazley, which the Communications Minister, Helen Coonan, and ISPs criticised as expensive then. Three months later Senator Coonan announced the Government's Net Alert policy, promising free filtering software for every home that was interested. She also announced an ISP filtering trial to be conducted in Tasmania, but that trial was scrapped.

The ISP filtering measure, according to Mr. Howard is a world first by any Government, and is expected to offer funding to help cover the cost. An ISP filter option will be made available to parents when they sign up with an ISP. This service will be compulsory to all ISPs. The measures are expected to be implemented by the end of this month.

US authorities have reported last month that more than 29,000 convicted sex offenders had profiles on MySpace. In Australia, about 26 per cent of Australia's 3.8 million MySpace users are under 18. To protect the users, MySpace has written to all state and territory governments, and the Commonwealth, asking them to create a national child-sex offender database that requires email addresses to enable them to track sex offenders and remove their profiles on the system.

Read the full article here.

On ZDNet Australia's article, "Knowledge is greatest threat to critical infrastructure," researchers and security experts agree that Australia's critical infrastructure still proves to be vulnerable due to insufficiency and lack of educational resources. The article discusses the problem with the security of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, "the central nervous system for sensors, alarms and switches that provide automated control and monitoring functions for utilities such as water, gas and electricity, as well as large manufacturers."

Jill Slay of the University of South Australia's Defence and Systems Institute, said at the inaugural International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Critical Infrastructure Protection conference that Australia needed more stringent audits of SCADA network access, better training and stricter controls over contractors. She believes Federal Government initiatives such as the Trusted Information Sharing Network are good but, at present, are insufficent to keep the SCADA operators aware and updated of current threats and response strategies.

The article also points out that due to the threat of terrorism, there has been increased security concerns on essential services as SCADA systems have increasingly been accessible over TCP/IP protocol corporate networks to improve process automation and visibility of data. According to the article, "the Federal Government's approach to SCADA security has been to garner industry support through cooperative initiatives such as its Trusted Information Sharing Network, a community of practice networks dedicated to fostering knowledge-sharing and training between government, industry and academia," however "the amount of information available on SCADA systems online provides such a large amount of information out there for those who want to find network vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure."

To read the full article, proceed here.

On 30 July 2007 in Berlin and 27 June 2007 in Tokyo, the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology of Germany, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan signed a Joint Statement expressing the following:

"Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), including the Internet, are key enablers in the development of the economies in both Germany and Japan. Spam poses a potential threat to this economic development. It must be made clear that spam has no legitimate role in the German or Japanese e-economy.

The Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology of Germany, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan see mutual benefit in strengthening friendship and cooperation between their two countries through cooperation concerning anti-spam policies and strategies. The aim is to support international cooperation in and among a variety of organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network, and the Asia-Europe Meeting.

Under this Joint Statement, cooperation in matters of mutual interest will be able to take place through the exchange of ideas, information, personnel, skills and experience and collaborative activities that will be of benefit to both sides. Because spam has implications for many groups of stakeholders, every effort will be made to ensure that all interested parties, both public and private, are consulted as appropriate. Particular areas of cooperation will include:

a) Exchanging information about anti-spam activities such as anti-spam policies and strategies, as well as technical and educational solutions to spam;

b) Encouraging the adoption of effective anti-spam technologies and network management practices by German and Japanese Internet Service Providers and major business network managers, and further cooperation between government and private sectors;

c) Supporting German and Japanese marketers or bulk email senders in adopting spam-free marketing techniques;

d) Identifying and promoting user practices and behaviours which can effectively control and limit spam and supporting the development of multi-stakeholder public information and awareness campaigns to foster increased adoption of anti-spam practices and behaviours by end users in Germany and Japan;

e) Cooperating to strengthen anti-spam initiatives being considered in international fora."

To access the Joint Statement in different languages, click here.

In order to ensure transparent procurement at reduced costs in Chinese hospitals, the China Medical Equipment Association (CMEA) under the auspice of the Ministry of Health will draw up a recommended list of medical equipment to be used for purchasing decisions. The list will be based on an open and fair assessment of medical equipment considering the needs of the partners involved (including the government, hospitals and manufacturers), according to CMEA. Purchases should be made by the Ministry's International Communication and Cooperation Center.

Furthermore, China earmarked 1.2 bln yuan (about 157.9 million USD) to purchase medical equipment for hospitals in the country's poor rural areas through government procurement and public bidding. As mentioned by an official of the Ministry of Health, the list of new equipment would include electro-cardiographs, ultrasound scanners, operation beds and respiratory mechanics.

For more information, see Xinhua News Agency and here.

Sophos recently released its global statistics naming the top 12 spam-relaying countries for the period between April to June 2007. The US and China tops the list, while Europe, on the other hand, houses six of the top 12 countries mentioned in the statistics, which when combined, account for even more spam-relaying than the U.S. The statistics reveal as well that the overall global volume of spam rose by 9% during the second quarter, when compared to the same period in 2006.

"'While the US remains top spam dog, the latest chart emphasises the urgent need for joined-up global action to combat this growing problem,' said Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at Sophos. 'For every spam campaign, the spammers, the compromised computers used, and the people being deluged by the unsolicited mail are often located in totally different parts of the world. A consolidated effort is needed not only to pursue and prosecute spammers, but also to convince computer users everywhere of the importance of blocking rather than responding to spam messages. Everyone has a part to play if we are to win the global battle against spam.'"

Statistics on spam relayed by continent, however, show Asia as the top spam-relaying continent with the number of Asian nations relaying smaller amounts of spam. Europe, which topped the chart in the first quarter of 2007, has reduced its percentage by 6.6 percent and fallen to second place. Asia, North America, South America and Africa have all seen rises in spam-relaying activity.

Read the full article here.

KPMG, a global network of professional firms providing audit, tax, and advisory services, released a report on Cross-Border Investigations: Effectively Meeting the Challenge.

KPMG, along with the research firm Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates Inc. approached multinational businesses in diverse industries around the world, and asked those charged with the responsibility for cross-border investigations within those companies how they responded to their current challenges. As the trade barriers fall and international commerce expands, and as the speed of conducting business and remitting funds increases, companies that conduct business across international boundaries are recognizing the corresponding increase in the risk of fraud and misconduct. They thus face several challenges such as taking the appropriate first steps, cultural and legal differences, investigation resources, and the availability and accessibility of electronic data.

The report proposes that an effective approach can lower the risk of the occurrence of fraud or misconduct, thus lowering the possibility of being hit with serious sanctions, can demonstrate to regulators, shareholders, stakeholders, bond-ratings agencies, and the capital markets that the business takes accountability and control seriously, thereby mitigating damage to reputations, can exhibit the business's commitment to overall corporate governance activities, and can assist in a rapid and efficient response before issues spiral beyond control.

This report aims to provide insights into possible responses to the described challenges. It points out as well that an effective cross-border investigations plan demonstrates not only an organization's sound risk management practices, but also its overall commitment to good corporate governance.

Read the full report here.

On 25 June 2007, Malaysia released a notice for Tenders for the Provision of Consultancy Service for Strategic Study and Drafting of Anti-Spam Legislation for Malaysia. For more information, visit the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission website.

The Internet Society of New Zealand (InternetNZ) released the ISP Spam Code of Practice in May 2007 for public consultation, and it had been open to comments until 18 June 2007. The Code was developed by the InternetNZ / Telecommunication Carriers' Forum (TCF) / The Marketing Association (MA) Working Party which has representation from a cross section of service providers and other interested parties.

The ISP Spam Code of Practice was created in keeping with the requirements of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 of the New Zealand government. It had also been developed with regard to the MA’s Code of Practice for Direct Marketing and the TCF’s SMS Anti-Spam Code, which both deal with Spam related issues, as well as to the TCF’s Customer Complaints Code.

Both consumers and service providers are expected to benefit from the adoption of this Code. The Code aims to establish practices that will lead to the minimization of Spam in New Zealand. It also aims to provide information to end users about both preventative and curative steps against Spam. Anticipated benefits to the service providers include the generation of higher levels of customer satisfaction and improved operational efficiency due to the reduced volumes of spam.

Public submissions on the Code can be found here.

Visit the Internet Society of New Zealand website for further details.

28-31 Aug 2007 The ITU, in collaboration with the Viet Nam Ministry of Posts and Telematics and with support from the government of Australia, will be hosting a workshop 28-31 August 2007 entitled Regional Workshop on Frameworks for Cybersecurity and Critical Information Infrastructure Protection in Hanoi, Viet Nam.

The description of the event, draft agenda, invitation letter, and practical information for meeting participants is available on the event website. Further information is available from cybmail@itu.int.

According to a recent Press Realease by The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), Singapore is already looking into a new five-year infocomm security roadmap (2008-2012) as it embarks on the final year of the current three-year Infocomm Security Masterplan (2005-2008). The Infocomm Security Masterplan was launched on 22 February 2005 as a strategic roadmap to chart Singapore's national efforts in developing capabilities to prevent cyber-security incidents and protect the critical infrastructure from cyber-threats. According to Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, Second Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Singapore "cannot afford to be complacent, especially with new and dangerous threats evolving and growing at such an alarming rate. Instead of simply taking one step forward, we need to be many steps ahead in our efforts to combat cyber threats."

Providing a glimpse of the new five-year Masterplan to be launched in 2008, Dr. Balakrishnan shared that the new infocomm security roadmap will build on Singapore's existing efforts to focus on more international collaborations to improve Singapore's ability to combat cyber threats. The collaborations will look into knowledge exchanges and regular communication between governments on cyber threat trends and protection of critical infrastructure. When launched in 2008, the new security roadmap will also secure Singapore's ultra high-speed and pervasive Next Generation National Infocomm Infrastructure (NGNII) to provide a secure and trusted environment for the creation of new value-added services such as location-based marketing, goods tracking and localised information services and the pervasive adoption of online services such as those in the area of banking, healthcare and education.

Under the current Masterplan, the government has developed various security initiatives to equip public officers with more timely information and knowledge to assess and improve on their cyber defence. This allows them to better protect, detect and respond to cyber threats. An example is the Cyber-WatchCentre which monitors cyber threats real-time and round-the-clock. By mid 2008, the centre will ensure end-to-end security for all public officers, allowing government agencies to better anticipate cyber attacks and respond to them speedily.

For more information on these inititiatives, view the IDA Press Release.

The SHA-1 algorithm, which has been widely used in many of today's mainstream security products since 1995, was significantly compromised in February 2005 by a team of researchers led by Xiaoyun Wang based at China’s Shandong University. (This team had already undertaken attacks against the MD5 and SHA: hash functions previously, prior to their attack on SHA-1).

Their success prompted calls for a replacement algorithm. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology had already announced that they planned to phase out the use of SHA-1 by 2010 in favour of the SHA-2 variants. The need for a replacement algorithm has now led NIST to launch a contest to devise a successor on 27 January 2007. The competition is to begin in the fall of 2008, and continue until 2011, with full completion and approval by 2012. Contests like this one have a promising history in cryptography. Notably, the Advanced Encryption Standard (devised as a more secure replacement to the prior Data Encryption Standard) was devised through an open competition between fifteen teams of cryptographers between 1997-2000.

The Chairman’s Report (Version for Comments) from the ITU New Initiatives Programme workshop on The Future of Voice, held January 15-16, 2007 in the ITU Headquarter, has been made available for comments on the event's web-page.

To download the document, please click here. 

All comments and remarks, to be reflected in the final version of the Chairman’s Report should be sent via email to SPUmail@itu.int no later than the 19th February 2007.

 

Under the "Shaping Tomorrow's Networks Project" and in line with the stated objectives of the WSIS Tunis Agenda for the Information Society (November 2005), that “… ITU and other regional organisations should take steps to ensure rational, efficient and economic use of, and equitable access to, the radio-frequency spectrum by all countries ….”, ITU and the Ugo Bordoni Foundation (Italy) jointly organized a workshop to identify global trends and good practice in radio spectrum management.

The Workshop on "Market Mechanisms for Spectrum Management" was held from 22 to 23 January 2007 at ITU Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland.  

In preparation for the workshop a Background Resources Website on Spectrum Management was created. This website aims to provide a number of background resources on regional and national initiatives as well as some background information on spectrum management policy and regulation in general.

Background papers as well as Contributions to the workshop can be found here.

To download the Speaker's Presentations, please click here.

Link to Workshop Webcast Archives is available here.

More information about the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Project can be found here.

More information about the workshop can be found here.

See the full ITU Press Release for the event here.

We would like to inform all workshop participants that the Chairman's Report will be made available at the event website in the next few weeks.

For the purposes of the New Initiative Programme event on The Future of Voice, held on 15-16 January 2007 in ITU Headquarters, five background papers as well as four regional studies have been developed and presented for comments. In order to access documents, please click on the links below.

Background Papers

• "Innovation Dynamics in the IP Environment" by Dr. Knud Erik Skouby and Dr. Reza Tadayoni
• "The Future of Communications in Next Generation Networks" by Dr. James Alleman and Dr. Paul Rappoport
• "Regulatory Trends: New Enabling Environment" by Dr. Aniruddha Banerjee, Dr. Gary Madden, and Joachim Tan
• "The Status of Voice over Internet Protocol Worldwide, 2006" by Phillippa Biggs
• "The Future of Voice: Consumer Issues" by Ewan Sutherland

Regional Case Studies

• "Future of Voice in Africa" by Russell Southwood
• "Communications: Government and Business Practices in the Asia Pacific Region" by Khelia Johnson and Oluwaseun Oyeyipo
• "Regulatory Challenges of Voice over IP Telephony: Analysis for Selected South and Eastern European Countries" by Anna Riedel
• "Ruling Voice over IP: Challenges for Regulators in Latin America"

The ITU has just published a Survey on Radio Spectrum Management, available for download here (.pdf format).

The survey was prepared by Marco Obiso, Cristina Bueti, Rochi Koirala and Lorenzo Mele of the Strategy and Policy Unit (ITU).

Together with other background papers will form part of the input material for an international ITU/FUB Workshop on Market Mechanisms for Spectrum Management to be held in Geneva (Switzerland) from 22-23 January 2007.

The Advance Programme for the workshop is now on-line, and will be regularly updated.

More information about the Workshop can be found here.

More information about the Shaping Tomorrow’s Networks Programme can be found here.

OFCOM has just released its first research publication, The International Communications Market 2006. Report focuses specifically on the international communications market, reflecting the increasing impact of global issues on the UK commercial and regulatory communications agenda. 

To read executive summary, please click here.

To download the document, please click here.

OFCOM has just released a new public discussion document on Regulatory Challenges Posed by Next Generation Access Networks. 

To read executive summary, please click here.

To download the document, please click here.

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) is a composite index that has been developed by the ITU/Digital Opportunity Platform to measure countries' progress in ICTs and digital opportunity, as part of the endorsed methodology for WSIS evaluation and follow-up. It is a flexible methodology that has been used in many different ways. Every day this week, SPU will demonstrate a different application of the DOI, to show its flexible and versatile applications for policy analysis.

The urban/rural digital divide is one of the most obvious divisions in many countries (depending on their geography, degree of urbanisation and industrial development, among other factors). ITU has traditionally sought to monitor the urban/rural divide in telecoms using the indicators of % of main lines in urban areas and mainlines in the largest city. For example, in China, as recently as 2004, just over two-thirds of all mainlines were to be found in urban areas (World Telecommunication Indicators).

However, the urban/rural divide extends far beyond connectivity. Differences in digital opportunity between urban and rural areas are also evident in the price of access to ICTs (often more expensive in rural areas), speed and quality of access (what the Nigerian blogger Oro calls "plug and pray") and technology in e.g., coverage of population with a mobile signal. The Digital Opportunity Index measures all these different aspects to access to ICTs.

For most countries, detailed data on urban/rural differences for all these aspects are difficult to come by. However, at the recent Digital Opportunity Forum held in Korea, the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology presented its expert analysis of the urban/rural divide in Egypt (see figure below). Taking into account differences in price, coverage, Internet availability and usage, the Ministry calculated that the rural population in Egypt has one quarter less opportunity to access and use ICTs as in urban areas. This points to a measurable and significant urban/rural divide in connectivity in a country where the vast majority of the population (95%) live in the fertile Nile valley. The DOI provides a means not only of quantifying the extent of this urban/rural divide, but also of monitoring its future evolution.

The urban/rural divide in Egypt

Source: Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, presented to the Digital Opportunity Forum, 1 September 2006.

For more information about the Digital Opportunity Index, click here.

The ITU’s Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) is delighted to announce over 70,000 downloads of its major new report, the World Information Society Report (WISR) since July.

The World Information Society Report charts progress in building the Information Society and track the dynamics driving digital opportunity worldwide using a new tool—the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). The Digital Opportunity Index can strengthen policy-making by monitoring the critical areas of the digital divide, universal access, gender and the promotion of broadband and universal service policies. The DOI has been cited by the US Federal Communications Commission to measure the state of broadband in the United States, monitored in Ireland to track the price of broadband and used by the Egyptian Government to measure the urban-rural divide in Egypt.

Every day this week, SPU will profile a different practical application of the Digital Opportunity Index, to demonstrate its genuine use for policy purposes and to show how it can monitor WSIS follow-up. The Digital Opportunity Index is relevant for policy-makers, regulators, academics, public and other stakeholders with an interest in telecommunications and development.

To find out more, please click here.

As a result of a British documentary, India is now under pressure to strengthen its laws combating data theft and other electronic crimes in the country. Amendments to India’s IT Act of 2000 have been proposed and should be enacted by the national parliament in its upcoming winter.

Read the full Information Week article here.

See also Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and Information Technologies for more information.

‘Teledensity‘, or the number of phones per 100 inhabitants, is one of the more useful measures of an economy’s ICT infrastructure. In the early 1990s, ITU carried out research on the progress of Asia-Pacific economies in achieving the ‘teledensity transition‘ in their fixed-line networks (see left chart). The ‘teledensity transition‘ may be defined as passing from a teledensity of 10 lines per 100 inhabitants to 30 per 100. Below a teledensity of 10, access to telecommunications is restricted to a small part of the population and few businesses and therefore the impact of telecommunications on the economy and society is limited. With a teledensity above 30 per 100, access to telecommunications is available to a majority of households and virtually all businesses. Thus, the use of telecommunications can be expected to have a comparatively greater impact on the economy and society.

For the developed economies in the Asia-Pacific region, it took between 8 and 35 years (average 16 years) to make the transition between 1935 and 1995, with a progressive acceleration over time. However, for a sample of developing economies in the same region, it took only between 2 and 6 years (average 3 years) to make the transition between 1995 and 2006 (see right chart).

The main difference between the two charts is that the developed countries made the transition using fixed-line networks, whereas the developing economies have invariably made the transition using mobile networks. Mobile networks can generally be rolled out much more quickly, and more cheaply, and are more convenient for users (e.g., through pre-paid cards). Furthermore, mobile networks are relatively ‘development-neutral‘, in the sense that developed economies made the mobile teledensity transition only marginally more quickly (2.6 years) than developing ones (3.1 years).

For more insights from telecom transition and digital opportunity in the information society, please consult the World Information Society Report 2006.

The Digital Opportunity Index (DOI), which is one of the two indices officially endorsed by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (Geneva 2003-Tunis 2005), can be used as a practical tool to track the changing dynamics driving the Information Society worldwide.

The map illustrates the strong lead taken by Asia, together with Europe and North America, in realizing digital opportunity. Two Asian countries top the world rankings – the Republic of Korea and Japan, and the average DOI scores for the region are higher than the world average of 0.37. Central Asian countries are catching up fast with large infrastructural investments and strong gains in mobile and internet subscribers, including 3G mobile technologies (CDMA 2000 1x and W-CDMA). It is worth noting that five out of the top 15 gainers in the DOI come from the Asian region: these are India, China, Indonesia, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

The Asian Tigers, together with Scandinavian countries lead in internet subscriptions, with around a third of their population subscribing to the internet, but only half of these subscribed to broadband services. This is in contrast to the Republic of Korea, where virtually all internet users are broadband subscribers, with access to faster, advanced services such as video, teleconferencing, multiplayer gaming and triple play. These different profiles of internet usage could result in the development of more varied skill sets and contrasting rates of innovation and, over the longer term, may shape the Information Society differently, according to the type, speed and capacity of internet access available. However, there are often large differences in the level of development within the region - the Asia-Pacific region contains both high-income and Least Developed Countries. In many economies fixed line telephony has been challenged by the worldwide growth in mobile phones.

However, there remains a strong need for basic connectivity in Asia, where connectivity is the main factor driving the digital divide and limiting access to ICTs.

For more analysis on this and other related to digital opportunity issues, please consult the World Information Society Report 2006.

"The ICT industry is expected to grow by 6% in 2006 and, looking ahead, highest growth will be driven by Internet-related investments, Linux servers, digital storage, personal digital assistants and new portable consumer products." But any return to the heady days of 20% and 30% growth in many products and market segments in the 1990s are unlikely, according to the 2006 edition of the OECD’s Information Technology Outlook 2006.

For more information, see the OECD Information and Communications Policy website.

As part of the ITU's work in follow-up to the WSIS, the World Information Society Report 2006 is addressed to all stakeholders and intended to provide insights as well as useful benchmarks for building the Information Society. The Report gives practical examples of how the DOI can be used, and highlights projects around the world that are working to meet the commitments made at the WSIS.

Chapter five, Beyond WSIS: Making a difference globally, focuses on WSIS implementation and follow-up in different countries. The WSIS called for governments to move from principles into action. There are many efforts underway, both large and small, to implement the WSIS goals, involving a range of stakeholders at the community level, regionally, nationally and internationally. This chapter of the report highlights some of these initiatives to implement the WSIS Plan of Action, from national strategies to grassroots projects. A variety of initiatives have been launched to promote digital opportunity, infrastructure and advanced ICT applications and these highlight fresh approaches and innovative new solutions to ICT development.

One of the biggest challenges for the uptake of ICTs and for building a people-centered and development-oriented Information Society is the affordability of the services. The Digital Opportunity Index monitors the mobile communications that promise to bridge the digital divide in many parts of the world, as well as more recent technologies such as broadband and mobile Internet access. The price of broadband continues to fall worldwide, by as much as twenty per cent a year over the last two years according to ITU’s analysis, while broadband speeds continue to increase. The lower cost of ICTs greately facilitates their diffusion and utilization, and contributes to increased digital opportunity.

Internet affordability (cost of 20h internet connection as a % of monthly GDP per capita)

Note: 1 means affordable; 0 means that the price of lower-user basket is in excess of average GNI per capita.

These positive trends are not restricted to developed countries, and many valuable multi-stakeholder initiatives are underway to further promote ICT development worldwide in the wake of WSIS. 

The DOI has been developed by a multi-stakeholder partnership, the Digital Opportunity Platform, comprising ITU, UNCTAD and KADO (the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity and Promotion) and which is open to new partners. It will be reported annually in order to track progress in reaching the WSIS targets, and building a diverse and inclusive Information Society, by 2015.

"Chapter Four: From Measurement to Policy-Making" considers the changing telecommunications policy landscape, in areas of universal access/service, affordability, digital inclusion, broadband and wireless, amongst others. It shows how policy-makers can use the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI) to inform policy-making and policy design to achieve the WSIS goals. The DOI is not an abstract mathematical construction, but has real ‘hands-on’ applications for policy-makers, particularly in the context of the commitments made by governments at the World Summit on the Information Society.

Chapter Four uses the DOI for analysing digital gaps between regions at the national and international levels, for assessing gender gaps and for monitoring digital inclusion. The DOI is a useful policy tool that can be adapted to assess all of these data requirements. Chapter four of the World Information Society Report uses the DOI to analyse digital opportunity throughout the continent of Africa; perform a benchmark comparison of India’s performance relative to its neighbouring countries (see Figure below); examine regional disparities in digital opportunity in Brazil; and examine the gender gap in the Czech Republic. The chapter also outlines the next steps in ICT measurement for policy-making that the Digital Opportunity Platform plans to undertake.

Using the DOI for Policy Purposes

To find out more about the World Information Society Report, please click here.

"Chapter Three: Information Society Trends" tracks the shifting dynamics of the Information Society worldwide. It monitors the changes in digital opportunity across different countries and regions, and investigates those that have made the strongest gains in digital opportunity.

The Asian economies of the Republic of Korea and Japan continue to lead in digital opportunity, mainly due to their pioneering take-up of broadband and 3G mobile services. Nearly all Internet subscribers in the Republic of Korea are broadband subscribers, whilst Japan is the only market where Internet subscribers are most likely to access Internet over their mobile. Dramatic progress has been achieved by developing countries, however, which made the greatest progress in digital opportunity - notably India, where digital opportunity nearly doubled between 2001 and 2005, and China, which experienced remarkably strong gains in infrastructure. Some countries are leveraging their investments in infrastructure more successfully than others, however.

Major Gainers in digital opportunity (2001-2005)

Note: Component indices of the DOI are represented by O = Opportunity; I = Infrastructure; U = Utilization.

Chapter three analyses trends in digital opportunity, broadband speed and price, as well as the price of other telecommunication services. Find out more about the WISR here.

"Chapter Two: Measuring the Information Society" introduces the structure and methodology of the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). It explains why the component indicators were chosen and how they measure different aspects of digital opportunity, in: opportunity to access telecommunications (including basic access to telecommunications and affordability, with detailed price information); the basic infrastructure available in a country; and actual utilization of ICTs, in the use of the Internet and broadband technologies (fixed and mobile).

This chapter reviews trends in the individual indicators making up the DOI, including: the growth of mobile coverage (both 2G and 3G); a comparison of Internet and mobile prices; household penetration of ICTs and broadband and mobile Internet. It illustrates these trends with a wealth of country information and regional comparisons, to show how the DOI captures the growth in digital opportunity around the world.

The DOI is a flexible and forward-looking index, which includes measurement of the promising technologies of tomorrow in broadband and mobile Internet subscribers (as a proportion of total Internet subscribers and total mobile subscribers). It is the major index to date that includes up-to-date and current price information for both mobile and Internet access. Find out more and download the DOI as part of the World Information Society Report here.

Structure of the DOI:

The DOI is currently being updated for 2006 information, as part of the ongoing work programme of the Digital Opportunity Platform.

 

"Chapter One: A Summit for Building the Information Society" outlines the background to the World Information Society Report (WISR). It sets out the background to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in the origins, aims and achievements of the Summit. In particular, it considers the call by member governments for an effective means and methodology for follow-up to monitor progress in building the Information Society through implementation of the Summit's recommendations.

The Geneva Plan of Action calls for a composite ICT Development (Digital Opportunity) Index to be published annually, or every two years, in a report on ICT development to clarify the magnitude of the digital divide in both its domestic and international dimensions.

Chapter One of the WISR reviews WSIS implementation since the Summit concluded in Tunis in November 2005, and explains why composite indices give a more complete picture of the development of the Information Society in any given economy than a single indicator. It gives an overview of the main composite Indices for measuring Digital Opportunity, and how they differ. It concludes by explaining the main virtues of the Digital Opportunity Index, especially for developing countries: it evaluates digital opportunity in 180 countries, the most of any index published to date; it is based on standard indicators (as defined by the Partnership for Measuring ICT for Development); it uses objective data rather than survey data; it can be split into its fixed and mobile components, so developing countries can be measured on the basis of their strengths; it uses household penetration data (which favour developing countries, on the basis of their large average household size); and it is simple and easy-to-use.

"Chapter One: A Summit for Building the Information Society" of the World Information Society Report can be downloaded for free here.

The ITU’s Strategy and Policy Unit (SPU) is delighted to announce over 17,000 downloads of its major new report, the World Information Society Report (WISR), over the two months since its publication.

As part of the ITU’s follow-up to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the Report charts progress in building the Information Society and track the dynamics driving digital opportunity worldwide using a new tool—the Digital Opportunity Index (DOI). The DOI is part of the agreed evaluation methodology endorsed during the WSIS and will be published annually in the World Information Society Report to track progress in reaching the WSIS targets and building a diverse and inclusive Information Society by 2015.

The WISR shows how the Digital Opportunity Index can be used to strengthen policy-making by monitoring the critical areas of the digital divide, universal access, gender and the promotion of broadband and universal service policies. The Report is addressed to policy-makers, regulators, academics, public and other stakeholders with an interest in telecommunications and development.

Starting next week, SPU will profile a different chapter of the World Information Society Report each day, to show how the Information Society is evolving and how you can contribute to WSIS follow-up. 

For more information, please see the WISR website. 

A recent APDIP e-Note goes into the discussion of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) and Internet Governance.

As the number of non-English speakers on the Internet grows exponentially, the limitations of the Domain Name System have become evident to many.

The APDIP e-Note examines "how IDNs relate to cultural diversity and the basic human right to communicate in one's own language on the Internet. While the bulk of the content on the Internet has been in English, this is rapidly changing. In China, for example, over 60 million of the nation's 100 million-plus users browse the web only in Chinese, yet top-level domain names remain in Roman script for all users. The APDIP e-Note further discusses the ongoing debate on how best to allow users to navigate the Internet in their own language. Different systems available for multilingual domain names and future scenarios are also explored.

Download the full APDIP e-Note.
View other APDIP e-Resources here.

The Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) is an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that aims to promote the development and application of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for sustainable human development in the Asia-Pacific region.

A select committee has recommended a major change to New Zealand's anti-spam bill, suggesting anyone should be able to send unsolicited emails that are of an entirely non-commercial nature and need not desist even if asked to do so by the recipient. The original anti-spam bill said that organisations that sent unsolicited emails to promote their aims or ideals - such as school newsletters and messages from political lobbyists - would fall foul of the spam bill. This is if they did not stop sending messages when asked to do so, by letting recipients "opt-out". The select committee dropped this requirement in amendments it proposed early September 2006.

The proposed amendments also drop the legal requirement that spam be reported to a customer's internet service provider before Internal Affairs could take action. Other proposed amendments eliminate the distinction between emails whose prime purpose is commercial and ones that are primarily promotional, but which contain a commercial element, and lift a ban on possessing or supplying email harvesting software, but bans New Zealanders from using such software to send spam.

This news item was retrieved through the APCAUCE Newslog.
The full article is available at stuff.co.nz.

A presentation entitled "Booming Broadband for a Wireless World" was given by Lara Srivastava of ITU on 22 August 2006 at BroadbandAsia 2006 in Shanghai, China. Other speakers included, inter alia, L. Ladid (President, IPv6 Forum), T. Poulos (Asia-Pacific Head, Global Billing Association), A. Hassan (Executive Director, Wi-Fi Alliance), J. Wang (Secretary-General, TD-SCDMA Forum), S. Ramaswamy (Senior Vice President, Bharti AirTel).

The Vietnamese Ministry of Trade is drafting a circular governing advertising activities by electronic means, including emails, pop-ups and mobile phone messages.

"Local Internet users have been bombarded with spam mails but most of them are from overseas. Now such a circular is necessary as local spamming activities are on the rise.

The circular has basic requirements for users to fight spams such as opt-out options, genuine sender addresses, sender telephone numbers and obvious headings. But it seems that the draft circular is too lenient towards spammers when it provides them five working days before they have to stop their spams in case recipients choose to opt out. It also allows for the collection of personal data including email addresses and telephone numbers. Even though the circular requires collecting parties to ask for permission first and to keep those data confidential, this provision can be abused and can cause disputes later on.

This is all the more possible because the circular provides two scenarios: A complete ban of sales of email addresses and telephone numbers to advertisers; or allowing such an activity. Unsolicited short mobile messages are now possible because some carriers are selling subscribers’ numbers to various advertising companies. Users are especially frustrated when senders use some automatic message generation device so that they might receive an advertising message in the middle of the night.

The fines provided in the draft circular are from VND5 million to VND20 million, which many say are not heavy enough to prevent harmful violations of personal information."

[via APCAUCE and Viet Nam News]

An article entitled New regulation to monitor online video spoof craze in Xinhua Online says that new regulations are in the pipeline to regulate video content on the internet in the wake of a surge in short satirical films online, according to the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

"Video spoofs have become so popular that netizens have even coined a slang term, "egao," to describe the act of using real film clips to create mocking send-ups.

From late August or September, only authorized websites such as sina.com, sohu.com and netease.com, will be allowed to show short films under the new regulations, Xinhua News Agency reported, citing an announcement by the administration."

[via Smart Mobs]

The International Herald Tribune has an article about the growing problem of "cyberviolence" in South Korea, which has one of the world's most developed Internet communities:

'Complaints filed with the government's Korea Internet Safety Commission more than doubled to 42,643 last year from 18,031 in 2003. Women have reported sexual harassment. A 16-year- old schoolgirl accused of informing on an abusive teacher ran away after her photos and insults were splashed on her school Web site. A singer struggled with rumors that she was a man. Twist Kim, a singer and comedian, had a nervous breakdown after pornographic Web sites proliferated under his name, as if he had created them, causing television stations to spurn him.

In most countries, Internet users oppose government attempts to censor the Internet. In South Korea, however, in both government-funded and private surveys, a majority of people support official intervention to check unbridled freedom of speech on the Internet.

A poll taken in November showed that nearly one of 10 South Koreans from 13 to 65 said they had experienced cyberviolence.

The problem in South Korea may presage what will happen in other countries, according to the authorities, who have begun cracking down on the problem.

"In the past few years, the Internet has grown in South Korea explosively," said Kim Sung Ho, secretary general at Kinternet, a lobby of domestic portals. "The Internet community has developed faster and stronger in South Korea than elsewhere. So we are struggling with its side effects earlier than other nations."

Since last year, dozens of people have been indicted on charges of criminal contempt or slander for writing or spreading malicious online insults about victims like Kim Myong Jae. They face fines of as much as 2 million won, or $2,067.

This month, the National Assembly will debate a bill that would require the nation's 30 major Internet portals and newspaper Web sites to confirm the identities of visitors before allowing them to use bulletin boards, the main channel of cyberviolence.

"The idea is to make people feel more responsible for what they are posting on the Net," said Oh Sang Kyoon, a director at the Ministry of Information and Communications. "Victims cannot live a normal life. They quit jobs and run away from society. They even flee the country. It's like lynching victims in a 'people's court on the Web.'"

Some critics question whether such a law would solve the problem. Cyberviolence, they say, has been increasing even though most of the country's major Web sites are already applying the policy.

"This is violating privacy in the name of protecting it," said Oh Byoung Il, director general at jinbo.net, a civic group. "It discourages anonymous whistle- blowers. It impedes the free flow of communication, the soul of the Internet."

Official interference will also discriminate in favor of foreign portals like Google, said Kim of Kinternet. For instance, when users search for "sex" in a South Korean portal, they must first prove they are adults by supplying personal data - a requirement that does not apply to the Korean-language Google, which operates with an overseas server.

But Kim Myong Jae condemned the portals as willing accomplices in online mob attacks. While painfully slow to respond to victims' complaints, Kim said, the portals - the largest of which, naver.com, attracts 15 million users a day - highlight real-time lists of the most- clicked-on news, thus helping spread sensational, and often libelous, items.

Kim said he had filed suit against the nation's top four portals: Naver, Daum, Yahoo! Korea and Nate.

And portals say they are now screening their contents more vigorously. "Rather than being an arena for sound debate, the Web bulletin boards have to some extent become a place for verbal defecation," said Choi Soo Yeon, a naver.com spokeswoman. "We have 300 monitors who work round the clock to delete abusive and defamatory language." But ultimately, the portals say, the users who post on the Web should be responsible for content.

South Korea saw an explosion of Internet users as the country emerged from decades of military rule, and citizens jumped on the new technology as a way of expressing long-suppressed views. About 33 million South Koreans - out of a population of 48 million - use the Internet, most of them with broadband connections. And many of them are not shy about their feelings.

News articles on portals or newspaper Web sites often are accompanied by feedback sections, where readers comments. Some news articles attract thousands of entries, ranging from thoughtful comments to raving obscenities. When suspicions first emerged last year that the cloning expert Hwang Woo Suk had faked his groundbreaking work, few dared to speak in public against the man lionized as a hero. Scientists, who unveiled evidence of fabrication through anonymous postings, brought about Hwang's downfall.

One of the most famous victims of online mob rule was the so-called "dog-poop girl." A cellphone photograph of a girl who failed to clean up after her dog in a subway car was posted on the Internet. For weeks, people pursued her relentlessly; the girl reportedly dropped out of school as a result.

To Kim Myong Jae, it was familiar. "Two months after I became the target, I visited a plaza near my old company. I dressed differently. Still a person reported my appearance on the Web, how I looked and how that person felt sick to see me," Kim said. "It's a handicap I may have to carry for a long time."'