It must have been a week while I was attending one of the briefing sessions after the ministerial team visited “The Internet Governance Forum (IGF)” as held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

What was it for Bangladesh being in IGF, the Internet governance lobbying ground?

The team requested ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom on the inclusion of Bangla script compatible domain names as Egypt and Russia has sent similar proposals for their own IDNs.

By the way, why do we need IDN?

This Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) has been talked at length in this IGF. For last couple of years, these IDNs have become a hot topic in the field of Internet governance. As the number of non-English speakers [non Latin-based script] on the Internet grows exponentially, the limitations of the Domain Name System [DNS] have become evident to many.

It has also been said that over half the Internet users around the world don’t use a Latin-based script as their native language. It might sound great when ICANN will allow this floodgate to expand the global reach of the Internet by introducing the top-level domains in non-Latin character sets. It will help over half the world’s population who uses alphabets other than Latin, to let them read and write domain names and email addresses in their native languages. But, one thing I know for sure, search is getting hard in coming days.

It is true that the genuine community voice of the local populations in their own new idnGTLDs can be given a chance to be heard. But, then – in case of Bangladesh, adopting Bengali domain might lead us to the island syndrome where we may not be found by the international communities. It is fantastic solution for localized content, and are we there yet? Some has concerns as we need to avoid restricting new idnGTLDs to governments, many of which are often repressive or takes months to process, and we must also avoid handing the market to the Internet incumbents.

What is there for us and why isn’t everyone’s interested for IDN?

I’m not disapproving it, but are we done yet, with the keyboards war? Well, there is a keyword called “priority” before we proceed with this IDN thing. Yes, leapfrogging is great idea but sometimes shortcuts lead to nowhere.

And, under ICANN’s current plan, the only IDN domains are allowed are in country-code domains controlled by governments, like Bangladesh’s .bd, China’s .cn, and India’s .in. Here comes the moment of truth, who is administering the .bd domain?

The UAE telecom regulator [TRA] is promoting its fierce campaign for the local domain .ae [I would be surprised if you can’t find couple of promotional ads in middle eastern telecom magazines and sites] by saying …

If it’s in the UAE it’s gotta be .ae!

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has also re-delegated the UAE ENUM space (971) to TRA, which in turn delegated it to aeDA [TRA’s initiative] to manage the country top level domain [.ae ccTLD] from both administrative and technical perspectives in compliance with international best practices. According to TRA, they are aiming to attract around 200,000 registrants by 2010!

The current .bd domain administrator has acute shortage of manpower and the regulatory body has the domain administration authority in the amended act. As always, blame it on the predecessors; but this is an extra job when you don’t have proper organogram for it.

If we talk about priorities, what should be done next?

Licensing the .bd domain administration to an able body or to prepare the proposal for Bangla IDN?

Please have a look at the preparation phase of IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process, welcome to the real world.

Politically, “both” would sound perfect even if I subscribe to a different school of thought!  Please be advised that it is all about empowerment of local communities doing local businesses. It is mostly about business friendly policies not only Bangla script that matters.

And, please, please fix the keyboard layout!

Happy Eid-Ul-Azha!

Wer  eine Umlaut Domain per IP-Umleitung anlegen möchte muss bevor er diese im Kundenmenü Anlegt, von “IDN” zu “ACE” String umwandeln.

Beispiel: Ich möchte die domain http://www.säure.de anlegen. Diese Domain ist durch den Umlaut “ä” im format IDN .

Wenn ich diese nun anlegen möchte als säure.de bekomme ich eine Fehlermeldung bei vielen Anbietern.

 Was kann ich tun? Ich muss meine Domain von IDN in ACE umrechnen lassen dieses kann ich mit dem von der Denic dafür vorgesehenen Tool erledigen, zu finden

 Hier: http://www.denic.de/de/domains/allgemei … erung.html

dort gebe ich säure.de in das fenster als ACE ein. Ergebnis ich bekomme statt säure.de > xn--sure-loa.de Dieses kann ich nun wie gewohnt im Kundenmenü als Domain Eintragen.

Last week ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) Which is the International body responsible for, among other things, administering the domain name system (DNS) announced that Countries can now apply for website domain names and TLDs “Top Level Domain Names” that are non-Roman characters. With countries like Egypt, China , Israel and Russia already applying for Arabic ,Chinese , Hebrew and Cyrillic respectively. marking the true beginning of IDNs (International Domain Names).

Experts expect the new breed of URLs to surface within a year, ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush noted in a statement, “The IDN program will encompass close to one hundred thousand characters, opening up the Internet to billions of potential users around the globe.”

“This is the biggest technical change to the Internet’s addressing system – the Domain Name System – in many years,” said Tina Dam, ICANN’s senior director of Internationalized Domain Names. “Right now, it’s not possible to get a domain name entirely in, for example, Chinese characters or Arabic characters. This is about to change.”

My Comment :
I think its a good step to increase the accessibility and usability of the Internet but it’s unlikely to come without a cost.

There is no way that we can properly manage this new system without DNSsec, which must be an international priority now.

DNS Security measures will need to be taken very seriously. The incidental difference between BankofAmerica.com from BánkofAmerica.com is just a small example of how criminals can exploit the new system.

Not to mention the foreseeable technical challenges in properly identifying the new breed of Phishing sites and SPAM Servers…etc, to sum it up this will be the biggest challenge to date facing the internet critical resources.

Former ICANN CEO stated back in 2006 that “There are 37 possible characters that can be used in domain names, but if non-English letters are allowed, this number would rise to 50,000 or more, ( My Comment: Actually more like a 100,000 ) said Twomey. He added that this could create problems where, for example, a character in Urdu looks identical to one in Arabic. This would confuse the system and make it difficult to direct users to the right website every time.

ICANN Announcement: HERE

Busy Beaver Button-O-matic Artist Damien Correll

How do you transform a wooden nickel into a gold button?  Let’s ask Button-O-matic artist, Damien Correll:

As a kid, my elders always warned me “not to take any wooden nickels”, and being a child of the 80s and 90s I hadn’t the foggiest clue what a wooden nickel even was and therefore what that old American adage even meant. Years and years later, I thiiiink I now get it.

Originally from Philadelphia, Damien Correll is a designer/illustrator/maker living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Formerly a member of the Rad Mountain collective, Correll is now a creative partner at the small design studio, Part & Parcel. His work has been featured in a variety of publications including in the pages of New York Magazine, XLR8R, Juxtapoz, IdN, STEP, NOVUM, The New York Times Magazine and Faesthetic.

Click here for BusyBeaver.net

Het enthousiasme om Chinese tekens in domeinnamen te gebruiken blijkt een stuk minder groot dan gedacht. Veel Chinese bedrijven laten hun huidige domeinnamen ongewijzigd.

Chinezen hebben sinds kort de mogelijkheid om traditionele Chinese karakters in url’s te registeren. Dit is het gevolg van het besluit van de ICANN vorige maand om IDN (Internationalized Domain Names) toe te staan.

Hoewel adressen met Chinese karakters nog niet in gebruik zijn, is de registratie van IDN-domeinnamen voor het toplevel domein .cn al wel geopend. Maar slechts weinig Chinese bedrijven lijken te zitten wachten op een echt Chinees webadres, zo meldt PC World.

De Chinese portal Tencent bijvoorbeeld, kan zijn naam in het Chinees (zoiets als 騰訊.cn) laten vastleggen, maar doet dat omdat het ook bereikbaar is via de url qq.com, dat veel korter is. Bovendien hebben veel Chinese bedrijven hun toevlucht gezocht in domeinnamen met getallen die met hun merk geassocieerd worden.

Zo is het bedrijf NetEase bereikbaar onder 163.com en is een reissite te vinden op 51766.com omdat de getallen in het Chinees worden uitgesproken als de zin ‘Ik wil gaan reizen’ (vertaald).

Gewenning
Maar dat is niet de enige reden voor het achterblijven van het enthoussiasme, denkt Sam Flemming, oprichter en voorzitter van het CIC, een internetonderzoeksbureau in Shanghai. “Chinese adressen zullen alleen aantrekkelijk zijn voor oudere Chinezen en het volk in de dunbevolkte gebieden omdat zij de traditionele Chinese taal spreken. Veel andere Chinezen gebruiken Engelse karakters of Pinyin, een fonetisch spellingssysteem dat vaak wordt gebruikt om Chinese door Latijnse karakters te vervangen.” Tot slot speelt gewenning een rol. “De huidige internetgebruikers zijn nu eenmaal gewend aan de niet-Chinese adressen”, aldus Flemming.

Provided by CommunityDNS, the information in this post consists of news items in the security-based Internet community.

Security firm chokes sprawling spam botnet

The efforts of a research firm took down a botnet responsible for 33% of the world’s spam.

The attack was multipronged. First the security firm reported abuses to ISPs regarding certain IP addresses. Secondly, the firm worked with registrars to deactivate registered names. Third, the firm registered backup domains that were not used, and fourth, the botnet was able to generate random domains based on a specific algorithm. The firm understood the algorithm and registered names possibly generated by this algorithm.

The effect was a botnet that had no where to turn. Now the individual bots have been orphaned and the security firm is working with the ISPs to notify the computer owners whose computers were once members of the botnet.

Click here for more information.

MassMutual Warns of Data Breach

Employee and customer data for MassMutual could have been compromised. Data handled by a third party provider was breached.

Click here for more information.

Majority of Web Apps Have Severe Vulnerabilities

A recent report indicates that close to 9 out of 10 web applications could lead to information exposure due to flaws as 87% of the Web applications analyzed had serious vulnerabilities.

60% of Internet-based attacks targeted Web applications. 90% of web vulnerabilities rested with commercial Web applications while 8% rested with browser-run applications.

25% of the attacks were SQL Injection-based with 17% of the attacks being attributed to Cross Site Scripting

Click here for more information.

No Rush to Adopt Domain Names Written in Chinese in China

While ICANN has opened the gates for IDNs to begin in certain countries, China being one of them, it appears there is no great rush to acquire the Chinese equivalent of the currently used Latin character set.

In many cases Chinese organizations have reduced the number of characters to make it easier for Chinese to type in the URL. For example “Tenchnt” is known as “qq.com” for its users. Another company has used “163.com” as the URL for its brand name as companies often associate numbers with their brands.

In one case where someone has already grabbed the Chinese equivalent to one company’s name, the head of the company would like to purchase the name, but feels having it owned by another party would not create any harm to their existing brand.

While the Chinese character sets will aid Internet usage for the older population, the majority of China’s Internet population is already used to the current method of using the Internet.

Click here for more information.

EuroDNS is officially accredited by EURID, the .EU Registry to allow private individuals and companies to apply for Internationalized Domain Names.

To help all parties benefit from this great opportunity, EuroDNS is now accepting pre-registrations for ‘.EU’ Domain names composed with non-Latin characters.

This document – which integrates EuroDNS’ Terms & Conditions of Registration but does not wish to replace the Registry’s official documentation available at http://www.eurid.eu/en/eu-domain-names/idns-eu – aims to provide you some guidance on the topic.

PS.  Maak, bij de registratie van EuroDNS IDN’t, gebruik van de voucher code GOEU70. Daarmee bespaar je 70% op de registratie.

Email, social networking and chat applications allow web consumers to exchange information with family friends and business people all over the world.

General public access to the Internet has been around for 40 years; the Internet celebrated it’s 40th birthday On October 29, 2009.

W.B. Pitkin said “Life begins at forty.” Well that certainly seems to to be true for the Internet. On November 16, 2009 ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) will launch the process for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN). The Fast Track process will allow countries and nations to integrate the name and  characters of their national language into domain names. At present, the Internet endings are based on Latin characters. This opportunity will broaden Internet access for the global community.

In October, Twitter announced that it will give the present of language support to F.I.G.S the acronym for French, Italian, German and Spanish languages.

This is an exciting time! Multiple language support will spark a romance with the Internet for newbies and rekindle the flame for others. Internationalizing languages on the Internet will also provide students and adults opportunities to develop language skills enabling them to compete in a global workplace.

The World Wide Web is wooing the globe! Isn’t it romantic?

This rather extended title refers to ICANN’s decision to allow domain name extensions, specifically for country or region specific extensions initially, to be registered in non-latin characters or international characters.  This represents a major step away from the use of Latin based characters for the DNS and opens the door, albeit a small bit initially, to millions of users around the world who never use Latin characters in their everyday lives.  Large population groups will now be able to use their native or national language in its original form to register their domain names with, a major step in the right direction in my opinion and one more step away from US dominance of the ICANN as an organization.  Since releasing ICANN in terms of US ownership or control, the organization has been actively moving into a more international role focusing on bringing its services and the DNS to everyone around the world, regardless culture, language or creed.

[Totally tongue in cheek here, but...]

in South Africa it means we can finally use Khoisan for ours, since it is the oldest language of the original people of this country, the basis of our nation’s collective spirit (bushmen, the last of the San people, are very hardy friendly folk), and the language used for this country’s official motto.  Though it is so prominent, it does not take an expert to know that very few South Africans have a clue how to read or pronounce Khoisan, but that does not seem to stop us from using it as we have.  It just looks so impressive when writing into slogans or inscribed onto buildings or imbedded into country emblems, just take a look at our country’s Coat of Arms to see what I mean:

(The motto of the coat of arms – !ke e:/xarra//ke – is in the Khoisan language of the /Xam people, and means “diverse people unite”, or “people who are different joining together”)

So our national domain should reflect the same I think – something like southafrica.!ke or southafrica.e:/x – truthfully I cannot tell you where a Khoisan word starts or ends, even in South Africa I would need one of a very few Khoisan language experts to advise us on that, or a Bushman of course.  I may say it as ’southafrica.”click click tsk tsk tsk click”‘ or something sounding that way, since the Khoisan languages sound so much like tongue clicks repeated amongst other sounds in various tempos and with variable accents. Ultimately the San people would be now able to spell a domain exactly as they speak it, and we fellow South Africans would be able to look on with embarrassed pride at how good it looks without being able to read or speak it.

Regardless, this is a silly explanation of what the ICANN decision will lead to, and not at all the right one, but it is meant to show that everyone now would be able to use, spell and read their national domains in their own characters reflecting their own language, even the Khoisan of South Africa!

ICANN just announced a big step in their ongoing IDN efforts, with plans to enable the registration and use of Internet domain names based on non-Latin alphabets and characters.    A complex undertaking, more than half of the world’s 1.6 Billion Internet users native languages use non-Latin alphabets, characters or symbols, including  Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Cyrillic.  Interesting to see how Brand Managers as well as Domainers react to this coming Continental shift in web addressing.  Expect a race to register thousands of “premium” domain names,  for example the Perso-Arabic script equivalent of  www.farsi.com which sold for over $70,000 in August 2009.

Provided by CommunityDNS, the information in this post consists of news items in the security-based Internet community.

Net set for ‘language shake-up’

Since 2008 ICANN approved the allowance of names written in non-Latin/ASCII character sets. If approved by the body on October 30 the first applications for Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) will be accepted by November 16. The first IDNs could therefore be up and running by mid 2010.

Click here for more information.

Mobile Broadband Operators Heading for Capacity Crisis

A recent study states that Internet traffic via mobile Internet devices will rise 25 times by 2012, yet for the same time period revenue for operators is expected to increase by a factor of 2. This illustrates that the cost for providing mobile broadband capacity is still high.

Comment: This illustrates the strong arguments providers are making towards the US’ FCC regarding Net neutrality. Providers are saying Net neutrality is OK for traditional ISP networks, but argue strongly against Net neutrality rules being levied upon wireless networks.

Click here for more information.

Developing countries must boost broadband: UN

Lack of broadband infrastructure means developing countries are missing out on information technology benefits. Missing, or limited broadband infrastructure means loss of the development of offshore companies that may be used to help with the respective country’s economy.

Also lost are advantages people may have with the use of mobile phones. With lower access to broadband people are working to take advantage of what applications can be accessed via cell phones as in Africa the number of mobile subscribers outpaces fixed line subscribers by a factor of 20.

In developed countries people are 200% times more likely to have broadband access than in lesser developed countries. Also, in lesser develop countries broadband can be very expensive. For example, in Africa’s Burkina Faso, Central African Republic and Swaziland, broadband runs $1,300 per month while the monthly charge in Egypt and Tunisia is only $13.

The report came from the UN conference on Trade and Development.

Click here for more information.

Scan of Internet Uncovers Thousands of Vulnerable Embedded Devices

Researchers have been studying the vulnerability of Internet accessible devices where default passwords have not been changed and are still in place.

Out of 130,000,000 IP addresses scanned, nearly 300,000 devices had administrative interfaces that could be remotely accessed via the Internet. Of those 300,000 devices 21,000 still used default passwords. Even if default passwords had been changed cyber criminals could still determine passwords through brute force of cracking passwords. With that said, through extrapolation it is believed that 6,000,000 devices on the Internet are vulnerable.

Cybercriminals could access such devices to conduct click fraud, DNS cache poisoning or launch attacks on other systems.

Click here for more information.

500,000 job hunter details exposed in Guardian hack

Hackers launched an attack on The Guardian’s Jobs website and made off with information from 500,000 people who had posted their resumes on the organization’s jobs website. The hack was stopped midway through, but what was exposed on the various resumes or CVs were names, email addresses, cover letters and the resumes themselves.

Click here for more information.

Gift Cards Convenient And Easy To Hack

As with credit and debit cards, gift cards are a form of currency and are thus subject to cybercrime, as noted in recent research.

Cybercriminals can “sniff” the information through a scanner directly in the checkout line and then cloned and used against the retailer’s hacked web-based gift card application.

Cybercriminals can also clone unused gift cards. This occurs by cybercriminals taking unactivated cards, cloning the cards and placing the cards back on the rack for display. Once the card is purchased and activated the cybercriminal has access to the account.

The SQL injection flaw is also another method cybercriminals may use to hack web-based gift card applications to obtain information.

Recommendation is to begin utilizing same encryption standards being studied for the credit and debit card providers and processors.

Click here for more information.

The internet, while certainly quite problematic for those involved in traditional print publishing, also presents a field of opportunities for development and collaboration if employed effectively. IdN seems an appropriate example, being that it is an internationally collaborated publication. For one thing, the internet offers unrivalled distribution possibilities, allowing IdN to promote and sell their magazines and books directly to customers across the world.

Systems Design Ltd., 2009, IdN Proshop, IdN, Hong Kong, accessed 11 October 2009, http://idnworld.com/proshop/

IdN’s approach exemplifies the possibilities in independent publishing, reflecting the design ethic which their publication showcases, the makers of IdN present a bi-monthly magazine which favours quality, and foregoes what would most probably, be greater profit margins, in favor of realizing their creative vision for the magazine. Rather than going for the cheapest (or simplest) production option, each magazine is constructed with the utmost care and attention to detail. Their latest issue features an assemblage of 6 different types of paper and comes with a complementary DVD – and I should point out that this is the norm for an issue of IdN. In an era where you can view almost anything on the internet (and at no cost), creating a product which, in itself is art is one way to combat online competition.

Systems Design Ltd., 2009, IdN Magazine, IdN, Hong Kong, accessed 11 October 2009, http://idnworld.com/mags/

I love this. 

After months of reading this magazine online, I thought i should share. IdN is an international publication for creative people, “an international designers’ network.” Their mission is to ‘amplify and unify the design community’, and they have many methods for ensuring that this happens. They create magazines, books, dvds, and tote bags among other things! Opening an issue of IdN Magazine is like stepping into a gallery, a visual gallery – photography, illustration, typography, architecture, graphics, fashion, culture, and motion graphics cover each page, and then some! 

Thier 15th Anniversary book has been published and it is worth a look. it is over 400 pages of commissioned work by 250 creators who they have collaborated with over the past decade. This hardcover book is only 59.00, includes a DVD 9 and is available now. 

‘What do You Love?’ looks at not only the past, but imagines what the future could be, through the eyes of some very creative people.

Provided by CommunityDNS, the information in this post consists of news items in the security-based Internet community.

Scaling the Root

An independent, third party organization was selected to analyze the impact of scaling the root in order to meet future needs currently on the horizon.

Currently the root zone is relatively small and changes slowly. This is expected to change with the support of DNSSEC, the addition of IDNs, support for IPv6 and the addition of new TLDs.

As a result of the study it is found DNSSEC will have the largest impact to the root zone and is suggested that DNSSEC be added prior to the addition of IDNs, IPv6 and new TLDs. While the addition of new TLDs will have an increased entry of 1 per new TLD, the implementation of DNSSEC results in a increase of the root zone data by 4.

Another way of looking at impact of changes is:

• New TLDs and IDNs will increase the number of TLD entries in the root zone.

• New TLDs, DNSSEC, IPv6 and IDNs will, in their own right, will increase the size of the root file.

• DNSSEC, IDNs and IPv6 will increase the amount of data required for each TLD.

• DNSSEC and IPv6 will increase the number of variables per TLD.

• DNSSEC and IPv6 will increase the number of changes per TLD per year.

Click here for more information.

Security Just Got A Lot More Complicated

Remaining undiscovered for more than a year, security researchers stumbled across an new form of malicious software. Known as Induc, this innovative piece of malware performs its nasty business through the use of a compiler. Induc infects compiled code while leaving a program’s source code alone. So while the source code looks fine the malware resides in the unreadable compiled code. Induc currently operates upon Delphi, versions 4.0 to 7.0. What makes this harmful is the malicious code can reside in complied code that has been digitally signed since the source code has remained untouched.

Click here for more information.

Facebook app flaws create Trojan download risk

A Romanian hacker has discovered Facebook applications that have cross-site scripting vulnerabilities. Five applications developed by Newscloud have been discovered to have the vulnerability. At this point access to the five applications have been blocked by Newscloud.

Click here for more information.

FCC chairman proposes Net neutrality rules

Net neutrality is, “…not about government regulation of the Internet. It’s about fair rules of the road for companies that control access to the Internet” says FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski.

October is the expected timeframe for when an FCC panel will vote on adopting general guidelines into official commission rules.

The six principles that may be turned into official commission rules are:

1. “Accessing content. The first rule states that consumers should not be limited in the content they choose to view online, as long as it’s legal.”
2. “Using applications. Internet users should be able to run any application they want as long as they don’t exceed service plan limitations or harm the provider’s network. ”
3. “Attaching personal devices. Consumers should be permitted to connect products they buy to their Internet connection, as long as the devices operate within the service plan and do not harm the network or enable theft of service. ”
4. “Obtaining service plan information. Customers should be able to easily review their options when buying Internet service plans and learn about how those plans protect against spyware and other invasions of privacy. ”
5. “New rule: Non-discrimination. Internet providers would be prohibited from selectively blocking or slowing Web content or applications. ”
6. “New rule: Transparency. Providers would be required to make their network management practices clear and available to consumers. ”

Click here for more information.

Tech Insight: How To Make Business Partner Security Work

In a study of 500 data breaches over the last 4 years, 57% involved partner networks used by an external attacker. Understanding what data partners need to have access to and at what times can allow access to be tightened, thus mitigating damage due to data breaches.

Click here for more information.

Es wird sie bald geben, die UMLAUT-DOMAINS (auch: Internationalized Domain Names = IDNs) mit der Endung .EU!

Per 10.12.2009 werden Umlaut-Domains mit der Endung .eu im WWW verfügbar sein!

Dann also gibt es .EU-DOMAINS mit SONDERZEICHEN in den unterschiedlichen Sprachen der 27 EU-STAATEN!

Im Deutschen gehören zu den SONDERZEICHEN: ä, ö und ü.

Die Vormerkungen für .eu-Domains mit Sonderzeichen laufen derzeit bei der united-domains AG auf Hochtouren. Das ist ein Zeichen dafür, wie sehr man in Domainer-Kreisen auf die Freigabe der sprachlichen Sonderzeichen für .eu-Domains gewartet hat.

Es zeichnet sich ab, dass es in Kürze ähnlich viele IDN-.EU-Domain-Registrierungen geben wird wie bei den seit 2004 möglichen IDN-.DE-Domain-Registrierungen.

Provided by CommunityDNS, the information in this post consists of news items in the security-based Internet community.

Botnet traffic bounds back 90% within 48 hours of ISP shutdown

Cutwail is one of the largest botnets running today, producing 15% – 20% of all spam, including malicious sites, phishing sites and fake antivirus sites. With most of its operations running from Latvian ISP, Real Host, the ISP was shut down by upstream providers. During a 48 hour time period spam dropped by 38% and cutwail’s botnet activity dropped by 90%. After the 48 hour period, cutwail’s activity was at nearly the pre ISP-shutdown levels. After the November 2008 shutdown of McColo Web Hosting it took several weeks for botnet activity to reach its previous levels of activity.

Click here for more information.

Message from Hackers: Enjoy The Summer Break Because Winter Attacks Will Be Harsh

According to a poll taken at last month’s Defcon17 less than 25% of hackers are malicious. Of those 81% are more active during the winter months with 56% saying Christmas is the optimal time and 25% saying New Years Eve is the most optimal day for hacking. 52% say weekday nights are when most of their hacking is done. Over 30% hack during business hours while only 15% hack on the weekends.

Click here for more information.

MS phishing filter blacklists everything

All sites ending with “.uk.com” have been blocked by Microsoft’s SmartScreen Filter. The filter is built into IE7 and IE8. It is unclear why such blockage occurred other than human error. This points to the scenario that filtering, no matter how good is not an exact science.

Click here for more information.

PCI Council Releases Recommendations For Preventing Card-Skimming Attacks

Credit card skimming is becoming the a popular way for credit and debit card account numbers to be stolen by cybercriminals. Devices are rigged to obtain the data, whether the rigging occurs after installation or before the device leaves the manufacturer. If credit cards were cryptographic devices, the threat would disappear.

Click here for more information.

China Forecasts Spread of Chinese Domain Names

CNNIC, the official registry for China’s ccTLD, .CN, announced that it is moving ahead with the deployment of .CN using both simplified and complex Chinese characters. Government organizations are already moving forward with the acquisition of the localized TLDs. Some are already in use within China, however most advertising within China utilizes the traditional Latin/ASCII character set for their URLs. People and organizations who already have a .CN name will automatically receive the localized version in both simplified and complex Chinese. Not only will this prevent legal issues over name ownership, it will also prevent phishing using such names because one who owns a simplified Chinese version does not need to worry about a phisher using the same name with the complex Chinese version. At ICANN’s October conference China hopes to push ICANN to an agreement on IDNs so the simplified and complex versions of Chinese second and top level domains can migrate to DNS.

As of the end of June China had more than 338 million Internet users; the largest of any country.

Click here for more information.

Obama’s FCC to enforce ‘net neutrality’

FCC chairman, Genachowski said that net neutrality will be supported and attempts to violate its tenets will be sought. It is the intent of the Obama administration to ensure the Internet is free of increased user fees due to heavy traffic and slow downloads. To assist in this endeavor a member of Congress has introduced a bill aimed at enforcing net neutrality legislation that guards against discriminatory practices by network operators. This is going on at the time Comcast is in a legal battle with the FCC whereby Comcast is challenging the FCC’s authority for penalizing Comcast for limiting web traffic to its consumers.

Click here for more information.

Dutch ISP builds dike around ‘Net, throttle non-HTTP traffic

Even as ISPs in countries such as Canada and throughout Europe throttle specific protocols at certain times of the day, a Dutch ISP is making their throttling efforts easy to understand. ALL non-HTTP traffic will be throttled back to 1/3rd the bandwidth speed, every day from noon to midnight. The thinking is websites are fine, however VoIP, P2P and FTP shall have second priority as the Web is not and shall not become a rich media delivery service.

Click here for more information.

Notorious hacker Analyzer pleads guilty on credit card scam

Known for breaking into NASA’s systems Ehud Tenenbaum, known as “Analyzer”, has pleaded guilty to US authorities for credit card fraud that cost US banks as much as $10 million.

What would normally carry a 25 year prison sentence will most likely be reduced due to his cooperation with authorities.

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La revista de IdN es una publicación internacional para el mundo del diseño creativo y su misión es amplificar y unificar a la comunidad del diseño en el Asia-Pacífico y otras partes del mundo.

IdN ha sido un organizador activo de muchos acontecimientos relacionados con el Diseño. Se dedica a reunir a diseñadores alrededor del globo junto con comunicarse, aprender de […] e inspirar a unos de otros. Se ha convertido en verdad lo que proclaman las iniciales de su título una red de los diseñadores internacionales [IdN].

Su editor es Laurence Ng y su Director de arte Jonathan Ng, (padre e hijo). La revista se imprime con distintos papeles, barnices, y de un cuanto hay en procesos de impresión todo un lujo y su diseño es increíble, rompe con todas las reglas conocidas además siempre va acompañado de un CD que trae entrevistas y gran parte del contenido de la revista en formato DVD y otros.

¡Blanco y negro y visto en todas partes!
La última edición que recibimos corresponde al aniversario nº 15 de IdN, y su tema es el blanco y negro, le preguntaron a los diseñadores que aparecen en las páginas: ¿si sentían el blanco y negro como algo nostálgico? Y la mayor parte de ellos dijo que no, pero hacer todo en blanco y negro les produjo un impacto que se les reveló como, “lo atemporal”, incluso de ir más lejos y usar el blanco y negro, como protesta contra la ubicuidad y atreverse a decir que el verdadero color de la reproducción hoy en día, es el Blanco y Negro.

Entre sus entrevistados, aparecen de una gran variedad de artistas de distintas disciplinas, que en su pasión para esta edición de yuxtaposiciones más primitivas. No están intentando persuadir a nadie de su predilección por el blanco y negro, sino quisieran que la gente entendiera cuál es el poder del blanco y negro, y que tiene tal asimiento sobre todos nosotros. Los lectores pueden comenzar a ver el mundo algo diferente después de que vean lo que ellos tienen que decir: ampliar la discusión del color contra blanco y negro es un gran velo lleno de cortinas fascinantes del gris.

A pesar de que debo haber sido criticado más de alguna vez, en mis talleres de las distintas universidades donde hago clases, porque trabajo insistentemente con el blanco y negro, entonces esta edición la recibí con un placer enorme ya que me sentí muy comprendido.
Amigos si pueden suscríbanse no se van arrepentir vale la pena este es el diseño de hoy…

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A look back at August 2008, Art & cultural allies from the UK, British Council, onedotzero, D-Fuse, and several local creatives from Bandung who belongs to multidisciplinary backgrounds, came together in Bandung to collaborate, work, and share stories about the experience living in Urban space (Bandung)  through a project entitled Re: Imagining The City

The event bringing together a diverse group of artist, musician, architect, film-maker and academic speakers from around the city.

The Great news is that the onedotzero have received funding from British Council to create a book of the Re-Imagining The City project, to be published by IdN as a special edition in early 2010. It will be edited by Shane Walter of onedotzero with input from D-Fuse and British Council.

It will be an amazing publication, capturing the Re-Imagining The City project of screening, panels, debates and the live A/V show — the book will also include a DVD. dont want to miss any of it out!

newssource; Tom Bland of onedotzero