System News for Sun Users

FBI/IC3: Impersonation, Intimidation and Scams, Yep that.s the Internet

2013-05-14T16:00:00+01:00

"The FBI and Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) issued their annual look at the state of the dark side of the Internet which is indeed thriving with all manner of scams and intimation tactics being used by criminals.

While complaints filed with the IC3 are down slightly through 2012 over 2011 (289,874 v. 314,246, respectively), losses from online scams are up over 8% topping out at over $525 million through the same time period.

The most common complaints received in 2012 included FBI impersonation e-mail scams, various intimidation crimes, and scams that used computer scareware to extort money from Internet users..."

Internet Security and the Future of the Password

2013-05-13T16:00:00+01:00

"At any given time and across any given news site it�'s clear to see that the internet landscape is changing; sometimes for better and sometimes for the worst. More often than not we see news story after news story of accounts and businesses that have fallen victim to hacks and malicious users accessing private data for ulterior motives. In order to better combat these attacks, the minds at Google have been hard at work formulating new ways that people will access information that has previously required a password to access..."

Want a Reply To Your Email? Try Being Downbeat and Pessimistic, Say Scientists

2013-05-06T16:00:00+01:00

"If you want a quick reply to an email, make it downbeat and pessimistic, experts have advised.

That's according to a study by software company Contactually, which found that negative emails got a quicker response than positive conversations.

It also found that unhappy people are more likely to reply to emails within 24 hours, compared to their more upbeat colleagues..."

25 Weirdest Things in the .Internet of Things'

2013-04-22T16:00:00+01:00

"The Internet is slowly creeping into every part of our lives, so much so that it�'s becoming easier to look around the house and find objects that can be connected to the Internet. In just a few short years, we probably won�'t think twice about connecting most of these objects to the Internet, but others will likely take some more time to get used to..."

College dorm bathrooms
College dorm laundry room
Garden
Dog collar
Cat feeder
Cattle
Human heart
Diapers
Slippers
Breathalyzer (that Tweets)

Read on for details and more Things!

Why the Internet of Things Needs IPv6

2013-04-22T16:00:00+01:00

"The transition to IPv6 is important not only because the 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses are running out, but also because the proliferation of Internet-connected devices is creating a new environment of information. 'The Internet of Things is very much upon on us,' said Vint Cerf, Google�'s chief Internet evangelist, at the Rocky Mountain IPv6 Summit..."

How Data Centers Can Keep Up With Massive Internet User Growth

2013-04-22T16:00:00+01:00

"Picture how bad it would look for your company if a salesperson, in the middle of a pitch across the country, can't access her presentation on your servers. Internet user growth is on the rise in the office and on the road, so data centers face a new challenge.

We spoke to Kevin Ressler, director of global product management for the enterprise networks division at TE Connectivity, about this rise in mobilityand how data centers must grow and change to avoid falling short of user demand..."

IRS Going Against Privacy Tide On Warrantless Email Search

2013-04-22T16:00:00+01:00

"The [US] Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has taken the position it does not need a search warrant to gather email in criminal investigations, despite opposition from lawmakers and privacy advocates and a ruling by a federal appellate court.

Through the Freedom of Information Act, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) obtained 247 pages of IRS records in an attempt to find out whether the agency had ever used only a subpoena to obtain emails. Unlike a warrant, a subpoena does not require law enforcement to show 'probable cause' in front of a judge. Probable cause refers to having enough evidence to show that a crime has likely been committed..."

The Web's Submarine Vulnerability

2013-04-22T16:00:00+01:00

"As if cyberwar didn't present enough threats to the Internet -- there's old school sabotage out there. Take some pirates, some wire-cutters, and a massive submarine cable, and you have a recipe for major disruption.

The crown jewel of the Sea-Me-We 4 network is an almost 12,000-mile long telecommunications cable that winds from the south of France, across the Mediterranean, down through the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea, around the tip of India into the Bay of Bengal, reaching the end of its tether at Singapore...

Sea-Me-We 4 was constructed by a consortium of 16 international telecommunications companies, and is intended to connect hundreds of millions of people in Asia and Europe. What happens if someone snips it?"

New Web Domain Names: Should You Pass?

2013-03-25T16:00:00+01:00

"Web addresses ending in extensions such as .accountant or .pizza will soon join the online world where .com has long been the sought-after destination. Yet the majority of small and midsize businesses (SMBs) still have no idea the new real estate is about to hit the market. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names (ICANN) received nearly 2,000 applications when it opened the doors for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) last year. A gTLD is the string of characters "to the right of the dot" in Internet domain names, such as .com or .org..."

10 Web Threats That Could Harm Your Business

2013-03-18T16:00:00+01:00

"SQL injections accounted for about 7% of Web attacks in 2011 and looked to be petering out, according to security services vendor Trustwave. Then last year those exploits jumped to 26% of Web attacks, hitting companies that could have easily protected themselves.

The Trustwave data proves what hackers have known for years: Even though application vulnerabilities are well known and can be fixed or blocked, many companies don't implement secure coding practices and regularly test their applications to find them...

Bigger, Subtler DDoS Attacks
Old Browsers, Vulnerable Plug-Ins
Good Sites Hosting Bad Content
Mobile Apps And The Unsecured Web
Failing To Clean Up Bad Input
The Hazards Of Certificates
The Cross-Site Scripting Problem
The Insecure 'Internet Of Things'
Getting In The Front Door
New Technology, Same Problems

Read on for details.

Email Addiction: Why the Enterprise Can't Break Free

2013-03-18T16:00:00+01:00

"Atos CEO Thierry Breton caught a lot of flak last year when he announced he wanted his employees to give up email, but he may have been on to something.

Kids these days don't use email -- digital market research company comScore found that use of Web-based email dropped 31% among 12- to 17-year-olds and 34% among 18- to 24-year-olds in the period between December 2010 and December 2011.

And consumers are off email as well..."

We still need Emily Post in the digital age

2013-03-11T16:00:00+01:00

"In the age of the tweet, the text, and the wearable camera, there's still reason to take an extra few seconds to be polite..

Thirty minutes or so after I finish writing this post, I'll get a short email from my editor ..

But if you believe New York Times tech writer Nick Bilton, I should be irked, not pleased. In an attention-grabbing story the other day with the print headline "Thanks, Don't Bother," Bilton writes: "Some people are so rude. Really, who sends an email or text that just says 'Thank you'?" He wasn't being ironic..."

DOD Reaches 1 Million Users On Cloud Email

2013-03-11T16:00:00+01:00

"The Department of Defense now has one million users on a consolidated private cloud email platform, making it one of -- if not the -- largest of all independent email systems worldwide. Two years after beginning the push toward enterprise email for the Department of Defense, the military has almost fully migrated one service, the Army, to enterprise email; has begun moving a series of other DOD agencies and military commands to the system; and is engaging in deep discussions about the move with the Air Force and Navy..."

5 Insurance Impacts of The Internet Of Things

2013-02-04T17:00:00+01:00

"When I&T sister site InformationWeek went to this year's Consumer Electronics Show, a major theme was the "internet of things" �' a big jump in the number of networked devices.

Intel's CTO talked about wearable technology, while Cisco's CTO of emerging technologies noted that "the marginal incremental cost to adding connecting or computing power is getting smaller and smaller."

While some remain skeptical about if this massive increase in connectivity truly serves the public, insurance industry observers see it as an opportunity to get a clearer picture of risk... Following are several examples of the kind of connected devices that insurers might explore down the road:"

Appliances
Carpets
Thermostats
Water pumps
Workout equipment

Read on for details.

Internet-Facing Printers Remain a Huge Risk

2013-01-29T17:00:00+01:00

"Despite repeated warnings about office and home devices being accessible from the Internet when there is no good reason for them to be, every now and then someone gets the idea of using Google Search to sniff out just how many of them are there.

The latest in this line is Adam Howard, a UK-based software engineer who searched for publicly accessible HP printers by using a sequence that matches with an often-used pattern for printing documents on an office or home network:..."

Email Privacy Tops Tech Agenda at Judiciary Committee

2013-01-28T17:00:00+01:00

"Should law-enforcement officials have easier access to your email just because it's stored in the cloud? It does now and Patrick Leahy says he intends to resume efforts to update 1986 electronic privacy law to provide greater legal protections for emails and other digital files in the cloud..."

New BYOD Threat: Email That Self-Destructs

2013-01-24T17:00:00+01:00

"As the BYOD movement infiltrates the enterprise, IT managers have more to worry about than ever. The latest challenge: Employees who use apps to send messages that "self-destruct."

The possibility of employees dropping company secrets into Dropbox already worries IT managers, but at least such actions leave behind a trail that can be traced. What happens when employees send messages to each other and to others outside the organization that are deleted by default?..."

Leslie Daigle, Chief Internet Technology Officer, Internet Society on How the Internet Has Evolved In 30 Years

2013-01-16T17:00:00+01:00

"Daigle shares the details of the switchover to the TCP/IP network 30 years back and how the Internet has evolved today, where IPv6 is the new normal...

Exactly 30 years ago, on January 1, 1983, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) switched from using Network Control Protocol to Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol or TCP/IP �- the basic foundation or the backbone for the Internet. Leslie Daigle, Chief Internet Technology Officer, Internet Society shares the details of the switchover to the TCP/IP network and how the Internet has evolved today.

Here is Leslie Daigle in her own words:.."

9 Things That You Did Not Know About the Indian Cyber Law

2013-01-14T17:00:00+01:00

"Cyber law and security expert, Adv Prashant Mali, points out 9 things about the Indian cyber law which can get you punished with imprisonment of up to three years.. ' If an employee keeps forwarding all his official emails from his official email id i.e from empname@company.com to his personal email id i.e to empname@gmail.com' ..."

Vint Cerf, Father Of The Internet And Chief Internet Evangelist For Google, On How The Internet Was 30 Years Back

2013-01-14T17:00:00+01:00

"Vint Cerf, Father of the Internet and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, on how the Internet was 30 years back

Co-creator of the Internet, Vint Cerf, who made the Internet possible by developing the Transmission Control Protocol, shares his view on how the Internet was 30 years back..."

Email Overload: Disease Or Symptom?

2012-12-27T17:00:00+01:00

"Email overload is a symptom of larger management dysfunctions. Why are your employees spending so much time covering themselves for every little thing?...

We all say we want less email. But, do we really mean it? I think we're saying: I want less irrelevance in my life. Much in the same way we complain about time-wasting meetings -- instead of focusing on creating fantastic and nimble work sessions -- I'm not sure we're focusing on the right problem..."

8 Modest Proposals for Reducing Email

2012-12-17T17:00:00+01:00

"If we really want to cut down the volume of email in our inboxes, we need to be saved from ourselves. I agree with InformationWeek's Jonathan Feldman: The email onslaught is as fierce as ever and we have only ourselves to blame. I'm just not sure willpower is going to cut it as a solution, for the same reason that most of us will have forgotten our New Year's resolutions by the time Valentine's Day rolls around: We have none.

We can't help it. Email is easy. Email is "free" -- perhaps not for IT budget makers, but certainly in the sense that anyone with Internet access can get a no-cost account with a nice heap of storage in about two minutes. Worst of all: Email makes us feel like we're Getting Things Done..."

Canada among Countries Refusing To Sign WCIT Treaty

2012-12-17T17:00:00+01:00

"Canada, the United States and a number of other countries have hung up on a global telecom summit.

The countries said Thursday they won�'t sign new regulations agreed to at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai because of concern one part could be used to undermine an open Internet.

�'With many like-minded countries, Canada endeavoured to reach consensus on new International Telecommunication Union (ITU) regulations that recognized advances in telecommunications while maintaining an open, accessible Internet,�' Industry Minister Christian Paradis said..."

It Pays To Study the Habits of Your Email Users

2012-12-13T17:00:00+01:00

"How many email messages do you receive in the average working day: 20? 30? 50? More? And what volume of email have you accumulated over the past year: half a gig, a gig, two gigs?

Whatever the exact amount, it is safe to say that most of us have to deal with a lot of email traffic and that an increasing proportion of it comes with chunky attachments. This raises the question of what we do with all these messages after we have read them, particularly those relating to projects, customer interactions and so on that really need to be kept for reference or regulatory purposes..."

Email Is So Last Century

2012-12-12T17:00:00+01:00

"Over the course of the past year or two we have started to hear that email is becoming less relevant in this era of social networking.

With websites such as Facebook grabbing the world�'s attention and organisations encouraged to communicate with all and sundry via sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn, many are seriously questioning the importance of email in everyday business activities.

Despite the rhetoric from social networking enthusiasts, however, it will come as little surprise to any IT professional that email continues to be widely deployed in the vast majority of organisations..."

Workers can't (or Won't) Escape from Their eMail

2012-12-12T17:00:00+01:00

"Do you sometimes feel as if you're perpetually buried inside your inbox? Join the club. Despite the massive popularity of social media, we spend a staggering amount of hours sorting, reading and sending email, according to a recent survey from Mimecast..."

How the Word "Spam" Came to Mean "Junk Message"

2012-12-03T17:00:00+01:00

"Today I found out how the word �'spam�' came to mean �'junk message�' or �'junk mail�'.

While some have suggested that this was because SPAM (as in the Hormel meat product) is sometimes satirized as �'fake meat�', thus spam messages are 'fake messages', this potential origin, while plausible enough on the surface, turns out to be not correct at all.

The real origin of the term comes from a 1970 Monty Python�'s Flying Circus skit..."

Infuriated By Internet Shutdown, Anonymous Declares War on Syrian Government Websites Worldwide

2012-12-03T17:00:00+01:00

"The hactivist group Anonymous reacted angrily to the Internet shutdown yesterday in Syria, an act attributed to the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the civil war there. Anonymous basically declared war on the Syrian regime, saying it intends to obliterate "all Web assets belonging to the Assad regime that are NOT hosted in Syria," starting today."

'Spear Phishing' the Main Email Attachment Threat

2012-12-03T17:00:00+01:00

"Some 91% of cyber attacks begin with a 'spear phishing' email, according to research from security software firm Trend Micro.

Spear phishing is an increasingly common form of phishing that makes use of information about a target to make attacks more specific and "personal".

These attacks may, for instance, refer to their targets by their specific name or job position, instead of using generic titles like in broader phishing campaigns.

The goal of a spear phishing attack is to trick the victim into either opening a malicious file attachment or clicking a link to a malware- or an exploit-laden website, which could compromise the victim's network..."

Why What Happened To the Internet in Syria Couldn't Happen Here

2012-12-03T17:00:00+01:00

"The Internet shutdown in Syria likely took very little to accomplish considering the country's limited Internet infrastructure and international connectivity, network analysts said Friday.

Such a move would be much harder, if not impossible, to achieve at least from a technology standpoint, in the U.S. or other democracies with mature Internet infrastructures, they said..."