Trends I'm Watching

Your credit card info and identity will probably be stolen -- unless you understand a few simple rules

Bob Parsons at the Hot Points blog discusses Phishing:

There’s a new way to steal your identity. There’s a trick used to steal people’s credit card information that’s been in use for about one year. It’s called “Phishing” -- the word is fishing spelling with a “ph” instead of an “f”. And it’s very easy to fall prey to, if you don’t know what to look for.

Phishing is not only used to steal credit card information, but it’s also used to steal people’s entire identity.

If you don’t know how to detect Phishing, your personal info will be stolen.
You need to be aware of what Phishing is, and how to detect and protect yourself from it. It’s important that you read and make it a point to understand the rest of this article. If you don’t, you can be very sure that your credit card information (and quite possibly your identity) will be stolen.

How Phishing works.
Phishing begins when a crook creates an email that looks like it was sent from a reputable company. The emails that are sent look very real -- down to the smallest detail. They are created by professionals that are in the business of stealing your information and turning it into cash.

XXX Web Domains May Become Reality

Joi Ito discusses the ICANN debates to require all porns sites on the web use a XXX top level domain (i.e., www.Whatever.xxx).

There are people who are concerned about censorship and control. These are issues that have been raised, but I think the .XXX proposal is more about creating incentives for legitimate adult entertainment sites to come together and fight "bad actors" and is not focused on forcing people to use the .XXX domain.

Trends in Networks

Ten predictions by Hossein Eslambolchi, CTO and CIO of AT&T

10: Home LANs will proliferate.

9: Knowledge mining will transform the way we do business.

8: Wireless and wired lines will converge -- accelerating virtualization.

7: Broadband will be common -- leading to the death of locality.

6: e-Collaboration will dominate the workplace -- promoting foster next-generation speech recognition.

5: Sensor networks will be everywhere.

4: Wireless Internet will be big -- driving mobility.

3: Convergence of communications and applications will become a reality -- the network will be the computer.

2: Security is critical.

1: IP will eat up everything.

via E M E R G I C . o r g: May 25, 2005 Archives via Jeff Nolan and CRN

Routers Get Security Patches

Link: Om Malik on Broadband ? Cisco & Juniper Holes & Flaws.

In an increasingly networked world, not a day goes by when some company or the other reports problems with its gear. Cisco’s IOS is showing its age, and the number of flaws and vulnerabilities is being reported on a much more regularity. Barely a week after it reported VoIP related flaw, there is news of three more denial of service (DoS) flaws in Cisco IOS, and this involved who the IOS handles MPLS packet processing, IPv6 and border gateway protocol.

Juniper is having its own set of problems. According to Broadband Reports forums, Juniper had to rush out a patch to large ISPs.

Fighting Spyware: Follow the Money

Link: Everybody Is Crazy.

Some state governments have been going after the writers of spyware. This is an ineffective strategy.

They should be going after the money on both ends: those who provide the capital, and those who receive the revenue from said spyware – often, it is large, well-known corporations operating through several proxies. That’s the only way I see to curtail the problem.

Here is a comprehensive list of the firms that bankroll spyware writers.