Digital Trends
We think of this as a digital age, and in many ways it is. But perhaps not to the extent that we believe – a new EU report reveals that one in four Europeans has never used a computer, and one-third of all Europeans have never used the Internet.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the least active online are the unemployed and those over 65. But a quarter of those who’ve never gone online say they can’t afford it, and one in three don’t see any need to do so.
If you thought you noticed a sharp drop in spam recently, you weren’t mistaken. When hosting service McColo was shut down, some big spam botnets found themselves without a home. But it’s set to creep back up again as the Srizbi botnet has found a new home.
The Washington Post, whose investigation helped take down McColo, says part of the Trojan that’s infected the slave computers in the Srizbi botnet includes a formula that will generate a random but unique URL in the event of a network shutdown, so they can check for updates.
EstDomains isn’t popular among computer security people. The domain registrar is said by many to be the main registrar for domains associated with spam and cybercrime. As F-Secure chief research officer Mikko Hypponen wrote:
"They’ve been on our map for years as they’ve been the largest registrar used by online criminals for their domain name registration needs."
But EstDomains might not be around too much longer. The company has been notified by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that it will be stripped of its accreditation due to the conviction of its chief executive, Vladimir Tsastsin, who was found guilty in Estonia of money laundering, credit card fraud and forgery.
Sweden’s TeliaSonera has announced it has reached an agreement with Apple to offer the iPhone in several Nordic and Baltic nations later this year, including Sweden (of course), Norway, Denmark, and Finland, as well as the Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
As with other recent announcement of deals with international mobile operators, the announcement was brief and offered no information on pricing, dates of availability, or what version of the iPhone would be offered to users. Apple is widely expected to introduce a 3G version of the iPhone early next month at its WWDC developer conference.
Last year Estonia suffered weeks of debilitating cyber attacks after it took down an old statue of a Russian Red Army soldier in its capital, Tallinn. The denial of service attacks that followed crashed computers in many government departments. Estonia blamed Russia, but Moscow has always denied any involvement.
12 months on from that event, a cyber defense hub has now opened in Estonia. It will be funded and staffed by seven Nato nations – Germany, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Italy and Spain. By the time it becomes fully operational at the end of August, the hub will have about 30 workers, who will research and train on cyber defense issues. Even the US is sending an observer.
Some of the world’s leading hackers have starkly warned that British high streets stores could become the next victims of cyberterrorism, claiming that it’s “only a matter oftime” before they’re on the receiving end of the kind of tactics that shut down the Estonian government not too long ago. Speaking in a panel at last week’s InfoSecurity Europe conference, the hackers – who are now white hat guys – seemed to regard the situation as inevitable. Roberto Preatoni, thefounder of the cyber crime monitoring site, Zone-H, and WabSabiLabi, stated: "We had all been waiting forthis kind of attack to happen. Estonia was just unfortunate to be the first country to experience it. But very soon, our own [western] companies and countries will be getting attacked for politicaland religious reasons. This kind of attack can happen at any time. And it will happen." Although Russia was believed to be responsible for the Estonian attack, Preatoni said itwasn’t so. "In my opinion, this was a collection of private individuals who spontaneously gathered under the same flag. Even though Estonia is one of the world’s most advancedcountries in IT technology, the whole economy was brought to its knees. That’s the beauty of asymmetric warfare. You don’t need a lot of money, or an army of people. You can do it from the comfort ofyour living room, with a beer in your hand.” All the panellist were in agreement that British chain stores such as Tesco were prime targets, but byextension that idea could apply to big chains globally. Typically, the attacks are of the Denial of Service variety, which uses an extreme number of page requests to crash a site. Preatonialso asserted that the latest net address system, known as Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), is actually more amenable to DoS.
Last April and May a series of service attacks against Estonian government sites almost brought the small Baltic nation to a standstill. There was a belief that Russia was behind it all, in the wakeof Estonia removing a Soviet war memorial from its capital, and Nato was called in to investigate. The real reason proved to be less sinister. The hackers were based in Estonia itself, and oneof them, Dmitri Galushkevich, was fined $1650 for his part in the cyber attacks, according to the BBC. Galushkevich is one of about 375,000 ethnic Russiansin the country of 1.3 million, and prosecutors asserted that the student took part in the cyber attacks as a protest against Prime Minister Andrus Ansip. The denial of service attacks hit thesite of Andrus’s political party, government agencies, other political parties and even newspapers, and were part of a bigger picture including rioting where one person was killed. Galushkevich admitted his part in the organized hacking. "In deciding the verdict, the court took into account the fact that he had no criminal record," Gerrit Maesalu, spokesman forthe regional prosecutor’s office in north-east Estonia, told AFP. At the time of the attacks, Estonia blamed Russia and described the attacks as a“cyber war.”
According to Internet security company McAfee in its Virtual Criminality Report, groups either allied to or from governments in up to 120 countries could beengaged in cyber spying or cyber attacks, creating as massive threat to Internet security. One of the worst offenders is believed to be China. So far this year it’s believed to have beenbehind attacks on the US, India, New Zealand and Australia. The McAfee report included input from NATO, the FBI, and theSerious Organized Crime Agency. Earlier this year Estonia was hit by a massive distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack that coincided with a disputebetween the country and Russia over a war memorial, but Russia denied any culpability for the attacks. “Attacks have progressed from initial curiosity probes to well-funded andwell-organized operations for political, military, economic and technical espionage,” McAfee stated. The report also dealt extensively with criminal activities on the Internet, which isnow a billion dollar industry. One highlight was the use of “vishing,” which is hacking into VoIP technology.
New figures released by Eurostat show that mobile phone subscriptions in the 27 EU states increased a staggering 14 times between 1996 and 2005. At the start of the period, the average was seven subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, but just nine years later it had increased to 96 for each 100. With 158 and 127 respectively, Luxembourg and Lithuania were top of the list, with Romania the lowest, having just 62 mobile subscriptions per 100 inhabitants. The most interesting figures, though, show countries where people used mobile access but had no landline. There was a great divide between Western Europe and the newer EU member states to the east. Although Swedish registered non one with just a mobile and no landline, the percentage was 42% just using mobiles in the Czech Republic, 40% in Latvia, and 36% in Estonia, 48% in Lithuania and 38% in Slovakia. Throughout the EU members in 2006, 18% had mobile access but no landlines. The overall percentage of landlines rose during the nine-year period from 43 per 100 inhabitants to 48, with the highest numbers occurring in Western Europe.
Reporters Without Frontiers have released their Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2007, and it highlights not only the problems with press freedom for traditional journalists around the globe, but also the threat to bloggers. A number of countries have seen their rankings fall because of the way they’ve restricted or violated the freedom of bloggers. Several countries, like Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Egypt, have arrested bloggers and closed sites. Globally, at least 64 people are currently in prison for postings they’ve made online, with 50 of those being in China (the report does not consider recent events in Myanmar). Eight more are being held in jail in Vietman, while an Egyptian man was jailed for criticizing the country’s president and the Islamist control of the country’s universities. “We are concerned about the increase in cases of online censorship,” Reporters Without Borders said. “More and more governments have realised that the Internet can play a key role in the fight for democracy and they are establishing new methods of censoring it. The governments of repressive countries are now targeting bloggers and online journalists as forcefully as journalists in the traditional media.” The top-ranked countries for press freedom were Iceland, Norway, Estonia, Slovakia and Belgium. The bottom five were Cuba, Iran, Turkmenistan and North Korea, with Eritrea claiming bottom place. The UK was ranked 24th and the US 48th.
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