Spam and cyber attacks Essays

Spam and cyber attacks Essays Spam and cyber attacks Essay Spam and cyber attacks Essay A traffic Jam on a real highway can effect that road and any other roads that connect to it and the same can be true for the information highway. And while most traffic Jams are a result of an accident or too many vehicles (or data packets in the case of the Internet) legitimately trying to get from place to place, they can also be slowed down deliberately, as happened in Brussels last September when about 100 trucks slowed traffic entering the city as part of a planned protest. Last week, a small Dutch Internet service provider called Cyberpunk initiated a traffic Jam of its own. Its apparent goal wasnt to slow down he entire Internet but to bring down the services of Asparagus a spam fighting organization that had added Cyberpunk to its block lists for allegedly allowing its customers to send spam around the world. Cyberpunk advertises that customers are allowed to host any content they like, except child porn and anything related to terrorism. Everything else is fine. According to published reports, that traffic Jam affected servers around the world and impacted ordinary people thousands of miles away who werent able to watch online video or access other Web services as a result of a protest on another continent. Its a scary thought and a reminder of how this global village we live in is so interconnected that we can no longer afford to ignore problems that affect other people, because they can affect us, too. Of course thats long been true to a certain extent a fire in an oil field in the Middle East can affect gas prices in our Midwest; a poor wheat harvest in Kansas could affect bread prices in Russia; a storm in New York can affect air traffic in San Francisco. But on the Internet, the impact can be immediate and widespread. This is one reason international bodies such as the United Nations hold occasional global forums like he Internet Governance Forum or the International Telecommunications Union (TU) World Conference on International Telecommunications to talk about coordinated strategies to keep traffic flowing on our global highway. Of course, even these bodies are not without their controversy. Late last year, the United States led a coalition of countries Tanat retunes to slang an International electroluminescent Regulations treaty because it proposed regulations that many Western countries considered to be a threat to the open Internet. Without getting into the specifics of the TIT treaty, the mineral issue of control versus openness is one that needs to be looked at in light of todays threat landscape. We need global cooperation to help thwart attacks and keep traffic moving. But we dont need cyber police around the world stopping traffic for no legitimate reason Just to see whats in the trunk, so to speak. Solving international cybercafà © poses both legal and technical challenges. Dave Rand, who co-founded the Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS) and is now a technical fellow at Trend Micro, pointed out in an interview that its possible for spam to be sent from Antigen advertising a virus site in Canada with payment processed in the Virgin Islands, and with domain name servers in the United States and a fulfillment service in India. Where does law enforcement start? He asked. Its very difficult for law enforcement to get a handle on it because there are no effective transnational laws for the Internet. Finding a way to balance privacy, security and the legal aspect of the Internet as a whole is a deep dark problem, Rand said. Rand said its up to the private sector to apply appropriate pressures at the right time. He pointed to an example from 2008, wh ere a series of articles from then-Washington Postcolonial Brian Krebs pressured upstream Internet service providers into cutting off access to McCoy, a San Jose-based company that was hosting spam sites. At that moment, said Rand, spam on the Internet dropped by more than 50 percent. Rand said that its time to put international pressure on Cyberpunks upstream providers that link them with the global Internet. I might add that its also appropriate to continue international conversations about beefing up cross-border cooperation and international laws that can help protect the Internet. I am well aware of the potential for overvaluation or oppressive laws, as we found at that last TIT meeting, but we also need to find better ways to protect our shared infrastructure while also protecting national sovereignty and an open Internet. This post first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News. Read the Huffing Post article, Dealing with spam and cyberneticss: Control vs. Openness, which can be found on the course website in the week 11 section. Requirements: Research the topic thoroughly and write a report that looks at all the ethical issues involved in both having a proprietary injector and making the decision to change it as Apple has done. Ensure you cover the following points in your report: Describe the ethical issues from the customers point of view. Describe the ethical issues from Cyberpunks point of view. What obligation does Cyberpunk have to its own customers and the general population? What are the difficulties in attempting to develop effective transnational laws for the Internet? Support your arguments with at least three references from reputable sources such as books and journal articles relevant to the subject.