Submission + - Iran Threatens Undersea Internet Cables in Strait of Hormuz, Releases AI-Generat (circleid.com)

Submitted by penciling_in on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @06:54PM

penciling_in writes: Iran is escalating threats against undersea Internet cables in the Strait of Hormuz. On October 21, a senior Revolutionary Guards official warned that seven major cables could be targeted. Two days later, it is reported that Tehran has detailed plans to attack the cables and prevent repair ships from restoring service if war resumes.

Adding a rather surreal touch, Iranian-linked propaganda accounts circulated an AI-generated video on October 27–28 depicting underwater cable bombings, followed by dramatic scenes of Gulf banking systems and communications networks collapsing.

According to TeleGeography, less than 1% of international bandwidth passes through Hormuz, but the regional consequences could be substantial. Maritime intelligence firm Windward reports that Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar have no submarine cable routes that bypass the strait. Terrestrial alternatives exist, though their capacity to absorb a major disruption remains uncertain.

Submission + - 12-Year-Old's Lost Video Has Resurfaced, Discussing Bitcoin at $8 (circleid.com)

Submitted by penciling_in on Saturday February 01, 2025 @09:47PM

penciling_in writes: In 2011, a 12-year-old YouTuber named Tom posted a video explaining Bitcoin with remarkable accuracy. At just $8 per coin, he described it as a peer-to-peer currency, free from central control, and even predicted government resistance. His breakdown of mining, Bitcoin’s 21-million cap, and its potential as an investment was astoundingly prescient. Over a decade later, his video has resurfaced, stunning viewers with its foresight and inspiring a community to honor his insight with a meme coin.

Submission + - Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler: The Mother of WHOIS Honored by CHM (circleid.com)

Submitted by penciling_in on Thursday December 05, 2024 @02:38PM

penciling_in writes: Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler, a pioneering information scientist, was recently awarded the Computer History Museum's Fellow Award for her groundbreaking contributions to the ARPANET and internet infrastructure. Initially a biochemist, Feinler transitioned to tech, joining Doug Engelbart's Augmentation Research Center (ARC) in 1972. As principal investigator, she led the Network Information Center (NIC), compiling ARPANET contact information that evolved into today's WHOIS system. Beyond her technical expertise, Feinler championed diversity, mentoring women and minorities in STEM. Her enduring legacy continues to shape internet protocols, with modern projects addressing data accuracy honoring her as "Project Jake."

Submission + - Verisign and ICANN Renew Root Zone Maintainer Service Agreement (circleid.com)

Submitted by penciling_in on Thursday October 24, 2024 @12:12PM

penciling_in writes: Pat Kane, Senior VP at Verisign, reports that on October 20th, ICANN and Verisign renewed the agreement under which Verisign will continue to act as Root Zone Maintainer for the Domain Name System (DNS) for another 8-year term. "The Root Zone sits atop the hierarchical architecture of the DNS and is essential to virtually all internet navigation, acting as the dynamic, cryptographically secure, global directory of all top-level domains that exist in the DNS. The Root Zone Maintainer is a unique role that ensures the cryptographic signing and publication of the Root Zone no less than once a day, without which, navigation on the internet would be impossible."

Submission + - Ukraine Arrests VPN Operator Enabling Access to Russian Internet (circleid.com)

Submitted by penciling_in on Friday October 11, 2024 @12:13PM

penciling_in writes: Ukrainian authorities have arrested a 28-year-old man in Khmelnytskyi for running an illegal VPN service that allowed users to bypass Ukrainian sanctions and access the Russian internet (Runet). The VPN, active since Russia's invasion, enabled Russian sympathizers and people in occupied territories to reach blocked Russian government sites, social media, and news.

Handling over 100GB of data daily and linking to 48 million Russian IP addresses, the VPN may have been exploited by Russian intelligence. Ukrainian cyber police, in collaboration with the National Security Service, seized servers and equipment in multiple locations.

The suspect faces charges under Part 5 of Article 361 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code, which could lead to a 15-year prison sentence. Investigations are ongoing into further connections and funding sources. The case highlights the growing role of VPNs in the ongoing cyberwar between Ukraine and Russia.

Submission + - Starlink Surpasses 4 Million Subscribers (circleid.com)

Submitted by penciling_in on Friday September 27, 2024 @11:36AM

penciling_in writes: Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite-based internet service, has hit a major milestone by surpassing 4 million subscribers worldwide. SpaceX confirmed the news on Thursday after company President Gwynne Shotwell hinted earlier in the week that the service would reach the mark within days. Since its beta launch in October 2020, Starlink has rapidly scaled, growing from 1 million subscribers by December 2022, to 2 million by September 2023, and now 4 million just months later. The service operates through a vast constellation of nearly 6,000 satellites, providing satellite internet to users in almost 100 countries, including expanding into previously underserved regions like Africa and the Pacific islands. While competition from OneWeb and Amazon’s Project Kuiper looms, Starlink remains the market leader. However, challenges like slowing U.S. growth and concerns over satellite interference with radio astronomy persist.

Submission + - Company Offers $206M in Secured Notes Backed by IPv4 Addresses (circleid.com)

Submitted by penciling_in on Friday May 03, 2024 @05:27PM

penciling_in writes: Cogent (CCOI) recently announced that it was offering secured notes for $206M. The unusual part is what it’s using as security: some of its IPv4 addresses and the leases on those IPv4 addresses.

The notes are expected to be repaid in five years. It’s important that Cogent is creating a special-purpose, bankruptcy-remote subsidiary for this security. The registry in charge of IPv4 records in North America is ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers, and while they allow transfers, they are only allowed if the recipient can demonstrate need, or if the recipient owns the entire organization or network that holds the addresses.

Submission + - Vint Cerf Receives IEEE Medal of Honor (circleid.com)

Submitted by penciling_in on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @09:19PM

penciling_in writes: Vinton Cerf, widely known as the “Father of the Internet,” has been awarded the IEEE Medal of Honor in 2023 for his contributions to the development of the Internet architecture and for his leadership in its growth as a critical infrastructure for society.

In 1974, Robert Kahn and Cerf, who was working as program manager at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Processing Techniques Office, jointly designed the Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol. Together they make up the Internet’s core architecture and enable computers to connect and exchange traffic.

Since 2005, Cerf has been vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google in Reston, Va., promoting the usage of the Internet for the benefit of the public. Cerf is also in charge of locating new technologies and creating policies that assist the production of Internet-based products and services.

Submission + - ICANN to Hold First-Ever Remote Public Meeting Due to Covid-19 Outbreak

Submitted by penciling_in on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @08:36PM

penciling_in writes: The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has announced that its ICANN67 Public Meeting, which was to be held in Cancún, Mexico, will now be held via remote participation-only. This decision was made as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, considered a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization. The meeting, scheduled for 7-12 March 2020, marks the first time in ICANN's history that it will hold a Public Meeting solely with remote participation.

Submission + - Close to 735K Fraudulently Obtained IP Addresses Have Been Uncovered and Revoked

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14, 2019 @03:39PM

An anonymous reader writes: The American Registry for Internet Numbers, Ltd. (ARIN) has won a legal case against an elaborate multi-year scheme to defraud the Internet community of approximately 735,000 IPv4 addresses, the organization has revealed. While the specifics of the findings are not released, John Curran, ARIN President and CEO said the fraud was detected as a result of an internal due diligence process. ARIN is a nonprofit member-based organization responsible for distributing Internet number resources in the US, Canada, and parts of the Caribbean. The emerging IPv4 address transfer market and increasing demand have resulted in more attempts to obtain IPv4 addresses fraudulently. This is the first arbitration ever brought under an ARIN Registration Services Agreement, and related proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. ARIN was able to prove an intricate scheme to fraudulently obtained resources that included many falsely notarized officer attestations sent to ARIN. Some fraudulently obtained addresses were transferred to third parties; however ARIN made no effort to pursue the parties that received the completed transfer, ARIN’s General Counsel told CircleID.

Submission + - Internet RFC Series Turn 50

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07, 2019 @04:31PM

An anonymous reader writes: Today marks the fiftieth anniversary for the Internet "Request for Comments" (RFC) series, which started in April 1969 with the publication of RFC1 titled "Host Software" authored by Stephen D. Crocker. The early RFCs were meant to be requests for comments on ideas and proposals, says Heather Flanagan, RFC Series Editor. Today over 8500 RFCs have been published, ranging from best practice information, experimental protocols, informational material, to Internet standards. An RFC has been published to mark the fiftieth anniversary to include retrospective material from individuals involved at key inflection points, as well as a review of the current state of affairs.

Submission + - Security Companies Peddling Snake Oil - Buyer Beware Says Paul Vixie

Submitted by penciling_in on Monday April 20, 2015 @01:17PM

penciling_in writes: There are no silver bullets in Internet security, warns Paul Vixie in a co-authored piece along with Cyber Security Specialist, Frode Hmmedal: "Just as 'data' is being sold as 'intelligence', a lot of security technologies are being sold as 'security solutions' rather than what they for the most part are, namely very narrow focused appliances that, as a best case, can be part of your broader security effort." We have to stop playing "cops and robbers" and pretending that all of us are potential targets of nation-states, or pretending that any of our security vendors are like NORAD, warn the authors.

Submission + - A First Person Account of DNSChanger Takedown Operation and Clean-Up Task (circleid.com)

Submitted by penciling_in on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @11:52AM

penciling_in writes: Paul Vixie shares his personal account of the DNSChanger takedown operation working with FBI and a worldwide team. He also explains the delay issues in identifying and notifying victims which resulted in FBI asking the judge for an extension and were given four more months. 'On July 9 2012 the replacement DNS servers operated by ISC will be shut down and any victims who still depend on these servers will face new risks,' he warns. A half dozen national Internet security teams around the world have created special web sites that will display a warning message to potential victims of the DNS Changer infection. The full list of these "DNS Checking" web sites is published on the DCWG's web site.

Submission + - DNS Heavyweights Raise Concern Over DNS Filtering (circleid.com) 1

Submitted by penciling_in on Thursday May 26, 2011 @11:10AM

penciling_in writes: A group of DNS heavyweights have released a paper detailing serious concerns over the proposed DNS filtering requirements included as part of the bill recently introduced in the U.S. Senate named Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 ("PROTECT IP Act”). The group which includes Paul Vixie, Dan Kaminsky, Steve Crocker, David Dagon and Danny McPherson, have detailed several serious technical and security concerns in the event that the mandated DNS filtering is enacted into law. Dan Kaminsky says: 'There are efforts afoot to manipulate the DNS on a remarkably large scale. The American PROTECT IP act contains several reasonable and well targeted remedies to copyright infringement. One of these remedies, however, is to leverage the millions of recursive DNS servers that act as accelerators for Internet traffic, and convert them into censors for domain names in an effort to block content.'

Submission + - Kidnapping, Theft and Rape Are Not "Cyber" Crimes (circleid.com) 1

Submitted by netzar on Tuesday November 02, 2010 @02:25PM

netzar writes: CAUSE executive director, Neil Schwartzman, in a post on CircleID urges governments and law enforcement to treat cyber crime as what it really is: 'crime': "When someone is mugged, harassed, kidnapped or raped on a sidewalk, we don't call it 'sidewalk crime' and call for new laws to regulate sidewalks. It is crime, and those who commit crimes are subject to the full force of the law. For too long, people have referred to spam in dismissive terms: just hit delete, some say, or let the filters take care of it. Others — most of us, in fact — refer to phishing, which is the first step in theft of real money from real people and institutions, as 'cyber crime.' It's time for that to stop. ... This isn't just email. This isn't a war. This isn't "cyber." This is crime.