Helps defend users against specific types of cyber crime

The security of the global Internet has been bolstered by a historic collaboration between government and the private sector. ICANN has joined the U.S. Department of Commerce and VeriSign Inc. to add security at the top of the domain name system – the technical infrastructure behind the Internet’s “phone book” - to protect Internet users from certain forms of online fraud.

“A cyber criminal can steal your money or your personal data without you even knowing it. Cyber crime doesn’t respect national boundaries,” said Rod Beckstrom, President and CEO of ICANN. “This upgrade will help disrupt the plans of criminals around the world who hope to exploit this crucial part of the Internet infrastructure to steal from unsuspecting people.”

With the Internet’s pervasive role in daily life expanding rapidly, finding viable solutions to cyber crime is imperative. Deployment of Domain Name System Security Extensions, or DNSSEC, at the “root” of the Internet has laid the foundation for a new generation of innovative cyber security solutions by creating a global authentication platform - a common source of trust in the validity of Internet addresses.

The United Arab Emirates has taken the initiative to protect Intellectual Property Rights by applying successful procedures to prevent illegal decryption of PayChannels on the Internet. The UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) launched the initiative in collaboration of the telecom operators where they have successfully blocked illegal Internet traffic used to unscramble the encrypted PayChannels for the first time worldwide.

H.E. Mohammed Al Ghanim, Director General of the TRA said: “The UAE gives utmost importance to Intellectual Property to ensure the most advantageous economic environment through supporting owners of property rights. This step will protect consumers against this type of fraud and it will limit infringement of Intellectual Property Rights and violation of federal laws.”
In the same context, the TRA warns of the unlawful use of telecom services which harm consumers and the national economy. The TRA also urges the consumers to take caution while purchasing satellite receivers or PayChannel services by ensuring its legitimacy.

Telnic Adds its Support to DataPortability Project

Telnic Limited (http://telnic.tel), the Registry Operator for the award-winning, communications-focused .tel top level domain (TLD), today announced that all .tel names now support the hCard microformat, OpenID and Open Authentication (OAuth). In addition, Telnic also announced its support for the DataPortability Project (http://dataportability.org), signing up to its Portability Policy Initiative.

"With these enhancements, .tel owners can now benefit from being more discoverable and begin to utilize their .tel domain in conjunction with more services," said Henri Asseily, CTO and Chief Strategist for Telnic Limited. "With the introduction of support for these standards, .tel becomes more useful to and more manageable for individuals to use as a single authoritative source of information online across multiple services."

A total of 17 per cent of Jordan’s computers were infiltrated by a variant of the notorious Kido malware, according to the latest malware report of Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content management solutions.

“Kido has been mostly successful in Jordan at wreaking havoc in large corporation networks, due to its advanced network worm replication functions, that make it a nightmare for system administrators,” said Costin Raiu, Senior Anti Virus Expert, Head of Kaspersky EEMEA Virus Lab.

 “Kido.ih has been active in other ME countries as well, being one of the most successful variant. It is also one of the last variants, with its authors apparently having stopped the active development of this family of malware. Nevertheless, it is still spreading in the wild and causing problems for users,” he said.

200 millionth DSL line deployed by Telefónica to support cost-effective delivery of innovative service packages over VDSL2

Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced that Telefónica is receiving the 200 millionth digital subscriber line (DSL) shipped by Alcatel-Lucent – a unique and important milestone for the DSL industry, demonstrating the company’s ongoing leadership in this space.

“DSL has been the engine behind the broadband/Internet revolution, and is connecting approximately 2/3 of today’s broadband users around the world,” said Dave Geary, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s wireline networks activities. “Alcatel-Lucent is extremely proud to be the only vendor to have passed this important milestone. And this is not the end point: we are committed to keep on innovating in those technologies that drive our customers’ future growth and profitability. VDSL2, GPON, developing the next generation of DSL/fiber flavors and increasing the application enablement capabilities of the access network are a focal point of our activities.”