Biography
Books
|
|
|
|
|
Blog
John's blog posts are hosted at:
http://weblog.johnlevine.com/
http://weblog.johnlevine.com/
October 31 2009
(Thanks to Chris Lewis for permission to adapt this) Everyone who uses e-mail needs spam filtering, and some filters definitely work better than others. Some people we know were trying to design tests of filter quality, which turns out to be extremely difficult. What one might call 'filtering quality' assessment, should be… read moreHelping banks fight phishing and account fraud, whether they like it or not
August 21 2009
On Wednesday, Project Honey Pot filed an unusual lawsuit against "John Does stealing money from US businesses through unauthorized electronic transfers made possible by computer viruses transmitted in spam." Their attorney is Jon Praed of the Internet Law Group, who is one of the most experienced anti-spam lawyers around, with whom I have worked in the past. The goal… read moreAre phishing and malware separate threats?
August 16 2009
Phishing is when bad guys try to impersonate a trusted organization, so they can steal your credentials. Typically they'll send you a fake e-mail that appears to be from a bank, with a link to a fake website that also looks like the bank. Malware offers another more insidious way to steal your credentials,… read moreWhy can't we make the Internet secure?
August 08 2009
In a discussion about a recent denial of service attack against Twitter, someone asked Some class of suppliers must be making money off of the weaknesses. Anybody out there have a prescription for the cure? Sure, but you're not going to like it. The Internet was originally a walled garden, where its… read moreHow unconscionable is the profit that Verisign makes from its registry?
July 11 2009
Verisign makes a great deal of money from the .COM and .NET registries. Can we tell how much they make, and how much that might change if the CFIT lawsuit succeeds? It's not hard to make some estimates from public information. The largest gTLD registry that Verisign doesn't run is .ORG, which was transferred… read moreVerisign fires back at CFIT and sets a trap for ICANN
July 05 2009
Last month the Ninth Circuit revived CFIT's anti-trust case against Verisign. On Thursday, Verisign filed a most interesting petition for rehearing. As you would expect, they offer a whole bunch of arguments about why the original decision to dismiss the case was right, and the appeals panel was wrong to reinstate it. Many of them are procedural,… read moreJuly 04 2009
The DKIM standard has been out for two years now, and we're starting to see some adoption by large mail systems, but there's still a lot of misunderstanding about what DKIM does and doesn't do. A DKIM signature means a message isn't spam Any a mail system can add a signatures to… read moreJuly 02 2009
Yesterday I said that the original motivations for adding new TLDs were to break Verisign's monopoly on .COM, and to use domain names as directories. Competitive registrars broke the monopoly more effectively than any new domains, and the new domains that tried to be directories have failed. So what could a new TLD do? Get… read moreJuly 01 2009
ICANN's Sydney meeting has come and gone, with the promised flood of new top-level domains claimed to be ever closer to reality. Does the world need more TLDs? Well, no. Way back in the mid 1990s, it seemed obvious that Internet users would use the DNS as a directory, particularly once early web… read moreAppeals Court revives the CFIT anti-trust suit agaist Verisign
June 05 2009
Back in 2005 an organization called the Coalition for Internet Transparency (CFIT) burst upon the scene at the Vancouver ICANN meeting, and filed an anti-trust suit against Verisign for their monopoly control of the .COM registry and of the market in expiring .COM domains. They didn't do very well in the trial court, which… read moreJune 04 2009
Phishing, stealing personal information by impersonating a trusted organization, is a big problem that's not going away. Most antiphishing techniques to date have attempted to recognize fake e-mail and fake web sites, but this hasn't been particularly effective. A more promising approach is to brand the real mail and real web sites. See more ... read moreMay 15 2009
I got a note from a college friend via Facebook yesterday, telling me about the clever 282.im domain. Gee, it looked just like Facebook, like, you know, a phish. Uh oh. See more ... read moreA "G12" to oversee ICANN? Not likely
May 06 2009
Viviane Redding, the Information Society and Media Commissioner for the EC posted a video blog this week noting that the JPA between ICANN and the US Department of Commerce ends this September. In it she proposes that ICANN be overseen by a "G-12 for Internet Governance" with 12 geographically balanced government representatives from around the world. That's such… read moreCanadian government finally files an anti-spam law
April 24 2009
Press reports say that the Canadian government introduced an anti-spam bill in the House of Commons today. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but since it's reportedly based on the recommendations in the report from 2005 task force, of which I was a member, signs are encouraging. I'll write more once I've… read moreThe Jaynes case is finally over
March 31 2009
Last September the Virginia Supreme Court issued a surprise ruling that reversed its previous decision and threw out the state's anti-spam law on First Amendment grounds. The Commonwealth made a last ditch appeal to the US Supreme Court, which I predicted they'd be unlikely to accept. I guessed right, they turned it down yesterday, meaning the case is finally over.… read moreAlso find John on:
Buy Direct and Save
©2009, O'Reilly Media, Inc. (707) 827-7000 / (800) 998-9938 All trademarks and registered trademarks appearing on oreilly.com are the property of their respective owners. |
About O'Reilly
Academic Solutions Authors Contacts Customer Service Jobs Newsletters O'Reilly Labs Press Room Privacy Policy RSS Feeds Terms of Service User Groups Writing for O'Reilly |
Content Archive Business Technology Computer Technology Microsoft Mobile Network Operating System Digital Photography Programming Software Web Web Design |
More O'Reilly Sites
O'Reilly Radar Ignite Tools of Change for Publishing Digital Media Inside iPhone O'Reilly FYI makezine.com craftzine.com hackszine.com perl.com xml.com Partner Sites InsideRIA java.net O'Reilly Insights on Forbes.com |