The UK's top 20 betting sites have suffered 33 separate outages since March 1, according to an analysis by the BBC which has been investigating Internet based extortion in the gambling industry. Fifteen of the 20 bookies have been offline during that time. Four of the providers - William Hill, Betdaq, Totalbet and UKBetting - have said they were either attacked or received extortion demands by criminals prior to the March 15 start of the Cheltenham Festival, a leading horse racing event is experiencing its second extended outage in less than a week.
March 2004 Archives
Opinion by John Thomas and Adam J. Elbirt, University of Massachusetts, Lowell
MARCH 18, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - The IP Security (IPsec) architecture comprises a suite of protocols developed to ensure the integrity, confidentiality and authentication of data communications over an IP network. While the flexibility of the IPsec standards has drawn the interest of the commercial sector, this same flexibility has resulted in the identification of several problems with the protocols because of their complexity. As with other security systems, poor maintenance can easily lead to a critical system failure.
IPsec may be used in three different security domains: virtual private networks, application-level security and routing security. At this time, IPsec is predominately used in VPNs. When used in application-level security or routing security, IPsec is not a complete solution and must be coupled with other security measures to be effective, hindering its deployment in these domains.
Continue reading IPsec: How it works and why we need it.
The agenda will examine in detail every aspect of IP and network security, covering issues like specific perimeter systems, network loopholes, endpoint security and best practices, to help decision-makers plan and build self-defending networks.
The summit will take place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from April 12-13, and in Singapore from April 14-15.
The major theme of the event is Self-Defending Networks, focusing on the need to adopt an integrated, holistic approach to combat the new generation of blended attacks.
Continue reading Cisco Systems Security Summit 2004 to Focus on Self-Defence.
By Thomas Claburn
A report from Symantec concludes that the rate of discovery for Internet security flaws is leveling off, but the flaws are being exploited much more quickly.
The only good news in this week's report from security-software vendor Symantec Corp. is that the rate at which Internet security holes are found leveled off at seven per day in the last six months of 2003. The bad new is that those flaws are being exploited much more quickly.
A prime concern of security pros is the time from when a vulnerability is disclosed publicly--often by software makers, who publish a patch at the same time--and when writers of worms or virus write malicious code to exploit it.
Continue reading Symantec: Security Flaws Exploited Much Faster.
