Information Policy

Internet governance group pushes on without, er, internet organizations

The controversial internet governance group NetMundial has rejected calls to delay the creation of its "coordination council" – and launched without the support of the technical community nor the International Chamber of Commerce.

North Korea internet blackout

Reports have flooded the globe of North Korea’s internet outages on Monday, with rumours emerging of the country suffering total loss of access at one stage. In the wake of November’s Sony Pictures cyber-attack (alleged to have been committed by hackers in Pyongyang responding to Hollywood political satire ‘The Interview’ despite North Korea denying responsibility), the North Korean internet blackouts have been linked with America; President Obama’s response to the hack indicating an intention to retaliate against the suspected perpetrators: ‘I think it was an act of cyber-vandalism that was very costly, very expensive…We take it very seriously…We will respond proportionately.’ Alternative possibilities for the outages are a software glitch on a router, although, according to US-based internet monitoring company Dyn, routing instabilities usually improve over time rather than getting progressively worse. Dyn say that North Korea appears to be back online today, with spokesman Jim Cowie commenting that: ‘The question is whether it will return to the unstable fluctuations we saw before the outage.’

TeleGeography notes that North Korea, infamous for its limited national connectivity, has only one internet service provider, Star JV, which commenced services in November 2010. Broadband access is only permitted with special authorisation and primarily used for government purposes. The rest of the country is not permitted access to international sources of news, with the only form of web access available being to the nationwide intranet called ‘Kwangmyong’, established in 2000, connecting universities, libraries, cyber cafes and other institutions.

Source: https://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/2014/12/23/north-korea-internet-blackout/

Russian opposition faces Internet censorship

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV

MOSCOW — Supporters of Russia's most prominent opposition leader on Tuesday revived their campaign to stage a protest near the Kremlin, despite government attempts to hamper their efforts by Internet censorship.

Twitter Ventures Into Ad Sales in Russia

Twitter has started to sell advertising in Russia, shrugging off regulatory hurdles and a slowing economy as part of a push to add revenue outside the U.S.

The social network is selling ads through reseller Httpool, the company's advertising partner for Eastern Europe, VP Colin Crowell said in an interview in Moscow. Russia's largest lenderOAO Sberbank and wireless operator VimpelCom are among the San Francisco-based company's first Russian clients, according to Httpool.

Russian malware leaves Wordpress sites vulnerabl

A Russian malware called SoakSoak has infected thousands of Wordpress sites causing Google to blacklist more than 11,000 domains, according to researchers at the security firm Sucuri.

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