That time of year when my friends and colleagues join the annual migration to San Francisco for 3 days and 4 nights of messaging, mobile, malware, and midnight meetings. We’re headed up to the conference later today. Do stop by and say hi!
It’s been a great conference, and it’s only about half done. As is common at these conferences, I write down lots of things we should do and need to publish. The difference is now that we are growing I may have the time to put the polish on them and get them published.
Today’s keynote discussed the economics of botnet mitigation. Michel van Eeten from Delft University of Technology presented information compiled from some different datasets about botnets.
Good news
Botnet infection rates are relatively stable. They’ve not spiraled out of control like some people were predicting.
Interesting news
More than 50% of bot infections are contained on 50 ISPs in the entire world.
Bad news
Centers set up specifically to fix botnet infections don’t really have a big impact on infection cure rate.
Good news
ISP actions and walled gardens do have an impact on infection cure rates.
The biggest take away from the session is that ISPs are critical in both protecting from infection and helping users cure infection once it happens.
Had a great time a M3AAWG last week. So many familiar faces and a lot of new ones, too. I’ve got a lot of interesting stuff that I can share with readers over the next few days.
One of the things I have received permission to share is the new Office 365 IP delisting link. I botched the first time I posted it, so I’m going to try again. Office 365 IP Delisting Page. Many thanks to the Microsoft guys for getting this together for people.
While I’m talking about Microsoft, there is a bit of a problem with folks signing up with their FBL. Some people are finding that the process gets stuck and FBLs aren’t enabled. MS is aware of the issue and they are working on fixing it. As I know more I’ll share.
Unsurprisingly, authentication was a big topic of conversation, both in the hallways and in the sessions. There were some strong opinions stated. I think, though, that we’re pretty clear that we’re going to get to a more authenticated world. But we have some different opinions on how and how fast that’s going to happen.
André Leduc received the 2016 J.D. Falk award this week at the Paris meeting of M3AAWG. He was recognized for spearheading two distinct projects.
The first was the Operation Safety Net – Best Practices to Address Online, Mobile, and Telephony Threats This 76 page report was written by global security experts. One of the major goals of the report was to discuss security in language accessible to policy makers and management. The report, newly updated in 2015, is available at the M3AAWG website. Making technical language accessible is, to my mind, one of the most important parts of getting security recommendations implemented.
In addition to his work in making security recommendations accessible, André was the lead architect behind the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation. This legislation has greatly reduced the amount of spam received by Canadians. According to Leduc, CASL has improved permission practices by senders outside of Canada.
Congratulations to André.