According to Washington Internet Daily (subscription only), ICANN should continue a join project agreement (JPA) with the Department of Commerce to prevent "governmental interference" in the domain name system, said the Center for Democracy and Technology in comments filed with NTIA. The JPA is up for midterm review by NTIA, and ICANN has said U.S. oversight should end. CDT said it wants an independent ICANN, but added that it’s "premature" to end the JPA, since several countries want to control the DNS to a far greater extent than the U.S. has.
An Estonian court has fined a man in the only conviction linked to last year’s cyber attacks on official web sites during riots over the relocation of a Soviet-era war memorial. The 20-year-old was fined for organizing the disruption of the server for the web site of the ruling-coalition-leading Reform Party.
A USA Today story talks about Cybercrooks – phishing specialists – putting finer touches on scams to trick people into divulging sensitive personal data on fake Web pages. Meanwhile, top-level crime rings are getting stealthier and more efficient at herding millions of compromised PCs, referred to as bots, into networks that they deploy to steal data, commit extortion and spread spam.
Beefing up cyber security is a top priority for President Bush, as he is expected to unveil a budget plan next week to include a $6 billion system aimed at protecting U.S. communication networks from attacks by terrorists, spies and hackers, The Wall Street Journal (subscription only) reports.