ICANN OKs International Domains: The Pros and Cons

ICANN's approval of non-Latin character domains undoubtedly is a game-changing decision in the history of the World Wide Web. Here are a few pros and cons to consider as we move away from the traditional ASCII based-Web. With scheduled to start popping up in the middle of next year, many people are debating if this digital support for more distinctly international sites balances with potential security threats and fragmentation of the Internet. Pro: World Wide Web Supporting World Wide Language Let's face it; millions of Internet users speak languages that aren't written using Roman characters.

The transition will begin on November 16 when countries can apply for country codes in their own unique character sets. "The first countries that participate will not only be providing valuable information of the operation of IDNs in the domain name system, they are also going to help to bring the first of billions more people online - people who never use Roman characters in their daily lives," ICANN CEO and President Rod Beckstrom said in a statement. Allowing Web sites to have domains that use other characters will make Web addresses more recognizable to some and make the Web more accessible to millions of new users. Con: Country Codes are Only the Beginning Generic domains such as .com, .org and .net aren't open to international characters yet, but could be in the next couple of years. Pro: Country Codes are Only the Beginning If done properly, opening generic domains to international characters could be a good thing. If ICANN decides to open generic domains without extending rights to existing URL holders, international companies and brands might find themselves purchasing URLs in multiple languages to protect the use of their name, points out PC World Tech Inciter writer Tech Inciter David Coursey.

If International corporations were granted rights to the .com URLs they already possess it could spell an end to selecting a region before entering the site. It would also open doors for smaller Web sites that are just interested in serving a particular language group. For instance, going to intel.com could lead to the English version of the site, while using a Japanese, Russian, or Korean suffix would take you to a version of the site with that language. Con: A lesson from 1337 h4ck3r$ Expanding beyond Roman characters also increases potential for site rip-offs that use homoglyphs, characters with identical or indistinguishable shapes. Con and Pro: No Latin Base Emphasis Apparently homoglyphs are drawing some attention at ICANN. Languages that use accented Latin characters aren't being supported at this time, The CBC Reports.

This already occurs to some degree (for instance pointing your browser to google.com takes you to a different site than go0gle.com) but different languages might have characters that are identical to characters in other languages. They attribute the lack of support to security concerns that accented characters could lead to phishing scams because, "internet users might not at first see the difference between, for example, 'google.com' and 'goógle.com.'" This is bad news for French, Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese speakers - all four languages use accented characters. As fellow PC World writer Jacqueline Emigh pointed out, it would be next to impossible to produce a keyboard that could support characters from every language under the sun. But, if ICANN is aware of security concerns that would arise from including these languages, maybe they have some sort of anti-homoglyph trick up their sleeve for other languages, (here's looking at you, Cyrillic.) Con: Keyboards and Restrictive Access Adding support for 100,000 international characters would make traditional keyboards insufficient input devices for accessing the entire Internet. Virtual keyboards and language packs could possibly help alleviate the problem for some people, but there wouldn't be an easy fix.

ICANN released this video with its announcement, hoping to encapsulate the potential for opening up international character domains.

Malware messes up India's online test for business schools

The move by India's top business schools to take their CAT entrance test online turned embarrassing after malware-infected computers left a number of students unable to take the test. It said on the CAT Web site that it has decided to reschedule the tests for the affected students. Prometric, a Baltimore, Maryland, testing company hired to conduct the CAT (Common Admission Test), said this week that the testing labs faced technical difficulties mainly due to malware and viruses. Over 240,000 candidates registered for the CAT 2009, which was scheduled to run from Nov. 28 to Dec. 7. While the written test was held on a single day in previous years, the online test this year was spread over 10 days, giving candidates the option to choose a date and center for the test.

The tests are continuing after the initial disruption. Prometric was to conduct the tests across labs in 32 cities in the country. But on the first day of the test, computer viruses and malware prevented 47 testing labs from delivering the test to candidates as scheduled. The IIMs have been set up by the government, but the institutes run as autonomous organizations. The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are the top management training schools in the country, and some of their alumni occupy key positions in companies both in India and abroad.

The CAT is conducted to select students for the seven IIMs, and some other affiliated institutions. If there were viruses and malware in the system, candidates can now question their test results in court, he added. The disruption of the test now throws open the possibility of legal action by candidates, said Vijay Mukhi, a Mumbai-based expert on cybersecurity. It is also not clear what the IIMs have done to ensure data integrity, Mukhi said. Candidates for the CAT faced problems with connectivity as well, as the speeds were sluggish, Mukhi said. There could be doubts that the system did not register correctly the entry made by the candidates in their answers, he added.

Having local servers at the test centers linked up to the main servers would have prevented that problem, he added. About 8,000 of the 45,000 candidates for the first three days of the test had difficulties, he told reporters in Delhi this week. India's Minister for Human Resource Development, Kapil Sibal, has criticized the problems with the tests. The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party described the computer failures as a shame for a country that calls itself an IT superpower.

ITU Telecom World expo shifts in response to economic crisis

The ITU Telecom World exhibition has returned to Geneva after a visit to Hong Kong in 2006 - and has brought many Asian exhibitors back with it. The booths of China Mobile, ZTE and Datang Telecom Group loom over the entrance to the main hall, alongside those of NTT DoCoMo and Fujitsu, while upstairs Huawei Technologies and Samsung Electronics booths dwarf that of Cisco Systems, which has more meeting rooms than products on display. "Ten months ago, people were urging us to cancel the event," said Hamadoun Touré, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, which organizes the exhibition and the policy forum that runs alongside it. There are also signs that the way some companies are using the show is shifting. The pessimists feared that the show would attract neither exhibitors nor visitors, as companies slashed marketing budgets and cut back on business travel in the midst of the economic downturn.

The ITU still expects 40,000 visitors at this year's show; 82,000 turned up at the last Geneva event, in 2003. This year, around half the show is occupied by national pavilions: Saudi Arabia has the biggest, followed by those of Spain and Russia. While the show is noticeably smaller than previous editions - it only occupies Halls 2, 4 and 5 of the sprawling seven-hall Palexpo exhibition center, with some yawning gaps between stands, Touré is satisfied. "It's a good show, despite the crisis," he said. Other European nations, including Belgium, France and the U.K., also have pavilions, but by far the most numerous are those of the African nations: Burundi, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. The biggest company stands are those of the Asian network operators and equipment manufacturers, with the U.S. and Western European countries keeping a low profile. Microsoft and IBM have booths, but you'd barely notice.

This domination of the show floor is not down to size alone: It's also about tactics. There were actually only three of them, but their effect was magnified by loud music and the multiple video walls on the booth. Russia deployed what looked like an army of violinists dressed mostly in sequins on its stand on Monday. China Mobile has taken a similar route, with the logo of its 3G mobile brand, Wo, swirling and pulsing hypnotically across the walls and even the ceiling of its booth. Similar exhibits fill the stands at NTT DoCoMo and Samsung.

ZTE has taken a more traditional route, with glass cases full of mobile phones, modems and cellular base stations. On the Cisco booth, there are almost no products to be seen - unless you count the looming bulk of one of its TelePresence systems, linking the booth in high resolution to similar systems around the world. This shows images of the products that can be rotated on screen to examine them from different angles - and even measured or dismantled so that prospective buyers can figure out whether they would fit in their data center. Other elements of the Cisco product range are present virtually thanks to another screen, supplied by Massachusetts-based Kaon Interactive. Like Secretary-General Touré, Cisco faced a crucial decision last year about whether to maintain a show presence in Geneva. "One year ago, it wasn't clear how many customers were going to make this trip," said Suraj Shetty, the company's vice president of worldwide service provider marketing. That's why the rest of the stand is given over to meeting rooms. "Our focus is on customer intimacy," Shetty said.

However, the company realized that "this could be used as an opportunity to shift how we get contact with customers," he said. Carrier Ethernet specialist Ciena has taken a similar approach. Like Cisco, it prefers to show products virtually, rather than physically. "Computer graphics and touch screens are more effective in these cases. Its stand, close to Cisco's and even more discreet, consists entirely of meeting rooms. That's the trend," said Ciena CTO Stephen Alexander.

If you're buying bulky network or data center infrastructure, then don't expect to kick the tires at a trade show next year - although you might be able to click on them, on the booth's screen or your own.

Start-up claims its DVDs last 1,000 years

If you really, really need to make sure those precious photos of yours last virtually forever - or at least longer than the average two- to five-year lifespan of consumer-grade DVDs, then start-up Cranberry LLC has the answer for you: a DVD that literally lasts a millennium. DiamonDiscs contain no dye layers, adhesive layers or reflective materials that could deteriorate. Cranberry's DiamonDisc product holds a standard 4.7GB of data, which roughly amounts to 2,000 photos, or 1,200 songs, or three hours of video, but the media is unharmed by heat as high as 176 degrees Fahrenheit, ultraviolet rays or normal material deterioration, according to the company.

While only future generations may be able to prove DiamonDisc can last 1,000 years - never mind that DVD players will probably have been long forgotten by then - Cranberry claims its technology has been proved by researchers using the ECMA-379 temperature and humidity testing standards to outlast the durability of competitors that claim a 300-year shelf life. However, instead of a silver or gold reflective surface, its disc is transparent, with no reflective layer. The Ferndale, Wash.-based company this week announced their product, which it says uses the same format as standard DVDs to store data. According to the company, unlike standard recordable DVDs, which use a 650 nanometer wavelength laser diode to etch a small pit into a disc's media surface, the DiamonDisc uses a higher-intensity laser to more deeply etch data into the "diamond-like" surface of its synthetic stone disc. The company is in talks with the U.S. government and the military, which are looking for archival media. "For the military, there's no heat, light, magnetic waves or environmental abuse that will have an impact on these discs," said Joe Beaulaurier, Cranberry's chief marketing officer.

The DiamonDisc technology was invented by researchers at Brigham Young University and was first brought to market by Springville, Utah, startup Millenniata . While Millenniata performs the R&D on the product, Cranberry does the sales and marketing. The company is also working on developing a Blu-ray version of their DVD product, Beaulaurier said. Cranberry performs the data-write for customers on the DiamonDisc they purchase. Photos, videos or other content that consumers want to store can be uploaded directly to Cranberry's Web site or mailed to the company. When compared to other consumer archive DVDs, such as Kodak Gold Preservation Write-Once DVD-R , which costs around $6, DiamonDisc carries a premium . A single DiamonDisc costs $34.95, two or more individual discs go for $29.95, and a five-pack is $149.75. Beaulaurier said prospective customers should factor in not only the longevity of the product, but the services provided.

You burn a DVD once and it eliminates costs and energy down the road." Of course, the company is also happy to sell you its burner, but that will set you back $4,995. But, for $5,000 you get 150 DiamonDiscs to burn away until to heart's content. Cranberry checks the burn of each disc to ensure the quality of the finished product. "So [the consumer doesn't] need to monitor the burn process and make sure it took," he said. "This is also very green technology. The burner plugs into any standard USB port and uses any standard DVD burning software, Beaulaurier said.

Cisco security survey:Cybercrime taking a page from business schools

Cybercriminals are getting more professional, adopting classic business structures in the development and deployment of malware that is increasingly designed to reap maximum profit, according to the annual Cisco security report. Start-up kits for those looking to set up shop in cybercrime are also available. Crackers sell their wares in online marketplaces where they can also hire quality-assurance testers to strengthen their malicious code, as well as botnets for quick distribution of their exploits, the report says. For example, the Zeus Trojan kit includes what is needed to infect machines and steal login data for $700, the Cisco security survey says.  Worst moments in network security history This year Cisco gave for the first time awards for notable achievements, and its top prize for illegal activity - Most Audacious Criminal Operation - went to Zeus, which infects victims' machines and gathers data such as passwords.

Criminals sell toolkits for modifying Zeus so attackers can alter its code enough to duck antimalware filters, Cisco says. The malware has infected an estimated 4 million machines, Cisco says, and poses a formidable botnet that could be used for a variety of attacks. The Most Notable Criminal Innovation is Koobface, a worm that lures users to a YouTube video that encourages Flash player updates. Koobface highlights the use of social networking sites for spreading malicious activity. The updates they download are actually the worm that gathers sensitive information from infected machines.

With social networking accounting for 2% of work Web traffic, businesses need to educate employees on how to use these sites safely, Cisco recommends. Users get baited with intriguing postings that lead to sites that download malware, the report says. The usefulness of social networking sites to scammers is the trust users place in them. The overall exploit and threat level including those against social media users increased 57%, according to Cisco. "It's easier and often more lucrative to fool social media users in order to launch an attack or exploit or steal personal information," the report says. So someone clicking on a short URL found in a Twitter posting could wind up with an infected machine.

Shortened URLs - a common tool used by Facebook participants - that cut the number of characters needed to reach a site can mask that they link to sites that download malware. Cisco recommends getting browser add-ons that reveal the actual URL when the cursor rolls over the shortened URL, giving users the chance to see whether it looks legitimate. Since it relies on victims being fooled into clicking on links to sites that download malware or opening malicious files, user education is key to fighting it, Cisco says. In other areas, targeted spam accounts for just 10% of all spam, but it is on the rise and can be nearly impossible to stop. Cisco estimates that there is no evaluation of the dangers presented by 80% of Internet sites, making effective URL filtering more difficult. Antivirus scams are up five-fold since 2008, luring victims to buy antivirus packages that legitimate vendors offer as free trials or buying packages that deactivate viruses already on the targeted machines.

Emerging tools that analyze and characterize Web content to determine its safety rather than a list of URLs to block are more effective, the report says. Businesses are getting lax about their skepticism of cloud computing platforms and failing to do as much due diligence as they might have a decade ago. Cisco recommends that businesses ask where data is actually stored, how they are being protected, who has access to them and whether they stack up to various regulatory and auditing requirements. This erosion of caution may be the result of personal use of social networking sites that leads to a belief that cloud infrastructure can be trusted out of hand, the report says. Cisco estimates that one in 600 PDF downloads contains malware, as does one in every 200 Java and every 3,000 Flash files. Attackers are veering away from buffer overflows, worms and directory traversals and toward arbitrary code execution and denial-of-service attacks as their favored exploits, the report says.

Users need to quickly update versions of readers for these files in order to have the most secure versions, Cisco says. These changes indicate the desire by criminals to gain and retain control of infected machines. Whereas in earlier years a few widespread exploits accounted for the bulk of the total, in 2009 a broader range of less successful attacks contributed to the total, the report says. Cisco's ratings of threats found by its IntelliShield service indicate there is an increase in threats and a greater variety of sources.