The FCC today issued it's new set of "rules" today. I put quotes around "rules" because they have opened the discussion to the public and could still be challenged in court. Most of the members of the commission have also made it clear that these are not final rules. The new "rules" goes back to a court ruling in January that struck down the 2010 FCC rules for an open web. The court said the FCC does not have the authority to cast the rules it released in 2010. The FCC has been put in charge of this issue simply because they are the most closely related governing body.
The 2010 order declared that Internet service providers (ISPs) cannot throttle the bandwidth they are providing, not even to competitors. This allows established content providers, like Netflix, and start-ups to have equal resources available to them. This is the idea of an open Internet. However, the possibility of a two tiered net has begun to arise. Not too long ago Netflix paid Comcast a premium for a metaphorical fast lane in the information superhighway. There is an argument between the two companies over why the bandwidth was throttled in the first place, but the fast lane principal is the same.
The newly released "rules" from the FCC seemed to favor a fast lane. The main idea was to establish a baseline performance. Essentially, the consumer will get what they pay for, it is prohibited for the ISP to deliver anything less. With that being said, it would be possible for a scenario such as the one with Netflix above to become more commonplace. If the FCC discovers that ISPs are discriminating against smaller content providers, they may move to a second option. Plan B would be to reclassify bandwidth under Title II, which would basically make it a public utility much like telecommunications. With a reclassification, net neutrality would be directly under control of the FCC which will allow them to enforce the open net policy. Internet service providers such as Verizon and Comcast are understandably against this action. The argument posted by the ISPs is that a Title II reclassification will inhibit innovation and marketplace competition.
Allowing ISPs to limit the bandwidth for content providers will give the more wealthier companies an advantage while some of the smaller online companies will suffer. The reason the normal consumer should be concerned over net neutrality is rising prices. The deal Netflix and Comcast struck happened a few months ago, has anyone noticed Netflix raised their prices? The price increase may be just a coincidence, but this could be a potential consequence when companies pay for a fast lane.
There hasn't been any market impact analysis conducted by the commission, which will be the deciding factor between the current state of affairs and a Title II overhaul. Additionally, a republican committee member seems to think that the decision should be in the hands of elected officials, which I personally would not like to see happen. However, the courts have already decided that the FCC has been correct in attempting to enforce net neutrality, which makes the Republican's comment moot.
For the time being it seems the FCC is fighting a losing battle. The war over net neutrality may be coming to an end soon and the ISPs will look to come out on top. Unless the FCC moves to transform broadband services to Title II and make ISPs common carriers, there may not be much more they can do. The open internet is coming to an end.
Personally, I enjoy streaming hours of Netflix, Hulu, and Crunchyroll, and I enjoy not seeing my bank account dwindle. I am not a small e-commerce site owner, but I do believe in entrepreneurship. I am a fan of a transparent, open Internet. The final ruling on Net Neutrality will have a major impact on all those connected to the World Wide Web, large or small participants. As of right now the FCC has not released a final draft of the proposed "rules" but keep a look out.
I am by no means an expert on this subject matter, but I am concerned about the awareness of the commonwealth concerning net neutrality.
For more information check out these sites:
http://www.fcc.gov/guides/open-internet
http://www.newsweek.com/fcc-proposes-new-net-neutrality-rules-251173
http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/15/5311948/net-neutrality-and-the-death-of-the-internet
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Friday, May 2, 2014
Zero Days
Before getting to the subject that is in the title, I would like to give an introduction. *Clears Throat*
This is my first post to my new blog, Random Access. The purpose is pretty much to give a summary of some of the major stories involving technology and gadgets. I doubt many of these posts will relate to consumer products, because I'm too poor to care about the new iPhone. Mostly I will talk about things that affect the masses, as you will see in a few lines. I wanted to do this because I feel a lot people see these important topics in passing and may not fully appreciate the impact the event will have on them. Also, and this may be completely false, but I am not sure everybody understands the severity of some of these issues, such as internet privacy, neutrality, and just how true some action movies are. I guess that sums it just about up, but if this becomes a thing that I do, you'll begin to see what I mean.
After that weak introduction we should talk about what the title means. "Zero Days" are the title given to security loopholes that have already been exploited by hackers. They are named as such because developers are unable to prepare or fix the problem before it is compromised. There have been two very large security problems that have surfaced lately, the Hearbleed bug and the IE flaw.
The Heartbleed was a bug within the secured socket layer (SSL) of nearly every major website. It basically works underneath the HTTP you see before every web address. What SSL provides for you while browsing are: confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation. It allows you to form an agreement with whatever ecommerce site you are on that the current session is secure. The real scary thing about Hearbleed, is that it was an ongoing problem, that wasn't made public until recently. This means that some hackers could have been taking advantage of this loophole for a long time. Even foreign attackers could have penetrated some sites and stolen consumers' information. The bottom line is, that you are not always safe online, even if you see that "s" at the end of HTTP, your session can still be compromised.
The second big security story was the flaw in IE. I jokingly posted an article to Facebook, asking who uses IE now anyway? Well it turns out to be quite a few people, especially if you look at it from a global standpoint. The flaw in IE was exploited using a watering hole attack. A watering hole attack starts with the attacker inserting a flash file that a user is likely to visit. The flash files exploit the flaw in IE. The flaw allowed attackers to take over the user's computer and even install malicious software on the user's computer. The thing with IE is that it comes with Windows OS, including Windows XP which is still used by a large number of stubborn users. Businesses are among the users that still run XP, afraid to switch over for reasons of costs, and reliability. Microsoft dropped support for XP which put those that use IE and XP at the most risk. The IE flaw ran from IE 6-11, with XP limited to IE 8. Microsoft has since released a patch to fix this, which was also available to XP users.
What the main point is, I fear that people have become complacent with our confidentiality online. I'm not talking about social media privacy, or gmail, but something that somebody can potential ruin your livelihood if precaution is not taken. I realize that this may sound like I'm a little paranoid, however some skepticism goes a long way. While we move our lives more and more to a web based foundation, it is important to understand to whom we are entrusting our lives with. It can be difficult to comprehend that people are able to take this very private information from us without stepping into our homes.
This is my first post to my new blog, Random Access. The purpose is pretty much to give a summary of some of the major stories involving technology and gadgets. I doubt many of these posts will relate to consumer products, because I'm too poor to care about the new iPhone. Mostly I will talk about things that affect the masses, as you will see in a few lines. I wanted to do this because I feel a lot people see these important topics in passing and may not fully appreciate the impact the event will have on them. Also, and this may be completely false, but I am not sure everybody understands the severity of some of these issues, such as internet privacy, neutrality, and just how true some action movies are. I guess that sums it just about up, but if this becomes a thing that I do, you'll begin to see what I mean.
Zero Days
After that weak introduction we should talk about what the title means. "Zero Days" are the title given to security loopholes that have already been exploited by hackers. They are named as such because developers are unable to prepare or fix the problem before it is compromised. There have been two very large security problems that have surfaced lately, the Hearbleed bug and the IE flaw.
The Heartbleed was a bug within the secured socket layer (SSL) of nearly every major website. It basically works underneath the HTTP you see before every web address. What SSL provides for you while browsing are: confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation. It allows you to form an agreement with whatever ecommerce site you are on that the current session is secure. The real scary thing about Hearbleed, is that it was an ongoing problem, that wasn't made public until recently. This means that some hackers could have been taking advantage of this loophole for a long time. Even foreign attackers could have penetrated some sites and stolen consumers' information. The bottom line is, that you are not always safe online, even if you see that "s" at the end of HTTP, your session can still be compromised.
The second big security story was the flaw in IE. I jokingly posted an article to Facebook, asking who uses IE now anyway? Well it turns out to be quite a few people, especially if you look at it from a global standpoint. The flaw in IE was exploited using a watering hole attack. A watering hole attack starts with the attacker inserting a flash file that a user is likely to visit. The flash files exploit the flaw in IE. The flaw allowed attackers to take over the user's computer and even install malicious software on the user's computer. The thing with IE is that it comes with Windows OS, including Windows XP which is still used by a large number of stubborn users. Businesses are among the users that still run XP, afraid to switch over for reasons of costs, and reliability. Microsoft dropped support for XP which put those that use IE and XP at the most risk. The IE flaw ran from IE 6-11, with XP limited to IE 8. Microsoft has since released a patch to fix this, which was also available to XP users.
What the main point is, I fear that people have become complacent with our confidentiality online. I'm not talking about social media privacy, or gmail, but something that somebody can potential ruin your livelihood if precaution is not taken. I realize that this may sound like I'm a little paranoid, however some skepticism goes a long way. While we move our lives more and more to a web based foundation, it is important to understand to whom we are entrusting our lives with. It can be difficult to comprehend that people are able to take this very private information from us without stepping into our homes.
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