Analyzing the connections between sites could help spot Web attacks.

Over the past couple of years, cybercriminals have increasingly focused on finding ways to inject malicious code into legitimate websites. Typically they’ve done this by embedding code in an editable part of a page and using this code to serve up harmful content from another part of the Web. But this activity can be difficult to spot because websites also increasingly pull in legitimate content, such as ads, videos, or snippets of code, from outside sites.

Wicked web: FireShark finds potentially malicious servers by determining which ones are serving up content to multiple websites. Credit: Websense

Now a researcher at Websense, a security firm based in San Diego, has developed a way to monitor such malicious activity automatically.

Speaking at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco last week, Stephan Chenette, a principal security researcher at Websense, detailed an experimental system that crawls the Web, identifying the source of content embedded in Web pages and determining whether any code on a site is acting maliciously. Read more

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Google’s promise of very-high-speed broadband can’t just be about big pipes.

Last week, Google announced its plans to build an experimental fiber network that would offer gigabit-per-second broadband speeds to up to 500,000 U.S. homes. Among other goals, the company said it wanted to “test new ways to build fiber networks, and to help inform and support deployments elsewhere.”

Credit: Google

Google hasn’t released many details yet, but experts believe that the key to successful very-high-speed broadband doesn’t lie in fiber alone. To really speed up the Internet, Google will have to operate at many levels of its infrastructure.

Gigabit-per-second speeds are much faster than, for example, the speed currently offered by high-speed services such as Verizon FiOS. However, Google’s network won’t be the first to reach such speeds. There are several such deployments internationally, including in Hong Kong, the Netherlands, and Australia. Internet2, a nonprofit advanced networking consortium in the United States, has been experimenting with very-high-speed Internet for more than a decade, routinely offering 10-gigabit connections to university researchers.

Existing applications for very-high-speed Internet include the transfer of very large files, streaming high-definition (and possibly 3-D) video, video conferencing, and gaming. Some experts speculate that accessing large data files and applications through the cloud may also require better broadband.

“Just big pipes alone to an end user does not necessarily guarantee that you can deliver high-end applications,” says Gary Bachula, vice president of external relations for Internet2. There are many factors beyond raw bandwidth, Bachula says. For example, an improperly configured router or a university firewall can affect performance and end up acting as a network bottleneck.

“You need to have open networks, you need to publish your performance data, you need to have people troubleshoot your network remotely,” says Bachula. In recent years, Internet2 has been researching tools and technologies that can help find and resolve the performance issues that occur on high-speed connections “in a systematic and seamless way.” Ideally, he says, consumers as well as network managers would be able to use these tools to diagnose the network.

“If we’re really going to realize the vision of some of these high-end applications, it does have to go beyond basic raw bandwidth,” he adds.

It’s also not enough to build a fast hardware infrastructure, says Steven Low, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Caltech, and cofounder of the network optimization technology company FastSoft, based in Pasadena, CA. Low believes the protocols that move traffic through the network will also need to be updated to make effective use of very-high-speed capabilities.

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It could take a year to patch up a flaw to a key Internet protocol.

Late last week, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) approved a fix to the protocol that guards most sensitive transactions and communications online. But experts expect it to take a year for the fix to be fully applied.

The patch repairs a flaw in the protocol that encrypts sensitive communications, including most banking and credit-card transactions. It repairs the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, which has superseded the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol. TLS is built into Web browsers and Web servers and protects high-value information.

The current flaw, discovered by Marsh Ray and Steve Dispensa of a Kansas-based authentication company called Phone Factor, gives an attacker the ability to hijack the first moment of the encrypted conversation between a Web browser and a Web server. This allows the attacker to add a command of his own, which could be as serious as an order to withdraw money from the victim’s account. One security researcher demonstrated the attack on Twitter, showing that the flaw could be used to command the server to reveal a user’s password.

“The reason it’s striking is that it’s actually a TLS error, or at least arguably so,” says Eric Rescorla, a security consultant at a company called RTFM and one of the authors of the draft fix to the protocol. Rescorla says the flaw shows how difficult it actually is to design security protocols for the Internet.

To make use of the flaw, an attacker would first have to set up a “man in the middle attack” and intercept traffic between the client and the server. This might be done by hijacking a particular server on the Internet, for example.

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We saw innovations in real-time search, streaming video, and an operating system for the cloud.

This year will be remembered for cloud computing, real-time search, and the appearance of Google’s Web-based operating system.

Real-Time Search

The Web’s dominant search company, Google, got some serious competition in 2009. Thanks to a long-awaited technology-sharing deal with Yahoo and a focus on product-related searches, Microsoft’s revamped search engine, Bing, began nipping at Google’s heels (“What’s Microsoft’s Bing Strategy?”).

The physicist Stephen Wolfram also shook up the search-engine scene by developing a “computational knowledge engine” designed to provide all sorts of useful information via a search-like interface (“Search Me,” “Alpha and Google Face Off,” and “Wolfram Alpha Braces for Overload“). The arrival of Wolfram Alpha also forced Google to explore a more sophisticated approach to presenting meaningful information from online databases (“Google Unveils Google Squared“).

In the battle to gain an edge, both Google and Microsoft turned their attention to the “real-time Web” and this year’s hottest Web company, Twitter. Keen to tap into the freshest online information, these search engines began delivering seconds-old snippets from Twitter, as well as other sites in their results (“Google Takes Search Real-Time“). Several startups also hope to tap into real-time online activity (“In Search of What Everyone’s Clicking“). But collecting real-time information and presenting it in meaningful ways remains a tricky challenge, as Google CEO Eric Schmidt explained during recent a visit to Cambridge, MA (“Searching for Real-Time Search“).

Faster search is just one sign of a general increase in the speed of information flow across the Web. This year Internet experts revealed new protocols for collecting bits of related information no matter where they appear online (“Who’s Talking About Me?“). Others focused on analyzing the huge quantities of data being produced at any given moment (“Startups Mine the Real-Time Web“).

In Search of Context

With so much interest in mining Twitter posts, the trustworthiness of online information was another hot issue. Several research projects and startups have revealed ways to automatically determine who can be trusted to provide accurate information on a particular topic (“A Smarter Way to Dig Up Experts” and “Computers Can’t Answer Everything“). Researchers have also developed ways to add context to information posted online. In this area, Wikipedia has come under particular scrutiny (“Who’s Messing With Wikipedia?” and “Adding Trust to Wikipedia, and Beyond“).

A Web OS

Even as Microsoft encroached on Google’s turf, the search giant took a bold step into Microsoft’s backyard. Google’s browser, Chrome, evolved into a complete operating system, as the search giant continued to press into ever-broader areas of computing technology (“An Operating System for the Cloud“). The Chrome OS isn’t yet available to the public, but there have been some early indications of the radical approach that Google has taken (“Hints of How Google’s OS Will Work” and “Google Gives a First Look at the Chrome OS“).

Google’s vision relies on the power of Web applications and sophisticated browser technology. New browser features will make it easier to work both online and off, to handle heavier processing tasks, and to incorporate multimedia into the browser without plug-ins (“An Upgrade for the Web“).

Cloud Computing

Businesses everywhere were still fascinated by the promised convenience and cost savings of cloud computing (“Technology Overview: Conjuring Clouds“). But as companies began adopting the technology this year, kinks that still need to be worked out revealed themselves (“Industry Challenges: The Standards Question“). Companies have found it difficult to move data between different cloud services, even though some startups are now offering solutions (“Virtual Apps Drift Into the Cloud” and “Moving Data around the Clouds“). Security has been another worry (“Vulnerability Seen in Amazon’s Cloud Computing“). And some companies turned to different kinds of cloud computing that offer greater security and control (“A More Secure, Trustworthy Cloud” and “Big Blue Sees Clouds on the Horizon“).

Content Transformed

Another of the year’s big trends was the growth of online streaming media. This is one reason that downloading copyrighted material over file-sharing networks seems to be on the way out (“Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Usurped by Streaming Video“). Much excitement was also generated over a streaming media project called OnLive, which promises to bring high-end video games to users whose devices don’t have the processing power to handle the advanced graphics (“Moving Video Games to the Clouds“).

Companies in a variety of media industries have also looked for ways to use piracy to make money off content (“Embracing Piracy“). And the music industry sought entirely new ways to sell music online (“Can Video Games Be the New MTV?” and “What Will Happen to Lala’s Music Plans?”).

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Peer-to-peer routing technology being tested by Internet service providers could change networking.

“Peer-to-peer” (P2P) is synonymous with piracy and bandwidth hogging on the Internet. But now, Internet service providers and content companies are taking advantage of technology designed to speed the delivery of content through P2P networks. Meanwhile, standards bodies are working to codify the technology into the Internet’s basic protocols.

Rather than sending files to users from a central server, P2P file-sharing networks distribute pieces of a file among thousands of computers and help users find and download this data directly from one another. This is a highly efficient way to distribute data, resistant to the bottlenecks that can plague centralized distribution systems, but it uses large amounts of bandwidth. Even as P2P traffic slowly declines as a percentage of overall Internet traffic, it is still growing in volume. In June, Cisco estimated that P2P file-sharing networks transferred 3.3 exabytes (or 3.3 billion trillion bytes) of data per month.

While a PhD student at Yale University in 2006, Haiyong Xie came up with the idea of “provider portal for peer-to-peer,” or P4P, as a way to ease the strain placed on networking companies by P2P. This system reduces file-trading traffic by having ISPs share specially encoded information about their networks with peer-to-peer “trackers”–servers that are used to locate files for downloading. Trackers can then make file sharing more efficient by preferentially connecting computers that are closer and reducing the amount of data shared between different ISPs.

During its meetings last week in Japan, the Internet Engineering Task Force, which develops Internet standards, continued work on building P4P into standard Internet protocols. However, Xie believes that those efforts will take two or three more years to come to fruition. In the meantime, he says, many P2P application makers and Internet carriers are already implementing their own versions of P4P.

Pando Networks, which facilitates Internet content delivery, was the first company to adopt P4P techniques. In collaboration with Xie, Pando worked with Verizon, Telefónica, AT&T, and Comcast to run two sets of P4P tests last year; the results showed that P4P could speed up download times for file sharers by 30 percent to 100 percent, while also reducing the bandwidth costs for ISPs. Since then, Verizon and Telefónica have both implemented versions of P4P within their networks, though the network maps may not be available in all regions or to every P2P provider. Several other ISPs are considering implementing P4P, Xie says; Comcast, for instance, publicly stated its interest in the technology following last fall’s trial.

Robert Levitan, Pando’s CEO, says that the company used the expertise it gained through those trials to develop algorithms that automatically derive network maps, based on information gathered from software installed on individual users’ machines (more than 30 million computers have Pando’s media booster software installed). The company uses the maps to help route content more quickly to those same computers. The company’s clients include Nexon America, one of the largest free-to-play online video-game companies, and NBC.com, which uses P4P to deliver full-length HD shows over the Internet.

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Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Usurped by Streaming Video

Peer-to-peer traffic is shrinking at a dramatic rate, according to a report on Internet traffic trends released this week. At the same time, streaming video and direct downloads are exploding in popularity. The figures suggest that the entertainment industry’s battle against illegal file trading has taken a toll, but some experts say that users may simply be turning to more user-friendly methods of obtaining media content.

Credit: Technology Review

The report was jointly released by the University of Michigan, the nonprofit research corporation Merit Network, and the Internet-traffic-monitoring company Arbor Networks. Researchers at the three organizations had collaborated on measuring traffic across about one-third of the Internet over a two-year period. Arbor collected much of the anonymized data from more than 100 Internet service providers in 17 countries.

“Over the last two years, peer-to-peer has collapsed,” says Craig Labovitz, chief scientist for Arbor Networks. The report’s findings show that peer-to-peer has gone from 4 percent of all Internet traffic to about half a percent. At the same time, streaming video has been exploding–the report estimates that 10 percent of all Web traffic is streaming video, making this the fastest-growing class of Internet applications identified by the researchers.

Labovitz says it’s difficult to know for sure what caused peer-to-peer traffic to decline so dramatically. However, as legitimate video sites such as Hulu have proliferated, he believes that many consumers have found it easier to obtain movies and TV shows via these sites, instead of using peer-to-peer file-sharing tools. “It’s far more convenient and faster,” he says. “It used to be the case that to watch a movie, you had to wait eight hours for your peer-to-peer to seed. And now you can go to one of these sites and watch a movie in real time in [high definition] via streaming.”

Doug Knopper, cofounder and co-CEO of video-advertising company FreeWheel, says that the report’s results are in line with trends observed by his company. He says, “If you’re reasonably certain that the official, authorized, online streaming version in its pristine form, coming from its content creator or an authorized distributor, is easy to download, then why wouldn’t you do that as opposed to going to some shady site where you’re not really sure what you’re getting?”

But other experts point out that peer-to-peer file sharing is unlikely to disappear. Hendrik Schulze, chief technology officer of ipoque, a German-based provider of Internet traffic management and analysis, says that his company has also observed a decline in the percentage of peer-to-peer traffic. However, he notes that this doesn’t mean there’s less peer-to-peer traffic–it simply isn’t growing as fast as other Internet applications. According to his company’s figures, peer-to-peer protocols still account for the majority of traffic in the regions ipoque monitors. The company measures traffic in South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, but has no data on North America.

Peer pressure: A report released this week found a sharp decline in peer-to-peer Internet traffic over the last two years. This graph shows that decline. Credit: Arbor Networks

Schulze thinks that peer-to-peer’s slower growth is partly the result of crackdowns on copyright infringement, particularly in Europe. However, he says peer-to-peer has also taken a hit in regions where there is no significant effort to stop illegal downloads. In those cases, he says, peer-to-peer may be growing more slowly because other platforms are easier to use. For example, Schulze says, some platforms stream full, high-definition video over ordinary Internet protocols.

Schulze doesn’t think the change in traffic patterns necessarily means that people are switching to legal methods of obtaining media content. “It’s hard to say, with no numbers to prove it,” he says. But he notes that many of the streaming and direct-download sites he has encountered also host copyrighted material.

However users are getting their video, most experts agree that the trend is for more and more of it to be flowing through the Internet. Atul Bhatnagar, CEO of Ixia, a company that tests Internet infrastructure, says, “In the future, the Internet is going increasingly real time and multimedia.” He notes that consumers are getting more video online not only because of an increase in bandwidth and streaming sites, but because consumer hardware is now making it easier to access content on the Internet.

Devices such as Internet-connected DVD players “could have a tremendous effect on traffic,” Bhatnagar says.

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Can the Wireless Internet Be Neutral?

Every cell phone tower includes scheduling software that decides how fast e-mails, videos, and photos flow to and from wireless gadgets. Today these schedulers are programmed, at least in part, to make sure that the most profitable Internet traffic moves along at a fast clip. But under forthcoming Federal Communications Commission (FCC) “Net neutrality” regulations, wireless carriers may have to more strongly consider something else: fairness.

“Sometimes these (wireless) schedulers are designed to maximize throughput, rather than fairness,” says Dipankar Raychaudhuri, director of the Winlab, a mobile Internet research lab at Rutgers University. “For example, you can maximize throughput to someone who has a strong signal–favoring one user who has a high signal over another who doesn’t–so that it leads to higher revenue.”

Last week, delivering on an Obama campaign promise, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced in a speech that he would propose Net neutrality regulations. Such rules would promote the Internet as a level playing field, and prohibit service providers from slowing down or blocking access to websites or applications. The actual draft rules will be released next month, but Genachowski made it clear that both wired and wireless technologies are in the crosshairs. “It is essential that the Internet itself remain open, however users reach it,” he said, adding that “how the principles apply may differ depending on the access platform or technology.”

Ensuring Net neutrality across the airwaves will be more complex though. “I don’t have a position on Net neutrality,” Raychaudhuri adds, “but this would be quite an interesting technical problem to try and solve.”

The complexity of the situation is illustrated by a recent flare-up in the wireless space. The FCC is investigating a claim by Google that its Google Voice application was unfairly rejected from Apple’s iPhone App Store. AT&T, which provides iPhone service, shot back in a letter to the FCC that Google’s voice application blocks calls to some rural areas where it would be more expensive for Google to connect.

It’s not clear yet whether Google Voice–which bridges both Internet and landline connections–would be considered in violation of any existing regulation. Because while traditional phone companies are barred by regulation from blocking calls to far-flung exchanges, Internet telephony applications do not yet face such regulation.

As any cell phone user knows, quality of service depends on how close the nearest cell towers are, how many other people are using the network, and a host of other factors. Already, the number of iPhones in service is causing traffic congestion on AT&T’s network, and “this will happen to all of the operators as smart phones and data traffic grows very rapidly,” says Raychaudhuri.

Defining and regulating “fairness” as it pertains to wireless Internet traffic is inherently difficult, says Mung Chiang, a Princeton electrical engineering professor working on broadband access algorithms. “The notion of congestion–what is it, how often it happens, who is to blame–it’s much harder to define in wireless networks,” compared to landline Internet connections, he says. “Who is going to take the blame when somebody close to a tower transmits signals that may wipe out others, even if this person may not be downloading movies?”

However the FCC chooses to define Net neutrality, Chiang says the specter of regulation hangs heavy over wireless Internet businesses. “As with other industries, uncertainty is worse than anything,” he says. “Deploying towers, digging up roads, and standardizing new equipment is a very long-term, capital-intensive thing. If people don’t know what is going to happen until litigation sets precedents, that will be a big deterrent to capital expenditures, and that generally is a concern.”

The idea of Net neutrality itself is not new. In 2005 the FCC issued principles–but not formal regulations–saying consumers have a right to access legal Internet content and services of their choice. But the matter came to a head last year when Comcast started slowing some customers’ peer-to-peer traffic–that is, the bandwidth-slurping exchange of music and video directly between computer-users’ hard-drives. The FCC ruled that Comcast had to stop the practice. Comcast sued, challenging the FCC’s authority to act in the absence of formal regulations.

In response to the Genachowski speech, the wireless industry was quick to assert there is no problem to solve. AT&T suggested that the highly competitive wireless market–five carriers with more than 10 million customers and 10 carriers with four million or more–provides state-of-the-art service. “Today, American consumers enjoy the broadest array of innovative services and devices, the highest usage levels, the lowest prices, and the most competitive choices of any wireless market in the world,” a company statement said, adding that “we have never had concerns with disclosure or transparency regarding network management decisions so long as such requirements are reasonable.”

Such industry proclamations don’t mean that private interests can’t crowd out public ones, says John Palfrey, a Harvard Law School professor and co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. The risk, he adds, is that big media companies will seek to “solve the copyright debate through bandwidth shaping or other technical means,” or that ISPs will curtail certain kinds of speech, as is widely done in some other countries. “Without Net neutrality,” says Palfrey, “the most important public network in most people’s lives could become dominated by private interests. The parade of horribles that could occur is endless.”

Even Net neutrality advocates like Palfrey, however, concede that technology advances faster than government. “The trick will be to say ‘Can you draw those rules in such a way that will promote innovation over the medium to long term, not just the immediate term?’” he says. “Any regulation will need to be revised in five or ten years.”

Jon Crowcroft, a professor of Communications Systems at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, fears that regulatory meddling will inevitably add costs. “I personally am disappointed that a regulatory agency wants to get in the loop. Generally regulations are needed when we have a market failure,” he says. “While today there are lots of anomalies, they are generally localized in geography and time, and generally drift toward a generally neutral network.”

He adds: “If someone has to put in extra technology to support existing customer base, it will increase the cost of your components, probably a lot. That would be a very negative effect.”

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The online encyclopedia is poised to let users find, edit, and embed clips.

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