Citizen Lab Director Ronald Deibert and Research Manager Masashi Crete-Nishihata’s piece on ethics in cyberspace, “Blurred Boundaries: Probing the Ethics of Cyberspace Research”, as well as Professor Deibert’s article titled “Dark Guests and Great Firewalls: The Internet and Chinese Security Policy”, are listed free for download and can be accessed here.

Iran’s telecommunications ministry has barred local banks, insurance firms and telephone operators from using foreign-sourced emails to communicate with clients, a specialist weekly said on Saturday.

“The telecommunications minister has ordered the use of domain names ending with .ir” belonging to Iran, Asr Ertebatat reported.

The order prohibits banks, insurance firms and telephone firms using foreign hosts for their sites or to inform their clients using foreign providers such as Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail or MSN, it said.

The weekly said that individuals seeking to communicate with such firms must now use email addresses ending with iran.ir, post.ir or chmail.ir.

Entities linked to the Iranian government must use addresses ending in gov.ir or .ir, while universities should use emails ending in ac.ir or .ir, the report added.

Iran has announced that as of May a national information network will be used to replace the Internet in the daily management of the administration of state entities, the banking system and public enterprises.

For the full article, see here.

Below is the Supreme Leader of Iran’s response (Fatwa) to a question by a Mehr News Agency reporter on the use of circumvention tools:

Mehr News Agency Reporter: Some news websites have been filtered. Some people, such as journalists, due to their occupation need to access these websites to gather news and information. Usually, the news covered on the filtered websites is not available on permitted websites. What is the religious order on the use of circumvention tools for those whose jobs necessitate access?

Supreme Leader: In general, the use of circumvention tools has to be inline with the rules and regulations of the Islamic Republic, and violation of the laws is not permissible.

Some time after, the web-pages containing this news were blocked on a few ISPs as a result of the automatic blocking by words – in this case ‘circumvention tools’ or ‘anti-filtering’.

See here for an English report on the topic by Radio-Free-Europe.

Going Local

In a letter to the Director General of the Central Bank of Iran, the Minister of Communications wrote:

From now on, only local E-mail addresses will be accepted from clients while opening up new accounts. Also, sending bank statements to foreign E-mail addresses is banned.

According to the letter, this decision has been implemented in order to realize some of the provisions of Article 46 of the Fifth Economic Development Plan (2010-2015). It  identifies E-mail services such as G-mail, Yahoo, etc as one of the tools for foreign sources to gain access to users’ personal information.

What Is In a Name?

ISNA (Iranian Students’ News Agency) has asked other Iranian news agencies to follow in its suite in boycotting Google. This move comes after Google’s refusal to include “Persian Gulf” on its Google-Map services. Some experts believe that ISNA’s decision could lead to blocking Google completely in the country.

Cutting Ties

On the morning of Tuesday May 8^th, some IPs were disconnected in Tehran. IT-Analyze reports that thirteen Iranian ISPs failed to meet their payment deadlines to a Dutch company from which the IPs were purchased. This led to the disconnection of the IPs by the TCI (Telecommunications Company ofIran).

In a separate article, the TCI announced that the disconnection of IPs is not under its jurisdiction and that is has not disconnected any IPs inTehran.

Counter-Measure

Pasha Naser-Abadi’s book titled “Countering Threats in Cyberspace” has been published. The book which also includes the Cyber Crimes Law is based on the author’s personal experiences with users.

**Countering Threats in

Cyberspace” Cover

Unknown Origins

The VP of Development at the IT Organization of Iran commented regarding lingering uncertainties on the cause of the alleged cyber attack against the Ministry of Oil:

It is not yet clear whether the disruption in the Ministry of Oil’s website was intentional or due to negligence.

He continued:

Regardless, every incident should be considered a warning and we should work to remedy the situation.

Power Monopoly

Paydari Group’s Internet TV channel has been filtered in Iran. The reason behind this decision is yet to be officially announced.  Paydari Front – which can loosely be translated to the ‘Resistance Front’ – is a principalist political group, with close ties to the Supreme Leader.  One of the group’s main reasons for the establishment of an Internet TV channel was to counter the monopoly of the IRIB (Iranian Broadcasting) in the field.

Some Statistics

Mehr News Agency reported on the latest statistics of the telecommunications network in the country. This report puts the number of internet users at 28.5million, with 1,154 cities connected to the data network. Mehr also states that 334 universities are connected to the internet through a fiber-optic connection. The source of these statistics is unclear.

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The Indian government has given a one month deadline to Internet Service Providers, specially the ones offering services in Jammu & Kashmir, to come up with a solution enabling the interception of VoIP(Voice over Internet Protocol) calls, according to a report in PTI (via The Hindustan Times). The report cites unnamed sources as saying that security agencies, the Department of Telecom, National Technical Research Organisation and ISPs have been unable to come up with a solution to blck ‘unregistered’ VoIP services. So it appears that the onus has been put on ISPs to provide a solution.

Why is this being done?

This, according to the PTI report, is in the wake of a blast attempt by militants, who were communicating via VoIP. Security concerns over VoIP services is not new, and since it’s difficult to trace the originating location of such calls accurately, unlike calls made on mobile networks, it’s been the preferred means of communication of terrorists, according to the government security agencies. At a recent Conference on Mobile Law in Delhi, IPS officer Aditya Mishra had explained exactly how VoIP had been used in the terrorist attacked in Mumbai, and pointing towards a need for standards (like in case of GSM), which allow security agencies to intercept calls in time, even though IP allows for recovery of all call related information, including call recordings.

For the full article, see here.

A couple of days ago, Adobe issued a security update for Adobe Flash Player that has been detected in the wild targeting specific objectives.

Several spear phishing campaigns have been detected. The mails sent contain a Word document attachment. It contains a reference to a Flash file that is downloaded from a remote server once the document is opened. This Flash file exploits the CVE-2012-0779 vulnerability triggering a shellcode that looks for the payload within the original word document. The payload is decoded using a one byte XOR scheme, dropped on the system and then executed.

Most of the malicious Flash files have low AV detection rates so it is very important to apply the vendor’s patch.

For the full article, see here.

The Iranian Ministry of Science has come under attack, less than a week after the Ministry of Oil was forced offline due a cyber attack. According to one source from the Ministry, its joint projects with the Ministry of Defense were most probably of the most interest to the attackers.

According to BBC-Persian, the Iranian Ministry of Science has confirmed that its computer section has come under cyber attack, however, no damage has been incurred.

Tabnak News also reported that although the Ministry of Oil is back online, the intranet (internal network) of its subsidiary companies is still disconnected. The National Oil Distribution Company’s website has also changed its content, and no longer includes usage, export and related details.

Following the recent cyber attacks against Iran’s Ministry of Oil, the Deputy Minister of Oil at the Civil Defense Organization said that the nature of the cyber attack and its perpetrators had been identified. He clarified that details could not yet be revealed as it was an ongoing case. He added:  “On a general note, the attack was carried out by a virus aiming to steal and destroy the Ministry’s data.”

Responsibilities

Deputy Minister of Communications said that the 3^rd Operator (RighTel) needs to be held accountable for the obligations which it has failed to fulfill and for the delays in delivering its services.

The Monitor

The IT Organization of Iran issued the National System of Information Security Management Activities (NAMA) certificate to five private companies. The issuing of these certificates is meant to promote and develop the information security management culture, promote security in the information exchange environment and to monitor the implementation of the information security management system.

Moving Up

The Director of the Center for National Management and Development of Internet, Mohammad-Reza Tavakoli, reported that there had been ‘dramatic growth’ in the number of internet users in the country. He added that a report of the latest results will be shortly published on www.iriu.ir website. This website, currently in its beta version, provides an interactive system for determining the internet penetration rate across the country.

Out of Service

The website, of The Organization for Targeted Subsidies was out of access on the day it had announced as its deadline for opting in/out of the second phase national subsidies. At the time of this report the website was back in service.

Lagging Behind

Iran’s member to the International Confederation of E-Government announced that the country was ranked 100th out of 190 countries on the list, a two place improvement from the previous year. The UAE ranks 28^th, Bahrain is 36^th, while Kazakhstan is 38^th. The Maldives is also ahead of Iran ranking 95^th. According to the 5^th Economic Development, the E-governance system should be implemented in Iran by 2015.

For six months last year, cyberspies infiltrated and siphoned key data from the computer networks of at least 20 organizations in the US, Australia, Canada, and Europe – all of them with policy, economic, or political interests pending in China – then laundered them through a coopted server in the US and transmitted the information to China.

Operating undetected from late March to mid-September 2011, the sprawling cyberespionage program targeted, among others, a mining executive doing deals in China during a steel shortage there, Canadian immigration officials dealing with a Chinese businessman fleeing prosecution in Canada, and an international maritime executive promoting a new vessel design standard to minimize greenhouse gas emissions – a move China had publicly refuted.

For the full article, see here.

In his piece, Professor Deibert writes about Canada’s role in securing cyberspace, quasi-national cyber armies such as the Syrian Electronic Army and the challenges faced by global civil society in cyberspace.

You can also read CJFE’s report card, which grades key free expression issues and major institutions.

To view the full Review, see here.