Verisign Plans for Security Alert System

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1374754,00.asp

By Caron Carlson 
November 5, 2003   

WASHINGTON - In a project dubbed Electra, Verisign Inc. plans to
expand its proprietary DNS server platform—called Atlas—into a
grid-like infrastructure to support more-sophisticated traffic
analysis and pattern recognition. Electra, which will be unveiled next
year, will help support an early warning system for Internet attacks.

The Mountain View, Calif., company will combine data streams obtained 
through its online payment service and its naming and directory 
services to identify threat correlations, according to company 
chairman and CEO Stratton Sclavos. The online payment system processes 
96 million transactions a day, detecting commercial fraud such as 
identity theft; and the directory services manage 10 billion 
connections a day. 

Put together, the systems can provide the basis for an offense 
strategy for battling viruses, worms and other Internet attacks, said 
Sclavos, who was in Washington Wednesday promoting the company. With 
more sophisticated data analysis, Verisign will be able to offer 
enterprises earlier warnings about attacks and a prioritized list of 
remedial steps, he said. 

Verisign has spent $100 million over the past three years upgrading 
its infrastructure, according to Sclavos, who said the company is 
committed to further research and development. 

"We're going to spend the money regardless of whether we get paid for 
it," he said. 

Early analysis of data from the online payment and directory services 
suggests that commercial fraud and distributed attacks generally 
originate from the same IP addresses, according to Sclavos. Regions 
such as Eastern Europe and Africa appear to be a common source of both 
credit card rings and DDOS attacks, he said. 

"It is clearly coming from the same regions," he said. "The newest set 
of threats seems to be much more organized, much more massive." 

As for Verisign's controversial Web site redirect service, SiteFinder, 
which it was forced to shut down last month following worldwide 
complaints, Sclavos expects to re-launch it next year. In the 
meantime, he said, modifications will be made to the service, 
including added language support and an improved method of handling 
mail traffic. 




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