[LINK] IIA icode

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Obama's cyberczar eyes IIA anti-botnet initiative 

By Stuart Corner Monday, 30 May 2011 16:12 
<http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-news/strategy/47480-obamas-cyberczar-
eyes-iia-anti-botnet-initiative>


Thirty Australian ISPs, representing 90 percent of Australian Internet 
users, are now signed up to the Internet Industry Association's icode 
that aims to reduce the number of PCs infected with botnets, and which 
has caught the attention of US president Barack Obama's 'Cyberczar' 
Howard Schmidt.

The IIA has named a further six ISPs - iPrimus, Comcen, Minopher, 
Activ8me, PPS Internet and Studentnet - that have signed up to the code, 
which the IIA says has achieved over 90 percent market coverage in the 
six months since its introduction, last December.

The IIA said also that its CEO, Peter Coroneos, had been recently called 
to a White House meeting by Obama 'cyberczar' Howard Schmidt to explore 
the scope for implementing the scheme in the US. 

"Howard Schmidt has long advocated measures such as those we've 
implemented here," Coroneos said. "He has previously expressed his 
support for our scheme…The President's Cybersecurity Coordinator was 
interested to know how the scheme was actually working and the response 
from customers who were notified.

"More importantly, he was interested to test US ISPs on their 
preparedness to follow suit, recognising, as we do, that global problems 
require coordinated global solutions."

He added: "We are out to tackle the millions of infected machines which, 
on a global scale contribute to almost all spam, threaten personal data 
privacy and challenge even national security. They are the weapon of 
choice for today's cybercriminal. Our aim is to reduce the pool from 
which they draw."

The IIA says also that it had been nominated for an international award - 
the 'Internet Hero' award from peak UK industry body, UK ISPA, in 
recognition of its achievements for the Internet and the Internet 
industry.

According to IIA, the icode "provides a flexible, consistent approach for 
Australian ISPs to help inform, educate and protect their customers."

It contains four main elements:
- A notification/management system for compromised computers;
- A standardised information resource for end users;
- A resource for ISPs to access the latest threat information;
- A reporting mechanism in cases of extreme threat back to CERT Australia 
to facilitate a national high level view of attack.

These recommended resources include online tools and extend through to 
home visits for users lacking the technical know how to diagnose and fix 
infected machines. The icode web site lists three organisations that 
customers can call to do home visits.

Coroneos told iTWire that the IIA does not yet have any quantitative 
figures for the effectiveness of the scheme, but hoped to put something 
in place over the next six months. He said that participating ISPs were 
sending out some 40,000 notices per month to customers identified as 
having infected machines. "Thier first reaction is one of surprise, and 
their second one of gratitude," and that the ACMA had identified around 
19,000 'significant incidents' per day from infected machines in 
Australia. "But we don't know how many of those are new infection and how 
many previously infected machines that are being activated."



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