Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks increased 71 percent year-over-year in Q3, Akamai reported Tuesday. DDoS attacks greater than 100 Mbps increased 138 percent, including two attacks attributed to the Mirai botnet. Mirai originated the October attacks against DynDNS, which caused outages and latency for major U.S. websites (see 1610210056). The DynDNS attacks have resulted in significant congressional interest in the cybersecurity of connected devices (see 1610260067). The House Communications and Commerce Trade subcommittees are set to hold a hearing Wednesday on IoT cybersecurity, partially in response to the DynDNS attacks (see 1611090063). In contrast, Akamai found that web application attacks decreased 18 percent, with U.S.-originating attacks down 67 percent.

Looking to boost its presence in the aviation market, ViaSat purchased Irish aviation software company Arconics, it said in a media release Monday. The companies had a partnership revolving around wireless in-flight entertainment offerings, and post-acquisition, the satellite company said it plans on offering airlines "real-time insight, control and agility of aircaft and flight data."

The FTC, which held a September workshop on ransomware, is offering advice on guarding against the growing threat (see 1609070044). It has provided guidance and an accompanying video for businesses that become ransomware victims. In a Thursday blog post, staff attorney Ben Rossen said that the Privacy and Identity Protection Division also during the workshop proffered some tips for consumers, including updating software, thinking before clicking on questionable links or downloading attachments and backing up data. Rossen said consumers should try to contain an attack, possibly restore their computer and call law enforcement. "Law enforcement doesn’t recommend paying the ransom, although it’s up to you to determine whether the risks and costs of paying are worth the possibility of getting your files back," he wrote. There's no guarantee that criminals would restore files and they could possibly target people for other scams, he added.

Following negative interactions online, adults and teens said they "became less trusting of others in the real world" and suffered other consequences such as stress and sleep deprivation, Microsoft said in releasing preliminary poll results Thursday. The survey of people ages 13 to 74 across 14 countries, including the U.S., found that about two-thirds of respondents fell victim to at least one of 17 different online risks such as unwanted contact or various forms of harassment, Chief Online Safety Officer Jacqueline Beauchere wrote in a blog post. Microsoft will release full results Feb. 7, Safer Internet Day 2017, she said, but it wanted to present some preliminary data after the U.S presidential elections. Adults are more inclined than youths to distrust people online and more reluctant to participate in blogs and online forums, she added. "On a positive note, 29 percent of adults said they tried to be more constructive in their criticism of others after a negative online situation. That compares to one-quarter of teens." Youths, however, were more likely to experience social and academic losses after encountering an online risk.

Cloud traffic is expected to rise 3.7-fold by 2020 from last year, Cisco forecast Thursday, to 14.1 ZB per year. Continued rapid growth will occur because the cloud's ability to scale quickly and efficiently will increasingly make it a more attractive option than traditional data centers, Cisco said. Consumer and business data workloads are expected to increase substantially through 2020, and firms' share of data center workloads is expected to decrease to 72 percent in 2020, from 79 percent, Cisco said. “Cloud computing has advanced from an emerging technology to an essential scalable and flexible part of architecture for service providers of all types around the globe," Vice President-Service Provider Marketing Doug Webster said in a news release. “Powered by video, IoT, SDN/NFV [software-defined networks and network function virtualization] and more, we forecast this significant cloud migration and the increased amount of network traffic generated as a result to continue at a rapid rate as operators streamline infrastructures to help them more profitably deliver IP-based services [to] businesses and consumers.”

Semiconductor supplier Semtech and Comcast will jointly work on a trial deployment of a Comcast low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) based on Semtech wireless RF technology. In a news release Wednesday, Semtech said the LPWAN trial deployment should start in Q4, focused on enterprise, government and consumer IoT applications. Semtech said that after the trials the network could expand to as many as 30 markets within 30 months. To help with the buildout, Semtech said, it granted Comcast a warrant to buy 1.09 million shares, with vesting coming in phases based on reaching particular milestones regarding coverage targets.

Moderators of the presidential and vice presidential debates should ask the candidates what they would do to promote increased access to affordable high-speed broadband, several groups urged the moderators Monday. The groups said they want the moderators to pose this question: “Home broadband internet access has become an essential tool for education, employment, civic engagement, and even healthcare. Yet 34 million people still lack access to affordable high-speed internet. What will you do as president to help expand access to affordable high-speed internet for everyone in America?” The groups include Common Cause, the Communications Workers of America, Demand Progress, Engine and Public Knowledge. Voters must understand the candidates’ plans for low-cost broadband access, they said in a letter to the five moderators. "Both candidates have promised major investments in infrastructure development, and broadband internet should be a part of these plans,” they said. Lawmakers told us Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's broadband infrastructure plan has bipartisan potential but raises questions about the funding source (see 1609230040). Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump hasn't mentioned broadband when discussing infrastructure investment. The three topics for Monday's debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, were to be: America's Direction; Achieving Prosperity; and Securing America. CTA President Gary Shapiro also detailed what he would like to see from the debate. "Unfortunately, some of her proposals, such as 'free' Wi-Fi, carry staggering price tags that go unmentioned in her tech agenda," Shapiro said of Clinton's plans in a Monday blog post. "Trump promises to push 'pause' on all new rules and review all previous rules  --  a tall order, though it certainly sounds attractive. Unfortunately, Trump remains as vague as ever, saying only that excessive regulation costs our country upwards of $2 trillion a year." Shapiro hopes for attention on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the sharing economy, the deficit and immigration, he said. The candidates should talk about how to overhaul agencies, including the FCC, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance said in a blog post. The FCC “continues to assert more power (even after being rebuked by the courts) on net neutrality, expansion of government broadband, and privacy,” the group said. “TPA wants to hear from both candidates how they would fix our agencies and how they would reduce the rules and regulations being promulgated at a rate that is costing the economy more than a trillion dollars in economic activity each year.”

Nintendo and the Wi-Fi Alliance are continuing their lobbying against Globalstar's proposed broadband terrestrial low-power service, said ex parte filings (see here and here) posted Wednesday in FCC docket 13-213. Nintendo said that at a meeting at its Redmond, Washington, offices with Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., it echoed its concerns about TLPS' possible interference with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi use in the 2.4 GHz band (see 1609160070). It said that instead of moving on a draft order, the FCC should do "comprehensive, transparent, real-world testing" and separate assessments of the potential effects of opportunistic use of Wi-Fi channel 14 by third parties. Nintendo representatives at the meeting included Executive Vice President-Operations Don James. Wi-Fi Alliance's filing recapped a phone call with Commissioner Mike O'Rielly in which it repeated its charge that using 2473-2495 MHz for TLPS will interfere with Wi-Fi channel 11 and that Globalstar hasn't done industry-standard testing or analysis to demonstrate the contrary (see 1505290019). Wi-Fi Alliance also said the FCC should look at whether the entire upper segment of the 2.4 GHz band should be opened up for unlicensed use. Globalstar has said TLPS would serve the public interest by adding 22 megahertz to the nation’s broadband spectrum inventory and alleviating congestion in the 2.4 GHz ISM band.

The FCC set-top plan has numerous legal and policy flaws, said AT&T and NCTA in a legal analysis filed in docket 16-42 Monday. The draft plan would “mandate that each [multichannel video programming distributor] also build and maintain apps for an indefinite period of time and for an indeterminate number of retail platforms that have shipped a minimum number of units, regardless of the nature of the device or platform,” the filing said. “That would impose a substantial and apparently perpetual burden on MVPDs with no mechanism to reimburse MVPDs even for cost, and thus inevitably leading to increased prices for all subscribers.” The item would “create new barriers to innovation” by “demanding that all MVPD networks conform their highly varied systems to new, to-be-invented open standards” and by “requiring government pre-approval for any and every desired variation or amendment in licensing,” the filing said. The requirement that all MVPDs can't favor their own programming in the universal search function would “prohibit MVPDs from presenting their many clickable options for MVPD content offerings,” the filing said. The item also has numerous legal flaws and “cannot be sustained as a matter of law or sound public policy,” the filing said. “At no time has the Commission provided sufficient notice for parties to learn many significant aspects of the Chairman's new proposal or to address it adequately.” The license proposed in the FCC set-top box draft item is similar to the Dynamic Feedback Arrangement Scrambling Technique (DFAST) license used under existing CableCARD rules, TiVo said in a filing posted Monday to docket 16-42. The company Wednesday lobbied Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, aides to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, Office of Strategic Planning Chief Paul de Sa, Chief Technologist Scott Jordan, aides to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, and staff from the Office of General Counsel and the Media Bureau. A DFAST license “is not a copyright license at all,” TiVo said. “The standard license between the MVPDs and the competitive device maker that uses the MVPD-controlled app is merely subject to FCC oversight in the event programmers and MVPDs engage in anticompetitive or anti-consumer conduct.” Third-party devices would require certain information to provide the universal search function the FCC draft item is aiming for, TiVo said. The information required would include data such as “channel information (if any), program title, rating/parental control information, program start and stop times (or program length, for on-demand programming)” TiVo said. The search function also would need “entitlement and price information” and “information regarding search requests and past viewership” to “provide personalized and predictive search and recommendations,” TiVo said. The White House is backing the draft (see 1609190050).

Google Fiber refreshed its TV user interface, the company said in a blog post Wednesday. The update includes improved DVR navigation, personalized recommendations, enhanced search and Rotten Tomatoes ratings in program descriptions, it said. New customers get the new interface right away; current customers get it “in the coming weeks,” Google said.