The Ofcom report on UK Broadband says 97% of 1,500 residential connections in May 2010 (18 million tests) received speeds lower than what was advertised to them.

We found that average download speeds remain well below the speeds which some ISPs continue to advertise: the average download speed received in May 2009 of 5.2Mbit/s compares to an average headline speed of 11.5Mbit/s, equivalent to 46% of the headline speed.

65% of the UK is said to have broadband at home. Perhaps the most important statistic for security research is this one:

It is estimated that around 2.75 million households, are currently incapable of receiving a minimum speed of 2Mbit/s which the Government has targeted as part of its universal service commitment.

This compares to 40% of American homes have no broadband and 30% have no Internet access at all.

Germany and Greece have the highest penetration increase rate (3%), according to the OECD, while Korea (94.3%) and Iceland (83.2%) have the highest percentage already connected.

These numbers beg several questions related to the economics of threats, especially in terms of bot-infected computers.

We often debate signal bleed in wireless audits. This NY Times report has a fun and detailed look at a wireless signal that works across the 50km between Windblown California Islands and San Francisco.

Both atmospheric attenuation and refraction cause signals to fade. The engineers tackled these problems with several steps, including using powerful antennas and narrow channels. An IEEE 802.11n radio can use channels as wide as 40Mhz, but Pozar limited the channel width to 10MHz, creating a more focused signal. This sacrificed speed for distance.

“Because we’re going over 50 kilometers of water, I’m being extremely conservative. So I’ve actually cranked this back to only around 12 megabits,” Pozar said.

The NYT Bits Blog has posted Part I: Answers to Questions About Internet Privacy.

Jen King at the UC Berkeley School of Information pointed me to this specific answer:

First, encourage your local court to join the privacy movement. Second, build a positive online presence that will push your private financial information off the first page of Google search. The majority of Web searchers don’t look past the first page of Google, so if you can control the first page, then you can limit how many people see your foreclosure. Start by building personal profiles on sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and other popular communities. You may also consider building a personal blog. Arrange to have your name in the URL of each Web property to maximize its “Google juice”. Maybe join a site that lists people in your industry or profession. By carefully linking these sites to one another, you can often make these positive profiles come up at the top of a search for your name.

Many years ago at the 2003 Blackhat conference a presentation was given on how to remove all traces of an identity on the Internet. It was great stuff but clearly a task for Sisyphus.

From that point on I have actively advocated that people who want privacy should actually push and manage information online in the same way celebrities and politicians manage theirs. Some choose to fight and erase objectionable traces but this will eventually fail. Most create press kits and photos, with careful appearances, for public consumption. Both face the threat of paparazzi and tabloids but the latter group seems to have found the least-cost and most secure path (i.e. data integrity).

It is much harder to remove everything than to bury something, a lesson also learned from digital forensics.

The best strategy is to build up online reputation and credibility — pro-actively create a reflection of true persona that can withstand an accusation, incident or even a campaign…and on that note how many know the ruling on Arthur Andersen was actually overturned?

Apple filed an objection but the US Copyright Office appears to have ignored it and sanctions iPhone jailbreaking

IPhone users can now legally hack their phones to download applications that aren’t in Apple’s App Store.

The U.S. Copyright Office, a division of the Library of Congress, has authorized several new exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), one of which will allow mobile phone users to “jailbreak” — or hack into — their devices to use apps not authorized by the phone’s manufacturer. The new rules will be published on Tuesday in the Federal Register.

Their position is not just for applications; they continued to uphold the right to hack the phone to subscribe to another network

The Copyright Office also renewed and expanded its 2006 decision allowing mobile phone users to jailbreak their phones in order to switch carriers. Previously, the office allowed firmware updates to enable network-switching; this week, it added a provision allowing software hacks as well. In other words, iPhone users can now legally download software that will enable their phones to join a non-AT&T network.