July 23, 2019 – Cyber Law Watch

The battle against phishing

Jul 23 2019

By Cameron Abbott, Michelle Aggromito and Jacqueline Patishman

All over the world, organisations and individuals battle phishing. Even in systems with a high degree of security, phishing is still a risk and human failures to spot and deal with phishing can cause the best of security policies and procedures to become undone.

To fight phishing at the source, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) recently achieved some success in this space through its use of email verification technology to fight phishing attacks. This technology, called ‘Synthetic DMARC’, works by assigning a DMARC record for all domains attempting to pass-off as gov.uk domains, by analysing and vetting non-existing subdomains against DNS records and building on authentication systems of the past.

Not just for jilted ex-lovers: The criminalisation of the non-consensual distribution of intimate images in WA

Jul 23 2019

By Cathryn Palfrey and Esther Power

This week marked the conclusion of the first prosecution under the Criminal Law Amendment (Intimate Images) Act 2018 (WA). Mitchell Joseph Brindley, 24 years old, pleaded guilty to posting ten intimate images of the woman he dated. The images were taken with the woman’s consent whilst they were in a relationship. When it ended, Mr Brindley created fake Instagram accounts under her name and posted the images without her consent.

Non-consensual intimate image dissemination is colloquially known as ‘revenge porn’. A study in 2017 found that 20% of Australians between the ages of 16-49 years had a picture or video of themselves shared without their consent.

A global movement has emerged to counter the surge of ‘revenge porn’.

Archive:July 23, 2019