Verizon FiOS topped the list of Internet service providers in the Netflix December ISP Speed Index, Netflix said Monday in a blog post. Historically, December is the “heaviest viewing month” for Netflix, with Dec. 28 being the year’s biggest streaming day in terms of Internet traffic, it said. Despite the heavy demand, “we saw continued increases in average speeds across the largest ISPs,” with Verizon FiOS topping the list at 3.36 Mbps, Cablevision second at 3.32 Mbps and Bright House third at 3.30 Mbps, Netflix said. That’s up from November average speeds of 3.27 Mbps, 3.20 Mbps and 3.16 Mbps, respectively, it said. Time Warner Cable posted the largest gain in December, jumping three spots to sixth place with average speeds of 3.18 Mbps, up from 2.97 Mbps in November, it said. Netflix defines the index as a measure of prime time Netflix performance on a particular ISP and not a measure of overall performance for other services/data that may travel across the specific ISP network, it said. “Faster Netflix performance generally means better picture quality, quicker start times and fewer interruptions.”

U.S. Central Command confirmed that hackers claiming to belong to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group temporarily took control of the military command’s Twitter and YouTube accounts earlier Monday. The hackers claimed their actions were retaliation for recent U.S. military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Both accounts went offline soon after the hacking occurred and remained suspended at our deadline. The hackers changed the profile picture and background image on the command’s Twitter page to an image of an ISIL militant that included the word “Cybercaliphate” and the phrase “i love you isis,” referring to the group’s alternate name Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Hackers sent out multiple Tweets, including images that listed the phone numbers and email addresses of active-duty and retired U.S. Army officers. Another Tweet included an image of a document listing purported “scenarios” involving China and North Korea. Hackers also uploaded several videos to Central Command’s YouTube account. “We are taking appropriate measures to address the matter,” a command spokesman said. The hacks occurred as President Barack Obama began a four-day rollout of proposed broadband and cybersecurity policies (see 1501120043 and 1501120045).

Average global Internet connection speeds decreased in Q3 of 2014, while “attack traffic” increased, said the Akamai Technologies 2014 State of the Internet Report released Thursday. The report’s data was collected by Akamai’s Intelligent Platform and included responses from the company’s customers. Although global Internet connection speeds stayed above the 4 Mbps “‘broadband’ threshold,” those speeds dropped by 2.8 percent to 4.5 Mbps in Q3, said Akamai. The global broadband adoption rate of more than 4 Mbps reached 60 percent in Q3, a 1 percent increase quarter-over-quarter. Adoption rates of more than 10 Mbps decreased by 0.5 percent in Q3. The report located attack traffic from 201 unique countries or regions in Q3, up from 161 in Q2. Fifty-percent of the attacks came from China. The number of Chinese attacks were three times greater than those that came from the U.S., although China and the U.S. were the only countries that accounted for more than 10 percent of global attack traffic. Akamai customers reported 270 distributed denial of service attacks in Q3, a 4 percent decrease from Q3 in 2013. More than 790 million IPv4 addresses connected to the company’s Intelligent Platform from more than 246 countries or regions in Q3. South Korea had the fastest average mobile connection speed, growing from 15.2 Mbps in Q2 to 18.2 Mbps in Q3. Iran’s 0.9 Mbps was the lowest average mobile connection speed in Q3.

Former Department of Health and Human Services cybersecurity official Timothy DeFoggi received a 25-year prison sentence for his conviction on child pornography charges, the Department of Justice said Monday. DeFoggi, 56, was convicted in August on the charges, which stemmed from his use of a Tor-network-based child pornography website. The site was one of three the FBI shuttered in a December 2012 sting (see 1408270094). “DeFoggi attempted to sexually exploit children and traffic in child pornography through an anonymous computer network of child predators,” said Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell in a news release. “But dangerous criminals cannot be allowed to operate on-line with impunity. Today’s sentence shows that the Department of Justice will bring criminals and child predators to justice, even when they employ anonymous networks like Tor.”

Indeed.com Chairman Rony Kahan joined the Coalition for Local Internet Choice’s (CLIC) board of advisers, the group said Tuesday. CLIC’s board also includes Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf, Netflix Vice President-Global Public Policy Christopher Libertelli and Gig.U Executive Director Blair Levin. The pro-broadband deployment group said Tuesday that its membership has now expanded to 225 entities. CLIC said it believes the FCC’s current consideration of petitions from the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the city of Wilson, North Carolina, is an opportunity for the commission to remove state restrictions on community choice and encourage local broadband competition. “That can happen only if elected local officials are free to decide what’s best for their communities, whether that means working with willing incumbents, entering into public-private partnerships with new entrants, establishing their own networks, or developing other innovative solutions that work for their communities,” CLIC President Jim Baller told us in an email.

Self-censorship among writers in liberal democracies is growing due to surveillance activities in the U.S. and Western Europe, said a PEN American Center survey released Monday. PEN commissioned the FDR Group to do the survey, which received 772 responses from writers living in 50 counties. Thirty-six percent of those surveyed said freedom of expression “enjoys less protection” in the U.S. than in their home countries, said PEN. “Mass surveillance has also gravely damaged the United States’ reputation as a haven for free expression at home, and a champion of free expression abroad,” it said. Self-censorship among writers in liberal democracies is approaching levels “seen in non-democratic countries,” it said. “Writers are concerned that expressing certain views even privately or researching certain topics may lead to negative consequences,” said PEN.

The Internet of Things will remain a “trending topic” in 2015, as more than a third of online U.S. consumers now own at least one smart device other than a smartphone, said Ipsos research conducted for data privacy management company TRUSTe. The most popular devices are smart TVs (owned by 20 percent of those sampled), in-car navigation systems (12 percent), fitness bands (5 percent) and home alarm systems (4 percent). The survey canvassed 1,000 U.S. adult consumers online Nov. 28 to Dec. 5 and found that the number of connected devices available on the market continues to grow, and so does the amount of data being collected, TRUSTe said. Nearly eight of 10 consumers canvassed said they’re concerned about the idea of their personal information collected, it said. Only 20 percent “think that the benefits of owning a smart device outweigh any privacy concerns about the data they may collect,” it said. Though ownership of smart devices is high, consumer awareness of Internet of Things as a term is remarkably low, it said. The survey that 82 percent were unfamiliar with the term, it said.

The “problem” with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition is that “no one yet has a convincing explanation for how the multi-stakeholder model will be immune to pernicious influences from governments,” said The Washington Post in an editorial Sunday. “Details of the technical transition are being hammered out, but the accountability measures and controls that will be vital to establishing and preserving a legitimate global Internet governance are taking longer.” The Commerce Department “still holds a trump card: It can renew its contract with ICANN,” said the Post. The surveillance revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden shouldn’t be used as a “pretext” for foreign governments to “gain control” of Internet governance, it said. ICANN and NTIA didn’t comment.

The White House kicked off what it said is the first part of a counter-response to the high-profile hack into Sony Pictures Entertainment. It issued an executive order imposing additional sanctions against the government of North Korea, which it says committed the cyberattack. It’s “a response to the Government of North Korea’s ongoing provocative, destabilizing, and repressive actions and policies, particularly its destructive and coercive cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement Friday. “The E.O. authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to impose sanctions on individuals and entities associated with the Government of North Korea. We take seriously North Korea’s attack that aimed to create destructive financial effects on a U.S. company and to threaten artists and other individuals with the goal of restricting their right to free expression.” The order is targeted at North Korea's government and not its people, President Barack Obama said in a letter to Capitol Hill leaders. The order “provides criteria for blocking the property and interests in property of any person determined” to be affiliated with the North Korean government or “to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, the Government of North Korea or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked" pursuant to the order, Obama said. North Korea has denied responsibility for the attack. The FBI issued a news release Dec. 19 saying it concluded the North Korean government is responsible and that the attack reaffirms that “cyber threats pose one of the gravest national security dangers” to the U.S. The Department of the Treasury issued its own news release Friday saying three entities and 10 individuals are targeted under the sanctions order. “Even as the FBI continues its investigation into the cyber-attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment, these steps underscore that we will employ a broad set of tools to defend U.S. businesses and citizens, and to respond to attempts to undermine our values or threaten the national security of the United States,” Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew said in a statement.

More than six of 10 U.S. broadband homes never back up their data to an online storage service, despite the many options available, Parks Associates said Thursday in a report. The finding suggests there’s “a huge addressable market for cloud-based storage in 2015, as consumer consumption of digital content is on the rise,” Parks said. In U.S. broadband homes, smartphone users alone spend 18 minutes on average per session when streaming music apps, it said. That exceeds the time they spend on average on gaming, social media or video apps, it said. “As the connected consumer achieves greater mobility, device storage becomes a limiting factor for consumer content, prompting a shift to cloud-enabled storage and access," the firm said. Starting at CES and throughout 2015, the firm expects to see CE makers and online technology companies “leverage cloud-based storage as a value-added feature,” it said. “CE companies and cloud-based storage providers are struggling to differentiate in the market, prompting device and service providers like Amazon, with its Fire Phone, and Kodak, with its upcoming Android devices, to rely on cloud-enabled storage and functionality to attract new customers." Wearables in particular stand ready “to form a large chunk of the personal cloud in the new year as consumers store their health and fitness data in the cloud,” Parks said.