Two quick facts about American industry's resilience against cyber-attack, (1) our critical infrastructure is inadequately protected and (2) federal regulation will be required to fix the problem, reliance on market forces alone will not be sufficient irrespective of whether or not Sony Pictures survives. Although regulation is needed, it needs to be coordinated and, above all, cost-effective. Which agency is charge of regulating cybersecurity? Right now, it's a free for all with agencies staking out turf and claims of authority. more
On the evening of Tuesday, September 9th, Congressional leaders unveiled a 1,603 page, $1.01 trillion FY 2015 appropriations bill to fund the U.S. government through the end of September 2015. One provision of the omnibus bill would delay the IANA transition until after the September 30, 2015 expiration of the current contract between the NTIA and ICANN. more
The Internet never ceases to fascinate. I am referring not to its content, but to its governance. The IANA transition is the latest example in a world of interesting possibilities. At the core, we find ICANN, and that is why we need a Human Rights Advisory Committee. Any future model, with or without the NTIA, needs to seriously consider this option. But I prefer the hard truth over my own ideals. Maybe this idea will be dismissed, simply because human rights are discussed as some kind of inconvenience. more
I have learned that lesson many times over. In many of the issues that we are facing, as a society or in our industry, I am reasonably confident that common sense will eventually prevail. Sometimes the road twists and turns, but in the end water flows around rocks. In our industry I can refer to developments we have been advocating for (structural separation, utilities-based telecoms infrastructure, broadband for social and economic benefits, ICT-based industry and sector transformation, FttH, internet as a tool for more direct democracies, etc). more
The latest Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) Global Phishing Survey, which analyzed over 100,000 phishing attacks in the first half of 2014, examines the progress that top level domains (TLDs) are making in responding to phishing attacks that use their TLDs. The report finds the .INFO domain has the lowest average phishing uptimes as compared to other TLDs, such as .COM and .NET. more
Section 3.18 of the ICANN 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) contains language requiring registrars to investigate and respond to abuse complaints. Nearly one year into the new RAA's effective period, what do we know about Section 3.18? If a person or entity wants to submit a complaint, what should they keep in mind? This article reviews the meaning of Section 3.18, how to leverage it, offers a list of do's and don'ts for complainants, and offers a few recommendations for registrars. more
Are you passionate about preserving the global, open Internet? Do you have experience in Internet standards, development or public policy? If so, please consider applying for one of the open seats on the Internet Society Board of Trustees. The Internet Society serves a pivotal role in the world as a leader on Internet policy, technical, economic, and social matters, and as the organizational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). more
Implementing security requires attention to detail. Integrating security services with applications where neither the security service nor the application consider their counterpart in their design sometimes make plain that a fundamental change in existing practices is needed. Existing "standard" registrar business practices require revision before the benefits of the secure infrastructure foundation DNSSEC offers can be realized. more
If you will be at ICANN 52 in Singapore in February 2015 (or can get there) and work with DNSSEC or the DANE protocol, we are seeking proposals for talks to be featured as part of the 6-hour DNSSEC Workshop on Wednesday, February 11, 2015. The deadline to submit proposals is Wednesday, December 10, 2015... The full Call For Participation is published online and gives many examples of the kinds of talks we'd like to include. more
By now you might have read the news "How 'Gangnam Style' Broke YouTube?" What happened is that a YouTube video named 'Gangnam Style' by a South Korean singer Park Jae-sang, known by his stage name PSY, has been viewed so many times that it broke YouTube's view counter. YouTube's view counter is built on a 32-bit integer, which provides a view-tracking capability of nearly 2.15 billion views. more
The first 12 domain registries have been scheduled for the first special Sunrise Period mandated by ICANN for trademarks on the blocked collision lists. A total of 328 new domain extensions have launched so far in 2014. Each one of these has its own unique collision list of names that were found to be already in use on private computer networks. Some of these lists have over 100,000 names. All of these registries were required to block these names from being allocated until a policy for their allocation could be developed by ICANN. more
IT is now a boardroom discussion. Beyond troubleshooting server issues and maintaining network security, IT initiatives must provide company-wide ROI and work in unison with other department objectives. But the link between corporate efficiency and technology spending isn't always obvious -- here are four critical IT elements your business needs to improve productivity. more
Yesterday's DDoS attack against DNSimple brought to light a longstanding need for DNS nameserver operators to have an ability to unilaterally repudiate domains from their nameservers. The domains under attack started off on DNSMadeEasy, migrated off to DNSimple and took up residence there for about 12 hours, causing a lot of grief to DNSimple and their downstream customers. more
A week ago I was discussing the alternative of a European Internet root with an ex-ICANN Board member. The idea that I like to develop in these discussions is to offer end-users a modern and cheaper naming system. Note that it does not mean that the ICANN root is a bad one, it means that a new and upgraded one could cohabit with the existing one. One will wonder what this article has to do with new gTLDs but considering the creation of an Internet "version 2", offers website and brand owners many advantages. more
While the debate continues as to whether most new gTLDs are a sound long-term investment for their registry operators, there's no disputing that the program has been an economic boom for ICANN. The 1,930 first round applications each required an application fee of $185,000, which added up to a tidy $357 million. Even after refunds for withdrawn applications ICANN still cleared about a third of a billion dollars from the first round before a single string was delegated. more
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