There may still be a few security practitioners working in the field who didn't have a copy of Bruce Schneier's Applied Cryptography on their bookshelf the day they started their careers. Bruce's practical guide to cryptographic algorithms, key management techniques and security protocols, first published in 1993, was a landmark volume for the newly emerging field, and has been a reference to developers ever since. more
From high-profile data breaches to increasingly sophisticated tracking systems, the issue of consumer privacy is earning a lot of headlines these days. To better protect their personal privacy, many consumers are taking matters into their own hands. A Forrester Consulting survey revealed that one-third of consumers polled admitted to using do-not-track tools and ad blockers to protect their online privacy, while another 25 percent have cancelled at least one online transaction after reading the seller's privacy policy. more
Today is a wonderful day for us working with Internet Governance that do believe in an Open Internet and multi stakeholder model for its governance. FTTH Council is having its annual meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, and the IT Minister, Anna-Karin Hatt, made an opening speech that was among the strongest I have heard from any country. Yes, any country. And I do not even know if any organization have said such strong things. more
Anyone who still is using the "I'll-just-wait-on-IPv6-because-it-will-never-happen" approach is clearly NOT watching the measurements. First, there was the news last week that Google's IPv6 measurement had crossed over 3% less than five months after crossing the 2% mark. Then today comes word from the World IPv6 Launch measurements program that the February 2014 measurements are up... more
So you are the IT regulator for a country and you are convinced that the shortage of IPv4 address space represents a threat to the development of the Internet in your country and you want to do something about it. Being that as regulator you don't really run the countries IP networks, what can you really do? I've heard many regulators in over 30 countries grapple with this problem. The purpose of this article is to think through some ideas to guide action on using (or not) regulation to drive IPv6 adoption. more
On Dec. 12, 2013, the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) announced the formation of a new working group, Extensible Provisioning Protocol Extensions (eppext). The working group was formed to create an Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) registry of Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) extensions and to review specifications of extensions for inclusion in the registry. EPP is the standard domain name provisioning protocol for generic top-level domain (gTLD) name registries that operate under the auspices of ICANN. more
In January 1995, the RFC Editor published RFC 1752: "The Recommendation for the IP Next Generation Protocol"... The Internet is a security officer's nightmare -- so much openness, so easy to capture packet traffic (and/or spoof it!) and send all manner of unwanted traffic. It was built as a research network, hosted by institutes that were 1/ professionally responsible and 2/ interested in working together collegially. So, in the 19 years since the publication of that statement, have we really failed to address the stated goal? more
Minds + Machines was the first "new gTLD portfolio applicant" I spotted early in 2008, when .PARIS started being mentioned. Then came a few other projects like .HORSE and later .VODKA. Being French, my vision of good new gTLD suffixes may be slightly different to those native English speakers. Therefore, I favour some TLDs such as .SURF and .ART over some clearly English terms others such as .HORSE. more
In an interesting article on Information Week, Jonathan Feldman makes the argument that because of entrenched attitudes and established practices among "IT infrastructure gurus," Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) will fail to gain traction, forcing developers to turn towards Platform as a service (PaaS) as the route of least resistance. Feldman is not anti-IaaS, he makes it clear that he thinks enterprise infrastructure managers are making a mistake, but believes they'll continue to make it anyway. more
Sun, surf, and ... service operators? It's a match made in heaven! The Caribbean cable and telecommunications industry may not be large, but it is an important and fast-growing region. The recent Caribbean Cable & Telecommunications Association (CCTA) Annual Meeting in Puerto Rico threw the spotlight on this slice of paradise and I was there to catch up on some of the trends emerging for the year ahead. more
Expect a charm offensive as Comcast and scores of sponsored researchers explain how acquiring Time Warner Cable will promote competition and enhance consumer welfare. You might not hear too much about two traditional concerns remedied by actual facilities-based competition: incentives to innovate and reduce prices. Comcast will frame its acquisition as necessary to achieve even greater scale to compete with other sources of video content and maybe to compete with the limited other sources of broadband access. more
A Swiss Del Monte entity that had a license to use the "DEL MONTE" mark applies to operate the .delmonte generic top level domain (gTLD). Another Del Monte entity, based in Delaware, filed a "legal rights objection" (LRO) - under WIPO-established procedures - to the Swiss Del Monte's application. A three member panel sustained the Delaware company's LRO... The Swiss entity sued in federal court seeking a declaration that it had sufficient rights in the "DEL MONTE" mark to operate the TLD... more
IPv6 adoption continues to gain ground at a slow pace. This is to be expected. The complications associated with hardware and software upgrades, as well as the lack of reachable content, means that IPv4 is still king of the hill. To me, this situation seems to mirror one a few years back with web browsers. Sometime around the turn of the century, Internet Explorer became the dominant browser. Riding on a 90% market share for Windows, the incumbent - Netscape Navigator - did not stand a chance. However, with it came a dark age for web developers. more
The holidays open up a block of time to catch up on "I meant to read that" bookmarks, RSS feeds, and all the favorited and forgotten tweets. I made it through 50 before a NormanShark blog post kicked off a research project. The analysts found a malware sample which was using .bit domains in their communications infrastructure, but .bit ... what is that? .bit is a TLD operating outside of ICANN. Some would say they are TLD squatting, but I leave that opinion up to the reader. more
I've often found truth in the famous George Santayana quote, "Those that cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it." That's an apt warning for what is currently happening - again - with the hundreds of new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) that are launching ... and failing to work as expected on the Internet. First, a quick refresher: As most CircleID readers know, in the early 2000s, seven new gTLDs were launched: .AERO, .BIZ, .COOP, .INFO, .MUSEUM, .NAME and .PRO. Aside from Country Code TLDs (ccTLDs), these were the first top-level changes to the DNS since the early days of the Internet. more
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