Featured Blogs

WCIT Denouement

It is midnight in Dubai and I am listening to the final readings of the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR). This instrument is the final output of two weeks of negotiations at the World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT), a gathering of the world's nations to update the the ITRs. The Chair goes through the document article by article, section by section, and with each passing "thank you", this Conference draws to a close. Many in the room are elated. more

How to Donate Safely to Charity

Please share this post. After a tragedy, many of us want to donate to funds and charities to show our support for a community. However, scam charities immediately pop up, looking to steal your well intentioned donations. There are at least 30 newly-registered domains over the past 48 hours related to the tragic shootings at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut: Most, if not all are scams and rip-offs. How then, to donate so that your funds make it to the deserving victims? more

WCIT-12 Disappoints, More Work to Be Done

In the end it was a disappointment that the treaty on International Telecommunications regulations (ITRs) that had been under negotiation for two weeks at WCIT-12 was not acceptable to 55 countries, and that, as a consequence, these countries did not sign the final version of the international treaty (89 did sign). After two weeks of sometimes fractious negotiation - 1,275 proposals were discussed in all - the contentious issues were significantly watered down. However the dissenting countries felt that the key issue - anything in relation to the internet - should not be included at all and, quite correctly, did not compromise on that. more

Is WCIT Failure the Start of a Digital Cold War?

This was never part of the plan. Going into the Dubai World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) two weeks ago, there was optimism aplenty. After weeks of online and media campaigning, proponents of a free Internet had managed to scare everyone into thinking that WCIT was tantamount to digital Armageddon. This had the effect of defusing the conference before it even started, or so it seemed... more

A Look at How Retailers Handled the Online Rush as Black Friday Sales Hit $1 Billion Mark

This year Black Friday online sales reached $1 billion for the first time. Of course, Cyber Monday is the busiest e-commerce day of them all. Sales for Cyber Monday reached $1.5 billion this year, a 30 percent increase from 2011... Website providers have been moving to cloud computing so they can instantly scale to meet increased traffic. But what happens when everyone needs to scale at the same time? more

Cyber Security: A Duty to Care?

Yesterday, in my post on three new threats in one day, I posed the question whether it was necessary to develop regulations that would set a minimum standard on cyber security for devices that connect to the Internet. I'm having second thoughts here, which I'll explain in this post, but also try to look at a way forward and ask you to engage. more

Three New Cyber Security Threats in One Day

Internet crooks never cease to surprise me. The inventiveness in being bad is super. If these guys lent their thinking power to the economy, the economic crisis would be solved within a week. Today I ran into three brand new cyber security threats that were reported on. In one day. So I thought to share them with you. more

Sovereign Nations on an Unseen Path at WCIT 2012 to Create a Super-Sovereign ITU

It puzzles me to watch Governments introducing or subscribing to proposals that would in effect smoothly concede part their sovereignty to the ITU -- in an area that is central -- Communications. The WCIT 2012, in the middle of its second week, would now discuss Document DT/51-E 11, which is said to be a "package" of not-yet-compromised draft proposal for revisions to the International Telecommunication Regulations, which inevitably makes ITU the control center of all communications in the known Universe. more

ION Conference At USENIX LISA This Week Features IPv6 and DNSSEC Sessions - Will Be Livestreamed

If any of you are attending the USENIX Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference in San Diego this week, the Internet Society's "Internet ON" (ION) Conference is co-located with LISA12 and will take place tomorrow, December 11, 2012, from 1:30 - 5:00 pm US Pacific time. more

It’s Not Paranoia if They Are Really After You!

In the latest development from the World Conference on International Telecommunications, a new "compromise proposal" has been leaked to wcitleaks.org. This proposal is certainly no compromise, as it not only is a bald faced power grab by the sponsors (Russia, UAE, China, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Sudan at this point), but shows a stunning lack of comprehension of how the Internet works and how it is currently governed. It also shows that the coalition of Civil Society groups and private sector organisations that have focused on WCIT have been correct all along.  more

Lost in Translation? Bridging the Gap between Technology and Governance

It is reassuring that, with the WCIT underway, there is increasing awareness of the threats to the Internet posed by a number of the amendments, significantly in many cases supported by authoritarian governments. There is less awareness of the serious economic implications of some of the proposed ITR amendments. While it is highly unlikely a doomsday scenario will unfold at the WCIT itself, it is clear that substantial changes to Internet governance are possible over the next several years. more

WCIT - So Far So Good - Recap of Week One

So far the world has survived WCIT-12 and the internet has not been taken over by anybody. So, in the end, what was all the fuss about? Those who have followed my reporting on these issues from the very beginning more than a year ago - long before the media frenzy on this topic started - will have seen that we never took the sensational approach. We fully understood the issues that were emerging, but at the same time we could also place them in the right context, to explore how they should be addressed. more

2012 Global Phishing Trends: Uptime Down, Numbers Up

Despite security advances over the past year, including the increased deployment of DNSSEC, pirates continue to wreak havoc on the Internet. But before you decide that Internet security innovations are futile, consider this: online criminals are just like burglars in the physical world; they don't take new ways of blocking their best efforts lying down. They come up with new and, in some cases, stronger plans of attack. more

WCIT’s Security Issues

Another contentious issue at the WCIT in Dubai is 'security'. There has been a dramatic increase in nervousness regarding a whole range of security issues, especially in relation to the internet. They include: SPAM, denial-of-service-attacks, identity theft, cybercrime, cyberwarfare, and privacy issues on social media. From the list above it is clear that some of these issues are related to content, while some can be classified as national security and others as criminal offences. In other words, there is no clear-cut issue on what constitutes security. more

The Case for Hot Swappable Nameservers

Earlier this week we announced our "Proactive Nameservers", which is just marketing speak for what it really is: hot swappable nameservers or nameserver fail over. What is it? ... It's basically what every webmaster, IT department and CTO wishes they had set up before... more