Featured Blogs

What to Say About the Treaty on the ITRs: Crib Notes

Look past the panic over December's World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT); it's unlikely to be a catastrophe for several practical reasons: (1) the negotiation lasts ten days, so there is not enough time for 193 countries to agree on how to phrase catastrophe (2) large multilateral events tend to converge, like so many voters, on the centre, and (3) the putative chairman of the event is a seasoned grown-up, and will not allow the treaty to break the global information grid. more

No Virginia, You Have No Duty to Secure Your WiFi Access Point

Every now and again a report flies across the network about the police breaking down someone's door and attempting to arrest the home owner for bad things online - assuming that whatever happened from that person's Internet connection is their fault. Now there are lots of problems with this - lots of problems. But one of the big ones is that anyone can access an open access point... more

Understanding the Brazilian Court Decision to Arrest Google’s Representative

Brazil has been on the news lately, and not for good reasons: an electoral judge order the arrest of Google's Director in Brazil for not complying with a court decision that ordered the removal a YouTube video with allegedly defamatory content. A lot has been said about this, but it seems that many people got it wrong, so let's recap some of the misinterpretations that circulated, specially those at the EFF website. more

Is It About to Get Much Harder to Own a Domain Name?

Question: why has air travel become so painful? Because the threat posed by bad actors requires making everyone jump through hoops before letting them board a plane. To the point that, despite obvious requirements to ensure air safety, some are now openly questioning if the cure is not worse than the disease. Registering a domain name could be about to go the same way. more

Community Support Required for Alternative Trademark Clearinghouse Solution

It's time for the community to demonstrate its resolve to see ICANN implement a successful and effective Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH). Let's be clear here. The current ICANN implementation model and approach is flawed and needs attention. Following more than three months of consultation and negotiation, today I'm pleased to be able to present the domain name and trademark protection industries with an alternative solution for the operation of ICANN's Trademark Clearinghouse for the new Top-Level Domain (TLD) program. more

Letter to ICANN on Big Brands Proposed Usage of Generic Domain Extensions

We have been taking an active interest in the development of the new TLD program by ICANN and excited by the many opportunities and challenges that this "opening up" will bring to us, our customers and the internet ecosystem as a whole. However, we also have our concerns about how some entities wish to use generic domain name extensions as "walled gardens". more

Lessons Behind the Microsoft 3322.org Takedown

The Microsoft action against 3322.org, a Chinese company, started with the news that computers were infected during the production phase. Stepping away from the controversy surrounding the approach, there are important lessons that cyber security officials and upper management, deciding on the level of and budget for cyber security in organisations should learn and take into account. I'm writing this contribution from a premise: China uses the fact that most IT devices are built in China to its advantage. Allow me to start with an account from personal memory to set the stage. more

Rebalancing Telco Infrastructure Investments

One of the reasons telecommunications has been so successful for more than 160 years is that it adopted a strategy that resulted in a seamless network all around the world. You can pick up a phone anywhere in the world and, with little or no instruction, make a call to anybody else in the world without worrying what phones and technology they are using on the other end of the line... But during that process the nature of the network operators changed. more

Unclear on the Concept, Sanctions Edition

United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) is an advocacy group that, among other things, tries to isolate Iran by pressuring businesses and organizations to stop doing business with Iran. This week they turned their attention to ICANN and RIPE to try to cut off Internet access to Iranian organizations. Regardless of one's opinion about the wisdom of isolating Iran (and opinions are far from uniform), this effort was a bad idea in an impressive number of both technical and political ways. more

National Broadband, Leadership or Procrastination

There is no doubt that any national infrastructure plan of the magnitude of national broadband networks as they are currently rolled out in 9 countries and which policies have been put in place in another 110 countries will have questions attached to it. Furthermore, this infrastructure is being developed for the digital economy, which, in itself, is a fast-moving world. Five years ago there were no smartphones, tablets, mobile apps or smart TVs. more

A Look at Mail Patterns from Legitimate Webmail Sources

For many years, I have tracked spam from botnets and reported on it. I have analyzed those botnets' distribution patterns by number of IPs, number of messages per email envelope and geographical distribution. While spam from botnets is interesting, and the main source of spam, it is not the only source of spam. What about spam that originates from the MAGY sources? more

RIPE NCC is Reaching the Last /8 of IPv4

In an earlier article, IPv4 - Business As Usual, we pointed out that the RIPE NCC will reach the last /8 of IPv4 address space (16,777,216 addresses) sometime later this year. On Friday, 14 September 2012 we reached this important milestone; we allocated the last IPv4 addresses from the unallocated pool. From now on, the RIPE NCC can only distribute IPv6 addresses and a one-time /22 IPv4 allocation from the last /8 to those Local Internet Registries (LIRs) that meet the requirements. more

Mobile Infrastructure Running Out of Steam

The enormous growth in mobile usage, doubling each year, is set to continue for several years in a row. According to Ericsson, by 2020 mobile operators will need to provide one thousand times the capacity that was required in 2010. Our assessment at BuddeComm is that the mobile industry has already fallen behind in delivering the capacity needed today, let alone coping with the enormous growth ahead; and that this situation will deteriorate before it improves. more

Report On National Online Cybercrime and Online Threats Reporting Centres

Today I released a report on 'National cyber crime and online threats reporting centres. A study into national and international cooperation'. Mitigating online threats and the subsequent enforcing of violations of laws often involves many different organisations and countries. Many countries are presently engaged in erecting national centres aimed at reporting cyber crime, spam or botnet mitigation. more

Microsoft’s Takedown of 3322.org - A Gigantic Self Goal?

I will first begin this post by emphasizing that this article is entirely my personal viewpoint and not to be considered as endorsed by or a viewpoint of my employer or any other organization that I am affiliated with. Neither is this to be considered an indictment of the sterling work (which I personally value very highly) that several people in Microsoft are doing against cybercrime. Microsoft's takedown of 3322.org to disrupt the Nitol botnet is partial and will, at best, have a temporary effect on the botnet itself... more