Featured Blogs

DNSSEC Taking Center Stage at 2010 Black Hat

On July 28th DNSSEC took center stage at the 2010 Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas. Two years ago, at the same conference, Dan Kaminsky unveiled the infamous DNS bug that many believe became a major catalyst for DNSSEC implementation. To kick things off, Jeff Moss -- founder of Black Hat -- in his opening speech called out the fact that "we have not solved any fundamental problems" and noted that the technical community must catch up. more

Using Facebook for Verisimilitude? For real?

I recently became aware of the new pay-by-mobile phone service Venmo.com. "Pay friends with your phone, skip the ATM, Settle up on meals, rent, bills and drinks" ... Venmo are using Facebook connect as a way of verifying user identities, at least that is what they claim. more

DNS RPZ, Malicious Domains… Bring Your Own Policy. Dress Casual.

Paul observed that most new domain names are malicious. Are they? Since the "dawn of tasting", some 30 million domain names have been created for the purposes of interposition on existing name to resource mappings. That is a third of the .COM historical growth, and mostly in the last five years. ... It is difficult not to conclude that interposition on persistent, public referents is without malice, and that the malicious parties are advertisers seeking to transform public referents into private property, as promotional devices... more

Even if Do-Not-Track Were a Good Idea, Could It Ever Work?

In a recent article, I read about increasingly intrusive tracking of online users, which has lead to a proposal at the FTC, "FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said the system would be similar to the Do-Not-Call registry that enables consumers to shield their phone numbers from telemarketers." Maybe I'm dense, but even if this weren't a fundamentally bad idea for policy reasons, I don't see how it could work. more

Bandwidth: Why Fast is Important in a Global Economy

Bandwidth is the basic foundation for Internet traffic as a connector to everything important in our lives. Whether it is basic bandwidth for connecting to family and friends, or a super fast highway for global reach and competitiveness in the business world, bandwidth constitutes the speed at which we connect as a global presence within the expanding sphere of Internet communication. ... To understand why bandwidth is important to all Americans, including personal and business uses, we must understand the different types Internet traffic. more

Taking Back the DNS

Most new domain names are malicious. I am stunned by the simplicity and truth of that observation. Every day lots of new names are added to the global DNS, and most of them belong to scammers, spammers, e-criminals, and speculators. The DNS industry has a lot of highly capable and competitive registrars and registries who have made it possible to reserve or create a new name in just seconds, and to create millions of them per day. Domains are cheap, domains are plentiful, and as a result most of them are dreck or worse. more

Broadband Tariffs: The Significant Gap Between Residential and Business

Analysis from Point Topic's recent reports on global broadband tariffs has revealed a significant gap in residential and business tariffs worldwide. Clearly businesses are paying more for their services than residential consumers but the relative differences in the ratios is more marked than might be expected. The first thought is that they are paying for more bandwidth and that is true to an extent. more

Spamhaus Motion to Reconsider

A few weeks ago, Spamhaus filed a motion to have the judge reconsider his recent $27,002 award to e360. Their brief hangs on three arguments. ... it's clear Spamhaus is prepared to take this to the Court of Appeals (again) if the judge doesn't reconsider. In my lay reading of the law, and the memo in support of motion to alter judgement I don't think Spamhaus is out of line in asking for the judge to reconsider. I expect that if the judge doesn't reconsider, then we'll see an even more aggressive filing taking it up to the Court of Appeals. more

Are Service Providers Giving Up on Landline too Soon?

Interesting times in the carrier space, for sure. While most readers of this column are focused on the business market, it's hard to ignore what's occurring in the consumer space right now. Being based in Toronto, I happen to be struck by the similar trends shaping on both sides of the border. Over the past few days, we've seen earnings reports from major telcos and cablecos, and these businesses seem to be going in opposite directions. more

Clouded by a Convenient Illusion

In a relatively short time, the phrase "in the cloud" has become a term of art when talking about the internet. A quick Google search shows nearly a million uses of the phrase in the past month, a 3x increase from the same period in 2009. But, what does it actually mean to have your web site, your software, your data, or anything else "in the cloud?" "In the cloud" is derived from "cloud computing," which in turn is just a new term for distributed computing, where data-crunching tasks are spread across a variety of different physical processing units. This was common in mainframes in the 1960s, and later the idea of distributing processing across cheap PCs running Linux became popular in the 1990s. more

The Issue of License Proliferation

When I was on the ICANN board, we were dealing with the issue of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), an initiative to allow non-latin characters in domain names. Technically, it was difficult and even more difficult was the consensus process to decide exactly how to do it. Many communities like the Chinese and Arabic regions were anxious to get started and were getting very frustrated with the ICANN process around IDNs. ... When I joined the Open Source Initiative board of directors, we were also struggling with a similar, but slightly different problem. more

Cyberwar vs No Cyberwar

I was browsing CircleID the other day and came across Bruce Schneier's article on cyberwar. Schneier's article, and the crux of his point, is that the term cyber war and the threat of cyber warfare has been greatly exaggerated. The real problem in cyberspace is not the threat of cyber warfare wherein a foreign government, or possibly non-state actor, conducts a cyber attack on another nation. more

New TLD Application Tip: Launch Strategies

Almost exactly nine years ago, the .INFO domain first started accepting registrations. This was an historic event as it was the first time a new generic top-level domain (TLD) was launched to an existing domain marketplace and, in fact, was the first new TLD to be added since .com. We've seen (and provided technology to power) many other TLD launches since then, with many business models. As you seek to introduce your own new TLD however, you should carefully evaluate the different launch models that have been tried before and determine which one will work best for your specific TLD. more

Would You Fly an Airplane That Had a Pre-flight Checkout That Was Only 40 Percent Complete?

In the aviation world safety is paramount. Commercial airlines go to major lengths to make sure that their planes are fully up to code and can fly safely in the air. The risks - loss of human lives - are far too extreme to take any chances. One result of this diligence is the fact that travel by plane is far safer than any other method - nearly 40 times safer per mile than travel by car. While application security risks are not as dire, research shows CSOs fail to use the same stringent level of safety to secure their Internet-facing applications. more

FCC’s McDowell Warns of “Irreversible International Regulation”

The stakes of the U.S. communications policy debates are larger than many assume. Subjecting broadband to new and extensive regulation in the U.S., says FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell in today's Wall Street Journal, could invite a regulatory ripple effect across the globe. more