Featured Blogs

Verisign Receives Subpoena Relating to Stock Option Backdating

VeriSign has reported that they are cooperating with a grand jury subpoena and a SEC inquiry into their historical stock option grants. More can be found here. Backdating of options is essentially a fraud against existing shareholders, as noted in the press or simply searching Google for "backdating fraud". Under the existing 2001 .com Registry Agreement, section 16.C would allow for termination of the agreement by ICANN in the event that VeriSign "is convicted by a court of competent jurisdiction of a felony or other serious offense related to financial activities... more

Microsoft Choking Domain Parking Business Practices?

In a follow up to Microsoft's Strider URL Tracer tool released a few months ago, SecurityFocus is running an article which takes a closer look at how Microsoft's free Strider URL Tracer with Typo-Patrol is aimed at fighting typo-squatters and domain parking abuse. From the article: "In most cases, the typo domain is not even selling a product or service itself. The typo domain makes its money from syndicated advertising such as Google's AdSense program. The typo-squatter simply parks the domain and the only content on the site ends up being the ads served from a syndicated advertising program..." more

FTC Issues Statement on Whois Databases

A recent statement released by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission emphasized that the Whois databases should be kept "open, transparent, and accessible," allowing agencies like the FTC to protect consumers and consumers to protect themselves: "In short, if ICANN restricts the use of Whois data to technical purposes only, it will greatly impair the FTC's ability to identify Internet malefactors quickly -- and ultimately stop perpetrators of fraud, spam, and spyware from infecting consumers' computers," the statement states." more

Phishing Moving to the Web Channel

Today we received one of the first phish attempts to be made as a web spam (comment spam/blog spam) attempt. I wasn't convinced, and thought that perhaps it was a way to gather and verify RELEVANT online identities. Someone put me straight. It's phishing. I've often in the past had run-ins with the good folks in the anti virus realm back between 1996 and 2005 who thought Trojan horses and then spyware were not part of their business. Years later the AV business people ruled it is part of their business and ran to catch up. Same with botnets. more

Conflict of Opinion

If a UDRP panelist believes domainers are the same thing as cybersquatters, is he fit to arbitrate? I came across an editorial on CNET today by Doug Isenberg, an attorney in Atlanta and founder of GigaLaw.com, and a domain name panelist for the World Intellectual Property Organization. The guest editorial focuses on Whois privacy and why it's imperative to maintain open access to registrant data for intellectual property and legal purposes. That's a common opinion I've read a million times. Nothing groundbreaking there. But then I was shocked to read that Isenberg generalizes domainers as cybersquatters: "Today, cybersquatters have rebranded themselves as 'domainers.' Popular blogs and news sites track their activities..." more

Macabre Result Avoided in Mortician Domain Name Case

If a court won't let you use your own name, you might feel like you're a mere ghost of your former self. That happened to Ed Kalis of Broward County, Florida. In a recent case, Florida's court of appeal considered whether a trial court's order against Kalis, enjoining him from using his own last name in various means of advertising and in the URL for his company's website, was proper. The appellate court held that the injunction was overkill. more

CIRA’s Second Public Letter to ICANN

Readers of my blog may recall that the Canadian Internet Registration Authority wrote a public letter earlier this year to ICANN that expressed concern over the current lack of accountability (note that I am on the CIRA board). The letter indicated that CIRA was withholding payment of any voluntary fees to ICANN until the accountability concerns were addressed. This week CIRA followed up with a second public letter to ICANN... more

Phishing: Competing on Security

The UK today is one of the main attack targets by phishing organized crime groups, globally. Phishing damages will amount to about two billions USD in 2006 worldwide -- not counting risk management measures such as preventative measures, counter-measures, incident response and PR damages. In most cases, phishing is caused by the fault of the users, either by entering the wrong web page, not keeping their computers secure or falling for cheap scams. Often this is due to lack of awareness or ability in the realm of Internet use rather than incompetence by the users... more

Mitigating Spoofed Attacks Using IPv6 Address Space

Timothy D. Morgan's recent paper titled, "IPv6 Address Cookies", seeks to apply the fundamental shift in resource availability brought about by the vastly increased Internet address space in IPv6 to develop a novel, lower cost solution to mitigating spoofed attacks. "Spoofed denial of service attacks have plagued the Internet for a number of years, and show no signs of abating. Research into mitigation techniques has apparently not led to a financially viable solution, and new attacks have been discovered in the wild without being widely anticipated". The following provides an introduction to this paper. more

Send a Message to NTIA

The Internet Governance Project is is urging Internet users everywhere, but especially those outside the United States, to respond to the NTIA Notice of Inquiry with the following statement: "The Internet's value is created by the participation and cooperation of people all over the world. The Internet is global, not national. Therefore no single Government should have a pre-eminent role in Internet governance. As the US reviews its contract with ICANN, it should work cooperatively with all stakeholders to complete the transition to a Domain Name System independent of US governmental control." more

Another Day in Court for CFIT vs. VeriSign and ICANN

The CFIT vs. VeriSign et. al. lawsuit had another day in court today. ...The key point coming out of a hearing today (Friday, June 09, 2006) in front of U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Whyte in San Jose, California is that the arguments made by CFIT against the .com deal between ICANN and VeriSign will continue. ...There was one moment of some drama. After lawyers for VeriSign and ICANN both argued that the 7 percent price increases without the need for justification would not be a violation of anti-trust law, Judge Whyte asked the lawyer for ICANN if it would be an anti-trust violation if VeriSign had been granted an annual 100 percent increase. The lawyer said, "no." Other lawyers for other matters sitting in the audience seemed to shift uneasily... more

How Much Money Do Spammers Make?

News reports say that high profile Ryan Pitylak was fined $10 million by the Texas Attorney General. A few days ago, he paid a $1M settlement to Microsoft. Since it had been widely reported that he'd made between $3M and $4M during his spamming career, that seemed like a pretty good deal for him. As I commented to the San Antonio Express, this new fine is more in line with what he did, and at least relieves him of all his ill-gotten gains... more

Domain Tasting Target of US Federal Cybersquatting Lawsuit

So Domain Tasting, where registrants (who may also be registrars) taste names and keep only those that have economic value, is now the target of a federal cybersquatting lawsuit, brought about by lawyers for major brand name retailers Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman against major domain name registrar Dotster. This Dotster lawsuit involves allegations of cybersquatting by registrars who use the Create Grace Period, which is mandated by ICANN for global registries... more

Royal Cat Loses ICANN UDRP Action

This is serious. I'm not joking. You can look it up. Morgan Stanley brought a UDRP action involving the domain name 'mymorganstaleyplatinum.com' against a registrant identified as "Meow ("Respondent"), Baroness Penelope Cat of Nash DCB, Ashbed Barn, Boraston Track, Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire WR15 8LQ, GB." The decision summarizes the response... more

Jefferson Rebuffed: The United States and the Future of Internet Governance

A paper by Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger and Malte Ziewitz was recently published at John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University titled, "Jefferson Rebuffed: The United States and the Future of Internet Governance". The following excerpt provides an overview of the paper: "Over the last several years, many have called for an internationalization of Internet governance in general, and Internet naming and numbering in particular. The multi-year WSIS process that culminated in November 2005 was intended to create momentum in such direction. The United States has long resisted such internationalization, fearing in particular the growing influence of China and similar nations..." more