Featured Blogs

Examining Real Examples of DNS Abuse: A Summary Overview of the 2nd DNS Abuse Forum

It was not without a little trepidation that I planned the 2nd DNS Abuse Institute Forum to focus on the long-standing and often contentious definitional issues surrounding DNS Abuse. While the risk of getting stuck in the usual entrenched positions was real, it seemed to me that we had an opportunity to provide some clarity and if not change minds, at least provide perspective. more

Potential Danger Ahead for Registrants: dot-info Abusive Domain Use Policy

ICANN has posted a request by Afilias for a new registry service in relation to "abusive" domains in dot-info. While in general the proposal is motivated by good intentions, the devil is in the details. While most folks (including myself) probably care very little about the .info TLD, my concern is that any bad implementation in .info might be copied or used as a precedent in other more important TLDs, in particular .com run by VeriSign. more

Oklahoma Spammer Fighter Loses Even Worse

Last December I wrote about Mark Mumma, who runs a small web hosting company in Oklahoma City and his battle with Omega World Travel a/k/a cruise.com. Mumma lost his CAN SPAM suit agains them in December, but Omega's countersuit for defamation went to trial last week, and I hear that the jury awarded Omega $2.5 million in damages, which Mumma is not likely to be able to pay. This may be painted in some circles as a huge defeat for anti-spam activists, but it's not... more

Who Will Secure the Internet of Things?

Over the past several months, CITP-affiliated Ph.D. student Sarthak Grover and fellow Roya Ensafi been investigating various security and privacy vulnerabilities of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in the home network, to get a better sense of the current state of smart devices that many consumers have begun to install in their homes. To explore this question, we purchased a collection of popular IoT devices, connected them to a laboratory network at CITP, and monitored the traffic that these devices exchanged with the public Internet. more

The Importance of Understanding Attacker Target Selection

There's a bit of a debate going on about whether the Kaseya attack exploited a 0-day vulnerability. While that's an interesting question when discussing, say, patch management strategies, I think it's less important to understand attackers' thinking than understand their target selection. In a nutshell, the attackers have outmaneuvered defenders for almost 30 years when it comes to target selection. more

SnapNames: Why the WLS is Better for Consumers

In 2002, VeriSign, the registry for .COM and .NET domain names, proposed the idea of a centralized, registry-level "wait list" for currently registered domain names. The system would let anyone around the world get "next in line" for a name that is registered now but may become available later.

This new registry service, titled Wait List System (or WLS), would augment what is now an ad-hoc group of registrar-level services that are useful, but aren't always fully dependable or even available to the general public. more

Bashbleed - A Nasty Reminder Never to Forget Security 101

After the botched burglary at the Watergate Apartments, every scam and scandal that hit the headlines became a 'gate' -- Irangate, Contragate, you name it. The Heartbleed bug is possibly the closest thing to Watergate that this generation of computer security had seen till the past few days -- an exploit in a component that is "just there" -- something you utterly rely on to be there and perform its duties, and give very little thought to how secure (or rather, insecure) it might be. So, fittingly, every such catastrophic bug in an ubiquitous component is now a 'bleed'. more

ICANN and the Data Quality Act: Part I

The first part of a multi-part series report by ICANNfocus. This part discusses the history of the data quality act. "The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE) has determined that ICANN is subject to the Data Quality Act. Specifically, because ICANN carries out the technical management of the internet, including the IANA function and the implementation of new top level domains, under agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce, ICANN's information disseminations are "sponsored" by the Department and thus subject to the Act." more

IPv4 Addresses Not Property, Canada Weighs in on the Nortel/Microsoft Transfer

The recent tempest in a teacup on ARINs PPML list over the transfer of IP address blocks from Nortel (a company in Chapter 11) to Microsoft has some interesting Internet Governance dimensions that are yet to be discussed. One aspect that has been overlooked amidst all the sound and fury, is the governmental perspective on IP address transfers. more

ICANN Meets in Kuala Lumpur

Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has released the following announcement today for its upcoming meetings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: ICANN, the international organisation responsible for managing and coordinating the Internet's Domain Name System is meeting in Kuala Lumpur 19-24 July, amidst reports that Internet usage in Asia is growing at an increasing pace, and that ICANN's model of public-private partnership is succeeding. more

Cyber Threats Yes, But Is It Cyber War?

Last night Intelligence Squared and Neustar conducted a fascinating, Oxford style debate on whether the threat of cyber war has been exaggerated. A packed house at the Newseum in Washington, DC heard four cyber heavyweights go toe-to-toe verbally both for and against the proposition that the threat has been exaggerated. more

Passwords Are Not Enough: Without Two Factor Authentication Your Business Is At Risk

Passwords are no longer sufficient to maintain an adequate level of security for business critical infrastructure and services. Two-factor authentication should be considered the minimum acceptable level of access control. There have been two types of security stories in the technology news over the last few months that should be of particular concern to system administrators and those responsible for maintaining business network infrastructure. more

Future of Cloud Computing and Why It’s Here to Stay

Nowadays, everybody is talking about cloud computing. Fans say it's the future, the answer to every problem with computing as we know it; others say it's just a fad and will eventually die. Who's right? While nobody knows the future, the fact is, enough evidence is available that we can all reasonably predict what's coming. Consider these facts... more

NeuStar Experiences Partial Outage as DynDNS Tries to Turn up the Heat

NeuStar's UltraDNS faced attack on two fronts on Tuesday, March 31. One of the attacks was technical -- a massive denial-of-service attack. The second was a rather surprising opening strike from competitor Dynamic Network Services (DynDNS), which launched a full-scale (and in T1R's opinion, misguided) public relations broadside. First, to the actual denial of service attack. Contrary to many early reports, UltraDNS was not 'down' on Tuesday... more

Aviation: The Dirty, Not-So-Little Secret of Internet Governance

Almost a year ago, I began writing about the relationship between the Internet/information and communications technologies (ICTs), the environment, and sustainability. One of the points I made in my first article on the subject is that there is much more we as a community can do to reduce our ecological footprint and enhance the sustainability of the Internet... This necessity combined with the ever-growing urgency to act hit hard when I recently read a New York Times article about how bad flying is for the environment. more