Featured Blogs

A Quick Look at QUIC

Quick UDP Internet Connection (QUIC) is a network protocol initially developed and deployed by Google, and now being standardized in the Internet Engineering Task Force. In this article we'll take a quick tour of QUIC, looking at what goals influenced its design, and what implications QUIC might have on the overall architecture of the Internet Protocol. more

Understand the Value of Defensive Domain Registrations

The bulk of corporate domain portfolios largely consist of defensive registrations which often include common misspellings, product names, and abbreviations in countries where they may not even be doing business. More than ever, with the launch of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) expected to occur next year, companies are now taking a hard look at their defensive holdings and asking themselves whether or not they really need all of these registrations. more

I Never Signed Up for This! Privacy Implications of Email Tracking

What happens when you open an email and allow it to display embedded images and pixels? You may expect the sender to learn that you've read the email, and which device you used to read it. But in a new paper we find that privacy risks of email tracking extend far beyond senders knowing when emails are viewed. Opening an email can trigger requests to tens of third parties, and many of these requests contain your email address. more

IPv4 Address Exhaustion and a Trading Market

There are discussions starting within the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) about the creation of trading market in IPv4 addresses as we approach the inevitable exhaustion of unallocated addresses. The view being put forward is basically "this is likely to happen anyway and by discussing it now, we can ensure it happens in an orderly way". When I first heard this idea I was a bit surprised. The RIRs are policy based bodies and so a shift to a trading market appears to be an abandonment of that policy base. However I have been partly corrected on that. more

What Do Bitcoin, Cloud Computing and the New gTLDs All Have in Common?

I am a student of life, learning one hard lesson at a time. In fact, I actually dropped out of my last year of college to start a tech company in a new space called the internet. I was an entrepreneur running an online service prior to the advent of the world wide web in 1992, back when Pine, Usenet, and Gopher ruled the information superhighway. Over the last 25 years, I have learned a great deal about technology adoption cycles by launching six internet companies, each at the forefront of a new technology wave. more

Is IPv6 a Boon to Criminals and Foe to the FBI?

Declan McCullagh recently opined that the "FBI [and the] DEA warn [that] IPv6 could shield criminals from police." His post was picked-up relatively widely in the past few days, with the headlines adding more hyperbole along the way. So just how real is this threat? Let's take a look. more

Recent COPA Ruling Shedding Light on Usefulness of XXX as Voluntary Self Regulatory Vehicle?

ICM Registry applauds the decision yesterday of Judge Lowell Reed of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in ACLU v. Gonzales to permanently enjoin enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act ("COPA"). Praising Judge Reed's meticulously documented opinion, ICM Registry President Stuart Lawley said, "This continues the unbroken chain of court decisions in the U.S. upholding free expression on the Internet, and it underscores the superiority of voluntary measures that empower users to select content compared with government regulations." Lawley concluded, "Now, more than ever, it underscores the need for ICANN to approve the proposal for a voluntary .xxx domain as another alternative to government regulation." more

If ICANN Won’t Stand Up to EU in WHOIS Dispute, Then the U.S. Congress Should

The early designers of the Internet quickly realized that as the number of domain names flourished, there was a need for tracking domain name owners to resolve questions and conflicts that might arise. To that end, they created WHOIS, a public database with the names, phone numbers, email addresses, and mailing addresses of registered domain owners and operators. more

Top 4 Lessons from CCTA 2014

Sun, surf, and ... service operators? It's a match made in heaven! The Caribbean cable and telecommunications industry may not be large, but it is an important and fast-growing region. The recent Caribbean Cable & Telecommunications Association (CCTA) Annual Meeting in Puerto Rico threw the spotlight on this slice of paradise and I was there to catch up on some of the trends emerging for the year ahead. more

The Dark Internet

I consult on communication issues for Neustar, an Internet infrastructure company. As most CircleIDers know, Neustar works behind the scenes to ensure the smooth operation of many critical systems like DNS, .us and .biz, local number portability and digital rights management. One of the cool things about working for them is the chance to attend the events they sponsor. Last week Neustar held a security briefing for senior federal IT personnel focused on Cybersecurity and Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC)... more

IP Blocklists, Email, and IPv6

Engineers in the Internet Engineering Task Force, in the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group, and elsewhere have been debating how to handle e-mail-server blocklists in an IPv6 network. Let's take a look at the problem here. We basically have three ways to address spam, in our goal of reducing the amount of spam in our inboxes... more

Tony La Russa’s Legal Claims Against Twitter Look Tenuous

It was bound to happen of course - someone sued Twitter for not verifying a "celebrity" or brand account. Mashable reports on a lawsuit brought by Tony La Russa, who is apparently a manager for the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. Mashable and others initially reported that La Russa and Twitter had resolved this one. It turns out they haven't after all. So what to make of Mr. La Russa's claims? more

What is ‘Pharming’ and Should You Be Worried?

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! ...or is it? What is this thing called "pharming"? Put simply, it's redirection of web traffic, so that the server you think you're talking to actually belongs to a criminal. For example: you think you're talking to www.examplebank.com because it says so in the browser's address bar, but actually you're connected to www.mafia-R-us.ru. This can happen in three main ways: 1. DNS Hijack: a social engineering attack on the Internet infrastructure... more

The State of the Internet - 2024

It’s been a while since I took a look at the worldwide Internet. The statistics cited below come from Datareportal. The world population in January 2024 was 8.08 billion, up 74 million from a year earlier, a growth rate of 0.9%. There were 5.61 billion unique mobile subscribers in January, up 138 million (2.5%) over a year earlier. 5.35 billion people used the Internet at the end of 2023, up 97 million (1.8%) from a year earlier. more

Identity Theft: Giving Away Your Personal Information

Identity theft is apparently the "in thing" these days. By media accounts, hackers and evildoers lurk everywhere trying to steal your personal information. In the past few months, one company after another is being forced to admit customer data has been lost or stolen. In many cases, they have them come forth repeatedly over the next few weeks, or even months revising the estimated number of impacted customers. To date, I don't think any have ever lowered those numbers. ...Let's consider two events that didn't make the front page of C|Net or CNN.  more