Featured Blogs

New gTLDs: Will Application Developers Be Ready In Time to Secure User Confidence?

Last week I pointed out a potential problem with the user experience, if, as envisioned, a large number of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) are added to the root at the same time. The problem I was referring to has nothing to do with the new gTLDs themselves. Rather, it's about the lack of any updated procedures and communication campaigns to application and software vendors. The objective would be to alert them in time and equip them to swiftly update their programs... more

2014 M3AAWG Mary Litynski Award Nominations Now Being Accepted

In 2010 the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M³AAWG) and the Internet industry as a whole lost a great friend and supporter, Mary Litynski. Her dedication, excellence, perseverance and tireless work behind the scenes of M³AAWG helped make the organization the success that it is today. Through this award, M³AAWG seeks to bring attention to the remarkable work that is done far from the public eye over a significant period of time... more

The Path to Combatting Domain Abuse

Completely eradicating malware, botnets, phishing, pharming, and spam from the Domain Name System is not possible. That may be an odd statement from someone who just took the leadership position at the DNS Abuse Institute, but it's meant to underscore the scope of the work ahead of us. There will always be bad actors exploiting the DNS for their own criminal purposes, but working together, we can mitigate their impact. more

The Association of National Advertisers Blinders on New TLDs

I read with interest the piece by the Chairman of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), Garry Elliot, in Advertising Age, which was partly prompted by my commentary in the same publication describing why new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) could be an opportunity for some brands. He says: "From all I've seen, no matter how one tries to justify ICANN's process or the benefits it speculates will occur, it is simply impossible to defend the economics of the ICANN proposal. That is the Achilles' heel of this entire exercise. To paraphrase an old saying, 'It's the economics, stupid.'" more

Spam Continues to Drop

The chart in this post shows the amount of inbound mail that we see, both spam and non-spam, over the past three and a half years. You can see in the above that the amount of good mail that we see has continued to increase over time. This is because of an increased customer base, not because the total amount of good mail worldwide has gone up... However, the amount of spam has plummeted from 23,000 in mid 2010 to 5000 now, a drop of over 75%. The contrast couldn't be starker -- spammers are not spamming as much anymore. It almost looks like the battle against spam is almost over. What's still left to do? more

Watch ION Belfast / UKNOF Live Tuesday, Sept 9, for IPv6, DNSSEC, BGP Security and More

On Tuesday, September 9, 2014, you have a great opportunity to watch live a very packed agenda full of great sessions about IPv6, DNSSEC, routing/BGP security and other components of Internet infrastructure streaming out of the UKNOF / ION Belfast event in Belfast, UK. All of the sessions can be seen live. more

Why Farmers Are Using Wifi to Grow Your Grapes

Recently, California farmer Craig Thompson got a pretty nifty upgrade for his irrigation: a broadband-connected Hydrawise control system that would automatically manage and monitor the irrigation of his olive and grape fields and collect data to alert him if there was a problem. He woke up the next morning to fields he could have assumed were appropriately hydrated, but the Hydrawise system quickly proved its worth when he looked at the data coming out of it. more

Why Businesses Aren’t Hanging Up Landlines Yet

There was a recent article in the Wall Street Journal that noted that the business world still uses a lot of landline telephones. Landline telephones have been steadily disappearing from homes, but are still not gone. I see ISPs still selling a telephone line to 10% or more of passings, and surveys show that the average residential landline penetration rate is still somewhere between 15% and 20%. more

Encryption and Securing Our Digital Economy

As G20 leaders from around the world gather this week, Germany wants them to agree to a concrete plan -- one that includes affordable Internet access across the world by 2025, common technical standards and a focus on digital learning. Today, the G20 economies, like so many other economies around the world, are digital and interconnected. Digital services have opened up new avenues for sustainable economic growth. more

The Real Threat to the Single Root of the Internet Seems to Come from ICANN Itself, of All Places

The proposed final Guidebook for the New generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) and Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) gTLDs contains elements that raise grave risks to the ICANN single root of the Internet caused by none other than ICANN itself. Below is my intervention at the ICANN Cartagena Public Forum today. ICANN President and CEO Mr. Rod Beckstrom was prompt to reply and acknowledge the validity of my statement adding that ICANN is fully aware of the problem. more

The Internet Community Says Thank You to ICANN for New TLDs

After more than six years of consultation and negotiation regarding the New Top-Level Domain Program, the ICANN Board this week approved the program to the pleasure of many within the Internet community. For this, we say thank you to ICANN on a job well done! The New Top-Level Domain (TLD) Program has been controversial at times and has fuelled many passionate debates within the Internet community. more

Introduction: ICANN’s Alternative Path to Delegation (Part 1 of 4)

As widely discussed recently, observed within the ICANN community several years ago, and anticipated in the broader technical community even earlier, the introduction of a new generic top-level domain (gTLD) at the global DNS root could result in name collisions with previously installed systems. Such systems sometimes send queries to the global DNS with domain name suffixes that, under reasonable assumptions at the time the systems were designed, may not have been expected to be delegated as gTLDs. more

Google as a Real-time Blackhole List

For those not familiar with RBL, the term means Real-time Blackhole List, it is mainly used for SPAM fighting. I have recently started playing around with Google as an RBL engine, the idea is that if the search term I use hits too many hits it is likely to be SPAM. The danger of course is that the term could be simply popular -- but the trick here is that I'm using something very special as the search term -- the IP address of the poster. more

Port 43 Failures Continue to Haunt

On February 16, 2012 ICANN took the new step of suspending the Registrar Alantron's ability to register new names or accept inbound domain transfers. This new compliance tool was used following Alantron's apparently inadequate response to a breach notice issued November 7, 2011. The issue in part concerns Alantron's perpetual problems with Port 43 WHOIS access which is required by the Registrar Accreditation Agreement. more

Ten Years of Passive DNS

The report, "A Decade of Passive DNS" provides a longitudinal analysis of the use and popularity of top-level domains over a ten-year period. The findings are based on what Farsight Security has seen in passive DNS from 2010-2019 based on a ten-year data rollup, excluding DNSSEC-related records. This study allows us to report on four measures for that period for each of the 1,576 IANA-recognized TLDs. more