Featured Blogs

CALEA Roundup: 2005-2007

The wrangling around the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) is one of those issues that creeps inexorably forward and is hard to follow unless you're really focusing. So here is a quick, if longish, overview: CALEA is a 1994 statute that requires telephone companies to design their services so that they are easily tappable by law enforcement in need of "call-identifying information." Back in August 2005, following a request from the Dept. of Justice, the Commission moved swiftly to impose CALEA obligations on providers of broadband access services and "interconnected VoIP" services... more

Domain Name Registries Must Do More to Protect Highly-Trafficked Domains

With the recent attacks against high-profile New Zealand domain names including Coca-Cola.co.nz and F-Secure.co.nz, fingers are naturally pointing to Domainz, the registrar of record for these domains, as the party responsible for this lapse in security. While domain name registrars certainly need to ensure the security and stability of their systems, domain name registries must also step up and take responsibility for mitigating risks posed by hackers... more

DNSSEC is But One Link in the Security Chain

As the implementation of DNSSEC continues to gather momentum and with a number of ccTLDs, and the '.org' gTLD having deployed it into their production systems, I think it is worth pausing to take a look at the entire DNSSEC situation. Whilst it is absolutely clear that DNSSEC is a significant step forward in terms of securing the DNS, it is but one link in the security chain and is therefore not, in itself, a comprehensive solution to fully securing the DNS system. more

Why We’ll Never Replace SMTP

An acquaintance asked whether there's been any progress in the oft-rumored project to come up with a more secure replacement for SMTP. Answer: No. Truly, spam isn't a technical problem, it's a social one. If we could figure out some way to make mail recipient networks and hosts willing to shun known bad actors, even at the cost of losing some real mail for a while until the bad actors cave, it would make vastly more difference than any possible technical changes. more

The $100 Billion National Broadband Plan for America

The new Biden Administration in the USA laid out a $100 billion proposal for broadband investment as part of its $2 trillion+ infrastructure plan. Under the proposal, the plan is to provide national broadband coverage. The Administration will use better competition measures, such as price transparency, the use of public utility infrastructure, and subsidies for low-income households to achieve its goals. more

97% of All Global 2000 Companies at Risk from SAD DNS Attack

There is a new threat in town known as "SAD DNS" that allows attackers to redirect traffic, putting companies at risk of phishing, data breach, reputation damage, and revenue loss. What is SAD DNS? No, it isn't the domain name system (DNS) feeling moody, but an acronym for a new-found threat -- "Side-channel AttackeD DNS" discovered by researchers that could revive DNS cache poisoning attacks. more

Haiti’s Telecommunications Sector in the Aftermath

The scale of the devastation inflicted by Haiti's earthquake a little over two weeks ago, meant that no industry has been left untouched by its effect. The telecommunications sector is no exception. Ever since the earthquake struck on Tuesday 12th January, fixed line and wireless communications have been virtually unavailable. more

Google Voice: Race to the Bottom for Telephony - or Something Else?

Just when you thought making phone calls couldn't get any cheaper, along comes last week's news from Google about their latest iteration of Google Voice. There have been several steps along the way for Google to get to this point, and there are a host of reasons why this news is of interest to service providers of all stripes. I often write about how certain technologies and disruptive forces change the business of being a service provider, and this is but the latest example. more

How to Preserve the .org Registry’s Integrity in the ISOC Sale of PIR

This article addresses the issues around the planned sale of the PIR .org registry by ISOC. It examines the history and issues plus looks at several possible paths forward, including PIR becoming a Benefit Corporation (B-Corp) and identifying possible alternative buyers who could retain PIR's non-profit status. Before Tim Bernier-Lee brought the HTML markup language to the Internet, starting in 1989, there were few registered domain names. Access for public registration started in 1986, and by December, there were about five dozen registered .com domain names.  more

Just Say No, to Your ISP Subverting Your DNS Queries

Over the past few weeks I have been seeing reports that some ISP's are actually subverting DNS queries to their own DNS server. Oh the humanity! What this means is that when you (your computer) does a UDP or TCP Port 53 DNS query the ISP is intercepting that and directing it to their own servers. Has anyone been told by their ISP that they are doing this? No? I didn't think so... more

Celebrating Six Years Since World IPv6 Launch - and How Far IPv6 Has Come!

Six years ago today, organizations all across the Internet came together as part of World IPv6 Launch to permanently enable IPv6 on their networks. Today, from that tiny launch the global Internet has grown to where over 25% of users are regularly connecting over IPv6. In some regions, this is significantly higher. For example, 237 million people in India connect over IPv6. Some mobile operators have over 80 or 90% of their devices connecting over IPv6. more

Fraudulent Transfer: Recovering Stolen Domain Names

Either because of laxness on the part domain name holders or cunning on the part of thieves, registrars have been duped into transferring domain names to fraudsters' accounts. I discussed the matter last year in Recovering Domain Names Lost to Fraudulent Transfer. These cases are mostly filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, for the good reason that the registry for dot com is located in that jurisdiction and they are mostly recovered. more

Recent Enhancements to ARIN’s whoIS-RWS Service

ARIN deployed a series of enhancements to its Whois-RWS service today. This includes enabling CIDR support and IPv6 lookups in the search box on the web page, provided plain text rendering of lists of ASNs and networks on the web - plus enhanced CIDR query matching on WHOIS port 43. more

Internet Repotting About to Start!

February 4th 2008 will be the day the repotting of the internet finally starts. A milestone of sorts for some people who spent a good part of the last five years getting us this far. It should now be finally possible for a IPv6 only device to have a chance to communicate on the Internet. Indeed, today, IPv6 address information is not included in most root DNS servers. Some good write-ups are already appearing on the subject covering the relevance of this development... Why get excited as there are practically no IPv6 only devices yet, some will bemoan. Well, one can hear a distant rumbling of such devices coming, alongside the mobile internet... more

More on the Front Running Class Action Suit

Several people pointed out that although the suit still hasn't appeared in PACER, copies of the complaint are available online, including this one [PDF] at Lextext. Having read it, I'm rather underwhelmed... I do not purport to be a lawyer (nor do I usually play one on the net), but it's hard to see how the facts, which are not in serious dispute, would support any of these charges. more