Featured Blogs

A Closer Look at the Flame/Flamer/sKyWIper Malware

The world is abuzz this week with some flaming malware - well "Flame" is the family name if you want to be precise. The malware package itself is considerably larger than what you'll typically bump into on average, but the interest it is garnering with the media and antivirus vendors has more to do with the kinds of victims that have sprung up - victims mostly in the Middle East, including Iran - and a couple of vendors claiming the malware as being related to Stuxnet and Duku. more

Connectivity in Every Language: Building a Multilingual Internet Together

Around the world, communities are racing to close the digital divide. From fiber deployments in rural areas to affordable smartphones and digital skills training, the goal is clear: connect the unconnected. But as we pursue that goal, a deeper question emerges that demands just as much urgency as infrastructure: When people get online, can they actually participate in the digital world? more

ICANN Has Opened Up Opportunities for Everyone Including Africa

The ICANN latest reveal of the applications pending batching has shown a number of very crucial details of what the new domains system is like. The new system before batching presents new applications with the North Americas having the highest applications amounting to 911, Europe follows with 675, Asia pacific which already has one continental domain .asia has three hundred and three domains, Latin America which shares the same ecological niche with Africa has 24 new applications 7 domains higher than Africa which has presented 17 new domains. more

Response Policy Zones (RPZs): Use as a Blocklisting Process

Gradually it seems the word is spreading about a new blocking methodology to interrupt the ability of end users to click and visit phishing sites - thereby having their personal information/credentials at risk. This is the DNS Response Policy Zones. DNS RPZs allows companies that run recursive resolvers to create a zone that will not resolve specific domains. more

Are We Ready to Defend Our Freedom? Book Review: “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”

It is not often that you read a book where afterward nothing seems the same again. Like Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Shoshana Zuboff's book: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power,, puts what we do in these times into a context and gives a focus to ongoing issues of privacy and governance with regard to the Domain Name System. This is even more astonishing as the book does not even mention the DNS, the Internet ecosystem or even Internet Governance directly. more

Reducing Unreachable ICANN Registrations

Recently ICANN published a report on inaccurate registration data in her own databases. Now the question is presented to the world how can we mitigate this problem? There seems to be a very easy solution. ... The question to this answer seems simple. To know who has registered with an organisation. This makes it possible to contact the registered person or organisation, to send bills and to discuss policy with the members. more

When Proxy Services Enable Abuse

People are growing increasingly alarmed by recent examples of bad actors abusing proxy services offered by registrars. While proxy services are designed to protect the privacy of legitimate domain name users - they do the opposite when abused by cybercriminals. Responsible Proxy providers play a key role in mitigating abuse. When they don't act responsibly - it's clear they contribute to the problem. more

IPv6 is Growing in Maturity, but Not Necessarily in Adoption

According to Google native IPv6 penetration has structurally crossed the 0.2% mark as a percentage of total traffic on the Internet in early 2011. This may not seem much, but it has doubled in a year, in an Internet that is still growing exponentially. more

Call for Participation - DNSSEC Workshop at ICANN 54 in Dublin, Ireland

Would you like to present an idea you have related to DNSSEC or DANE to a gathering of people within the DNSSEC community? Do you have an idea for a new tool or service? Have you recently implemented DNSSEC or DANE and want to share your story? The deadline is Monday, August 17, so please send your proposal soon! We are open to proposals on a wide range of topics... more

Name Collisions II - A Call for Research

This post is a heads up to all uber-geeks about a terrific research initiative to try to figure out causes and mitigation of name-collision risk. There's a $50,000 prize for the first-place paper, a $25,000 prize for the second place paper and up to five $10,000 prizes for third-place papers. That kind of money could buy a lot of toys, my peepul. And the presentation of those papers will be in London -- my favorite town for curry this side of India. Interested? Read on. more

Top Three Reasons to Just Say No to ICANN’s Current EOI gTLD Proposal

On December 9, 2009, the ICANN Board announced its intention to vote during its upcoming February 4, 2010 meeting to approve a plan by which ICANN would solicit "Expressions of Interest" (EOI) from prospective applicants for new Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) such as .BLOG. But given a number of significant governance and public policy concerns raised by the current EOI proposal, the ICANN Board should take no action on it before the next in-person ICANN regional meeting--in Nairobi, March 3-7, 2010. more

The End of the Experiment

Amidst a firestorm of debate, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has experimented with various forms of governance of the domain name system (DNS) involving input from the Internet community since its founding in 1998. ICANN's experimentation in running a representative and open corporate decision-making process has largely failed. This failure has manifested itself most explicitly by ICANN's retreat from its effort to enable the direct election of a subset of its Board members and, less explicitly, by the extent to which other efforts to engage the Internet user community in the decision-making process have proven ineffective. more

Surveillance Capitalist in Chief

Surveillance capitalism monetizes private data that it collects without consent of the individuals concerned, data to analyze and sell to advertisers and opinion-makers. There was always an intricate relationship between governments and surveillance capitalists. Governments have the duty to protect their citizens from the excesses of surveillance capitalism. On the other hand, governments use that data, and surveillance capitalism's services and techniques. more

Satellite Broadband, Stimulus Funds and Network Neutrality

At the IP Satellite Summit in Washington this week, a panel composed of satellite service providers and product vendors discussed whether or not they would pursue the economic stimulus funds set aside for broadband development. While the service providers agreed that there are viable business models for satellite broadband service without the stimulus money – of course, they were delivering service before the current economic collapse and talk of the stimulus money – the consensus seemed to be that they would apply for the grants to further develop, deploy and perhaps even subsidize their service offerings... more

Holiday Read: Questions of a Global Digital Citizen Before She Enters Her First Self Driving Car

Imagine that you are considering the purchase of your first self-driving car. You anticipate the benefits of sensors and steering that avoid accidents, conserve energy and keep you in contact with emergency personnel should you need help. You unlock the door, get situated in the driver's seat and are about to engage the ignition and then a question pops into your mind, "Is it really safe"? To answer that question, we need to understand first, that the car is not being controlled by Artificial General Intelligence... more