Featured Blogs

A Look at Mail Patterns from Legitimate Webmail Sources

For many years, I have tracked spam from botnets and reported on it. I have analyzed those botnets' distribution patterns by number of IPs, number of messages per email envelope and geographical distribution. While spam from botnets is interesting, and the main source of spam, it is not the only source of spam. What about spam that originates from the MAGY sources? more

IPv6 for Mobile Networks: Time to Act Now!

Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) serve the largest constituent of connected devices. There are over 4.6B GSM (and its derivatives) subscriptions today. When you add the CDMA family along with technologies with smaller footprints such as WiMax, IDEN to this list, that number tops 5B mark. On the other hand there are only (yes only!) 800M Internet hosts per ISC. Considering such a small percentage of those 5B or so devices are capable of being an Internet host and out of that percentage even a much smaller percentage is connected at a given time, one can understand the sheer potential of explosion in the number of Internet hosts as mobile devices in the next 3-5 years. more

Spamhaus Tells Us That Botnets Are Getting Worse

The Spamhaus Project just published a long article about the botnets they've been watching during 2014. As this chart shows, we're not making any progress. They also note that the goals of botnets have changed. While in the past they were mostly used to send spam, now they're stealing banking and financial information, engaging in click fraud, and used for DDoS and other malicious mischief. more

IPv6 Inside Everything and Everybody

With the market for connected humans reaching saturation in advanced economies, mobile operators now see connected devices as the next growth opportunity. 'Everything that can benefit from being connected will be connected', according to Ericsson's CTO (source). In the meantime, Intel dreams of embedding processors into everything that can gain something from communicating. more

Starlink Comes to Africa - Markets and Competition

SpaceX Starlink Internet service will be available in several African nations in the second quarter of this year, and the price in Nigeria has been announced -- $600 for the "residential" terminal and a monthly fee of $43. Is there a market for Starlink at that price in Nigeria and other Sub-Saharan African nations? The IMF projects a GDP per capita of $2,580 for Nigeria this year (and $1,900 in Sub-Saharan Africa and $2,260 for Africa overall) so the market for individual consumer accounts will be much smaller than in what the IMF refers to as "advanced economies." more

Wireless VoIP: Loss Leader or Upselling Strategy?

Verizon Wireless' decision to allow their subscribers to access Skype raises a question about strategy. Is Verizon leveraging Skype access as an inducement for subscribers to upgrade to smartphones and commit to $30 a month data plans, has the company acknowledged that its future marketplace success lies in data and not voice services, and how will the company prevent a substantial reduction in plain old voice subscriptions priced above the $30 data plan benchmark? more

WiFi in All U.S. Federal Buildings

Legislation has been introduced in the US that will require all public federal buildings to install WiFi base stations in order to free up cell phone networks. The Federal Wi-Net Act would mandate the installation of small WiFi base stations in all publicly accessible federal buildings in order to increase wireless coverage and free up mobile networks. The bill would require all new buildings under construction to comply and all older buildings to be retrofitted by 2014. It also orders $15 million from the Federal Buildings Fund be allocated to fund the installations. more

In Congress, A Confusing Argument Against New TLDs

In a recent post to CircleID entitled New Domains and ICANN Accountability, Steve DelBianco paints himself as "frustrated" that ICANN didn't take a different path toward new Top-Level Domains (TLDs). Mr. DelBianco was one of four witnesses at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts and Competition on September 23, 2009. He is a creative advocate for his clients, an engaging speaker, and a skillful writer, and he produced a synopsis of the hearing which sounded convincing -- until I tried to make sense of it. more

How Frequently Do Botnets Reuse IP Addresses?

I wonder how much botnets reuse IP addresses. Do they infect a system and spam, get blocked, discard the IP and move onto the next (new) one? This means that they have a nearly unlimited supply of IP addresses. Or do they infect a system and spam, get blocked, and then let it go dormant only to awaken it some time later? I decided to take a look. more

IPv6… the Internet Dragon Stirred Under Its Shell

At Cisco Networkers in Barcelona earlier this week, some of us saw a dragon try to wiggle out of its shell, provided you connected in IPv6 that is. A smile to Kame, the turtle which only danced under a IPv6 caress. Networkers 2009 saw more than 3000 attendants and a good complement of IPv6 presentations highlighted by a high powered plenary panel on the status of IPv6. more

The Wall Between Registries and Registrars Comes Tumbling Down

The ICANN Board has just voted to get rid of all co-ownership restrictions between domain registries and registrars. This is major news, with far-reaching consequences... This is the only principled decision the ICANN Board could have come to, and they deserve a lot of credit for doing it. By "principled," I mean taking ICANN's stated institutional principles and following them to their logical conclusion... more

Trust in Email Begins with Authentication

As most CAUCE supporters already know, forging 'From:' or other commonly seen email headers is trivially easy. It's one of the most frustrating oversights in the creation of Internet email technology -- though of course that's only obvious in hindsight; it was just fine for the pre-Internet networks of the late 1970s and early-mid 1980s. Since then, things have changed -- and the most interesting recent technological advancements in email have been in the realm of sender authentication, which encompasses ways to verify that the apparent sender of a message actually is the entity which sent it. more

Starlink Making a Space Grab

SpaceNews recently reported that Elon Musk and his low-orbit space venture Starlink have filed with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to launch an additional 30,000 broadband satellites in addition to the 11,927 now in the planning stages. This looks like a land grab and Musk is hoping to grab valuable orbital satellite paths to keep them away from competitors. more

Identical or Confusingly Similar to Trademarks but Noninfringing Domain Names

Domain names may be confusingly similar to trademarks or even identical or but not infringing. This is particularly true of trademarks acquired later than the allegedly infringing domain names ArcBest Corporation v. Domains By Proxy, LLC, Registration Private / Vernon Troupe, D2016-2381 (WIPO January 13, 2017) (<arcbest.com>, in which "ark" is a contraction of "Arkansas"), but it can also apply to marks composed of common element that predate domain name registration... more

Who Is Going to Dominate the Internet?

While the internet has brought about the transformation of whole industry sectors and generated thousands of business models, as well as changing social behaviour, it is at the same time creating its own giants and dominant players. Does this mean that while certain vested interests are demolished, and others transform themselves into smaller sectors and organisations, new conglomerates will surface? Only time will tell more