Featured Blogs

Phone Always Busy? Must be DDoS on VoIP Network

Amidst the fascinating news from the SCO saga, preparing for SANS London and contributing to the Unix timeline project at Grokline my eyes caught a piece of rather distressing news on the BBC. It appears that BT (British Telecom) intends to move its current phone network to an IP-based network by 2009 thereby sending the circuit-switched technology off to the attic. The real question is: can we guarantee the same level of reliability on VoIP as we had on circuit-switched telephony when the stated aim is to carry both voice and data traffic down the same cables (or fibres more likely)? more

DNS Policy is Hop by Hop; DNS Security is End to End

The debate continues as to whether ISP's can effectively filter DNS results in order to protect brand and copyright holders from online infringement. It's noteworthy that there is no argument as to whether these rights holders and their properties deserve protection - nobody is saying "content wants to be free" and there is general agreement that it is harder to protect rights in the Internet era where perfect copies of can be made and distributed instantaneously. What we're debating now is just whether controlling DNS at the ISP level would work at all and whether the attempt to insert such controls would damage Secure DNS (sometimes called DNSSEC). more

13th Registration Operations Workshop: Join Us Online on June 4th, 2024

As a member of the ROW Planning Committee, I am writing this post on behalf of the Committee and welcome all community members to join us on June 4th. We are celebrating ROW's 10th anniversary! A decade of collaboration and inspiration! Thank you to the incredible community that has fueled this journey! more

Latest Turn of Events on .XXX, from ICANN Wellington

As the ICANN's week-long meeting in Wellington, New Zealand is now fully underway, the approval of the proposed .XXX top-level domain (TLD) continues to remain a key topic of discussion and its eventual approval yet uncertain. The .XXX TLD was widely expected to receive its final approval at the ICANN's last meeting held in Vancouver about 4 months earlier but the discussion was unexpectedly delayed as the organization and governments requested more time to review the merits of setting up such a domain. Stuart Lawley, president of the would-be .XXX operator ICM Registry LLC offers his comments from Wellington. more

The Design of the Domain Name System, Part VIII - Names Outside the DNS

In previous installments we've been looking at aspects of the design of the DNS. In today's grand finale we look at the the subtle but very knotty issue of names inside and outside the DNS. In the early years of the DNS, domain names were typically resolved to A records which were used to identify a host running a service. With the notable exception of e-mail, once the host was identified, the name no longer mattered. more

Multistakeholderism Is Working: Even in Exile

I'm happy to report (mostly) positive feedback on my last article that examined how the multistakeholder model tackled, and tackled well, Phase 1 of the review of all Rights Protection Mechanisms. While bad news may sell more clicks, a little good news from time to time also appears to be welcome. Good news also reminds us of how fortunate we are to have a private sector ICANN with a multistakeholder model of policy development... more

Communicate.com to Receive $1 Million for Four Domain Names

An e-commerce company, Communicate.com Inc., that develops, owns, and operates a network of websites specializing in travel, consumer goods, sports/lifestyle and B-to-B (business to business) has announced that it has entered into an agreement to sell Automobile.com, Exercise.com, Body.com and Makeup.com for $1 million to Manhattan Assets, Inc., a private U.S. corporation. A non-refundable initial payment of $200,000 has been received. more

What’s Driving Spam and Domain Fraud? Illicit Drug Traffic

Spam is not about who sent it, it's about who benefits from it. For a moment forget everything you know about filters, zombie PCs, firewalls, spoofing, viruses, beisyan algorithms, header forgery, botnets, or blacklists. These are all methods for sending spam or preventing spam delivery. None of these explain why spam is sent and for far too long all the attention has been paid to the effects and not the driving force. Under the endless onslaught of junk mail it is easy to feel that the goal of the game is send spam and annoy us all. more

VeriSign’s Anti-Trust Claim Against ICANN Dismissed

ICANN confirmed today that Judge A. Howard Matz of the U.S. District Court, Central District of California has issued an order dismissing VeriSign, Inc.'s anti-trust claims against ICANN, with prejudice. In dismissing VeriSign's anti-trust claims, Judge Matz noted that VeriSign had failed in its first amended complaint to sufficiently allege an anti-trust claim. more

A Further Look Into ORSN

Most commentators on Vixie's astounding message have gotten sidetracked. People don't seem to see the most important feature of his statement: Vixie's endorsement of Open Root Server Network (ORSN) is based on explicitly political criteria. As ORSN says on its web site: "The U.S.A (under the current or any future administration) are theoretically and practically able to control "our" accesses to contents of the Internet and are also able to limit them. A manipulation of the Root zone could cause that the whole name space .DE is not attainable any more for the remaining world - outside from Germany." So ORSN sees this as a "backup"... more

The Rumors of Sender ID’s Demise Are Exaggerated

While several news stories are reporting that Sender-ID has been killed, that is not entirely true. While Sender-ID in its current form is dead because of Purported Responsible Address (PRA), the compromise version with MAILFROM and PRA scopes is not. Also, the co-chairs want to stay away from any other alternative algorithms that do RFC2822 checking because of possible Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) claims by Microsoft on that as well. Andrew Newton, one of two co-chairs of the working group, wrote in an email today to the group's discussion forum... more

Creating TLS: The Pioneering Role of Ruth Nelson

As often occurs in networking and cryptographic history, anecdotes and insularity conspire to mask how developments actually occurred, and seminal roles undertaken by women are forgotten or ignored. One of the notable examples of this proclivity occurred in the cybersecurity cryptology arena as it involves a critical platform known as the Transport Layer Security Protocol (TLS) and the pioneering role of Ruth Nelson. more

When the Defendant is a Domain Name: The Power of In Rem Proceedings Under the ACPA

A recent decision by a federal court in Virginia illustrates some interesting legal issues that arise from the global nature of the domain name system. It also highlights a powerful mechanism under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act ("ACPA") by which a plaintiff can proceed with a legal action to recover a domain name without regard to the court's personal jurisdiction over the registrant.  more

In Praise of Relatively Dumb Pipes

Comcast's furtive and undisclosed traffic manipulation reminds me of a curious, red herring asserted by some incumbent carriers and their sponsored researchers: that without complete freedom to vertically and horizontally integrate the carriers would lose synergies, efficiencies and be relegated to operating "dumb pipes."... Constructing and operating the pipes instead of creating the stuff that traverses them gets a bad rap. It may not be sexy, but it probably has less risk. But of course with less risk comes less reward, and suddenly no one in the telecommunications business is content with that. So incumbent carriers assert that convergence and competitive necessity requires them to add "value" to the pipes. more

ClamAV and the Case of the Missing Mail

Some email discussion lists were all atwitter yesterday, as Sourcefire's open-source anti-virus engine ClamAV version 0.94.x reached its end-of-life. Rather than simply phase this geriatric version out the development team put to halt instances of V0.94 in production yesterday, April 15, 2010. In other words, the ClamAV developers caused version .94 to stop working entirely, and, depending upon the implementation, that meant email to systems using ClamAV also stopped flowing. more