Featured Blogs

DDoS Mitigation: A Blend of Art and Science

As DDoS attacks become larger, more frequent and complex, being able to stop them is a must. While doing this is part science, a matter of deploying technology, there is also an art to repelling sophisticated attacks. Arbor Networks, Citrix and others make great gear, but there's no magic box that will solve all your problems for you. Human expertise will always be a crucial ingredient. more

How Brexit Raises Risks for Non-Compliant .EU Domain Names

On June 3, 2020, EURid, the registry for .EU domains, published its timeline and action plan to withdraw and delete .EU domains registered to entities and individuals located in the U.K. ... Following the .EU regulations that were published on March 29, 2019, registrations of .EU domain names may be held by EU citizens, citizens of Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway, independent of their place of residence -- as well as organizations that are established in the EU. more

WikiLeaks’ Vault 7: CIA Gives a Free Lesson in Personal Cyber Security

WikiLeaks' newly released Vault 7 trove is a tantalizing study in how one of the world's premiere intelligence agencies hacks devices. Analysts and experts have signaled that this leak appears authentic based on some clues in the content. But while it may ultimately be comparable in size to the Snowden or Manning leaks, it lacks the "wow" factor that made those landmark whistleblowing cases so important. What lessons are to be learned from the leaks, and how should we apply them to our personal digital lives? more

Stop the Presses! No Consensus at NetMundial!

We could see it as a victory for those advocating changes and adjustments in the system of internet governance. Au contraire... we could consider it as the debacle of the good intentions... all ending up in not knowing if it was worth it. I say and maintain, that the effort and the earned contributions were worth it. The final result is that ICANN should be strengthened to recognize its merits and achievements, not underestimate what this organization has accomplished in fifteen years of hard and continuous work. more

The Changing World of Network Management in an Increasingly Cloud-Centric World

Over the past two weeks Andrew Lerner, Vice President in Gartner Research covering enterprise networking products, has put out two successive blogs that raise really interesting questions about the changing world of network management in an increasingly cloud-centric world. In "What Keeps Network Folks Up at Night?", Andrew writes about the worrisome challenges in the Banking/Financial industry related to frequent manual network configuration errors. more

NTAG Chair Blog: Singapore Mid-term Update

While the media spotlights the US role in Internet governance, the NTAG Executive Committee has been focussed on the daily business of ensuring the New gTLD programme is moving forward in the best interests of applicants. There are signs that ICANN is becoming more responsive to applicant needs. Quick action implementing GAC Advice once it was resolved by the New gTLD Program Committee, the recent name collision webinar, and an ongoing dialogue on new gTLD auctions procedures are all positive steps. more

A Mature Broadband Market? (Implications and Industry Shifts)

It is becoming clear that the broadband market is reaching maturity. This is already causing havoc in the industry for ISPs that relied on year-over-year customer growth to prop up stock prices. Earlier this year, the New Street Research, a company that specializes in research in the telecommunications and technology sectors, said that it estimated that new broadband customers would grow by about 1 million this year. more

APT: The Cancer Within

Unless you have a team employing the latest proactive threat-hunting techniques, the stealthy Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) hiding in your network can pass by completely unnoticed. There are as many definitions of APT as experts writing about the topic, so let's boil it down to the simple essentials: APTs are usually implanted and maintained by a team of malicious actors with the intention of living long term in your network while extracting valuable private information. more

White Space for Internet Use Interfering with Wireless Patient Devices?

There is a germ of truth (perhaps a prion-sized germ or maybe just an amino acid) in the idea that transmitters in "white spaces" in the TV band *might* disrupt patient monitoring equipment if designed by a lunatic who believes in sending massive pulses of energy in a whitespace in the TV band (perhaps amplified by a large parabolic dish antenna the size of a trashcan lid or larger, aimed at the patient monitor system. But that risk is completely shared with zillions of other potential radiators of energy in the entire electromagnetic spectrum... GE, of course, owns NBC. There is a MAJOR conflict of interest at the corporate level of GE... more

First .emarat Arabic Script Domain Name is Live!

The .emarat Arabic script Internationalised Domain Name (IDN) ccTLD for the United Arab Emirates has been entered into the DNS Root Zone and is therefore now resolving. This is a truly historic moment in the development of the Internet in the United Arab Emirates and the wider Arabic-speaking world as it removes the last hurdle preventing people without English-language skills from enjoying the full benefits that the Internet has to offer. more

Hot Take on the Twitter Hack

If you read this blog, you've probably heard by now about the massive Twitter hack. Briefly, many high-profile accounts were taken over and used to tweet scam requests to send Bitcoins to a particular wallet, with the promise of double your money back. Because some of the parties hit are sophisticated and security-aware, it seems unlikely that the attack was a straightforward one directly on these accounts. more

Cyptech Needs You!

In August of last year I wrote in a blog about the importance of cryptech to wide-scale trust in the Internet. For those who don't know about it, http://cryptech.is is a project aiming to design and deploy an openly developed, trustable Hardware Security Module (HSM) which can act both as a keystore (holding your secrets and keeping them private) and as a signing engine. more

New Cyber Security Bill Could Increase Power of President and DHS

Introduced by ranking Senate members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, S.3480 is intended to create an Office of Cyber Policy in the executive branch of the government, confirmed by the Senate and ultimately reporting to the president. Senators Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln and Tom Carper introduced the bill publicly on June 10, and a critical part of the bill is that critical infrastructure networks such as electricity grids, financial systems and telecommunications networks need to cooperate with the Office of Cyber Policy. more

Is UN SG Guterres Driving the Bus That Macron Threw UN IGF & Multistakeholderism Under at IGF Paris?

A fresh & transparent, community-led, bottom-up, public debate has now become unavoidable and undeferrable. "....we need limited and smart regulation" were the clear and unambiguous words of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the launch of the final report of his UN Panel on Digital Cooperation last week in New York. Last November, I wrote about President Macron throwing down the gauntlet at UN IGF Paris challenging IGF and Multistakeholderism to become more relevant.  more

Don’t Let Patent Wars Widen Digital Divide

For generations, large pockets of Africa were isolated from things many of us take for granted: access to medical treatment and advances that can make the difference between a healthy, productive life or debilitating illness -- or even an early death. These problems still persist, but over the last two decades technology has helped break through and enable medical professionals to reach the poorest and most remote populations and offer some hope. more