Featured Blogs

HTTPS Web Hijacking Goes From Theory to Practice

I've been privately talking about the theoretical dangers of HTTPS hacking with the developers of a major web browser since 2006 and earlier last month, I published my warnings about HTTPS web hacking along with a proposed solution. A week later, Google partially implemented some of my recommendations in an early Alpha version of their Chrome 2.0 browser... This week at the Black Hat security conference in Washington DC, Moxie Marlinspike released a tool called SSL Strip... more

If It’s About to Break, Fix It!

The UN's WSIS Prepcomm in Geneva has ended on a divided note. The US Government's Ambassador Gross pre-announced war-cry "The United Nations will not be in charge of the Internet. Period." had been met by a nearly unanimous global response from nations for some sort of government control of the Internet on a multilateral basis. A raft of proposals to alter the current situation are on the table -- most of them fairly benign, but none supportive of the indefinite continuance of unilateral US control of the root zone authorisation. more

Domain Owners Lose Privacy

As facts unfold, and the NTIA's decision to take away our privacy comes to light, it is interesting to see the NTIA struggling to explain its decision. Keep in mind that an "as yet to be identified" bureaucrat made this decision to take away your privacy, did it without notice, and without holding hearings. Those affected were not given an opportunity to explain how the loss of privacy would negatively affect them. Quite simply, this is NOT how our government is supposed to work. We should be outraged... more

Why ICANN Nominating Committee Has Difficulty Finding Directors

The amount of time one spends actually working for ICANN is enormous. And that limits the people who can actually work for ICANN as directors. I say "work", but you should know that this is not a paid work. Nope. It's being performed for free -- we dedicate our time and skills to ICANN free of charge. Many people ask me "What is it like to be on the Board of ICANN?" Here is my response, with some astonishing data. more

The Future of the Internet Economy: Chapter 2

The OECD held a "high-level" meeting in June 2011 that was intended to build upon the OECD Ministerial on The Future of the Internet Economy held in Seoul, Korea in June 2008. I was invited to attend this meeting as part of the delegation from the Internet Technical Advisory Committee (ITAC), and here I'd like to share my impressions of this meeting. This 2 day meeting, "The Internet Economy: Generating Innovation and Growth", had the objective of exploring a number of current issues in the public policy space... more

Is the Risk Real With the New gTLD Program? (An Interview with Verisign)

It's late in the new gTLD day and the program looks to be inching ever closer to the finish line. Yet last minute hiccups seem to be a recurring theme for this ambitious project to expand the Internet namespace far beyond the 300 odd active TLDs in existence today (counting generics and country codes). A drive for growth which is already underway, with 63 gTLD contracts now signed as of mid September... But will those users find themselves at greater risk because of this namespace expansion? That's what several parties have been asking in recent months. more

Ye Olde DNS

I've been writing about the intrinsic problem with the use of the DNS as both a technical mechanism and as a source of unambiguous meaning and authority. The problems are much worse than most of the posters seem to note. The current approach assures that the Internet will unravel and worse, that URLs become perversely reused. The commercial terms of service associated with the use of ".com" names exacerbates the problem by imposing arbitrary social policies into the plumbing of the Internet. more

Why Can’t We Make the Internet Secure?

In a discussion about a recent denial of service attack against Twitter, someone asked, "Some class of suppliers must be making money off of the weaknesses. Anybody out there have a prescription for the cure?" Sure, but you're not going to like it. The Internet was originally a walled garden, where its operators knew who all the users were and could eject anyone who misbehaved... more

Policy Failure Enables Mass Malware: Part II (ICANN and OnlineNIC)

On Wednesday September 29th at 1PM there will be a meeting in the Old Executive Building in Washington D.C. with Registries and domain Registrars to discuss illegal Internet sales of prescription drugs. ICANN was originally invited but declined because citing "inappropriateness" . One "U.S." Registrar who definitely will not be in attendance is OnlineNIC more

Time to Renew .coop, .museum, and .aero ICANN

Way back in 2000-2001, ICANN approved a handful of new top level domains, and entered into agreements with their promoters. Three of the sponsored domains, are coming up for renewal next year, so they've sent in their renewal proposals. A sponsored domain is one that restricts who can register to members of a particular community, in this case respectively co-ops, museums, and the airline industry. Let's take a look and see how they're doing. more

How DANE Strengthens Security for TLS, S/SMIME and Other Applications

The Domain Name System (DNS) offers ways to significantly strengthen the security of Internet applications via a new protocol called the DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE). One problem it helps to solve is how to easily find keys for end users and systems in a secure and scalable manner. It can also help to address well-known vulnerabilities in the public Certification Authority (CA) model. Applications today need to trust a large number of global CAs. more

Putting a Spammer in Jail

The country's first criminal trial about spam ended in Leesburg, Virginia earlier this month with a conviction of Jeremy Jaynes, better known under his nom de spam of Gavin Stubberfield. I was an expert witness for the prosecution, the Commonwealth of Virginia. The case was brought under Virginia's state anti-spam law, not the weaker Federal CAN-SPAM act... more

Canada Finishes its Spam Task Force, Result is Pretty Good

Industry Canada, the part of the Canadian government roughly equivalent to the U.S. Commerce Department, has had a task force on spam working for the past year or so. I was invited to participate as an unofficial member, since I'm not a Canadian. Yesterday, it wrapped up its work and published its report (aussi disponsible en francais) to the government. It's quite good, and has a set of 22 recommendations. more

Would the Real Network Neutrality Please Stand Up?

I'm sure this is something that's been raked over before, but I don't see a common understanding of what 'Net Neutrality' actually is. Despite many of the Internetorati demanding it by law. There appear to be several different camps, which you could paint as "bottom of IP", "middle" and "top". The bottomistas would see enforced Internet Protocol itself as a premature optimisation and violation of the end-to-end principle. Unhappy that you only get IPv4 or IPv6? Still grumpy that you only have IPv4 and not even IPv6? Really miserable that your VoIP packets are staggering under the poisonous load of IPv6 headers? You're a bottomista. more

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Industry Soon to Be Largest Source of Co2 Emissions

Although on the production side the tar sands are one of the biggest sources of CO2 emissions, the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) industry, globally is the fastest growing and soon will be the largest source of CO2 emissions on the consumption side of the equation. ICT emissions are produced indirectly from the coal generated electricity that is used to power all of our devices. Currently it is estimated that ICT consumes around 10% all electrical power growing at about 6-10% per year. more