News Briefs

New Top-Level Domains Approved by ICANN

The Board of ICANN today gave final approval to the most dramatic change to the Internet in four decades -- allowing the expansion of new Top-Level Domains (TLDs). This monumental decision will allow companies and organizations to turn their own brands into Internet domain extensions (that is .brand) or to create broad generic strings such as .CAR, .SPORTS or .BANK. ICANN's TLD expansion plan was first announced three years ago on June 26, 2008 at the 32nd ICANN Meeting in Paris. more

Security Researcher Dan Kaminsky Has Died

The celebrated security researcher, Dan Kaminsky, widely known for his work on discovering cruicisl DNS security flaws, Sony Rootkit infections and pupular talk at the Black Hat Briefings. more

12-Year-Old’s Lost Video Has Resurfaced, Discussing Bitcoin at $8 and the Power of Peer-to-Peer Transactions

In 2011, a 12-year-old unknowingly predicted Bitcoin's rise in a forgotten YouTube video. Now, crypto enthusiasts have rediscovered it, launching $TPU, a Solana-based memecoin named after his old channel. The internet is hailing him as an accidental visionary, proving once again that the digital world never forgets -- and that early tech predictions can age like fine wine. more

Close to 735K Fraudulently Obtained IP Addresses Have Been Uncovered and Revoked, ARIN Reveals

The American Registry for Internet Numbers, Ltd. (ARIN) has won a legal case against an elaborate multi-year scheme to defraud the Internet community of approximately 735,000 IPv4 addresses, the organization has revealed. While the specifics of the findings are not released, John Curran, ARIN President and CEO said the fraud was detected as a result of an internal due diligence process. more

UPDATEDThree Undersea Cables Cuts Cause Significant Disruption in Europe and Asia

France Telecom has reported today that 3 major underwater cables were cut: “Sea Me We 4” at 7:28am, “Sea Me We3” at 7:33am and FLAG at 8:06am. The causes of the cut, which is located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt, remain unclear. Most of the B to B traffic between Europe and Asia is rerouted through the USA. Traffic from Europe to Algeria and Tunisia is not affected, but traffic from Europe to the Near East and Asia is interrupted to a greater or lesser extent (read more for country). more

UPDATEDExperts Urge Congress to Reject DNS Filtering from PROTECT IP Act, Serious Technical Concerns Raised

A group of leading DNS experts have released a paper detailing serious concerns over the proposed DNS filtering requirements included as part of the bill recently introduced in the U.S. Senate named Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 ("PROTECT IP Act"). The group who is urging lawmakers to reconsider enacting such a mandate into law, includes leading DNS designers, operators, and researchers, responsible for numerous RFCs for DNS, publication of many peer-reviewed academic studies related to architecture and security of the DNS, and responsible for the operation of important DNS infrastructure on the Internet. more

Firefox Starts the Roll Out of DNS Over HTTPS (DoH) by Default for US-Based Users

According to the company, the rollout will continue over the next few weeks to confirm that no major issues are discovered as this new protocol is enabled. more

ISPs Are Not Broadcasters, Says Supreme Court of Canada

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that Internet providers are not broadcasters for the purposes of the Broadcasting Act when they simply transmit content to subscribers, reports Michael Geist. The court noted... more

UPDATEDNetwork Solutions Under Large Scale DDoS Attack, Millions of Websites Potentially Unreachable

Network Solutions is having problems with "all" its name servers, according to their tech support and a recent post on North American Network Operators' Group (NANOG) mailing list indicates that it has been under very large-scale UDP/53 DDoS attack for the last 48 hour period. As a result, domain names hosted with Network Solutions' Worldnic have been affected. Network Solutions is one of the leading domain registrars and DNS hosting providers in the world, managing more than 7.6 million domain names. more

UPDATEDOfficial: Rod Beckstrom Announced as the ICANN President and CEO

During its board meeting today in Sydney, the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced Rod Beckstrom, the former U.S. cybersecurity chief, as the new President and CEO. Beckstrom will be replacing Dr. Paul Twomey who had been serving this position since March 2003 and announced his resignation earlier this year. Dr Twomey has lately been reported as the primary candidate for heading Australian Government's proposed A$43 billion investment in a new National Broadband Network. more

Misconfiguration Brings Down Entire .SE Domain in Sweden

A incorrect configuration within Swedens .SE zone caused temporary shutdown of all websites under the country code top-level domain. Web monitoring company, Royal Pingdom, also located in Sweden reports: "Last night, a routine maintenance of Sweden's top-level domain .se went seriously wrong, introducing an error that made DNS lookups for all .se domain names start failing. The entire Swedish Internet effectively stopped working at this point. Swedish (.se) websites could not be reached, email to Swedish domain names stopped working, and for many these problems persist still..." more

The Number Resource Organization (NRO) Issues Inspection Request to ICANN Concerning the .ORG Sale

The Number Resource Organization (NRO), acting as the Address Supporting Organization (ASO), today announced it has submitted correspondence to ICANN regarding the Internet Society's proposed transfer of ownership of PIR, the .org registry, to Ethos Capital. more

UPDATEDICANN Approves .XXX

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), in its board meeting in San Francisco on Friday, approved the .xxx Top-Level Domain. The ICANN board members voted 8 for, 3 against, 4 abstain. While the decision still has to undergo final review with IANA and the US Department of Commerce, it appear that ICANN's decade-long, most controversial Top-Level Domain application to date has now concluded. more

AFRINIC “In a Bad Situation”, Has Not Been Able to Constitute a Board and Has No CEO

The complicated events surrounding the African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC) were brought to light this week by ARIN's President and CEO John Curran during a recent presentation followed by a report today by Simon Sharwood of The Register. more

UPDATEDLatest Cybersquatting Stats from WIPO

According to latest reports from the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), allegations of cybersquatting by trademark holders continued to rise in 2008, with a record 2,329 complaints filed under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). This represented an 8% increase over 2007 in the number of generic and country code Top-Level Domain (gTLDs and ccTLDs) disputes handled and brings the total number of WIPO cases filed under the UDRP since it was launched ten years ago to over 14,000. To improve efficiency and respond to growing demand, WIPO has proposed an "eUDRP Initiative" to render the UDRP paperless... more