News Briefs

Online Safety Bill: UK’s Digital Overhaul

The UK Parliament has given the green light to the controversial Online Safety Bill, putting Ofcom, the communications watchdog, in charge of internet regulation. This step brings the legislation closer to becoming law. more

Hong Kong Billionaire Richard Li Becomes First Person to Own a TLD Matching His Name

The new top-level domain (TLD) .richardli secured for the Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li went live on the internet today. Kevin Murphy reporting in Domain Incite: "The registry is Pacific Century Asset Management (HK) Limited, a subsidiary of PCCW, the Hong Kong telecomms and internet giant of which Li is chair... The gTLD is a pure brand-protection play, according to the 2012 application" more

Russian-Speaking MoneyTaker Group Suspected of Stealing $10M From Companies in Russia, UK and US

According to report today, Russian-speaking hackers called MoneyTaker, are suspected of stealing nearly $10m by removing overdraft limits on debit cards and taking money from cash machines. more

IETF Looking at Technical Changes to Raise the Bar for Monitoring

During a speech last week at the Internet Governance Forum in Bali, Jari Arkko, IETF's chair, re-emphasized it's efforts to ramp up online security in light of recent revelations of mass internet surveillance. "Perhaps the notion that internet is by default insecure needs to change," Arkko said. Significant technical fixes "just might be possible." more

Internet Society Releases Paper on “What Really Matters About the Internet”

Internet Society has released a paper today highlighting the importance of understanding what is important and unchanging about the Internet. more

McAfee Labs 2018 Report Reveals 480 New Threats Per Minute, Sharp Increase in IoT-Focused Malware

In its latest quarterly report, McAfee Labs has reported seeing an average of 480 new threats per minute and a sharp increase in malware targeting IoT devices. more

FCC Banning Wireless Devices that Interfere with White Spaces Spectrum

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has proposed a ban on some wireless microphones and other low-powered devices that operate in the 700-MHz band after the digital TV transition in February, next year. This is part of an attempt to clear any potential interference with the "white spaces" spectrum which will be fully available for "public safety as well as commercial wireless services". more

Massive AWS Outage Disrupts Global Internet, Services Restored After DNS Failure

A major Amazon Web Services outage briefly disrupted millions of websites, apps, and smart devices worldwide. The DNS-related failure exposed the internet's heavy dependence on a few cloud providers before full recovery was achieved. more

ICANN Releases Temporary WHOIS Specification Plan for GDPR Compliance With Deadline Two Weeks Away

ICANN has released temporary specifications for gTLD registration data in order to establish temporary requirements needed for the organization and gTLD registry operators to continue to comply with existing ICANN contractual requirements and community-developed policies. more

Internet RFC Series Turn 50

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary for the Internet "Request for Comments" (RFC) series which started in April 1969 with the publication of RFC1 titled "Host Software" authored by Stephen D. Crocker. more

Cloudflare Challenges Google’s AI Dominance With New Web Content Policy

Cloudflare's new policy challenges Google's AI practices, giving website owners legal tools to control how their content is scraped, used, and monetised by AI systems. more

America’s Broadband Blind Spot: Audit Reveals Millions More Offline Than FCC Reports

A new audit has sharply challenged the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) broadband availability estimates, revealing that 26 million Americans lack access to fixed 100/20 Mbps internet, 6.4 million more than the FCC claims. more

Amazon Gets the Green Light for .Amazon TLD Following Intense Negotiations Involving South America

ICANN has lifted the stop on delegating the .amazon top-level domain, allowing the delegation of the domain to the company Amazon Inc. over the South American region. more

China Has Nearly 3 Times the Number of Internet Users as the US, and the Gap Will Only Widen

China has 772 million internet users, as compared to the United States currently at 292 million. While the US internet penetration has reached 89%, China is only 55% and growing fast. more

Leading Global Standards Organizations Endorse ‘OpenStand’ Principles

Five leading group of global organizations - IEEE, Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Society and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) - today announced that they have signed a statement affirming the importance of a jointly developed set of principles establishing a modern paradigm for global, open standards. The group have invited other standards organizations, governments, corporations and technology innovators globally to endorse the principles. more