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A recent exchange on CircleID highlighted a critical need for data to inform the debate on the impact of ICANN's post-GDPR WHOIS policy that resulted in the redaction of domain name registrant contact data. A bit of background: in my original post, I made the point that domain name abuse had increased post-GDPR. A reader who works with a registrar (according to his bio) commented: "Can you back up that statement with data? Our abuse desk has actually seen a reduction in abuse complaints." more
The RIPE 71 meeting took place in Bucharest, Romania in November. Here are my impressions from a number of the sessions I attended that I thought were of interest. It was a relatively packed meeting held over 5 days. So this is by no means all that was presented through the week... As is usual for RIPE meetings, it was a well organised, informative and fun meeting to attend in every respect! If you are near Copenhagen in late May next year I'd certainly say that it would be a week well spent. more
The 23-year-old British security researcher, Marcus Hutchins, who a few months ago was credited with stopping the WannaCry outbreak by discovering a hidden "kill switch" for the malware, is now reported to have been arrested by the FBI over his alleged involvement in separate malicious software targeting bank accounts. more
Over the last couple of weeks I have spent some time working on a project to develop a DNS cache for Windows that is intended to be reasonably secure against spoof attacks, in particular in situations where NAT firewalls may prevent port randomization. The program is evolving, but currently uses a couple of ideas to attempt to defeat spoof attacks... The source code is intended to be entirely un-encumbered, that is free in all respects. I would welcome any suggestions or comments on the aims of the project, the source code, the functionality of the program or other ideas. more
Recently ten Democratic Members of Congress wrote a letter to Alan Davidson, head of the NTIA, requesting that the "NTIA immediately cease the public disclosure of personal information about users of .US" country code top-level domain (ccTLD). This communication highlights a significant concern regarding domain registration data: the need to protect the privacy rights of Registrants. However, an equally significant concern regarding registration data was raised... more
The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) for the .ca country code Top-Level Domain yesterday announced the launch of a test-bed initiative for DNSSEC. CIRA’s Chief Information Officer, Norm Ritchie who made the official announcement at the SecTor security conference in Toronto, says it began the process of implementing DNSSEC in early 2009 and the implementation date is set for 2010. So far, over 15 Top-Level Domains have already deployed DNSSEC including dot-gov and dot-org. more
DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) is the leading email authentication technology, supported by major ISPs including Google, AOL, and Yahoo! (who invented its predecessor), popular mail server software like Sendmail, and many of the best minds in email technology. But if you peruse the archives of the IETF DKIM mailing list, or start up a conversation at MAAWG, it might appear that there's still a lot of disagreement about what a DKIM signature actually means. more
This past February, around 100 DNS industry experts met in Atlanta, GA for the "The Global DNS Security, Stability, & Resiliency Symposium." Organized by ICANN and hosted by Georgia Tech, this event was to strengthen personal relationships between operators and review what we know about the DNS infrastructure... The content included three breakout groups over two days: Enterprise Use of DNS, DNS in Resource Constrained Environments, and Combating Malicious Use of DNS... more
On June 9 CircleID published an insightful article by Thomas Rickert entitled "Demystifying Art 28 NIS2." In that piece Thomas set forth two alternative interpretations of Article 28(6) of NIS2, and argued that TLD registries should not be required to maintain a separate database of the registrant data under NIS2. In my view, Thomas' approach is inconsistent with the remainder of Article 28, and would not achieve the goals of NIS2 to improve cybersecurity across the EU member states. more
The demand for penetration testing and security assessment services worldwide has been growing year-on-year. Driven largely by Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) concerns, plus an evolving pressure to be observed taking information security and customer privacy seriously, most CIO/CSO/CISO's can expect to conduct regular "pentests" as a means of validating their organizations or product's security. more
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has issued a rare "emergency" directive ordering federal agencies to audit all DNS records within ten days. more
I have a hypothesis: The Bush administration came to power in December 2000. American telcos were on the precipice about to go into Free fall. We have seen how Bush politicized the Justice Department and are much more aware thanks to John Dean's Broken Government and Charlie Savage's Take Over of the intense desire to aggregate executive power to feed the Addingtons belief in the Unitary Executive. We now know that Cheney was meeting with the energy industry in early 2001 promising them whatever they wanted. We may begin to ask what the domestic telecoms industry was being promised? more
As many people have heard, there's been a security problem at the Internal Revenue Service. Some stories have used the word hack; other people, though, have complained that nothing was hacked, that the only problem was unauthorized access to taxpayer data but via authorized, intentionally built channels. The problem with this analysis is that it's looking at security from far too narrow a perspective... more
Microsoft's call for a Digital Geneva Convention, outlined in Smith's blog post, has attracted the attention of the digital policy community. Only two years ago, it would have been unthinkable for an Internet company to invite governments to adopt a digital convention. Microsoft has crossed this Rubicon in global digital politics by proposing a Digital Geneva Convention which should 'commit governments to avoiding cyber-attacks that target the private sector or critical infrastructure or the use of hacking to steal intellectual property'. more
In the US administration, we see important people like incoming Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta say at his Senate confirmation hearing that "a strong likelihood that the next Pearl Harbor" could well be a cyberattack that cripples the U.S. power grid and financial and government systems. He also said that cybersecurity will be one of the main focuses of his tenure at the Pentagon. But when you look at what is actually happening in cyber security, there is more position jockeying than there is real progress. more
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