DNS Security

DNSSEC: Will Microsoft Have Enough Time?

I have previously pointed out the shortcomings of good and user friendly support for DNSSEC in Microsoft's Server 2008 R2. During the period just after I wrote the post, I had a dialogue with Microsoft, but during the last months there has been no word at all. The reason I bring this up again is that more and more Top Level Domains (TLDs) now enable DNSSEC and also the fact that within six months the root will be signed.

CircleID’s Top 10 Posts of 2009

Looking back at the year that just ended, here are the top ten most popular news, blogs, and industry news on CircleID in 2009 based on the overall readership of the posts. Congratulations to all the participants whose posts reached top readership in 2009 and best wishes to the entire community in 2010.

You Don’t Need to Hack Twitter.com to Control All Its Traffic and Email

A big security news event last night and today is that the Twitter.com Web site was hacked and content on the site replaced. TechCrunch reported it and it has been picked up globally. But - was the Twitter.com website really hacked? We now know it was not so. There are four ways that users typing in Twitter.com would have seen the Iranian Cyber Army page.

Announcement: Critical Internet Infrastructure WG is Now Open to Public Participation

ISOTF Critical Internet Infrastructure WG is now open to public participation. The group holds top experts on internet technology, critical infrastructure, and internet governance, from around the globe. Together, we discuss definitions, problems, challenges and solutions in securing and assuring the reliability of the global internet infrastructure, which is critical infrastructure for a growing number of nations, corporations and indeed, individuals -- world wide.

The New ICANN Emerges in Seoul

With the loud crashing of a traditional drum ceremony and an impromptu electric guitar performance by a young Korean whose rendition of Pachabel has been downloaded sixty million times on YouTube, the 36th meeting of ICANN was kicked off this morning (Korean time) by new CEO Rod Beckstrom and his fellow Directors and assembled one thousand or so participants. ICANN has always been about change, but the atmosphere in Seoul this week is charged with a sense of new challenges and new opportunities.

ICANN 36 Preview: What’s ‘On Sale’ in Seoul

Last time the ICANN faithful gathered in Sydney, there was a fair bit of unrest and some big unknowns. The Implementation Recommendation Taskforce (IRT) report on how Intellectual Property (IP) could be protected in the era of new Top-Level Domains (TLDs) stirred the pot as did, to a lesser extent, the issue of Registry-Registrar separation in new TLDs. Additionally, everyone had big questions on their minds - when the root would be signed (and DNSSEC fully implemented)... Four months later and five thousand miles almost due north, the netizens gathering at ICANN 36 in Seoul know the answers to some of those very important questions.

RIPE at 59!

RIPE, or Réseaux IP Européens, is a collaborative forum open to all parties interested in wide area IP networks in Europe and beyond... RIPE has been a feature of the European Internet landscape for some twenty years now, and it continues to be a progressive and engaged forum. These days RIPE meets twice a year, and the most recent meeting was held at Lisbon, Portugal, from the 5th to the 9th of October 2009. In this column I'd like to share some of my impressions of this meeting.

Rod Beckstrom’s First 100 Days at ICANN

Rod Beckstrom took over as ICANN President/CEO on July 1, 2009, so October 9th marked his 100th day in office -- and a good opportunity to examine the progress made by ICANN during his short tenure. ...to borrow an analogy from American football: when you have the ball in the Red Zone, you need to score touchdowns, not field goals. So far, under Rod's leadership, ICANN has moved down the field on a number of issues. In particular, ICANN scored a "touchdown heard round the world" by bringing the MoU/JPA to a successful conclusion.

Securing a Domain: SSL vs. DNSSEC

There has been quite a bit of talk lately about the best way to secure a domain, mainly centered in two camps: using Secure Socket Layer (SSL), or using DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC). The answer is quite simple -- you should use both. The reason for this is that they solve different problems, using different methods, and operate over different data.

An Authenticated Internet

Discussions around DNSSEC are so often focused on the root, the attacks, what DNSSEC does and doesn't do and so on -- and these are all valid and important points. But there is far less attention focused on the opportunities that will surface from an authenticated internet. ...DNSSEC is becoming more of a reality now -- rather than a technical discussion which has been stuck in the mud for 15 years. We can now begin to think about new opportunities to build from a secure DNS, opportunities that build on the certainty that you have arrived at the correct website. Today, you can't be sure.