DNS Security

VeriSign Leaves the Security Certificate Business

Earlier this week in a press release, VeriSign said that they are selling their SSL certificate business to Symantec. VeriSign is the dominant player in this market, having absorbed competitor Thawte in 1999, and Geotrust in 2006. Three years ago, when VeriSign decided to divest its non-core businesses, they kept the certificate business. So what's changed? more

Verisign Provides Open Source Implementation of Merkle Tree Ladder Mode

The quantum computing era is coming, and it will change everything about how the world connects online. While quantum computing will yield tremendous benefits, it will also create new risks, so it's essential that we prepare our critical internet infrastructure for what's to come. That's why we're so pleased to share our latest efforts in this area, including technology that we're making available as an open source implementation to help internet operators worldwide prepare. more

2010 Domain Name Year in Review - Oh, What A Year It Was!

Many of us were expecting radical changes in 2010 to the domain name market. There definitely were some of those -- just not the ones I expected. From the seizure of domains names by the US Government to ICANN's removal of restrictions on Registry/Registrar cross-ownership, 2010 was a year full of surprises. In this post, I've compiled what I think were the biggest domain name stories in 2010. more

DNSSEC Now Deployed in all Generic Top-Level Domains, Says ICANN

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers organization (ICANN org) announced that all of the current 1,195 generic top-level domains (gTLDs) have deployed Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC). more

A Call to Help Disrupt the Spread of Child Sexual Abuse Materials

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) leads the charge to combat child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online, and we at Public Interest Registry (PIR) are dedicated to supporting their efforts. We are honored to work with them across two important programs: Domain Alerts and TLD Hopping List. IWF services have been extremely successful in addressing CSAM on .ORG over the past five years more

What Is the Domain Name Expiry Cycle and Why Should You Know About It?

Domain names are registered by the thousands every day. In July 2021, 236,336 domains were newly registered daily on average across all top-level domains (TLDs). Tens of thousands were also newly expired. Other months could be just as busy. "Newly registered" and "newly expired." Those are two terms I often get questions about. Newly registered domains are domains that someone just reserved, typically through a registrar or web hosting company. Newly expired domains, meanwhile, are those domains that someone had reserved but decided to let go for one reason or another. more

Evolving the Internet Through COVID-19 and Beyond

As we approach four months since the WHO declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic, and with lockdowns and other restrictions continuing in much of the world, it is worth reflecting on how the Internet has coped with the changes in its use, and on what lessons we can learn from these for the future of the network. The people and companies that build and operate the Internet are always planning for more growth in Internet traffic. more

91.3% of Malware Use DNS as a Key Capability

Nearly 92 percent of malware use DNS to gain command and control, exfiltrate data or redirect traffic, according to Cisco's 2016 Annual Security Report. It warns that DNS is often a security "blind spot" as security teams and DNS experts typically work in different IT groups within a company and don't interact frequently. more

ICANN DNS Resolver Symposium – the Session Had Several Interesting Presentations That I Would Like to Comment On

ICANN hosted a Resolver Operator Forum in mid-December, and the session had several interesting presentations that I would like to comment on here... The first presentation in this forum was from Paul Mockapetris. He pointed to the original academic published paper, Development of the Domain Name System, by Paul Mockapetris and Kevin Dunlap, published in the proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM’88. The paper noted that by 1983 it was obvious that the shared HOSTS.TXT file was not a scalable solution... more

OARC-40: Notes on the Recent DNS Operations, Analysis, and Research Centre Workshop

OARC held a 2-day meeting in February, with presentations on various DNS topics. Here are some observations I picked up from the presentations in that meeting... In a world where every DNS name is DNSSEC-signed, and every DNS client validates all received DNS responses, we wouldn't necessarily have the problem of DNS spoofing. Even if we concede that universal use of DNSSEC is a long time off ... more

Russia in Talks to Create Independent DNS

The Russian Security Council has proposed development of an independent DNS which would continue to work in the event of global internet malfunctions, according to a report from RT. more

Another Attack, Another Reason for the Urgency of DNSSEC Adoption

News broke this week about an attack in Puerto Rico that caused the local websites of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Coca-Cola, PayPal, Nike, Dell and Nokia to be redirected for a few hours to a phony website. The website was all black except for a taunting message from the computer hacker responsible for the attack... more

Developing Internet of Things Building Blocks

The Internet is undergoing an evolutionary transformation resulting from the explosive growth of things that are interconnected. From single purpose sensors through wearable technologies to sophisticated computing devices, we are creating, exchanging, and consuming more data at rates that would have been inconceivable just a decade ago. The market suggests the average consumer believes this is the best world possible. As technologists, we have a responsibility to consider if we are building an Internet that is in the best interest of the user. more

First gTLD Signed: Dot Gov

Today is a historic day as the first generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) has been signed. Only a few other top level domains, all of which are country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs), have been signed to date. This step is part of the first phase of adoption. Authoritative DNS servers need to sign and publish their zones. The second part is for the resolvers on the Internet to validate the keys. Both systems working together will provide security in the DNS. more

DNS Platforms: A Study in Capacity and Scalability

Capacity and scalability are necessary in managing DNSSEC and D/DoS. Capacity, necessary for maintaining operations during D/DoS attacks, is also necessary for increased traffic due to DNSSEC deployment. Scalability is highly important, as DNSSEC is deployed not only will greater traffic levels will be encountered, greater demand will be placed on the DNS platform. In the interest of understanding both capacity and scalability CommunityDNS conducted tests to assess the readiness of the two main DNS server platforms, BIND and NSD... more