DNS Security

Thought Leaders Create New Trends & Solutions, Followers Just Follow - Which Are You?

Last week I asked on a post elsewhere, why we, at the MLi Group, chose to consider speakers, panelists, supporters and sponsors at our Global Summit Series (GSS) as "Thought Leaders" and "Trend Setters? Many wrote me directly offering their answers and then it dawned on me that my answer may (or may not) get appreciated by many at the ICANN community. So here is why we do. more

Call for Participation - DNSSEC Workshop at ICANN 55 in Marrakech, Morocco

Do you have an idea for a new way to use DNSSEC or DANE to make the Internet more secure? Have you recently installed DNSSEC and have a great case study you can share of lessons learned? Do you have a new tool or service that makes DNSSEC or DANE easier to use or deploy? Do you have suggestions for how to improve DNSSEC? Or new ways to automate or simplify the user experience? If you do, and if you will be attending ICANN 55 in Marrakech, Morocco (or can get there), we are now seeking proposals for the ICANN 55 DNSSEC Workshop that will take place on Wednesday, 9 March 2016. more

How DANE Strengthens Security for TLS, S/SMIME and Other Applications

The Domain Name System (DNS) offers ways to significantly strengthen the security of Internet applications via a new protocol called the DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE). One problem it helps to solve is how to easily find keys for end users and systems in a secure and scalable manner. It can also help to address well-known vulnerabilities in the public Certification Authority (CA) model. Applications today need to trust a large number of global CAs. more

NANOG 65 Report

NANOG 65 was once again your typical NANOG meeting: a set of operators, vendors, researchers and others for 3 days, this time in Montreal in October. Here's my impressions of the meeting... The opening keynote was from Jack Waters from Level 3, which looked back over the past 25 years of the Internet, was interesting to me in its reference to the "Kingsbury Letter". more

Thoughts on the Open Internet - Part 5: Security

Any form of public communications network necessarily exposes some information about the identity and activity of the user's of its services. The extent to which such exposure of information can be subverted and used in ways that are in stark opposition to the users' individual interests forms part of the motivation on the part of many users to reduce such open exposure to an absolute minimum. The tensions between a desire to protect the user through increasing the level of opacity of network transactions to third party surveillance, and the need to expose some level of basic information to support the functions of a network lies at the heart of many of the security issues in today's Internet. more

Watch Live Oct 1 - Dyn’s Techtoberfest: Internet Trends, Security, Net Neutrality and More

On Thursday, Oct 1, 2015, from 9:30am-4:30pm US EDT (UTC-4), Dyn will be holding their "TechToberFest" event in Manchester, NH, and also streaming the video live for anyone interested. There are a great set of speakers and a solid agenda. As I wrote on the Internet Society blog, I'll be part of the security panel from 3-4pm US EDT... and we who are on the panel are excited to participate just for the conversation that we are going to have! It should be fun! more

Thinking Ahead on Privacy in the Domain Name System

Earlier this year, I wrote about a recent enhancement to privacy in the Domain Name System (DNS) called qname-minimization. Following the principle of minimum disclosure, this enhancement reduces the information content of a DNS query to the minimum necessary to get either an authoritative response from a name server, or a referral to another name server. more

Ten Years of Secure DNS at .se! (What We Learned)

Ten years ago today, and with 300,000 domains in the zone file, we introduced DNSSEC at .se. It was the end of a fairly long journey, or at least the first stage. The first Swedish workshop to test the new function according to the specifications from the Internet Engineering Task Force was arranged in 1999. At that time, I was still working in the IT Commission's Secretariat, and the standard was far from complete as it turned out. Our ambition was to change the world, at least the world that exists on the internet. more

Call for Participation - DNSSEC Workshop at ICANN 54 in Dublin, Ireland

Would you like to present an idea you have related to DNSSEC or DANE to a gathering of people within the DNSSEC community? Do you have an idea for a new tool or service? Have you recently implemented DNSSEC or DANE and want to share your story? The deadline is Monday, August 17, so please send your proposal soon! We are open to proposals on a wide range of topics... more

DNSSEC Successes, Statistics and Innovation Streaming Live from ICANN 53 on 24 June 2015

Where has DNSSEC been successful? What are some current statistics about DNSSEC deployment? What are examples of innovations that are happening with DNSSEC and DANE? All of these questions will be discussed at the DNSSEC Workshop at ICANN 53 in Buenos Aires happening on Wednesday, June 24, 2015, from 09:00 – 15:15 Argentina time (UTC-3). You can watch and listen to the session live. more

Registry Lock - or EPP With Two Factor Authentication

For the last couple of years, the most common attack vector against the DNS system is the attack against the registrar. Either the attack is on the software itself using weaknesses in the code that could inject DNS changes into the TLD registry, or social engineering the registrar support systems and the attacker receives credentials that in turn allows the attacker to perform malicious changes in DNS. DNSSEC is the common security mechanism that protects the DNS protocol, but by using the registrar attack, any changes will result in a proper working DNS delegation. more

The Internet of Things: Solving Security Challenges from the Fringe to the Core

News flash: to help fight California's drought, Samsung is offering a $100,000 prize to the innovator who creates "the most effective use of IoT and ARTIK [Samsung's IoT platform] technology for reducing water consumption by individuals or municipalities." When the average reader of this news headline needs no explanation of what "IoT" means or what this contest is about, we know IoT, or the Internet of Things, is for real. There are already an estimated 25 billion connected devices around the world, according to expert estimates. more

The Longevity of the Three-Napkin Protocol

It is not often I go out to my driveway to pick up the Washington Post -- yes, I still enjoy reading a real physical paper, perhaps a sign of age -- and the headline is NOT about how the (insert DC sports team here) lost last night but is instead is about an IT technology. That technology is the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), a major Internet protocol that has been around for more than a quarter century, before the Internet was commercialized and before most people even knew what the Internet was. more

Internet.nl - A New Site to Easily Test Your Use of IPv6, DNSSEC, TLS and DKIM

"Is Your Internet Up-To-Date?" Does your existing Internet connection work with IPv6 and DNSSEC? Do your web sites support IPv6, DNSSEC and TLS? Is there a quick way to find out? Earlier this month a new site, Internet.nl, was launched to make this all easy for anyone to test. All you do is visit the site at en.internet.nl (also available in Dutch) and just follow the very easy links. more

Cyptech Needs You!

In August of last year I wrote in a blog about the importance of cryptech to wide-scale trust in the Internet. For those who don't know about it, http://cryptech.is is a project aiming to design and deploy an openly developed, trustable Hardware Security Module (HSM) which can act both as a keystore (holding your secrets and keeping them private) and as a signing engine. more