DNS

On Mandated Content Blocking in the Domain Name System

COICA (Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act) is a legislative bill introduced in the United States Senate during 2010 that has been the topic of considerable debate. After my name was mentioned during some testimony before a Senate committee last year I dug into the details and I am alarmed. I wrote recently about interactions between DNS blocking and Secure DNS and in this article I will expand on the reasons why COICA as proposed last year should not be pursued further in any similar form.

COICA and Secure DNS

As a strong proponent of the private right of action for all Internet endpoints and users, I've long been aware of the costs in complexity and chaos of any kind of "blocking" that deliberately keeps something from working. I saw this as a founder at MAPS back in 1997 or so when we created the first RBL to put some distributed controls in place to prevent the transmission of unwanted e-mail from low reputation Internet addresses. What we saw was that in addition to the expected costs (to spammers) and benefits (to victims) of this new technology there were unintended costs to system and network operators whose diagnostic and repair work for problems related to e-mail delivery was made more complex because of the new consideration for every trouble ticket: "was this e-mail message blocked or on purpose?"

DNSSEC - Let’s Stay the Course!

I don't know about you, but I'm starting to think that DNSSEC being so hot these days is a mixed blessing. Yes, it's wonderful that after so many years there is finally broad consensus for making DNSSEC happen. But being so prominent also means the protocol is taking shots from those who don't want to make the necessary software, hardware and operational modifications needed. And DNSSEC has taken some shots from those who just want to be contrarian.

KnujOn Releases New Security, Abuse and Compliance Report

We have just issued a new report detailing abuse of the Domain Name System and Registrar contract compliance issues. The report specifically discusses several items including: Registrars with current legal issues; Illicit Use of Privacy-Proxy WHOIS Registration; A study on the contracted obligation for Bulk WHOIS Access; and more.

GAC New gTLD No Fly Zone

I have struggled over the past couple of weeks to come up with a metaphor to succinctly describe the standoff between the ICANN Board and the ICANN Government Advisory Committee (GAC) over the new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) implementation process. So here's my best attempt to explain these dynamics in terms a layperson may be better to understand. I chose the metaphor for its timeliness, without meaning to offend anyone.

Eureka! We’ve Struck ... Consensus

It took a trip to California - the land of the gold rush - to discover that most elusive of ICANN aspirations: consensus. ICANN kicked off this week's meeting in San Francisco with a parade of Internet pioneers discussing the past, present and future of ICANN. ... ICANN insiders might focus on points of contention that came out of this morning's comments -- whether on new gTLDs or the future of the IANA functions -- but I was more interested by those areas where ICANN pioneers clearly agreed.

Proxy-Privacy User Higher for Illicit Domains

WHOIS issues are looming large for the ICANN meeting next week, starting with an all-day WHOIS Policy Review on Sunday (background). WHOIS is a subject that has been the recent topic of a number of issues including a debacle over potentially disclosing the identities of compliance reporters to spammers and criminal domainers.

Inquiring About the “Unthinkable”

There has been no shortage of speculation within the ICANN community regarding the continued show down between the ICANN Board and its Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) over new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) and the pending expiration of the IANA contract this September. Now one of the more interesting topics of discussion that I have had with multiple independent parties was the potential of ICANN making changes to the L root zone file...

ICANN’s New gTLD Double Standard?

Over the last two days I have sat in a room and watched a rather interesting dynamic unfold between the ICANN Board and its Government Advisory Committee (GAC). While I remain optimistic of there being a responsible closure to the new gTLD implementation process within the next six months, an apparent double standard being used by the ICANN Board could be a potential stumbling block.

Caidagram: Visualising Geographically Annotated Internet Measurements

With measurement networks rapidly evolving up to hundreds of nodes, it becomes more and more challenging to extract useful visualisations from tons of collected data. At the same time, geographical information related to Internet measurements (either known or inferred with state-of-the-art techniques) can be exploited to build tools based on geography as a common knowledge base. We wanted to develop a tool to visualise different classes of geographically annotated Internet data, e.g., topology, address allocation, DNS and economical data.