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Decentralization is exciting. Headline-grabbing, even. After all, in a world where frustration levels are sky-high and rising, it should not come as a shock that many individuals are willing to embrace what we might call "anti-system solutions." Decentralized solutions, in our case, which come with the ambitious promise of providing everything their centralized counterpart can provide but without centralized points of failure and regulations. In our previous article, we enumerated several advantages associated with decentralized domain names. more
With solution providers such as Unstoppable Domains or Handshake, and blockchain technology-friendly browsers, such as Brave, that are more than happy to assist on the implementation front, decentralized alternatives to the traditional Domain Name System has been receiving more and more attention lately. Centralized vs. decentralized... what will it be? more
In April, I published an article, The Multistakeholder Moment of Truth: Will Stakeholders Hold ICANN Accountable?, alerting stakeholders that ICANN is violating its legal agreements with the U.S. Government -- namely the InterNIC licensing agreement and merged Memorandum of Understanding. At that time, I warned that it is essential for stakeholders not to remain silent in the face of this transgression, "hoping that such behavior left unchecked will end of its own accord." more
Technical management of the Internet was delegated to ICANN by the U.S. government because it was believed that the private sector would be more agile and responsive to the needs of globally distributed stakeholders. However, this optimism and the faith it has produced has proven to be misplaced since ICANN's multi-stakeholder governance continues falling far short of the basic expectations set when it was created. more
A recent study carried out by Governance Primer on behalf of the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) identified trends in the acceptance of all domain names in software hosted at Github, the largest open-source repository globally. This research builds on top of previous efforts aimed at identifying the underlying issues that result in problems when different applications need to handle Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) and new gTLDs, particularly when it comes to email addresses. more
As we finished this article, the world was hit by another global outage by content delivery network (CDN) provider, Akamai, on June 17, 2021. The cause seems to be related to the lack of capacity to a certain "routing table" of their distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation. Although the technical analysis is not yet available, the central premise of this article also applies to this incident, and it serves as a timely testimony. more
On May 26, 2021, I submitted a complaint to ICANN's Complaints Officer, Krista Papac. In a nutshell, my complaint centers on ICANN's blatant violation of its Bylaws, specifically Section 2.2, named Restrictions, which expressly prohibits ICANN from acting as a registrar. However, despite the absence of any exceptions to this unambiguous prohibition, ICANN is acting improperly as a registrar for the purposes of warehousing and cybersquatting on certain domain names in the .com and .net registries. more
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has been a major contextual factor of global internet governance discussions over the past year, and it appears that discussions in ICANN are no exception. Threats to the integrity and security of the DNS have become a regular topic of debate within the ICANN community. In recent months, these discussions have increasingly focused on the idea of 'DNS abuse' and, more specifically, COVID-19-related DNS abuse. more
It was not without a little trepidation that I planned the 2nd DNS Abuse Institute Forum to focus on the long-standing and often contentious definitional issues surrounding DNS Abuse. While the risk of getting stuck in the usual entrenched positions was real, it seemed to me that we had an opportunity to provide some clarity and if not change minds, at least provide perspective. more
The ways in which the Internet is embedded in our daily lives are too varied and numerous to catalogue. The Internet delivers information, access to goods, services, education, banking, social interaction and, increasingly, work space. The global pandemic has only heightened our dependence on the online world, which is why efforts to ensure that the Internet remains a trusted and secure environment are more important than ever. more
It has been just over 3 years since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect, and the work within ICANN (type "EPDP 2a" into your acronym decoder ring) to develop a permanent Registration Data policy is progressing at a snail's pace. At issue is a proposed mandatory requirement for Contracted Parties (really just Registrars), to differentiate between "legal persons" (a fancy way of saying corporations and similar organizations) and "natural persons" (the kind that eat and breathe and schedule Zoom calls). more
Managing the risk of third parties has become a compliance focus for many large organizations. Companies even work with third-party service providers and external vendors just to manage this risk. The recent SolarWinds attack escalates the critical need for chief compliance officers to collaborate with their business counterparts to identify and mitigate potentially unknown threats that lie within third-party supply chains. Yet how can companies manage this risk when it's not if but when you're attacked? more
The Registration Operations Workshop (ROW) was conceived as an informal industry conference that would provide a forum for discussion of the technical aspects of registration operations in the domain name system and IP addressing. The 10th ROW will be held online on Tuesday, June 8th, 2021 at 13h00-17h00 UTC. Click to learn more about the discussion topics and registration details. more
Domain name abuse is one of the most dangerous and under-regulated issues in digital business security today. Many of the largest companies in the world still lack basic domain security protocols, making them prime targets for bad actors. An attack on a domain can lead to the redirection of a company's website, domain spoofing, domain and domain name system (DNS) hijacking attacks, phishing attacks, network breaches, and business email compromise (BEC). more
The DNS Operations, Analysis, and Research Centre (DNS-OARC) convened OARC-35 at the start of May. Here are some thoughts on a few presentations at that meeting that caught my attention... These days it seems that the term "the digital economy" is synonymous with "the surveillance economy." Many providers of services on the Internet spend a lot of time and effort assembling profiles of their customers. These days, it's not just data in terms of large-scale demographics but the assembling of large sets of individual profiles. more
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