DNS

NTIA & You: NTIA’s Intention to Transfer IANA Functions to the Global Community Is Welcome, But…

It is no secret that both the US government, ICANN, and the global Internet community have argued and worked tirelessly for the past 15 odd years on the vexing issue of globalizing the US government's role in the IANA function. Despite the desire, long-held by many, for the US to relinquish its control of the IANA function, it is clear that getting to full multistakeholder control of the function is not going to be easy. more

Secure Domain Foundation Launched to Help Internet Infrastructure Operators Fight Cybercrime

Experts and companies in the information security industry today announced the formation of the Secure Domain Foundation (SDF), a new, non-profit, community-driven organization devoted to the identification and prevention of Internet cyber crime utilizing the domain name system (DNS). more

US Ambassador and US Commerce Dept Assistant Secretary Defend Transition of IANA Oversight

In an article entitled "Celebrating and Protecting the Global Internet" in Bloomberg BNA, US Ambassador Sepulveda and US Commerce Dept Assistant Secretary Strickling defend the transition of IANA oversight to the global multistakeholder community. more

Questions and No Answers to US Oversight transition, ICANN’s Role and Future of Internet Governance

Traditionally, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) coordinates the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions, which are key technical services critical to the continued operations of the Domain Name System (DNS)... ICANN has also evolved in its structures to use the 'Multistakeholder Model' in the dissemination of some of its functions and this has seen the creation of working groups and constituencies. more

Policy Advisory Board Model Now a Test of Multistakeholder Model

In early November 2013, prior to ICANN's Buenos Aires meeting, I published an article at this forum, Policy Advisory Boards – A Cornerstone PICS (Public Interest Commitment Specification), that extoled the advantages of adopting a Policy Advisory Board (PAB) model as a practical, effective, and least burdensome means of effectively implementing the request of ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) for consumer and competitive safeguards at sensitive new gTLD "strings" - especially those that are related to regulated industries and professions. It is deeply gratifying that the article has received nearly 9,000 views since first being posted and inspired considerable discussion. more

Dynamic DNS Customers, Check Your Router Settings!

There have been quite a few news stories released over the last 24 hours regarding a wide-scale compromise of 300,00 Internet gateway devices. Here's the executive summary of what happened, how to check if you are vulnerable, and what you can do to fix it... If you use any of these devices, you should check it to ensure your device has not been compromised. more

Jeff Schmidt to Present Name Collision Management Framework at Research Workshop

I'm delighted to announce that the name collisions workshop this weekend will include Jeff Schmidt, CEO of JAS Global Advisors, presenting the Name Collision Occurrence Management Framework that his firm just released for public review. Jeff's presentation is one of several on the program announced by the program committee for the Workshop and Prize on Root Causes and Mitigations of Name Collisions (WPNC). more

Widespread Compromised Routers Discovered With Altered DNS Configurations

A widespread compromise of consumer-grade small office/home office (SOHO) routers has been discovered by threat intelligence group Team Cymru. According to the report, "attackers are altering the DNS configuration on these devices in order to redirect victims DNS requests and subsequently replace the intended answers with IP addresses and domains controlled by the attackers, effectively conducting a Man-in-the-Middle attack." more

Namecoin Decentralized DNS Research

The holidays open up a block of time to catch up on "I meant to read that" bookmarks, RSS feeds, and all the favorited and forgotten tweets. I made it through 50 before a NormanShark blog post kicked off a research project. The analysts found a malware sample which was using .bit domains in their communications infrastructure, but .bit ... what is that? .bit is a TLD operating outside of ICANN. Some would say they are TLD squatting, but I leave that opinion up to the reader. more

Asia Pac Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress to Be Held in Hong Kong on May 14-15

The Asia Pac Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress for first and prospective second round applicants will be held in Hong Kong and timed to take place in conjunction with the International Trademark Associations' (INTA) 136 Annual Conference at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC) starting on May 10. more

Collisions Ahead: Look Both Ways before Crossing

Many years ago on my first trip to London, I encountered for the first time signs that warned pedestrians that vehicles might be approaching in a different direction than they were accustomed to in their home countries, given the left-versus-right-side driving patterns around the world. (I wrote a while back about one notable change from left-to-right, the Swedish "H Day," as a comment on the IPv6 transition.) more

CircleID’s Top 10 Posts of 2013

Here we are with CircleID's annual roundup of top ten most popular posts featured during 2013 (based on overall readership). Congratulations to all the participants whose posts reached top readership and best wishes to the entire community for 2014. more

Name Collisions II - A Call for Research

This post is a heads up to all uber-geeks about a terrific research initiative to try to figure out causes and mitigation of name-collision risk. There's a $50,000 prize for the first-place paper, a $25,000 prize for the second place paper and up to five $10,000 prizes for third-place papers. That kind of money could buy a lot of toys, my peepul. And the presentation of those papers will be in London -- my favorite town for curry this side of India. Interested? Read on. more

The 30th Birthday of DNS!

As Ond?ej Surý of CZ.NIC recently pointed out on the dns-operations list, it was 30 years ago this month, in November 1983, that two RFCs that defined what we now call the Domain Name System (DNS), RFC 882 and RFC 883, were published. They make for an interesting read today when you think about how far we've come in those 30 years -- and now how absolutely critical DNS is as part of the Internet's infrastructure. more

Conclusion: SLD Blocking Is Too Risky Without TLD Rollback (Part 4 of 4)

ICANN's second level domain (SLD) blocking proposal includes a provision that a party may demonstrate that an SLD not in the initial sample set could cause "severe harm," and that SLD can potentially be blocked for a certain period of time. The extent to which that provision would need to be exercised remains to be determined. However, given the concerns outlined in Part 2 and Part 3 of this series, it seems likely that there could be many additions (and deletions!) from the blocked list given the lack of correlation between the DITL data and actual at-risk queries. more