DNS

UK’s National Cyber Security Centre Reveals Plans to Scale Up DNS Filtering

Speaking at the Billington Cyber Security Summit in Washington DC, Ciaran Martin, head of UK's Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) and the first Chief Executive of the new National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), set out how the new organization will use DNS filters as part of its plan to curb cyberattacks. more

Domain Name Registrations Reach 220 Million, Close to 5 Million Added in Q3

Nearly five million domain names were added to the Internet in the third quarter of 2011, bringing the total number of registered domain names to nearly 220 million worldwide across all domains, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief, published by VeriSign, Inc. more

Verisign’s Role in Securing the DNS Through Key Signing Ceremonies

Every few months, an important ceremony takes place. It's not splashed all over the news, and it's not attended by global dignitaries. It goes unnoticed by many, but its effects are felt across the globe. This ceremony helps make the internet more secure for billions of people. This unique ceremony began in 2010 when Verisign, ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration collaborated... more

A New Phase of Measuring DNS Abuse

Today the DNS Abuse Institute (“DNSAI” or the “ Institute”) adds a new level of reporting for our measurement project: DNSAI Compass™ (“Compass”). With this new level of reporting, we intend to show the spectrum of how malicious phishing and malware is distributed across the DNS registration ecosystem.1 To demonstrate this, we are identifying registrars and TLDs with high and low volumes of malicious domain registrations in their Domains Under Management (DUM), or new registrations. more

Quo Vadis ICANN?

The short history of Internet Governance is full of errors, failures, and - mainly - omissions. Despite the shortcomings, we also must acknowledge the achievements of past and present internet governance efforts. In particular, ICANN and its stakeholder constituencies have delivered on the mandate of a stable, secure and resilient Internet. Working with the IANA, IAB and IETF, the operational functions of IP addresses, and the Protocol Assignment and DNS must be seen as an unqualified success. more

Digital Sovereignty and Internet Standards

There have been a number of occasions when the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has made a principled decision upholding users' expectations of privacy in their use of IETF-standardised technologies. (Either that, or they were applying their own somewhat liberal collective bias to the technologies they were working on!) The first major such incident that I can recall is the IETF's response to the US CALEA measures. more

DNS, Content Providers Including Google and Neustar Propose Extending DNS Protocol

A proposal to extend the DNS protocol has been submitted by Google and other DNS and content providers such as Neustar/UltraDNS. Wilmer van der Gaast and Carlo Contavalli on behalf of the Google Public DNS team said: "Our proposed DNS protocol extension lets recursive DNS resolvers include part of your IP address in the request sent to authoritative nameservers. Only the first three octets, or top 24 bits, are sent providing enough information to the authoritative nameserver to determine your network location, without affecting your privacy." The proposal aims to ultimately help send users to nearby servers in order to improves speed, latency, and network utilization. more

Feds Ask for DNSChanger Deadline Extension As Millions of PCs Could Be Cut Off from the Web

Brian Krebs reporting in Krebs on Security: "Millions of computers infected with the stealthy and tenacious DNSChanger Trojan may be spared a planned disconnection from the Internet early next month if a New York court approves a new request by the U.S. government. Meanwhile, six men accused of managing and profiting from the huge collection of hacked PCs are expected to soon be extradited from their native Estonia to face charges in the United States." more

Malware Increasingly Uses DNS As Command and Control Channel to Avoid Detection

Number of malware threats that receive instructions from attackers through DNS is expected to increase, and most companies are not currently scanning for such activity on their networks, security experts said at the RSA Conference 2012 on Tuesday. While most malware-generated traffic passing through most channels used for communicating with botnets (such as TCP, IRC, HTTP or Twitter feeds and Facebook walls) can be detected and blocked, it's not the case for DNS (Domain Name System) and attackers are taking advantage of that, said Ed Skoudis, founder of Counter Hack Challenges and SANS fellow. more

The Impact of a Pandemic on Cyberattacks and Business Continuity Plans

A new survey of security and IT leaders by csoonline.com sheds light on how organizations across industries are dealing with the COVID-19 crisis, how prepared they were when the pandemic first hit, how vulnerable they are, and what the long-term impact on companies may be. Unsurprisingly, the survey found there has been an increased number of employees working from home. more

Google Launches Public DNS Service

Today Google announced the launch of its own public DNS resolver called Google Public DNS - claimed as part of the company's effort to "make the web faster". Google product manager, Prem Ramaswami, writes: "As people begin to use Google Public DNS, we plan to share what we learn with the broader web community and other DNS providers, to improve the browsing experience for Internet users globally. The goal of Google Public DNS is to benefit users worldwide while also helping the tens of thousands of DNS resolvers improve their services, ultimately making the web faster for everyone." more

DNSSEC Workshop on March 26 to Be Streamed Live from ICANN 49 in Singapore

If you are interested in DNSSEC and how it can make the Internet more secure, the DNSSEC Workshop at ICANN 49 in Singapore will be streamed live for anyone to listen and view. One of three DNSSEC-related technical events at ICANN 49, the DNSSEC Workshop takes place on Wednesday, March 26, from 8:30am - 2:45pm Singapore time. more

ICANN 56 in Helsinki - Schedule of DNSSEC Activities

The ICANN 56 meeting takes place in Helsinki, Finland, from June 27-30 and while it is a smaller "policy forum" style of meeting, there will still be some activities related to DNSSEC, DANE and DNS security in general. DNSSEC Workshop The DNSSEC Workshop will take place on the morning of Monday, 27 June 2016. All times are Eastern European Summer Time (EEST), which is UTC+3. more

Senate Appropriators Add IANA Language As House Requests GAO Study and Civil Society Opposes Shimkus

The Senate Appropriations Committee just reported out on June 5th its version of the Commerce-Justice-State Departments Appropriations bill for FY 15. In the course of its deliberations it added a consensus amendment on the IANA transition offered by Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE)... Parsing the amendment's language, the requirement that NTIA conduct a thorough review and analysis of any proposed IANA transition plan amounts to telling it to do its job properly; implicit in this requirement is that the analysis be shared with Congress. more

Recognizing Lessons Learned From the First DNSSEC Key Rollover, a Year Later

A year ago, under the leadership of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the internet naming community completed the first-ever rollover of the cryptographic key that plays a critical role in securing internet traffic worldwide. The ultimate success of that endeavor was due in large part to outreach efforts by ICANN and Verisign which, when coupled with the tireless efforts of the global internet measurement community, ensured that this significant event did not disrupt internet name resolution functions for billions of end users. more