DNS

Don’t Blame Open Recursives For DDoS Attacks and Why You Should Implement BCP38

There has been plenty of buzz and chatter on the Internet recently concerning a very large DDoS attack against CloudFlare, with coverage on their blog, the New York Times, and the BBC, among many others. While attacks of this nature are certainly nothing new, the scale of this attack was surprising, reported to hit 120Gbps. For a sense of scale, your average cable modem is only about 20Mbps, or about 0.016% of that bandwidth. more

What Smaller Institutions Can Learn from DDoS Attacks on Big Banks

Since last fall, several waves of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks have targeted major players in the U.S. banking industry. JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and PNC were among the first to sustain intermittent damage. Eventually, the top 50 institutions found themselves in the crosshairs... In the months to come, security experts would praise the banks' collective response, from heightened DDoS protection to candid customer communications.. these larger institutions have learned some painful lessons that smaller firms might heed as they seek to minimize risks. more

Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance (Milton Mueller, NYU 12/14)

The Internet Society's NY Chapter (ISOC-NY) is delighted to present Milton Mueller's first full exposition of his new book Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance at NYU on Tuesday December 14 2010. Prof. Mueller is a co-founder of ICANN's NonCommercial User's Constituency and a renowned cyberlibertarian. more

Curious Statement About 2012 gTLD Round Name Collision Fears at IGF

During his presentation at IGF on 7 December in Guadalajara, Akram Atallah, President of ICANN's Global Domain Division, said the following: So when you look at that, you'll see that we are left with only 20 to go. There are a few that need to be withdrawn that haven't withdrawn... This surprised me, but since the meeting was about possible new application procedures and not the handling of the last round's persistent problems, I decided not to ask at that point. more

A Root Server With a View…

Running a DNS server that serves the root gives an interesting view into the world of the DNS. With the ongoing improvements to the ICANN operated L-ROOT, we've been fortunate enough to be able to make use of the "DNS Statistics Collector" (DSC) tool. "DSC" allows us to generate different views of the DNS queries we have been seeing at the L-ROOT systems. more

Want to Share Info with the DNSSEC Community? ICANN57 DNSSEC Workshop Seeking Proposals by Sept 15

Do you have information or an idea you would like to share with members of the broader DNS / DNSSEC community? Have you developed a new tool that makes DNSSEC or DANE deployment easier? Have you performed new measurements? Would you like feedback about a new idea you have? Would you like to demonstrate a new service you have? If so, we're seeking proposals for the DNSSEC Workshop to be held at ICANN57 in Hyderabad, India, in early November 2016. more

As We Head to ICANN64 in Japan, Let’s Pay Attention to National and Global Context of the Region

Soon it'll be time again for some of us to pack our bags and head for the ICANN64 meeting in Kobe, Japan. Even if you plan to stay at home, it still will be helpful to understand the national and global context in which the meeting is taking place. One way to do that is by looking at Japan's Prime Minister's Shinzo Abe recent Keynote Speech at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, (Jan 23rd, 2019) entitled: "Toward a New Era of "Hope-Driven Economy" more

A Mexican Standoff in Wonderland

Wikipedia defines a Mexican standoff as "a confrontation in which no strategy exists that allows any party to achieve victory. As a result, all participants need to maintain the strategic tension, which remains unresolved until some outside event makes it possible to resolve it." This would be an apt way to describe what may be possibly occurring presently between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and its largest ratepayer, VeriSign. more

Ensuring Last Minute GAC Safeguards

In light of some changes contained in the most recent Applicant Guidebook as well as some of the proposed contractual provisions contained in the recent IANA Statement of Work, there is a potential growing justification to make some necessary last minute changes to the legal terms and conditions contained in Module 6 of the Applicant Guidebook. Specifically, the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) and its individual members have a clearly defined role in the new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) process... more

Achieving Multi-Stakeholder Progress on DNS Abuse

DNS Abuse and how to address it has been the topic of intense, often conflictual, and rarely conclusive discussions for many years, starting with the very definition of the term and the degree of responsibility bestowed upon DNS operators. In 2018, after several months of intersessional work, the Internet & Jurisdiction Global Conference brought together in Ottawa more than 200 key stakeholders to define a roadmap to address certain jurisdictional challenges on the Internet, including DNS abuse. more

Trust Isn’t Easy: Drawing an Agenda from Friday’s DDoS Attack and the Internet of Things

Last week, millions of infected devices directed Internet traffic to DNS service provider Dyn, resulting in a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that took down major websites including Twitter, Amazon, Netflix, and more. In a recent blog post, security expert Bruce Schneier argued that "someone has been probing the defences of the companies that run critical pieces of the Internet". This attack seems to be part of that trend. This disruption begs the question: Can we trust the Internet? more

Making Internet Faster: Google, OpenDNS and Others Announce Joint Effort

Google, OpenDNS, content delivery networks and other operators have announced a joint effort called "The Global Internet Speedup," to "make the Internet faster". According to the group, this collaboration will be executed via an open IETF proposed standard called "edns-client-subnet" in order to help better direct content to users thereby decreasing latency, decreasing congestion, increasing transfer speeds and helping the Internet to scale faster and further. 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

ICANN, Ukraine and Leveraging Internet Identifiers

Ukraine's representative to ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) has sent a letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to remove Russian-administered top level domains (.RU, .SU and .рф) from the DNS root zone. In a separate letter, Ukraine's representative also asked RIPE NCC to withdraw the right to use all IPv4 and IPv6 addresses by all Russian members of the regional IP registry for the European region. 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