DNS

Decentralizing Cybersecurity Via DNS

Decentralization is a big trend in IT, and everyone has their own definition of what "decentralization" really means. With more organizations fully embracing a work-from-anywhere culture, decentralization has moved past being a fad and turned into a necessity. Decentralized cybersecurity is nothing new. Many of us have been doing it since before the pandemic. more

At the NCPH Intersessional, Compliance Concerns Take Centre Stage

The non-contracted parties of the ICANN community met in Reykjavík last week for their annual intersessional meeting, where at the top of the agenda were calls for more transparency, operational consistency, and procedural fairness in how ICANN ensures contractual compliance. ICANN, as a quasi-private cooperative, derives its legitimacy from its ability to enforce its contracts with domain name registries and registrars... more

Newer Cryptographic Advances for the Domain Name System: NSEC5 and Tokenized Queries

In my last post, I looked at what happens when a DNS query renders a "negative" response -- i.e., when a domain name doesn't exist. I then examined two cryptographic approaches to handling negative responses: NSEC and NSEC3. In this post, I will examine a third approach, NSEC5, and a related concept that protects client information, tokenized queries. The concepts I discuss below are topics we've studied in our long-term research program as we evaluate new technologies. more

New Report on Performance Measurements of the DNS Root Service in China

Zhiwei Yan writes to report: "CNNIC recently lunched a monitoring to measure the performance of the DNS root service in China (mainland). The results reflect that the service diversity from different ISPs and different geographical locations is obvious for different root servers. Besides, the stability of the DNS root service is directly affected by the BGP routing system. CNNIC will continue this work and anticipate the wide participation from the community." more

Change of Leadership at ICANN as Cerf Makes Way for Intellectual Property Expert

Intellectual property and computer law barrister Peter Dengate-Thrush has been elected as new Chairman of the Board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The former chairman of InternetNZ, the country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) registry for New Zealand (.nz), and cofounder of the Association of Asian Pacific ccTLDs, succeeds the legendary Vinton Cerf... more

Suggestions on IDN Variant Management

To some applicants, ICANN's variant management policy in DAG4 has become a big obstacle to the new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) application. The policy is to delegate the string while reserving the variants, and these variants will not be delegated until a sound mechanism is developed and the desired variants are evaluated. But for some languages, Chinese for example, the so called string and its variant, namely simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese, are equivalent and must be simultaneously delegated. more

A Look at the Rapid Evolution of the World’s DNS Infrastructure

A recent report by Pingdom looks at the booming growth of Internet's DNS infrastructure. From the article: "Five years ago there were 123 DNS root server sites (the "backend" of DNS) spread out on the Internet. Today there are more than twice as many, over 300. Five years ago, 46 countries had root servers. Today, 76 have them. In other words, not only has the number of root servers grown tremendously, but their geographical spread has increased as well. This is good news for the overall stability and performance of DNS worldwide." more

GNU C Library Found Vulnerable to Rogue DNS Server Attacks

Security experts from Google's Project Zero along with researchers from Red Hat, have identified and helped patch a security flaw in the GNU C Library (glibc) that could be exploited via rogue DNS servers, reports Catalin Cimpanu from Softpedia. more

It’s Time for a Referendum on Orgxit

The worst thing about Brexit wasn't the referendum. It was the fallout. David Cameron decided that the best way to manage a small risk was to take a big one. Finally, over three agonizing years later, the UK looks set to move on. The Internet Society – which has run the .ORG domain since 2002 – was in the same position as Cameron. They became convinced that it was worth dealing with a small risk by taking a huge one. more

Multi-Stakeholder Internet Governance Is Captured and Presumed Dead

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 Patchwork Quilt: Abuse Mitigation, the Domain Naming System and Pending Legislation

A few weeks ago, Appdetex published a blog with predictions for 2021, and admittedly, at the date of publication, there were already very clear indications that one prediction was already in flight. In our blog post, we'd said, "With the global domain name system failing to abate abuse, and, in fact, thwarting consumer protection, get ready for a patchwork of local laws targeting attribution and prosecution of bad actors... Get ready for some confusion and turmoil in the world of notice and takedown related to local laws and regulations." more

Reexamining Internet Fragmentation

One of the discussion topics at the recent ICANN 75 meeting was an old favorite of mine, namely the topic of Internet Fragmentation. Here, I'd like to explore this topic in a little more detail and look behind the knee-jerk response of declaiming fragmentation as bad under any and all circumstances. Perhaps there are more subtleties in this topic than simple judgments of good or bad. more

US Department of Commerce Reports on Open Internet, Privatization of DNS

Report form U.S. Department of Commerce: "Enabling Growth and Innovation in the Digital Economy" ... "The report articulates the Department of Commerce’s philosophy for digital economy policymaking and demonstrates the many ways in which the Department has pursued its policy agenda consistent with that philosophy." –Penny Pritzker, U.S. Secretary of Commerce more

Upcoming Event: DNS Measurements Hackathon 2017

RIPE NCC will be hosting the fifth hackathon event in Amsterdam, on 20 and 21 April, 2017. Operators, designers, researchers and developers are invited to take on the challenge and join in developing new tools and visualizations for DNS measurements. more

A Brief History and Recent Developments in the Co-Existence of Web2 and Web3 Domains

The Domain Name System (DNS, aka Web 2) and Web3 platforms are two different naming systems available to internet users. While the DNS (Web2) has been a reliable and trusted internet standard for decades, Web3 platforms (such as ENS, Handshake and Unstoppable) are a relatively new technology deployment that presents unique and different features. more