DNS

Report on DNS Amplification Attacks

In this newly released paper Randal Vaughn and Gadi Evron discuss the threat of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks using recursive DNS name servers open to the world. The study is based on case studies of several attacked ISPs reported to have on a volume of 2.8Gbps. One reported event indicated attacks reaching as high as 10Gbps and used as many as 140,000 exploited name servers. more

Protecting the Internet: Certified Attachments and Reverse Firewalls?

In many respects the internet is going to hell in a hand basket. Spam, phishing, DNS poisoning, DDoS attacks, viruses, worms, and the like make the net a sick place. It is bad enough that bad folks are doing this. But it is worse that just about every user computer on the net offers a nice fertile place for such ill behavior to be secretly planted and operated as a zombie under the control of a distant and unknown zombie farmer. ...Some of us are coming to the converse point of view that the net is being endangered by the masses of ill-protected machines operated by users. more

TLD for Online Communities and Social Networking?

A company called PW Registry Corporation makes the following announcement regarding the .PW ccTLD originally designated for the country of Palau: "The PW Registry Corporation announced today plans for the activation of the PW top- level domain (TLD), the Internet's first and only domain extension devoted to "Communities of Shared Interests". Unlike other domain extensions, such as .com, .biz, and .info, PW is aimed at providing individuals and consumer/affinity organizations a highly-personalized, permanent and portable e-mail address and a managed platform for community and social networking." more

3rd Lawsuit Against VeriSign; Seeks Class Action Status

A third lawsuit has been filed late Friday in a federal district court in California against VeriSign, Inc. over its controversial DNS wildcard redirection service known as SiteFinder. It was filed by the longtime Internet litigator Ira Rothken. In addition, while two other lawsuits have been filed by Go Daddy Software, Inc. and Popular Enterprises, LLC. in Arizona and Florida, this is the first lawsuit to seek class-action status. Here is an excerpt from the "Introduction" section of this class-action lawsuit... more

ICANN Violating Free Enterprise?

Message to ICANN: Let those who want to create a TLD, simply register it with ICANN. If the TLD is not already taken, if they have the technical capability to mange the TLD, and they have the desire to market domain names on that TLD, then let them do so. ...Do you present a businesss plan to the city you live in before they allow you a business license? Does the city ask you to prove you are financially stable before issuing you a business license? If you apply for a business license to open a clothing store, does the city ask how you will run your clothing store or if you have the necessary expertise to run a clothing store? Does the city think you will hurt them economically if your clothing store goes out of business? No, it's none of their business... more

WSIS and the Splitting of the Root

There's talk that in the battle between the USA and Europe over control of ICANN, which may come to a head at the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, people will seriously consider "splitting the root" of DNS. I've written a fair bit about how DNS works and how the true power over how names get looked up actually resides with hundreds of thousands of individual site administrators. However, there is a natural monopoly in the root. All those site admins really have to all do the same thing, or you get a lot of problems, which takes away most of that power. Still, this is an interesting power struggle. more

Internet Meltdown?

Is the internet on the verge of a meltdown? A non-profit organization, People For Internet Responsibility (PFIR), is concerned that there is the risk of "imminent disruption, degradation, unfair manipulation, and other negative impacts on critical Internet services..." PFIR believes that the "red flag" warning signs of a potential meltdown include "attempts to manipulate key network infrastructures such as the domain name system; lawsuits over Internet regulatory issues... ever-increasing spam, virus, and related problems..." more

Mitigating DNS Abuse and Safeguarding the Internet

The internet is a beacon of global connectivity and information, but it has also become a battleground where malicious actors exploit vulnerabilities for various immoral purposes. Domain Name System (DNS) abuse stands has proven a constant in the internet threat landscape, posing risk to the overall digital trust. more

ICANN Receives 67 Unique Applications for Chinese gTLDs

At the press conference held in London on June 13, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) officially announced a list of 1930 applications for the new generic top level domain (gTLD). During the 40 years since the launch of the Internet, there are only 22 gTLDs such as .com. The 1930 applications represent a historical change to the Internet; For the first time, Chinese gTLDs will become available and there are 67 unique applications for Chinese gTLDs. more

Putting String Similarity into Context: Bulgaria’s IDN (.??) vs. Brazil’s ccTLD (.br)

Bulgaria is a nation which is directly impacted by the current Fast Track automatic disqualification when Top-Level Domain (TLD) strings are "confusingly similar" to other TLDs, in this case an Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD). Bulgaria has already been declined twice (in late 2009, and in May of 2010) to register the *.?? Cyrillic IDN on the premise that it looks confusingly similar to Brazil's *.br ASCII TLD. Being a native Bulgarian, I did not see how these two strings are similar more

Morgan Freeman Wins Transfer of morganfreeman.com from Cybersquatter

Perhaps Morgan Freeman never learned about the high profile domain name disputes involving celebrity names (e.g., Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and Julia Roberts), because he didn't register morganfreeman.com before it was snatched up by Mighty LLC in April 2003. After learning about Mighty LLC's (no stranger to domain name disputes) cybersquatting, Freeman filed a complaint before a WIPO arbitration panel under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy... more

Questioning the Illusion of Internet Governance

I confess, I don't get it. Much has been written about the apparent desire by the United Nations, spurred by China, Cuba, and other informationally repressive regimes, to "take control of the Internet." Oddly, the concrete focus of this battle -- now the topic of a Senate resolution! -- is a comparatively trivial if basic part of Net architecture: the domain name system. The spotlight on domain name management is largely a combination of historical accident and the unfortunate assignment of country code domains like .uk and .eu, geographically-grounded codes that give the illusion of government outposts and control in cyberspace. more

In Rem Domain Name Proceeding: Sometimes “may” Means “must”

Investools, Inc. recently filed an in rem domain name proceeding against a Canadian entity that registered the domain names investtools.com and investtool.com. In rem domain name proceedings are provided for under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act ("ACPA"), 15 U.S.C. 1125(d), and are a handy way for a trademark owner to acquire a domain name from a cybersquatter when the cybersquatter can't be found e.g., is located outside the U.S. ...The ACPA requires that a plaintiff demonstrate four things to establish in rem jurisdiction over a domain name... more

Verisign’s Perspective on Recent Root Server Attacks

On Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, 2015, some of the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS) root name servers received large amounts of anomalous traffic. Last week the root server operators published a report on the incident. In the interest of further transparency, I'd like to take this opportunity to share Verisign's perspective, including how we identify, handle and react, as necessary, to events such as this. more

Why We Need to Find Solutions on Internet Governance As Soon As Possible

Internet Governance is the buzzword, especially over the past couple of years, with debates and negotiations taking place almost with the same intensity and pathos of delicate issues, such as terrorism. But Internet Governance is a delicate issue. At the beginning, there was the web that made everything better... Life was good and exciting. That was Internet 1.0. But consider Internet 2.0, currently in development. No longer an egalitarian utopia, it has become much like the rest of our society -- divided by class, geography, culture, religion and politics. And its growing fragmentation threatens us all -- because we will be asked to take sides. more