DNS

US-CERT Says They Are Aware of DNS Exploit Code, Emphasizes Urgent Patching

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has acknowledged that they are aware of the publicly available exploit code for a cache poisoning vulnerability in common DNS implementations. US-CERT is re-emphasizing the urgency of patching vulnerable DNS systems. more

ICANN Releases Paper on Domain Name Security

Today ICANN releases a paper with the title "DNSSEC @ ICANN - Signing the root zone: A way forward toward operational readiness". The paper explains in more detail than earlier documents what ICANN view on signing of the root zone is. I think the key points mentioned in this paper are true, and in general, I think this document is a good read. It is not long, and summarizes what I would call the current view is. more

DNS Attack Code Has Been Published

As warned by Dan Kaminsky, Paul Vixie, and numerous other experts experts, it was just a matter of time before an exploit code for the now public DNS flaw would surface. An exploit code for the flaw allowing insertion of malicious DNS records into the cache of target nameservers has been posted to Metasploit, a free provider of information and tools on exploit techniques. According to reports Metasploit creator, H D Moore in collaboration with a researcher named "|)ruid" from Computer Academic Underground, created the exploit, dubbed "DNS BaliWicked Attack", along with a DNS service created to assist with the exploit. more

DNS Security Flaw Secret Leaked Prior to Set Date: Patch DNS as Fast as Possible

In what seems to have started with a blog post by reverse engineer Halvar Flake, and subsequent blog postings from other experts in the know, the details of the recently announced DNS vulnerability was quite likely made public today. The DNS flaw was found earlier this year by security researcher Dan Kaminsky and earlier this month announced publicly along with various tools and patches provided by numerous vendors... more

An Astonishing Collaboration

Wow. It's out. It's finally, finally out... So there's a bug in DNS, the name-to-address mapping system at the core of most Internet services. DNS goes bad, every website goes bad, and every email goes...somewhere. Not where it was supposed to... I'm pretty proud of what we accomplished here. We got Windows. We got Cisco IOS. We got Nominum. We got BIND 9, and when we couldn't get BIND 8, we got Yahoo, the biggest BIND 8 deployment we knew of, to publicly commit to abandoning it entirely. It was a good day... more

ICANN’s New gTLD Process: Hype and Reality

At its 32d International Junket Meeting last week, ICANN's Board approved the GNSO Council's recommendations for the eventual addition to the root of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). This means that eventually, when the staff drafts, community comments upon, and Board approves implementation processes, those with deep pockets will have the opportunity to bid for new TLD strings... more

ICANN Takes First Step to Becoming a Global Content Regulator

There has been wide coverage of ICANN's decision this week to adopt a new process for creating new global Top Level Domains (gTLDs). Publishing a clear, transparent and objective process is thought likely to result in a considerable expansion of gTLDs -- although nobody really knows whether this means "quite a lot" or "many thousands"... Less attention has been given to one of the new tests ICANN will use when considering whether to approve a new gTLD, contained in GNSO's sixth recommendation... more

ICANN Paris: Seeking Comments from Internet Users in North America

Ahead of next week's ICANN meeting in Paris, I would like to consult users, At-Large Structures (ALSs) and others involved in internet governance in North America. As one of the three regional representatives on the ICANN At-Large Advisory committee, I want to make sure individuals, users and ALS's are given the chance to summit their own questions, suggestions and items to the agenda of the upcoming meeting. I'd be happy to receive your comments, and/or schedule a chat with you Mon-Thur, from 13:00-18:00 EDT. Leave a comment to this post, or leave me a message. more

Will a Global TAR Make DNSSEC Stick?

Two US Government contractors and the National Institute of Science and Technology have released a white paper, "Statement of Needed Internet Capability," detailing possible alternatives and considerations for a Trust Anchor Repository (TAR) to support DNSSEC deployment. The document was released through the DNSSEC-Deployment Group this week with a request that it be circulated as widely as possible to gather feedback. A Trust Anchor Repository (TAR) refers to the concept of a DNS resource record store that contains secure entry point keys... more

Fun and Games In the ccTLD World

There must be something in the air. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but there are a lot of things going on in the ccTLD world at the moment. In the UK Nominet's Annual General Meeting (AGM) is being held this week. This would normally provoke a yawn from most people -- it's an AGM -- how exciting can that be? This year's AGM looks like it could be quite entertaining, although it probably isn't going to be particularly beneficial for its membership. more

Brand Complementors: Implementing a Cooperative Domain-Name Use

The essay expands a cooperative solution to third-party use of brands in domain names. Like any approach that depends on cooperation, the solution will require both sides to change behavior but also allow both sides to take credit for the resulting benefits, i.e. a triangular solution. If not immediately addressed, the problem of third-party use can become a major threat to the industry. But we already know one thing: when it comes to this issue, legal action and bullying don't work. more

The End of End-to-End?

One of the major principles of the architecture of the Internet was encapsulated in a paper by Saltzer, Reed and Clark, "End-to-End Arguments in System Design". This paper, originally published in 1981, encapsulated very clearly the looming tension between the network and the application: "The function in question can completely and correctly be implemented only with the knowledge and help of the application standing at the end points of the communication system. Therefore, providing that questioned function as a feature of the communication system itself is not possible." At the time this end-to-end argument was akin to networking heresy! more

New Publication on Updating the Anti-Cybersquatting Regime and Ad-Based Cybersquatting

Sealing the cracks: a proposal to update the anti-cybersquatting regime to combat advertising-based cybersquatting is the title of an article by Christopher Varas in the April issue of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice. In this article, the author labels "modern cybersquatting" the monetization of domain names through PPC advertisements, and says that brand owners lack effective tools to combat this practice... more

IPv6 Deployment: Just Where Are We?

In this article we'd like to look at some measures of the use of IPv4 and IPv6 protocols in today's Internet and see if we can draw any conclusions about just how far down the track we are with the IPv6 part of dual stack deployment. We'll use a number of measurements that have been made consistently since 1 January 2004 to the present, where we can distinguish between the relative levels of IPv4 and IPv6 use in various ways. more

RIPE NCC Publishes Case Study of youtube.com Hijack

As you may be aware from recent news reports, traffic to the youtube.com website was 'hijacked' on a global scale on Sunday, 24 February 2008. The incident was a result of the unauthorised announcement of the prefix 208.65.153.0/24 and caused the popular video sharing website to become unreachable from most, if not all, of the Internet. The RIPE NCC conducted an analysis into how this incident was seen and tracked by the RIPE NCC's Routing Information Service (RIS) and has published a case study... more