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The term "Internet Governance" has become an area of particular attention in part as a consequence of widespread recognition that the Internet represents an important area of national interest for all countries seeking to participate in the benefits of global electronic commerce, distance learning, access to the encyclopedic wealth of information on the Internet, and in the social dimension that the Internet is creating. From the perspective of governments, the Internet is simultaneously a technology that promises high economic value for parties making use of it and a challenge in that it is unlike all other telecommunications media previously invented. more
As momentum builds in the world of .brands, there are some major players we as an industry have been watching closely for an indication of how their branded TLDs will become part of their digital strategies. .brand websites like these from high-profile tech leaders and influencers can be the best publicity for brand TLDs as a whole; as their involvement and buy-in acts as a significant endorsement of the .brand movement. more
DNS rebinding attacks are real and can be carried out in the real world. They can penetrate through browsers, Java, Flash, Adobe and can have serious implications for Web 2.0-type applications that pack more code and action onto the client. Such an attack can convert browsers into open network proxies and get around firewalls to access internal documents and services. It requires less than $100 to temporarily hijack 100,000 IP addresses for sending spam and defrauding pay-per-click advertisers. Everyone is at risk and relying on network firewalls is simply not enough. In a paper released by Stanford Security Lab, "Protecting Browsers from DNS Rebinding Attacks," authors Collin Jackson, Adam Barth, Andrew Bortz, Weidong Shao, and Dan Boneh provide ample detail about the nature of this attack as well as strong defenses that can be put in place in order to help protect modern browsers. more
Back in the days of dial-up modems and transfer speeds measured in hundreds of bits per second, unwanted email messages were actually felt as a significant dent in our personal pocketbooks. As increases in transfer speeds outpaced increases in spam traffic, the hundreds of unwanted emails we received per week became more of a nuisance than a serious financial threat. Today sophisticated spam filters offered by all major email providers keep us from seeing hundreds of unwanted emails on a daily basis, and relatively infrequently allow unwanted messages to reach our coveted Inboxes. So, to some degree, the spam problem has been mitigated. But this "mitigation" requires multiple layers of protection and enormous amounts of continually-applied effort. more
Subdomains help organizations sort different sections of their websites neatly. Looking at the subdomains of some websites, for example, we usually see subdomains like shop[.]domain[.]com and blog[.]domain[.]com, which help users navigate the sites efficiently. But we couldn't help but notice subdomains that might be revealing a lot about a company's Internet infrastructure and resources. more
In a development that few people will notice but is interesting to us domain geeks, Apple is in the process of retiring its news.apple.com domain in favor of apple.news. Apple is not going to shed light on why it is making this migration. I suspect that anything to take traffic off the .com domain is never a bad idea. Perhaps Apple has a long-term vision for making its News app web-accessible (instead of locked within an app). more
The dot brand observatory is a research program on brands who registered their name at the top level of the internet domain name system -- the DNS. The research looks at the registration of second level domain names by brands, but also the use of these domain names to provide services and experience to customers. This research is carried out every other month, and we illustrate hereafter a certain number of highlights of our December analysis. more
ICM Registry announced this week it has struck a deal with McAfee for a free malware scan for every .XXX domain. The deal would include McAfee's "trustmark" and date stamp, ICM said. Every .XXX domain will be scanned for vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, browser exploits and phishing sites, reputational analysis and malware, Stuart Lawley, CEO of ICM Registry, said in a statement. more
The European Union's Network and Information Security Directive (NIS1), introduced in 2016, aimed to strengthen cybersecurity among Member States. However, market fragmentation and growing digital threats led to the enactment of the NIS2 Directive. more
It seems like spam is in the news every day lately, and frankly, some of the proposed solutions seem either completely hare-brained or worse than the problem itself. I'd like to reiterate a relatively modest proposal I first made over a year ago: Require legitimate DNS MX records for all outbound email servers.
MX records are one component of a domain's Domain Name System (DNS) information. They identify IP addresses that accept inbound email for a particular domain name. To get mail to, say, linux.com, a mail server picks an MX record from linux.com's DNS information and attempts to deliver the mail to that IP address. If the delivery fails because a server is out of action, the delivering server may work through the domain's MX records until it finds a server that can accept the mail. Without at least one MX record, mail cannot be delivered to a domain.
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Yesterday the ICANN board discussed and approved ICANN staff to enter into negotiations with ICM Registry, Inc. for the .XXX Top Level Domain (TLD). I'm sure there will be a longer more complete presentation from ICANN later about this, but as an individual board member I thought I'd post a quick note before people got carried away with speculation based on a lack of information. more
During its board meeting today in Sydney, the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced Rod Beckstrom, the former U.S. cybersecurity chief, as the new President and CEO. Beckstrom will be replacing Dr. Paul Twomey who had been serving this position since March 2003 and announced his resignation earlier this year. Dr Twomey has lately been reported as the primary candidate for heading Australian Government's proposed A$43 billion investment in a new National Broadband Network. more
"The Root Server is a Scarce Resource" is the focus of part one of a three-part series based on a study prepared by Karl M. Manheim, Professor of Law at Loyola Law School and Lawrence B. Solum, Professor of Law at University of San Diego. Special thanks and credit to Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal, Vol. 25, p. 317, 2004. ...We begin our analysis of domain name policy with a brief excursion into economics. Economics cannot answer all of the questions raised by domain name policy. First, domain name policy must answer to the discipline of network engineering. A useful domain name system must work, and the functionality, scalability, reliability, and stability of the system are determined by the soundness of its engineering. Second, domain name policy must answer to public policy. The Internet is a global network of networks, and Internet policy is answerable to a variety of constituencies, including national governments, the operators of the ccTLDs, Internet Service Providers, information providers, end users of the Internet, and many others. more
Now that ICANN has approved a potentially vast expansion in the number of generic Top-Level Domains, there's considerable interest in and confusion about how these names can be used. For example if someone registers "dot BRAND", can they advertise http://brand/ and have it work? more
Looking back at the year that just ended, here are the top ten most popular news, blogs, and industry news on CircleID in 2009 based on the overall readership of the posts. Congratulations to all the participants whose posts reached top readership in 2009 and best wishes to the entire community in 2010. more