ICANN has released its draft new budget. The document gives us a good look at how ICANN sees itself. It's arguably an internally inconsistent view. ...This budget calls for ICANN to have almost 60 staff members by the end of the next fiscal year. Expenses under this budget are predicted to be twice those of last year ($16 million v. $8 million). more
From the perspective of Internet security operations, here is what Net Neutrality means to me. I am not saying these issues aren't important, I am saying they are basically arguing over the colour of bits and self-marginalizing themselves. For a while now I tried not to comment on the Net Neutrality non-issue, much like I didn't comment much on the whole "owning the Internet by owning the Domain Name System" thingie. Here it goes anyway. Two years ago I strongly advocated that consumer ISP's should block some ports, either as incident response measures or as permanent security measures... more
Excerpts from the recent address of the President and CEO of ICANN to the Working Group for Internet Governance (WGIG). "ICANN's establishment in California is a consequence of history. Jon Postel, the long standing coordinator of the IANA functions was based at the University of Southern California. Jon was designated ICANN's first Chief Technology Officer but was preempted from taking the position due to his untimely death. The legal instrument available in California to establish such a public benefit function, including its multi-stakeholder expression, is a not-for-profit, public benefit corporation..." more
In the coming months, ICANN will ambitiously expand the number of top-level domains (TLDs). ICANN could add ".movie" and ".paris", among others, to the existing ranks of ".com", ".org", ".gov", and ".edu". Here's another they should consider: a new ".pol" TLD that is reserved exclusively for political candidates and entities. A ".pol" TLD is needed to alleviate problems linked to a now-common phenomenon called political cybersquatting... more
Well folks, it's that time of year again. It's time for our countdown of the top 10 biggest domain stories for 2013. And while my predictions from last year were accurate, in that we did see a record number of registry and registrar breaches, I had no idea that this year's biggest story would even appear on the list. So with that said, let's get started. more
This is an open letter to the United States House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property and the Internet regarding the Oversight Hearing on new Top-Level Domains to be held on Wednesday 4 May. The intention of the open letter is to highlight the imbalance of intellectual property interests on the panel and to ensure the Subcommittee is presented with some balanced facts and benefits of the new Top-Level Domain program. more
One of the more persistent founding myths around the internet is that it was designed to be able to withstand a nuclear war, built by the US military to ensure that even after the bombs had fallen there would still be communications between surviving military bases. It isn't true, of course. The early days of the ARPANET, the research network that predated today's internet, were dominated by the desire of computer scientists to find ways to share time on expensive mainframe computers rather than visions of Armageddon. Yet the story survives... more
The Egyptian government has disabled most Internet and cell phone services in an apparent effort to disrupt the anti-government protests gripping the country. Egypt's four primary Internet providers all stopped moving data early Friday, effectively cutting off Egyptians from the outside world and each other. more
In Ian Flemming's Thunderball M sends 007 to the Bahamas on a hunch that SPECTRE is hiding something there. Well, it's been our hunch for a while that the Bahamas "office" for the Registrar Internet.BS does not exist. Now we have confirmation of such. It has been documented in an explosive undercover expose by LegitScript that Internet.BS address as stated could not be verified, could not accept mail, and that the business itself could not actually be found in the Bahamas. more
When 72 candidates vie for 8 positions, making tough choices are inevitable. ICANN's 2005 Nominating Committee (Nom-Com) on Friday announced the selection of a diverse and independent set of nominees for important roles in ICANN, including the Board of Directors, the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), the At-Large Advisory Council (ALAC) and the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO). more
The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is an annual UN conference on Internet governance which was held this year in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The topics discussed range from human rights online to providing Internet access in developing countries. A somewhat secondary topic of conversation is Internet security and cyber-crime mostly limited to policy and legislative efforts. Techies and Internet security industry don't have much to do there, but I have a few updates for us from the conference. more
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has been studying the issue of Internet navigation and the DNS. The study was undertaken at the request of Congress to "provide analysis and advice for consideration by agencies of the U.S. Government, interested international institutions, and other stakeholders." In addition to examining technological issues, the study is also considering "relevant legal, economic, political, and social issues...because technologies related to the DNS and Internet navigation do not operate in isolation, but must be deployed within a complex and challenging national and international context." more
The ICANN-45 International meeting of the ICANN Global Community in Toronto, Canada provided an opportunity for the unveiling of the initial draft of the ICANN Africa Strategy, an episode that will always be remembered as a landmark moment which signaled the official commencement of ICANN's new approach to Africa. Indeed, a new chapter has started regarding how ICANN will relate henceforth to Africa. more
At the beginning of this year, a set of powerhouse organizations in cybersecurity (CSO Magazine, Deloitte, Carnegie Mellon's CERT program, and the U.S. Secret Service) released the results of a survey of 523 business and government executives, professionals and consultants in the ICT management field. The reaction generated by this survey provides an unusually clear illustration of how cyber-security discourse has become willfully detached from facts. more
The Times of India recently interviewed India's Minister of State for Communications and IT, Sachin Pilot, on Internet Governance. Titled "'Internet's governance can't be limited to one geography'", the article started off with an amazing assertion by the minister... While this interview is a fairly standard restatement of the position some Governments (including India) have about governmental control of Internet Governance, it is sadly apparent that the minister unfortunately doesn't appear to understand what the root servers are, or how they work. more
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