Google Buys VeriSign (not really)

No that's not really happening, Google is not buying VeriSign. But given Google's ravenous appetite for data, it might find VeriSign quite attractive. VeriSign has both root domain name servers and servers for the .com and .net top level domains (TLDs). VeriSign could data mine the queries coming into those servers and produce a very valuable real-time stream of what users on the net are doing... Google just bought Postini -- and one would have to be fairly naive to believe that Google does not intend to dredge through all... 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

Valuing IP Addresses

The prospect of exhaustion of the IPv4 address space is not a surprise. We've been anticipating this situation since at least 1990. But it's a "lumpy" form of exhaustion. It's not the case that the scarcity pressures for IP addresses are evidently to the same level in every part of the Internet. It's not the case that every single address is being used by an active device. A couple of decades ago we thought that an address utilisation ratio of 10% (where, for example, a block of 256 addresses would be used in a network with some 25 addressed devices) was a great achievement.  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

Understanding the Threat Landscape: Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)

I previously provided a brief overview of how Verisign iDefense characterizes threat actors and their motivations through adversarial analysis. Not only do security professionals need to be aware of the kinds of actors they are up against, but they should also be aware of the tactical data fundamentals associated with cyber-attacks most commonly referred to as indicators of compromise (IOCs). Understanding the different types of tactical IOCs can allow for quick detection of a breach... more

SEO Secrets of Keyword-Relevant Domain Extensions

The Domain Name Association (DNA) recently commissioned Web Traffic Advisors, with supporting analysis from Kevin Rowe of Rowe Digital, to do an independent study, Hidden Advantages of Relevant Domain Names, to answer the following question: Can domain name extensions, especially meaningful or relevant domain name extensions (e.g. .Club, .Online, .Rocks, .Today), have the same opportunity as traditional or more generic ones (e.g. traditional .Biz, .Com, .Info, .Org)? more

How the Pandemic Changed Broadband

The Washington Post recently published an article with a series of graphs showing the impact of the pandemic on various economic indicators, including unemployment, wages, air travel, grocery prices, home prices, and consumer sentiment. The article got me thinking about the impact of the pandemic on the broadband industry, and several important changes emerged from our collective pandemic experience. more

FUD for Thought: ARIN Releases Comic Books

The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) has launched a comic book series to further help raise awareness for the adoption of IPv6 and other matters dealt by the organization. The comic books, called "Team ARIN", are fictionalized views of the organization, its processes, and the whole concept of Internet governance. "Though our heroes are fictional, the issues they face are very real," says ARIN. more

Who Should Bear Domain Name Risk?

Domain owners are bearing tremendous risk that someone else is better equipped to absorb. In this post, I outline the motivation of risk ownership, the sources of risk associated with owning a domain name, and the ways by which some of these risks have been transferred to institutions that are better equipped to handle them. I close by pointing out that we would be better served by having a trademark risk-management entity. more

The ENISA Botnet Report: Thoughts on the State of Play in Smart Phones

At the ENISA presentation on her botnet report at eco in Cologne, 9 and 10 March, one of the slots was dedicated to threats to the mobile environment. The message I was supposed to come home with was: we can still count the numbers of mobile viruses manually, <600; the problem will never be the same as on a fixed network as traffic is monitored and metered: We detect it straight away. We are studying the problem seriously. Are mobile operators really prepared for what is coming? more

Verizon to Stop Issuing New Public IPv4 Addresses

Verizon has announced that starting June 30, 2017, it will stop issuing new Public Static IPv4 addresses due to a shortage of available addresses. more

The Domain Industry Keeps on Growing and Changing

It has become very clear once again: the domain industry won't stop. The scenario we know today is constantly changing, and our industry adapts to the changes taking place in society and the economy. Thanks to its versatility, the domain industry continues to amaze with some big changes year after year. This sector has its own peculiarities, rules, and opportunities for all stakeholders involved. more

Is the Transition to IPv6 a “Market Failure?”

At the outset I should say that here I would like to restrict my view to the transition from the IPv4 Internet to the IPv6 Internet, and, in particular, to examine the topic of the appropriate market structure that lies behind the dual stack transition strategy, and the manner in which the Internet can transition from the universal use of IPv4 as the underlying datagram protocol to the universal use of IPv6. more

Comparing IPv4 and IPv6 Performance

The active measurements the RIPE NCC carried out on World IPv6 Day on 8 June 2011 included ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) and ICMP6 (ICMP for IPv6) measurements from our vantage points to selected hostnames of World IPv6 Day participants and other dual-stacked parties. We used these measurements to determine the performance of IPv4 versus IPv6 connections. more

Study Finds Spammers Use P2P Harvesting to Spam Millions

A recent study conducted by Blue Security reports how Internet users can unknowingly expose their contacts' emails addresses to Spammers while sharing files, music, games and DVDs over Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks. The study has uncovered hundreds of incidents where files containing email addresses were made accessible in P2P networks. more