Looking at .Net Bids

ICANN is now seeking public comments regarding the .net bids. Unlike before, I am not going to offend one friend or another by siding with one proposal over another. They are all qualified and experienced registry operators. Instead, I will make some general observations. 1. None of the Revenue and Pricing Model (i.e. Section 4) about the bids are available to public... more

.XXX is Back on the Radar Screen

The DoC seems to have finally realized it went too far by using ICANN to serve the interests of some conservative groups, as mentioned in a previous post. The new story is now that the ICANN board did not reject the .XXX application as such, but only the agreement negotiated between ICM Registry and the ICANN staff at that time. How subtle these things are... more

Aviation: The Dirty, Not-So-Little Secret of Internet Governance

Almost a year ago, I began writing about the relationship between the Internet/information and communications technologies (ICTs), the environment, and sustainability. One of the points I made in my first article on the subject is that there is much more we as a community can do to reduce our ecological footprint and enhance the sustainability of the Internet... This necessity combined with the ever-growing urgency to act hit hard when I recently read a New York Times article about how bad flying is for the environment. more

ICANN Whois Policies Update

According to an article in the October 15, 2004 INTA Bulletin, several new "Policies Applicable to ICANN-Accredited Registrars" will be implemented by the end of 2004. The new Restored Names Accuracy Policy tales effect November 12 and requires that a domain name that was deleted due to the submission of false contact data or lack of response to a registrar's inquiries...  more

Massive Spam and Malware Campaign Following Boston Tragedy

On April 16th at 11:00pm GMT, the first of two botnets began a massive spam campaign to take advantage of the recent Boston tragedy. The spam messages claim to contain news concerning the Boston Marathon bombing, reports Craig Williams from Cisco. The spam messages contain a link to a site that claims to have videos of explosions from the attack. Simultaneously, links to these sites were posted as comments to various blogs. more

A Review of the 2024 Threat Landscape and Implications for Domain Security

The cybersecurity landscape in 2024 has been characterised by unprecedented complexity and rapidly evolving threats, presenting significant challenges for organisations across all sectors. As the digital attack surface expands and threat actors employ increasingly sophisticated techniques, domain security has emerged as a critical component of a robust cybersecurity strategy. more

Google Cloud Storage Coming Within Weeks

During a presentation at the Interop Conference currently ongoing in Los Vegas, Mike Repass, Product Manager at Google, informed the audience that a new cloud storage service will be rolled out by Google within weeks. The role out is part of Google's expansion of its AppEngine platform which is said to offer similar security infrastructure as Gmail and Google Apps. "[T]he app partitioning and isolation are the same best of breed technology approaches that Google is developing for the rest of its customer base," Repass said. more

A Year of CAN SPAM

The CAN SPAM Act of 2003 went into effect a year ago on Jan 1, 2004. As of that date, spam suddenly stopped, e-mail was once again easy and pleasant to use, and Internet users had one less problem to worry about. Oh, that didn't happen? What went wrong? more

Has Your ISP Been Hacked? (Growing Concern Over AI-Driven Hacking)

As if we didn't have a long enough list of problems to worry about, Lumen researchers at its Black Lotus Labs recently released a blog that said that it knows of three U.S. ISPs and one in India was hacked this summer. Lumen said the hackers took advantage of flaws in software provided by Versa Networks being used to manage wide-area networks. more

ICANN GNSO Votes to Kill Domain Tasting

The ICANN Generic Names Supporting Organization has had tasting on its agenda since last fall, with a staff report issued in January, and a proposed anti-tasting policy written in March. On Thursday the 17th, the GNSO put the proposed policy to a vote, and it passed overwhelmingly. Under ICANN rules, the ICANN board has to take up the resolution at its next meeting, and since it was approved by a supermajority, it becomes ICANN policy unless 2/3 of the board votes against it, which in this case is unlikely. more

SEC Reinforces and Expands Its Cybersecurity Guidance for Public Companies

The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued an updated guidance for public companies in preparing disclosures about cybersecurity risks and incidents. more

Research Detects Spammers Using Fake URL-Shortening Services

New research has uncovered evidence of spammers establishing their own fake URL-shortening services for the first time. According to the latest MessageLabs Intelligence report, shortened links created on these fake URL-shortening sites are not included directly in spam messages; instead, the spam emails contain shortened URLs created on legitimate URL-shortening sites. "Rather than leading directly to the spammer's final Web site, these links actually point to a shortened URL on the spammer's fake URL-shortening Web site, which in turn redirects to the spammer's final Web site." more

NeuStar Experiences Partial Outage as DynDNS Tries to Turn up the Heat

NeuStar's UltraDNS faced attack on two fronts on Tuesday, March 31. One of the attacks was technical -- a massive denial-of-service attack. The second was a rather surprising opening strike from competitor Dynamic Network Services (DynDNS), which launched a full-scale (and in T1R's opinion, misguided) public relations broadside. First, to the actual denial of service attack. Contrary to many early reports, UltraDNS was not 'down' on Tuesday... more

Internet Zombies

Today on Dave Farber's IP list, someone revived the ancient argument that ICANN imposes limits on the number of top level domains (TLDs) because to have more than a few will cause DNS to wobble and cause the internet to collapse. Although long discredited, that argument hangs around like a zombie. ICANN has never been able to adduce a shred of proof that there is anything to support that assertion... more

U.S. Military Is Buying Location Data of People Around the World Through Ordinary Apps

The U.S. military is buying the granular movement data of ordinary people worldwide, harvested from innocuous-seeming apps, reports Motherboard. Among the apps connected to this type of data sale is a Muslim prayer and Quran app with more than 98 million downloads worldwide. more