The new year is upon us and it's time for our annual look at CircleID's most popular posts of the past year and highlighting those that received the most attention. Congratulations to all the 2016 participants and best wishes to all in the new year. more
Many nations, particularly from the developing world, look to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for advice on telecommunications issues and, increasingly, Internet governance issues. The ITU's Fifth World Telecommunication / ICT Policy Forum (WTPF-13), 14-16 May 2013, Geneva, Switzerland, will be the first WTPF to focus exclusively on Internet issues. more
In the ICANN realm, TechOps stands for Technical and Operations and its goal is to simplify processes, to find solutions, and to advise on technical and operational matters. There are three TechOps groups: The Registry, the Registrar and the joint Registry and Registrar, also known as Contracted Party House (CPH). How did we get there and what exactly are we doing? more
A new bill in the Canadian Senate, Bill S-210, has ignited a heated debate over its potential impact on the Internet in Canada. The bill, which mandates strict age verification for online content, has raised significant concerns among privacy advocates, network operators, and digital rights groups. more
Much has been said about how Google uses the services they provide, including their mail service, their office productivity tools, file storage and similar services, as a means of gathering an accurate profile of each individual user of their services. The company has made a very successful business out of measuring users, and selling those metrics to advertisers. But can we measure Google as they undertake this activity? How many users avail themselves of their services? Perhaps that's a little ambitious at this stage, so maybe a slightly smaller scale may be better. Let's just look at one Google service. more
There is an interesting note on the ITU Strategy and Policy Unit Newslog about Root Servers, Anycast, DNSSEC, WGIG and WSIS about a presentation to ICANN's GAC. (The GAC website appears to be offline or inaccessible today.) The interesting sentence is this: Lack of formal relationship with root server operators is a public policy issue relevant to Internet governance. It is stated that this is "wrong" and "not a way to solve the issues about who edits the [root] zone file." Let's look at that lack of a formal relationship... more
The African Network Information Centre (Afrinic), the primary body overseeing internet resources for Africa and the Indian Ocean region, has been thrust into receivership. This move comes in the wake of a crippling injunction secured by a South African firm in Mauritius's highest court. more
Public Interest Registry, the non-profit that runs the .ORG domain has launched a new top-level domain (TLD), .GIVING, to streamline online fundraising and donating for mission-driven organizations and philanthropic-minded individuals. more
Major U.S. broadband providers are now mandated to display clear consumer labels outlining prices, speeds, and data allowances for their services. This directive from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) applies to all major standalone home and mobile broadband plans, targeting providers with over 100,000 subscribers. more
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Board of Directors has green-lighted the next phase of implementing new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), per a resolution approved on July 27, 2023. more
When it comes to domain name disputes, no domain name has captured more media attention than sex.com. Of course, disputes about sex often obtain a great deal of attention, and the sex.com domain name dispute can grab its share of headlines because the case involves sex, theft, declared bankruptcy, a once-thriving Internet porn business, and fraud, instead of the typical cybersquatting allegations. Indeed, this case is remarkable for its potential impact on the development of caselaw concerning whether there is a valid basis to assume that trademark interests should overwhelm all non-commercial interests in the use of domain names. The answer is no, but the caselaw to support that answer is in tension with cases that strongly imply a contrary conclusion. more
CircleID recently interviewed Meng Weng Wong, the lead developer of Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and founder of Pobox.com. As one of the leading anti spam authentication schemes, SPF is used by companies such as AOL, Earthlink, SAP and supported by anti spam companies such as Sophos, Symantec, Brightmail, IronPort, Ciphertrust, MailArmory, MailFrontier, Roaring Penguin Software, and Communigate Pro. Last month, Microsoft announced its agreement to merge Caller ID, its own proposed anti spam authentication scheme, with SPF -- the joint standard is called 'Sender ID'. In this two-part interview, Meng Wong explains how SPF got started, where it is today and what could be expected in the future of email. more
The Registration Operations Workshop (ROW) was conceived as an informal industry conference that would provide a forum for discussion of the technical aspects of registration operations in the domain name system and IP addressing. The 11th ROW will be held online on Tuesday, June 21st, 2022 at 13h00 -- 16h00 UTC. The discussion topics will be... more
In light of the Biden administration's recent efforts in protecting critical infrastructure from cyber threats, new research from CSC indicates that a majority of the top energy companies in the U.S. are vulnerable to attack due to shortcomings in their online operations. Specifically, these organizations are vulnerable to domain name and domain name system (DNS) hijacking and phishing attacks based on their lack of effective domain security. more
The term "attack surface" is often heard in cybersecurity conversations. It refers to the sum of all possible attack vectors or the vulnerabilities that threat actors can exploit to penetrate a target network or damage an organization somehow. An unused and forgotten subdomain, for instance, can become an attack vector when taken over. Certain categories of companies have very large attack surfaces. Such is the case of streaming media businesses like Netflix and HBO Max. more