Hurricane Katrina will lead the endless finger pointing about what should have been done to strengthen the levees before the storm. However, as a former senior FEMA official under the Clinton Administration explained, "There's only two kinds of levees. Ones that have failed and those that will fail." The same is true for cyber-levees. more
A dialogue between Michael Warner (Historian, United States Cyber Command) and Tony Rutkowski (Cybersecurity engineer, lawyer and historian). Michael is chairing a cyber history panel at the October biennial Symposium on Cryptologic History hosted by the National Security Agency; his panel will include discussion of the almost unknown key role of cryptologist Ruth Nelson leading a team in the 1980s in a major initiative to secure public internet infrastructure. more
At the recent ISOC Asia conference in Kuala Lumpur a rather innocuous coffee break question was raised: could any one around the table name some of the major Top-Level Domains (TLDs) still delinquent in their IPv6 support? Nobody could answer on the spot but the question intrigued me. A logical place to start looking for an answer was ICANN. more
By definition "any word" or "any combination of words" can function as trademarks, but whether alone or combined for that purpose no use can overrule their ordinary meanings, support their removal from the public domain, or prevent speculation or use of identical or confusingly similar words by businesses other than rights holders. The fact is, all words that are not coined found in dictionaries, word lists, and circulating in world cultures are generic. more
Three sections of the redlined version of the Draft Evaluation Criteria for new Top-Level Domains (TLDs) caught my attention. It seems ICANN wants to ensure it has information to not only evaluate and score responses, but to conduct a post-launch analysis of the program's success in terms of expanded competition, consumer choice and trust. That additional information means more work by both the applicant and for ICANN. But it's a good move because pre-launch preparation and thought staves off mishaps and misfortunes later. more
Unlike consultant-led penetration testing, periodic or continual vulnerability scanning programs have to operate harmoniously with a corporation's perimeter defenses. Firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, web proxies, dynamic malware analysis systems, and even content delivery networks, are deployed to protect against the continuous probes and exploit attempts of remote adversaries -- yet they need to ignore (or at least not escalate) similar probes and tests being launched by the managed security service providers an organization has employed to identify and alert upon any new vulnerabilities within the infrastructure or applications that are to be protected. more
The Domain Name System is now over 25 years old. Since the publication of RFCs 1034 and 1035 in 1987, there have been over 100 RFC documents published that extend and clarify the original DNS specs. Although the basic design of the DNS hasn't changed, its definition is now extremely complex, enough so that it's a challenging task to tell whether a DNS package correctly implements the specs. more
I recently followed an interesting international discussion on FttH vs. cable. With the fiber to the home (FttH) debate hotting up, driven by the possibility of using FttH as the new infrastructure for the digital economy, the cable companies are putting up a stiff fight, both in Europe (Netherlands) and the USA, claiming FttH is not necessary, and that DOCSIS 3.0 can do the job just as well. In these debates the longer-term national interest is often disregarded. The debate is confined to the technology -- what it can and cannot do -- and it also concentrates on a rather short-term timeframe, say of the next five years. more
There certainly is a lot of interest in machine-to-machine communication (M2M) and the Internet of Things (IoT). But what we are seeing is only what is happening on the surface. Most of the M2M activities are taking place unnoticed. For example, most newly produced electronic devices are now all M2M enabled. Over 100 million smart meters have already been deployed by the electricity industry, with literally hundreds of millions of them in the pipeline. Healthcare is another key industry. more
We read with interest the 20 Sept., 2011 article in The Hollywood Reporter. This confirmed that there is a lot of misinformation about the expansion of the domain name space circulating. Sadly, a creative opportunity is being seen as a threat by the most creative of industries. The arrival of an open playing field for .ANYTHING is not a threat, it is unquestionably a long awaited opportunity and solution to the murky waters of the .COM namespace.
The opportunity is the restoration of trust and authenticity. Trust and reputations have been eroded by cybersquatting, phishing and fraud that are endemic to the current naming system. more
Last week, the much-anticipated Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) Early Warnings on new gTLD applications were finally issued. And the GAC didn't disappoint. A total of 242 warnings were issued on 163 strings (including 31 strings applied for by Radix). The GAC warnings yet again show that Africa is perfectly capable of being at the top of league tables -- for the wrong reasons. more
In 2003 - what did we have in terms of domain names? In 2003, the .AERO, .BIZ, .COOP, .INFO and .NAME Registries were just born. The . .MUSEUM Top-Level Domain was born that very year and .ASIA, .CAT, .JOBS, .MOBI, .PRO, .TEL and .TRAVEL did not exist yet. However, .EU was on its way. Although this particular TLD was a country code Top-Level Domain targeted at the European Union, it was awaited for by many brands in its Sunrise Period. more
In March of 2018, abuse.ch, a non-profit cybersecurity organization in Switzerland, launched a project called URLhaus to collect and share URLs identified to be distributing malware. more
Abdul Rahim's Internet governance experience spans over 20 years and most recently she served on the Board of Directors for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). more
Communications will be one of the most critical areas during the London Olympic Games. The industry is working to establish shared access networks -- would it not be nice if they did this everywhere, all the time? They are also working very closely with British Olympic Association, London Transport, the broadcasters and content providers. Mobile coverage will be the biggest shared infrastructure in the world. more
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