As a follow up to Susan Brenner's Networks and Nationalization and my comment there, I will go further in this post and talk about the "cyberwar" and "offense" aspects of her article. I think I made this point elsewhere as well... but before getting into a war, it'd be a brilliant idea to actually know that you can win. Cyberwarfare is the sort of game where you don't really need to be a huge government with the largest standing army in the world and sophisticated weaponry in order to win... more
The DNS Abuse Institute (DNSAI), the entity created by Public Interest Registry (PIR), today announced the launch of NetBeacon, a centralized DNS Abuse reporting service. NetBeacon was developed in collaboration with CleanDNS, an anti-abuse solution developer, which has donated the development and technology behind NetBeacon. more
Yesterday, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to allow qualified devices to operate on a license-exempt basis in unused portions of TV channels 2-51, spectrum commonly referred to as "TV white spaces." A lot has already been written about this move... But what is missing in these discussions is the bigger picture. more
The number of DDoS attacks during the first three months of 2019 increased by 84%, compared with the previous quarter. more
IPv6 adoption continues to gain ground at a slow pace. This is to be expected. The complications associated with hardware and software upgrades, as well as the lack of reachable content, means that IPv4 is still king of the hill. To me, this situation seems to mirror one a few years back with web browsers. Sometime around the turn of the century, Internet Explorer became the dominant browser. Riding on a 90% market share for Windows, the incumbent - Netscape Navigator - did not stand a chance. However, with it came a dark age for web developers. more
Telecoms engineers from all of the major telecoms services and equipment companies around the world agree that FttH is the only future-proof telecommunications technology. So who should we trust - the technology experts or politicians with different agendas? If there had been a division of opinion among these experts it would have been necessary to investigate it; but if they are all in agreement it is safe to follow their advice. more
Today marks another key step in DNSSEC deployment. Congrats to Dan Kaminsky, chief scientist at Doxpara and one of our partners on the Practice Safe DNS campaign, on the release of his new code Phreebird. Announced today at Black Hat Abu Dhabi, Phreebird Suite 1.0 is a free, easy-to-use toolkit that lets organizations "test-drive" DNSSEC deployment. more
In mid-August ICANN staff attempted to impose their own proposal for the process that will determine what overall new ICANN accountability measures should accompany the proposed IANA functions transition -- and thereby replace the restraining and corrective oversight role that the U.S. has played through periodic reevaluation of ICANN performance in conjunction with re-awarding of the IANA contract. In united reaction against that attempt, the ICANN community sent an unprecedented joint letter to CEO Fadi Chehade and the ICANN Board... more
On Monday the Wall Street Journal published an article alleging that Google was trying to arrange a "fast lane for its own content" with telecom carriers and contending that Google and Professor Lessig were in the midst of changing their position on network neutrality policy. The WSJ reporters received a lot of flak for the piece -justifiably so. There was no real "news" in this news article. more
On May 7, hackers breached parts of the computer systems that run Baltimore's government, taking down essential systems such as voice mail, email, a parking fines database, payment systems used for water bills, property taxes, real estate transactions and vehicle citations. more
According to recent study conducted by Minds + Machines, historical data analysis suggests brand owners do not necessarily register their brands when it comes to new generic Top-Level Domains. From the report: "A survey of the domain registration behavior of Fortune 100 companies reveals that they have not registered many of their trademarks in recently created generic top-level domains (gTLDs). A sample of 1043 brands were registered in less than 30% of the eight new open gTLDs created after 2001. If historical registration data is a guide, brands are unlikely to undertake many defensive domain name registrations in the proposed new gTLDs, and furthermore are unlikely to be the victims of cybersquatting." more
ICANN has taken another crack at the question of the economics of launching new top-level domains (TLDs). The first report that the group commissioned on the subject was greeted by a loud and unhappy uproar. Now we have the preliminary draft of a new report, this one by professors Katz, Rosston, and Sullivan. It is insightful and analytic, but the final version needs to consider the theoretical and empirical issues... more
Nobody doubts that some time in the near future there will be Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) in Chinese, Russian or Arabic scripts. The Chinese, Russian and Arabic-character-using worlds are large -- encompassing hundreds of millions of current and potential users. They are politically influential blocs, with the ability to demand action in international meetings. And perhaps most importantly, they are -- at least when taken together -- rich. Everybody knows that access on the web in these languages is not a matter of if, but simply a question of when... more
Empirical studies on cyber- and typosquatting (for example, Moore and Edelman's "Measuring the Perpetrators and Funds of Typosquatting") may inadvertently encourage bad behavior. People tend to do what most other people are doing, even when the given act is presented to them as something wrong. more
Damage to a single submarine cable has left the entire Red Sea region disconnected from the Internet. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Ethiopia have all suffered from the last week's cut of the so-called Falcon cable. more
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