Removing Need at RIPE

I recently attended RIPE 66 where Tore Anderson presented his suggested policy change 2013-03, "No Need -- Post-Depletion Reality Adjustment and Cleanup." In his presentation, Tore suggested that this policy proposal was primarily aimed at removing the requirement to complete the form(s) used to document need. There was a significant amount of discussion around bureaucracy, convenience, and "liking" (or not) the process of demonstrating need. Laziness has never been a compelling argument for me and this is no exception. more

On the Time Value of Security Features in DNS

There are some real problems in DNS, related to the general absence of Source Address Validation (SAV) on many networks connected to the Internet. The core of the Internet is aware of destinations but blind to sources. If an attacker on ISP A wants to forge the source IP address of someone at University B when transmitting a packet toward Company C, that packet is likely be delivered complete and intact, including its forged IP source address. Many otherwise sensible people spend a lot of time and airline miles trying to improve this situation... The problems created for the Domain Name System (DNS) by the general lack of SAV are simply hellish. more

What the US Government Said About IANA in Singapore

Two weeks ago, the US government announced it would transition its role in the IANA functions to the global Internet community. It tasked ICANN with the job of arriving at a transition plan and noted that the current contract runs out in 18 months' time, 30 September 2015. This week, ICANN started that process at its meeting in Singapore. And on the ground were the two key US government officials behind the decision. more

CAN SPAM and Affiliate Mailer Opt-Out

Many online businesses use affiliates to drum up business. The affiliate finds a lead somewhere, passes it to the business, and gets a commission if the lead turns into a sale. Web based affiliates are relatively uncontroversial, but affiliates who advertise by e-mail are a chronic problem due to their propensity to send spam, both spam as normally defined and as defined by CAN SPAM. Is it possible to do legitimate e-mail affiliate marketing? Maybe... more

Jurisdiction over Domain Names: Too Much Law Or Too Little?

In the prior issue of CircleID, I described registrations by John Zuccarini. Many of Zuccarini's registrations are typographic variations on well-known domain names, and Zuccarini typically redirects users to sexually-explicit content and pop-up advertisements. Despite scores of UDRP claims and ACPA suits, plus a major case brought by the Federal Trade Commission, Zuccarini's registrations remain in effect -- more than 5,000 strong, in my research. more

Purpose vs Discovery and the Internet as a Dynamic

I'm writing this in response to the myriad discussions about how to make sure that the Internet continues to "work" despite P2P or whatever the current threat seems to be. Behind much of the discussion is the presumption that the Internet has a purpose in the sense of making some applications like video games and VoIP work. Yesterday we feared modems, today we fear P2P. more

Domains Under the Most-Abused TLDs: Same Old DNS Abuse Trends?

While threat actors can use any domain across thousands of top-level domains (TLDs), they often have favorites. For instance, you may be familiar with Spamhaus's 10 most-abused TLDs for spamming. WhoisXML API researchers recently built on this list by analyzing 40,000 newly registered domains (NRDs) that sported some of the listed unreputable TLDs. We called this study "DNS Abuse Trends: Dissecting the Domains Under the Most-Abused TLDs." more

Microsoft, Facebook and Others Demand ICANN Take a Closer Look at Questionable Registrars

Adobe, Facebook, Microsoft and eBay are among a group of leading companies demanding ICANN to take a closer look at an "immediate and urgent matter" involving a subset of questionable domain name registrars. more

Europe is to the US Controlled GPS as Europe is to the US Controlled DNS Root?

An Analogy: Europe is to the US controlled GPS as Europe is to the US controlled DNS root? That's not a very good title is it? But it does express the point I want to make. This week the European Union launched the first satellite of its own global positioning system, Galileo. One has to wonder why the Europeans feel they need to do this. Isn't the GPS system run by the United States a perfectly good system? more

Internet Governance Outlook 2020: The Next Generation of Players and Problems Is Coming

The beginning of a new decade is always an invitation to have a broader look into the future. What, in the next ten years, will happen in the Internet Governance Ecosystem? Will the 2020s see the usual swinging pendulum between more liberal and more restrictive Internet policies in an interconnected world? Or will we move towards a watershed? more

Technical Community Calls for Stronger, Smarter Internet Governance in New Global Report

As industry watchers know, the UN's World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+20) review marks a pivotal moment that will shape internet governance well into the 2030s and beyond. In response, the team at CIRA has published a new report, emphasizing why the multistakeholder model should not only be protected, but refreshed and reinvigorated for the challenges that lie ahead. more

8 Reasons Why Cybersecurity Strategy and Business Operations are Inseparable

In modern society, there is one fact that is unquestionable: The hyper-connectivity of the digital economy is inescapable. A financial institution without an online presence or omni-channel strategy will cease to be competitive. Universities (for-profit or non-profit) must develop and continuously evolve their online learning capabilities if they are to stay relevant. Online retailers are quickly outpacing and rendering their 'brick-and-mortar' counterparts irrelevant. more

Social Networking and Web 2.0 Creating DNS Performance Issues for Carriers

A revolution is taking place on the Internet, with new sites redefining how we interact online. The next-generation Internet is emerging in collaborative and interactive applications and sites with rich, varied media (images, video, music). As with many revolutions, this one is driven by the younger generation, which is adopting social networking sites like MySpace and video sharing sites like Google's YouTube. But the general shift is not restricted to the young, as more mature consumers and businesses alike are exploring the possibilities of collaborative, media-rich applications. This major shift in Internet applications has its unintended victims. One of them turns out to be the Domain Name System (DNS). more

The Deeper Root Cause of the Fastly and Akamai Outages

As we finished this article, the world was hit by another global outage by content delivery network (CDN) provider, Akamai, on June 17, 2021. The cause seems to be related to the lack of capacity to a certain "routing table" of their distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation. Although the technical analysis is not yet available, the central premise of this article also applies to this incident, and it serves as a timely testimony. more

Hijacked IP Addresses

From time to time, a party can get out of control. Raucous celebration can become careless, even destructive. Combine a critical number of young people, a certain amount of beer and lots of music and damage often happens. Partygoers leave a mess behind them. The same thing happens to some IP addresses. Malicious actors use IP addresses properly registered to someone else. more