The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and Public Interest Registry (PIR) today announced that they have mutually agreed to extend ICANN's time to review PIR's submissions to April 20th. more
Vietnam is now responsible for more than 10% of the worlds spam, according to threat analysis from managed security firm, Network Box. November saw malware threat levels remain consistently high with Vietnam taking the number one spam spot from last month’s chart topper, Brazil. more
I have a new book out, Thinking Security: Stopping Next Year's Hackers. There are lots of security books out there today; why did I think another was needed? Two wellsprings nourished my muse. (The desire for that sort of poetic imagery was not among them.) The first was a deep-rooted dissatisfaction with common security advice. This common "wisdom" -- I use the word advisedly -- often seemed to be outdated. Yes, it was the distillation of years of conventional wisdom, but that was precisely the problem: the world has changed; the advice hasn't. more
The goal of public policy for connectivity should be to assure access to our common facilities as a public good by adopting sustainable business models that don't put owners and users at odds with each other. Such balances are typically difficult to achieve which is what makes connectivity so unusual - we can achieve both once we fund the facilities as a public good apart from the particular applications such as telephone calls and cable content. more
Google today revealed a new initiative, named Project Zero, with the objective to "significantly reduce the number of people harmed by targeted attacks." To carry out the project, Google is recruiting a team of experienced hackers - "practically-minded security researchers" - to contribute 100% of their time toward improving security across the Internet. more
In a landmark ruling, a U.S. federal court has agreed with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that the country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) are not property subject to attachment and thus overruled an attempt to seize Iran's, Syria's and North Korea's domains as part of a lawsuit against those countries' governments. more
The New York Times recently posted an article about how email is getting a makeover and how the communication medium is being shunned by the younger crowd as they move more and more towards other platforms. If you like using email, that means you're an old fogey. When the Internet exploded in growth in 1995, email was a pretty cool commodity. Now, it's not that big a deal anymore, according to the New York Times. more
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies today on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the alleged illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records. The five individual plaintiffs are also suing President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other individuals who have ordered or participated in the domestic surveillance. more
A statement released by the Hong Kong Internet Service Providers Association (HKISPA) denouncing any plans that would restrict Hong Kong's open internet network. more
With the backlash against tech companies gaining steam, we've seen certain contrarian members of the media taking indiscriminate aim at companies and issues without due cause. This is what happened when Financial Times columnist Gillian Tett, in a paywalled March 7th editorial, inaccurately portrayed a process involving the Amazon's gTLD application for .AMAZON, an issue the i2Coalition has been engaged in for years. more
ICANN community has a lot on its plate for 2015, and at this first full meeting of the year, we are all jumping into the work with both feet. Here are some of the main issues for brand owners: Sorting out the long-awaited transition from U.S. Government oversight to a truly multi-stakeholder model of governance; ensuring Registrant data (Whois) accuracy, accessibility and privacy (where appropriate); launching reviews of the new gTLD program; and protecting/preserving the robust business and brand voices in the process. more
The coronavirus pandemic has, in the most emphatic way, shown us all just how interconnected everything and everyone is. A worldwide race is underway to minimize human interactions in order to avoid a global catastrophe. The inescapable consequence of these initiatives is an unprecedented shut down of the local, regional and global economy. The latest cost estimate to save the global economy is now at $7 trillion and climbing. more
In January 2018, I looked back at 2017 to figure out how routing security looked globally and on a country level. Using the same metrics and methodology, I've recently taken a look at 2018 to see if we're making improvements. The good news is, it seems like the routing system is doing better! But there is still much work to be done. Using BGPStream.com, a great public service providing information about suspicious events in the routing system, I analyzed the number of incidents... more
I can hardly believe it's that time of year again -- time for our annual top 10 year in review. Having been at this for more than 20 years, you'd think I'd seen it all? But with the domain name industry, things are always in flux, and I could never have predicted some of these items. So without further ado -- here are the top 10 biggest stories from 2022. more
SpaceX Starlink Internet service will be available in several African nations in the second quarter of this year, and the price in Nigeria has been announced -- $600 for the "residential" terminal and a monthly fee of $43. Is there a market for Starlink at that price in Nigeria and other Sub-Saharan African nations? The IMF projects a GDP per capita of $2,580 for Nigeria this year (and $1,900 in Sub-Saharan Africa and $2,260 for Africa overall) so the market for individual consumer accounts will be much smaller than in what the IMF refers to as "advanced economies." more
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