Will Electronically Steered Antennas Replace Parabolic Antennas in Satellite Ground Stations? (ChatGPT-Assisted Version)

In a previous post, I asked whether electronically steered antennas (ESAs) would replace parabolic antennas in satellite ground stations. I read a few articles suggested by others and by Google search, used some common sense, produced a list of advantages of ESAs, and concluded that it was likely they would eventually replace parabolic antennas for many applications. more

WikiLeaks Releases CIA Documents on Grasshopper Framework for Building Customized Malware Payloads

WikiLeaks on Friday released a new set of leaks -- Vault 7 "Grasshopper" -- containing 27 documents from the CIA's Grasshopper framework, a platform used to build customized malware payloads for Microsoft Windows operating systems. more

Once Again, Why Internet Voting Doesn’t Work

An acquaintance said, "We trust our electronic systems to transfer millions of dollars of value; I suspect we will eventually develop schemes we will trust to record and count votes." Unfortunately, this is one of the chronic fallacies that make voting security experts tear their remaining hair out. The security models are entirely different, so what banks do is completely irrelevant to voting. more

2012 WCIT Meeting Beginning of Long Internet Cold War Between Authoritarians and Liberal Democrats

In his commentary, The Internet Yalta Alexander Klimburg, Fellow and Senior Adviser at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs, argues that the December 2012 meeting of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) may be the digital equivalent of the February 1945 meeting of the Allied powers in Yalta: the beginning of a long Internet Cold War between authoritarian and liberal-democratic countries. more

Sweden Tops World Wide Web Foundation’s Web Index, Making Best Use of Internet Access

Sweden has been recognized as making the best use of its Internet access, according to the first annual World Wide Web Foundation's Web Index survey. The Web Index aims to be the world’s first multi-dimensional measure of the Web’s growth, utility and impact on people and nations. more

Are These the Last Days of Boys’ Club IT?

In the year 2016, 55 years after the human race launched a person into space; the women are still not earning the same wage as their male counterparts. In the UK, the gender pay gap was 19.7% in 2013, the last year we have the statistics for. This was 0.1 per cent worse than in 2012. In the US, women earn 79¢ for every dollar that men earn. As explained in this great article from Vox, the issue is much more complex than mere numbers. more

The ICANN Experiment: Lessons From NewCo

As ICANN turns 25 and I turn 51, I realize that I have literally spent more than ½ of my life working in the domain name industry and with the first multistakeholder experiment originally called NewCo (later called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ("ICANN"). My first interaction with NewCo, after the Green Paper, White Paper, Internet Forum for the White Paper, etc., was an Intellectual Property attorney at the law firm of Arter & Hadden. more

MAAWG Issues ISP Guidelines for End-User Bot Removal

Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) has issued the first best practices aimed at helping the global ISP industry work more closely with consumers to recognize and remove bot infections on end-users' machines. The paper outlines a three-step approach with recommendations for detecting bots, notifying users that their computers have been compromised, and guiding them in removing the malware. more

NASCAR Team Pays Ransomware Fee to Recover Its Critical Files

NASCAR team Circle Sport-Leavine Family Racing (CSLFR) disclosed today a ransomware infection incident that took place in April and nearly caused losing access to critical files worth about $2 million. more

The geoTLD GDPR Survey 2018

The application of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to the DNS is a hot topic within the ICANN community. However, since the implementation of the GDPR on May 25th, 2018, there has been little public data on: how many WHOIS data requests have been made at the registry level, and; how the registries are handling them. To further the factual and evidence-based discussion within the ICANN community, we gathered quantitative data about WHOIS access post-GDPR... more

Renesys Reporting Total Internet Blackout in Sudan

Senior Research Engineer, Doug Madory at Renesys reports: "A few hours ago, we observed a total Internet blackout in Sudan and, as we publish this blog, the Internet remains largely unavailable. By count of impacted networks, it is the largest national blackout since Egypt disconnected itself in January 2011. The massive outage came as the government began a violent crackdown on protests triggered by the government’s decision to end fuel subsidies." more

ICANN to Push Ahead with New .Africa TLD Despite Ongoing Court Case

"Internet overseer ICANN will push ahead with a new ".africa" top-level domain, despite having twice been ordered not to because of serious questions over how it handled the case," Kieren McCarthy reporting in The Register more

Close to 7.9 Million Domain Names Registered in Q2 2016

VeriSign, in its latest latest Domain Name Industry Brief, reports approximately 7.9 million new domain name registrations in the second quarter of 2016 which brings total number of domain name registrations to approximately 334.6 million across all top-level domains (TLDs) as of June 30, 2016. more

Eugene Kaspersky: We Need Interpol for Internet, Law Enforcement Agencies Have Jurisdictional Limits

Eugene Kaspersky, co-founder of Internet security software Kaspersky Lab, was recently interviewed PC World where he talked about his views regarding cybersecurity and the evolution of malware. In response to fixing the problems with malware on the Internet, Kapersky says: "The Internet was never designed with security in mind. If I was God, and wanted to fix the Internet, I would start by ensuring that every user has a sort of Internet passport: basically, a means of verifying identity, just like in the real world, with driver's licenses and passports and so on. The second problem is one of jurisdiction. The Internet has no borders, and neither do the criminals who operate on the Internet. However, law enforcement agencies have jurisdictional limits, and are unable to conduct investigations across the globe. ... There is no such thing as anonymity on the Internet, for the average user." more

Domain Name Registrations Pass 205 Million

The global base of Internet domain names grew by nearly 3.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief, published by VeriSign, Inc. According to the report, the fourth quarter of 2010 closed with a base of 205.3 million domain name registrations across all Top Level Domains (TLDs), or a 1.7 percent increase over the third quarter. Registrations have grown by 12.1 million, or 6.3 percent year over year. more