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

Google Fiber Ramps Up Testing of Its 20 Gigabit Internet Service

Google Fiber is pushing the boundaries of internet speed with the testing of its 20 Gigabit product. After successful trials in domestic settings, the tech giant is now taking its ultra-fast service to educational and professional organizations to further test its capabilities. 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

ICANN Begins Accepting Applications for New gTLDs

ICANN announced today that after over seven years of planning, the organization has initiated the process for accepting applications for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). "We believe this program will do what it's designed to do, which is open up the Internet domain-name system to further innovation," said Rod Beckstrom, ICANN chairman, during an event at the National Press Club in Washington today. More information on the Applicant Support program can be found on the ICANN New gTLD page. 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

The WSIS+10 Outcome Document - Some Initial Thoughts

The final outcome document of the WSIS +10 Review was released late last night. I thought I would give you some initial impressions as we enter the week of the WSIS+10 Review at the United Nations in New York. The text endorses the central tenet of the multistakeholder model of governing ourselves on the Internet and re-commits to the Tunis agreement. It extends the mandate of the IGF for 10 years recognizing the role that this Forum plays in bottom up governance processes. more

First Internet War from a Social Psychological Perspective

The month-long series of coordinated attacks against Estonia's Internet in 2007 that shutdown websites of Estonia's government, those of its officials, banks and news agencies are believed to be based by various physiological principles including anonymity and contagion. more

Afnic Observatory - the Domain Name Market in 2022: Towards a Resumption of Growth

Afnic, the association responsible for several Internet Top Level Domains, including the .fr country-code Top Level Domain, has published the 2022 edition of its annual analysis under the title “The Global Domain Name Market”. Here are some highlights of this study. The domain name market posted aggregate growth of +1.9% in 2022, an acceleration that reflects a break in the trend observed since 2019. As we foresaw in last year’s report, 2021 was the “trough” year, with a relative improvement over 2022. more

Why We Need to Discard the Word “Multistakeholder”

A CircleID post by Alexander Klimburg takes aim at my article, "The Power to Govern Ourselves," delivered at the Gig-Arts conference in June. That speech, available here on the blog, argued that: "Multistakeholder does not describe a governance model. It never has. It was always a compromised Public Relations concept," one that muddied the distinction between governance by state actors and non-state actors. What really made the Internet institutions unique was their break with sovereignty. more

The Illusion of Internet Governance

There's been a lot of controversy over the U.S. Government's proposal to give up their supervisory role over ICANN. This lead Karl Auerbach, one of the only people ever elected to represent end-users in cyberspace, to write this letter to Congress. Karl did an excellent job as North America's first elected representative in cyberspace. He fought for things that would have made Internet governance more representative, and more transparent. 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

FAA Announces $175,000 Fine Against SpaceX for Failure to Submit Required Pre-Launch Information

SpaceX, the leading provider of commercial launches in the United States, is subject to FAA regulations and must provide safety data prior to any attempt at launch. Last year, SpaceX performed a record 61 launches, with 34 of them primarily for the Starlink program. 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

Looking Forward to ‘The Conversation We Should Be Having’

No, this topic hasn't yet been exhausted: There's still plenty more conversation we can and should have about the proposed sale of the .ORG registry operator to a private firm. Ideally, that conversation will add more information and more clarity about the issues at stake and the facts that underpin those issues. That's why I'm planning to attend today's event at American University where the sale's proponents, opponents and undecideds will have a tremendous opportunity to better understand one another. more

3 Things You Should Be Doing This Spring and Summer ... If You’re a New TLD Applicant

It would have been difficult to plan for this no-man's-land period we find ourselves in this spring as ICANN rectifies, resets and finally closes their new TLD application window. But for those of us with applications in the black-box hopper, we soldier on. From a marketing standpoint, there are three things we are working on with our partner clients with applications submitted, and if you're in the game too, you might want to consider similar actions. more