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Amazon Launched Its First Two Internet Satellites Into Orbit

Amazon launched its debut prototype satellites, Kuipersat-1 and Kuipersat-2, from Florida's Cape Canaveral on Friday. This marks the tech giant's initial foray into space, aiming to rival SpaceX's Starlink broadband network.  more

DNSSEC - Let’s Stay the Course!

I don't know about you, but I'm starting to think that DNSSEC being so hot these days is a mixed blessing. Yes, it's wonderful that after so many years there is finally broad consensus for making DNSSEC happen. But being so prominent also means the protocol is taking shots from those who don't want to make the necessary software, hardware and operational modifications needed. And DNSSEC has taken some shots from those who just want to be contrarian. more

Google Reported to Be Pushing Trump Administration for Exemption on Huawei Ban, Citing Security Risk

Reports on Friday said Google has indicated that the Huawei ban poses security risks for US consumers and is asking the Trump administration for an exception. According to a report by the Financial Times, Google executives are warning the ban will force China to develop its own Android software independent from Google and thus leading to security flaws and bugs. more

Las Vegas City Council to Debate the Support of .vegas Domain


Joe Schoenmann of the Las Vegas Sun reports: "The Las Vegas City Council will debate today whether to strike a deal with an Internet entrepreneur who seeks to use the Internet suffix .vegas -- over the objections of Clark County officials and one local company who say the city is jumping the gun and in the process likely shortchanging Las Vegas and county taxpayers. The council will consider endorsing a proposal by Dot Vegas Inc., to create the top-level Internet domain ".vegas" -- a new suffix that could be used in addition to the familiar .com, .net, .gov or .org suffixes that end most Web addresses." more

Can Big Companies Stop Being Hacked?

The recent huge security breach at Sony caps a bad year for big companies, with breaches at Target, Apple, Home Depot, P.F.Changs, Neiman Marcus, and no doubt other companies who haven't admitted it yet. Is this the new normal? Is there any hope for our private data? I'm not sure, but here are three observations... This week Brian Krebs reported on several thousand Hypercom credit card terminals that all stopped working last Sunday. Had they all been hacked? more

Ethical Hacking: Turning The Tables to Boost Cyber Security

Hacking remains a huge problem for businesses. As noted by MarketWatch, more than 175 data breaches have already happened this year, and in 2015 approximately 105 million adults in the United States had their personal information stolen. For companies, the stakes are huge: Compromised systems not only damage the bottom line but can severely impact public opinion. more

ICANN Must Simultaneously Reveal TLD and Second-Level Registration Rules

I outline two possible drawbacks with the idea of first revealing rules for the new proposed Top-Level Domains (TLDs) and then for second-level registrations. I propose a lottery process to initially allocate second-level domain names. A number of people have voiced concerns about the idea of automatically granting the winner of the TLD a monopoly power over second-level domain registrations. We should also be worried about the financial interest ICANN has in not providing the rules for the two-level registrations simultaneously. more

White House on SOPA: Protecting Intellectual Property Must Not Threaten Open, Innovative Internet

The White House today released a response to SOPA and PIPA petitions and the legislative approaches to combat online piracy. The response is prepared by Victoria Espinel, Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, and Howard Schmidt, Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff. more

EURid Compensates Carbon Emissions With Wind Turbines

European TLD registry, EURid has announced that it is the first TLD Registry in Europe to be registered by the EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). "EURid has taken an environmentally responsible approach to operating .eu for many years. Our environmental policy is based on the principle of 'reduce, reuse and recycle' and provides a framework for making sustainable choices." more

Identifying Spam: MAAWG’s Latest Documents Improve Accuracy of Reputation Systems

The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG), of which Return Path (my employer) is a very active participant, met recently in Heidelberg, Germany. Among other exciting projects, they finished two new best practices documents which have been lauded in the press as a big step towards stopping botnet spam... more

Internet and the Telecommunication Acts of 1900

On his blog Bruce Schneier recently published a post called "Power and the Internet". An article that most people in the western world will agree with. Internet freedom against Internet safety and security, the powerful have a lot of power to wield and the rest is at best ad hoc organised or fairly powerless lobby organisations. So who is likely to win? Vested interests, he warns. more

No Time Bar, No Laches under the UDRP

Two Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) decisions posted this month involved domain names registered 20 and 21 years ago, David Duchovny v. Alberta Hot Rods c/o Jeff Burgar, 21 years and Commonwealth Bank of Australia v. Registration Private, Domains By Proxy, 20 years. Complainants prevailed in both cases. The domain names stand out as being the oldest to have been found registered in bad faith, and transferred. more

Asserting but Not Proving Cybersquatting Under the UDRP

Having trademarks (registered or unregistered) is the prerequisite for maintaining a UDRP, but having one is not conclusive of either Respondent’s lack of rights or legitimate interests or that it registered and is using the domain name in bad faith. The cautionary tale in many of these cases, especially for the Complainant who has the burden of proof, is that it has to satisfy each of the elements in the three subsections... more

New Zealand’s Top-Level Domain Manager Seeking New Registry Service Provider for .nz

The manager for .nz announced today that they have launched a registry replacement process and are calling for expressions of interest from potential service providers by November 29th. more

Unlimited Bandwidth is Disrupting Infrastructure Models

Over the last ten years we have heard a lot about edge-based services. These were needed to enable the operation of applications at the edge of the network, as the lack of available bandwidth capacity made it difficult to do so over the core network. However, with the prospect of limitless bandwidth the design of the network is changing again. more