What Does It Mean to Deploy DMARC?

The IETF's DMARC working group is thinking about a maintenance update to the DMARC spec, fixing bits that are unclear and perhaps changing it where what mail servers do doesn't exactly agree with what it says. Someone noted that a lot of mailers claim to have "deployed DMARC," and it's not at all clear what that really means. ... I've suggested that we could write a DMARC deployment guide that describes the parts of DMARC, the ways they interact and in what sequence it's useful to deploy them. If you'd find that useful, leave a comment. more

ICANN’s Accountability and Transparency – a Retrospective on the IANA Transition

As we passed five years since the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition took place, my co-authors and I paused to look back on this pivotal moment; to take stock of what we've learned and to re-examine some of the key events leading up to the transition and how careful planning ensured a successful transfer of IANA responsibilities from the United States Government to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. more

Astronomical Increases in Domain Names: Low Constancy of Abusive Registrations

When ICANN implemented the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) in 1999, the number of registered domain names were in the low eight digits. Registered domain names passed the first million in 1997. Today, they are in the first third of nine digits, and continuing to grow. In its newly released publication gTLD Marketplace Health Index (Beta) (July 21, 2016) ICANN offers through a couple dozen metrics a picture of the multiple parts that corporately go into making a healthy marketplace. It's "Beta" because the Health Index is a work in progress. more

Facing Up to the Generational Privacy Divide

Last week hundreds of privacy regulators, corporate officers, and activists gathered in Jerusalem, Israel for the annual Data Protection and Privacy Commissioner Conference. ... Many acknowledged that longstanding privacy norms are being increasingly challenged by the massive popularity of social networks that encourage users to share information that in a previous generation would have never been made publicly available for all the world to see. more

‘Vulkan Files’ Leak Reveals Unique Insight Into Russian Cyber-War Plans

According to reports on Thursday, an anonymous person has Leaked confidential documents of NTC Vulkan, a Moscow-based defense contractor. It is believed that the documents are authentic and have been provided by an anonymous source who was greatly disturbed by Russia's attack on Ukraine.  more

The Next New Media: Typewriters and Handwritten Letters

Who would have thought that typewriters and handwritten letters would ever be back in fashion? But back in 2013 it was reported that Russia was buying large quantities of typewriters. When this was further investigated the country denied that this was for security reasons. Since the Snowden revelations there has been a further rush on typewriters, both by government officials and by a range of, mainly corporate, businesses. more

Meet My Friend Marlowe, She’s Dopamine for Authors

We all have a creative side, so consider meeting my friend Marlowe if you are an aspiring author. Authors.ai is a relatively new web property directly related to enhancing your novel's success or manuscript using Artificial Intelligence. Practically, Marlowe (the intelligent AI engine) reads and writes manuscripts in under an hour. Marlowe is labeled as a self-editing tool but's it is much more nuanced. more

Worldwide Cloud IT Infrastructure Spend Grew 9.2% to $32.6 Billion in 2016, Reports IDC

Vendor revenue from sales of infrastructure products (server, storage, and Ethernet switch) for cloud IT, including public and private cloud, grew by 9.2% year over year to $32.6 billion in 2016, with vendor revenue for the fourth quarter (4Q16) growing at 7.3% to $9.2 billion. more

Google to Begin Experimental Ultra High-Speed Broadband Networks

In a blog post today, Google has announced that they will begin a fiber network experiment of their own. From the announcement: "We're planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people." more

Donuts Acquires .TRAVEL TLD

Donuts Inc. today announced it has acquired the .TRAVEL domain name from registry operator Tralliance Registry Management Company; the .TRAVEL domain becomes Donuts' 239th TLD. more

IoT From a Network Perspective: Learning to Navigate the New Realms

Let's play the analogy game. The Internet of Things (IoT) is probably going end up being like... a box of chocolates, because you never do know what you are going to get? a big bowl of spaghetti with a serious lack of meatballs? Whatever it is, the IoT should have network folks worried about security. Of course, there is the problem of IoT devices being attached to random places on the network, exfiltrating personal data back to a cloud server you don't know anything about. more

Call for Participation - DNSSEC Workshop at ICANN 56 in Helsinki, Finland on 27 June 2016

Do you have an idea for an innovative use of DNSSEC or DANE? Have you recently deployed DNSSEC or DANE and have some "lessons learned" that you could share? Did you develop a new tool or service that works with DNSSEC? Have you enabled DNSSEC by default in your products? (And why or why not?) Do you have ideas about how to accelerate usage of new encryption algorithms in DNSSEC? more

Global Internet Growth Is Driven by Flexible Governance, Not Restrictive Regulation, Says Report

A new report has been released by Analysys Mason suggesting recent proposals to regulate the global Internet will harm growth and innovation worldwide. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will hold a treaty conference, the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), in December 2012, which will revise a 1988 treaty, the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITR). more

The Early History of Usenet, Part V: Authentication and Norms

We knew that Usenet needed some sort of management system, and we knew that that would require some sort of authentication, for users, sites, and perhaps posts. We didn't add any, though -- and why we didn't is an interesting story. The obvious solution was something involving public key cryptography, which we (the original developers of the protocol: Tom Truscott, the late Jim Ellis, and myself) knew about: all good geeks at the time had seen Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" column... more

Part 2: Let’s Have an Honest Conversation About Huawei

In the first section of this piece, I argued that the anti-Huawei litany only makes sense when one realizes that it is the Chinese state, not a global telecommunication equipment manufacturer based in China, is the target of this attack. China, in this view, is an integrated monolith, and any Chinese firm can be ordered to do the government's will without any legal, political, or economic checks and balances. more