INET DC, Weds, July 24: Surveillance, Cybersecurity and the Internet’s Future (Livestream available)

Are you concerned about the recent reports about government surveillance programs? Are you concerned about security and privacy online? If so, you may want to attend (in person or remotely) the INET Washington DC event happening on Wednesday, July 24, from 2:00 - 6:00 pm US Eastern time at George Washington University. Sponsored by the Internet Society and GWU's Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute, the event is free and open to the public and will also be streamed live on the Internet for those who cannot attend in person. more

How to Maximise Registrations Through Effective Registrar Relationships

There are some surefire ways to get channel engagement and drive registrations, but doing what everyone else is doing is not going to cut it in the world of new TLDs. Successful Registrar engagement requires an investment of time far in advance of what some Registry Operators appear to be expecting, both in terms of ongoing relationship management as well as continually providing tools which make it easier for Registrars to sell your extension over other TLDs. more

How Will Rural Chileans Use SpaceX Starlink?

The Chilean Undersecretary of Telecommunications (SUBTEL) has begun a year-long pilot study of SpaceX's Starlink satellite Internet service. I don't know how many test locations they are planning, but the first two have been selected. Last week I discussed the first, the John F. Kennedy school in Sotomó, an isolated town at 41.6° South on a fjord in Chile's Lake Region, and the second will be in Caleta Sierra on the coast about 1,200 miles north of Sotomó. SpaceX is also considering a European pilot study in Georgia and perhaps (hopefully) others. more

ICANN TAS Window Closes - What’s Next for Applicants?

It's official. After more than six grueling years of work for ICANN and the wider community, the new Top-Level Domain (TLD) application process finally closed a few hours ago. ICANN's Chief Operating Officer later advised the community in a release that just over 1900 applications had been submitted in the TAS with one hour remaining before the system closed (final numbers will be released on reveal day). This number of applicants falls within most industry estimates and shows significant demand as expected from across the globe. more

There are Reports of Widespread Post-Election Spear Phishing Campaigns Targeting Think Tanks, NGOs

In the wake of the 2016 United States Presidential Election, not even six hours after Donald Trump became the nation's President-Elect, an advanced persistent threat (APT) group launched a series of coordinated and well-planned spear phishing campaigns. more

Another One (Partially) Bites the Dust

Following in the footsteps of Lethic, Waledac and Mariposa, yet another botnet has been taken offline. Not completely, though, it was only a partial disconnect. The Zeus botnet, also known as Zbot, is a trojan password stealer that captures passwords and sends them to the attacker. more

Trust Us

Here's the question: is it meaningful or important for a federal agency to have regulatory authority over high-speed Internet access connectivity? Right now, the FCC (which is supposed to oversee "communication over wire and radio") has no clear authority to make policy about high-speed Internet connectivity. (Transport is different than content - this post is not about applications or uses of this connectivity. Be careful when you talk about the Internet "ecosystem," because transport has been historically and remains different from everything else. I'm talking about the capacity to send packets from Point A to Point B, whether provided by wired or wireless providers.) more

A New Frontier for the Global South

The Fund for Internet Research and Education - FIRE - is an initiative of AFRINIC that gives Grants and Awards to outstanding projects that use the Internet to provide innovative solutions to Africa's unique education, information, infrastructure, and communication needs. FIRE Africa is part of an initiative called The Seed Alliance that has LACNIC's FRIDA Program, APNIC's ISIF.Asia program, and the Internet Society as members. more

A New Phase of Measuring DNS Abuse

Today the DNS Abuse Institute (“DNSAI” or the “ Institute”) adds a new level of reporting for our measurement project: DNSAI Compass™ (“Compass”). With this new level of reporting, we intend to show the spectrum of how malicious phishing and malware is distributed across the DNS registration ecosystem.1 To demonstrate this, we are identifying registrars and TLDs with high and low volumes of malicious domain registrations in their Domains Under Management (DUM), or new registrations. more

Searching for Truth in DKIM: Part 4 of 5

Once you've determined that you can trust the signer of a message, as we discussed in part 3, it's easy to extrapolate that various portions of the message are equally trustworthy. For example, when there's a valid DKIM signature, we might assume that the From: header isn't spoofed. But in reality, DKIM only tells us two basic things... more

OneWeb Is Bankrupt – Who Will Buy Their Assets?

OneWeb has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. OneWeb CEO Adrian Steckel stated that they were "close to obtaining financing" but failed as a "consequence of the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis." That is plausible, but they were also far behind SpaceX Starlink in launch cost and capacity. (SpaceX, remains open as an essential industry working on defense contracts, but two employees have tested positive for COVID-19) and financial analyst Tim Farrar said SpaceX faced a "near-term cash problem" even before the pandemic). more

1st Sealed Bid gTLD Contention Auction Completed for the String .One

The first sealed bid auction for a new gTLD contention set was completed last week for the string .One. To our knowledge this is 1st auction to be conducted by a third party other than Applicant Auction to settle a contention set and marks the first time a new gTLD contention set was settled through a "Single Sealed Bid Second Price" auction... The winning bidder for the new TLD extension was One.com of Dubai, AE, which will act as the worldwide registry for .One domains. more

Amazon’s AWS Ground Station Service Is Now Available

Amazon announced that they would be providing satellite ground station service last year and Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web services, announced its availability in the video at the end of this post. AWS Ground Station is a fully managed, ready-to-go ground station service... This sounds like a compelling case, especially for a small operator or startup, but I don't know how the prices compare to existing services or building proprietary ground stations. more

How a ‘Defensive Registration’ Can Defeat a UDRP Complaint

A company that registers a domain name containing someone else's trademark may be engaging in the acceptable practice of "defensive registration" if (among other things) the domain name is a typographical variation of the registrant's own trademark. That's the outcome of a recent decision under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), a case in which the domain name in dispute, idocler.com, contained the complainant's DOCLER trademark -- but also contained a typo of the respondent's DOLCER trademark. more

Thoughts on the Best Western Compromise

The Sunday Herald reported on Sunday that Best Western was struck by a trojan attack that lead to the possible compromise of about 8 million victims. There is some debate as to the extent of the breach and not a small amount of rumor going around. I'm not entirely disposed to trust corporate press releases for the facts, nor am I going to blindly accept claims of security researchers whose first call is to the PR team when discovering a problem. That said, here is what seems to be the agreed upon facts... more