ICANN to Reconsider the .Amazon Domain Applications

Amazon filed applications for the .AMAZON top-level domains in several scripts in 2012. Five years later, ICANN will re-examine the applications after an Independent Review Process (IRP) proceeding. The IRP Panel found that ICANN's Board failed to demonstrate the existence of public policy reasons for denying the applications. more

Independence is New gTLD Compatible

Independence must be a fashion of the moment. Cataluña, a place where I've lived, is fighting hard to be independent and, even if I don't believe a second that this will ever happen, it is a common example of a community which fought hard, very early and by all means, to operate a new gTLD to clearly identify its culture (and Nation) on the Internet: the .CAT Top-Level domain. Note that this TLD has nothing to do with the .DOG nor .PET new gTLDs (joke). more

The Great Inevitable: From Broadband Internet to Cloud Application Access

Some inevitable changes are hard to see in prospect, yet are 'obvious' in retrospect. The next communications revolution is 'made for cloud' access. A colleague pointed me to a Forbes article "For Today's Telecoms Companies, Customer Experience Is Just As Important As Download Speeds". It was written by Huawei's global president of assurance and managed services. Well, I told you so! more

Canada’s Electronic Spy Agency Makes Its Malware Analysis Tool Public

Canada's Communications Security Establishment (CSE) which rarely discloses detail of its activities has taken the "unprecedented step" of releasing one of its own cyber defense tools to the public, in a bid to help companies and organizations better defend their computers and networks against malicious threats. more

How Governments Can Be Smart About Artificial Intelligence

The French MP and Fields medal award winner, Cédric Villani, officially auditioned Constance Bommelaer de Leusse, the Internet Society's Senior Director, Global Internet Policy, last Monday on national strategies for the future of artificial intelligence (AI). In addition, the Internet Society was asked to send written comments, which are reprinted here. more

Equifax Breach: 9 Fraud Prevention Steps Everyone Should Take

The U.S. Internet Revenue Service now says that criminals already had most of the information that credit bureau Equifax lost in a breach that revealed personal information about nearly 150 million people. The incident at Equifax and the IRS' mid-October admission of how much-stolen data was already in criminal hands may force changes in how the world handles personal information. more

Network Design: If You Haven’t Found the Tradeoff…

This week, I ran into an interesting article over at Free Code Camp about design tradeoffs... If you think you've found a design with no tradeoffs, well... Guess what? You've not looked hard enough. This is something I say often enough, of course, so what's the point? The point is this: We still don't really think about this in network design. This shows up in many different places; it's worth taking a look at just a few. more

Popular ccTLDs for Domain Name Disputes

As I've written before, the registry operators for many country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) have adopted the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) or a variation of it, while other ccTLDs have crafted their own dispute policies, or none at all. Although no ccTLD appears as frequently as .com in domain name disputes, it's interesting to see which ccTLDs are subject to dispute the most often. more

A Look Back at How the Internet of Iraq Came to be Dependent on Telecoms Based in Kurdistan

On the 25th of September, the northern autonomous region of Iraq known as Kurdistan voted to become an independent country. This vote has led to a current standoff between the central Iraqi government and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), with the Kurds threatening to cut off internet service into Iraq in retaliation for any punitive measures inflicted by Baghdad on the KRG. The following analysis was written by Doug Madory of Oracle Dyn after ISIS took control of Mosul, Iraq in 2014. It describes how the internet of Iraq came to be dependent on international connections through telecoms based in Kurdistan. more

Cuba’s (Hopefully Limited) ADSL Expansion

In 2015, ETECSA announced/leaked a plan to make ADSL service available in 50% of Cuban homes by 2020. I was skeptical. Doing so would mean investing a lot of money for obsolete technology between 2015 and 2020. They have recently announced the availability of ADSL connectivity at homes in portions of seven cities and, by December, they say some home connectivity will be available in every province. more

Internet Week Guyana Advances Caribbean Tech Development Agenda

Around the world, the growing sophistication of cyber criminals is challenging the capacity of governments, businesses and individuals to defend themselves. In the Caribbean, governments are forging strategic partnerships with regional actors like the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) and the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG), the region's largest volunteer-based community of network engineers, computer security experts and tech aficionados. more

Google Launcheds Advanced Protection Program for “High-Risk” Users

Coninsiding with October Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Google today announced the launch of Advanced Protection Program specifically "designed for those who are at an elevated risk of attack." more

Security Flaw in TPM Chips Allows Attacks on RSA Private Keys

Details of Infineon’s RSA key generation vulnerability was made public today after several announcements by vendors last week. more

KRACK Attack Can Affect All Modern WiFi Networks, Researchers Have Disclosed

Security researchers Mathy Vanhoef and Frank Piessens have detected a major vulnerability in the WPA2 protocol that secures all protected Wi-Fi networks. more

Civil Society Groups Call for Deletion of Internet Filtering Provision in EU Copyright Proposal

The European Digital Rights (EDRi) and 56 other civil society organizations, sent an open letter today to EU decision-makers calling for the deletion of the Article 13 of the Copyright Directive proposal, pointing out that monitoring and filtering of internet content that it proposes breach citizens’ fundamental rights. more