Massive Spam and Malware Campaign Following Boston Tragedy

On April 16th at 11:00pm GMT, the first of two botnets began a massive spam campaign to take advantage of the recent Boston tragedy. The spam messages claim to contain news concerning the Boston Marathon bombing, reports Craig Williams from Cisco. The spam messages contain a link to a site that claims to have videos of explosions from the attack. Simultaneously, links to these sites were posted as comments to various blogs. more

Correlation Between Country Governance Regimes & Reputation of Their Internet Address Allocations

We recently analyzed the reputation of a country's Internet (IPv4) addresses by examining the number of blacklisted IPv4 addresses that geolocate to a given country. We compared this indicator with two qualitative measures of each country's governance. We hypothesized that countries with more transparent, democratic governmental institutions would harbor a smaller fraction of misbehaving (blacklisted) hosts. The available data confirms this hypothesis. A similar correlation exists between perceived corruption and fraction of blacklisted IP addresses. more

Over 80 European Organizations Demand Protection for Net Neutrality

Today, more than 80 organizations, represented by The European Consumer Organization (BEUC) and European Digital Rights (EDRi), sent a letter to the European Commission demanding the end of dangerous experimentation with the functioning of the Internet in Europe and the protection of the principles of openness and neutrality. more

Live Today - “IPv4 Exhaustion and the Path to IPv6” from INET Denver

If you are interested in the current state of IPv4 address exhaustion within North America as well as the current state of IPv6 deployment, there will be a live stream today, April 17, of the sessions happening at INET Denver starting at 1:00pm US Mountain Daylight Time (UTC-6). The event is subtitled "IPv4 Exhaustion and the Path to IPv6" and you can view the live stream at. more

High-Performing Cloud Networks Are Critical to M2M Success

Machine to machine (M2M) communications may not be new, but with the rapid deployment of embedded wireless technology in vehicles, appliances and electronics, it is becoming a force for service providers to reckon with as droves of businesses and consumers seek to reap its benefits. By 2020, the GSM Association (GSMA) predicts that there will be 24 billion connected devices worldwide, while Forrester predicts that mobile machine interactions will exceed the number of mobile human interactions more than 30 times. more

What’s the Best IPv6 Transition Option for You?

After decades of talk, the time for IPv6 has finally arrived. There are several transition options available, but whatever approach you choose, the challenge will be to make sure that your subscribers don't experience a reduction in quality of service. IPv4 is likely to co-exist with IPv6 for some time, so a native dual-stack migration strategy will be the best transition option for most providers... With dual-stack mode, there is no disruption to the service if a client requests an IPv4 address. more

ICANN gTLDs: When Names Are Borrowed from an Atlas

When names are borrowed from an Atlas, things happen. Use of Geographic names have always caused some problems for two reasons; one they are in the public domain so anyone else can use them and two they connote that business is confined to just that geographic area. Like Paris Bakery, Waterloo Furniture or London Bank. Geographic naming was the biggest thing during last couple of centuries, as using name of a village or a city as a moniker was considered being on top of the hill. more

Fourth Round of Initial Evaluation Results for New TLDs

Mary Iqbal writes to report that ICANN has released the fourth round of Initial Evaluation results, bringing the total number of applications that have passed the Initial Evaluation phase to 131. ICANN is targeting completing Initial Evaluation for all applicants by August 2013. more

DNS Bug Disclosure: ICANN Releases New Guidelines

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has released new guidance concerning the reporting and disclosure of bugs that affect the Domain Name System, including information of how ICANN itself will behave in response to vulnerabilities. Until recently, ICANN, which is responsible for maintaining the root domain servers at the heart of the DNS system, had no specific guidelines for the reporting of vulnerabilities, leaving responsible disclosure protocols up to the researchers who discovered the bug. more

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Industry Soon to Be Largest Source of Co2 Emissions

Although on the production side the tar sands are one of the biggest sources of CO2 emissions, the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) industry, globally is the fastest growing and soon will be the largest source of CO2 emissions on the consumption side of the equation. ICT emissions are produced indirectly from the coal generated electricity that is used to power all of our devices. Currently it is estimated that ICT consumes around 10% all electrical power growing at about 6-10% per year. more

An Amazing Number - China Now Has 564 Million Internet Users: 75% Are Mobile

One of the staggering numbers introduced during the opening remarks at ICANN 46 here in Beijing by multiple speakers, including ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade and speakers from the Chinese government, was this: China now has over 564 million Internet users! Think about that for a minute. more

Evolving ICANN Carries Great Promise for Internet Users

The headlines out of ICANN's meeting in Beijing may be all about new domains, but it is the quiet, systemic evolution of ICANN itself that holds the greatest promise for Internet users globally. ICANN President Fadi Chehadé opened the meeting by announcing that it was ICANN's "season to evolve," and setting forth a series of programs, restructuring efforts and policy initiatives intended to make ICANN more responsive to the needs of its stakeholders, and by extension, to the needs of all Internet users, everywhere in the world. more

Total Domain Names Pass 252 Million Worldwide

More than six million domain names were registered in the fourth quarter of 2012, bringing the total number to more than 252 million domain names worldwide across all top-level domains (TLDs) as of Dec. 31, 2012, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief from Verisign. The increase of 6.1 million domain names globally equates to a growth rate of 2.5 percent over the third quarter of 2012, and marks the eighth straight quarter with greater than 2 percent growth. Worldwide registrations have grown by 26.6 million, or 11.8 percent, year over year. more

Third Round of Evaluation Results for New TLDs

Mary Iqbal writes to report that ICANN has released the third round of initial evaluation results, bringing the total number of applicants to pass Initial Evaluation to 93. ICANN has now completed the initial evaluation of all but 13 IDN Top Level Domains. more

ICANN 46 Starts This Week In Beijing - Remote Participation Is Possible

The 46th meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) takes place this week in Beijing, China, and will bring together leaders from all over the world to discuss and debate a wide range of issues related to domain names and the surrounding industry. One can expect that the new gTLDs, a topic frequently discussed here on CircleID, will naturally consume a great amount of the discussion at ICANN 46. more