World IPv6 Launch: This Time It Is For Real! - June 6, 2012

No more "test flights" ... 2012 is the year that IPv6 gets permanently deployed! That is the message of "World IPv6 Launch," announced today by the Internet Society, Google, Facebook, Cisco, Microsoft, Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable and a whole host of other companies. While last year's successful World IPv6 Day was all about testing how your site or service worked with IPv6, this year's World IPv6 Launch is about enabling IPv6 permanently as of June 6, 2012 (or earlier). more

China’s Internet Users Pass Half a Billion

The number of Chinese Internet users has surpassed 500 million, with nearly half of them using microblogs, or Weibo, according to latest official figures. About 55.8 million Chinese people became new Internet users last year, bringing the country’s Web population to 513 million, representing an Internet penetration rate of 38.3 percent, according to a report released by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). more

Understanding and Detecting Mobile Malware Threats

Every couple of years there's a new "hot threat" in security for which vendors abruptly tout newfangled protection and potential customers clamor for additional defense options. Once upon a time it was spyware, a few years ago it was data leakage, and today it's mobile malware. It's a reoccurring cycle, analogous to the "blue is the new black" in fashion -- if you fancy adopting a certain cynical tone. 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

Is There Any Room for Communities in The New gTLD Program?

With the start of hunting season for new gTLDs, attention needs to be paid to Community in all of its reality and diversity. After family, community is one of the strongest organizational principles in human society and has been since the beginning of history. With the rare exception of the classical hermit, everyone is part of multiple communities. Communities are important and need to be protected by society and by this new gTLD process. more

ICANN Begins Accepting Applications for New gTLDs

ICANN announced today that after over seven years of planning, the organization has initiated the process for accepting applications for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). "We believe this program will do what it's designed to do, which is open up the Internet domain-name system to further innovation," said Rod Beckstrom, ICANN chairman, during an event at the National Press Club in Washington today. More information on the Applicant Support program can be found on the ICANN New gTLD page. more

New TLD Application Window Opens Tomorrow - What Does It Mean? (Here are Answers to Some Basic FAQs)

Tomorrow, January 12th 2012 ICANN will open the application window for new TLDs. This post includes answers to some of the based frequently asked questions. If you have any other questions/queries, or if something is unclear please let me know via the comment at the end of the post. more

Types of Attack

A lot of pixels have been spilled in the last few years about "advanced persistent threats" (APT); if nothing else, any high-end company that has been penetrated wants to blame the attack on an APT. But what is an APT, other than (as best I can tell) an apparent codename for China? Do they exist? After thinking about it for a while, I came up with the following representation... more

Will We See IPv6-Enabled Consumer Devices at CES This Week?

What kind of IPv6 support will we see in consumer devices at the massive Consumer Electronics Show (CES) happening in Las Vegas this week? The show is already underway and much of the tech media is already writing in breathless prose about the latest tablets, notebooks and zillions of other consumer devices making their debut at CES. While the bright-shiny-object-chasing side of me definitely notices those articles, my own interest is on a deeper and far more technical level. more

Secret Doors in Phones and Computers

An article appeared in Computer World that alleges: in exchange for the Indian market presence" mobile device manufacturers, including RIM, Nokia, and Apple (collectively defined in the document as RINOA) have agreed to provide backdoor access on their devices. Could it be true that Nokia, RIM and Apple opened up to Government interception? more

Comcast Announces Completion of DNSSEC Deployment

Comcast, a leading ISP in the U.S., has fully deployed Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) according to a company announcement today. Jason Livingood, Comcast's Vice President of Internet Systems writes: "As of today, over 17.8M residential customers of our Xfinity Internet service are using DNSSEC-validating DNS servers. In addition, all of the domain names owned by Comcast, numbering over 5,000, have been cryptographically signed. All of our servers, both the ones that customers use and the ones authoritative for our domain names, also fully support IPv6." more

IPv6 Riding the LTE Coattails

In June 2009 we mused in these columns about Long Term Evolution standing for Short Term Evolution as wireless networks started to drown in a data deluge. It is January 2012 and we keep our heads above the mobile data deluge, even if barely, thanks to a gathering avalanche of LTE networks. Even the wildest prognoses proved conservative as the GSMA was betting on a more 'managed' progression... more

US House Committee Announces Oversight Hearing on DNS and Search Engine Blocking

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa today announced that the Full Committee will hold a hearing on January 18 to examine the potential impact of Domain Name Service (DNS) and search engine blocking on security, jobs and the Internet community. The Committee will hear testimony from cybersecurity experts and others from the technology community. more

How to Make DNS Green

The Dutch Internet registry SIDN has launched a unique program in partnership with CleanBits to identify what proportion of .nl domain names were hosted on a green or CO2-neutral basis. The results show a strong trend towards the 'greening' of the .nl internet zone. Nearly 30 per cent of .nl names were found to have green hosts. more

The Case of Mobile Users’ Bandwidth Consumption and Causality

It started with a report in the New York Times, citing a study from Arieso, saying that "Top 1% of Mobile Users Consume Half of World's Bandwidth". Arieso said that part of the reason for the increase in download volumes may be Apple's Siri voice feature on the iPhone 4S which allows consumers to dictate to the phone and enter more text and data... Other news outlets picked up the story and lost all perspective. more