Examining Real Examples of DNS Abuse: A Summary Overview of the 2nd DNS Abuse Forum

It was not without a little trepidation that I planned the 2nd DNS Abuse Institute Forum to focus on the long-standing and often contentious definitional issues surrounding DNS Abuse. While the risk of getting stuck in the usual entrenched positions was real, it seemed to me that we had an opportunity to provide some clarity and if not change minds, at least provide perspective. more

DNS Level Action to Address Abuses: New Tools for DNS Operators and Legislators

The ways in which the Internet is embedded in our daily lives are too varied and numerous to catalogue. The Internet delivers information, access to goods, services, education, banking, social interaction and, increasingly, work space. The global pandemic has only heightened our dependence on the online world, which is why efforts to ensure that the Internet remains a trusted and secure environment are more important than ever. more

A Digital Bill of Rights (& Responsibilities), Part 1: Why Do We Need It

Using the lingo of Internet Governance, the "stakeholders" of digital technologies currently live in a state of confusion about their rights and responsibilities in the digital age. Digital technologies confront us with many questions we thought had been answered long before. We have a pretty clear understanding of our rights and responsibilities as citizens of our country, how a state should be governed, and how the private sector should conduct its business. more

Privacy, Legal vs. Natural Persons, and the Never-Ending ICANN EPDP

It has been just over 3 years since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect, and the work within ICANN (type "EPDP 2a" into your acronym decoder ring) to develop a permanent Registration Data policy is progressing at a snail's pace. At issue is a proposed mandatory requirement for Contracted Parties (really just Registrars), to differentiate between "legal persons" (a fancy way of saying corporations and similar organizations) and "natural persons" (the kind that eat and breathe and schedule Zoom calls). more

Centrality and the Internet

The IRTF is a research-oriented part of the larger IETF structure. It has a number of research groups, one of which, DINRG, is looking at decentralized Internet Infrastructure. That's a big topic, and one could certainly look at distributed decentralized blockchain frameworks applied to ledgers, used by Bitcoin and similar, or self-organizing systems that perform orchestration without imposed control or distributed hash tables. more

The U.S. Fiber Expansion Craze

I've written several times recently in blogs that there is a growing backlog in buying fiber cable. Some of the backlog is due to the general supply chain malaise that seems to be affecting almost everything we buy. During the recent gas shortages in North Carolina, I found out that there is a shortage of truck drivers. Apparently, many truck drivers found something else to do during the pandemic, and now there is a shortage of drivers to deliver the many goods that are shipped by truck. more

Why Is Verisign Ignoring New Revenue?

Last month saw a much-anticipated decision handed down in the Independent Review Panel (IRP) proceeding examining the controversial 2015 auction for the .web generic top-level domain name registry (gTLD). This decision has been covered by others, including Kevin Murphy's DomainIncite, and has been the subject of unsurprisingly incongruous statements by both Verisign and Afilias, who are both contending for the .web concession privilege. more

Illusory Correlation and Security

Fear sells. Fear of missing out, fear of being an imposter, fear of crime, fear of injury, fear of sickness ... we can all think of times when people we know (or worse, people in the throes of madness of crowds) have made really bad decisions because they were afraid of something. Bruce Schneier has documented this a number of times. For instance: "it's smart politics to exaggerate terrorist threats" and ... more

New Hair-Like Plastic Polymer Cable Can Transmit Data Ten Times Faster Than Copper

Scientists and engineers are always looking for ways to speed up and more efficiently configure computing devices to maximize data flow. There are a lot of applications today that require the exchange of huge volumes of data in real-time. MIT scientists have created a hair-like plastic polymer cable that can transmit data ten times faster than copper USB cables. more

Are the Broadband Stats We Are Seeing Somehow Overinflated? What Did the Pandemic Hide?

The growth of broadband customers has looked spectacular over the past year during the pandemic. It's easy to chalk up higher broadband customers nationwide to the need for households to be connected during the pandemic. But as I look back on what's happened during the last year, I can't help but wonder if the broadband stats we are seeing are somehow overinflated. more

Your Cybersecurity is Only as Strong as Your Weakest Vendor

Managing the risk of third parties has become a compliance focus for many large organizations. Companies even work with third-party service providers and external vendors just to manage this risk. The recent SolarWinds attack escalates the critical need for chief compliance officers to collaborate with their business counterparts to identify and mitigate potentially unknown threats that lie within third-party supply chains. Yet how can companies manage this risk when it's not if but when you're attacked? more

10th Registration Operations Workshop (ROW), June 8th, 2021, Online

The Registration Operations Workshop (ROW) was conceived as an informal industry conference that would provide a forum for discussion of the technical aspects of registration operations in the domain name system and IP addressing. The 10th ROW will be held online on Tuesday, June 8th, 2021 at 13h00-17h00 UTC. Click to learn more about the discussion topics and registration details. more

Vendor Selection Matters in the Domain Registrar Ecosystem

Domain name abuse is one of the most dangerous and under-regulated issues in digital business security today. Many of the largest companies in the world still lack basic domain security protocols, making them prime targets for bad actors. An attack on a domain can lead to the redirection of a company's website, domain spoofing, domain and domain name system (DNS) hijacking attacks, phishing attacks, network breaches, and business email compromise (BEC). more

Some Thoughts on the Recent DNS Operations, Analysis, and Research Centre Workshop, OARC-35

The DNS Operations, Analysis, and Research Centre (DNS-OARC) convened OARC-35 at the start of May. Here are some thoughts on a few presentations at that meeting that caught my attention... These days it seems that the term "the digital economy" is synonymous with "the surveillance economy." Many providers of services on the Internet spend a lot of time and effort assembling profiles of their customers. These days, it's not just data in terms of large-scale demographics but the assembling of large sets of individual profiles.  more

SpaceX Starlink vs. Telesat Lightspeed

With 1,675 satellites launched and 500,000 requests for service in the United States alone, SpaceX Starlink clearly leads all would-be providers of low Earth orbit (LEO) internet service to consumers. However, it is arguable that Telesat Lightspeed is in the lead, or contending for the lead with SpaceX, in non-consumer enterprise, government, mobile backhaul, mobility and rural community markets. more