Is the Risk Real With the New gTLD Program? (An Interview with Verisign)

It's late in the new gTLD day and the program looks to be inching ever closer to the finish line. Yet last minute hiccups seem to be a recurring theme for this ambitious project to expand the Internet namespace far beyond the 300 odd active TLDs in existence today (counting generics and country codes). A drive for growth which is already underway, with 63 gTLD contracts now signed as of mid September... But will those users find themselves at greater risk because of this namespace expansion? That's what several parties have been asking in recent months. more

Chinese Internationalized Domain Names Approved by ICANN

ICANN's Board of Directors on Friday approved a set of Chinese language internationalized domain names which will allow millions of Chinese language users to access the internet using their native script. The new Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) and the associated organizations approved by the ICANN board include three different organizations: CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center), HKIRC (Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation Limited), and TWNIC (Taiwan Network Information Center). more

Emerging Cyber-Security Threats and Implications for the Private Sector

The new gTLD program will have a profound impact on the private sector's increasing dominance over Internet information resources and ownership of critical registry technical infrastructure assets. It is already anticipated that only the private sector will take full advantage of the commercial possibilities... However, the successful introduction of new gTLDs will also create new challenges of security for the private sector. more

Policy Failure Enables Mass Malware: Part II (ICANN and OnlineNIC)

On Wednesday September 29th at 1PM there will be a meeting in the Old Executive Building in Washington D.C. with Registries and domain Registrars to discuss illegal Internet sales of prescription drugs. ICANN was originally invited but declined because citing "inappropriateness" . One "U.S." Registrar who definitely will not be in attendance is OnlineNIC more

WGIG Too Focused on Negative Side of the Internet?

The following is a report by Susan Crawford at the ICANN meeting in Cape Town where a workshop was held yesterday for increasing awareness and understanding of United Nation's World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and issues that directly impact ICANN. "WSIS" is defined as a process in which governments intend to address a broad range of international legal, regulatory, economic, and policy issues related to the Internet. Some governments have proposed that an intergovernmental organization be responsible for "Internet governance," a phrase that remains undefined and some consider to include and/or mean the administration and coordination of the domain name system (DNS). more

Why Not an Interim Step Until DNSSEC is Ready?

I'm interested in CircleID community's take on NeuStar's recent announcement of Cache Defender. While only effective for domains the company is authoritative for, that does cover a large number of big Internet brands and financial institutions. Why wouldn't an ISP deploy this now, while waiting for all the myriad issues involved in DNSSEC to be resolved? more

Domain Owners Lose Privacy

As facts unfold, and the NTIA's decision to take away our privacy comes to light, it is interesting to see the NTIA struggling to explain its decision. Keep in mind that an "as yet to be identified" bureaucrat made this decision to take away your privacy, did it without notice, and without holding hearings. Those affected were not given an opportunity to explain how the loss of privacy would negatively affect them. Quite simply, this is NOT how our government is supposed to work. We should be outraged... more

Business Model Canvas for Cloud Providers

Cloud Computing is not so much about technology but more about the new business models that this technology enables. The question then is, how do these business models look? One of the most inspiring ways of looking at business models is through the so-called "Business Model Canvas". This article explores the basics of cloud computing business models as drawn out on such a canvas. more

“.Pol”, a “.Com” for Political Candidates

In the coming months, ICANN will ambitiously expand the number of top-level domains (TLDs). ICANN could add ".movie" and ".paris", among others, to the existing ranks of ".com", ".org", ".gov", and ".edu". Here's another they should consider: a new ".pol" TLD that is reserved exclusively for political candidates and entities. A ".pol" TLD is needed to alleviate problems linked to a now-common phenomenon called political cybersquatting... more

InternetNZ Has Disclosed a Vulnerability That Can Be Weaponized Against Authoritative DNS Servers

New Zealand's .nz operator, InternetNZ, on Wednesday disclosed a vulnerability against authoritative DNS servers. The vulnerability called TsuNAME was first detected in February 2020 in the .nz registry and found that it could be exploited to carry out Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks across the world. more

TLD Registration Enforcement: A Call for Automation - Part II

Last month, I wrote to describe the state of registration restrictions in .BIZ, .US, and .NAME. I noted trends among nonconforming registrations in these TLDs, and I suggested that certain automated enforcement systems might serve to improve compliance. But an important larger question remained unanswered: Why care about registration restrictions in the first place? Much as registries might like to ignore the restrictions, I submit that the Internet community nonetheless ought to hold them to their contracts.
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Americans Watched 21.4 Billion Videos in July, Largest Number Ever Recorded

According to the latest report released by comScore for the month of July, 58 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during the month, the largest audience ever recorded. Online video reached another all-time high in July with a total of 21.4 billion videos viewed during the month, according to the report. YouTube.com accounted for more than 99 percent of all videos viewed while Viacom Digital ranked second with 812 million (3.8 percent) followed by Microsoft Sites with 631 million videos viewed (3.0 percent). more

Spam and the Introduction Problem

IBM researcher Nathaniel Borenstein has commented that everyone agrees that spam is bad, and that's a huge impediment to doing anything about it. Having decided that spam is bad, it's tempting to divide the spam problem into smaller problems and try to solve the smaller problems, then put the solutions to the subproblems together and, voila, no more spam. That would be fine if the combined subproblems were truly equivalent to the spam problem, but that's rarely the case. more

Google Launches First Japanese IDN

John Yunker reporting in Global by Design: "Google has gone live with one if its many Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs): ???. I want to emphasize here that this is a top-level IDN - that is, the equivalent of a .com or .org. This TLD, according to Google, stands for 'everyone.' So you could in effect register 'someword.everyone,' which sounds a bit odd to me but I'm not Japanese. And, frankly, the Japanese have not been blessed with much in the way of IDN options up to this point." more

Researchers Expose Privacy Risks in Apple and Starlink’s Geo-Location Data, Uncovering Military and Civilian Tracking

Researchers from the University of Maryland have revealed significant privacy and security concerns related to the way Apple and Starlink geo-locate devices. Their study found that Apple's Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) collects and publicly shares precise locations of Wi-Fi access points. more