The Internet’s Gilded Age

The rise of the Internet has heralded rapid changes in our society. The opportunities presented by a capable and ubiquitous communications system and a global transportation network have taken some corporations from the multinational to the status of truly global mega-corporation. Good examples of these new corporations include Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook. There are a handful of large-scale winners in this space and many losers. But this is not the first time we've witnessed a period of rapid technological and social change. more

Is the Transition to IPv6 a “Market Failure?”

At the outset I should say that here I would like to restrict my view to the transition from the IPv4 Internet to the IPv6 Internet, and, in particular, to examine the topic of the appropriate market structure that lies behind the dual stack transition strategy, and the manner in which the Internet can transition from the universal use of IPv4 as the underlying datagram protocol to the universal use of IPv6. more

Understanding the Threat Landscape: Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)

I previously provided a brief overview of how Verisign iDefense characterizes threat actors and their motivations through adversarial analysis. Not only do security professionals need to be aware of the kinds of actors they are up against, but they should also be aware of the tactical data fundamentals associated with cyber-attacks most commonly referred to as indicators of compromise (IOCs). Understanding the different types of tactical IOCs can allow for quick detection of a breach... more

IPv6 Adoption Brings New Security Risks

Although IPv6 DDoS attacks are not yet a common occurrence, there are indications that malicious actors have started testing and researching IPv6 based DDoS attack methods. more

Study Reports on Baseline of Global IPv6 Adoption

A new research on native IPv6 traffic across six large providers in North America and Europe suggest that despite fifteen years of IPv6 standards development, vendor releases and advocacy, only a small fraction of the Internet has adopted IPv6. "The slow rate of IPv6 adoption stems from equal parts of technical/design hurdles, lack of economic incentives and general dearth of IPv6 content." more

3rd Lawsuit Against VeriSign; Seeks Class Action Status

A third lawsuit has been filed late Friday in a federal district court in California against VeriSign, Inc. over its controversial DNS wildcard redirection service known as SiteFinder. It was filed by the longtime Internet litigator Ira Rothken. In addition, while two other lawsuits have been filed by Go Daddy Software, Inc. and Popular Enterprises, LLC. in Arizona and Florida, this is the first lawsuit to seek class-action status. Here is an excerpt from the "Introduction" section of this class-action lawsuit... more

Skype Goes IPO - What Should Service Providers Do?

Last week's news about Skype's planned IPO brings a renewed focus on what constitutes a service provider these days, and perhaps more importantly, what forms the basis for its valuation? We all know how the advent of IP has turned the economics of telephony on its head, and the drivers of value continue to shift from the physical world of network infrastructure to the virtual world of software, the Web and now the cloud.
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IETF’s Descent Into the Political Rabbit Hole

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has a curious, non-linear history as a "non-organization" of technical innovators now approaching 47 years. As it approaches a landmark 100th official meeting, it has become embroiled in a controversy that takes it further down the political rabbit hole it has been deepening in recent years. The IETF is considering cancelling its 100th meeting now scheduled in Singapore in November 2017... because "concerns were raised about anti-LGBT laws." more

NIST as a Cyber Threat Actor

On 24 May, NIST published recommendations that are a key component of the U.S. cybersecurity ecosystem -- known as vulnerability disclosure guidelines. NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) is an agency of the Department of Commerce whose mission includes "developing cybersecurity standards, guidelines, best practices, and other resources to meet the needs of U.S. industry, federal agencies and the broader public." more

Comparing IPv4 and IPv6 Performance

The active measurements the RIPE NCC carried out on World IPv6 Day on 8 June 2011 included ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) and ICMP6 (ICMP for IPv6) measurements from our vantage points to selected hostnames of World IPv6 Day participants and other dual-stacked parties. We used these measurements to determine the performance of IPv4 versus IPv6 connections. more

Study Finds Spammers Use P2P Harvesting to Spam Millions

A recent study conducted by Blue Security reports how Internet users can unknowingly expose their contacts' emails addresses to Spammers while sharing files, music, games and DVDs over Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks. The study has uncovered hundreds of incidents where files containing email addresses were made accessible in P2P networks. more

WSIS and the Splitting of the Root

There's talk that in the battle between the USA and Europe over control of ICANN, which may come to a head at the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, people will seriously consider "splitting the root" of DNS. I've written a fair bit about how DNS works and how the true power over how names get looked up actually resides with hundreds of thousands of individual site administrators. However, there is a natural monopoly in the root. All those site admins really have to all do the same thing, or you get a lot of problems, which takes away most of that power. Still, this is an interesting power struggle. more

ICANN Violating Free Enterprise?

Message to ICANN: Let those who want to create a TLD, simply register it with ICANN. If the TLD is not already taken, if they have the technical capability to mange the TLD, and they have the desire to market domain names on that TLD, then let them do so. ...Do you present a businesss plan to the city you live in before they allow you a business license? Does the city ask you to prove you are financially stable before issuing you a business license? If you apply for a business license to open a clothing store, does the city ask how you will run your clothing store or if you have the necessary expertise to run a clothing store? Does the city think you will hurt them economically if your clothing store goes out of business? No, it's none of their business... more

Internet Meltdown?

Is the internet on the verge of a meltdown? A non-profit organization, People For Internet Responsibility (PFIR), is concerned that there is the risk of "imminent disruption, degradation, unfair manipulation, and other negative impacts on critical Internet services..." PFIR believes that the "red flag" warning signs of a potential meltdown include "attempts to manipulate key network infrastructures such as the domain name system; lawsuits over Internet regulatory issues... ever-increasing spam, virus, and related problems..." more

The ‘Millennium Problems’ in Brand Protection

As the brand protection industry approaches a quarter of a century in age, following the founding of pioneers Envisional and MarkMonitor in 1999, I present an overview of some of the main outstanding issues which are frequently unaddressed or are generally only partially solved by brand protection service providers. I term these the 'Millennium Problems' in reference to the set of unsolved mathematical problems published in 2000 by the Clay Mathematics Institute, and for which significant prizes were offered for solutions. more