ICANN and the Red Cross: An Exceptional Exception

ICANN's policy on the special protection of the Red Cross and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) names has triggered a very lively discussion including contributions by Konstantinos Komatis, Milton Muller, Wolfgang Kleinwächter, and myself (with Avri Doria's reply). There is an agreement that the exceptions are dangerous for ICANN's gTLD policy process which is in a formative and delicate phase. more

US Government Releases Two IPv6 Papers

During the last week of December, two US Government agencies released papers on IPv6. NIST released Special Publication 800-119, Guidelines for the Secure Deployment of IPv6. This comprehensive 188 page paper provides guidelines for federal agencies (and anyone else who might want to take advantage of it) to securely deploy IPv6. more

The Tempest in the TLD Teapot

At its recent meeting in Seoul ICANN announced with great fanfare that it's getting ever closer to adding lots of new Top Level Domains (TLDs). Despite all the hype, new TLDs will make little difference... I agree with my old friend Lauren Weinstein that this is a tempest in a very expensive teapot, because all of the purported reasons that people want new TLDs have been proven false, and the one actual reason that a new TLD would be valuable has no public benefit. more

Euro 2020: An Illustration of the Link Between Real-World Events and Online Infringements

In the run-up to the postponed Euro 2020 football championships, we've analyzed historical registration trends in domains containing the terms "euro2020" or "euro2021." A number of previous studies -- looking at events as diverse as the COVID pandemic, the annual holiday season shopping events, and the Reddit campaign relating to the manipulation of the stock price of U.S.-based retailer GameStop -- show a link between real-world events and spikes in online activity. more

Rise in Cybercrime Exploiting Artificial Intelligence Hype Leads to Growing Threats Within the .ai Domain Space

Cybercriminals are leveraging the growing popularity of artificial intelligence to perpetrate attacks, capitalizing on the surge in interest following the release of chatbot technologies like ChatGPT. New research by Netcraft reports on the increasing use of .ai domain names where criminals use malicious websites around AI to draw in victims. more

Don’t Confuse Brand and Category-Label New gTLDs

The domain name industry gets brand and label confused. A brand sums up what makes a company unique to its customers. A label tells what category a company goes in; it sums up what the product has in common with other products of that type. Sedan and SUV are category labels; Volvo is a brand, one that means safety to customers. Similarly Tesla Motors has its distinctive "Tesla" brand, but it introduces products to its users as "electric vehicles." more

Teen Hacker Who Targeted High Ranking US Government Officials Sentenced to 2 Years in Prison

A British teenager who hacked into the online accounts of former CIA director John Brennan, former director of intelligence James Clapper, and other high-profile US government employees, was sentenced today for to two years in prison. more

ICANN Launches Global Service for Nonpublic Domain Name Registration Data Requests

ICANN has introduced the Registration Data Request Service (RDRS), offering a standardized way to request access to nonpublic data for generic top-level domains (gTLDs). more

Internet Governance: Leading by Example

On CircleID Jeremy Malcolm blogged in "Wikileaks and the Gaps in Internet Governance" that "For the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus (IGC), this highlights the need for cross-border Internet governance issues to be made subject to a due process of law, informed by sound political frameworks, including those of human rights." A reaction, in which a network of the willing is suggested. more

More Stepping Stones Before This Summer’s Seminal DNSSEC Events

The deployment of Domain Security Extensions (DNSSEC) has crossed another milestone this month with the publication of DURZ (deliberately unvalidatable root zone) in all DNS root servers on 5 May 2010. While this change was virtually invisible to most Internet users, this event and the remaining testing that will occur over these next two months will dictate the ultimate success of DNSSEC deployment across the Internet. more

Aging the Internet Prematurely, One PDP at a Time

After blogging about ICANN's new gTLD policy or lack thereof [also featured on CircleID], I've had several people ask me why I care so much about ICANN and new top-level domains. Domain names barely matter in a world of search and hyperlinks, I'm told, and new domains would amount to little more than a cash transfer to new registries from those trying to protect their names and brands. While I agree that type-in site-location is less and less relevant, and we haven't yet seen much end-user focused innovation in the use of domain names, I'm not ready to throw in the towel. I think ICANN is still in a position to do affirmative harm to Internet innovation. more

GSA Looking Into .gov Outages

"The General Services Administration is analyzing what caused an outage of .gov websites for a few hours Wednesday morning," reports Federal Times. Officials said the problem involved so-called DNSSEC cybersecurity measures that affected access to certain .gov sites, according to GSA spokeswoman Mafara Hobson. more

WIPO Reports Cybersquatting Cases Grew by 12% Reaching New Records in 2018

According to a report from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), trademark owners filed a record 3,447 cases under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) with WIPO's Arbitration and Mediation Center in 2018. more

ICANN Cancels .CORP, .HOME, and .MAIL TLDs Indefintley Due to Collision Concerns

ICANN has announced that it has indefinitely deferred the delegations of the new TLDs .CORP, .HOME, and .MAIL due to the high-risk nature of the strings. The domains name system overseer has determined the said TLDs can cause name collisions, the overlap of private and public namespaces which may result in unintended and harmful results. more

U.S. Senators to Introduce IoT Security Bill

U.S. senators on Tuesday announced plans to introduce legislation seeking to address vulnerabilities in IoT devices. more