Twitter Worker Who Disabled Trump Account Likely Violated Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Says Lawyer

A prominent attorney for cybersecurity issues says the unnamed Twitter worker who deactivated President Trump's Twitter account not to say anything and get a lawyer. more

IGF 2015 Takes Action, Developing Best Practices to Address Internet Issues

After many months of hard work and preparation, the IGF community has published draft Best Practices on a range of key issues, complementing other intersessional efforts such as Policy Options for Connecting the Next Billion, and Dynamic Coalitions. Best Practices Forums (BPFs) offer the Internet governance community tangible ways to address Internet issues. more

NTAG Chair Blog: Odds and Endings

Imagine if the US Bureau of Labor Statistics delayed one of its reports for say, two months. No explanation. Just didn't release the employment numbers when it said it would. What if the Federal Reserve decided to say it was going to raise interest rates, but then just didn't? The global economy would be thrown into chaos. These organizations know that when you run critical infrastructure your word is part of that infrastructure. more

LEO Broadband Will Create Millions of Jobs

Earlier this month, Elon Musk tweeted an invitation to a job fair at the new SpaceX production and launch facility near Boca Chica, Texas. As shown here, the tweet says they want hard-working, trustworthy people with common sense. They are not looking for specific skills or education, but certain character traits – "the rest we can train." That tweet reminded me of hiring practices when I graduated from college. more

ICANN Reopens TLD Application System

After nearly six weeks of shutting down its TLD Application System (TAS) due to software issues, ICANN announced today the reopening of TAS. From the announcement: "The system will remain open until 23:59 GMT/UTC on 30 May 2012. Consistent with our previous practice and to allow the application window to open as soon as possible, two-hour maintenance windows have been scheduled as follows: 22 May at 16:30 GMT/UTC, 25 May at 23:00 UTC, and 29 May at 22:00 UTC. ... During the last few weeks, we have fixed the technical glitch that caused us to take the system offline." more

WHOIS Disclosure Questions

In 2020, the ICANN Generic Name Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council approved a plan to revamp the WHOIS system as per the recommendations given by the ICANN Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP). This plan directed ICANN to develop a centralized System for Standardized Access/Disclosure (SSAD) for WHOIS records. After much debate regarding the suitability and cost of such a system, ICANN brought together a group... more

Traditional Big ISPs Stagnate

In the first quarter of this year, the big cable companies added 482,000 customers, while telcos added over 50,000 customers. In what is a surprise to the industry, that growth has disappeared, and all of the big ISPs collectively lost almost 150,000 customers. That's a loss of 60,000 customers for the cable companies and 88,000 for the big telcos. The following statistics have been compiled by the Leichtman Research Group, which tracks the broadband performance of the largest ISPs in the country. more

The Huawei Issue in the Broader Context of Global Politics

It is very sad to see that Huawei has become a victim of US-China trade war politics and it will be very interesting to see how their court case against the US Government will pan out, the company claims that the ban of its products is "unconstitutional." There is no indication that Huawei has been involved in any spying activity; nor does it appear to have any intention of doing so. more

The True Effect of Corona on the DNS

In recent weeks we've seen a range of press articles, security blogposts and public statements addressing real or perceived issues with network capacity and the domain name system (DNS) in particular. These range from concerns about the resilience of the DNS with questions on the impact of the number of registrations to news indicating that a tidal wave of fraud and abuse is hitting the world. more

ICANN at 20: Looking Back Forward

This year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), marks its 20th anniversary since inception. ICANN was birthed as a result of the infamous DNS Wars - in 1994, the U.S National Science Foundation, the then overseer of the Internet infrastructure decided to sub-contract the management of the Domain Name System (DNS) to a private U.S company called Network Solutions INC (NSI). This move was not well received by the Internet community, culminating in the so-called "DNS Wars" more

EU Considers Integrating New Norms of Cyberwar Into Security Policies

"The European Parliament has been asked to adopt a new set of 'norms' about online conflict," reports Simon Sharwood in The Register. more

Michele Neylon, Blacknight CEO Elected as Chair of Registrar Stakeholder Group of ICANN

Michele Neylon, CEO of Blacknight, announced today his election as Chair of the Registrar Stakeholder Group of ICANN, the first European to ever hold this position. more

ICANN Begins Negotiations for the Approval of dot-XXX Domain

The board of ICANN on Friday gave initial approval for the addition of .xxx Top-Level Domain... Dot-XXX domains won't start appearing right away. ICANN must first conduct a "due diligence" study of ICM's business plan for the domain, and then the board will review the contract proposed for the operation of the domain. That may involve referring the matter to ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee, which is next scheduled to meet in December in Colombia, said board member Bruce Tonkin. "There is a potential that this is a prolonged process,"... more

Blocking Amplification Attacks: Sometimes the Incentives Work Against You

Since the end of last year, amplification attacks have been increasingly used by attackers and received heavy media coverage. Everyday protocols not given much thought before, like Network Time Protocol (NTP), can be asked in a very short remote command to send a very large response (list of 600 clients last connected to the NTP server) to a spoofed IP address (the target) by the requestor/attacker. more

Internet Accounting for 4.7% of U.S. Economy

The Internet is contributing more to the American economy than the entire federal government, according to a new study by the Boston Consulting Group. The Internet accounted for $684 billion, or 4.7% of all U.S. economic activity in 2010, according to latest report released by Boston Consulting Group. more