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The Comcast traffic shaping case has stirred up passionate debate. Net neutrality proponents are calling for Comcast's head on a platter. The common argument is that Comcast's policy may stifle innovation and competition. If a service provider is allowed to exercise unregulated discretion in how it treats subscriber traffic, it is a slippery slope toward anti-competitive practices. Net neutrality says keep your hands off. Some are preaching net neutrality as if it were an inalienable human right like freedom of speech... more
New research has uncovered evidence of spammers establishing their own fake URL-shortening services for the first time. According to the latest MessageLabs Intelligence report, shortened links created on these fake URL-shortening sites are not included directly in spam messages; instead, the spam emails contain shortened URLs created on legitimate URL-shortening sites. "Rather than leading directly to the spammer's final Web site, these links actually point to a shortened URL on the spammer's fake URL-shortening Web site, which in turn redirects to the spammer's final Web site." more
Now, I don't like the word "whither" any more than you do. But this Reuters article was circulating yesterday and it seemed to call for a "whither." It's a short story, so let's do a close reading. "A U.N.-sponsored panel aims to settle a long-running tug of war for control of the Internet by July and propose solutions to problems such as cyber crime and email spam, panel leaders said on Monday." We're going to decide what "internet governance" is by July? more
When a user of a large mail system such as AOL, Yahoo, or Hotmail reports a message as junk or spam, one of the things the system does is to look at the source of the message and see if the source is one that has a feedback loop (FBL) agreement with the mail system. If so, it sends a copy of the message back to the source, so they can take appropriate action, for some version of appropriate. For several years, ARF, Abuse Reporting Format, has been the de-facto standard form that large mail systems use to exchange FBL reports about user mail complaints. more
A harmful, highly unilateral and capricious action. Tons of software out there depended on the ability to tell the difference between a domain name which exists and does not. They use that to give a meaningful, locally defined error to the user, or to identify if an E-mail address will work or not before sending the mail. Many used it as a way to tag spam (which came from domains that did not exist). It is the local software that best knows how to deal with the error. more
A recent piece in The Markup called Swinging the Vote? attempts to figure out how Google decides where to deliver political e-mail. They were startled to discover that only a small fraction of it was delivered into the main inbox, and a fair amount was classed as spam. They shouldn't have been. This is an example of the fallacy We're so nice that the rules don't apply to us, which is far too common among non-profit and political mailers. more
It is openly admitted , in the same Implementation PDF file, that all accesses to the Site Finder service are monitored and archived. A further worry for users is the privacy policy and terms of service posted on the Site Finder service. Not only does the simple act of mistyping a URL implicitly cause you, the end user, to accept VeriSign's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy without the chance to review and accept or decline either, but critical information as described above is not disclosed in either policy (as of this writing). The Privacy Policy clearly states... more
I got an e-mail from someone currently attending the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meeting in Geneva. The e-mail ended up in my spam folder because the IP address used for the wireless LAN at the meeting is on a spambot/virusbot blacklist, namely cbl.abuseat.org. Apparently some guy there has his computer infected by a spambot or a virusbot... more
Having been involved in the whole TLD issue since its inception, back in the ancient history of the mid-1990's, one would think that nothing would surprise me anymore. As it turns out, however, watching the comments on ICANN's public comment list with respect to the new sTLD proposals, I find that I'm taken-back by some of the kinds of comments I'm seeing. more
Another paper from the Fifth Workshop on the Economics of Information Security, (WEIS 2006) is Proof of Work can Work by Debin Liu and L, Jean Camp of Indiana University. Proof of work (p-o-w) systems are a variation on e-postage that uses computation rather than money. A mail sender solves a lengthy computational problem and presents the result with the message. The problem takes long enough that the sender can only do a modest number per time period, and so cannot send a lot of messages, thereby preventing spamming. But on a net full of zombies, proof of work doesn't work. more
I suppose not many have been listening to Paul Vixie or surfing from China, I have done both. The Chinese "alternate root" has been going on for a while. China is creating an alternate root, which it can control while using the Chinese language. I doubt I need to tell any of you about ICANN, VeriSign, Internet Governance, alternate roots or the history of these issues. Everyone else will. Unlike most of my colleagues, I hold a different opinion on the subject and have for some time. China launches an alternate root? It's about time they do, too! more
There is currently a discussion going on between Milton Mueller and Patrik Fältström over the deployment of DNSSEC on the root servers. I think the discussion exemplifies the difficult relation between those who develop standards and those who use them. On the one hand, Milton points out that the way the signing of the root zone will be done will have a great influence on the subjective trust people and nation states will have towards the system. On the other hand, Patrik states that "DNSSEC is just digital signatures on records in this database". Both are right, of course, but they do not speak the same language... more
The sky is falling! The sky is falling! ...or is it? What is this thing called "pharming"? Put simply, it's redirection of web traffic, so that the server you think you're talking to actually belongs to a criminal. For example: you think you're talking to www.examplebank.com because it says so in the browser's address bar, but actually you're connected to www.mafia-R-us.ru. This can happen in three main ways: 1. DNS Hijack: a social engineering attack on the Internet infrastructure... more
A few months ago, Ted Hardie (AD of Applications for the IETF) informed the MARID WG in the closure announcement as follows: "Given the importance of the world-wide email and DNS systems, it is critical that IETF-sponsored experimental proposals likely to see broad deployment contain no mechanisms that would have deleterious effects on the overall system. The Area Directors intend, therefore, to request that the experimental proposals be reviewed by a focused technology directorate..." more
There is considerable coverage this morning (or this evening in Tunis) on the last minute WSIS deal struck yesterday. The gist of the coverage rightly reports that the U.S. emerged with the compromise they were looking for as the delegates agreed to retain ICANN and the ultimate U.S. control that comes with it (note that there is a lot in the WSIS statement that may ultimately prove important but that is outside the Internet governance issue including the attention paid to cybercrime, spam, data protection, and e-commerce). This outcome begs the questions -- what happened? And, given the obvious global split leading up to Tunis, what changed to facilitate this deal? more
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