Water Supply System Apparently Hacked, with Physical Damage

According to press reports, a water utility's SCADA network was hacked. The attacker turned a pump on and off too much, resulting in physical damage to the pump. ... For years, security specialists have been warning that something like this could happen. Although more and more people have started to believe it, we still hear all of the usual reassuring noises -- the hackers don't know enough, we have defenses, there are other safeguards, etc. That debate is now over... more

Large Group Formed to Oppose ICANN’s New gTLD Expansion

Eighty-seven major national and international business associations and companies have joined forces with the ANA (Association of National Advertisers), forming the Coalition for Responsible Internet Domain Oversight (CRIDO) to oppose the rollout of ICANN's top-level domain expansion program. more

New gTLDs and the 1%

While Occupy Wall Street and other groups representing the so-called 99% are getting most of the press, the 1% is raising its profile as well, at least when it comes to gTLDs. They are complaining that introducing global choice and competition to the Internet will cost them money. The chief of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) now says that it has "spent the last few months" considering the new gTLD program, and has found it lacking. They want ICANN to shut the whole thing down. more

Evaluating the Growth of Internet Traffic

At the opening of NANOG 53, Kevin McElearney of Comcast commented that within Comcast Regional Area Networks (CRANs), the company is regularly pushing 40+ Gbps of traffic out to the global Internet. This is a massive amount of traffic and in many cases, it's more traffic than entire countries around the world push out to the Internet. It got me thinking about just how much traffic there is on the Internet and the rate at which that traffic will grow over the coming years. more

European Commission in Favour of New IANA Contract - Disapproves of US Only Bidding Process

In a move that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, the EU Commission has given a rather mixed welcome to the IANA bid. While they obviously like a lot of what they are seeing, they're also not overly impressed with the contract only being open to US companies. more

Taking the Leap to Cloud-Based Malware Inspection

Is desktop anti-virus dead? Someday I'd love to make that announcement, but it still feels to me that there's a Patron Saint of Voodoo with an affinity for bringing it back to life -- like some macabre mirror image of the malicious zombies it's supposed to provide protection against. It's kind of ironic that today's innovation in desktop anti-virus isn't really happening at the desktop; rather it's occurring in the cloud. more

New TLD Spotted - .FUD

In politics, as in Internet policy, the most effective weapons are also the oldest. So when it came time for hard-line intellectual property advocates to make a desperate last stand against the new gTLD program, it came as no surprise they turned to the atomic bomb of rhetorical devices: FUD. FUD stands for "fear, uncertainty and doubt" and it is the tool of last resort when change is coming and you want to stop it. The theory is simple: the human response to fear is to cling to what's familiar and oppose what's new. So if you can scare enough people about the potential effects of a new policy or law, you stand a pretty good chance of preventing it from ever going into effect. more

Will Google Search Replace Domain Names?

The growing notion among big advertising agencies and brand marketers is that as search engines find answers instantly, there's no real need to enter a domain name in the browser and therefore domain names are far less important. They're absolutely right. Why would you type www.rolex.com when you can simply enter 'Rolex' and be there before you blink? But where they are seriously wrong is when you enter anything like 'Interlink', 'Pronet', 'National Trust', 'Premier Traders' or 'United Manufacturing', uncontrollable citations will gush out from every corners of the world. more

Is Africa Ready for a dotAfrica gTLD Future?

It's approximately 2 months to go before the grand application process for the new gTLDs begins, ICANN the international internet body made a revolutionary announcement in June that is going to change the entire internet namespace. With the current 21 gTLDs, the world is bracing for a surge of close to 500 new applications. Among the domains of my interest is the .Africa gTLD. more

Businesses Angry with ICANN’s New gTLD Structure, Says CADNA

In a conference hosted by the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) on Tuesday, discussions were held concerning ICANN's upcoming new gTLD Program. CADNA President Josh Bourne said: "ICANN has an image problem. Businesses are outright angry with ICANN because of the way that this program has been structured. We are not trying to derail the rollout of new gTLDs altogether, but rather, we are proposing an opportunity for ICANN to make this Program much less detrimental to brands and businesses..." more

Fair Notice and Applying for a New gTLD

Applying for a new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) will be expensive and complex. ICANN's Applicant Guidebook comprises 350 pages of dense instructions, spelling out the procedures to apply for a gTLD and to comment or object to the gTLDs applied for by others. Hidden among the forest of criteria and procedures is a problem that, unless solved, could deny good faith applicants the fair notice they deserve. more

Big Brands Should Embrace New TLDs & Stop Giving Away Money

Advertisers have given Verisign a free gift worth billions of dollars over the past 10 years. Sports Stadiums provide a great analogy... What do office supplies have to do with basketball? What does oil have to do with football? Yet, Staples will pay the Lakers $116 million dollars and Lucas Oil will pay the Indianapolis Colts about the same (over 20 years) to associate their company names with these stadiums. more

DomainsBot Integrates Twitter Handles, Facebook Identity Check to Domain Name Suggestion Tool

DomainsBot, the provider of domain name suggestion tool used by various companies such as GoDaddy, Tucows, 1and1, and eNom has just announced an update to its platform offering social networking identity search integration. The company update also includes B2B services for domain registrars, registries and new TLD applicants. more

What Will Be the Magic Number for New gTLD Applications?

With the application launch period scheduled to begin in less than three months, everyone wants to know just how many new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) applications will be submitted. In terms of the number of applications to be submitted, I've seen estimates putting the figure as low as 500. But just last week, an industry insider told me that he thought the number could go as high as 3,500. more

The Sins of the Flash

Recent news stories (based on research by Stanford student Feross Aboukhadijeh) state that an Adobe bug made it possible for remote sites to turn on a viewer's camera and microphone. That sounds bad enough, but that's not the really disturbing part. more