Notorious Russian Ship Yanter Suspected of Cutting Syria’s Undersea Internet Cables

A Russian ship, suspected by intelligence and military officials to be capable of cutting undersea Internet cables, is spotted near the coast of Syria. more

When ‘Confusing Similarity’ in UDRP Cases Gets Confusing

The first element of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) requires a complainant to prove that the disputed domain name "is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights." It's unusual for a complainant to fail on this first of three prongs, but one recent case demonstrates just how uncertain the UDRP can be sometimes. more

How the Slow Adoption of the Cloud Has Impacted 3 Industries

"It's in the cloud" has become a phrase we don't think twice about, but less than a decade ago, you might have received some awkward looks using this kind of talk in the boardroom. Cloud-based software applications are heralding the fourth industrial revolution that will eventually lead to the industrial internet of things (IIOT). The reasons for this are because... more

New Trojan Used in High Level Financial Attacks, Multiple Banks Attacked

Since January 2016, discreet campaigns involving malware called Trojan.Odinaff have targeted a number of financial organizations worldwide, warned Symantec Security Response team on Tuesday. more

One-Click Unsubscription

Unsubscribing from mailing lists is hard. How many times have you seen a message "please remove me from this list," followed by two or three more pointing out that the instructions are in the footer of every message, followed by three or four more asking people to not send their replies to the whole list (all sent to the whole list, of course,) perhaps with a final message by the list manager saying she's dealt with it? more

The Internet’s Climate Quandary and the Inconvenience of Practicing What We Preach

It all started earlier this year in June. I was coding transcripts of the past global Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meetings as part of a data mining exercise for DiploFoundation's Geneva Internet Platform (GIP). Pouring over transcript after transcript, the work was tedious, but I was learning a great deal about the Internet governance community as well. My interest was piqued by the conversations, the familiar names I came across, and the multi-stakeholder manifestation of politics, perspectives, and positions. more

Who Really Cares About New gTLDs?

ICANN's recent announcement of what it called "an exciting milestone in the evolution of the domain name system" - the delegation of the 1,000th new generic top-level domain (gTLD) - went largely unnoticed. While that's consistent with the new gTLD program in general (at least from the perspective of the general public), that doesn't mean trademark owners should forget about them. more

Maintaining Security and Stability in the Internet Ecosystem

DDoS attacks, phishing scams and malware. We battle these dark forces every day - and every day they get more sophisticated. But what worries me isn't just keeping up with them, it is keeping up with the sheer volume of devices and data that these forces can enlist in an attack. That's why we as an industry need to come together and share best practices - at the ICANN community, at the IETF and elsewhere - so collectively we are ready for the future. more

A Look at New gTLDs Numbers… We’re Doing Good

Like it or not, new gTLDs are here and they're here to stay. If it is still common to read that the ICANN new gTLD program was a failure and few users are using new domain names, numbers show the opposite. I recently read very rude critics addressed to new gTLD applicants but surprisingly, critics often come from ".com" investors and my understanding of this is that new domain names lower their margins ...since the domain name offer is now larger. more

Restraining Order Filed by US States’ Attorneys in the Final Hours of IANA Transition

With less than 24 hours to go before the historic contractual relationship between the US government and ICANN is set to expire, a motion hearing is expected to be held today based on a lawsuit filed in federal court in Texas by four states' attorneys general which could lead to NTIA facing the possibility of a temporary injunction. more

eco to Address the Impact of Brexit on the Domain Industry

eco, which is the largest internet industry association in Europe, is holding a virtual meeting later this month to discuss Brexit. The meeting, which is scheduled for July 27th at 1200 UTC, will be the first of several dialogues among industry to discuss the potential impact of the UK's exit from the EU on the domain name industry. As I mentioned in a recent post, the exit of the UK from the EU has an "unknown" impact on how domain name registries and registrars will interact with UK based registrants. more

Moving to the Cloud? 10 Key Questions for CIOs

Companies are moving to the cloud. According to Cloud Tech, CIOs are on the front lines: In 72 percent of companies surveyed, chief information officers lead the cloud computing charge. However, adoption without the right information is doomed to fail - here are 10 key questions CIOs should ask before moving operations to the cloud... First, it's critical to identify business benefits. Here the key to success lies in specifics rather than generalities... more

Breaking Nonsense: Ted Cruz, IANA Transition and the Irony of Life

Harvard Professor Karl Deutsch, the late nestor of political science, described world history as the "history of side effects". Political actions, according to his theory, always have side effects which go out of control and constitute new history. The history of the Internet is full of side effects. But this time, we could have special unproductive side effects. A failure of the IANA transition could trigger a process towards a re-nationalization of the borderless cyberspace... more

The Kindness of Strangers, or Not

A few days ago I was startled to get an anti-spam challenge from an Earthlink user, to whom I had not written. Challenges are a WKBA (well known bad idea) which I thought had been stamped out, but apparently not. The plan of challenges seems simple enough; they demand that the sender does something to prove he's human that a spammer is unlikely to do. more

DDOS Attackers - Who and Why?

Bruce Schneier's recent blog post, "Someone is Learning How to Take Down the Internet", reported that the incidence of DDOS attacks is on the rise. And by this he means that these attacks are on the rise both in the number of attacks and the intensity of each attack. A similar observation was made in the Versign DDOS Trends report for the second quarter of 2015, reporting that DDOS attacks are becoming more sophisticated and persistent in the second quarter of 2016. more