Earlier this year, at the CES show in January, the big cable companies discussed their vision for the future. They introduced the concept that cable networks would be able to deliver 10-gigabit broadband in the future. They labeled the promotion at the show as 10G. I didn't write about it at the time because I assumed this was a gimmick to give some buzz to this show in the middle of the pandemic. But lately, I've seen that they are still talking about the 10G initiative. more
It was not without a little trepidation that I planned the 2nd DNS Abuse Institute Forum to focus on the long-standing and often contentious definitional issues surrounding DNS Abuse. While the risk of getting stuck in the usual entrenched positions was real, it seemed to me that we had an opportunity to provide some clarity and if not change minds, at least provide perspective. more
The ways in which the Internet is embedded in our daily lives are too varied and numerous to catalogue. The Internet delivers information, access to goods, services, education, banking, social interaction and, increasingly, work space. The global pandemic has only heightened our dependence on the online world, which is why efforts to ensure that the Internet remains a trusted and secure environment are more important than ever. more
Using the lingo of Internet Governance, the "stakeholders" of digital technologies currently live in a state of confusion about their rights and responsibilities in the digital age. Digital technologies confront us with many questions we thought had been answered long before. We have a pretty clear understanding of our rights and responsibilities as citizens of our country, how a state should be governed, and how the private sector should conduct its business. more
It has been just over 3 years since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect, and the work within ICANN (type "EPDP 2a" into your acronym decoder ring) to develop a permanent Registration Data policy is progressing at a snail's pace. At issue is a proposed mandatory requirement for Contracted Parties (really just Registrars), to differentiate between "legal persons" (a fancy way of saying corporations and similar organizations) and "natural persons" (the kind that eat and breathe and schedule Zoom calls). more
The IRTF is a research-oriented part of the larger IETF structure. It has a number of research groups, one of which, DINRG, is looking at decentralized Internet Infrastructure. That's a big topic, and one could certainly look at distributed decentralized blockchain frameworks applied to ledgers, used by Bitcoin and similar, or self-organizing systems that perform orchestration without imposed control or distributed hash tables. more
I've written several times recently in blogs that there is a growing backlog in buying fiber cable. Some of the backlog is due to the general supply chain malaise that seems to be affecting almost everything we buy. During the recent gas shortages in North Carolina, I found out that there is a shortage of truck drivers. Apparently, many truck drivers found something else to do during the pandemic, and now there is a shortage of drivers to deliver the many goods that are shipped by truck. more
Last month saw a much-anticipated decision handed down in the Independent Review Panel (IRP) proceeding examining the controversial 2015 auction for the .web generic top-level domain name registry (gTLD). This decision has been covered by others, including Kevin Murphy's DomainIncite, and has been the subject of unsurprisingly incongruous statements by both Verisign and Afilias, who are both contending for the .web concession privilege. more
Subdomains help organizations sort different sections of their websites neatly. Looking at the subdomains of some websites, for example, we usually see subdomains like shop[.]domain[.]com and blog[.]domain[.]com, which help users navigate the sites efficiently. But we couldn't help but notice subdomains that might be revealing a lot about a company's Internet infrastructure and resources. more
Fear sells. Fear of missing out, fear of being an imposter, fear of crime, fear of injury, fear of sickness ... we can all think of times when people we know (or worse, people in the throes of madness of crowds) have made really bad decisions because they were afraid of something. Bruce Schneier has documented this a number of times. For instance: "it's smart politics to exaggerate terrorist threats" and ... more
Scientists and engineers are always looking for ways to speed up and more efficiently configure computing devices to maximize data flow. There are a lot of applications today that require the exchange of huge volumes of data in real-time. MIT scientists have created a hair-like plastic polymer cable that can transmit data ten times faster than copper USB cables. more
The growth of broadband customers has looked spectacular over the past year during the pandemic. It's easy to chalk up higher broadband customers nationwide to the need for households to be connected during the pandemic. But as I look back on what's happened during the last year, I can't help but wonder if the broadband stats we are seeing are somehow overinflated. more
Managing the risk of third parties has become a compliance focus for many large organizations. Companies even work with third-party service providers and external vendors just to manage this risk. The recent SolarWinds attack escalates the critical need for chief compliance officers to collaborate with their business counterparts to identify and mitigate potentially unknown threats that lie within third-party supply chains. Yet how can companies manage this risk when it's not if but when you're attacked? more
The Registration Operations Workshop (ROW) was conceived as an informal industry conference that would provide a forum for discussion of the technical aspects of registration operations in the domain name system and IP addressing. The 10th ROW will be held online on Tuesday, June 8th, 2021 at 13h00-17h00 UTC. Click to learn more about the discussion topics and registration details. more
On Thursday, May 20, a final decision was issued in the Independent Review Process (IRP) brought by Afilias against the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), rejecting Afilias' petition to nullify the results of the July 27, 2016 public auction for the .WEB new generic top level domain (gTLD) and to award .WEB to Afilias at a substantially lower, non-competitive price. Nu Dotco, LLC (NDC) submitted the highest bid at the auction and was declared the winner, over Afilias' lower, losing bid. more
Colonial Pipeline, which accounts for close to half of the United States East Coast's fuel, has shut down its operations due to a cyberattack. The incident, believed to be the largest successful cyberattack on oil infrastructure in the U.S., was disclosed over the weekend. more
A multi-year investigation into 2017 net neutrality rulemaking finds 18 million fake comments were filed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and half a million fake letters were sent to Congress. more
SpaceX on Tuesday disclosed that it has received 500,000 preorders for its Starlink satellite internet service and that it anticipates no technical problems meeting the demand. more
New Zealand's .nz operator, InternetNZ, on Wednesday disclosed a vulnerability against authoritative DNS servers. The vulnerability called TsuNAME was first detected in February 2020 in the .nz registry and found that it could be exploited to carry out Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks across the world. more
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Government of India, approved permissions today to Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) for conducting trials for use and applications of 5G technology. more
Beavers Chewing Through Fiber Cable Cause Hundreds Lose Internet in a Canadian Remote Community
Internet service was down for nearly 900 customers in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, over the weekend after beavers chewed through a crucial fiber cable, resulting in "extensive" damage. According to a statement from the area's telecom provider, Telus, the outage also affected some cable TV customers and caused disruptions to local cell phone services. more
The US Department of Defense gave a small unknown Florida company control to millions of its dormant IP addresses, minutes before President Trump left office. According to reports, the unknown Florida company, Global Resource Systems LLC, initially obtained control of 56 million Pentagon-owned IP addresses on January 20 and later increased to near 175 million IP addresses. more
Security Researcher Dan Kaminsky Has Died
The celebrated security researcher, Dan Kaminsky, widely known for his work on discovering cruicisl DNS security flaws, Sony Rootkit infections and pupular talk at the Black Hat Briefings. more
ISPs in the U.S. saw a significant surge in both downstream and upstream traffic, increasing at least 30% and as much as 40% during peak business hours and as much as 60% in some markets, according to a new report from the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG). more
Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit operator of the .org top-level domain, today launched the DNS Abuse Institute, a centralized effort to combat DNS Abuse. In its news release, PIR said the Institute "will bring together leaders in the anti-abuse space to fund research, publish recommended practices, share data, and provide tools to identify and report DNS Abuse." more
Despite several groundbreaking technical achievements over the past nine years, Google's parent company Alphabet has decided to end the Loon project. The company said the road to commercial viability has proven much longer and riskier than hoped. more
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers organization (ICANN org) announced that all of the current 1,195 generic top-level domains (gTLDs) have deployed Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC). more
Donuts stated today that it has completed the acquisition of Afilias announced on November 19. Donuts' CEO Akram Atallah says the company is now ready to begin the integration plan promising minimal disruptions to customers. more
The Government of Niue, a small island 2,400 kilometers northeast of New Zealand, launched proceedings today demanding a "redelegation" of its country code top-level domain, .nu, from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). more
Cloudflare and Apple, along with Fastly, on Tuesday announced a new proposed DNS standard that separates IP addresses from queries preventing an entity from seeing both at the same time. more
According to an announcement on Monday, the Internet Society has agreed to extend its existing financial commitment to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for an additional term of six years. more
The WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center on Monday announced it had registered its 50,000th "cybersquatting" case. The 50,000th case just received by WIPO coincides with the organization's 20th anniversary on November 20, 2020. more
Cloudflare's new report warns about the significant increase of DDoS attacks and their level of sophistication. The numbers doubled from Q1 to Q2 and doubled again in Q3, resulting in a four-fold increase compared to the pre-COVID level in the first quarter. more
Donuts and Afilias announced today that Donuts is acquiring Afilias in a deal that is expected to close in December 2020 for an undisclosed amount. The combined entities will support over 25 million domain names spanning well over 400 TLDs. The deal will not include certain Afilias businesses, such as the mobile software and registrar businesses, which will remain with Afilias' original group of investors. more
The U.S. military is buying the granular movement data of ordinary people worldwide, harvested from innocuous-seeming apps, reports Motherboard. Among the apps connected to this type of data sale is a Muslim prayer and Quran app with more than 98 million downloads worldwide. more
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The year 2020 saw a marked increase in fraudulent domain registrations, phishing attacks, hacks and hijacking attempts, as well as the sale of counterfeit goods. Companies must protect themselves from revenue and reputation losses, as well as the risks of data breaches -- and not just react to the new face of commerce. more
Back in the 1980s, no one would have foreseen that the Internet would grow the way it did and that IPv4 addresses would become a scarce asset. Today, we face a shortage of available IPs and the emergence of a secondary IP address market, proving that IPv4 addresses are sought after and are a valuable commodity. more
ZeuS malware traces its origin as far back as 2006, when it was used to steal victims' online banking credentials. In 2011, its source code was leaked on a file-sharing site and quickly spread throughout various underground fora. more
More than a decade ago, the cost per IP address was around $5, but when IANA allocated the last block of IP addresses in 2011, that soon changed. With the world experiencing a shortage of IPv4 addresses, many companies are now looking for ways to get their hands on IP addresses to continue expanding their businesses. more
A Domain Name System (DNS) blackhole is essentially a DNS server that gives false results for domain names. Also known as a "sinkhole server," an "Internet sinkhole," or a "DNS sinkhole," threat actors sometimes use DNS blackholes to redirect users to potentially harmful sites or pages. more
Today, we released the latest issue of the Domain Name Industry Brief, which shows that the first quarter of 2021 closed with 363.5 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), a decrease of 2.8 million domain name registrations, or 0.8%, compared to the fourth quarter of 2020. Domain name registrations have decreased by 3.3 million, or 0.9%, year over year. more
Complying with strict data privacy regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a must do. Violators can get penalized as much as €10 million or 2% of their annual turnover. This reality makes it critical for organizations, therefore, to employ strict employee, customer, and stakeholder data management policies. more
Intranets are by definition meant for internal use only -- employee communication, content management, and the like. They are part of the Deep Web where search engines can't index sites, and unauthorized people shouldn't be able to access them. more
.Tech Domains, the leading new domain extension for the tech ecosystem, recently announced a nationwide pitch competition in partnership with Startup Grind, the world's largest community of startups, founders, innovators, and creators, for idea-stage entrepreneurs to win $10,000 in equity-free funding and over $100,000 in startup benefits. more
Many reports have released indicators of compromise (IoCs) regarding the Endless Mayfly disinformation campaign. But for those who don't know what it is, Endless Mayfly uses fake social media accounts and media websites to spread false information that has to do with U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia relations. more
On any given day, most of us get more emails that we won't read than those that we would. Many of these messages will remain unread and sent to the trash. There comes the third category of emails: Those we wished we hadn't read and acted upon because they are bound to be malicious, sent by cybercriminals trying to lure you into one of their scams. more
Cryptocurrencies keep making waves in the online community, making them prime vehicles of threat actors in scam, phishing, and other malicious campaigns. Fraudsters, for one, have stolen millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies from investors through websites that promise rewards, giveaways, and earning opportunities. more
A threat actor reportedly infiltrated the network of and stole data from a financial institution about a month ago by exploiting any of four Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerabilities -- CVE-2021-26855, CVE-2021-26857, CVE-2021-26858, or CVE-2021-27065. While patches for all these have been released, users who have not downloaded and installed these could remain at risk. more
.Tech Domains, the leading new domain extension for the tech ecosystem, recently announced that it is collaborating with Code.org, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to computer science in schools. more
Threats can come from anywhere, even from legitimate hosting infrastructure. In fact, many cybercriminals often host their command-and-control (C&C) servers in known hosting providers' networks, sometimes those that offer bulletproof hosting services, to evade detection and consequent blocking. more
Magecart-style attacks have been around for a while and continue to be mentioned in the news in 2021. We found and collected a list of 20 domain names that have been mentioned in the past months on VirusTotal as Magecart indicators of compromise (IoCs). more
Addressing Domain Name System (DNS) abuse has been a priority of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), notably since March 2020. During its 70th conference, the organization's members talked about creating a web page defining DNS abuse-related terms, which should be updated over time, to help users report cases. more
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