The Root KSK Rollover? What Does It Mean for Me?

In a little over two weeks, precisely in 17 days (on 11 October 2018 at 16:00 UTC), ICANN will roll the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) root Key Signing Key (KSK). If you are a Domain Name System (DNS) and DNSSEC expert already engaged globally on the topic, you are certainly both well aware and ready for the rollover. This article is probably not for you! If however, you are out there focused on your day to day running or managing a DNS infrastructure... more

The .BEST New gTLD: Second Interview

This is a one hour podcast giving all details about what the .BEST social network is going to be and how users will be able to generate an income from it... Cyril Fremont gives lots of details on how his social network, focusing on reviews, is going to be different from Google Reviews, Facebook, Yelp and TripAdvisors. If one would be tempted to think that ... well, "that's just going to be another social network", then, I strongly suggest to listen carefully the part of the interview on the decentralization of this network. more

Lessons Learned from the Namejuice/DROA/DROC Outage

Last week an ICANN registrar, Namejuice, went off the air for the better part of the day -- disappearing off the internet at approximately 8:30 am, taking all domains delegated to its nameservers with it, and did not come back online until close to 11 pm ET. That was a full business day and more of complete outage for all businesses, domains, websites, and email who were using the Namejuice nameservers -- something many of them were doing. more

New Brandsight Domain Management Survey Reveals Companies Face Challenges Managing Domain Portfolios

Brandsight recently concluded their Second Annual Domain Management Survey. Respondents to the survey were corporate domain name professionals. Of those that responded, 35% had portfolios that were between 3,000-10,000 domains and another 30% had portfolios greater than 10,000 domains. Fifty-seven percent of respondents reported that they manage domains out of the legal department, with the remaining respondents' portfolios managed out of IT, marketing and other groups. more

Caribbean Candidates Vie for Posts in ARIN Elections

Three Caribbean candidates -- Peter Harrison, Kerrie-Ann Richards and Alicia Trotman -- have been named among the final candidates to contest elections for leadership roles at the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) in October. ARIN is one of five Internet registries worldwide that coordinate the distribution and administration of number resources. The registry serves the United States, Canada and several territories in the Caribbean. more

Continued Threats from Malware

As part of my job, I manage an incident response team that was engaged by a significant organization in Georgia whose network was infected by the QBOT (a.k.a. QAKBOT) malware. The customer had been infected for over a year, several teams before ours had failed to solve the problem, and they continued to get reinfected by the malware when they thought they had eradicated it. Over time it had spread to more than 1,000 computers in their ecosystem stealing user credentials along the way. more

(DNS) Security Protocols Do What They Say on the Tin

DNS-over-TLS has recently become a welcome addition to the range of security protocols supported by DNS. It joins TSIG, SIG(0) and DNSSEC to add privacy, and, in the absence of validating stub resolvers, necessary data integrity on the link between a full-service resolver and the users' stub resolver. (The authenticated source feature of TLS may also offer some additional benefits for those of a nervous disposition.) Good stuff. What is not good stuff is... more

LACNIC, Google, CaribNOG and Internet Society to Hold 'Internet Week Trinidad and Tobago'

The Latin American and Caribbean Internet Registry (LACNIC) and Google will hold a series of workshops next month as part of Internet Week Trinidad and Tobago, an event intended to advance the Internet development agenda of the wider region. The workshops are part of a project through which LACNIC and Google seek to strengthen digital markets in Central American and Caribbean countries. This joint project seeks to enhance local connectivity and strengthen the ecosystem for entrepreneurs. more

The UN Panel on Digital Cooperation: Reinventing the Wheel or Innovating Internet Policy Making?

The new High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation (HLP.DC), appointed by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, will have its first face-to-face meeting in New York, September 25-26, 2018, just before the beginning of the 73rd UN General Assembly. The Panel, co-chaired by an American woman, Melinda Gates from the Microsoft Foundation and a Chinese man, Jack Ma from Ali Baba, "is expected to raise awareness about the transformative impact of digital technologies... more

Spare a Thought for Venezuela

Please spare a thought for Venezuela. This, the 33rd largest country in the world and with about 34 million people, the largest proven reserves of oil, the cheapest price of gasoline in the world, and was in 1950 richer than Germany, has fallen on times so hard in this once Latin America's richest country that 75% of the population lost an average of 11 Kg (24 pounds) in weight in one year because of food scarcity. And you might ask: "Why should I care?" 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

Cheers to ICANN!

It has been 1.5 years since I have started my journey with ICANN. Within this short journey of mine, looking back I remember a nice memory that makes me love ICANN more and forces me to get involved even deeper. I got to know about ICANN in the APNIC conferences. I didn't really get the enormity of ICANN until I attended my first ICANN meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark in March 2017 as a fellow. more

Respondent Had Rights or Legitimate Interests in Domain Name by Using It to Promote Genuine Business

In the case of Avon Products, Inc. v. Jenika Mukoro, Heirs Holdings, a 3-member WIPO Panel denied the Complainant's efforts to have the domain name avonhealthcare.com transferred because the Complainant failed to sustain its burden of establishing that the Respondent had no rights or legitimate interests in the disputed domain name. The Panel found that the Complainant proved that its trademark AVON (which has been in use since 1929) is well-known in the field of cosmetics... more

A Look at the Current State of DNSSEC in the Wild

The DNS system is, unfortunately, rife with holes like Swiss Cheese; man-in-the-middle attacks can easily negate the operation of TLS and website security. To resolve these problems, the IETF and the DNS community standardized a set of cryptographic extensions to cryptographically sign all DNS records... Now that these standards are in place, how heavily is DNSSEC being used in the wild? How much safer are we from man-in-the-middle attacks against TLS and other transport encryption mechanisms? more

Internet Companies and Government Contracts: Complying with DCAA Regulations

One of the biggest opportunities for Internet companies of all sizes can be to get a U.S. government contracts. This kind of business partnership is highly desirable as the U.S. government spends about $500 billion for contracts annually. The government contracting in an extremely competitive field, as the huge number of businesses bid for the same contracts. After all, there is a lot of money involved here and those are all big jobs that can prove vital for any company. more