Trust is the lifeblood of the Internet and central to everything that is done here. In order for the current 3.5 billion users to continue using the Internet and its services, and for the next billion users to connect to the Internet, trust is required. The importance of trust is seen even more in Africa where, though there is a high growth of Internet users, the e-commerce uptake rate is very low. Users are very reluctant to carry out financial transactions over the Internet because of fear of being attacked by cybercriminals. more
Digital Transformation (DX) is picking up speed. According to a recent announcement by IDC, the market is expected to grow at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17.9% to reach a whopping 321 billion dollars by 2021. In 2018 alone, IDC expects that 326 billion will be spent on transforming how people and things communicate. Based on these numbers, it looks like Digital Transformation has become the real deal. more
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) launched the Uniform Rapid Suspension System (URS) (2013) in anticipation of the marketing of new gTLDs that became available from November 2013. It is one of four new rights protection mechanisms (RPMs) designed to combat cybersquatting. It is not intended for legacy gTLDs, and for new TLDs, it is planned only for that class of dispute colloquially referred to as a "slam dunk." more
What if we created a rule that gave everyone - good or bad - the right to hide their license plate, where they live, who they are, and just go incognito? What if we made it a right to walk into any building in the world, and simply say "No, thank you" when the security guards asked for one's identification? The criminals would celebrate, and we'd all be utterly alarmed. We would immediately be afraid for our personal safety. more
Spring storms with winter qualities clobbered North America this week, threatening Canada with slow-moving storms, and pounding the United States with near-record snowfall in the midwest, low temperatures in the south and tornadoes further east. You could say change was in the air. And although the unseasonable weather didn't reach as far south as Florida, the climate of change still dominated the atmosphere at the fifteenth regional meeting of the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG). more
Would you like to share information about how you are using DNSSEC with the wider technical community? Do you have an idea for how to make DNSSEC or DANE work better? Or work with new applications? If so - and if you will be attending ICANN 62 in Panama City, Panama from 25-28 June 2018 - then please consider sending in a proposal to participate as a speaker in the ICANN 62 DNSSEC Workshop! more
Cubans now have 5 million mobile accounts. The five-millionth account was recently opened Guanabacoa, in the eastern part of Havana and we see here that growth slowed last year, but has resumed -- perhaps due to increased 3G availability. Most Cubans have 2G phones, which are used primarily for making calls and sending text messages that may have attached images. more
Late last week, ICANN published the guidance from the Article 29 Working Party (WP29) that we have been waiting for. Predictably, WP29 took a privacy maximalist approach to the question of how Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies to WHOIS, a tool widely used by cybersecurity professionals, businesses, intellectual property owners, consumer protection agencies and others to facilitate a safer and more secure internet. more
Persons from the Caribbean seeking to contribute to the governance ecosystem of the global Internet can now volunteer for an appointment to the board of trustees of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN). The call for volunteers will close on April 30 at 5 pm EDT. ARIN is one of five registries worldwide that coordinate Internet number resources. Its region spans the United States, Canada and many countries in the Caribbean. more
Recently, Bert Hubert wrote of a growing problem in the networking world: the complexity of DNS. We have two systems we all use in the Internet, DNS and BGP. Both of these systems appear to be able to handle anything we can throw at them and "keep on ticking." But how far can we drive the complexity of these systems before they ultimately fail? Bert posted a chart on the APNIC blog to illustrate the problem. more
There's a lot of misunderstanding about blockchain. A recent study by HSBC, for example, found that 59 percent of customers around the world had never heard of it. Yet, while that alone is quite telling, it's probably more alarming to consider the fact that very same poll revealed that 80 percent of people who had hard of blockchain did not understand what it is. This level of confusion isn't confined to the general population either. more
Well, here we are on Friday the 13th and I couldn't think of a better way to spend the day than providing an update on GDPR, WHOIS and ICANN. There's lots to cover, so let's dive right in. As we have been talking about for a number of months now, the EU's new General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) will become enforceable on May 25th. The ICANN community has been struggling with how GDPR will impact the WHOIS system. more
Final echoes of the US Senate committee's questions of Facebook this week will only fade in the UN Security Council where, in a few years, Member States will adopt a treaty on regulation of the Internet Economy. By opening wide the door to questions on privacy, revenue, security and purpose, Congress showed its well-placed concern and signaled that others can too. 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. The 7th ROW will be held in Vancouver, Canada on Thursday, May 17th 2018 in the afternoon, at the end of the GDD Industry Summit, in the same venue. more
The integrity of any legal system depends on the quality of mind of those appointed to administer it. There are expectations that the one judging the facts and applying the law knows what the facts are and what law to apply. Panels appointed to adjudicate disputes under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) are not held to any lower standard than the judges of courts of competent jurisdiction. more
Close to 1300 IP addresses were hijacked this morning resulting in Amazon losing control of a number of its highly used cloud services. more
A number of news sources marked Monday, April 23, as the day Net Neutrality died. EFF in response posted a blog clarifying that the case is not true. more
A British teenager who hacked into the online accounts of former CIA director John Brennan, former director of intelligence James Clapper, and other high-profile US government employees, was sentenced today for to two years in prison. more
For the first time, a large dataset has been released by a security firm to help AI research and training of machine learning models that statically detect malware. more
Post Russia's April 4th blockage of Telegram, increasing number of users in the country are turning to VPNs and proxies to continue their access to the messaging platform. As a result, the government has gone a step further and started blocking every possible way of connecting to Telegram. more
A recent change in Google's network architecture has put a stop to a so-called "domain-fronting" feature that allowed services use Google's network to get around state-level internet blocks. more
Over fifty experts and expert advocates have released an open letter in support of security research and against efforts to chill or intimidate security researchers. more
Over the past five years, nearly 10 billion records have been lost, stolen or exposed, with an average of five million records compromised every day. more
Researchers at security service provider, Zscaler, are reporting that in the past six months they have blocked over 2.5 billion web-based cryptomining attempts within their cloud service. more
A hacking incident over the weekend attacked networks in a number of countries including data centers in Iran where they left the image of a U.S. flag on screens along with a warning: "Don't mess with our elections." more
Many administrators misconfigure cloud storage, such Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) buckets, resulting in the contents being publicly-accessible. more
An anonymous tip has lead security experts Brian Krebs and Matthew Chambers to four years of access logs for the entire network of more than 1,000 dot-cm typosquatting domains. more
In response to the European Commission surprise announcement last week that British domain owners may no longer be entitled to keep their ".eu" domain names, EFF is urging the registry for .eu (EURid) no to follow through. more
The ACE (African Coast to Europe) submarine cable that runs along the west coast of Africa between France and South Africa (connecting 22 countries), was damaged on March 30. more
APNIC Labs, the research arm of Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre, is partnering with Cloudflare for a joint research project relating to the operation of the DNS, reports Geoff Huston, APNIC's Chief Scientist. more
"ICANN could invoke emergency powers in its contracts to prevent Whois becoming 'fragmented' after EU privacy laws kick in next month," reports Kevin Murphy in Domain Incite. more
Microsoft will invest $5 billion in the Internet of Things over the next four years, said Julia White, Corporate Vice President, via a blog post today. more
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission approved an application by Space Exploration Holdings (SpaceX) to provide broadband services using satellite technology in the United States and around the world. more
Various news outlets on Wednesday reported Boeing being hit by the WannaCry virus; the incident had initially triggered a widespread alarm within the company. more
Domain name registries and registrars will not be able to implement ICANN's proposed overhaul of the Whois system in time for the EU's General Data Protection Regulation according to an estimated timetable from ICANN. more
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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has presented several data models to its contracted parties regarding their contractual arrangements with ICANN and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). more
As DNS attacks grow in frequency and impact, organizations can no longer afford to overlook DNS security as part of their overall defense-in-depth strategy. As with IT security in general, no single tactic can address the entire DNS threat landscape or secure the complete DNS ecosystem. more
Gauss Research Laboratories, the .PR ccTLD manager, is pleased to announce that addresses are still up and running and will work worldwide despite the power situation in Puerto Rico. more
The i2Coalition is proud to announce that it will be holding a joint webinar with eco – Association of the Internet Industry, on the upcoming root KSK rollover in conjunction with ICANN on Tuesday, April 24th at 11 AM EST (UTC -4). more
Today we're announcing the recipients of our 2018 "Ron Yokubaitis Internet Community Leadership Award": longtime Internet infrastructure industry advocates and publishers, Allison Heather and Stephen Mayhew. more
Afilias today announced that it is temporarily suspending plans to limit the display of WHOIS data to comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) currently scheduled to take effect on 25 May, 2018. more
We are announcing that we are forming a new ad hoc group to handle policy issues arising in regards to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and other related intermediary liability concerns. more
Radix, one of the world's largest portfolio registries, today reported a 71% renewal rate of its premium domains that have a recurring premium renewal fee. This renewal rate is based on revenue, implying that if premium domains worth $100,000 were registered, domains worth $71,000 have been renewed in 2017 more
Verisign has released its Q4 2017 DDoS Trends Report, which represents a unique view into the attack trends unfolding online, through observations and insights derived from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack mitigations enacted on behalf of Verisign DDoS Protection Services and security research conducted by Verisign Security Services. more
Escalating prices for large IPv4 number blocks, coupled with aggressive buyer acquisition strategies in the first half of 2017, stimulated considerable additional supply in the second half of the year, according to the 2017 State of the IPv4 Market Report released by Avenue4 LLC. At the end of 2017, the total number of transactions, aggregate address space transferred, and prices were all steeply up over the prior year even as global activity softened. more
In the recent ado.com UDRP decision, the panel made the speculative and factually incorrect finding that a "high" asking price indicated bad faith targeting of a trademark. The UDRP is intended to address clear-cut cases of cybersquatting, not to second guess the asking prices set on inherently valuable domains in an open and competitive marketplace. more
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