DDoS Attacks on US Banks This Week Peaked at 60 Gbps

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that targeted U.S. financial institutions this week have reached 60 Gbps, according to researchers from DDoS mitigation provider Arbor Networks. more»

New Law in Russia Lets Authorities Take Down Certain Sites Without Trial

A law that aims to protect children from harmful internet content by allowing the government to take sites offline has taken effect in Russia. The authorities are now able to blacklist and force offline certain websites without a trial. The law was approved by both houses of parliament and signed by President Vladimir Putin in July. more»

Flame Virus Was Developed by U.S., Israel to Slow Iranian Nuclear Efforts, According to Officials

The United States and Israel are reported to be responsible for developing the Flame virus aimed at collecting intelligence in preparation for cyber-sabotage aimed at slowing Iran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon, according to Western officials with knowledge of the effort. According the Washington Post, "[t]he massive piece of malware secretly mapped and monitored Iran's computer networks, sending back a steady stream of intelligence to prepare for a cyberwarfare campaign, according to the officials." more»

UPDATEDICANN Senior Executive Resigns Over Undisclosed Conflict of Interest

Senior vice president Kurt Pritz has resigned his new job as ICANN's Chief Strategy Officer over an undisclosed conflict of interest, reports Kieren McCarthy in .Nxt. "In a note posted on the organization's website earlier today, new CEO Fadi Chehade noted that Pritz had resigned 'because of a recently identified conflict of interest'. ICANN has so far refused to identify what that conflict is." more»

Twitter's t.co Domain Outage Caused by Human Error

Declan McCullagh reporting in CNET: "Twitter last year began to abbreviate all hyperlinks using its t.co domain name -- which had the side effect of introducing a central point of failure where none existed before. That failure happened last night [Sunday Oct 7] around 11:30 p.m. PT when t.co went offline, meaning millions of Twitter users received 'non-existent domain' errors when trying to follow links." more»

ICANN All Set for the gTLD "Reveal Day" in London

ICANN plans to announce the long-anticipated list of applied-for domain names under its new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) program tomorrow. The announcement will be made in London at 12:00PM and streamed live on ICANN's website. ICANN has received over 1,900 applications from around the world. more»

First TLDs to be Recommended for Delegation on April 23, 2013

Mary Iqbal writes to report: ICANN CEO Fadi Cherhade announced on February 13th, 2013 that ICANN is planning on recommending the first TLDs for delegation on April 23, 2013. Cherhade did not specify which TLDs will be included in the announcement, however, ICANN will be evaluating applicants in the order determined by the prioritization draw which was held in December 2012. more»

FTC Chief Concerned Over Most New gTLD Bids

Kevin Murphy reporting in DomainIncite: The US Federal Trade Commission is still "looking at" ICANN's new gTLD program amid concerns that most of the applicants applied defensively, it has emerged. ... "We have been very, very concerned about ICANN and their dramatic expansion of the domain names, which we think will cause consumer confusion and even worse lead to more areas where malefactors can hide from the law while defrauding consumers," FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz said. more»

Rwanda Gets Control Over Its Domain .RW

After a seven-year long process of transferring Rwanda's Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD), ".rw" from Belgium, finally Rwandans can now manage their national identity, reports AllAfrica. more»

No External Attacks Behind GoDaddy's Major Outage, Says Company

GoDaddy.com has reported today that the Web hosting outage that involved thousands and possibly millions of websites on Monday was due to internal issues and did not involve any attacks by hackers. The outage lasted for about four hours and affected mainly small-business sites. GoDaddy.com hosts more than 5 million websites. more»

Google Says ITU Is the Wrong Place to Make Future Internet Decisions

Google has launched a "Take Action" page to urge people to speak out amidst the gathering of the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU) taking place next month in Dubai to update global telecom rules for the first time since 1988. Google and others have raised concern as some countries may see this as an opportunity to set up new rules for the internet. more»

Obama to Sign Executive Order for Streamlining Approval of Internet Networks

Currently, the process for approving broadband construction projects on federal property varies from agency to agency. Property controlled by the federal government includes roads, about 30 percent of the nation's land and more than 10,000 buildings. The order will require the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Interior, Transportation and Veterans Affairs as well as the Postal Service to develop a single process for approving Internet construction projects. more»

FCC Chief Criticizes Russia for Passing Internet Censorship Bill

Brendan Sasso reporting in the Hill: "Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), issued a statement late Wednesday slamming Russia for passing a bill that would allow the government to blacklist certain websites. He said the country had moved in a 'troubling and dangerous direction.' ... 'The world’s experience with the Internet provides a clear lesson: a free and open Internet promotes economic growth and freedom; restricting the free flow of information is bad for consumers, businesses, and societies,' he said. more»

IETF Working on HTTP 2.0, Will be Based on Google's SPDY Protocol

With an eye toward updating the World Wide Web to better accommodate complex and bandwidth-hungry applications, the Internet Engineering Task Force has started work on the next generation of HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), the underlying protocol for the Web. more»

ICANN CEO: "We Will Not Change our Timeline"

Mary Iqbal writes to report: ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade, in his recent "New gTLD Applicant Webinar" dated February 5, 2013 affirmed his committment to moving forward with the rollout of new Top Level Domains. Chehade stressed that ICANN has a responsibility to move forward with new Top Level Domains for the benefit of internet users as a whole as well as for the benefit of those who have applied to operate new Top Level Domains, but not at the expense of the stability of the DNS, which is the core responsibility of ICANN. more»