A recent statement released by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission emphasized that the Whois databases should be kept "open, transparent, and accessible," allowing agencies like the FTC to protect consumers and consumers to protect themselves: "In short, if ICANN restricts the use of Whois data to technical purposes only, it will greatly impair the FTC's ability to identify Internet malefactors quickly -- and ultimately stop perpetrators of fraud, spam, and spyware from infecting consumers' computers," the statement states." more»
The market is still guessing about Google's continued purchases of "dark fiber" and what that will mean to the Internet. Yet another explanation was floated at a recent IT conference: IPv6, the next-generation Internet standard.
During a debate on the adoption of Internet Protocol Version 6 at the Burton Group's annual Catalyst conference in San Francisco, Alex Lightman, CEO of IP telephony vendor Innofone.com, offered a new reason for Google's expenditures on dark fiber. His observation came during a dialogue on Internet addressing and the lack of support by service providers for IPv6. He is worried that the United States is focused on the present and is not addressing future needs. more»
There will be much to discuss at ICANN's Marrakech meeting which kicks off this Saturday, but one question rises about all others: what will happen to the internet on 30 September 2006?
ICANN has its own agenda to discuss, but that agenda and what people actually want to discuss are a little different. As is the fundamental issue that everyone at that meeting should be talking about. This is our account of what is likely to happen, why, and what it all means. more»
If a court won't let you use your own name, you might feel like you're a mere ghost of your former self. That happened to Ed Kalis of Broward County, Florida. In a recent case, Florida's court of appeal considered whether a trial court's order against Kalis, enjoining him from using his own last name in various means of advertising and in the URL for his company's website, was proper. The appellate court held that the injunction was overkill. more»
Readers of my blog may recall that the Canadian Internet Registration Authority wrote a public letter earlier this year to ICANN that expressed concern over the current lack of accountability (note that I am on the CIRA board). The letter indicated that CIRA was withholding payment of any voluntary fees to ICANN until the accountability concerns were addressed. This week CIRA followed up with a second public letter to ICANN... more»
The UK today is one of the main attack targets by phishing organized crime groups, globally. Phishing damages will amount to about two billions USD in 2006 worldwide -- not counting risk management measures such as preventative measures, counter-measures, incident response and PR damages. In most cases, phishing is caused by the fault of the users, either by entering the wrong web page, not keeping their computers secure or falling for cheap scams. Often this is due to lack of awareness or ability in the realm of Internet use rather than incompetence by the users... more»
Timothy D. Morgan's recent paper titled, "IPv6 Address Cookies", seeks to apply the fundamental shift in resource availability brought about by the vastly increased Internet address space in IPv6 to develop a novel, lower cost solution to mitigating spoofed attacks. "Spoofed denial of service attacks have plagued the Internet for a number of years, and show no signs of abating. Research into mitigation techniques has apparently not led to a financially viable solution, and new attacks have been discovered in the wild without being widely anticipated". The following provides an introduction to this paper. more»
If you created something that is used billions of times every day by millions of people, you might expect it to be around for a long time to come.
Yet Dr Paul Mockapetris, inventor of the net's Domain Name System (DNS), entertains few illusions about the longevity of his creation. "I expect the DNS to be eventually replaced," he told the BBC News website. "The internet is all perishable technology that going to get replaced or extended." more»
At a time when threats to the Internet and other computer networks loom from teenage hackers and terrorists alike, Neumann (pronounced "Noy-muhn") is sounding an alarm that computer security advocates agree has fallen on deaf ears. The trouble, Neumann warns, is that the Internet is populated by computers that were not designed with network security in mind. As a result, security is addressed on a patch-by-patch basis, but an effective solution would require redesigning systems from scratch. more»
It's become a familiar pattern in online security. A groundbreaking way to communicate emerges, spreads like wildfire, and then hackers find a way to use it to their advantage. Security companies react--but not before the problem has succeeded in wreaking havoc. It happened with e-mail and is happening now with instant messaging and mobile devices.
The next area that could be targeted: Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, which lets people make low-priced phone calls using the same technology that delivers e-mail. And the results could be just as damaging, if not worse, than with other technologies, some security experts warn. more»
A venture-backed Waltham company that's quietly amassed more than 650,000 Internet domain names is stepping out of stealth mode today and unveiling its plans to build a substantial Boston-area Web 2.0 business around the emerging field of "direct navigation."
The company, called NameMedia, is being led by Kelly P. Conlin , 46, a veteran media executive who previously had been chief executive of International Data Corp. in Boston and Primemedia Inc. in New York. NameMedia has already hired 75 people in its office near Route 128 to buy, sell, and develop businesses around Internet domain names. more»
A dispute over the cost of Internet domain names has spilled over onto Capitol Hill, where allegations of monopolization and unreasonable price hikes surfaced in a congressional hearing on Wednesday.
The dispute arises out of a lawsuit settlement reached on March 1 in which the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) gave VeriSign the right to raise fees on .com domains by 7 percent annually. The settlement, approved by ICANN's board by a 9-5 vote, ended a legal spat that started with VeriSign's controversial move to take control of all unassigned .com and .net domain names in 2003. Those guaranteed price hikes struck some members of the House of Representatives' Small Business Committee as unreasonable. more»
Bob Parsons of Godaddy has a piece on BusinessWeek today discussing the "loophole in the process" of domain name registrations often referred to as "domain tasting":
This scheme is so lucrative that more companies are joining every day. It is affecting .net and .org, too. Unless the add/drop scheme is checked, the problem will assume gigantic proportions.
Writing about this won't win me many friends in the industry, but my primary concern is for the protection of legitimate Internet domain name registrations. more»
The IT industry will never eradicate security threats to email systems and organizations should take a holistic approach to securing their communication systems to the level where they believe risk is at a manageable state, according to panelists at this week's Inbox email conference in San Jose...
At a packed panel session on email accreditation and reputation, the panelist told audience members that reputation services have taken off rapidly. These services profile the sender's behavior to determine the likelihood that a message is legitimate or spam. The sender's reputation is determined based on multiple criteria then assigned to categories, or lists. more»
With voice over IP consumer usage poised to become a mass market, existing users are fairly satisfied with their service, according to a new survey released on May 31 by SupportSoft.
Sixty one percent of the 100 VOIP users subscribing to a cable-based service surveyed said that they are satisfied with their service, despite the finding that 34 percent of them had to have a technician come out within 90 days of the initial service installation because of a problem, and that 16 percent had to have a technician come out two or more times due to service problems. more»
