CircleID: News Briefs

The US House Passes Cybersecurity Bill

2010-02-04T13:10:00-08:00

US house today approved the Cybersecurity Act that reauthorizes several National Science Foundation cybersecurity programs. Janie Lorber of the New York Times reports: "The House today overwhelmingly passed a bill aimed at building up the United States’ cybersecurity army and expertise, amid growing alarm over the country’s vulnerability online. The bill, which passed 422-5, requires the Obama administration to conduct an agency-by-agency assessment of cybersecurity workforce skills and establishes a scholarship program for undergraduate and graduate students who agree to work as cybersecurity specialists for the government after graduation."

Read full story: New York Times

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More under: Cyberattack, Internet Governance, Policy & Regulation, Security

Google, NSA Join Forces in the Effort to Build Better Cyberattack Defense System

2010-02-04T12:56:00-08:00

Google and NSA, a leading electronic surveillance organization, are said to be entering a partnership where the two organizations could share critical data without violating Google's policies or other privacy laws, according to sources. Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post reports: "Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google—and its users—from future attack."

Read full story: Washington Post

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More under: Cyberattack, Privacy, Security

Las Vegas City Council to Debate the Support of .vegas Domain

2010-02-03T11:28:00-08:00

Joe Schoenmann of the Las Vegas Sun reports: "The Las Vegas City Council will debate today whether to strike a deal with an Internet entrepreneur who seeks to use the Internet suffix .vegas—over the objections of Clark County officials and one local company who say the city is jumping the gun and in the process likely shortchanging Las Vegas and county taxpayers. The council will consider endorsing a proposal by Dot Vegas Inc., to create the top-level Internet domain ".vegas"—a new suffix that could be used in addition to the familiar .com, .net, .gov or .org suffixes that end most Web addresses."

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More under: Domain Names, Domain Registries, ICANN, Top-Level Domains

VeriSign to Recognize Innovators, Leaders That Have Shaped the First 25 Years of .Com

2010-02-03T10:26:00-08:00

For the upcoming 25th anniversary of .com Top-Level Domain, VeriSign, the registry operator of the domain will launch a year-long initiative to celebrate the event. From the announcement: "In March 1985, the first .com domain was registered, igniting the birth of the consumer Internet that, 25 years later, continues to transform communications, commerce and our society as a whole. Beginning in March 2010, VeriSign, the long-time operator of the .com domain, will lead an industry-wide initiative to recognize the innovators and leaders that have shaped the first 25 years of .com and in doing so transformed our economy and society. The celebration of "25 Years of .com" will kick off with a policy-focused event in Washington, DC on March 16."

The company has also launched a website—www.25yearsof.com—that will host a variety of multimedia content throughout the coming months, showcasing the innovators and entrepreneurs who have shaped the Internet.

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More under: Domain Names, Domain Registries, Top-Level Domains, Web

Google Quietly Turns on IPv6 Support for YouTube, Major IPv6 Traffic Spike Detected

2010-02-02T12:13:00-08:00

ISP's are seeing a large amount of inbound IPv6 traffic originating from Google. Carolyn Marsan of Network World writes: "Google has quietly turned on IPv6 support for its YouTube video streaming Web site, sending a spike of IPv6 traffic across the Internet that has continued from last Thursday until Monday. Industry observers say YouTube appeared to be supporting IPv6 in production mode, as opposed to running a test of the next-generation Internet protocol."

Read full story: Network World

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More under: IPv6

Obama Reinforces Belief in Net Neutrality

2010-02-02T09:37:00-08:00

Following his State of the Union Speech last week, Obama was asked a number of user-submitted questions via prepared via YouTube. Popular questions included the issue of open internet and neutrality, to which Obama responded:

"I'm a big believer in Net Neutrality. I campaigned on this. I continue to be a strong supporter of it. My FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has indicated that he shares the view that we've got to keep the Internet open, that we don't want to create a bunch of gateways that prevent somebody who doesn't have a lot of money but has a good idea from being able to start their next YouTube or their next Google on the Internet."

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More under: Access Providers, Broadband, Net Neutrality, Policy & Regulation

ACTA Moving Forward in "Secrecy"

2010-01-29T15:12:00-08:00

Reported in the Financial Times: "Persistent illegal downloaders face having their internet links disconnected under a secret trade deal being negotiated by developed nations this week, according to activists and industry groups. Leaked drafts of the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement [ACTA] say the world's biggest developed nations want internet service providers to be more responsible for the content they distribute—and even cut off repeat infringers of copyright legislation.

Read full story: Financial Times

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More under: Access Providers, Internet Governance, Law, P2P, Policy & Regulation

Jan 28: International Data Privacy Day

2010-01-28T14:17:00-08:00

January 28 is marked as International Data Privacy Day in order to help raise awareness and generate discussions about information privacy. This year companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Google, AT&T, LexisNexis and The Privacy Projects are sponsoring Data Privacy Day efforts. From the website: "During the week in which Data Privacy Day falls, a range of activities and events will take place in the United States and Canada, each designed to further privacy education and awareness or to advance the debate and dialogue around current controversial privacy issues." To mark the occasion, Google has introduced its Privacy Principles, which according to the company, guides the decisions it makes as new products and services are created that offer transparency and control.

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AFNIC Invites Network Managers to Prepare for the Signing of the DNS Root in May 2010

2010-01-28T08:36:00-08:00

Loic Damilaville writes: "From May 2010, all the root servers on which the working of the domain name system depends, will be giving DNS responses signed by using the DNSSEC protocol. This evolution aims for increasing the confidence in DNS responses (by authenticating their origin); administrators of networks connected to Internet should be aware that this evolution could cause some service disruptions. In fact, the changes in the root server configuration could lead to a DNS disconnection risk, and therefore disruption of Internet service in certain cases..."

Read full story: External Source

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More under: DNS, DNSSEC, Security

DNS, Content Providers Including Google and Neustar Propose Extending DNS Protocol

2010-01-28T07:21:00-08:00

A proposal to extend the DNS protocol has been submitted by Google and other DNS and content providers such as Neustar/UltraDNS. Wilmer van der Gaast and Carlo Contavalli on behalf of the Google Public DNS team said: "Our proposed DNS protocol extension lets recursive DNS resolvers include part of your IP address in the request sent to authoritative nameservers. Only the first three octets, or top 24 bits, are sent providing enough information to the authoritative nameserver to determine your network location, without affecting your privacy." The proposal aims to ultimately help send users to nearby servers in order to improves speed, latency, and network utilization.

Update:
Paul Hoffman informs us that the proposal was submitted by a few engineers who work for "Google and other DNS and content providers such as Neustar/UltraDNS", *not* by the companies themselves. (See his full comment below.)

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Comcast to Start a Series of Public IPv6 Trials Using 3 Transition Mechanisms

2010-01-27T13:13:00-08:00

Comcast today announced plans to conduct production-network trials of IPv6 technology this year. The trials are aimed at helping identify and solve any areas of difficulty involved in the transition to IPv6, and to determine what approach will be the easiest and most seamless for its customers, says Jason Livingood, Comcast's Internet System Engineer.

Comcast will test three IPv6 transition mechanisms:

• Phase one will use 6rd, a technique developed by French ISP Free that allows for rapid deployment of IPv6 by tunneling IPv6 traffic over IPv4 addresses.

• Phase two will support native IPv4 and IPv6 traffic running side-by-side in an approach dubbed dual-stack. This is Comcast's preferred method of transition to IPv6 and may require the carrier to reclaim unused blocks of IPv4 addresses.

• Phase three will test a technique developed by Comcast called Dual-Stack Lite, which uses network-address translation to share one IPv4 address among many customers.

Related Links:
IPv6 Information Center
Preparing for the IPv6 Transition Comcast Blog
Comcast Launches IPv6 Trials Network World

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More under: Access Providers, IPv6, Telecom

ICANN Begins Public DNSSEC Test Plan for the Root Zone

2010-01-27T13:00:00-08:00

The deployment of Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) for the root zone got an official start today with its public signing for the first time. DNSSEC for the root zone is a joint effort between ICANN and VeriSign, with support from the U.S. Department of Commerce to improve security of the Internet's naming infrastructure.

Kim Davies, ICANN's Manager of Root Zone Services, says: "What happened today was the deliberately un-validatable root zone started being published on l.root-servers.net. It is anticipated this will be rolled out across the other root servers over the coming months. This phase is designed to identify any issues with the larger DNS response sizes associated with DNSSEC data."

For up to date status of the root signing deployment project, see http://www.root-dnssec.org/.

Other sources: (UPDATED Jan 27, 2010 6:17 PM PST)
Official Announcement from ICANN Jan.27.2010
L-Root now serving "DURZ" signed responses DNS-OARC, Jan.27.2010

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More under: DNS, DNSSEC, ICANN, Security

Steve Jobs: Apple is a Mobile Device Company

2010-01-27T11:07:00-08:00

Apple CEO, Steve Jobs today announced the highly anticipated iPad and told the crowed that the company is now a $50 Billion a year company—the majority of it being from sales of mobile devices including iPod, iPhone, and laptops. Now with the introduction of iPad, Jobs calls apple a mobile device company: "Apple is a mobile devices company. This is what we do." Jobs says Apple is the number one mobile devices company in the world.

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More under: Mobile

New Scientist: Internet Backbone Breaks the 100-Gigabit Barrier

2010-01-27T10:25:00-08:00

Jeff Hecht of the New Scientist writes: "There are few facets of society that have remained untouched by the internet. From business communication to leisure activity, the net has transformed the way we behave. Yet at its heart the internet has stagnated. As a slew of bandwidth-hungry services come on-stream, the fibre-optic backbone that forms its trunk routes are at risk of becoming overwhelmed by too much data. It's due for an upgrade."

Read full story: New Scientist

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More under: Broadband, Telecom

One More Reason to Avoid Diet Drug Fakes: They're Dangerous

2010-01-26T16:34:00-08:00

Garth Bruen writes: "The Food and Drug Administration is reporting that some people have gotten fake Alli that contained twice the recommended dose of sibutramine (aka. Meridia), another diet drug. The issue is possible heart problems. The FDA discovered the illegal Alli-Meridia switch when otherwise healthy people reported feeling anxious, shaky, nauseated, and sleepless after taking the bogus Alli. Some even had heart palpitations. No deaths have been reported."

Read full story: NPR

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More under: Cybercrime, Law, Policy & Regulation, Spam

TLDs of Vacant or Close to Vacant Places in the World

2010-01-26T12:30:00-08:00

Royal Pingdom has put together a list of top ten places with designated country code Top-Level Domains that are barely inhabited. The list starts off with '.hm' for Heard and McDonald Islands, an Australlian territory, with zero population. Others include '.pn' for Pitcairn Islands (Population: 50), '.tf' for French Southern and Antarctic Lands (Population: 140), '.cc' for Cocos (Keeling) Islands (Population: 596) and '.va' for the Vatican City (Population: 826).

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More under: Domain Names, Top-Level Domains

Despite China's Denial, US Says It Will Aggressively Press the Cyber Attack Issue

2010-01-26T07:15:00-08:00

The denial was issued as the US administration continues to demand that Beijing provides an official "explanation" for the attacks which White House officials said had "troubled" the President Barack Obama."Any accusation that the Chinese government participated in cyber attacks, either in an explicit or indirect way, is groundless and aims to discredit China," said a spokesman for China's ministry of industry and information technology.

Read full story: Telegraph.co.uk

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More under: Censorship, Cyberattack, Internet Governance, Privacy, Security

China's CNCERT Response to Google

2010-01-22T22:49:00-08:00

Gadi Evron writes: "China responds to Google's accusations on its CNCERT web site, here. Johannes Ullrich just brought this to my attention on Facebook. In short, CNCERT wrote that China is the biggest victim of cyber attacks, and that Google lacks evidence to link the recent attacks to China as the perpetrator. I am certain more details and analysis will become available soon."

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More under: Cyberattack, Security

ICANN Meeting in Nairobi to Go Ahead Despite Safety Concerns

2010-01-22T17:10:00-08:00

A special board meeting was held today by ICANN in order to address the upcoming meeting in Nairobi and security concerns raised by the community as a result of recent events in the city. ICANN has reaffirmed it's commitment to the meeting in Nairobi and an announcement was made via a blog post by Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's President and CEO:

"[W]e reached out to the Kenyan government as well as other nations with operations in Kenya for their risk assessments of the situation. The consistent feedback was that the overall risk assessment of Nairobi had not changed. Accordingly, based on the ICANN CEO's recommendation, the ICANN Board has approved moving ahead with the ICANN Nairobi meeting.

At the same time, we recognize that many developing country cities have higher ambient levels of street crime and much of the world (the U.S. And Europe included) faces international terrorist threats and attacks. Both are simply facts of life. Also, as with all ICANN events, we will continue to monitor the security situation in case there are any material future changes. For any ICANN community members who do not travel to the event, remote participation will be available for many of the meetings."

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More under: ICANN

Video on How the DNS Works

2010-01-22T13:54:00-08:00

CENTR, the Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries, has produced the following video to help explain the functioning of the Domain Name System (DNS).

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