Lost in the media excitement surrounding the Kaminsky variant cache poisoning attack and ongoing frenzy to patch vulnerable recursive nameservers, the calls for DNSSEC as the only complete solution to similar attacks and the accusations by the technical community that the DoC was dragging its feet in approving root signing, and the order issued by the OMB to deploy DNSSEC in gov by January 2009, was this letter last week from ICANN to NTIA regarding their intention to submit a detailed proposal concerning signing the root to the Department this month.

In it, ICANN argued that “full deployment of DNSSEC would be a solution to these vulnerabilities” and that “the first step in attaining this solution is making specific plans for, then implementing DNSSEC at the root level.” While you won’t find much disagreement among the technical community on the first issue (although there is plenty of work occurring on easier to implement, but temporary fixes), it should be obvious that the second assertion is debatable. Simply put, if the root were signed tomorrow, the vast majority of the DNS would still be unsecure for a long time to come. Numerous improvements would still need to be undertaken by registries, registrars, ISPs, and software providers to achieve a globally meaningful secure DNS. Sure signing the root could provide a signal to the market to begin deploying, but in no way is it a required “first step.” There is a massive amount of work still to be done.

And besides, there are temporary, completely feasible alternatives to signing the root that would achieve the same goal. For instance, an IANA-run ITAR. Such a solution would similarly signal the market to begin DNSSEC deployment activities, but would avoid further strengthening of the DNS bottleneck while the appropriate technical and political solutions for distributing signing authority can be found.

Milton Mueller will present (via webcast) the paper "Scarcity in IP addresses: IPv4 Address Transfer Markets and the Regional Internet Address Registries" at an upcoming ITU Workshop on IPv6. The presentation is scheduled for Thursday, September 4, 2008 at 14:15 UTC (10:15 EST) during Session 3: "Economic dimension of IPv6 adoption. What is at stake?" A link to the webcast will be posted here on the day of the workshop. The draft agenda is available here.

The workshop, to be held 4 — 5 September in Geneva, Switzerland, will provide a platform for dialogue where key players in the field, including all ITU sectors, as well as other interested entities will be able to discuss and address international public policy issues on the migration to IPv6, as well as the economic aspects related to IP address allocation. It is designed to stimulate discussion and interaction with the audience, rather than a string of presentations and speeches provided by panelists and speakers.

As we run out of IPv4 addresses, should the Regional Internet Registries allow address blocks to be traded? In a paper released last month, we argued that a liberalized transfer policy would serve a number of important purposes. Transfer policy proposals are quite controversial, however. In an attempt to gauge levels of support, the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) has taken a survey of its public policy mailing list. About 200 people responded. Overall, the survey found that 87% of the respondents supported a liberalized transfer policy of some kind. It is a level of support much larger than one would have anticipated from the debates on the lists, which seem to have been dominated by vocal opponents.   more »

The IGF’s Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) has been renewed, adding 17 new appointments, which brings the total number of advisers up to 50. We provide a quick review of the new appointees.   more »

Wednesday the U.S. Federal Communications Commission released the text of its Order sanctioning Comcast, a U.S. provider of broadband Internet access over cable lines, for selectively targeting and interfering with connections of peer-to-peer (P2P) applications. The Commission concluded "Although Comcast asserts that its conduct is necessary to ease network congestion, we conclude that the company’s discriminatory and arbitrary practice unduly squelches the dynamic benefits of an open and accessible Internet and does not constitute reasonable network management."   more »

There’s some concern that basic human rights to free expression, privacy, and other civil liberties might be getting pushed too far away from the center of the UN Internet Governance Forum’s (IGF) meeting agenda. The IGF will meet in Hyderabad, India the first week of December this year, and the Secretariat has just published a draft agenda. The agenda is very heavy on security concerns and weak on individual rights protection. A coalition of groups promoting an “Internet bill of rights” has sent a letter to the Secretariat complaining that “rather than promoting positive discussion about how to expand the opportunities that the Internet offers for realizing our fundamental rights and freedoms as enshrined in international law, the title of the main security theme plays on negativity and fear of the Internet.” That letter was endorsed by the civil society Internet Governance Caucus, which IGP participates in.

About ten days ago the US Commerce Department sent ICANN a letter slapping it upside the head for suggesting in its President's Strategy Committee report that the US might actually keep its 1998 promise to turn over root zone file to ICANN/IANA. On August 1, Commerce sent ICANN another letter, warning ICANN that it had better continue to allow unrestricted public access to personal information in the Whois database. Specifically, it made its opposition known to ICANN's proposed legalization of services that offer domain name registrants some shield against the indiscriminate display of their personal data to anyone in the world who wants it. This letter, too, was part of a public comment period on proposed changes in the Registrar Accreditation Agreement. These letter speak to a shift in relations between the USG and ICANN, one that is in some ways encouraging, but also potentially very dangerous as well.   more »

The FBI is soliciting vendor proposals to provide one-stop, turn-key access to Internet Zone files, domain WHOIS and DNS records. Posted July 22, with responses due yesterday, the solicitation details a system that would aggregate the data and provide it to the FBI for up to the next 5 years. On one hand, the open nature of the DNS makes this request mostly just a large data collection exercise, but it has some interesting wrinkles with respect to its scope and selection process, as well as implications for civil liberties.   more »

Alexa Raad, CEO of Public Interest Registry, and Dr. Milton Mueller, Professor and Chair of the Noncommercial Users Constituency, released a joint statement on Internationalized domain names (IDNs) today. In a letter to ICANN's CEO Paul Twomey, Raad and Mueller expressed concerns about the potential for governments to link non-ASCII script domain names to policies that restrict or control Internet access. "The deployment of Internationalized Domain Names (“IDN”) should be seen as a technical measure to allow for multi-lingual use of the internet, and not used as a tool by governments to control access, impose censorship or limit freedom of expression online," the statement read. Click "read more" to see the full statement.   more »

Does who signs the IGF invitation mean a change in priority? That the invitation to IGF 2008 was signed by the USG-DESA does not reflect more than a change in protocol and may reflect a greater institutional commitment by the UN to Internet governance issues.   more »