Stories about: ICANN

VeriSign is in many ways synonymous with managing the Web, thanks to its handling of key DNS root servers and of name resolution for .com, .net, and other domains. In recent years, it's had both strong ups and strong downs.

The international organization that oversees the Web's top-level domain naming system said that the hijacking last month of several of its domains was due to a security breach at the registrar that manages those URLs.

Turkish hackers Thursday defaced the official sites of the international organizations that oversee the Internet's critical routing infrastructure and regulate domain names, researchers said Friday.

As expected ICANN, the nonprofit group that manages the Internet domain name system, unanimously voted to begin the process of relaxing the rules for generic top-level domain names (gTLDs).

ICANN, the nonprofit group that manages the Internet domain name system, will vote at its meeting in Paris on Thursday on whether to open up the rules for top-level domain names.

Jonathan Zittrain is an internationally known cyberlaw scholar and technologist with a giant resume. He is Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford Internet Institute and also teaches at Harvard. Zittrain is co-founder of the Chilling Effects Web site (a watchdog site) and holds patents on wireless and network devices. Zittrain has been making headlines with his latest book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It , in which he argues that closed-systems devices like the iPhone are potentially harmful. In a chat, Zittrain explained how he feels about the iPhone and the dangers posed to the Internet as a whole.

It's not often that a domain-name holder accused of cybersquatting actually prevails in a dispute with the party that filed the complaint. It's rarer still for that entity to then win a counterclaim of attempted reverse domain-name hijacking.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is starting to look at how the organization might function after its current memorandum of understanding with the US Department of Commerce expires in September 2009.

Phishers, cyber-squatters, and other online fraudsters continued their assault on well-known corporate brands over the last 12 months, increasing the burden on the companies being targeted and further frustrating consumers.

Internet policymakers are considering sweeping changes to the way they distribute IP addresses that could allow network operators to make money by transferring unused blocks of IPv4 address space to others in need. One result could be lessened incentive to move to IPv6 any time soon.

Who's afraid of IPv4 address depletion? Not IT professionals, according to a new survey due this week by BT INS, a Californian consulting firm.