Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief: Internet Grows to 331.9 Million Domain Names in the Second Quarter of 2017
Today, we released the latest issue of the Domain Name Industry Brief, which showed that the internet grew by approximately 1.3 million domain names in the second quarter of 2017, and closed with a base of 331.9 million domain names across all top-level domains (TLDs).1,2 This is a 2.1 percent increase, year over year. 1,2
Verisign Statement on .cc/.tv/IDN License Application Status in China
Verisign obtained licenses to provide domain name registry services for .com and .net in China in July 2016. As such, .com and .net domain name registrations are not affected.
Verisign is engaged in discussions with the Chinese government to obtain licenses to provide domain name registry services for .cc, .tv and our Chinese IDNs. We submitted our updated applications in July 2017. We expect to begin to engage in discussions with the Chinese government about our final evaluation and ultimately obtain licenses for .cc, .tv and our IDNs.
We will continue to distribute our products through the existing group of licensed registrars, which continue to process new .cc and .tv registrations: HiChina, Bizcn, Chinasource and 35 Tech. Renewals of existing .cc and .tv domain name registrations are not affected and will follow the standard renewal process. We view obtaining a license for our Chinese IDNs as a prerequisite to their launch.
Verisign Domain Name Industry Brief: Internet Grows to 330.6 Million Domain Names in Q1 2017
Today, we released the latest issue of the Domain Name Industry Brief, which showed that the internet grew by approximately 1.3 million domain names in the first quarter of 2017, and closed with a base of 330.6 million domain names across all top-level domains (TLDs).1,2 This is a 3.7 percent increase, year over year.1,2
Verisign Named to the Online Trust Alliance’s 2017 Audit and Honor Roll
Verisign is pleased to announce that we qualified for the Online Trust Alliance’s (OTA) 2017 Honor Roll for showing a commitment to best practices in security, privacy and consumer protection. This is the fifth consecutive year that Verisign has received this honor.
The OTA is an initiative within the Internet Society (ISOC) with the mission to promote best practices for online trust. Now in its ninth year, the 2017 OTA audit analyzed nearly 1,000 websites across multiple industry segments, evaluating the websites for consumer protection, security and privacy protection practices, and has been embraced by organizations worldwide as an objective benchmark report.
Q1 2017 DDoS Trends Report: 26 Percent Increase in Average Peak Attack Size
Verisign just released its Q1 2017 DDoS Trends Report, which represents a unique view into the attack trends unfolding online, through observations and insights derived from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack mitigations enacted on behalf of Verisign DDoS Protection Services.
Market Landscape: The Botnet Ecosystem
Launching a DDoS attack is much more accessible to attackers thanks to the rise of cloud computing, cheap hosting, readily available bandwidth and open-source attack tools. From low-skilled teenagers aiming to cheat while playing online games to cybercriminals looking to supplement their income by renting out their botnets for opportunistic attacks, the DDoS-for-hire market is booming.
Verisign Q4 2016 Domain Name Industry Brief: Internet Grows to 329.3 Million Domain Names
Today, we released the latest issue of the Domain Name Industry Brief, which showed that the internet grew by 2.3 million domain names in the fourth quarter of 2016, and closed with a base of 329.3 million domain names across all top-level domains (TLDs).1,2 This is a 6.8 percent increase, year over year.1,2
Q4 2016 DDoS Trends Report: 167 Percent Increase in Average Peak Attack Size from 2015 to 2016
Verisign just released its Q4 2016 DDoS Trends Report, which represents a unique view into the attack trends unfolding online, through observations and insights derived from distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack mitigations enacted on behalf of Verisign DDoS Protection Services and security research conducted by Verisign iDefense Intelligence Services.
Q3 2016 DDoS Trends Report: UDP Flood Attacks Make Up 49 Percent of Attacks
Verisign just released its Q3 2016 DDoS Trends Report, which provides a unique view into online distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack trends from mitigations enacted on behalf of Verisign DDoS Protection Services and research conducted by Verisign iDefense Security Intelligence Services.
User Datagram Protocol (UDP) flood attacks continue to dominate in Q3 2016, making up 49 percent of the total attacks in the quarter. The most common UDP flood attacks mitigated were Domain Name System (DNS) reflection attacks, followed by Network Time Protocol (NTP) reflection attacks.
The highest intensity flood attack in Q3 2016 was a TCP SYN flood that peaked at approximately 60 Gigabits per second (Gbps) and 150 Million packets per second (Mpps). This flood attack is one of the highest packets per second attacks ever observed by Verisign, surpassing the previous flood of 125 Mpps mitigated by Verisign in Q4 2015.
The largest attack in Q3 2016 utilized the Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) protocol (IP protocol 47) and peaked at 250+ Gbps and 50+ Mpps. This is the first time Verisign observed this type of attack against our customer base.
A Great Collaborative Effort: Increasing the Strength of the Zone Signing Key for the Root Zone
A few weeks ago, on Oct. 1, 2016, Verisign successfully doubled the size of the cryptographic key that generates Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) signatures for the internet’s DNS root zone. With this change, root zone Domain Name System (DNS) responses can be fully validated using 2048-bit RSA keys. This project involved work by numerous people within Verisign, as well as collaborations with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).
As I mentioned in my previous blog post, the root zone originally used a 1024-bit RSA key for zone signing. In recent years the internet community transitioned away from keys of this size for SSL and there has been pressure to also move away from 1024-bit RSA keys for DNSSEC. Internally, we began discussing the root Zone Signing Key (ZSK) length increase in 2014. However, another important root zone change was looming on the horizon: changing the Key Signing Key (KSK).