Industry Insights: Verisign, ICANN and Industry Partners Collaborate to Combat Botnets
Note: This article originally appeared in Verisign’s Q1 2021 Domain Name Industry Brief.
This article expands on observations of a botnet traffic group at various levels of the Domain Name System (DNS) hierarchy, presented at DNS-OARC 35.
Addressing DNS abuse and maintaining a healthy DNS ecosystem are important components of Verisign’s commitment to being a responsible steward of the internet. We continuously engage with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and other industry partners to help ensure the secure, stable and resilient operation of the DNS.
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Verisign Q1 2021 Domain Name Industry Brief: 363.5 Million Domain Name Registrations in the First Quarter of 2021
Today, we released the latest issue of the Domain Name Industry Brief, which shows that the first quarter of 2021 closed with 363.5 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), a decrease of 2.8 million domain name registrations, or 0.8%, compared to the fourth quarter of 2020.1,2 Domain name registrations have decreased by 3.3 million, or 0.9%, year over year.1,2
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IRP Panel Dismisses Afilias’ Claims to Reverse .WEB Auction and Award .WEB to Afilias
On Thursday, May 20, a final decision was issued in the Independent Review Process (IRP) brought by Afilias against the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), rejecting Afilias’ petition to nullify the results of the July 27, 2016 public auction for the .WEB new generic top level domain (gTLD) and to award .WEB to Afilias at a substantially lower, non-competitive price. Nu Dotco, LLC (NDC) submitted the highest bid at the auction and was declared the winner, over Afilias’ lower, losing bid. Despite Afilias’ repeated objections to participation by NDC or Verisign in the IRP, the Panel ordered that NDC and Verisign could participate in the IRP in a limited way each as amicus curiae.
(more…) Verisign Support for AAPI Communities and COVID Relief in India
At Verisign we have a commitment to making a positive and lasting impact on the global internet community, and on the communities in which we live and work.
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Verisign Q4 2020 Domain Name Industry Brief: 366.3 Million Domain Name Registrations in the Fourth Quarter of 2020
Today, we released the latest issue of the Domain Name Industry Brief, which shows that the fourth quarter of 2020 closed with 366.3 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), a decrease of 4.4 million domain name registrations, or 1.2 percent, compared to the third quarter of 2020.1,2 Domain name registrations have grown by 4.0 million, or 1.1 percent, year over year.1,2
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Information Protection for the Domain Name System: Encryption and Minimization
This is the final in a multi-part series on cryptography and the Domain Name System (DNS).
In previous posts in this series, I’ve discussed a number of applications of cryptography to the DNS, many of them related to the Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC).
In this final blog post, I’ll turn attention to another application that may appear at first to be the most natural, though as it turns out, may not always be the most necessary: DNS encryption. (I’ve also written about DNS encryption as well as minimization in a separate post on DNS information protection.)
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Securing the DNS in a Post-Quantum World: Hash-Based Signatures and Synthesized Zone Signing Keys
This is the fifth in a multi-part series on cryptography and the Domain Name System (DNS).
In my last article, I described efforts underway to standardize new cryptographic algorithms that are designed to be less vulnerable to potential future advances in quantum computing. I also reviewed operational challenges to be considered when adding new algorithms to the DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC).
In this post, I’ll look at hash-based signatures, a family of post-quantum algorithms that could be a good match for DNSSEC from the perspective of infrastructure stability.
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Securing the DNS in a Post-Quantum World: New DNSSEC Algorithms on the Horizon
This is the fourth in a multi-part series on cryptography and the Domain Name System (DNS).
One of the “key” questions cryptographers have been asking for the past decade or more is what to do about the potential future development of a large-scale quantum computer.
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Verisign Outreach Program Remediates Billions of Name Collision Queries
A name collision occurs when a user attempts to resolve a domain in one namespace, but it unexpectedly resolves in a different namespace. Name collision issues in the public global Domain Name System (DNS) cause billions of unnecessary and potentially unsafe DNS queries every day. A targeted outreach program that Verisign started in March 2020 has remediated one billion queries per day to the A and J root name servers, via 46 collision strings. After contacting several national internet service providers (ISPs), the outreach effort grew to include large search engines, social media companies, networking equipment manufacturers, national CERTs, security trust groups, commercial DNS providers, and financial institutions.
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Newer Cryptographic Advances for the Domain Name System: NSEC5 and Tokenized Queries
This is the third in a multi-part blog series on cryptography and the Domain Name System (DNS).
In my last post, I looked at what happens when a DNS query renders a “negative” response – i.e., when a domain name doesn’t exist. I then examined two cryptographic approaches to handling negative responses: NSEC and NSEC3. In this post, I will examine a third approach, NSEC5, and a related concept that protects client information, tokenized queries.
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