Product alert - but this one is free! Symantec have released 'Norton Everywhere' which aims to provide a holistic security solution to all internet devices. What this means for DNS is rather than defaulting to the DNS server of your internet provider you can use choose to use the Norton DNS. This will filter insecure sites and guard against malicious DNS attacks. Symantec isn't the first to provide such a service. If Norton doesn't appeal there are other free DNS options such as Google Public DNS an OpenDNS. Changing your default DNS setting to one of these providers seems like a worthwhile thing to do.

On the subject of the private and public divide of our social media lives comes this news article of a debt collection bank employee found to have set up a fake facebook site for the purpose of tracking the bank's bad credit customers that had gone AWOL. This story is at the heart of the issue of ethics on the internet - do organisations have a right under any circumstances to parade as something they are not?

It will be considered as a technical achievement in the history of the internet: the introduction of non-latin top level domain names. To date United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Russian Federation, and Egypt will now be able to view a complete domain name in arabic script. Western society probably failed to consider, until recently, the limiting effect of the internet's architecture for speakers of non-latin derived languages. In the same way technically disconnected rural communities form part of the digital divide, so to do inhabitants of countries that had no education in latin based languages. How does a browser support arabic script? The brower itself must support both the character sets of the language. Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari all support arabic script.

The internet community has long been waiting for ICANN to deal with the evolving DNS issues inherent in the decentralised system. The appointment of Whit Diffie as Vice President for Information Security and Cryptography at ICANN should bode well amidst the criticisms of ICANN not doing enough in responding to domain name security hacks and attacks. The Canadian Press has said "While ICANN does not run many of these domain name servers directly, it can press for the use of a security protocol that is meant to verify that the directory information is authentic. The technology uses mathematical techniques similar to encryption.".

The topic of domain names as a commodity isn't new, but the prices auctions are fetching for names is. When $2 million is refused for 'jeans.com' it paints a picture of the cost/benefit ratio of domain investment - where the potential financial benefits are clearly outweighing initial costs. The trend developing is for multinational companies to buy domain names with commonly understood verbs (eg dating.com) or nouns (eg books.com). It strengthens their own branded domain name and targets consumers who are undertaking searches on the net for the thing they want - be it a service or good - as opposed to searching for the company that sells that thing. Does it suggest that searching habits are changing? Is brand awareness and brand loyalty losing power?

'Educause', a not for profit organisation supporting education in Information Technology, has released an excellent guide explaining DNS Security. It explains the primary benefit of incorporating DNSSEC, namely that it will '...expand the trustworthiness-and thus the usefulness-of the Internet as a whole.'.

DNSSEC was developed to add security to the Domain Name System . The tool works by adding information on the origin of authentication of DNS data, data integrity and authenticated denial of existence. DNSSEC obviously adds more information to queries and therefore increases the size of those query packets. Where older routers exist the additional information included in the larger data packets may not be recognised and therefore the DNS will not be resolved. The end user, in this instance, would not be able to visit the site they requested. The fear campaigns in the community have been around that very point: that the implementation of DNSSEC will not resolve host names. This article provides some light explanation around the rollout of DNSSEC and lays to rest the fear mongering by stating that there, to date, has been minimum negative effect of the DNSSEC that has been rolled out.

Microsoft shares the same point of view on the limitations of the Flash product as Apple. Again, reliability, security and performance were identified as impediments of supporting the flawed software. Speaking about the mobile era Steve Jobs of Apple says 'low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards...' are areas where Flash is not currently accommodating. It's most interesting to watch powerful market players create pressure for change in the internet space. Adobe can ill afford to ignore these criticisms yet it's now taking opportunity to discredit the motives of the multinationals: "Apple's moves to block Flash and other technologies are designed to protect a business model that locks developers and consumers into a single, proprietary stack," Adobe spokeswoman Holly Campbell said.

Steve Jobs announces that Apple has no intention of supporting Flash sites through iphones and ipads in the future. Claiming that Flash has too many bugs, drains batteries too quickly and is too oriented to PCs. Apple has not intimated that they will offer an alternative solution. Do we believe these reasons, or are there more politics at play here? I'm inclined to think there is something more. Granted Apple does make every attempt to provide its users with a high level of reliability and useability which Flash obviously undermines. Clearly such standards are what differentiates the quality levels of Apple from Mac. The power is with the market then. Will users opt for other devices that do support Flash, or will the Apple brand keep its power despite not supporting the major software brand used to build interactive sites? Interestingly, although Flash is not recognised officially as a 'standard' HTML5 does support certain Flash features. Adobe has commented that it is committed to improving its Flash product.

The year was 2008. The person was Dan Kaminsky. The discovery: DNS has security flaws. Translation: the website you are visiting may not actually be the genuine site. This might take you 15 minutes to read through, and perhaps longer to absorb....but I highly recommend spending time on learning about the technicalities of DNS and the vulnerabilities of its functionality. The discovery of its weak points is what DNS security is addressing. Briefly, it covers the distributed nature of DNS, how cache poisoning occurs and patch recommendations to provide a 'fix'.

GoDaddy.com, the world's largest domain name registration company is taking similar action to Google by deciding to not conduct further business in China. This decision is a reaction to China now demanding that applicants of domain names are to provide additional personal information, including a full colour head shot photograph. While China maintains forcing applicants to register extensive personal information will curb the creation of unsavoury sites (namely pornography) everyone else outside of the Chinese government believes such detailed personal information will equip the government to target any individual (to what extent - who knows) displaying any content that the government does not support. Is this an invasion of privacy? Should people be able to exercise multiple personas on the internet, or should you be who you are? If a government is to collect such information who will ensure the information it collects isn't abused? Do we answer these questions differently when thinking of China i.e. what would the answers be if Australia was to introduce such a law? At the very least, it's a relief to see companies realising that China is compromising the values of the internet and are reacting suitably by taking their services out of the country. More need to participate in the retalliation.

Yahoo has made public its proposal to hack the domain name system (DNS) so as to resolve issues with migrating to IPv6 from IPv4. Internet protocol version 4 (IPv4) was the first widely deployed version of IP that supports 32 bit addresses (equating to 4,294,967,296). The issue of exhausting the 32 bit address allocation was identified in the 1990's, prompting the development of IPv6. IPv6 supports 128 bit addresses, obviously offering a more expansive address system. The article claims that a 'significant percentage of internet users have broken IPv6 connectivity'. Yahoo thus proposes to switch users to IPv4 connectivity once detection of broken IPv6 connectivity is realised. Yahoo will forward its proposal to the Internet Engineering Task Force, however questions of DNS trust and security will surely be the two topics of debate in testing this proposal.

Opponents of expanding gTLDs have largely based their arguments on the additional cost to business in performing defensive registration on their brands. What is defensive registration? Basically it's an action taken to protect a trademark (in the case of domain names, to protect a word or phrase which identifies the goods or services of a party). This study investigates how valid the defense registration argument, backed by organsiations such as Microsoft, actually is. It assesses the amount of defensive registration already undertaken in varying gTLDs for the top Fortune 100 companies. The conclusion: 'If past behavior is predictive of future actions, we will see a minimal amount of defensive registration activity in new gTLDs by brand owners, and new gTLDs will be largely ignored by cybersquatters.'

SEDO (Search Engine for Domain Offers) has partnered with VeriSign (the operator of the valuable .com and .net gTLDs, amongst other network inrastructure) to conduct a .TV auction between 1 April - 8 April 2010. Having a semiotic association with rich media content and a memorable quality, it seems likely the auction will attract bids from brand names already harnessing rich media content and looking to capitalise on new revenue streams that the expansion of gTLDs offers. Reserves will be around $5000 for each auctioned name ( a list of all names can be found at http://sedo.com/search/searchresult.php4?auctionevent=tvPremium&tracked=&partnerid=&language=us ) causing some annoyance amongst those who have already made costly .TV purchases in excess of the reserved price.

With ICANN's decision to add new categories of names to top level domain names, organisations are already embarking on the process to register their brand. Regsitering a name won't come cheap though. Yet another example of the internet well and truly being commodified, Canon will pay $185,000 for the privilege. Perhaps the media attention in being first will be worth the outlay.

During a speech at the Media Institute in Washington [February 24, 2010], Larry Strickling, President Obama's top official at the Department of Commerce and administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), suggested that there should be policy discussions between government agencies, foreign governments and key Internet constituencies on issues such as privacy, child protection, cybersecurity, copyright protection and Internet governance. "It's now time to respond to all the social changes being driven by the growth of the Internet," Strickling said. "We need Internet Policy 3.0. We enter this new decade recognizing that we rely on the Internet for essential social purposes: health, energy efficiency, and education. It's also a general engine for economic and social innovation. We must take rules more seriously if we want full participation, but we must keep the need for flexibility in mind."

Iran has arrested 30 people suspected of belonging to a U.S.-linked cyber network gathering information on Iranian nuclear scientists and sending people abroad for training, a news agency reported on Saturday.

-US to aim for internet speeds of 100Mbps -Same as the Rudd Government's network -Congress will be asked to provide billions THE US is set to follow Australia in a bid to introduce superfast broadband to millions of homes within the next ten years. A new internet policy to be unveiled this week includes the goal of boosting domestic broadband speeds to 100Mbps - more than 25 times the current average.