Afilias plans to deploy Domain Name System Security Extensions in 13 more top-level domains 

DUBLIN, IRELAND  – 23 August 2010 – Afilias, a global provider of Internet infrastructure services, today announced that it will deploy Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) across its registry platforms, signing 13 more top-level domains (TLDs) and increasing DNSSEC deployment among domain registries by 50 percent.

“Afilias has been a leader in DNSSEC deployment, including working closely with .ORG to plan, design and implement the .ORG DNSSEC strategy as early as 2007,” said Ram Mohan, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Afilias. “We are pleased to introduce DNSSEC across our registry and DNS platform, protecting TLDs in our care from DNS cache poisoning and man-in-the-middle attacks, while maintaining consistency and convenience for registrars and their customers."

DNSSEC development began in the early1990s, but only recently became ready for broad deployment as an additional security measure to protect the DNS from cache poisoning exploits. Recently referred to as the Kaminsky bug, this exploit can allow malicious entities to intercept Internet users’ requests to access a website, and redirects or eavesdrops on these users without their knowledge, and with no ability to reassert control. DNSSEC introduces digital signatures to the DNS infrastructure and automatically ensures that users’ are not hijacked and taken to an unintended destination.

To deploy DNSSEC for these additional TLDs, Afilias is introducing a new global strategy, launched under its “Project Safeguard” initiative.  Project Safeguard includes a registry and DNS infrastructure upgrade across Afilias’ global technology platforms to support DNSSEC. It also includes a year-long registrar training initiative to address technical issues concerning implementation of DNSSEC in registrar-registry transactions.

As part of Project Safeguard, Afilias conducted research across domain name registrars to understand the issues they face with DNSSEC deployment. Afilias’ Registrar DNSSEC Readiness Report found that:·       

• Registrars think DNSSEC is a good idea, but are not yet fully prepared to offer consumer services.  80 percent of registrars believe that top-level domain (TLD) registries should offer DNSSEC. However 90 percent of registrars currently feel completely unprepared or only somewhat prepared to actually offer DNSSEC services to their customers as this time.        
• 69 percent of Registrars plan to offer DNSSEC services in 2011 or beyond. 32 percent have no plan to introduce DNSSEC within the next 12 months.      
• Consumer demand is the biggest challenge for registrars. 56 percent cite a lack of consumer demand as their biggest challenge impeding their DNSSEC implementation.       
• Registrars also cite issues with deploying DNSSEC technology:  For example, nearly 20 percent cite the management of DNSSEC keys as their number one concern, followed by more than 18 percent that cite overall DNSSEC technology and expertise.  

“Our goal is to help registrars navigate the challenges of enabling the next generation of Internet security with DNSSEC, by providing a simple and singular enablement process to easily deploy DNSSEC across Afilias-supported domain registries,” said Mohan. “The Project Safeguard initiative should ease the technical burden of DNSSEC deployment and could spur user adoption."

Afilias will deploy DNSSEC first in the .INFO domain in September, to be followed by TLDs that it supports in Asia, the Latin America/Caribbean, and Europe. Based on the proven strategy for the .ORG registry’s successful DNSSEC deployment effort, Afilias will adopt a similar, careful, step-by-step approach.  This strategy will include a “friends and family period” which will coincide with registrar outreach.

About Afilias

Afilias is a global provider of Internet infrastructure services that connect people to their data. Afilias’ reliable, secure, scalable, and globally available technology supports a wide range of applications including Internet domain registry services, Managed DNS, and services in the RFID and supply chain market with its Afilias Discovery Services. For more information on Afilias please visit www.afilias.info.

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DNSSEC statistics source: DNSSEC Deployment Initiative https://www.dnssec-deployment.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/TLD-deployment-Table1.pdf  As of 13 August 2010 26 TLDs had deployed DNSSEC. 

If the rise of phishing has taught us anything, it's that on the Internet, if a digital asset has value, there's somebody out there who wants to steal it. Whether it's a bank account password, a credit card number, a PayPal login, or even a magic sword in an online game, there's a fraudster somewhere trying to misappropriate it for his or her own nefarious purposes.

Domain names have always been a target for such criminals. Companies and individuals doing business online have few assets more valuable than their domain name. It may cost $10 or less to register one, but the domain name is the glue that connects a company to its customers; revenue and brand equity depend upon its security.

Domain theft is not a new phenomenon, of course. Sex.com, for example, was hijacked all the way back in 1995, when there was only one registrar. Its true registrant had to spend years in court to retrieve it. In more recent years, high-profile domains such as Panix.com, Baidu.com and even ICANN.org have been temporarily stolen by attackers using social engineering to exploit process vulnerabilities at domain name registrars.

It's surprising, given that domain name hijacking predates the creation of the competitive registrar market itself, that the industry has not done more in the last decade to mitigate the risks. ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) noted as recently as last year that "pure play, secure registration service providers are rare, in part due to the fact that evaluating security measures does not play as prominent a role in customer decisions when choosing a registrar as it should."

However, registrant apathy regarding security may already be changing, according to a recent survey of savvy registrants.

There are three areas where registrars, in general, have room for improvement when it comes to security.

1. Better Authentication

The simple username/password authentication approach so common at Registrars has repeatedly been found vulnerable to social engineering attacks and should not be considered strong enough security for high-value domain name accounts. This is especially true when automated password reminders are available. If all an attacker needs to do is compromise a password or e-mail address in order to have complete control over a domain portfolio, registrants have the right to ask for stronger authentication.

Nowadays, it's common practice for large financial institutions to allow, or even require, multi-factor authentication before giving customers access to valuable assets. But it's not just banks. After the phishing black market put a dollar value on World of Warcraft accounts, the game's developer had to start offering players one-time password tokens, in the form of key fobs, as a second authentication factor, to decrease fraud.

When you think about it, the fact that magic swords are sometimes offered a greater degree of protection than domain names is pretty crazy.

2. Notifications

When someone logs into a registrar domain account they are given virtually the “keys to the kingdom” for that organization’s entire domain portfolio and DNS settings. If domain account access is compromised, then all it takes for the criminal is to login to the registrar account, change the registrant and other contacts associated with the domain, and then either change the DNS information to point to a new site or transfer the domains to a completely different registrar where it is difficult for to reclaim the names.

It is time registrants get routinely notified when such changes are made to their domain name portfolio, whether via e-mail, text or perhaps even telephone for the most critical items. The best scenario is to notify two or more authorized employees to provide for shift changes and/or redundancy. Social engineering is the attack of choice for hijacking domains, and it's harder to impersonate two people than one.

Because e-mail accounts are easier to compromise than phone numbers, using out-of-band communications channels, such as telephone or SMS text message, could also increase security.

3. Access Control

Usually, authenticated registrants have global privileges: they can change name servers, transfer out domains or cancel renewals, for example. The risk of domain hijacking could be further mitigated by employing more granular access controls once a customer has been "authenticated". Many registrants may wish to use a higher level of security on their primary domains, limiting critical privileges to certain high-status users. The learning curve here could be eased somewhat by the fact that existing registrar Whois records already usually describe at least three roles – the administrative, technical and billing contacts.

Registrars should enable Registrants to designate different contacts for different authority levels. This would accord Registrants the choice of better protection.

None of these measures need to be a drain on registrars' margins. Indeed, once in place, these will save money that is now spent resolving disputes after the fact by making criminal activity more difficult. Further, with domain name registrants increasingly looking at registrars' security provisions before they make their purchasing decisions, the opportunity presented by value-added premium services, designed for security and marketed to customers with high-value domain portfolios, should be obvious. Criminals look for the softest targets; with a little effort in just 3 areas, registrars can significantly improve the security they provide for registrants.

For more reading on this topic, see SSAC’s advisory to registrars on improving security: SAC040

(Disclosure: I am one of the charter members of SSAC)

Fourth annual .INFO Awards program will offer US$15,000 in prizes

DUBLIN, IRELAND – 10 August 2010 – Afilias, a global provider of Internet infrastructure services and registry for the .INFO top-level domain (TLD), today announced the opening of its fourth annual .INFO Awards program which recognizes the best .INFO websites around the world. From August 9th to September 10th any .INFO domain owner may submit their website to the .INFO Awards for a chance to win honors as the “Best .INFO website of 2010.”

“.INFO is an intuitive domain name choice for anyone looking to share their information with the world,” said Roland LaPlante, Chief Marketing Officer for Afilias. “.INFO has been the most successful new TLD ever launched, as evidenced by the millions of sites now operating worldwide. The .INFO Awards program not only gives us the opportunity to highlight the best .INFO sites from around the world, but also to allow Internet users to voice their support for their favorite ones.”

 Afilias first launched the .INFO Awards program in Germany in 2007 and expanded the awards internationally in 2009. 2010 will mark the fourth year of honoring the best .INFO websites and highlighting the usefulness that the .INFO domain has added to the Internet in the nine years since its debut.

Qualifying submissions will be evaluated by a panel of online and media experts based on five key criteria including: presentation of content, functionality of the website, design, usability, and originality. The panel of judges will be announced on August 17th and will consist of experts in the fields of websites, design, and media.

A shortlist of the 10 finalists based on the judges’ scores will be published on October 5, 2010. Members of the public will then be able to vote for their favorite of the top 10 sites until November 2 at 11:59 pm ET. The public votes will be combined with the judges’ scores to select the top 3 winners, with first place being named the “Best .INFO website of 2010.” Winners will receive cash prizes allocated as: US$7,500 for first place, US$5,000 for second place, and US$3,000 for third place.

 For details on entry requirements and restrictions please visit the Awards Rules. For more details on the .INFO Awards or to submit your site visit www.INFO-award.info.

About .INFO:

.INFO was the first generic, unrestricted TLD to be launched since .com and is the most successful new TLD launched in over 25 years. Registrations in .INFO first became available in 2001. Since then, .INFO has grown to become the fourth largest gTLD in the world with over 6 million domain names registered. .INFO Domains are currently available in ten Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) scripts. For more information on .INFO please visit www.info.info.

About Afilias:

Afilias is a global provider of Internet infrastructure services that connect people to their data. Afilias’ reliable, secure, scalable, and globally available technology supports a wide range of applications including Internet domain registry services, Managed DNS, and services in the RFID and supply chain market with its Afilias Discovery Services. For more information on Afilias please visit http://afilias.info.

Almost exactly nine years ago, the .INFO domain first started accepting registrations.  This was an historic event as it was the first time a new generic top-level domain (TLD) was launched to an existing domain marketplace and, in fact, was the first new TLD to be added since .com.  We’ve seen (and provided technology to power) many other TLD launches since then, with many business models.  As you seek to introduce your own new TLD however, you should carefully evaluate the different launch models that have been tried before and determine which one will work best for your specific TLD.

Trademark Protection
All new TLDs will require some form of trademark protection to ensure that Intellectual Property (IP) holders’ rights can be protected prior to live, public registrations.  Afilias has implemented a number of different types of trademark protection plans from pre-registration without trademark verification, to those with extensive application and verification processes.  We’ve seen the best success with a very focused trademark pre-registration period that has clear trademark parameters and works with a known trademark verification agent to weed through all of the submissions.  We also recommend that all registries lock pre-registered trademark domains for up to 60 days following their registration award to allow for any potential UDRP claims that IP owners may wish to file.  

Landrush
Landrush will be the most critical time for your TLD as it places the heaviest load on the technical registry system.  We’ve seen in excess of 300,000 names coming in through initial landrush opening minutes, so you want to be very careful about who you select as your registry partner.  You should make sure that their registry has been tested to withstand a significant landrush load.

In addition, you will have to make some policy decisions about how you want landrush to work. In almost all cases you should avoid pre-registration fees with a “chance” at getting your name. These can be viewed as lottery-based systems that can subject your organization to new legal restrictions.  We highly recommend that clients not charge for applications, but only for awarded names.

Regardless, you need to decide if you will open the floodgates all at once, or if you want to have multiple, specialized application periods (see below) in advance of the “public” opening.

Premium Names and Auctions
In recent years TLDs like .info, .mobi, .asia and .me have seen good success by reserving premium names, which are highly desirable generic or category terms.  In .info’s case, we reserved a number of country domains and have awarded them for use by their respective governments (some great examples are spain.info and germany.info).  Other TLDs have used reserved name lists for auctions following landrush.

Premium or other reserved names can fit well into your new TLD’s strategy, particularly if you will be representing a certain category or key community where they will present more value.  An auction approach helps to raise the price, and therefore perceived value of these names, and can help put your registry on a sound financial footing more quickly.  

RFPs
If auctions are not to your taste, other domains have also seen success by simply launching a period where interested users can respond to a “request for proposal” with a business and launch plan for a highly desirable name.  As a registry, you can offer additional promotion, partnerships or advertising to help assist with the launch of these sites, which can also act as great brand ambassadors for your fledgling TLD.

Each new TLD will have its own priorities. However, at the end of the day, you need a plan that will get lots of names into your target market quickly, generate awareness of your TLD (so it will be viewed as a legitimate place to visit by Internet users), and demonstrate actual use in the market (i.e. real sites and e-mail).  Your launch plan is critical to establishing these building blocks quickly. If you are not a TLD expert, consider teaming up with someone who has been there before.

What were you doing this week back in 1985? Answer: Probably watching the debut of Back to the Future, a early Steven Spielberg movie which incorporated novel uses of technology to travel in time. During that same time in 1985, however, another innovative use of technology was also making its debut—one with much greater implications for improving our lives on a global scale.

On July 10, 1985 the first .ORG domain name – mitre.org – was registered, joining the initial registrations in .com and 5 other “generic top level domains” in the Internet’s Root zone. This date marks the starting point of the Internet revolution by allowing Internet users to locate online resources by easy-to-remember names instead of complex numbers. Making the Internet more accessible has spurred global economic development, improved freedoms and increased access to knowledge for the last 25 years.

Afilias is pleased to be a partner with .ORG, The Public Interest Registry (PIR) in supporting the millions of .ORG domains now in use worldwide. We are proud to provide state of the art registry and DNS services which ensure that .ORG is a reliable and secure home for the millions of organizations worldwide who depend on their .ORG online identity to pursue their missions. We have worked closely for the past seven years with PIR and its parent organization, the Internet Society (ISOC), to continuously upgrade the critical infrastructure supporting .ORG to meet the needs of both current and future Internet users. The recent deployment of a significantly upgraded security technology, DNSSEC, across the .ORG domain is but one example of how PIR, ISOC and Afilias join together to ensure the .ORG domain is exemplary, safe and trusted.

Since 2003, when PIR became the steward of .ORG, .ORG has grown by almost 300% to over 8 million domains. This growth is a testament to the dedicated and focused team at PIR, the secure and reliable technology underpinning the registry, and to the engaged base of active registrars, who serve the expanding core of .ORG registrants and the larger universe of .ORG Internet users. The achievements of .ORG over the past twenty-five years in general and the seven years in particular point to a great renaissance and a period of extraordinary activity and success for .ORG, and bode well for the next twenty-five years.

The entire team at Afilias congratulates Alexa Raad, CEO of PIR, her team, ISOC and the Internet community on achieving this important and historic milestone. Happy Birthday .ORG!

The .mobi domain was launched in 2006 to provide a dedicated name space for content made for mobile consumption. Since its launch, dotMobi, the company behind the .mobi domain, has developed many innovative products that help businesses and organizations mobilize their messages for a mobile audience.  Past successes have been their Device Atlas and Instant Mobilizer, which have won awards in their own right.  The .mobi domain has also become a success and is one of the largest new TLDs ever launched.  Today, dotMobi launches its next innovation -  goMobi aimed at providing small and medium sized businesses an easy and fast way to get their content on the mobile web in a way that helps them convert customers to sales.

goMobi is a new kind of content management solution that allows an average person or business owner to easily build a mobile friendly website with content that reflects the way visitors on the go want to consume it.    With goMobi’s simple intuitive tool, a business can have their new mobile site up in minutes!  Better yet, goMobi sites work on any Web-enabled phone, saving resource constrained businesses from any development time for multiple phone apps for different operating systems—goMobi just makes it happen!

goMobi recognizes that consumers on the go don’t need all the information or fancy graphics of a full website—they need a “just the facts” approach that quickly loads critical information like the phone number, address, directions, hours, etc.  goMobi uses a set of standard icons to present this information in an intuitive format similar to most smart phone displays.  A goMobi site is not just easy to create, but it embodies a mobile friendly experience -- something most small and medium sized businesses would benefit from but don’t have the time and resources to create. 

Now any organization can make mobile marketing a direct and fundamental approach to reaching current and potential customers. 

goMobi is a new and compelling service that can be offered as a value-add by registrars, hosting companies or Web design and developers.  It is easy to integrate with current content management solutions and provides customers a complete site, hosting included!  In addition, experts like designers and developers can create their own custom goMobi features, to offer clients an even more tailored mobile site, with all the benefits of the goMobi solution.

Afilias is supporting the move to an easy-to-create mobile Web.  You can now visit us on the mobile Web with our new and improved goMobi site at http://afilias.mobi

If you are a new TLD applicant, one of the key pieces of your plan is how you intend to go to market. Many applicants will be required by ICANN to use registrars, and there are many good reasons for this. Registrars understand the domain business, they are experienced domain marketers and most importantly, they have existing business relationships with many of the same registrants you will need to make your TLD successful.

The question is: HOW do you get registrars to support YOUR new TLD? Afilias has more experience introducing new TLDs to registrars than anyone, and we’d like to suggest 3 principles for success:

1. First, choose an attractive string: The most important reason for a registrar to support you is if your TLD will sell. Make sure your string has a strong reason for being—that it adds value to the Internet and will serve a market that will buy it!
2. Second, Provide Support: Be sure to give registrars tools that will help them sell your TLD. For example you’ll need to ensure competitive pricing and provide marketing materials and promotional support. Plan to work as a TEAM with your registrars
3. Third, Keep it simple: Registrars are going to be swamped with new offerings. If YOUR TLD is simpler to implement, your chances for success are better.
   • Simplicity begins with the accreditation process—Study what new TLDs have done in the past and don’t re-invent the wheel.
   • Pricing should also be simple and sustainable. Look at how registrars sell domains today and try to replicate that model.
   • And last, Technical systems must be familiar and standards-compliant: Registrars don’t have time to learn a whole new system. They will support TLDs that use systems they are familiar with, as it saves them time and money.

Registrars are the key to distribution so you must learn how to succeed through them. How? Choose an attractive string, provide appropriate support for your registrars, and keep it simple for them.

Of course, it isn’t quite that simple. That’s why you should work with an expert who is already dealing with registrars and has done this for many new TLDs before. Afilias already has a group of accredited registrars that together support over 90% of the active domain name marketplace. This coupled with our registry technology which already supports 15 different TLDs, has the kind of experience you’ll need in gaining distribution to make your new TLD successful.

Afilias is a sponsor of the 12th AfriNIC Public Policy Meeting and AfNOG.

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The deployment of Domain Security Extensions (DNSSEC) has crossed another milestone this month with the publication of DURZ (deliberately unvalidatable root zone) in all DNS root servers on 5 May 2010.

While this change was virtually invisible to most Internet users, this event and the remaining testing that will occur over these next two months will dictate the ultimate success of DNSSEC deployment across the Internet.

Until now, ICANN and its partners have been rolling out DURZ to each of the root servers individually. With this step, all root servers now have DURZ. We will now get to see, before a validatable root zone is published, how the DNS infrastructure will behave as more queries for DNSSEC information result in larger responses. Answers to the important question about how the DNS scales with the addition of DNSSEC will hopefully start to filter in, as well as the opportunity to watch for abnormalities in the system. The final step in the root’s DNSSEC deployment will occur in July when a validatable root zone is published.

If you are an application provider, ISP, or a TLD registry thinking of DNSSEC deployment you should take this event as an actionable item and allow your technical teams time to participate in DNSSEC testing.

The next milestone will be the deployment of a validatable signed root. Signed TLDs will be able to submit their keys to the root zone after it is signed, creating a single, hierarchical, secure infrastructure, in contrast to the islands of trust we have today.

We have spent the better part of the past three years working closely with .ORG and the Public Interest Registry towards the deployment of DNSSEC in .ORG throughout the domain name system. This June, second level .ORG names will be able to submit their key information and be signed, which will propagate throughout the DNS, a first-ever in a major gTLD. We look forward to learning, sharing and helping the system become stronger across this and future DNSSEC deployments across the other TLDs we support.

Over the last three years, the Anti-Phishing Working Group’s semiannual Global Phishing Survey has become a widely cited source of information about the state of phishing and its place in the Internet landscape. Afilias’ Director of Domain Security, Greg Aaron, has been co-authoring these reports with Rod Rasmussen of Internet Identity, with the goal to show the community what phishers are doing and how anti-abuse measures are effective. The newly published edition of the report highlights how criminals have utilized the domain name space, but offers good news about the domain name community has helped diminish the effects of some very dangerous phishing. It’s an encouraging success story.

The new Global Phishing Survey reveals that in the second half of 2009, the Avalanche phishing gang perpetrated two-thirds of all phishing attacks on the Internet! This criminal entity utilizes a botnet comprised of consumer-level computers to host its phishing and malware too. By running its own distributed, illegal hosting, the gang tries to make its phishing “bullet-proof” – resistant to take-down because there’s no traditional hosting provider to call. But such phishing can be stopped by suspending the domain names. Fortunately we saw a number of domain name registrars and registries shut down Avalanche phishing in an increasingly effective fashion, often neutralizing the phishers’ technical advantage.

In the second half of 2009, we saw Avalanche registered 4,141 domain names in various TLDs, and hosted up to 40 separate attacks on each domain. Avalanche prefers to register domains at registrars that react slowly (or not at all) to abuse reports and/or have weak fraud-detection routines. Similarly, Avalanche prefers TLDs where the registry operators do not have effective anti-abuse policies and procedures to help the registrars and provide swift action when needed. Unfortunately, we saw Avalanche victimize certain registrars and TLDs over and over again.

Avalanche and similar threats have prompted many industry members to adopt best practices to fight phishing and other criminal abuses. Afilias adopted its .INFO Anti-Abuse Policy in 2007, defining what constitutes abusive use, and reiterating the registry’s right to take action. Registrars also have terms of service in their registration agreements, and those terms prohibit illegal activities and allow the registrars to suspend domain names at their discretion. In practice, Afilias monitors for phishing and other problems in the .INFO space, and communicates abuse reports and documentation to its registrars. The registrars examine the reports and work on mitigation as they feel appropriate. On occasion Afilias will also suspend domains directly, especially to stop large-scale abuse in a timely fashion. This kind of cooperation and information-sharing is adaptable and effective, allows registrars and registries to install good process, and appropriately manage risk. On a daily basis, it saves thousands of Internet users from becoming victims.

The 2009 data shows that Avalanche phish stayed up for less than half the time as other phish—a great result. How did it happen? First, the entire response community concentrated attention on Avalanche, pushing phishing attack alerts to each other. That response community includes the banks and online services targeted by the phishers, security companies and researchers, registries, and registrars. Second, a number of registrars and registries took quick action, looking for Avalanche domains and killing them through the summer and fall of 2009. Education and data sharing clearly helped. In November 2009, members of the security community shut down Avalanche’s infrastructure for a week. After re-establishing its operations, Avalanche kept registering domains, but launched fewer attacks. Avalanche attacks decreased from 26,411 in October 2009 to just 59 in April 2010. We’ll continue to monitor Avalanche, but it appears that overall, the domain industry may be more prepared for whatever comes next.

The median up-time for all phishing attacks on the Internet has fallen remarkably over the past two years, from 19 hours 30 minutes in early 2008 to 11 hours 44 minutes in the second half of 2009. The falling times point to improved awareness, responsiveness, and detection across the board. Here at Afilias, our policies and procedures have dissuaded phishers like Avalanche from registering .INFO domains, and non-Avalanche phish in .INFO stayed alive for less than half the industry average.

The results above emphasize the effectiveness of best practices and processes. Domain industry players are becoming increasingly sophisticated about e-crime, and can greatly improve the safety of the Internet for everyone.

To see all the details, please read the new APWG report, at: http://www.apwg.org/reports/APWG_GlobalPhishingSurvey_2H2009.pdf