] In commenting about Tuesday's deliverance of the policy
] revisions to the DOC, ICANN's President and Chief
] Executive Officer M. Stuart Lynn talked about the
] importance of his organization in hammering out policy
] for the Internet.
]
] "It is in the interests of all Internet users-commercial
] and private, businesses and individuals-that ICANN
] continue to develop and mature as a vehicle for consensus
] policy development," Lynn said. "These new agreements, by
] eliminating much of the unique legacy treatment of
] VeriSign/NSI, will be a major step in that direction.
] They will help to maintain the continuing stability of
] the DNS as an important and effective part of the
] Internet, and will improve the ability of ICANN to serve
] as an effective administrator of this important
] resource."

From 2 years ago ... eerily prescient of the current mess.

ICANN Passes Final VeriSign Contract to DOC

] On 25 May 2001, ICANN and VeriSign, Inc., entered into an
] Unsponsored Registry Agreement under which VeriSign
] operates the .com top-level domain. The agreement and its
] appendices may be viewed by following the links below.

Alright ... here it is ... I haven't had time to read it yet. The agreement was between verisign and ICANN and "overseen" by the Dept. of Commerce which apparently had some veto power in the matter.

ICANN | .com Registry Agreement

] Bulldozer maker Caterpillar Inc. wants to bury Walt
] Disney Co.'s "George of the Jungle 2" movie, which it
] alleges in a lawsuit filed late Tuesday in Federal Court
] in Peoria, Illinois, infringes on its trademarks.

Sigh...

CNN.com - Caterpillar sues over 'George of Jungle' - Oct. 16, 2003

Decius wrote:
] ] VeriSign also made a mistake by informing ICANN and other
] ] standards bodies only a few days before it launched Site
] ] Finder, he added. "The number one complaint, actually,
] ] that we heard across the board was this lack of notice,"
] ] Lewis said. "We do sincerely regret any inconvenience
] ] that the service created, notwithstanding that most of
] ] the concerns that we discussed today ... were largely
] ] addressed within a matter of days, if not hours."
]
] In the last meeting Verisign made it clear that they had their
] reasons for not informing anyone about the changes and that
] future changes would also be made without notice. Of course,
] they have very little to loose by RErelease the site with
] notice, as everyone is aware of it at this point and we know
] they aren't asking permission, so they've decided to let us
] know. They get headlines that say "look, we're sorry" and
] people who aren't paying attention don't know any better.
]
] ICANN must end Verisign's contract.

I think I've brought this up before: is verisign's contract with ICANN or with some US Govt agency (Commerce?)

RE: Declan gave Verisign the headline they wanted

Cute flash.

Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer?

Elonka wrote:
] ] According to Tubul, his group controls 450,000 "Trojaned"
] ] systems, most of them home computers running Windows with
] ] high-speed connections. The hacked systems contain
] ] special software developed by the Polish group that
] ] routes traffic between Internet users and customers'
] ] websites through thousands of the hijacked computers. The
] ] numerous intermediary systems confound tools such as
] ] traceroute, effectively laundering the true location of
] ] the website. To utilize the service, customers simply
] ] configure their sites to use any of several domain-name
] ] system servers controlled by the Polish group, Tubul
] ] said.

These people should go to prison!

RE: Wired News: Cloaking Device Made for Spammers

So Deutsche has initiated coverage of SCO with a rating of "Buy" ...
and set a price target of $45. SCOX surged up $5 or 33% to about $20 in early trading...

Stock analysts smoke crack

NIST is trying to update the venerable set (CBC/OFB/CFB/counter) of encryption modes. Some of the new ones provide "authenticated encryption," i.e. the equivalent of encryption and MACing with one key and significantly less cost than encrypt-then-MAC.

In light of Vaudenay's CBC padding attack, authenticated encryption seems prudent.

NIST -- New Encryption Modes

(this is a follow-on paper to Vaudenay02 which doesn't seem available online)

How to break CBC encryption using certain common padding schemes given a "padding oracle", a node that tells you whether or not a given ciphertext corresponds to a well-padded plaintext.

Breaking CBC Encryption for Fun and Profit

Decius wrote:
] ] But Sclavos also said he thinks much of the fury against
] ] VeriSign originates with companies that compete in the
] ] retail sale of domain names. Severing that part of the
] ] business could, in theory, blunt some of the critics.
]
] Verisign is pursuing this for another reason, which is not
] discussed in this article. Most of the restrictions on
] their management of the tlds which were referenced in ICANN's
] demand that SiteFinder be shutdown are restrictions on
] anti-competitive behavior vis-a-vis other domain name
] registrars. If Verisign is NOT a domain name registrar then
] they don't need to worry about creating a level playing field
] between the access they have, and the access that other domain
] name registrars have. Many of the restrictions on their
] activity in the ICANN contracts would go away.
]
] Its hard to say if this move is specifically directed at
] making SiteFinder legal, or if Verisign has any other tricks
] waiting in the wings if the contractual concerns with
] SiteFinder are resolved in their favor. What IS clear is that
] this is an important move in the fight over SiteFinder, and
] its implications could be significant for those who don't wish
] to see the "service" restarted.

Who is NetSol's .com/.net contract with? Dept. of Commerce? How about not renew it or take it away from them?

It is *crazy* that .com/.net should be run by a for-profit company which will be incented to do dumbass things like sitefinder ... it should be operated by a non-profit/non-government organization, overseen by ICANN/IAB/IETF/etc.

And how much is being able to run sitefinder really worth to verisign, anyway? Is it really worth getting involed in a nasty legal battle with ICANN and *making everyone that actually runs the net hate them*??

RE: Verisign to sell off Network Solutions, keep tlds