ICANN hands out keys to global cyber guardians

As a part of a security measure to save the Internet from complete and utter destruction in the event of a Dooms Day scenario, ICANN has handed out seven “guardian keys” to secret individuals from the following countries: Britain, the U.S., Burkina Faso, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, China and the Czech Republic.

In the event of an Internet failure, five of the seven individuals would have to bring their key to a U.S. military base. Each key contains a portion of the DNSSEC root key.

Although I doubt the new cyber guardians would ever need to use the keys, the idea of this is just really cool. Props to ICANN for being a little less boring for once.

Source | Popular Science

.Org and .EU now configured with DNNSEC

The Public Interest Registry and EURid, operators of the .org and .eu domain names respectively, announced the deployment of DNNSEC on the two gTLDs this week at the 38th ICANN meeting. The domains are the largest yet to adopt the new standard, which will bring greater security to Internet users.

As boring as it sounds, DNSSEC makes domains more secure by verifying and validating name server responses as they cross the Internet. It makes intercepting web traffic harder and can even stop hackers from redirecting visitors to fake sites.

The technology was expensive for the .org and .eu registries to implement, but I think it was worth it. It remains to see whether the general public is aware enough about the technology for it to have an effect on consumer choice for the extensions.

Source | Domain News
Photo | Flickr

New ICANN CEO releases address

New ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom has been in his post for more than three weeks now, but just released his first public address yesterday. In the message, Paul Twomey’s replacement talks about how excited he is to be working at ICANN and details his plans for the future.

While it’s great to see that the new CEO is alive and kickin’ (I thought he was living under a rock), the message doesn’t reveal anything new about ICANN. Rather, it’s the same old pitter-patter I’ve come to expect from Marina Del Rey, the organization’s home city.

First, Beckstrom addressed the new IDN system, stating that this effort would be the to-do at his new workplace.
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