.WEB Auction Rakes in Record Breaking $135M, What Will ICANN Do With All This Money?

ICANN now has over $230 million in its coffers, the proceeds from New gTLD program auctions. The latest record breaking price is of $135 million to operate the .WEB gTLD. On 27 July 2016, Power Auctions LLC, ICANN’s authorized auction service provider, conducted a New Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) Program auction to resolve contention for …

Bastille: Wireless Keyboards are vulnerable to Hackers

Batille, the first cybersecurity company to detect and mitigate threats from the Internet of Things (IoT), today unveiled a massive vulnerability affecting the vast majority of low-cost wireless keyboards. Using a new attack that the Bastille Research Team has named “KeySniffer,” hackers can remotely “sniff” ALL the keystrokes of wireless keyboards from eight manufacturers from …

File-sharing site Kickass Torrents (KAT) Seized and shut down by FEDs

According to TorrentFreak, Artem Vaulin, 30, of Poland, was arrested in the Ukraine on a number of charges, including conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of criminal copyright infringement. According to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, the copyrighted material over on the site …

Republican Platform 2016 on Protecting Internet Freedom blocks IANA Transition

In a last ditch effort to prevent the IANA transition, the GOP has included in its Republican Platform for 2016 [PDF] which was formally approved during the party’s national convention in Cleveland a policy position on “Protecting Internet Freedom.” The position affirms the effort to stop the oversight handover to a new body, it reads: …

Survey: 95% Of People Know .COM, Only 52% Know Least 1 New gTLD

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) published [PDF, 2.88 MB] the findings from its Phase 2 Global Consumer Research Survey. The key findings are listed below. Conducted by Nielsen, the study measured current consumer attitudes toward the gTLD landscape and domain name system (DNS), as well as changes in consumer attitudes from …

First Cyrillic address Using a .бг domain goes live in Bulgaria

After nearly two years  ICANN has approved Bulgaria‘s national domain. Initially there was some uncertainty over whether the request would be granted as .бг bears some visual similarities to Brazil‘s already registered “.br”. Имена.бг (“names”) is the first Bulgarian web address available entirely in Cyrillic. The Ministry of Transport, Information Technology and Communications has said …

No authorization from Congress: Sen. Cruz’ Discusses the Concerns of IANA Transition

The Obama administration’s decision to give up U.S. control of regulating the internet is likely illegal, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said. “The Obama administration does not have the authorization from Congress,” Cruz said Thursday, speaking at a Heritage Foundation event on internet freedom. “And yet they are endeavoring to give away this valuable, critical property. …