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Blue Security Gives Up, Spammer Wins |
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The anti-spam venture embroiled in a denial-of-service attack that brought down millions of blogs two weeks ago has thrown in the towel. Wednesday morning, Israeli-based Blue Security posted a message on its site -- now offline -- that it is shutting down operations.
Blue Security, which debuted its spam-fighting service last summerand built up a user base of more than 500,000, decided to wave the white flag after its servers were knocked offline by an aggressive denial-of-service (DoS) attack it claimed was launched by a deep-pocket Russian spammer tagged as "PharmaMaster."
May 3, in an attempt to get out the word about the DoS, Blue Security repointed its domain to an unused blog on Six Apart's TypePad blogging service. Within minutes, PharmaMaster attacked the blog with another DoS, which brought down Six Apart and left millions without access to their blogs. Blue Security's domain name service provider, Tucows, was also hit with a DoS and knocked offline for several hours; Tucows going down took thousands of Web sites it hosts with it.
Wednesday, Blue Security said it had to give up because it couldn't sustain the fight against spammers. "Several leading spammers viewed [us] as a strategic threat to their spam business," Eran Reshef, Blue Security chief executive wrote in the message posted to the company's site.
"After recovering from the attack, we determined that once we reactivated the Blue Community, spammers would resume their attacks. We cannot take the responsibility for an ever-escalating cyber war through our continued operations.
"As much as it saddens us, we believe this is the responsible thing to do," said Reshef, who did not respond to an e-mail requesting additional comment. Later Wednesday, a spokesman said that the company would not be making any additional statements beyond the message on its site.
"I'm not surprised that they shut down," said Todd Underwood, chief of operations and security at Manchester, N.H.-based Renesys, an Internet monitoring and routing analysis firm. "People who go after spammers get attacked by spammers."
Underwood added that although Blue Security was doomed to fail, it should have been able to weather these first rounds of attacks. "It was apparent how ill-prepared they were to deal with a DoS attack. They could have lasted a lot longer if they had been prepared."
Reshef admitted as much after the URL redirection brought down TypePad. "It wasn't the best decision to reroute traffic to TypePad," Reshelf said then.
Blue Security's model -- an automated agent sent an opt-out request in a tit-for-tat whenever a user received a spam message -- could only have worked if it accumulated a base large enough that spammers would find it impossible to strike back, Underwood argued.
Its surrender, though regrettable, was the right decision. "It was always clear that they would subject innocent users to attacks. There's simply no way to directly attack spammers that doesn't risk significant collateral damage," Underwood concluded.
Currently, Blue Security's Web site is offline. It's not clear, however, whether the situation is temporary, or if the company has closed the site for good.
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Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers |
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What is ICANN?
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is an internationally organized, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions. These services were originally performed under U.S. Government contract by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and other entities. ICANN now performs the IANA function.
As a private-public partnership, ICANN is dedicated to preserving the operational stability of the Internet; to promoting competition; to achieving broad representation of global Internet communities; and to developing policy appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.
What is the Domain Name System?
The Domain Name System (DNS) helps users find their way around the Internet. Every computer on the Internet has a unique address called its "IP address" (Internet Protocol address). Because IP addresses (which are strings of numbers) are hard to remember, the DNS allows a familiar string of letters (the "domain name") to be used instead. So rather than typing "192.0.34.163," you can type "www.icann.org."
What is ICANN's Role?
ICANN is responsible for coordinating the management of the technical elements of the DNS to ensure universal resolvability so that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses. It does this by overseeing the distribution of unique technical identifiers used in the Internet's operations, and delegation of Top-Level Domain names (such as .com, .info, etc.).
Other issues of concern to Internet users, such as the rules for financial transactions, Internet content control, unsolicited commercial email (spam), and data protection are outside the range of ICANN's mission of technical coordination.
Ensuring predictable results from any place on the Internet is called "universal resolvability." It is a critical design feature of the Domain Name System, one that makes the Internet the helpful, global resource that it is today. Without it, the same domain name might map to different Internet locations under different circumstances, which would only cause confusion.
How does ICANN work?
Within ICANN's structure, governments and international treaty organizations work in partnership with businesses, organizations, and skilled individuals involved in building and sustaining the global Internet. Innovation and continuing growth of the Internet bring forth new challenges for maintaining stability. Working collectively, ICANN's participants address those issues that directly concern ICANN's mission of technical coordination. Consistent with the principle of maximum self-regulation in the high-tech economy, ICANN is perhaps the foremost example of collaboration by the various constituents of the Internet community.
ICANN is governed by an internationally diverse Board of Directors overseeing the policy development process. ICANN's President directs an international staff, working from three continents, who ensure that ICANN meets its operational commitment to the Internet community.
Designed to respond to the demands of rapidly changing technologies and economies, the flexible, readily implemented policy development process originates in the three Supporting Organizations. Advisory Committees from individual user organizations, and technical communities work with the Supporting Organizations to create appropriate and effective policies. Over eighty governments closely advise the Board of Directors via the Governmental Advisory Committee.
ICANN's Board has included citizens of Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Ghana, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Senegal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
ICANN's Accomplishments
Among ICANN's recent accomplishments:
ICANN established market competition for generic domain name (gTLD) registrations resulting in a lowering of domain name costs by 80% and saving consumers and businesses over US$1 billion annually in domain registration fees.
ICANN implemented a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), which has been used to resolve more than 5000 disputes over the rights to domain names. The UDRP is designed to be efficient and cost effective.
Working in coordination with the appropriate technical communities and stakeholders, ICANN adopted guidelines for the deployment of Internationalized Domain Names (IDN), opening the way for registration of domains in hundreds of the world's languages.
ICANN's Ongoing Work
In 2000, ICANN introduced seven new gTLDs: .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, and .pro. The ICANN community is currently exploring possibilities to add additional gTLDs.
In response to community concerns over privacy and accessibility, ICANN is hosting several workshops regarding Whois, the public database of domain name registrations.
With the deployment of IPv6, the new IP address numbering protocol, global network interoperability continues to be a primary mission for ICANN.
ICANN Welcomes Participation
Participation in ICANN is open to all who have an interest in global Internet policy as it relates to ICANN's mission of technical coordination. ICANN provides many online forums which are accessible through ICANN's website, and the Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees have active mailing lists for participants. Additionally, ICANN holds public meetings throughout the year. Recent meetings have been held in Bucharest, Montreal, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, and Accra.
For more information on the Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees, please refer to their websites:
Address Supporting Organization (ASO) -
Country Code Domain Name Supporting Organization (CCNSO) -
Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) -
At-Large Advisory Committee -
Governmental Advisory Committee -
More information on ICANN can be found on ICANN's website:
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Equinix Opens Data Centers |
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Data center operator Equinix (equinix.com) announced on Wednesday that it has opened new data centers in the Chicago and Los Angeles areas, and released details of plans for a new facility in the Chicago area and expansion in the New York market.
Equinix says the expansions will support the significant customer growth expected in the company's key markets. The company's 2006 data center openings, combined with the planned Chicago build, represent an increase of 35 percent in the company's overall cabinet capacity.
“Driven by the proliferation of IP-based applications, from music downloads to content-rich Web sites to businesses exchanging large amounts of data, the growth rate for colocation services nearly doubled in 2005, and is expected to experience double-digit growth in both 2006 and 2007 when the worldwide market is expected to comprise $3.5 billion,” says Andy Schroepfer, founder of Tier 1 Research. “Equinix has significantly outpaced this growth rate over the past several years and has risen to become the current worldwide market leader.”
Equinix says the Chicago expansion center, located adjacent to its current downtown Chicago Internet Business Exchange center, adds approximately 1,100 cabinets to the existing IBX. The Los Angeles facility opened Wednesday, marks the company's third IBX center in the Los Angeles area, providing the company with the means to respond to strong customer demand in the area.
The planned Chicago-area expansion would add a third IBX near the Chicago O'Hare Airport. Equinix plans to purchase the site in early June, and will develop it in multiple phases. The first building will accommodate 3,800 cabinets, of which 2,500 will be built out in phase one. At capacity, the facility is expected to generate roughly $80 million in annual revenue.
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Web Hosting Express Offers De |
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UK-based Web hosting provider Web Hosting Express (webhostingexpress.co.uk) announced today that would offer free Web hosting forever to five small or medium-sized companies in the UK or US.
The purpose of the promotion, says the company, is to lower the amounts those companies are spending on Web hosting and design, and to increase their sales.
According to Web Hosting Express, the company intends to hold a monthly competition to provide new and existing customers the opportunity to win free hosting for a personal or hobby Web site.
"We are pleased to finally offer this to the public as this is a fantastic opportunity for small and medium sized businesses in the UK and USA to host their site with us free with no strings attached, this will decrease those companies monthly and yearly overheads and hopefully most importantly increase your sales," said the company's press release.
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Skype Goes Multi-Lingual With Live Translation Services |
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Skype's tagline is "The whole world can talk for free." Now, eBay's (Nasdaq: EBAY) Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) subsidiary plans to bridge the language gap to boot -- but at a price.
Skype on Thursday announced a deal involving language services provider Language Line and Voxeo, a provider of standards-based Interactive Voice Responses and VoIP platforms, designed to make it easier for people to communicate with one another regardless of their native languages.
Specifically, the joint solution will translate English into more than 150 languages using personal interpreter services.
"Language Line's 'Personal Interpreter Service' greatly enhances the Skype experience for our growing multilingual customer base," said Saul Klein, vice president of marketing for Skype. "Our consumers can now use the Skype technology to easily communicate in the languages their customers and friends prefer to speak."
Languages Galore
Skype subscribers can now be on the phone in a conversation with up to four other Skype users -- a five-way conversation -- as well as a live, professional Language Line Services interpreter. Language Line Personal Interpreter is a pay-as-you-go service that provides quick and easy access to skilled interpreters. Among the most commonly requested languages are Arabic, French, German, Japanese, Spanish and Russian.
"Every day, virtually all Fortune 500 multinational corporations, as well as businesses of all sizes around the world, depend on Language Line Services to assist them in communicating with their customers in their own languages," said Louis Provenzano, Language Line Services' senior vice president of sales and marketing. "Now, by using SkypeOut, this inexpensive service is available to individuals and small businesses from anywhere in the world at a moment's notice."
No Free Lunch
Note that Provenzano used the word "inexpensive." Skype isn't exactly letting the whole world talk for free anymore. Language Line Personal Interpreter Services over Skype cost US$2.99 per minute. Interpreter costs are automatically charged to the caller's SkypeOut balance.
"I am skeptical that there is a good fit between Skype's core proposition, which is about cheap communication, and this premium service," Ovum Research analyst Jan Dawson told TechNewsWorld. "It's not the sort of thing that an ordinary consumer is going to use. It's a business service."
Businesses might not find much value in the service, either, Dawson noted. For his part, if he were paying for live translation services he would want a high quality phone connection where he could be sure to hear everything.
"Skype does have quality issues. You get echo, you get delay, you don't always get through," he pointed out.
Forging Ahead
Nonetheless, Skype is forging ahead with its latest innovation. Voxeo gets into the picture to provide an interface between Language Line Services and the Skype Network. Language Line's Personal Interpreter Service uses Voxeo's Prophecy voice platform to automate the process of transferring the call from Skype to Language Line Services.
"Language Line's 'Personal Interpreter Service' demonstrates perfectly the power of VoIP platforms like Prophecy to change the way we communicate with each other, both personally and professionally," said Clegg Ivey, Voxeo's vice president of operations and strategy. "This partnership works so well because Voxeo, Skype and Language Line Services all share one simple goal: to reduce the barriers to global communication."
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