March 2014 archive

Weekend Project: Try Out “Bloodhound”, A Web Browser With Full DNSSEC Support

bloodhoundHere is a quick project to try out this weekend… download and try out the Bloodhound web browser from the DNSSEC Tools Project.

This web browser is a modified version of Mozilla Firefox that supports local validation of DNSSEC and also usage of the DANE protocol.  The cool part about Bloodhound is that it validates ALL web addresses used in the building of a web page, i.e. it is not just validating only the main URL for a site.  Given that many web pages today make many calls to other web sites for various components and pieces of the site, Bloodhound will ensure that all of those are validated via DNSSEC.

Once you have Bloodhound installed, you can visit our lists:

where you should see failures happen when you attempt to go to the “bad” sites.

More information about how to configure Bloodhound is available on the DNSSEC Tools Project website.  The Bloodhound browser was created as an experimental project to advance DNSSEC deployment and as a test bed for how DNSSEC validation can be build directly into applications.  If you have feedback or would like to get more information, please see the bottom of the Bloodhound web page for how to get in touch with the folks at the DNSSEC Tools Project.

TDYR #128 – The Internet Needs Defending NOW

TDYR #128 - The Internet Needs Defending NOW by Dan York

Seeking Reviewers – Open Source Courseware for IPv6 Computer Networking

Computer Networking open source coursewareWould you be interested in reviewing a computer networking course book that is being updated for IPv6 and is available as an open source document for all to use? We learned a bit ago that professor Olivier Bonaventure at the Universite catholique de Louvain in Belgium is seeking reviewers for his draft 2nd edition of “Computer Networking : Principles, Protocols and Practice” that he has updated for IPv6. The book can be found at:

http://cnp3bis.info.ucl.ac.be/

although what is perhaps more interesting is that Professor Bonaventure has made the book available on Github at:

https://github.com/obonaventure/cnp3

It is available for anyone to use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.  He is seeking comments about the book and asking people to raise new issues on Github at:

https://github.com/obonaventure/cnp3/issues?page=1&state=open

where you can see that some reviewers have already filed a number of suggestions and bug reports.

We understand that the goal of Professor Bonaventure and his team is to develop a more finished version of this 2nd edition by the middle of this year and we commend them on this effort.  These kind of courseware books / modules that can be used at universities and other training centers are definitely welcome.  We look forward to adding this course book to our IPv6 Training page as it continues to evolve.

If you have a bit of time to read through the book, Professor Bonaventure and his team would no doubt appreciate any feedback you may have!

 

TDYR #127 – Is There A WordPress Plugin To Convert Email To A Post Or Page?

TDYR #127 - Is There A Wordpress Plugin To Convert Email To A Post Or Page? by Dan York

A Breakfast Gathering of DNSSEC Advocates At IETF 89

One of the great joys of working within the DNSSEC community is the truly outstanding and passionate people that are all focused on how we can make the Internet more secure and trustworthy. Last week at IETF 89 in London a few of us who were there were able to meet for breakfast on Friday morning and we have a photo to prove that (click for a larger version):

DNSSEC Advocates

It was an enjoyable time and several ideas for further activities came out of the conversations that happened there. Plus we got to see who was wide awake at 7:30am and who was desperately needing caffeine. :-)

The people there at the breakfast were subscribers to the “dnssec-coord” mailing list that was set up to help in the coordination and communication between people who want to accelerate the deployment of DNSSEC.  That list is open to anyone to join.  We have a monthly conference call and do other work on the mailing list.  Some of the people on the list are able to get to IETF and/or ICANN meetings.  Some of the list subscribers don’t go to those meetings and participate only electronically and on the phone calls. Some are from large companies and some are individual consultants.    It doesn’t matter… all are welcome to join and be part of the conversation about how to make the Internet more secure via DNSSEC and DANE.

We’d love to have you join us!  If you’d like to help accelerate the adoption of DNSSEC and are interested in the advocacy/promotion/publicity side of the adoption work, please feel free to subscribe to dnssec-coord and join in our efforts.

 

Celebrating the 25Th Anniversary of the World Wide Web (Featured Blog)

Today the full original name of the World Wide Web is being seen everywhere as people all around the world join together to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the proposal that Tim Berners-Lee submitted at CERN that led to the creation of the "Web" we have today. While many of our articles here on CircleID focus more on the underlying Internet infrastructure that makes the Web possible, it's good to take a moment to reflect on - and celebrate - the amazing evolution of the Web from those very early days! More...

Celebrating The 25th Anniversary of the World Wide Web (Featured Blog)

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On The 25th Anniversary Of The Web, Let Us Keep It Open And Make It More Secure

Web 25th AnniversaryCan we even begin to count the ways the “Web” has affected all of our lives? Today is the 25th Anniversary of the proposal that led to the creation of the World Wide Web. Over at Webat25.org, Tim Berners-Lee, the W3C and the World Wide Web Foundation are celebrating this milestone with greetings from people all around the world, including Internet Society President and CEO Kathy Brown, who recorded a video greeting, as well as IETF Chair Jari Arkko and IAB Chair Russ Housely.  The WebAt25 effort is also promoting an active campaign on Twitter using the #web25 hashtag and is encouraging people everywhere to get more involved with efforts to ensure the Web remains an open platform for creativity, innovation and collaboration.

As our Leslie Daigle wrote in an excellent Internet Technology Matters post today, the Web is a prime example of how “permission-less innovation” enables the creation of new services that run on the Internet and also of both the global nature of the Internet and the value of open standards.

For us here at the Deploy360 Programme, our use of the Web is the critical cornerstone of our efforts to accelerate the deployment of key Internet technologies… even as most of the protocols (IPv6, DNSSEC, BGP) we promote are actually part of the underlying Internet infrastructure that makes services like the Web possible. Without the Web, we would not be able to bring you all the resources and news we bring you here, nor would we be able to share it with you through web-based social media. It is critical for our work.

On this day, we  join with the W3C, World Wide Web Foundation and so many others in celebrating this 25th anniversary and the amazing success of the Web. As we do so, though, we know that for the Web and other Internet services to prosper they need to not only continue to be as open as they have been in the past, but they also need to be more secure to protect the privacy and security of information. That is why we’ve worked so hard getting DNSSEC deployed more widely,  recently opened our new “TLS for Applications” topic area, and why we’re looking for your help to build more content to help application developers, website designers and many more people understand how to make the Web and other services more secure.

Thank you, Tim Berners-Lee, for the proposal 25 years ago that led to the creation of the World Wide Web, and for everything you’ve done to keep the Web open to all. We look forward to joining with people around the world to continue to keep the Web – and the Internet – open for all!

TDYR #126 – I Remember Info.cern.ch – Celebrating 25 Years Of The World Wide Web

Back in 1991 or so, I was running an IT training team and developed a class on "Navigating The Internet", which, at the very end, had one page mentioning that there was this thing called the "World Wide Web" that you could see by telnetting to info.cern.ch.... we've come a LONG way since then! Happy 25th Anniversary to the Web! #web25 In this episode I reflect on how the Web has profoundly impacted my life and career... and what we need to do to ensure it remains open for all in the future! See: http://www.webat25.org/ http://webwewant.org/ and follow the "#web25" hashtag on Twitter. (Note: In full disclosure I work at http://www.internetsociety.org/ where we are active on these type of issues for the broader Internet.)

DNSSEC Training In Rwanda For The .RW ccTLD

I was very pleased to learn via a series of tweets this morning of a two-day DNSSEC training seminar that happened in Kacyiru, Rwanda, sponsored by the Rwanda Information and Communication Technology Association (RICTA) in partnership with ICANN. The seminar took place over the last two days and the agenda looks quite good.

rwanda-dnssec-training

It seems they got some good news coverage on two local sites, complete with other photos of the event: IGIHE and UMUSEKE. Unfortunately, as I cannot read Kinyarwanda, and neither, it seems, can Google Translate, I don’t have any idea what the articles are saying beyond the technical acronyms.

The attendance is great to see as Africa is one region where it would be great to see more ccTLDs signed with DNSSEC.  At this moment Rwanda’s .RW is not appearing on either our DNSSEC deployment maps nor on ICANN’s DNSSEC Status Report as signed with DNSSEC… but hopefully with a workshop like this that status will be changing soon!

P.S. To that end, I note that the seminar invitation reads “Adoption event for the .RW country code top-level domain name”. If anyone reads this from RICTA and could email us info about when they are planning to sign the .RW ccTLD, we’d love to add that information to our DNSSEC deployment maps.

Photo credit: RICTAInfo on Twitter