We’re Going to Visit All 203 Nations
In November 2017, the Internet Society hosted the inaugural Indigenous Connectivity Summit in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The event brought together community network operators, Internet service providers, community members, researchers, policy makers, and Indigenous leadership. One of the participants shared her story.
Denise Williams,Coast Salish from Cowichan Tribes on Vancouver Island, began her career as an ESL teacher, with the idea that she would travel the world teaching English. A chance encounter on a bus – “I’m from a small town so I talk to whoever is in my vicinity,” says Williams – served as an entry point to work as a policy analyst for Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, which led to Education Technology work at the First Nations Education Steering Committee. “I learned the way that digital technologies either advance or detract from a community’s ability to nurture curiosity in their youth,” says Williams. “I came from no understanding of networks to it becoming my life’s work. I don’t know if i found it or it found me.”
In 2015, Williams took the reigns of the totally defunded First Nations Technology Council, and through strategic planning and vision, has grown the organization’s programs in talent development, Continue reading
Working Together with APNIC on Routing Security and MANRS in Asia Pacific
The Internet Society and APNIC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to cooperate in supporting the MANRS initiative in the Asia Pacific Region. Paul Wilson (APNIC) and Rajnesh Singh (ISOC) signed the MoU in Brisbane, Australia on 13 June 2018.
It’s an exciting moment for everyone who believes that Internet routing security issues can be resolved through collaboration, providing limitless opportunities for good. The MoU formalises the existing long-term relationship between the two organizations to have a global, open, stable and secure Internet.
The MoU focuses on capacity building to undertake initiatives and activities to promote awareness of MANRS in the Asia-Pacific region, to cooperate and render mutual assistance, and to encourage the attendance of APNIC members to meetings, seminars, workshops and/or conferences on routing security.
Both organizations have agreed to exchange research information and training materials (whether printed, audio or visual) related to routing security in general. APNIC has a proven record of delivering hands-on and online quality training and providing analytical research data.
We look forward to welcoming more MANRS members from the Asia Pacific region, and working together with APNIC to improve routing security around the world.
The post Working Together with APNIC on Routing Security and Continue reading
IoT Security is the Heart of the Matter
The Internet Society is raising awareness around the issues and challenges with Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and the OTA IoT Trust Framework is promoting best practices in protection of user security and privacy. The importance of this was brought home with the keynote talk at the recent TNC18 Conference, which was given by Marie Moe (SINTEF) who related her experiences with her network-connected heart pacemaker.
Marie is a security researcher (who also formerly worked for NorCERT, the Norwegian National Cybersecurity Centre) who has an implanted pacemaker to monitor and control her heart, and has used the opportunity to investigate the firmware and security issues that have had detrimental and potentially fatal consequences. Quite aside from uncovering misconfigurations that required tweaking (e.g. the maximum heartbeat setting turned out to be set too low for a younger person), and an adverse event that required a firmware upgrade, she was even more concerned to discover that little consideration had gone into the authentication and access aspects that might allow an attacker to take control of the device.
These devices allow their recipients to lead normal lives, and of course being network-connectable has many practical advantages in terms of monitoring and Continue reading
Article 13 of the Copyright Directive Raises Serious Questions
The next couple of days will be important for the future of the Internet, as the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) will vote on the proposed Copyright Directive. The Directive, which aims to update and reinforce the rights of rights holders within Europe’s Digital Market, is largely a positive step forward inasmuch as the law needs to be updated in light of modern technologies and the Internet. However, Article 13 of the directive raises serious questions about the implications for free expression, creativity, and the freedom to publish.
Under this article, “information society service providers” will be required to use “content recognition technologies” to scan videos, audio, text, photos, and code to the detriment of open-source software communities, remixers, livestreamers, and meme creators.
Last week, many Internet luminaries penned an open letter to the President of the European Parliament asking for the deletion of Article 13. The Internet Society agrees with the concerns raised in this letter and urges the Parliament to reconsider Article 13 in light of the implications for the open Internet.
In the meantime, civil society and academia, including EFF, EDRI, Creative Commons, and the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition Continue reading
TunapandaNET Paves the Way for Kenya to Connect the Underserved
Currently, 53% of the world’s population is offline due to factors such as high cost of Internet infrastructure and lack of relevant local content. Internet access remains unaffordable in many economies in transition where people have to choose between the Internet and other vital necessities such as food and health. Maybe one day we will look back at this historic moment in which Community Networks were paving the way for equitable and meaningful access to technology.
Community Networks are an emerging complementary and sustainable solution to address the connectivity gap existing in underserved urban and rural areas around the world. Such networks rely on the active participation of local communities in the development and management of shared Internet infrastructure as a common resource. Existing examples provide concrete evidence that community network development can prompt positive effects to help communities leverage on technology for socioeconomic empowerment. We have gained experience from Guifi.Net, Zenzeleni Network, Rhizomatica and Wireless For Communities, all successful projects proving that the technical side of the community network model can be replicated.
I asked Josephine Miliza a few questions to get deeper insight into the project. Josephine is a network engineer with a Continue reading
Alert – Web server host migration on June 19, 2018
As you may have noticed, our shiny new website has some speed issues. It is slow for many visitors. Over the past few months we’ve worked on a number of potential changes to improve the site performance. One big change we’re making is to move to a different hosting provider.
That change will happen tomorrow – Tuesday, 19 June 2018 at 13:00 UTC.
Assuming all goes well, you shouldn’t really notice – except that the site should be faster! But if you happen to be browsing the site around 13:00 UTC, you might see some glitches on pages while the DNS magic happens and we change to pointing to the new server.
Once we’ve made this migration, I’ll write more about what we have done and how it has helped our site’s performance. Meanwhile, I just wanted to give a quick alert about this impending change to anyone viewing our site.
The post Alert – Web server host migration on June 19, 2018 appeared first on Internet Society.
Reflecting on the Internet Society’s 2017 Asia-Pacific Activities
The Asia-Pacific Bureau has been producing an annual snapshot of its activities and initiatives for a couple of years now, and we are pleased to present the 2017 edition. While it is not meant to be an exhaustive record of all that we did, it does provide a good overview of our activities in the region.
In addition to the Bureau’s core programmes, our Chapters are also very active in their local communities and, as volunteer-led entities, do amazing work in helping to support and carry out the Internet Society’s mission at the local level. We invited our chapters in the region to submit a summary of their activities, and the submissions that made it before the deadline are included in the report.
As I reflect on 2017, it probably stands out as the year the digital economy began to cement itself in the Asia-Pacific. Across the region, numerous developments, from the emergence (and to some extent, dominance) of local technology firms to new policies designed to facilitate the growth of connected societies all signify that countries in the largest region of the world – both in geography and population – are finally putting their plans into action.
Nowhere is Continue reading
Net Neutrality Round Table
Debates regarding net neutrality regulation in the United States have been carried out for over a decade. Rulemakings by the FCC have been passed numerous times, won and lost in court, and been repealed, resulting in years of political back and forth. Now, net neutrality is being argued for and against on Capitol Hill and its regulatory future is unclear.
To address this political limbo, the Internet Society convened experts from the technical community, public interest groups, and academia to discuss how we can create a permanent solution for net neutrality that protect the interests of Internet users while fostering an environment that encourages investment and innovation. During this half-day event, participants began a conversation to define net neutrality, what conduct it should cover, how compliance could be assured, and how to balance consumer and private sector interests.
The discussion was moderated by Larry Stickling, Executive Director of the Collaborative Governance Project at the Internet Society, and included a balanced group of politically left- and right-leaning public interest groups, private sector organizations, and academics. The event was under Chatham House Rule and did not allow tweeting during the meeting in order to encourage participants to freely and respectfully voice their Continue reading
The Week in Internet News: X-Ray I
AI to get X-ray vision: Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory are getting close to creating AI that can see through walls, Geek.com reported. The research team is using AI to analyze radio signals bouncing off human bodies. The result is a neural network-generated stick figure that moves like the targeted person does.
Dr. AI will see you now: Perhaps more useful that looking through walls, some AI technologies are now being used to identify tuberculosis, pneumonia, upper respiratory infection, and bronchitis based on how a cough sounds, said AdWeek. Several companies are exploring other ways to use AI in healthcare settings.
Encryption wars, part 207: Apple has moved to close a security hole that law enforcement agencies used to defeat encryption on iPhones, according to many news reports, including one in the New York Times. The Apple move set off a new round of debate about encrypted devices and law enforcement access, the Washington Post noted.
It appears that at least one company that builds iPhone cracking tools already has a workaround, however, Motherboard reported.
Meanwhile, an FBI official suggested that each encrypted device that law enforcement agencies cannot crack represents a victim without justice, BusinessInsider. Continue reading
SEE 7: Connectivity, Routing Security & IoT
The 7th RIPE South-East Europe (SEE 7) meeting is being held on 18-19 June 2018 in Timisoara, Romania, and is focusing on several of the subjects of interest to the Internet Society. It’s also being chaired by our colleague Jan Žorž, whilst I’ll be talking about IoT Security and the OTA IoT Trust Framework.
In Monday, there are talks on BGP monitoring from Paolo Lucente (pmacct), and from Krzysztof Grzegorz Szarkowicz (Juniper Networks) on improvements to routing protocols to suit the centralised data centre-based architectures that are becoming more prevalent on the Internet, and which are the subject of an Internet Draft. Zoran Perovic (SOX) will also talk about paradigm shifts in the implementation of Internet Exchange Points.
On Tuesday, there will be a discussion led by Goran Slavic (SOX) on implementing MANRS in an IXP, which is very relevant to the current MANRS initiative which is increasingly being adopted by IXPs. Our colleague Jan will then be presenting about RIPE-690 which provides recommendations for IPv6 address prefix assignments for end-users. Preceding this, will be an update on IPv6 adoption in the SEE region from Massimiliano Stucchi (RIPE NCC).
Some other highlights are the talk on Quad9DNS by Nishal Goburdhan (PCH) that’s supporting Continue reading
EuroDIG 2018 Gathers the Internet Community: What’s New
The 12th edition of the European Dialogue on Internet Governance or the EuroDIG, as it is commonly known, took place in Tbilisi, Georgia, on 5-6 June. The Internet Society (ISOC) is an institutional partner to EuroDIG and the ISOC European Regional Bureau helped shape the agenda and were involved in several sessions.
This year, a few specific aspects caught my attention and created a lot of debate during the sessions and in the corridors.
Reinforcing the multistakeholder model
While European governments have traditionally been strong supporters of the Internet Governance Fora (IGF) and the multistakeholder model, this support has been to some extent compromised by concerns over national security and other priorities in the recent times. Several core members of the European Internet community have talked about a “fatigue” with the regional and national IGFs.
This year’s EuroDIG offered some fresh food for thought. Larry Strickling, who leads the Internet Society’s Collaborative Governance project, made several interventions during the EuroDIG. Strickling’s extensive experience of driving multistakeholder processes and his practical approach were received with great interest and curiosity. In parallel, high participation from young people injected heaps of new energy and optimism to the event.
Embracing the Internet opportunity Continue reading
Hackathon@AIS: Summary report
The annual Hackathon@AIS, in its second year, is aimed at exposing engineers from the Africa region to open Internet Standards Development. This year, the event was held 9-10 May 2018 in Dakar Senegal at the Radisson Blu Hotel during the Africa Internet Summit (AIS-2018).
The event was attended by more than 75 engineers from 15 countries including 11 fellows who were supported to attend the event. The event featured participants with English and or French-speaking backgrounds encouraging collaboration to work. Organized into 3 tracks, the event allowed participants to choose which track they were interested in participating in. The tracks were as follows:
1. Network Time Protocol Track
Objectives:
- Make NTP more secure (Privacy)
- Using WireShark NTP Plugin to read/analyze NTP traffic
- Code changes to NTP implementations to make them compliant with the draft
- Read and understand Draft RFC
Facilitators:
- Loganaden Velvindron (Mauritius)
- Nitin Mutkawoa (Mauritius)
- Serge-Parfait Goma (Congo)
Participants were introduced to NTP and asked to test out an IETF draft and implement it in open source NTP clients.
Outcome:
Participants were able to successfully implement draft and made presentations demonstrating their work and accomplishments.
2. Network Programmability
Objectives:
- Introduce participants to Software Defined Networking (SDN)
- Introduce network Continue reading
New Video Explains Routing Security and How MANRS Can Help
Routing security can be a difficult topic to explain. It’s technical. It’s filled with industry jargon and acronyms. It’s, well, nerdy. But routing security is vital to a stable and secure future Internet, and we here at the Internet Society have been supporting the Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS) initiative for several years now. To help explain, at a very high level, some of the major routing security issues and how MANRS can help address them, we’re pleased to announce a new explanatory video.
Available with English, French, and Spanish subtitles, this short new video explains three major incidents that can lead to things like denial of service attacks, surveillance, and lost revenue:
- Route Hijacking – when one network operator or attacker impersonates another
- Route Leak – when a network operator unintentionally announces that it has a route to a destination
- IP Address Spoofing – when fake source IP addresses hide a sender’s identity
Network operators of all sizes have a role to play in securing the Internet’s routing infrastructure. By implementing the four simple MANRS Actions, together we can make significant improvements to reduce the most common routing threats. Those four actions are:
- Filtering – making Continue reading
Considerations Regarding Encryption and Exceptional Access Briefing
On June 12, 2018, the Internet Society hosted a briefing for Congressional staff on encryption and lawful access. Considerations Regarding Encryption and Exceptional Access offered an opportunity for participants to learn more about the technical aspects of encryption, risks associated with creating back doors, and other technical means for lawful access.
Before beginning the conversation, participants were given a primer on encryption, which offered high-level explanation of different kinds of encryption and exceptional access, and shown a video on end-to-end encryption, which used colors to explain how encryption keys are exchanged. Encryption experts, including Christine Runnegar (Senior Director, Internet Trust, Internet Society), Robyn Greene (Policy Counsel and Government Affairs Lead, Open Technology Institute), and Maurice Turner (Senior Technologist, Center for Democracy and Technology), then engaged in a two-hour, in-depth conversation with participants, answering questions and discussing global norms and policies.
The panelists emphasized that encryption is currently the most robust security tool in existence, but just as it gets more sophisticated, so too do hackers. Sooner or later this security tool will likely be bypassed and new tools will need to be created. Weakening encryption by creating keys for “backdoor” access that can evade its security measures makes any Continue reading
A Partnership to Tackle Growing Risks in a Connected World
With a shared vision of putting people at the center of the Internet, the Internet Society and Consumers International have formed a new working partnership aimed at creating a safer, more trusted Internet for everyone.
As stated in a joint letter to G20 leaders, both organizations share the view that the unwritten future of the Internet is full of endless opportunity, but that if we want everyone to benefit from its potential we need to make sure it is fair, open, safe and secure.
Only by prioritizing the needs of people in an increasingly-connected world, can we make this possible. Consumers should be confident in their use of Internet-connected devices, and have the right to know how their personal data is collected, protected, shared and stored.
Our organizations plan to work together on a wide range of initiatives including to make sure individuals have access to secure Internet-connected devices, understand what online privacy and security means for them, and are empowered to make informed choices about the technology they use in their daily lives.
The Internet of Things (or IoT) offers the promise of convenience, efficiency and more personalized services. It’s a phenomenon that’s being seen all around the Continue reading
MANRS BCOP published as RIPE document
The MANRS initiative’s set of Best Current Operational Practices has received recognition from the RIPE community by being published as RIPE-706.
Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security (MANRS) – which is supported by the Internet Society – aims to help network operators around the world to improve the security and resilience of the global routing system through four actions that include filtering, anti-spoofing, coordination and support for global validation. It currently involves over 85 organisations encompassing nearly 200 Autonomous Systems around the world, including some of the largest ISPs.
The MANRS BCOP offers guidance on how to practically implement each of the MANRS actions, based on the operational experiences of numerous network operators around the world. It’s a must read for those working with the global routing system, as routing security is a shared responsibility and needs commitment to good practices from all its participants.
The RIPE documents are developed and approved by the RIPE community, having been published since 1989. They include technical and operational recommendations, as well as policy, procedural and organisational documents. The publication of RIPE-706 represents community recognition of the MANRS principles and the importance of a commitment to routing security.
The MANRS initiative would like to thank David Freedman, Brian Continue reading
ISOC has goals at TNC18
This week is TNC18, the largest European research and education networking conference, which is being held at the Lerkendal Stadium in Trondheim, Norway – the home of current Norwegian Football Champions Rosenborg BK. Of course we’re actually in a conference centre underneath one of the grandstands and not on the pitch, but this is still a premier event that brings together managers, network engineers, and researchers from R&E networks in Europe and the rest of the world.
The Internet Society is not only one of the conference sponsors, but has a significant role in the programme as well. Our colleague Karen O’Donoghue on Monday spoke about NRENs and IoT Security in the ‘What’s Coming Next In Privacy Innovation‘ session, where she’s discussing the security and privacy challenges of burgeoning numbers of IoT devices and how these will impact R&E communities. ISOC is encouraging the development of best practices through the Online Trust Alliance’s IoT Security & Privacy Trust Framework, and this is a good opportunity to discuss how the NREN community can take the lead in adopting good operational practice.
Karen will also be talking about Time and Security during the ‘Security‘ session on Tuesday. Continue reading
Registration Open for Applied Networking Research Workshop: TLS, Routing, Privacy, and More
The third Applied Networking Research Workshop will take place on Monday, 16 July, during the IETF 102 meeting in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
The full workshop program is now available online and includes sessions on TLS, routing, Internet infrastructure, congestion control, traffic engineering, and anonymous communications. The workshop will conclude with a poster session. Accepted papers will be made available at no charge via the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Digital Library in due course.
The ACM, IRTF & Internet Society Applied Networking Research Workshop 2018 is an academic workshop that provides a forum for researchers, vendors, network operators and the Internet standards community to present and discuss emerging results in applied networking research. It is sponsored by ACM SIGCOMM, the IRTF, and the Internet Society. The workshop is also generously supported by Comcast and Akamai.
This academic workshop is open to all; registration is free for IETF attendees and $150 USD otherwise. Registration information is available. Student travel grants are also available and the deadline to apply for these is 15 June 2017.
If you’re already planning to be in Montreal for IETF, check out the workshop program and consider registering for the ANRW 2018 to take in these great Continue reading
CLIC Québec – L’heure du déclic pour la découverte et l’accès en ligne au contenu culturel québécois
Dans un contexte de renouvellement des politiques culturelles du Québec et du Canada à l’ère du numérique, ISOC Québec a lancé le projet « CLIC Québec » grâce à la subvention Beyond The Net octroyée par l’Internet Society en juillet 2017. Ainsi, depuis bientôt un an, ISOC Québec oeuvre à travers « CLIC Québec » d’une part à sensibiliser les décideurs politiques et les utilisateurs finaux et d’autre part à identifier et valoriser les bonnes pratiques des milieux culturels en matière de diffusion, de promotion et d’accès en ligne aux contenus et produits culturels locaux.
Profitant de la tenue du 1er Forum sur la Gouvernance d’Internet au Québec (FGI Québec), qui coïncidait avec les célébrations des 25 ans de l’Internet Society en septembre 2017, ISOC Québec a organisé un atelier intitulé Cultures en réseaux et découvrabilité des contenus locaux au cours duquel une soixantaine de participants (professionnels de la culture, experts et consultants en politiques culturelles, spécialistes des métadonnées et du Web sémantique, chercheurs/universitaires, citoyens et utilisateurs finaux) ont identifié ensemble dix pistes d’action susceptibles d’accroître la présence et le rayonnement des contenus culturels québécois sur Internet.
Pour mobiliser davantage les acteurs des différents secteurs des industries culturelles québécoises Continue reading
CEO Succession at Internet Society – Status update (June 2018)
This is a quick update on the CEO Succession process at the Internet Society (ISOC). For background, please check my previous notes to the community.
As you know, the application window for potential candidates for ISOC’s CEO position closed in early April. Let me update you on where we are in the process.
The process for selecting a new CEO for ISOC is progressing well and is on track. As anticipated, and as a consequence of the broad appeal of the role, the open call for applicants resulted in a significant amount of interest from all around the world. The Board received more than one hundred applications from candidates with a diverse set of backgrounds in business and the private sector, government, the technical community, the global NGO space, and the wider Internet community.
The strength and quality of the applications has been very high and it has been an incredibly tough challenge to identify and evaluate the most suitable candidates for this role from such a large and qualified pool of talent and experience.
Nevertheless, given the importance that the CEO position holds for both ISOC and the Internet as a whole, the deliberation by the Board has been Continue reading