New eligibility criteria for .EU

New eligibility criteria for .EU
Image source: OpenClipart-Vectors via Pixabay

As of October 19, 2019, internationally-based EU citizens can now register .EU or .ею domain names.

The .EU is the country code top level domain for the European Union. More than 3.6 million registrations spread out across Europe make this TLD a popular extension. Initially, this extension is only reserved to companies and individuals residing within EU and EEA member states. However in order to meet the needs of an ever-changing digital environment, EURid, the .EU registry, changes this eligibility criteria to extend it to all EU citizens living around the world.

“We are excited to be able to extend the registration criteria to EU citizens around the world. The .eu domain is now closer to your ambitions, achievements and dreams. It is the bridge connecting you to your friends and family – even if you live outside the EU. It will always show your roots, your outlook, and your cultural values.” – Marc van Wesemael, EURid`s CEO.

For more information on the conditions for registration of your .EU, don’t hesitate to contact us.

ccTLDs news : .AR domain name registrations for Argentina are opened

ccTLDs news : .AR domain name registrations for Argentina are opened
Image source: Mampu via Pixabay

Argentina now offers the possibility to register .AR domain names. Until now, it was only possible to register third level domain names particularly in .COM.AR.

Here are the launching periods planned:

Sunrise period – From 11/09/2019 to 09/11/2019

  • Priority to holders of domain names registered in the zones .com.ar, .net.ar, .org.ar, .int.ar, .tur.ar, before December 1st, 2015 and in effect at August 27, 2019.
  • At the end of this period, if only one request is received, the user who did the request can register the domain name by paying the corresponding tax. If many requests are received by the registry for the same name, the holder of the name will be decided by drawing lots.

Intermediary period – From 27/11/2019 to 27/01/2020

During this period, all the community can request the registration of domain names available in .AR.

The reserved and restricted domain names are excluded and some domain names will likely be subjects to approval.

  • Reserved domains: domain names identical to names registered in ‘.gob.ar’ and ‘.mil.ar’ are exclusively reserved to these names’ holders. To note: Even a domain name reserved in one of the .AR zones can be classified as reserved by the Argentinian registry.
  • Restricted domains: Even a domain name reserved in one of the .AR zones can be classified as reserved by the Argentinian registry, making these names unavailable for registration.
  • Terms which are subjects to approval: normal words or expressions which, if they are part of a domain name, must be approved by the Argentinian registry. They include names that are aggravating, discriminatory or contrary to the law, to morality or to good customs, or that could cause confusion, deception or identity theft.

For any information, don’t hesitate to contact your Nameshield’s expert.

General availability: 15/09/2020 (Update)

Starting 15/09/2020, domain names available can be registered in .AR by any user, depending on the conditions set by the rules of the Argentinian registry.

For reminder, the registration conditions of the .AR include the providing of supporting documents.

If your current domain names portfolio doesn’t have COM.AR, NET.AR, etc. and you wish to register a .AR at the time of the general availability, we advise you to anticipate and to contact your consultant to know the detail of the documents to provide.

The domain name is an integral intangible asset

Essential key element to any dematerialized data flow exchange, the domain name became a strategic intangible asset of great value. Depending on the academic works, there is a real correlation between the intangible assets’ quality and the companies’ economic performance. Identifying and valuating domain names becomes necessary for the financial director. Explanations in La revue de la Société Française des Analystes Financiers – SFAF (the journal of the French Society of Financial Analysts) of Jean-Manuel Gaget, Strategy and Consulting director of Nameshield and administrator of the Institut de Comptabilité de l’Immatériel (Intangible Accounting Institute).

In the 90’s, the domain name was an accessory element of the brand. During its world expansion, it became the principal element of the brand, in particular in the e-commerce’s world. You only need to look at how Amazon or Easyjet have developed their logo to consider it as a unique communication medium.

The domain name has this unique particularity to be an intangible asset with four dimensions. It is simultaneously:

  1. An IT object allowing to access services on the Internet by being the link between the IP address (a suite of numbers) of a physical object [computer, server, smartphone…] and a literal name (role of the Domain Name Server or DNS);
  2. A communication tool allowing to establish its identity on the Internet and gain a digital territory;
  3. A legal element through a temporary contract with an Internet Registry;
  4. A financial asset, accountable as an intangible asset under certain conditions.

Now an essential key element to any dematerialized data flow exchange, be it for email sending, the access to websites, social networks and connected objects, any data exchange on the Internet passes by the use of a domain name and any service disruption has important consequences on the organizations’ activity.

Why and how to rate your domain name capital?

Today, the academic works, in particular carried by the French referential of the intangible capital’s measure “Thesaurus Capital Immatériel” (Thesaurus Intangible Capital) show a real correlation between the intangible assets’ quality and the companies’ economic performance. The higher the quality of the intangible assets is (human capital, information system capital, customer capital…), the stronger, more sustainable and economically efficient in the medium and long term the company’s fundamentals are. Hence the importance to measure the intangible capital and its evolution over time. 

However, as much as literature is rich regarding methods of brands valuation, it is near non-existent regarding domain names. That is why in 2019, the Intangible Accounting Institute wished to enrich the Thesaurus Intangible Capital with a specific section on the rating of the domain name capital. In the same way that clients, Human, IT, knowledge… assets are evaluated, we searched to evaluate the domain name capital in association with the brand capital. Because brands and domain names are now inseparable!

Accounting principles applicable to domain names

In a decision of the French Council of State of December 7th, 2016 (ebay.fr case), it is reminded that if the use of a domain name:

  • Represents a constant source of profits;
  • Has a sufficient sustainability (particularly if it can be regularly renewed);
  • Is likely to be transferred;

Then it is an intangible asset of the company and must follow the associated accounting and tax rules. As such, the domain names have to be accounted either at their creation cost, at their acquisition value, or at their current value (market value) for the ones acquired free of charge. The domain names are then not to be considered as a simple IT workload, but as real assets that should be managed at fair value. As such, further attention on tax issues related to domain names’ value must be given within the context of the transfer prices.

Which financial valuation methods to use?

Inspired by the ISO 10668 standard regarding the monetary valuation of the brands, we have developed a reliable scientific corpus by financing the CIFRE thesis of Mr. Clement GENTY (2016-2019), covering the subject: “Internet governance and global economy: proposal of a valuation model of a domain name’s value as intangible asset“. It is in this context that three approaches regarding the monetary valuation of domain names have been studied:

  • A historical costs approach;
  • A market approach (on semantics);
  • A loss approach (replacement cost).

The market approach aims to measure the semantic value of a domain name by reference to the monetary transactions passed. To that end, we have developed a database of more than 1.4 million transactions passed. This approach allows to give a price value by comparable.

Aim: to measure the digital performance of the organizations

These three approaches of domain names valuation by historical costs, the market and the loss, combined to the domain name capital rating are tools that should be at the disposal of the financial directions so they can better measure the digital performance of their organizations.

Satori Botnet: The hacker facing up to 10 years imprisonment did not act alone

Satori botnet
Image source: TheDigitalArtist via Pixabay

We now know more about the cyberpirate, Nexus Zeta, whose real name is Kenneth Currin Schuchman, who distinguished himself with the creation of the Satori botnet.

Pleading guilty to the charges regarding Satori botnet creation, his confessions describe the implementation of this attack using IoT flaws.

For reminder, a botnet is a set of infected computers remotely controlled by a cybercriminal. The machines that belong to a botnet are often called “bots” or “zombies”. The aim: to spread a malware or a virus to the greatest number of machines possible.

The hacker Nexus Zeta did not act alone but worked together with two other cybercriminals: Vamp who served as the primary developer/coder of Satori and Drake who managed the botnet sales.

The Satori botnet was created based on the public code of the Mirai IoT malware.

For reminder, in 2016, Mirai was the source of one of the biggest DDoS ever seen in 2016, targeting in particular the American provider DYN. The functioning is based on the permanent research on the Internet, of IP addresses corresponding to connected objects (IoT). Once the vulnerable connected objects identified, Mirai connects to them to install the malware.

If the Satori botnet mainly attacked the devices running with factory-set or easy to guess passwords, in its first month of deployment, it has infected over 100 000 devices.

Between 2017 and 2018, the three hackers continue to develop Satori, which they will rename Okiru and Masuta. The botnet went as far as to infect over 700 000 devices.

Officially accused by the American authorities, Kenneth Currin Schuchman is free until his trial. However, he breaks the pre-trial release conditions by accessing the Internet and developing a new botnet. It is in October 2018 that he is this time arrested and jailed. Pleading guilty, he’s facing up to ten years in prison and a fine of 250 000 dollars.

50 years after Arpanet, the Internet’s ancestor

Arpanet - Internet’s ancestor - Nameshield Blog
Image source: geralt via Pixabay

On October 29, 1969 UCLA sends the very first e-message to Stanford Research Institute through Arpanet network (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) laying the foundation for today’s networked world.

Arpanet, the Internet’s precursor 

Arpanet is the first data transfer network developed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) which belonged to the U.S. Defense Department.

The first Arpanet node was set up at UCLA on August 30, 1969, the second node, at the Stanford Research Institute, was set up on October 1st 1969. The first message was sent between the two institutions on October 29 1969 by the UCLA computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock who wished to send the word “login” but the system crashed so only two letters, “l” and “o”, were transmitted, the complete word will only be transmitted 1 hour later.

Arpanet connected some universities and research institutes: first, UCLA and Stanford Research Institute, followed by UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah. At the end of 1969, Arpanet counted 4 nodes, in 1971, 23 nodes were created and 111 nodes in 1977.

In 1983, Arpanet has been divided in two networks: one military, the MILnet (Military Network) and the other academic, the NSFnet.

On January 1st 1983, the name “Internet” already in use to define all of Arpanet, became official.

World Wide Web turns 30 years old

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher working for the CERN, proposed a hypertext system working on the Internet. This system was originally developed for scientists working in universities and institutes around the world, so they could instantly share information. His vision of universal connectivity became the World Wide Web, which sent Internet usage skyrocketing.

In 1993, Mosaic, the first popular web browser was created by Marc Andreessen and Eric J.Bina, two students of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) of the University of Illinois. It was not the first graphical web browser but Mosaic was particularly fast and allowed the users to display images inside web pages instead of displaying images in a separate window, which has given it some popularity and contributed to increase the World Wide Web’s popularity.

Internet Protocol – From IPv4 to IPv6

The Internet Protocol (IP) is a set of communication protocols of IT networks developed to be used on the Internet. IP protocols allow a unique addressing service for all connected devices.

IPv4 the first major version was invented in the 70’s and introduced to the public in 1981. It is still the dominant protocol of the Internet today. Twenty years ago, the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) started predicting the depletion of IPv4 addresses and began working to create a new version of the Internet Protocol: IPv6.

IPv4 uses a 32-bit addressing scheme to support 4.3 billion devices, while IPv6 possesses a much larger address space. Indeed, IPv6 uses a 128-bit address allowing 3.4 x 1038 possible addresses.

DNS – Domain Name System

At the request of the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Defense Department, the DNS (Domain Name System) was invented in 1983 by Jon Postel and Paul Mockapetris, in order to associate complex IP addresses with humanly understandable and easy-to-remember names. Thus a logical address, the domain name, is associated to a physical address, the IP address. The domain name and IP address are unique.

In 1998, is created ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the regulatory authority of the Internet. Its main purpose is to allocate the Internet protocol addresses spaces, to attribute the protocol identifier (IP), to manage the domain name system of top level for generic codes (gTLD), to assign the country codes (ccTLD), and to carry out the functions of the root servers’ system management.

With 351.8 million domain names registrations in the first quarter of 2019, domain names registrations continue to climb, but with the increase of the number of threats aiming the DNS at the same time.

The emergence of cyber threats

Considered as one of the first cyberattacks and certainly the first to attract the media’s attention, the Morris Worm was launched in 1988 by a student of the Cornell University, Robert Tappan Morris. Originally, the malware developed by the student didn’t have for purpose to cause damage but simply to estimate the extent of the Internet. However this worm affected about 60 000 computers estimated connected to the Internet and the cost of the damages was about 100 000 to 10 million dollars. This event marks the turning point in the field of online security.

Today, cyberattacks are abundant, frequent and more and more sophisticated. The evolution of techniques and the arrival of new technologies make cyberattacks increasingly complex and offer new opportunities to attackers.

There are various types of cyberattack like attacks aiming the DNS: DDoS, DNS cache poisoning, DNS spoofing, Man in the Middle… (In 2019, according to IDC – International Data Corporation, 82% of companies worldwide have faced a DNS attack over the past year) or attacks directly aiming users and having for purpose to obtain confidential information to steal an identity (phishing).

The consequences for victimized companies can be significant. For example, today the cost of a data breach is 3.92 million dollars on average according to IBM Security, this cost has risen 12% over the past five years.

An IP traffic estimated in 2022 more important than the one generated from 1984 to 2016

With more than 5 billion Google searches made every day, e-commerce continuing to thrive, social media growing in popularity and the increasing number of connected objects, the traffic volume on the Internet has risen considerably.

Indeed, in 1974, daily traffic on the Internet surpassed 3 million packets per day. According to a Cisco’s research in 2017, the global IP traffic reached 122 exabytes per month, the company estimates that this volume should reach 396 exabytes by 2022.

“The size and complexity of the Internet continues to grow in ways that many could not have imagined. Since we first started the VNI Forecast in 2005, traffic has increased 56-fold, amassing a 36% CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) with more people, devices and applications accessing IP networks” said Jonathan Davidson, senior vice president and general manager of Service Provider Business at Cisco.

Today, 50 years after the birth of the Internet’s ancestor, Arpanet, there are more Internet connected devices than people in the world. In 2022, the web users will represent 60% of the world’s population and more than 28 billion devices will connect to the Internet.