Last year was not a good year for new generic domain names (new gTLDs). While a number of domain names became available for registration, the total number of new domain names decreased for the first time in its history. While there were 27,710,468 domain names registered at the beginning of the year 2018, only 23,823,948 saw the end of the year. Domain holders in the Czech Republic had a total of 23,245 new gTLDs registered, i.e. less than 0.1 %.
For our children to continue using the Internet
The time before the GDPR enters into force is relentlessly ticking away. Do not worry, in this post I am neither going to paint scary pictures of what companies will have to face, nor make a list of what you should forget about when this law is enacted; I will “just” focus on the processing of personal data of children, namely the Article 8 that regulates the conditions for granting consent with processing of the child’s personal data in connection with information society services.
Nice and happy Christmas holidays and everything good in the new year 2018 wishes the CZ.NIC team
National telecom regulators discussed challenges in quality of service (QoS) measurement
On the 7th of December 2017, the MoQoS project held its first stakeholders´ workshop aimed at measuring the so-called Quality of Service of high-speed Internet using the crowdsourcing method.
Your Own Certification Authority in a Letsencrypt Style
Have you ever thought of automating the certificate issuing in your organization’s internal certification authority? How about using the same procedure as in Let’s Encrypt and the ACME protocol, while enjoying all the benefits ACME has to offer? The possible solution is to use Boulder. I will now try to break down for you the Boulder’s installation process and the pitfalls that I encountered during the setup.
Suricon: Practical experience with cybersecurity in manufacturing and companies
One of the most comprehensive open source intrusion detection systems Suricata held its annual conference in Prague. And because CZ.NIC intensively uses Suricata in its Turris routers to protect users, we have become a proud partner of the event. There, we shared our experience with other Suricata users and showed the technological solution of the Turris Omnia router, where Suricata can be operated with ease.
Looking back at the Cybercompetition finale
A golden opportunity: the bank we’re about to rob is moving to new premises today. To our luck, they’re also testing alarms until 4 PM, so it won’t be suspicious if we accidentally set one off. There is an open window on the first floor protected by a single sensor. Our inside man among the staff has placed an IP camera into the sensor cabinet, so we can see if the sensor we are trying to break has the ‘status OK’ or the alarm is screaming. The IP camera is streaming to YouTube — alas with a delay. The problem is that the sensor communicates via radio waves: every 15 to 30 seconds the diode beeps and the device sends a signal. We’re listening, trying to imitate it, and when we’re sure, we’re gonna shut down the sensor and turn on our little imitation that we built. What is left is just to arrange the tin foil between the antennas, like this… the sensor alarm’s blaring! We are holding our ears and will try again in half a minute.
New Version of FRED, Testing Was Its Foundational
On the 15th of November, following the prior maintenance notification, our system administrators have successfully installed a new version of FRED, the system that is the basis of the .cz domain name registry (as well as national domain name registries in a dozen of other countries). What does that actually mean though?
Pexeso: cyber education through play without a computer
Today’s children often learn to play a video on a tablet before they utter their first sentence, and game applications are often more popular among our little ones than toy blocks. When the parents find out that a cute hat for a virtual doll has deprived their account of an amount exceeding the price of some real fashion accessory, they start taking an interest in the security settings and in what their kids do on the computer.
New additions to the user community of the FRED registration system
Last year, our open source FRED registration system experienced a success in Togo, Argentina and Malawi. In particular, Argentina, as the eighth largest country of the world, made us very happy. Argentina is now the largest domain register that uses FRED apart from us. Since we have information from countries that have been testing our system for a long time, we were quite surprised to hear from Macau at the beginning of this year that they managed to complete the installation and transition and are planning to run production soon. The .MO domain registry is the first Asian destination of our product. Shortly thereafter, we learned of another registry in Africa that managed the transition to FRED. It is a small land of Lesotho using the .LS domain. Let’s look at these new additions to the FRED user community in more detail.