Icann's general meetings are held 3 times a year. Paris welcomes the 32nd event of this kind this week. It is a good occasion for various interest groups to share their opinions on the way Internet will/may/should evolve. It is also a place to openly discuss (and eventually agree on) policies that will regulate how the Web is operated.

The subject of a complete TLD (top-level domain name) extensions' liberalisation, announced (almost) without prior notice by the Director of Icann Paul Twomey some days ago, has made the headlines of major business newspapers such as yesterday's LesEchos.

A debate has occured between pros and cons during the "New gTLDs workshop", but from a security point fo view, this doesn't looks like a good idea. Mike Rodenbaugh expressed some concerns about such a move, that may endanger the security and stability of Internet. But other participants warmly endorsed the proposition.

Previously in the afternoon, Steve Crocker and Dave Piscitello from the SSAC committee warned the public about some other threats. They particularly exposed the risk of phishing attacks that target domain names portfolios and registrars impersonation attacks. The Comcast example served as an illustration for registrars attending this session. The problem of the DNS response modification by "entrusted agents" (registries, registrars, ISPs, etc.) has also been discussed. You may review the complete SSAC committee action plan on this page.

Numerous other topics of interest for the security community are raised during this week. The fast-flux hosting technique used in more and more malevolent activities was for example on the agenda of another meeting from the GNSO. This report from March 2008 helped the GNSO approve a resolution on the matter. Icann also seems to finally agree on another threat/moneymaking model -cross out words depending which business you're in- : Domain Tasting.

But Icann is a complex not-for-profit (sic) organisation. Different groups are lobbying for diverging (often financially motivated) interests: these groups can represent (linguistic or geographic) communities that want Icann to open a new TLD for their exclusive use. On the other hand, the CP80 foundation tries for example to encourage Icann to set standards -ports filtering for instance- at the governments or ISPs' level to rule out explicit adult content from the Web.

The heavy Icann structure and strong opposite forces often result in a slow decision process (remember the .XXX TLD story?). And on the other side, cybercriminals and cyberprofiteers don't have these burdens and will quickly identify "opportunities".