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Trademark Holder of "Ovation Hair" Registered In 2012 Wins UDRP On http://t.co/arMn6YqxoM Registered in 2008... http://t.co/yL60fz9zUZ

— The Domains (@thedomains) November 19, 2013

First DS records added to the .is zone

Registrants can now add DS records for their domains to the .is zone. This formally makes it possible to activate DNSSEC for any .is domain. Shortly after this was enabled, the first DS records where added. Congratulation to the registrants of 'tass.is' and 'secure.is'.

DNSSEC for the ccTLD .is is now fully deployed and we encourage our registrants to secure their domains as soon as possible.

DNSSEC activated for .is

The Domain Name System (DNS) ensures that everyone can find resources on the internet in a simple way, by using domains and hostnames. Without DNS we would have to use the IP addresses of the resources we were looking for (web site, mail server etc.), but they are hard to remember and cumbersome to use.

From the beginning certain problems have been known with the way DNS is implemented (See RFC3833). These problems may allow attackers to disrupt the lookup process, either stopping people from accessing certain resources or directing users to different resources than they intended. Banks, insurance companies, commerce, government and other sites that handle important and critial data are popular targets for these kinds of attacks where the attackers look to seize personal information, login credentials and credit card information from unsuspecting users.

To fix these weaknesses, an extension of the DNS protocol, DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions), was created. DNSSEC makes it possible for DNS servers to cryptographically sign their responses so that users are assured that the response they get originated from the correct DNS server.

ISNIC has now finished the first stage in implementing DNSSEC for the .is TLD, by signing the .is zone and having the corresponding DS records published in the root zone by IANA. Records in the is zone can now be authenticated by properly configured DNS resolvers that support DNSSEC.

The next step in the implementation is to allow domain holders to publish their DS records in the .is zone so their signed zone can be authenticated by the chain of trust to the root zone. Then domain holders can be assured that properly configured resolvers can and will authenticate responses from their domain servers and will disregard attempts from attackers to disrupt or poison the DNS system.

See RFC4033, RFC4034 and RFC4035 regarding the definitions of DNSSEC and RFC6781 regarding DNSSEC operational practices. ISNIC uses open source software, OpenDNSSEC to manage keys and signing of records in the is zone.

DNSSEC service will be included in the yearly fee for all domains.

Postal fee introduced

Today ISNIC began levying a special fee of €2.0 for printing and sending out bills via conventional mail.

Receiving paper bills via conventional mail is optional and users can select not to receive any such bills, thus avoiding these charges. ISNIC assumes that non-domestic billing contacts elect not to receive bills via conventional mail, only by email. If a registrant needs paper based bills, he can instruct the billing contact to change the default setting.  See the "Cancel paper" option under "My settings".

As before, ISNIC will not charge any transaction fee for those that choose to pay via online baking (mostly domestic users). We still recommend all to pay and renew via credit card by using ISNIC's automatic renewal for security.  

Electronic versions of bills and charging summaries are made available to the billing contacts via the ISNIC web after login.

Merchants weekend (bank holiday)

ISNIC's office is closed today, first Monday in August, which is the yearly "Merchants weekend" (verslunarmannahelgi) in Iceland. We will be back again tomorrow morning.