From rbnexploit, RBN - Partners Official Sponsors of ICANN?:
Russian Business Network (RBN); what if they were out to own the Internet by owning the DNS? The Internet totally relies on DNS (Domain Name System) so obviously this must be the stuff that Hollywood movies are made of, but this nightmare scenario is more real than any of us would like to believe.
This article draws a few of the ingredients together, it is important to stress this is not to discredit ICANN, but to show just how RBN and their associates are applying themselves to the weakness of DNS allocation and exploiting ICANN’s vulnerability via influence, commercial sponsorship and registrar development.
This one may fall into the tin-foil-hat arena, especially considering the following text:
The background research and this summary article has been around four months in the making within the community. It should be emphasized there is considerably more ‘who’ and ‘what’ which will be presented in full later.
The “there’s more evidence, but it’s secret” line is a classic for conspiracy theorists. It may pan out or it may not, but the article does raise a couple of very interesting points.
First, organizations such as ICANN are designed to be completely open and transparent (and they should be). An completely open dialogue requires full and complete disclosure, however, and it’s very easy for malicious entities such as the RBN to participate without that disclosure, which adds significant risk to the process.
Congress requires all lobbyists to be registered so that our representatives know who they’re talking to and what interests they represent. It allows them to control to dialogue and keep entities such as drug cartels from influencing US policy. Whether that particular system works or not, it still addresses an important need.
The second issue they raise is one of trust. The most fundamental trust most web entities (such as small online businesses) make is with their registrar and hosting provider. Registrar/Hosting companies have propegated so quickly that reputation economics are useless in making a vendor decision, so price/performance is the metric many entities use in choosing a registrar/hosting solution. This makes it far too easy for entities such as the RBN to victimize their customers without any possibility of recourse.
At any rate, I look forward to any information that makes the article’s case more directly. It promises to be interesting.
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