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ICANN Newsletter | Week ending 19 December 2014

News from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers


Announcements This Week

IANA Systems Not Compromised

19 December 2014 | As ICANN reported on 16 December 2014, it was recently the target of a so-called "spear phishing" attack.

ICANN Donates $50k to Internet Governance Forum Support Association

18 December 2014 | Los Angeles, California… The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced today that it has donated USD$50,000 to the Internet Governance Forum Support Association (IGFSA).

Results Available for 17 December 2014 New gTLD Program Auction

17 December 2014 | On 17 December 2014, Power Auctions LLC, ICANN's authorized auction service provider, conducted a New gTLD Program Auction to resolve string contention for two new generic top-level domain (gTLD) strings: .BABY and .MLS.

ICANN Announces 2014 IANA Functions Customer Service Survey Results | Organization Achieves 93 Percent Overall Customer Satisfaction

17 December 2014 | The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today published the results of its third annual IANA Functions Customer Service Survey, which reflected a 93 percent overall customer satisfaction rate.

Selection of Advisors to the Enhancing ICANN Accountability Process

17 December 2014 | The Accountability & Governance Public Experts Group (PEG) announces the selection of Advisors to the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG).

ICANN Targeted in Spear Phishing Attack | Enhanced Security Measures Implemented

16 December 2014 | ICANN is investigating a recent intrusion into our systems.

Public Comment Open on Initial Report from the GNSO's PDP Working Group on Translation and Transliteration of Contact Information

16 December 2014 | The Working Group has published its Initial Report that contains its discussion and put the arguments it has gathered to the community.

IDN TLDs - LGR Procedure Implementation - Maximal Starting Repertoire Version 2 is Now Open for Public Comment

15 December 2014 | ICANN is releasing for public comment version 2 of the Maximal Starting Repertoire (MSR-2). This upwardly compatible version of the MSR adds six additional scripts to the repertoire. The MSR is the first deliverable under the "Procedure to Develop and Maintain Label Generation Rules (LGR) for the Root Zone With Respect to IDN Labels" (the Procedure) and the starting point for the work by community based Generation Panels to develop their LGR proposals. The contents of MSR-2 and the detailed rationale behind its development are described in "Maximal Starting Repertoire - MSR-2-Overview and Rationale." Community members are invited to provide feedback on the contents of MSR-2.

Second Annual Report on WHOIS Improvements Now Available

15 December 2014 | ICANN releases its 2014 Annual Report on WHOIS Improvements. This Report is inline with ICANN's commitment to WHOIS and its ongoing improvement.

Join Us for the Middle East's First Regional Webinar on the IANA Stewardship Transition and ICANN's Accountability

15 December 2014 | The ICANN Middle East team invites you to participate in the first regional webinar on the IANA Stewardship and ICANN's Accountability.


Upcoming Events

8-12 February 2014: 52nd International Public ICANN Meeting – Singapore

About ICANN

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Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."