Cracks in the foundation of the Internet: A senior official at the international Internet administration ICANN has warned of a fragmentation of the global network. “The potential fragmentation of the Internet is a worrying topic,” said ICANN’s technology officer for Europe and North America, David Huberman, in Rust, southern Baden, on the sidelines of the Cloudfest industry meeting. When it comes to Internet isolation, experts primarily focus on the states of Russia, Iran and China. Huberman did not comment explicitly on individual countries. “These are authoritarian governments that want to control their people,” he said simply. ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is based in the USA and has been managing the system of international top-level domains with endings such as “.com” since it was founded in 1998 and assigning IP addresses to them. The central task is to ensure the secure and stable operation of the Domain Name System (DNS) for the Internet. The organization’s 78th Annual General Meeting will be held in Hamburg in October with more than 2000 participants. ICANN is still against blocking Russia from the Internet, said Huberman against the background of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “We say no. We have to remain neutral.” At the start of the war last year, Ukraine demanded that Russia be banned from the Internet. ICANN had rejected that from the beginning. Kristian Ørmen of the Swedish foundation Internetstiftelsen said that the technical monitoring of the domain name system – that is the technical heart of the internet – is guaranteed. “You can trust him, it’s transparent,” he said. Ørmen belongs to a very small circle of computer specialists worldwide who monitor the security of the system and have special authorizations for it.
ICANN – Internet lockdown warning – Economy
