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ICANN and the 7 Keys to the Internet

December 30, 2022 / 01:09:17

This episode covers top-level domains, the company Donuts Inc., the DNS system, and the ICANN key signing ceremony. David Mel shares a personal story about attempting to purchase the domain pizza.pizza, leading to a deeper exploration of domain ownership and internet security.

David recounts his experience in Seattle with friends, where he discovered the existence of pizza.pizza and his desire to buy it. He explains how he found out that Donuts Inc. owns many top-level domains, raising questions about internet ownership and security.

The discussion shifts to the history of the internet, starting from ARPANET to the establishment of the DNS system. David explains how the DNS works and the role of ICANN in overseeing domain registrations.

David and his team attend the ICANN key signing ceremony in Virginia, where they witness the secure process of signing the root zone of the internet. This ceremony involves multiple layers of security and collaboration among key holders from different countries.

The episode concludes with a humorous twist about the actual owner of pizza.pizza, revealing the high cost of the domain and the team's unsuccessful attempts to contact the owner.

TL;DR

David Mel shares his quest to buy pizza.pizza, exploring domain ownership, the DNS system, and the ICANN key signing ceremony.

Episode

1:09:17
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[Music] thank you
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what's up everybody I'm David Mel and welcome to waveform have you ever wanted a domain and then you were in Virginia
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and then you were in a small cage with Iris scanners and lots of strange people me neither until about a month ago
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stick around because I'm about to tell you what the heck I'm talking about all right boys
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let's buckle up let's do this so I'm gonna tell you a story and it's a little weird and a little
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wild and a little cheesy it's an entirely true story correct okay
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yes okay so a few months ago I think this is around June so uh this podcast has been
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a long time coming I was in Seattle hanging out with some friends I think I went there to visit friends I from
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college I haven't seen in a very long time and we were just chilling at one of their their houses and we wanted to
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order a pizza okay because there were a bunch of us and it was like makes sense to have a pizza for everybody right
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so every now and then I go and I look up all of the potential websites that you
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can own all the top level domains that you can own just for fun okay there are many sorry I was thinking about the
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pizza all right yeah no yes it's okay I think we're really simple here yeah I see no flaws yeah we'll get there
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okay so do you guys know what a top level domain is so that would be like the.com or the dot org or the dot gov
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part of the URL yeah um and there's a bunch more that I don't you know pay attention to or keep track
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of but yeah the most common ones being country dot us yeah dot CA they're wow
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nice trivia turns out there are many many many many top level domains I believe that there's a list of top level
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domains that you can go look at any time you want um and I every few months kind of just
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read them for fun because I I really want I really just want to see the domains right so I remember that there
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uh is a DOT Pizza among other things right because there's like dot
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lawyer.fun.joy.monster.condos.cool.dance.dating.deal.deals
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international.investments.irish.jewelry.jobs.joy.vacations.ventures.villas.vin.volvo.voting.voyage all of this random stuff monster monster that's awesome but there's also a DOT
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pizza so in my head I'm like we want a pizza there's a DOT Pizza
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well you you should be able to go to Pizza dot pizza right like if you go to pizza. pizza I would assume that like
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Papa John's or Domino's probably owns Pizza dot Pizza you can tell you're not from the tri-state area why
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are those there needs to be some elitism here if we're from New Jersey yeah those
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are both awful awful pizza places oh totally absolutely but in Seattle that's probably the standard people yeah oh wow
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Papa John's is the most popular pizza chain in the US right okay that's fair fact check that I yeah I think that was
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the fact check I ordered a Papa John's Pizza while I had kovid and this thing
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was so unbelievably dense oh my God I like could not believe this pizza it was
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like ridiculous better ingredients better ingredients not pizza would be
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the best uh domain for Papa John's yeah I mean there are many there are many options that you could have here but I
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just wanted to go to pizza.pizza because I thought it was the dumbest one that's right right because you could you could have like I want to order a DOT pizza or
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I need a DOT pizza but Pizza dub Pizza funnier so I try to go to pizza.pizza
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and it doesn't resolve right it's like not found I'm like um you know what I do when I have good
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domain ideas you're one of those oh yeah you're one of those oh yeah how many domains do you have David uh I haven't
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counted in a while how many digits of domains do you have I think in the two digits okay that's all right which could
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go up to 99 yeah yep that's 97 but yeah so you bought yeah when I have good
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domain ideas I try to I try to buy them right speaking of which Ellis just looked up better ingredients.pizza and
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it's currently available for 14.99 a month that's not bad yeah but better ingredients better dot Pizza is
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unavailable Oh weird that's funny okay so yeah so yeah it's only usually like
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12 a year so I try to buy them um I have a lot of domains I own such selections as bangers only.net which
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just takes you to a Spotify radio playlist of semitar and Life by Third Eye Blind nice because imagine you're in
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a party right and someone's like I don't know what to play on the radio and you just go just go to Bangers only.net
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and it's only it's only bangers it's only every single we're not wrong during covet I bought I bought outmywindow.app
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and I just made it so if you went there it would just rotate through really
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pretty scenes of out windows because people were trapped in their apartments right
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um I also have bought two domains that got me sued by Lego Corporation so
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we probably don't have to go into that part okay but uh here's to say I like buying domains so
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I tried to buy pizza. pizza uh and it looked like somebody already
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owned it like it wasn't available and I was like hmm why would someone sit
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on Pizza dot Pizza in the domain space this is called parking someone's parking on Pizza dot Pizza
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so but what you can do is when someone owns a domain you can do what's called a who is look up on a domain
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so effectively you are looking up like the person that owns it when they bought it how much they bought it for all of
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this stuff just I was just curious right so I do a who is look up on pizza.pizza
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and I start to get pretty confused there's a lot of information here but I started seeing all of these names pop up
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over and over again there was Donuts Inc there was I can but Donuts ink started
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popping up a lot more so I did some research on Donuts ink and I looked them up and they're they're like massive
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they're like a multi-billion dollar Corporation and all they do is own top level domains this is Donuts like the
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pastry yes okay I just wanted to make sure beyond the irony yeah exactly beyond the irony that Donuts owns dot
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Pizza they also own like a crapload of other top level domains like 20 almost
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like 25 of the entire top level domain industry damn yeah so very good David
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what it's Mega David exactly yeah so I I start googling them and there's some
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articles from like 2012 2014 being like should we even concerned that Donuts is owning so much of the domain industry
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and I'm like I agree like how is it that one company can be a multi-billion dollar Corporation and own almost a
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quarter of the entire domain industry like that that seems really confusing and weird and how does that how does any
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of that actually work because isn't the internet like a thing that we are all supposed to own together and why do you
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just get to like spin up a top level domain and just own it and then sell it that's real quick too just to confirm
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when you're saying 25 of all domain names that's including domain names that are like owned and working or 25 of all
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like claim domains that aren't actually directed it's just top level domains so
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that's like the amount of claimed but not actual working domain names is way
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past 25 they they head up dot pizza right and then anyone there's millions
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of permutations of something that could be a DOT pizza but they own dot people that's Pizza okay right yeah they just
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own a topical domain and then someone can register Pizza dot Pizza this might be a dumb question but I didn't realize
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that one company can just own an entire top level domain right so yeah so do the
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because there's the dot us dot CA are those only so those are called country codes and those are not really owned by
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anyone those are operated by someone else who we'll get to later in the podcast I see yeah and then if you want
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to buy something.pizza you have to pay for that address through the people that own that
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pizza which is so not particularly okay but we will get there okay I promise you oh my God okay all right so I start
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wondering how do we get to this point how do we end up at this place where like this Donuts Inc owns like a quarter
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of the top level domains that are available on the internet like that seems insane because you're just a private private company worth billions
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of dollars and you get to just spin up these top level domains so I realize I don't really understand how like any of
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this stuff works so I decided to do a little research and what we found was um a lot so we're
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about to get into it oh boy six months six months cue the waveform intro I
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don't know um so if we're going to understand how we got to this point where one private company owns like a quarter of all top
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level domains on the internet we kind of have to understand how we got to the
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domain name system in the first place right um but to just give you a brief intro of
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what's going on the internet as we know it today actually used to be a research project uh run by the US government and
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it was called arpanet and originally the entire purpose of it was to allow different computers that
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were far away from each other to do something called time sharing so you have a super computer at a university
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and another University wants to use that supercomputer you can basically like log
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into that computer and use its computing power right amazing yeah so the original purpose of this like internet thing
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which was the arpanet at the time was to just like share resources and also share information with each other it's very
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wholesome yeah it's kind of like remote desktopping across yeah it's absolutely
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remote desktopping and it's funny that remote desktopping now seems like an additional feature you can do with a computer because it was originally the
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whole point of the computer of uh having an internet right um this only works because computers
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have IP addresses you guys probably know what IP addresses are it's like a unique identifier that your computer has that
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it's like a home address right if you want to mail a piece of mail somewhere you have to know where to send it if you're sending it over a network you
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don't have to know what computer to send that to over the network so at the very beginning of the arpanet
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there were only a few computers on the arpanet you had government organizations University computers that were being
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sponsored by arpa military it was all basically like only government stuff
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because this was just a government research project side note spurred by the launch of Sputnik in 1957 just like
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the whole NASA episode that we did everything comes back to 1957 that we'll
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get into that in the future at the time uh the IP addresses that were being
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given out to all these computers were managed by one guy at the University of
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Southern California uh called John his name was John postel and so effectively if you wanted to be on the arpanet on
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the internet you basically call up one dude who ran a spreadsheet like an Excel spreadsheet basically right he said hey
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uh John I want to be on the arpanet uh here's my computer can you issue me like
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an IP address and he's like oh yeah sure yeah sure so he literally like adds you
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to the spreadsheet and then every night he distributes the spreadsheet onto the internet or the arpanet and everyone's
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computer downloads the spreadsheet so that if you want to do time sharing with another computer you need a
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directory yeah it's a director it's a phone book you put in their IP address and it allows you to go to their computer but you have to know like oh
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David is at 186.8.4.2 right yeah which just the the
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sheer Ridiculousness of like one single spreadsheet I'm trying not to make any crypto references
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well please do you can because because the thing about the internet is that it's a distributed Network there's
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there's centralized decentralized and distributed and the internet is distributed
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meaning it's on a bunch of different servers in a bunch of different places that are all yeah dating with each other
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meaning every node on the Internet connects to base almost every other node
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so it's even if one node like gets destroyed um in the early days they were worrying
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about potential nuclear attacks knocking out a major node you can still send information across the network right got
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it so so yeah um so this guy was like maintaining the spreadsheet which was completely
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ridiculous but it didn't take long after the development of the arpanet and everyone realizing like how useful this
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was for other governments and universities and agencies to like want
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to be on the internet too right so NASA Department of energy more universities
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everyone that was technically like legally allowed to be on the internet were just like wait John John put us on
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the internet get me in there yeah yeah so the spreadsheet starts getting real big real big and it's like it's one guy
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managing this spreadsheet seeing seems like a terrible idea yeah yeah so the
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more people that started to get on it the more they realize like okay this whole IP address thing is like not working obviously you still need IP
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addresses but humans don't really think in terms of numbers they think in terms of words
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so they spun up these top level domains these like websites and the Seven
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original ones were.org.gov Dot mil.edu.int.net and.com
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and these were basically just the different organizations that were allowed on the internet right
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fast forward to the 1980s and the internet is going growing very very fast
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um it would eventually get to the point where the public could have access to it um but the guy's in charge of this project kind of saw it saw the writing
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on the wall and they knew the internet was going to be a thing bans the globe like a super highway it
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is called internet imagine if you will sitting down to your morning coffee turning on your home computer to read
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the day's newspaper well it's not as far-fetched as it may seem you need a computer and a phone and suddenly you're
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part of a new mesh of people programs archives ideas this is going to be a thing that everyone was going to use and
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they needed a solution to scale it right because again a spreadsheet even if you're using domains yeah a
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spreadsheet's not scalable was it still a spreadsheet yeah by then it was literally called host.text hosts.txt oh
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man yeah it was a DOT text document he was one one guy and they gave him this
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nickname of the Ayanna the internet assigned numbers Authority which started out as like a funny nickname for him and
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very clearly became like a lot yeah you know just a big thing
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um so they were like all right this isn't working we need to set up like a scalable way to do this they thought
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just having domains would be the way to scale it but a host.txt file is not scalable so they put out this call for
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ideas because they're like the public is eventually going to get access to this thing we need to have a scalable like
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secure way for everyone to do this so this guy named Paul makapetris came forward with a pretty simple and elegant
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solution called the DNS system or it's not DNA system that's redundant the DNS
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which stands for domain name system yeah so you guys know what DNS is
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man okay I did I did have a class in college that explained all of the uh the
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basics of like DNS IP addresses and all the things that go behind making a
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website I've forgotten eighty percent of it so you might have to refresh my memory on
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the differences what a DNS is how it works it sounds like a redirect but I'll let you explain that's what I was gonna
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say just the way to redirect top level domain or whatever you type into your bar into the IP address that goes to
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wherever that website is that goes from a bunch of numbers to going oh that's google.com and then right isn't Google
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like or something like that probably something like that yeah all right well we're gonna get to that okay after the
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break [Music] foreign
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[Music]
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we're back so I sort of like to think of the DNS as like a a layered network of
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phone books sort of effectively you're putting in the URL that you want to go to in your address bar and then your
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computer needs to find what's the IP address of that because a website is not like Words a website is just a server
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right so you're accessing that computer just like the time sharing on the arpanet you're you're actually just
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accessing that computer and it's like giving you the website you know so generally
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um on your browser your browser caches what the IP address of websites are when
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you've already accessed them within the last few days right so it'll stay on your computer for a little bit and that way it's just like way easier to
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instantly go to that website so you don't have to like ask a bunch of questions if your browser doesn't have
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that cache because it clears its cache every few days automatically it will ask your OS and your os does the
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same thing where your OS also caches IP addresses but your OS also wipes your
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cache every few days because IP addresses can change that's a whole nother thing so then if your OS doesn't have the IP
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address it goes to your ISP and your ISP your internet service provider has a
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this special type of server which is called a recursive server or a resolver and the reason that this is sort of like
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a phone like a layered stack of phone books is because that resolver server
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will jump to a bunch of other servers and say hey do you know where I can find
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this IP address and it says uh I don't know the exact place but I know the name servers are over here and the name
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servers uh can tell you where to find.com or dot org or dot net and it's
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sort of just going back and forth where you have this ISP right here and it goes
00:18:21
got it yeah was that weird Bing Bong is maybe describe big bang for the audio
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listeners when I'm saying Bing Bong I'm saying I'm I don't know it's like a two
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for bouncing foreign
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yeah okay so anyway your ISP eventually will get told where that IP address is
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and then it caches that for a number of days so that not only when you ask for a website but when other computers that
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are also using your internet service provider ask it can immediately tell them right the entire purpose of this is
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to sort of make it as fast as possible to access the websites that you're
00:19:04
looking for and not have to go through this whole DNS system so it's all based on caching and all of this stuff
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um and remember this ISP resolver thing later because it's going to come up again it's kind of important
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so anyway this is a pretty elegant system the DNS system is a hit and it's working pretty well and it's most
00:19:23
importantly it's scaling tons of people are getting on the Internet The public's getting on the Internet
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um it's just it's scaling really fast yeah but suddenly the pub the public could start registering their own web
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pages because once they have originally got access to the internet they could start making blogs and stuff like that
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and luckily we have this robust DNS system so that people can actually get to the websites that they want but that
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also doesn't mean that the system is perfect um because the scale of the internet was
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growing the way it was it became a lot of work for John postel to keep
00:19:57
registering domains right like he had moved on from the spreadsheet but he was still by himself the Ayanna the internet
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assigned numbers Authority one guy at USC registering everyone who wanted to be on the internet
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and this was like an exponential growth of people who were getting on the internet right it's like the amount of
00:20:15
people that used chat GPT over the last three days has it's been like a million
00:20:20
people in three days imagine you're one guy and a million people come to you and ask for ask for something like that's
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just too much um so uh suddenly the National Science
00:20:32
Foundation was paying like his salary and it became too much work for him so
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they started basically Contracting out a third party to registered domains for
00:20:43
people and that was a company called Network Solutions so as soon as the
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public had access this started to become a problem because when one Pages started popping up and stuff the lawyers at USC
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started being like people are going to have disputes over who gets what domain because at the at the current time you
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could just reach out to John and you could just say hey I want pizza. pizza and he would just be like all right you
00:21:07
got pizza dough pizza and you know it didn't really matter but when they started Contracting the workout to
00:21:12
Network Solutions they had to pay Network Solutions and the government started being like we're paying real
00:21:19
money to a real company to register domains for people and that is taking our government money like why are we
00:21:25
doing that that makes no sense so Network Solutions is like well we could charge people for domains and then we
00:21:32
could like put that money back into the National Science Foundation and there's a lot of drama over this because the
00:21:38
government was handling you know it was a research project right it was like they're like is this still a research project or is this becoming like a thing
00:21:44
like this is profit scale playing business yeah like actual businesses actual commercial work is getting put on
00:21:50
this and this is becoming a problem so what happens though if you said you can just call them up and ask for a domain
00:21:56
what if you are like want to be nintendo.com or but you're not actually Nintendo can you just how is he
00:22:03
confirming that uh no oh no confirming we're just [ __ ] we're full set
00:22:09
dude we're just like you you are now nintendo.com that seems like a big problem yeah so the lawyers are like
00:22:15
this is a big problem and they're like look we got we got like commercial information flowing over government
00:22:22
sponsored and paid for servers that are being hosted at private universities this is three separate entities that are
00:22:29
never supposed to touch this is a big problem so the lawyers are like we we got to get this like internet
00:22:35
registration thing out of the University as like fast as possible Right so this takes a a while
00:22:42
um the government kind of puts forward these different papers for what they want the this like potential internet or
00:22:48
uh registration organization to be they have you know they're drafting this paper they're like it should be this and
00:22:54
it should do this and it should have these laws and eventually they come up with a paper that basically states
00:23:00
exactly what they want this third party organization to be originally they were like it should be in Geneva because
00:23:06
there's no problems in Switzerland right they're so unbiased and all this stuff by now this was being handled by the US
00:23:13
Department of Commerce and of course the U.S Department of Commerce anytime they see an opportunity
00:23:19
for Capital C capitalism they're going to take they're going to take the chance here so they basically
00:23:26
like within this paper develops this way for internet registration to work that
00:23:31
would spur competition it would be a whole new industry right it wasn't just going to be Diana that was people were
00:23:37
gonna like pay Ayanna and that was gonna work it was going to be distributed into different roles so
00:23:44
this organization comes forward calling themselves icann the internet Corporation for assigned names and
00:23:49
numbers and they win the contract to basically be the organization that will be this oversight board they create the
00:23:56
rules on how internet registration Works they maintain everything and then below them because they're just
00:24:02
a governing body they're like a standards Committee in a way there are going to be two different types of
00:24:07
registration things there are registrars which are companies that you are almost
00:24:13
definitely familiar with you've got things like GoDaddy Google domains you know that name.com namecheap GoDaddy is
00:24:20
the largest registrar uh in the world by now or right now by the way and basically registrars are just they're
00:24:27
the ones that interface with you where you say like hey I want to register Pizza dot Pizza you go to GoDaddy and
00:24:32
they sort of like deal with it but they don't actually like maintain the dot Pizza domains they just handle the money
00:24:40
transfer stuff you know and they re they don't register yeah for you they're like a broker yeah they're basically like a
00:24:45
broker um and registrars have to pay I can a little small fee when they register domains which helps keep that kind of
00:24:52
float because remember icann is a nonprofit organization um and they also have to pay the Registries
00:24:59
a little bit and the Registries are probably the guys you have not heard of which is Donuts Inc
00:25:05
uh you've there's pool.com there's all of these Registries and effectively what those Registries do is they sort of like
00:25:13
they maintain the top level domains right so dot Pizza yeah dot fun dot Joy
00:25:20
Dot Monster are the other names all just random nouns as well donut and pool it's
00:25:26
just they're just flexing so ping pong yeah for for posterity Donuts is now
00:25:32
identity digital literally while we were reporting the story they changed their name that is
00:25:39
the most corporate oh yeah Overlord name possible apparently Donuts used to be a
00:25:44
play on DNS because it's Donuts but there's like also multiple stories that
00:25:50
have been reported for where this has come from so wow yeah yeah so to me it seems kind of weird that you can just
00:25:56
like you know you can just spin up dot pizza and be like I'm gonna own that pizza I'm gonna deal with this and I'm
00:26:02
going to make billions of dollars out of nowhere and it is it is kind of weird I
00:26:08
mean it's you can just be a registry right but to be a registry you are sort
00:26:14
of helping maintain the internet because you are you're maintaining the dot Pizza servers you have to like have a lot of
00:26:21
infrastructure ready to let dot Pizza work so if you decide to own that pizza
00:26:26
you've got to maintain that pizza you've got to like make those servers work so that dot Pizza can even be a thing okay
00:26:32
so there was a little give and a little take there's a lot of giving and yeah there's a lot of take there's a little
00:26:38
give a lot of take yeah yeah comparatively if there's some gigantic company that decides to buy a pizza
00:26:45
domain and suddenly they're running huge businesses and things on a DOT Pizza server and you're maintaining all of
00:26:51
those for them in general isn't that server just the one that's redirecting to no being the redirection or no but it is
00:26:59
sort of like the symbiotic relationship because icann is a non-profit organization that's just like a standards committee and uh the the
00:27:07
Registries when they want to create a new top level of domain say Donuts is just like we think there should be a DOT
00:27:13
Pizza they go to icannon say that and then I can says hmm interesting okay I kind of like that idea hey all the other
00:27:20
registries out there are you interested in being the dot Pizza thing and then they can bid on that
00:27:26
so they can bid on who gets to be the dot Pizza like Overlord right you have
00:27:31
to put a lot of money into it and then you have to have like tons of Maintenance and stuff okay but it's a it's very much this like kind of
00:27:39
um symbiotic relationship between the people that create the standards for the internet and the people that create the
00:27:44
infrastructure for the internet so while it does seem like a little bit weird and sketchy you can just spin something up there's it's still good for
00:27:51
everybody because that competition that allows Donuts to go and say hey we think there should be a DOT Pizza it allows
00:27:57
people like me to spin up dot Pizza domains right or like you know bangers only.net you know you know League of
00:28:05
lego.com I shouldn't have disclosed that um I might get sued again
00:28:12
incoming yeah yeah uh so yeah it's not it's not like necessarily as nefarious
00:28:19
as it seems um but while doing a lot of research on the
00:28:24
things that icann actually does and maintains and the rules that they put into place I started hearing these
00:28:30
Rumblings and reading these Rumblings of this secret meeting called the key
00:28:36
signing ceremony that I can conducts it's the key signing key ceremony and I
00:28:42
was sort of just doing like basic Research into it and it it everything that I was reading was basically like there are seven different people from
00:28:49
seven different countries who every three months all come together at a secret facility and perform a ritual
00:28:55
that takes three to four hours and everything on the internet was like these are the people that can take down
00:29:01
the internet and I was like what like this is insane this sounds
00:29:07
like a James Bond there's like immediately picturing like a cauldron yeah yeah like set okay seven people
00:29:13
yeah from seven different places all have to physically come to the same location yeah to perform a ritual when
00:29:19
you say ritual you mean like a like a spreadsheet type ritual or I didn't really know I just I kept everything
00:29:25
just said like it's a ceremony and it takes three to four hours and I was like is there is there like okay blood
00:29:31
involved and they all have keys you said yeah they are having this giant wall with these big keys that they put in and
00:29:37
I'll have to turn right they have like these hyper protected keys that they have to bring with them to this location
00:29:43
this is gonna make that up no no they all bring in one different animal and they all have different animals in a box
00:29:49
okay so there's so there's okay Keys yeah they bring in these physical keys that they bring with them from their
00:29:55
country imagine forgetting your key I didn't even think about that my key
00:30:01
sorry guys yeah I can't do the ceremony yeah so I was like this sounds insane yeah and apparently it's been the the
00:30:07
topic of like a CSI episode and like a couple of random what happens I mean this is great this is great like
00:30:14
headline fodder oh absolutely the most clickbaity things like these people could take down
00:30:20
80 of the internet as you know it tomorrow believe it or not that's like what all the headlines say yeah and I
00:30:25
was just like this seems insane and I want to verify what's actually going on here
00:30:32
so uh we'll find out what's going on after the break [Music]
00:30:40
foreign [Music]
00:30:47
we're back uh key signing key signing key ceremony vampires people eating each
00:30:55
other nine mysterious faceless figures emerge from the dark seven key holders of the internet each holding mysterious
00:31:01
Keys yeah this sounded completely absurd so I started spamming icam with emails uh nice I was like I should yeah I was
00:31:10
like I don't want to get involved in this mess this seems a little oh I love it I love to throw myself in front of
00:31:16
bullet trains there I don't wanna I wanna get in the middle of the danger so I'm like can I want to come to this can
00:31:22
I come to this I want to come can I come to this can you let me come to this and at first they said no
00:31:27
and then I battered them for three more months and then they said yes I mean if you hear a ritual and then get denied
00:31:32
access you want to go more I I would be like well no I have to go and it's gonna
00:31:38
happen to get every three months it's Gonna Keep right it's every three months and it rotates between an into script
00:31:43
building in Culpeper Virginia and an area of LA
00:31:48
apparently like right as yeah right as you leave the LA airport there's like
00:31:53
these indescript black buildings and nobody ever knows what they're for and this is where this happens it's because it's nearer
00:32:01
I mean yeah prove me wrong that it is though yeah that's true it's true that's
00:32:08
what LAX is yeah airstrip surrounded by in and outs yeah so ironically the one that they denied
00:32:14
us uh access to was in LA and even though I was ready to just like fly to LA and do this uh but they rotate so the
00:32:21
one that they finally said I could come to was the one in Virginia and because we live in the New York Jersey area it's
00:32:28
not completely out of the question to drive to Virginia right so uh Ellison
00:32:33
Adam and I pack into a car and we go to see what's really going on at the source
00:32:39
of the internet this explains why you asked me for a hotel room for an undisclosed location yeah I didn't want
00:32:45
to I don't know not a lot of people go overnights in Virginia for for work I did say yes I did say yes and I was like
00:32:51
where are you going you were like I can I can't hard to say no tell you that I guess yeah yeah so yeah I didn't want to
00:32:57
spoil the podcast yeah right so as you can see we are we did not get sacrifice yeah you're back they're still alive
00:33:03
it's really good yeah uh and it turns out everything that had this ritual has to do has to do with DNS which is
00:33:11
amazing because maybe it will answer my question of who owns dot pizza right because I just want to get pizza. pizza
00:33:17
this is the key to the entire story the key to the internet is the key to dot Pizza the seven keys right the Seven
00:33:23
Keys the seven keys are the keys this is the motivation for everything is yeah you need pizza dough pizza oh yeah we
00:33:29
still need pizza love pizza okay all right so back in 2010 a security
00:33:34
researcher named Dan Kaminsky found a major security exploit in DNS uh and the
00:33:42
exploit is called DNS cash poisoning or DNS spoofing do you guys remember when
00:33:47
you would see like things on TV and they'd be like don't connect to Rogue Wi-Fi networks in your
00:33:53
um Cafe at internet cafes and all that for the airport or something yeah or the airport and like you know people are
00:33:58
still putting this kind of stuff out but it's kind of it's not as important anymore it doesn't seem as crazy there's
00:34:05
not as many public service announcements saying like don't connect to Rogue Wi-Fi networks effectively this DNS cache poisoning
00:34:12
hack how this works is that when your isp's resolver is ping pong ping pong ping
00:34:19
ding dong when it's Bing bonging between the name servers and all these different servers
00:34:25
it is every time it asks a question to one of these servers it sends out a
00:34:30
query number right so question number one thousand and then you answer this is the answer to question number one
00:34:36
thousand question number one thousand one yeah this is the answer to question number 1001 right exactly uh so what
00:34:45
happens in this DNS cache poisoning thing is that this nefarious server over here just sprays out query resolves it
00:34:53
just sprays out answers to these queries so it's like hey I've got the answer to query 1000 through 1099 and it's just
00:35:00
spraying them out so if it's able to attach to the query question before this
00:35:06
other server over here is able to give the answer then your internet service provider server resolver will just be
00:35:14
like oh okay and it takes that answer so nefarious server can just be like
00:35:22
yeah so nefarious server can just be like yeah here's the I here's the um IP
00:35:27
address of the website that you're looking for right so imagine uh you look up you type in facebook.com your uh your
00:35:37
browser doesn't have facebook.com cache so it asks your OS your OS doesn't have it cache because you haven't been there
00:35:42
in a while it goes to your ISP your ISP doesn't have a cache because it hasn't been there a while sends out that query
00:35:47
and then the nefarious server says oh facebook.com is at this IP address it routes you to a fake facebook.com login
00:35:54
page looks exactly like the regular facebook.com login page you type in your username and password hit enter and then
00:36:01
it forwards you to the real facebook.com and you are none the wiser that they just stole your information uh this could be a lot even worse if it
00:36:10
was like a bank right Bank login page you know they just stole your login info for like all of your money
00:36:17
and this was a really really big issue because the internet is built on trust
00:36:23
um back in the day when it was just a research project the internet nobody had to worry about nefarious actors like it
00:36:29
was literally just like the government universities and scientists and they were just sharing information it was
00:36:35
like literally no one worried about this it's the good old days the good old days yeah but as soon as money is like added
00:36:42
to any sort of thing as as soon as there's money to be made yeah there's going to be nefarious actors that try to
00:36:48
steal your information and your money right um so I can was like all right this is a
00:36:55
huge problem because the entirety of DNS is built on this and Because the Internet is built on trust imagine like
00:37:01
50 of the time you have no one or actually all of the time you have no idea whether or not when you go to
00:37:06
facebook.com and it has you log in if you're logging in or if you're literally giving away your information nobody's
00:37:12
going to use the internet if nobody knows if it's secure like that's just a core part of it and I think a lot of
00:37:17
people think about you know oh I'm just like I'm this like little guy let's random person nobody wants to steal my
00:37:23
information but it's not even about that it's like the biggest websites on the internet are just going to be continuously targeted and all of the
00:37:30
information of everybody is just going to be stolen yeah so the internet organizations and I can are like well we
00:37:37
want people to keep using the internet and they're not going to use it if they think their info is going to be stolen so we need to figure out how to patch
00:37:42
this right DNS Works in a very specific elegant way and they don't want to change up the way that DNS works
00:37:49
completely because this is like you know it's the way that things have been going for a long time and it works really well
00:37:54
so what they decide to do is add public key cryptography to the DNS system do
00:38:00
you guys do you guys know how public key cryptography Works nope nope let's talk about basic cryptography really quick so
00:38:07
here's an example I want to send you a message right but I don't want anyone else to be able to like just take that
00:38:14
message so back in the day of like spies and stuff you know you could like you could encrypt a message with some
00:38:21
algorithm and then meet someone in a park give them your letter and if they also have the algorithm say that you had
00:38:28
the algorithm on a USB drive and you give them the USB drive they could then like decrypt it on their end
00:38:34
but with the internet when you're sending information over the Internet that encryption key is what it's called
00:38:41
it's called an encryption key you can't send someone else the decryption key because then you have to encrypt the
00:38:49
decryption key it's a recursive problem right it's this layered problem so what
00:38:55
they came up with was this thing called public key cryptography and basically how this works is that
00:39:01
every website has both a public key and a private key you can think of the keys
00:39:06
as just encryption algorithms right every website's private key is something that only they know like nobody else is
00:39:13
supposed to be able to get access to the private key but they distribute their public key all over the Internet so when
00:39:20
you request facebook.com you have the public key for facebook.com right but
00:39:25
only when you you say here's the public key for facebook.com only when the
00:39:32
private key interacts with the public key of facebook.com does it actually decrypt the data and give you the data
00:39:38
right and that way if a nefarious actor was able to inject the fake IP address of
00:39:44
fake facebook.com when your public key interacted with Facebook fake facebook.com it would not be able to
00:39:51
decrypt the information because it doesn't have the public key there does that make sense yeah so it wouldn't match yeah so when you create a public
00:39:58
key in a private key for a website specifically when you create a private key for a website that's what's
00:40:03
considered a website being signed you've probably seen this in your browser before you you have this little lock on
00:40:09
a site and it says like this website is signed this website is secure you've also seen https versus HTTP that means
00:40:18
that website is signed secure is that what the S stands for yeah hypertext transfer protocol signed I think it's
00:40:25
secure secure it usually there's like a lock or something yeah it's a little lock yeah yeah so https means that they
00:40:32
have a private key so it means you can be sure that when you access this website it's the real website go to mkbhd.com we got a little right right
00:40:44
it's hypertext transfer protocol secure secure there it is yeah beautiful yeah
00:40:50
cool so now I can for a number of years has been trying really hard to get more
00:40:56
basically since 2010 to get as many people to move over to this public key cryptography methodology as possible a
00:41:04
lot of the original uh top level domains um they're still trying to get to move over even the the country code domains
00:41:11
you know like TV for tuvalu some of those are not signed and what
00:41:17
TVs what oh I didn't explain this earlier TV is not sorry okay sorry so
00:41:23
twitch is based into it yeah yeah so okay no this isn't this is actually amazing I know this is a side tangent
00:41:30
side note dot TV television so I'm lost no okay so uh when they created all of
00:41:36
the non um non-generic toplevel
00:41:41
domains.com.org.gov.net that that kind of stuff they also created country codes for all of the countries and actually
00:41:48
they're not specifically just countries they're areas of economic interest so IO
00:41:55
guess what IO stands for dot input output no okay guess what that
00:42:01
stands for and everyone uses it as a tech website because yeah yeah it's a region there's an area
00:42:07
of economic interest Indonesia no Iowa
00:42:13
Country it is the Indian Ocean ah wait what okay the ocean so if there's enough
00:42:20
all right yeah I can is not the UN right they don't want to be the ones that are designating what's a country and what's
00:42:26
not because that gets really complicated really fast this war is being fought about exactly that's what you just
00:42:32
Define regions instead regions of economic interests areas of economic interest okay so basically I can just
00:42:38
distribute all of these country code domains and they allow the countries to
00:42:43
maintain them so tuvalu is an independent nation okay but I can has given them the dot TV because it's
00:42:51
toovalu that's a big responsibility for that small region like well it's a huge
00:42:56
Money Maker for a lot of these small regions okay yeah think about this dot GG
00:43:01
that's like all gaming yeah all gaming websites all their hyperlinks are DOT GG like
00:43:08
they have mkbhd.gg I think is our Discord link something along there yeah GG is Guernsey
00:43:15
right it's like these are actually areas of economic interest so a lot of countries and areas of economic interest
00:43:21
make a lot of money off of being able to just sell these top level domains and the ones that have handy ones like dot
00:43:27
TV or dot IO or dot GG yeah they make a lot of money at this which is great for them especially small island countries
00:43:33
shout out to two all our two blue fans out there gonna visit the home of twitch someday yeah our next road trip we're
00:43:39
gonna ask to go to tuvalu a long road trip okay so anyway uh let's get back to
00:43:45
what happens at the at these I can key signing key ceremonies let's talk about
00:43:51
that right what happened yeah so you see we drive all the way to Virginia we stay in a little hotel so we get up in the
00:43:58
morning at our hotel we you know have some breakfast and we start driving into the countryside and towards this secure
00:44:04
location right okay we're driving up this road and we start seeing little cameras just peeking out on this dirt
00:44:11
road and we're filming and we're like we should probably stop filming so he likes immediately stopped filming and we're
00:44:18
just going up this dirt road and there's just more cameras as we're going up the road and we end up at this giant like
00:44:23
facility with this like big Gates and cameras pointing in different directions we drive up to the gate and they're like
00:44:31
what are you here for who goes there yeah basically or just like uh we're guests for the icann key signing key
00:44:37
ceremony and they're like and they you know go talk to people and they come back and then they unlock the gate and we go in
00:44:44
wow yeah and it was like so you're not allowed to film anywhere
00:44:49
leading up to the building or anywhere in the building except for in the secure room in which the key signing key
00:44:55
ceremony takes place right it's a good rule yeah which is a good rule because making something like
00:45:01
digitally unhackable is basically impossible because people will always find a way to hack it but making
00:45:06
something you know physically unbreakable is pretty pretty doable
00:45:11
doable yeah yeah exactly so this is why they do this so we go in we go through multiple layers of security we have to
00:45:18
show them these QR codes um they have like not for us but for people who have done this a lot they
00:45:24
have Iris scanners they have thumb print scanners everything I was dreaming about oh yeah this is like secure secure
00:45:30
because again this used to be under the US government this used to be under the US Department of Commerce and it was
00:45:36
only at the very end of Obama's administration that he spun it off he canceled the contract with the Department of Commerce spun it off to be
00:45:42
its own independent organization so they still maintain most of the government security protocols that they had at the
00:45:49
time so we follow them through these rooms and we have lunch we have very nice sandwiches and then we go into this
00:45:57
super secure room and even just to get into the room like we were with all
00:46:03
these key holders right now one thing to note that the internet got wrong is that
00:46:08
you don't need all seven of the key holders of the internet to be there at every single meeting you only need like
00:46:14
a few they invite most of them because you know they're all from different countries and by the way none of them
00:46:21
are like most of them are not employed by icann they're just security researchers from all around the world so
00:46:26
they do this like willingly and they have to like take time off and fly to
00:46:31
America to like perform this ceremony so we walk in after we go through all these
00:46:36
security protocols people are using Iris scanners thumbprids and even to just to get into the room you have to have two
00:46:42
separate people scan these key cards to allow them to enter the room you have to sign in every time you enter the room
00:46:48
like the amount of like tracing to know when anyone has done any action is like
00:46:54
insane right it's totally insane so we go into this room and the room is kind of wild because there's a seating
00:47:01
room where everyone sits and then there's like a front desk area for people for the person that is
00:47:07
administering the meeting to like call to meeting to order and do everything but there's also just a giant cage next
00:47:13
to you and within that cage is like two safes and effectively what's happening during
00:47:20
this key signing key ceremony is that icann is signing the root Zone and the
00:47:26
root zone are the servers that your isps resolver or recursive server it's the
00:47:32
first thing that your isps resolver asks for an IP address so if the root zone is
00:47:38
signed that basically means that that first jump that you went to in the
00:47:44
DNS system to like ask for where this IP address is is also secure so just like a
00:47:50
website becomes secure that whole zone of saying like I'm telling you where to
00:47:55
go you can tell you can you know that the information that it's telling you where to go is the real information
00:48:02
right okay so if I can is able to do that your ISP will pretty much never get
00:48:07
false information because even if your ISP is sending out query numbers and
00:48:12
this nefarious server is sending out bongs um wow that doesn't mean sorry we'll do
00:48:19
that again I always say things and then they become inappropriate I like never I
00:48:24
never like think about them anyway even if your ISP is sending out query numbers and a nefarious server is sending out
00:48:30
responses to those query numbers you it uses the same cryptography to know this
00:48:36
response is legit right so now when you spin up a new top level domain I can
00:48:42
requires that that top level domain is signed and that everything that comes from that top level domain is signed but
00:48:48
a lot of The Originals have not been signed yet and they're trying to get more people to sign them but this ritual
00:48:54
is basically made to every three months re-sign the root zone so anyway yeah all
00:49:00
these people are from different countries and to perform any action requires at least two to three people so to get into the cage two people have to
00:49:07
scan into the cage and then other people have different jobs where like only one person knows the code to one safe only
00:49:14
one person knows the code to the other safe they open the saves they build a computer on the desk of the guy that's
00:49:21
administering the the whole ceremony they literally have a laptop that is just a shell they have to put in the
00:49:27
battery they have to put in like all of these different parts of the computer they boot the OS off of a off of a DVD
00:49:34
like everything they have a power cable that like only goes into a certain area like everything about this computer is
00:49:42
air gapped which means it's like not connected to like the internet it has it they de-build it and rebuild it every
00:49:48
time they do this that's awesome it's crazy that's really cool isn't that awesome yeah yeah and then what they do
00:49:53
after they go through all this cage stuff and all these all this stuff and then they build a computer is they have
00:49:58
this thing called an HSM or a Hardware security module basically what this HSM
00:50:04
is is it's a key generator that also needs people with key cards to
00:50:10
put their key cards into just to turn on and then that key generator algorithmically signs all of the root
00:50:17
zones it creates new cryptographic keys for all of the root zones that last you know for the next three months
00:50:23
huh yeah so it's this insane process right and the crazy thing about this is
00:50:29
like there's maybe 15 people in the room every single step that goes through the
00:50:35
ceremony every person in the room has to sign off that that happened exactly as it was supposed to because they
00:50:40
distribute the uh the script for the ceremony way before the ceremony even
00:50:46
happens you can see it on the internet before you even do it every single little task is like specifically task
00:50:52
number one test number two test number three and it goes just like it's like three to four hours of ceremony right so
00:50:58
every person in the room is like yep I agree that that worked the way it was supposed to yep I agree that worked the
00:51:03
way it was supposed to and there's just like no way for any one two three four nefarious actors to like mess up the key
00:51:12
signing ceremony right it's like every single perceptible way that they could get
00:51:17
people to one person could say I don't think you did that right and that actually happened at our ceremony where
00:51:23
like one thing happened incorrectly and a couple people were like wait wait do that like oh and they fix it and it's
00:51:28
wild and as secure as the ceremony like is you
00:51:34
know being able or having to like go to this uh this this undisclosed
00:51:40
location or secure facility and then not being able to film leading up to all
00:51:45
this stuff okay you can see the document here Ellis brought it in this is the key signing key ceremony script look at the
00:51:53
amount of pages 34 page double-sided document normally this takes about four
00:51:58
hours our ceremony took three and they're like I think that's a that's a record they're so excited the audit
00:52:04
cameras are recording and the online video streaming is enabled confirm that all the ceremony attendees have signed in using the visitor log in tier three
00:52:10
so a lot of it is really technical like that but then if you go I believe it's uh act nine step six
00:52:19
uh should be towards the back uh they get much more light-hearted towards the end
00:52:25
ceremony participants take a group photo that's it six nine there's six nine nice nice they
00:52:33
got the memes too there's not I hope you might have said this while I was out of the room but the you know the whole
00:52:40
thing is like part of a public record like you can go on YouTube and watch key
00:52:46
signing Keys ceremony number 14 right and we're in it uh welcome as well David emmel here
00:52:52
now let's rub it here and out of Molina here great and so in the beginning
00:52:58
there's a step where everyone like introduces themselves and uh wins
00:53:03
they're like all right the YouTube guys let's uh let's have them stand up and introduce themselves and on the public
00:53:09
record as we stand up one of the administrators goes
00:53:18
[Laughter] um yeah so so yeah the incredible thing
00:53:25
about this actually is that with how insanely secure all of these steps are right it's actually security through
00:53:32
transparency because they actually live stream this entire process on YouTube
00:53:37
while they're doing it with the comments on wow they have seven different camera angles one that's playing directly down
00:53:44
at the key signing like the Hardware security module one that's pointing at the audience one that's in the safe one
00:53:49
that's this direction in a safe one that's doing this like they show you as many angles as physically possible
00:53:54
they're using like a Blackmagic switcher to just like you know it's crazy because they're so public about everything but
00:54:01
because there are so many places to stop these potential points of failure just because you need a number of people to
00:54:07
sign off on things it's actually one of the most secure possible things there is they're like putting it all out there
00:54:13
they're like this is how it works this is exactly the script this is what people need to be there to do the thing
00:54:19
um but you can't break you can't break in like it's literally impossible to break in verify it from every angle yeah wow um so it was a pretty it was a
00:54:27
pretty crazy experience and what's crazy is that they're supposed to rotate the key holders out you know it's like every
00:54:33
few months the keyholders are supposed to rotate out or something like every few ceremonies um but they never really ended up doing
00:54:39
it and then they were going to retire a couple of people were going to retire in 2020 but then they didn't because of
00:54:45
covid and so the ceremony we were at was the first ceremony where anyone ever retired and so two people retired at
00:54:52
that ceremony and was like really emotional and like I don't know Ellis and Adam and I we were like it felt like
00:54:58
like a summer camp kind of thing because we're in this room with all these people for three and a half hours we have lunch
00:55:04
together we have this debrief afterwards where and everyone's like all right do you think that could have gone smoother
00:55:09
what could could we have changed like what can we change in the script next time and they retire this people and
00:55:14
it's just like everyone's sort of gets emotional it's really weird that's awesome so anyway you became the
00:55:20
new key holder uh I actually ate the keys I asked if I could be a key holder and they were like
00:55:26
you go through a rigorous process of deciding who is going to be a key holder Yeah so basically background check you
00:55:32
yeah everything you can apply and like we talk one of the people that retired was
00:55:37
um someone from Sweden and she was getting replaced by an a new person from
00:55:43
Sweden and we asked the new person from Sweden like oh like you know what do you do and she's like oh I've been in the
00:55:50
cyber security industry for 30 years or something like that it was like she was like really insane her credentials were
00:55:55
crazy so like they go through like a rigorous vetting process um just to be able just because they
00:56:02
want to make sure that anyone that is doing this stuff knows what they're doing um so you don't have what it takes
00:56:08
probably not probably not um so anyway yeah it it ended up being
00:56:15
kind of crazy because the DNS system is this thing that we all use every single day we all assume that it's safe and
00:56:23
secure and that when you go to a website it's the real website and people won't use people wouldn't use the internet if
00:56:28
this didn't happen and these people who meet every three months and have
00:56:33
sandwiches together in a secure facility they basically keep the internet safe
00:56:38
like it is not necessarily true that they could take down the internet because they are just like signing the
00:56:45
root Zone and making sure the internet's safe but they they are they could kind of
00:56:50
take down the internet in the sense that you wouldn't use the internet because every single popular website would be
00:56:55
compromised potentially right and it's just it's crazy that this happens and nobody knows about it the
00:57:01
heroes we need but not the ones we deserve absolutely and they were the nicest people ever it was it was crazy
00:57:07
um so I guess to wrap this all up uh I do get I guess it does feel slightly
00:57:12
sketchy that Donuts own so much of the internet but it's also under the oversight of a non-profit organization
00:57:18
whose goal is to keep the internet safe and it's a symbiotic relationship
00:57:24
between private companies and like oversight boards and I don't know if
00:57:29
there's a better model for this um they've thought about moving these icann ceremonies to different countries
00:57:36
obviously because the internet sort of used to be a U.S research project but now it's owned by everybody it's not
00:57:41
even under the Department of Commerce anymore and the fact that the meetings happen in LA and Virginia is a little
00:57:48
bit U.S Centric so they're thinking about moving them but I feel a lot more
00:57:53
I feel a lot more secure about the fact that there's not some like nefarious overlords that are kind of running all
00:58:00
this stuff you know there have been registrars who the people that rendered registrars have gotten in a lot of legal trouble for like selling domains before
00:58:07
I can even said they were like available and there have been random nefarious Bad
00:58:13
actors but overall I think it's something that is just technically good for everyone
00:58:19
um and the last thing I got to know is that the irony of this a whole story about who owns pizza.pizza
00:58:27
is actually completely kind of wrong in the first place because when I did that who is look up to find out who owns
00:58:34
pizza.pizza I just missed the guy that owns pizza.pizza I just completely missed his name uh Ellis found it and
00:58:41
Ellis emailed him and uh the perfect ending to it David Ellison
00:58:49
six months later Alice never would have happened Alice do you want to sit do you want to tell them
00:58:55
about the email sure so we found out um Pizza we found it for sale on a domain
00:59:01
auction site um Pizza dot Pizza is uh listed for you
00:59:07
want to guess how much pizza that pizza costs yeah I do you want to guess uh we
00:59:13
get a trivia point one time fee I'm gonna guess is 150 wait uh I guess my
00:59:19
question is do you pay yearly or do you pay one-time fees there's an option to own it forever and there's an option to
00:59:25
lease it per month we're guessing own it forever own it forever yeah
00:59:31
one thousand neither of you are even remotely because of course
00:59:37
I don't even know what you guessed what'd you say one hundred and fifty dollars guys so Pizza Pizza
00:59:42
think of the power the value right now so if people own a pizza dough
00:59:48
pizza took six months to research your project was right in front of them uh it wasn't okay it wasn't in the who
00:59:55
is look up because this okay the dude who owns it made sure to redact all of his information yeah I did find it on
01:00:01
this domain auction site though um if you wanted to lease Pizza dot Pizza it would cost you uh about two hundred
01:00:08
thousand dollars a month or you could have it for the cool price of 10 million
01:00:14
dollars don't do it and so naturally so so Ellis decided to email the owner of Pizza Hut
01:00:21
pizza yeah we'll we'll put these emails up for the video and I'll read them for the audio listeners but you know I said hey what's up my name is Ellis I'm a
01:00:28
producer on a podcast we're working about you know top level domains Pizza I saw you own pizza.pizza could we just
01:00:34
like can we just talk like I just want to know like who you are what you're about why you picked Pizza dot Pizza
01:00:40
and uh I got this email back hello thank you for your interest until I have
01:00:46
nothing to say thank you um so wasn't down to talk
01:00:52
guess he just wants his cool 10 mil I just wanted to know why he owns Pizza is
01:00:57
it that it's worth part of a question I mean if I had something even just up for sale for 10 million dollars
01:01:03
I mean I consider that worth owning do we think he paid way more than that or
01:01:09
way less than no definitely I would guess like because during the cot.com boom when it was still pretty easy to
01:01:16
get domains people were just parking as many domains as they physically could yeah he's hoping he's hoping a big
01:01:22
Corporation comes along and they have like an ad campaign where they gonna do pizza that pizza yeah ads and then they
01:01:28
go well I guess we'll have to spend two hundred thousand dollars a month buy it from this guy who else do we know that
01:01:34
does things like that it's only it's only twelve dollars a month a year a year twelve dollars a dollar a month
01:01:39
Adam if anyone does folio it's pretty good I am waiting well I am
01:01:45
waiting for Lego Corporation to come to me and allow and just buy it for me but instead they decided to sue me so I you
01:01:52
know but that's what happens when they see the price tag that guy's not gonna get 10 million dollars from Pizza Hut okay no way I'm
01:01:59
gonna tell okay just maybe we'll use this in a clip or maybe this will be at the end of the podcast I just want to tell you guys about my league of Legos
01:02:05
website okay so Legos is a copyrighted word yes well that's what you think so
01:02:12
okay so I had this great idea do you guys know what a MOBA is I do
01:02:20
I'm not 100 sure on the acronym but like League of Legends DOTA exit all those different massive multiplayer online
01:02:27
battle arena correct multiplayer online battle arena right so League of Legends Dota 2 that kind of stuff now in these
01:02:34
MOBA games it's usually like 5v5 or 3v3 and there's a lot of Heroes in the game
01:02:40
right so usually they have themes League of Legends is like you know they create Heroes the biggest the hardest part of
01:02:47
making a MOBA is building a hero that is like unique and also balanced and also
01:02:53
has a background and a story like so most of these mobos only release like one hero per year right like dodo only
01:03:00
releases one to two Heroes per year because character development is a lot and then they also have to create skills
01:03:05
and have them balanced and all this stuff so what is the one company that has access
01:03:12
to unlimited IP just unlimited they have Partnerships across the freaking globe McDonald's
01:03:19
Crocs Disney Nintendo Lego oh my God oh my God Nike
01:03:26
did I not queue this up uh Adidas oh the metaverse the metaverse oh my
01:03:32
goodness okay yeah so Lego Corporation if you go to any store you got Harry Potter Legos you've got New York City
01:03:39
Legos you've got uh Avengers Legos and you know they're every single possible
01:03:45
IP has made a Lego set because it's a win-win situation for both companies right so not only do you already have
01:03:51
the 3D CAD mile CAD models of these little Minifigures you can just make
01:03:57
like it already makes sense for Lego to have like a MOBA game but the fact that
01:04:02
you can use any IP in this MOBA game means that you don't have to like put a ton of effort into
01:04:08
the character development and background stuff of this character it seems like the most obvious thing ever right
01:04:15
so uh I purchased League of Lego.com and League of legos.com
01:04:21
um because I wanted Lego to reach out to me and pay me and said they reach out to me and sued me but allegedly allegedly
01:04:29
well that's what you wanted well okay so but I have a really great way to get out of this okay so
01:04:36
in the event that they actually take me to a physical Court I'm going to start a Irish Pub
01:04:43
uh whether or not it's in the real world or in the metaverse who's to say but you
01:04:49
know how like Irish pubs and local local pizza joints and this kind of these kind of places like they sponsor like local
01:04:54
sports teams you know so imagine my Irish Pub oh
01:05:00
Fuego's Irish Pub right oh flagler's Irish Pub sponsors a children's soccer
01:05:06
team and they call it League of Legos right League of Legos wait so the league
01:05:12
has a bunch of the same team called fuegos it's a they they no it's oaf
01:05:17
Legos they're sponsoring one team but now there's illegal well they could they could they could sponsor whole soccer I'm just poking some holes right here so
01:05:24
I need to make sure you're ready for the Lego Warriors we'll just say they dude the Lego lawyers do not I mean
01:05:31
league has to have more than one team so right okay problem here is yeah okay we need to create a sport called a flag
01:05:37
unless we can just say they sponsor a whole a whole um League yeah what if it's like a
01:05:43
series of like sort of randomized teams where each person plays like a role and maybe like each role has like a specific
01:05:50
skill you know and we can call them uh Champions I like that you know it makes people feel like yeah yeah
01:06:00
anyway anyway so yeah so um the moment that I get more than a cease and desist
01:06:05
letter I uh I plan to spin up the Irish pub in the metaverse for the lawyers the Lego lawyers I think
01:06:13
it's a full fruit plan and that's the end of the podcast okay so anyway so yeah so
01:06:19
now now now um who owns dot Pizza dear listeners
01:06:25
we owned.pizza we own Dot Pizza we owned up pizza
01:06:32
we owned our pizza we owned out pizza are you asking me to type we own that pizza oh yes I am I just typed David
01:06:38
Amel owns that pizza oh my God
01:06:44
we own we own we own that pizza we own we owned up we own we own.com we
01:06:51
owned a pizza how'd you get this picture of me all right anyway that's the end of the
01:06:56
podcast I hope you guys learned something about the domain name system and the insane world of icann
01:07:03
um many of the people at icann told us that if we were able to make a podcast that they could show to their kids so
01:07:08
that they knew what they did for a living it would be beneficial I'm not sure if this helped but if it did that'd
01:07:14
be great I did learn a lot yeah I learned a ton I'm probably gonna learn a ton again when I re-listen to this because there's
01:07:20
a lot of information but I have one short burning question at the end hit me the pizza you had that night when you
01:07:27
developed all of this was it just like not satisfactory because you had so much on your brain after after ordering
01:07:34
before ordering that night that I wanted to order a pizza well you were originally ordering pizza correct well I
01:07:40
wanted to you never ordered pizza that night oh my God oh my God you totally
01:07:47
left that out I would have guessed that I should have guessed you never did you guys just not eat that we've been working on the story for six months
01:07:54
we didn't have dinner that day I fell too deep into this a rabbit hole and then it was like 11 p.m and we just kind
01:08:01
of it's only right oh that was perfect yeah only right yeah anyway uh yeah
01:08:06
thanks for listening thank you the waveform podcast also we gotta give some special thanks to the people that were
01:08:11
helping us out over at I can Patrick showed us around on his day off Andreas and Aaron helped us and were amazing and
01:08:19
guided us through the whole process Gwen hooked us up with the icann stuff in the first place after I pestered them for
01:08:24
multiple months uh Vince Surf and Steve Crocker who like helped build the internet in the first place they came on
01:08:31
and did interviews with us and that was super useful appreciate that and Kim Davies who is now the new Ayanna the new
01:08:37
internet assigned numbers Authority was not physically at the event with us but he was on the iPad it was like a little
01:08:43
virtual head and he's in the photo on the iPad as a virtual head thank you everyone thank you also thank you to VOX
01:08:50
media podcast Network I'm Adam Ellis David and Zayn still for creating her interaction music
01:08:57
close enough pace thank you
01:09:06
foreign [Music]

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Episode Highlights

  • The Weird World of Domains
    David shares his quirky journey into the realm of top-level domains, including pizza.pizza.
    “I thought it was the dumbest one.”
    @ 03m 30s
    December 30, 2022
  • The Origins of the Internet
    A look back at how the internet began as a government research project called ARPANET.
    “The original purpose was to share resources and information.”
    @ 09m 42s
    December 30, 2022
  • The DNS System Explained
    David breaks down the Domain Name System and its importance in accessing websites.
    “The DNS system is a hit and it's working pretty well.”
    @ 19m 23s
    December 30, 2022
  • The Birth of ICANN
    ICANN emerges as the governing body for internet registration, shaping a new industry.
    “This organization comes forward calling themselves ICANN.”
    @ 23m 44s
    December 30, 2022
  • The Key Signing Ceremony
    A secretive ritual involving seven key holders from different countries takes place every three months.
    “These are the people that can take down the internet!”
    @ 29m 01s
    December 30, 2022
  • DNS Cache Poisoning Explained
    A major security exploit in DNS that can lead to identity theft and fraud.
    “The internet is built on trust.”
    @ 36m 23s
    December 30, 2022
  • Key Signing Ceremony
    A detailed look into the highly secure and transparent key signing ceremony for the internet.
    “It's like security through transparency!”
    @ 53m 32s
    December 30, 2022
  • The Emotional Retirement
    The first ceremony where key holders retired, creating an emotional atmosphere among participants.
    “It felt like a summer camp kind of thing.”
    @ 54m 58s
    December 30, 2022
  • The Value of Pizza.pizza
    A humorous exploration of the ownership and value of the domain pizza.pizza.
    “If you wanted to lease Pizza.pizza, it would cost you about two hundred thousand dollars a month!”
    @ 01h 00m 08s
    December 30, 2022
  • The Pizza That Never Was
    A humorous moment about not ordering pizza during a busy work night.
    “Oh my God, you totally left that out!”
    @ 01h 07m 40s
    December 30, 2022
  • Gratitude to ICANN Team
    Special thanks to the ICANN team for their support and guidance throughout the process.
    “Thank you everyone!”
    @ 01h 08m 43s
    December 30, 2022

Episode Quotes

  • I thought it was the dumbest one.
    ICANN and the 7 Keys to the Internet
  • This is going to be a thing that everyone was going to use.
    ICANN and the 7 Keys to the Internet
  • This sounds insane!
    ICANN and the 7 Keys to the Internet
  • This is gonna make headlines!
    ICANN and the 7 Keys to the Internet
  • It's like security through transparency!
    ICANN and the 7 Keys to the Internet
  • I learned a ton, and I’ll learn even more when I re-listen.
    ICANN and the 7 Keys to the Internet

Key Moments

  • Domain Discovery03:30
  • DNS Breakdown19:23
  • ICANN Formation23:44
  • Secret Ceremony28:36
  • DNS Exploit33:42
  • Ceremony Security45:01
  • Iris Scanners45:24
  • Internet Safety Heroes56:38

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