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ICANN has just emailed another updated regarding the interruption of the new gTLD Application process availability caused by a security hole in the TLD Application System (TAS). According to the report by Akram Atallah, COO of ICANN, they are still planning to complete the currently ongoing notification of applicants affected by the breach by May 8th, 2012.

Here are the statistics from the email:

• 1,268 registered users in the new TLD Application System (per account up to 50 new TLD applications can be submitted)
• 95,000 file attachments
• 455 file names might have been viewed by other applicants
• System logs are still being reviewed to see which viewings did occur
• Approximately 105 applicants’ file names might have been exposed to other applicants
• Approximately 50 applicants might have viewed the file names of one or more other applicants

See the full updated from Akram Atallah, COO of ICANN after the jump.

TAS Interruption – Update (2 May 2012)

Statement by Akram Atallah, COO

2 May 2012

ICANN is in the process of notifying applicants whether they were affected by the software glitch that caused us to take the TLD Application System, or TAS, offline. As we announced earlier this week, we plan to complete this notification process on or before 8 May.

As we notify applicants, we want to share some data that gives insight into the scope of the problem and the number of applicants affected.

At the time we took the system offline, there were 1268 registered users and some 95,000 file attachments in the system. Of these, there were approximately 455 instances where a file name and the associated user name might have been viewed by another applicant. We are continuing to review system logs and packet-level traffic to confirm how many viewings actually did occur.

Our review has determined that approximately:

• 105 applicants might have had file names and user names viewed by another applicant.
• 50 applicants might have viewed file names and user names from one or more other applicants.

Work continues on enhancing system performance and testing the fix for the glitch.

• We recognize and regret the inconvenience to applicants as they try to plan their schedules and resources in anticipation of TAS reopening. As we have previously announced, we will keep the system open for at least five business days to allow applicants to assure themselves that their applications remain as they intended.

Related posts:

• ICANN Issues additional statement regarding new TLD Application System Bug
• ICANN new TLD Application System may have shown data from other applicants
• ICANN Says new TLD Application System (TAS) Bug is fixed, QA in progress
• Network Solutions Reports Data Security Issue For Some E-Commerce Merchants
• ICANN nixes Expression of Interest for new gTLDs

ICANN just issued another update on the TAS system and gave out some numbers this time.

“”At the time we took the system offline, there were 1268 registered users and some 95,000 file attachments in the system.”

“Of these, there were approximately 455 instances where a file name and the associated user name might have been viewed by another applicant.”

“We are continuing to review system logs and packet-level traffic to confirm how many viewings actually did occur.”

“Our review has determined that approximately:

• 105 applicants might have had file names and user names viewed by another applicant.
• 50 applicants might have viewed file names and user names from one or more other applicants.”

“ICANN is in the process of notifying applicants whether they were affected by the software glitch that caused us to take the TLD Application System, or TAS, offline. As we announced earlier this week, we plan to complete this notification process on or before 8 May.”

ICANN published its draft budget last night and will open the public comment period on May 25th.

It will approve the budget at the Prague ICANN meeting in June

I went through the budget an found some pretty  interesting things.

While everyone has a top 10, I thought I would go with a top 11:

1.   ICANN needs a new financial planner:

“As of 31 March 2012, the Reserve Fund balance was $52.3 million.

Total investment income for FY13 is budgeted to be $1.0 million”

So less than a 2% return is budgeted.

Since you can find a 5 year CD paying out about 2% if you can’t do better than a 2% return on investment you should find another guy to handle your investments.

In its annual report ICANN had almost $100 million in cash but I guess only 1/2 of that is in the “reserve fund”

2.  When Cost of Living is only going up by 3.6% how does ICANN justify budget increases of 18% and 31% and 39%

The cost of living adjustment issued for 2012 by the US Government is at 3.6% (they haven’t announced 2013 yet)

However ICANN budget includes:

“”FY13 operating expenses are budgeted to be $74 million (without contingency) an increase of 18% over FY12’s forecast.

“FY13 administration costs are expected to increase by 31%.”

“Professional Service costs for FY13’s budget are $20.6 million; a 39.3 percent increase over FY12’s forecast.”

3.  ICANN is a pretty good place to work

As of May 1, 2012, ICANN has 143 employees.

Here are some of the perks an employee gets:

“US-based staff members are entitled to three weeks’ vacation per year for their first five years (and four weeks per year after that).”

“Staff members are eligible to earn a bonus based on achievement of specifically defined performance targets”

“ICANN has a retirement program which they allocate 7% of gross total compensation to”

“Other Personnel Costs are approximately 10% percent of gross  include medical/dental insurance premiums, recruitment and relocation costs.”

4.  ICANN spends a lot on its conferences:

ICANN meeting’s core functions typically cost over $1.5 million per meeting and include:Venue costs including meeting space, audio-visual, technical support functions, power, bandwidth connectivity, and backup provisions which are estimated at about $750,000 per meeting.

“Food and catering, registration administration, printing, office supplies, and shipping are estimated at $250,000 per meeting”

“Meeting interpretation, scribe services, pre-meeting site inspections, and professional planning services are estimated at $500,000 per meeting”

Keep in mind that “Local sponsors typically pay for gala and other costs”
ICANN staff also get free airfare, room and a per diem allowance for attending conferences:

“Airfare costs average $2500 and are adjusted up or down depending on the venue and class of travel.”
“Lodging costs average $250 per night for the seven-day ICANN meeting.…

The most popular posts on DNN in April of 2012 by web traffic were:

1. XXX Goes Live in the Root Servers (04|15|2011)
2. Joichi Ito Joins Tucows Board (12|15|2008)
3. Frank Schilling’s InternetTraffic.com now powers 1,500,000+ domains (04|19|2012)
4. Will Marchex Sell iPanel.com to Apple? (04|05|2012)
5. First Brannans Domain Auction by Clements brothers yields $34,000 ( 04|09|2012)
6. Google settles Dispute over gmail.de after 8 years (04|16|2012)
7. Internet.bs Corp Responds to KnujOn Accusations (04|09|2012)
8. Keep Playing the Music . . . Really, The Ship’s Not Sinking (02|22|2008)
9. LeadRefs Announcing New Version of Domain Sales Lead Generation Tool (04|16|2012)
10. ICANN Issues additional statement regarding new TLD Application System Bug (04|14|2012)

Related posts:

• Most Popular Articles on DNN for January 2010
• CEO Rod Beckstrom to Leave ICANN in 2012
• DOMAINfest Global 2012 to Introduce Fantasy Domaining Contest
• Internet.bs Corp Responds to KnujOn Accusations
• This Week In Domains (week 17/2012)

According to a statement released by ICANN tonight, it appears the TAS system is at a couple of weeks away from being re-opened.

Today was the day that ICANN promised a week ago it would give a date for the re-opening of the TAS system and for the Big Reveal

Here is what ICANN said a week ago about today April 27th:

““”No later than 27 April 2012 we will provide an update on the reopening of the system and the publication of the applied-for new domain names.””

Yet today the only update is that “ICANN will notify all applicants within the next seven business days whether our analysis shows they were affected by the technical glitch in the TLD application system.”

Only after that occurs does it seem that ICANN will announce when the TAS system will re-open for at least 5 days.

There is still no word on when the Big Reveal will take place but this week the group putting on the viewing party to be held in Paris, sent out new invitations for May 22nd.

We have no idea of how the group came up with a date of May 22nd but they may know something we don’t

Lets make a few assumptions and try to figure out when this might all come down

So 7 business days from today is May 8th.

If ICANN is ready to open the system back up by that date, you figure ICANN will give a few days notice before re-opening the TAS system, so lets say Monday the 14th is the day the TAS system may re-open and then close on that Friday May 18th.

ICANN had said they would make the Big Reveal 2 weeks after the application period but we also have the memorial day holiday weekend in the US from May 25- May 28th so we are going to predict the Big Reveal might happen around May 31st.

Certainly ICANN would not want to push the Big Reveal off until June.

Here is tonight statement in full:

The ICANN public comment period for the .com Registry Agreement renewal with VeriSign ends tomorrow on Thursday April 26th at 23:59 UTC.

You can submit comments via to com-renewal@icann.org. In the second “reply” phase replies to the comments can be submitted limited to those who commented in the first phase – this phase will end on May 17th 2012.

The 14 comments submitted to date can be read on the site here.

The proposed agreement suggests to keep the .COM contract with VeriSign without opening it to competitive bidding, a process that when done with the .NET registry in 2005 resulted in lower .NET registry pricing ($5.89 per Domain Name Year). The proposed extension would allow VeriSign to increase registrations fees by 7% in four of the next six years, potentially bringing up the price from the current $7.85 to $10.29 by 2016.

In case some of you feel strongly about the anti-competitive nature of the .com renewal, you may also want to consider a submission to the US Department of Justice.

[Hat tip to George Kirikos]

Related posts:

• ICANN further simplifies public comment process
• Big Shocker ! Verisign Raises Prices Again.
• Verisign Registry to Increase COM & NET fees in July 2010
• ICANN approves new .INFO policy
• Verisign domain takedown proposal very worrisome

ICANN public comment period for the .com Registry Agreement renewal ends on Thursday April 26th.

As you know, under the terms of the renewal contract Verisign will be able to raise their wholesale price on .com registration 7% in 4 out of the next 6 years.

You can submit you comments on the contract to com-renewal@icann.org.

You will get an email from ICANN  acknowledging the comment (this may take a little while) You have to reply to that email for your comment to be posted, received and published by ICANN.  If you do not respond to the email your comment will not be counted.

Under ICANN  “new” comment period methodology, there’s an initial comment period — the one that ends on April 26, and then there’s a second “reply” period, where those who commented in the first part can respond to issues raised in the first main comment period; one wants to be sure to get one’s comments in by the end of the first comment period, as that’s the real deadline, not the “reply close” date.

Existing comments can be read here.

As always George Kirikos is on top of the issue and has posted his comment as offers anyone who doesn’t want to spend the time to compose their own comment can adopt all or part of George’s comment.

While the comments may have no directly impact in that ICANN is likely to rubber stamp the VeriSign renewal contract as the orginal contract does have a presumptive renewal provision, a broad set of submissions might send a message to the NTIA/DOC/DOJ that ICANN does not have the support of domain name registrants when it comes to renewing the dot-com agreement with VeriSign on such anti-competitive terms.

If people don’t go “on the record” with their concerns, ICANN/VeriSign are happy to go about their business claiming that no one objected to the contract.…

In a release by ICANN tonight they are now giving themselves until April 27th to give update on when the TAS system will even re-open and an a updated for the date of the “Big Reveal” where ICANN will announce who applied for what.

Also in tonight’s release is the information that once the TAS system re-opens it will reopen for “at least 5 days”, which is  more than the 3 day period previously announced.

Since we may not get an update until April 27th as to when the system may re-open for 5 days, those having reservations in London, Paris or Vegas for the Big Reveal currently scheduled for the at the of end of April of the beginning of May, well lets just say I hope you have a refundable ticket.

Here is the announcements:

And while we’re all waiting on ICANN to bring back the TLD Application System (TAS), Pool.com has released a game to promote their Digital Archery service. The game sets a time 10 seconds from the current  time and wants you to guess the the time is up.

Pool’s Digital Archery service aims for new TLD applicants to hit their predicted time in the next phase after the application phase. The applicants who are closest to their predicted time will be batched int he first batch of applications, if there are over 500 TLD applications – which is likely.

Comparable to their drop catching model, taking a shot with Pool.com’s Digital Archery Engine is free. The fees are entirely based on the company’s success:

• Top Batch: $25,000
• Top 50% of Batches: $10,000
• Bottom 50% of Batches: NO FEE

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• The Domain Game Contest Day 2 !