ICANN, Ukraine and the exploitation of Internet identifiers
March 01, 2022 3:38 PM PST
Ukraine’s representative to ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) has sent a letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to remove Russian-administered top-level domains ( .RU, .SU and .рф) from the DNS root zone. In a separate letter, the representative of Ukraine also asked the RIPE NCC to withdraw the right to use all IPv4 and IPv6 addresses to all Russian members of the regional IP registry for the European region. Continued
Is ICANN’s SSAD proposal about to fail?
Mar 01, 2022 10:59 a.m. PST
After years of work on a proposed standardized WHOIS data disclosure system (known as SSAD) and more than a year of operational evaluation of the proposal by ICANN itself, the ICANN Board seems about to reject the proposal. And rightly so. The proposed SSAD is entirely watered down, fractured, and grants no oversight powers to ICANN over disclosure decisions which would continue to be left entirely to the discretion of individual registrars (the same parties that ICANN supervises). Continued
Domain registrations associated with new TLD launches
February 18, 2022 12:58 PM PST
One of the primary goals of a brand protection program is to detect illicit third-party activity that lies outside the firewall, i.e. outside of the official and tactical domain portfolio of a brand owner. Trademark threats occur across a range of internet channels, but domain name abuse is one of the main areas of concern, both in terms of visibility and risk of brand domain names being confused by potential customers, and application options available. For this reason, domain monitoring is considered a core part of a brand protection service. Continued
The Court’s analysis in ACPA is instructive on how to argue bad faith domain name registration
February 2, 2022 10:40 a.m. PST
NameFind is a GoDaddy company that owns domain name registrations and seeks to profit from them by placing pay-per-click advertisements on parked pages found on domain names. Global Licensing owns the DEJA VU trademark which is used in connection with strip clubs and other adult related services. When NameFind used the domain name dejavushowgirls.com to create a pay-per-click ads page, Global Licensing sued, raising claims under the federal Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), 15 USC 1125(d). Continued
New CSC research on the impact of COVID-19 on internet safety and security
January 26, 2022 10:32 a.m. PST
Hackers are using company domain names more than ever for malicious attacks. Well-established research shows that phishing and related malware attacks most often occur from a compromised or hijacked legitimate domain name, a maliciously registered domain name, and a confusion, or via email header spoofing. Domain security intelligence is the first line of defense in preventing domain cyberattacks. Continued
Observations on resolver behavior during DNS outages
January 20, 2022 3:17 p.m. PST
When an outage affects one component of the Internet infrastructure, there can often be ripple effects downstream affecting other components or services, directly or indirectly. We would like to share our observations of this impact in the case of two recent such outages, measured at different levels of the DNS hierarchy, and discuss the resulting increase in query volume due to the behavior of recursive resolvers. Continued
Review of the year 2021 for domain names
January 14, 2022 10:37 a.m. PST
Is it really 2022? Is it? Although many may view 2021 as another “lost” year due to the pandemic, filled with Zoom™ meetings, virtual conferences, working from home and limited travel – there have been a number of name tales. notable areas that deserve to be highlighted. So, without further ado, here are the 10 biggest domain name stories of 2021 – here we go! Continued
ICANN’s accountability mechanisms – in name only?
December 30, 2021 6:09 a.m. PST
On December 14, 2021, Dot Hip Hop, LLC (DHH) filed an Urgent Reconsideration Request following ICANN Staff’s inaction (for its more than four-month delay) regarding its request for the award of the .hiphop register. Not only did ICANN’s Board Accountability Mechanisms Committee (BAMC) decide not to consider the request for reconsideration on an urgent basis, but on its last day of business for 2021, the organization of ICANN decided to retaliate against DHH for filing the reconsideration request in the first place. .. Continued
IRP panel sanctions Afilias and clears way for ICANN to adjudicate .web disputes
December 28, 2021 1:20 p.m. PST
The .web Independent Review Process (IRP) panel rendered a final decision six months ago, in May 2021. Immediately thereafter, the claimant, Afilias Domains No. 3 Limited (now a fictitious entity known as ‘AltaNovo Domains Limited), filed a request for reconsideration of the final award under Article 33 of the Arbitration Rules. Rule 33 allows clarification of an ambiguous decision and gives the Committee the opportunity to supplement its decision if it has inadvertently failed to consider a protest or defence, but specifically does not allow full reconsideration of a final decision. . Continued
Nominations Open for 2022 Public Interest Registry (PIR) Board
December 07, 2021 8:47 a.m. PST
Would you like to help shape the future of the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the not-for-profit operator of the .ORG, .NGO and .ONG domains? Or do you know someone who would be a good candidate? If so, the Internet Society is seeking nominations for three positions on the PIR Board of Directors. Read more for more details if you are interested in being considered as a candidate or know someone who should be considered. Continued
DOTZON Study: 2021 Digital Business Brands
November 12, 2021 6:29 a.m. PST
DOTZON presents the fourth edition of the Digital Company Brands study. After introducing the study in 2018, DOTZON has continued to expand and improve the underlying data to show how cities are successfully using their digital business brands. The digital corporate brand is the digital dimension of a corporate brand and reflects the “digitality” of a company. Purely digital corporate brands first developed in the 1990s, with the emergence of internet business models. Some of them were based only on a generic Internet address, for example www.hotel.de or www.amazon.com. Continued
Finding the meaning of “logs” in the Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (CPA)
Nov 4, 2021 9:29 a.m. PDT
When the results depend on the meaning of a word, the first task is to define it. “Records,” which is a key word in the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), is still being defined. Its legal context provides that a registrant of a domain name is liable to the owner of a trademark if it “has a bad faith intention to profit from such trademark…and (ii) registers, markets or use a domain name [corresponding to a mark] which … is distinctive at the time of domain name registration [and] is identical or confusingly similar to that mark. Continued
Registrar Influence on Forbes Global 2000 Domain Security Posture
November 2, 2021 11:19 a.m. PDT
In the 2021 Domain Security Report, we analyzed the trend of domain security adoption based on the type of domain registrar used, and found that 57% of Global 2000 organizations use Consumer-grade registrars with limited protection against domain and DNS hijacking, distributed denial of service (DDoS), man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks, or DNS cache poisoning. On average, adoption of domain security controls is twice as high for enterprise-grade registrars as for those using consumer-grade registrars. Continued
A three-step process for driving out compulsive domain brand squatters
01/11/2021 17:45 PDT
Domain trademark squatting can be defined as the unauthorized or dishonest use of trademark or corporate identifiers in domain names. This is often linked to the use of similar domains in bad faith, and we see it all the time. The threat actors behind these domains are referred to by different names, although one of the most common is “typosquatters”. The Hot on the Trail of Compulsive Brand Squatters webinar showed how these people infiltrate the internet. The first page of PhishTank’s valid phishing search to date tells us that domain brand squatting is a real and present danger. Continued
Cryptocurrency and DNS: phishing domains, cryptomining and more
October 28, 2021 7:01 a.m. PDT
When we look at the intersection of cryptocurrency and domain data, we see something insidious: the prevalence of crypto-related threats. And it’s not just cryptojacking. It’s not even the use of cryptocurrency that has made ransomware attacks easier for threat actors to commit and all the more widespread. As with almost any trend, there is always someone looking to take advantage of it and use it for their own personal gain. Ever since cryptocurrency became the pandemic’s go-to pastime, threat actors have started targeting crypto newbies for their schemes. Continued