Domain Management

Blogs

Have You Reviewed Your Domain Lock Portfolio?

Domain names give your intellectual property visibility, as well as provide function for your company's infrastructure. Vital domain names are simply too important to be left exposed. To protect them, you can add extra layers of security to your digital brand with easy, secure, server-level protection in addition to multi-level locks that combat domain name system (DNS) hijacking and protect against unauthorized changes and deletions to your critical domain names. more

Three Reasons Why CISOs Need to Know How Their Company Is Managing Their Domains

Companies today manage hundreds or even thousands of domain names that support their organization, their visitors from different countries, and their brands and trademarks. They register misspelling of their names as a defensive strategy to protect their brand from online fraud, or from losing traffic to simple user typos. more

An Overview of the Concept and Use of Domain-Name Entropy

In this article, I present an overview of a series of 'proof-of-concept' studies looking at the application of domain-name entropy as a means of clustering together related domain registrations, and serving as an input into potential metrics to determine the likely level of threat which may be posed by a domain. more

.AI You Ready? A Domain to Add to Your Portfolio… Before Someone Else Does

On the sunny beaches of Anguilla -- a small island of just 35 square miles -- I'm sure artificial intelligence (AI) is the last thing people are thinking about. The primary industries of Anguilla, set in the Leeward islands in the Caribbean, are tourism and offshore banking. However, this nation has been assigned the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .AI -- which is being repurposed to represent artificial intelligence. more

How to Protect Your Brand in Web3

In 2014, computer scientist Gavin Wood coined the term "Web 3.0." The phrase, which has now been shortened to "Web3", refers to the third generation of the internet that's designed to be truly decentralised and free from a central authority. Web3 has the potential to add real-world value for businesses by creating additional avenues to reach consumers. However, owing to its less regulated nature, brands also have the potential to be taken advantage of both by users and by the providers in the space. more

12th Registration Operations Workshop: Join Us Online on June 20th, 2023

The Registration Operations Workshop (ROW) was conceived as an informal industry conference that would provide a forum for discussion of the technical aspects of registration operations in the domain name system and IP addressing. The ROW series is being co-sponsored by Verisign and ICANN and organized by Cofomo, and we are looking forward to an engaging set of talks, panel discussions, and conversations with individuals involved with the operation of domain name registrations systems. more

U.S. National Cybersecurity Strategy and Its Impact on Domain Security

Last month, the U.S. National Cybersecurity Strategy was launched, providing a new roadmap for stronger collaboration between those operating within the digital ecosystem. The strategy calls on software makers and American industry to take far greater responsibility to assure that their systems cannot be hacked while accelerating efforts by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Defense Department to disrupt the activities of hackers and ransomware groups around the world. more

Processing Domain Data to Improve Business Continuity as a Domain Name Registry

In the fall of 2022, around 9,000 numeric domain names such as 0146.se, 0148.se, 0149.se, and so on were registered in the .SE zone. These domains were registered with two registrars, Register.eu and 1API. They had the same kind of SSL certificate, and there were other similarities among them that strongly suggested they were connected. All these domains were registered after September 1, 2022, but not on the same date... more

Brand Impersonation Online is a Multidimensional Cybersecurity Threat

Brand impersonation happens much more often than people realize. In CSC's latest Domain Security Report, we found that 75% of domains for the Global 2000 that contained more than six characters from the brand names were not actually owned by the brands themselves. The intent of these fake domain registrations is to leverage the trust placed on the targeted brands to launch phishing attacks, other forms of digital brand abuse, or IP infringement... more

Patterns and Trends in Domain Tasting of the Top 10 Global Brands

Domain tasting is a long-established practice involving the short-lived existence of a domain, which is allowed to lapse a few days after its initial registration. The practice arose in response to an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) policy allowing a domain to be cancelled -- with all fees refunded -- within a five-day grace period, intended to address the issue of accidental registrations1. However, the practice is open to abuse by infringers. more

Blockchain Domains and What They Could Mean for Online Scams and Brand Protection

Blockchain domain names, domains that are stored on blockchain or cryptocurrency exchanges, are part of a growing, unregulated, and decentralized internet. Right now, blockchain domains are used mostly by cryptocurrency users, but they are growing in popularity - the Ethereum name service reported over 2.2 million .eth domain name registrations in 2022. At the same time, crypto scams are also exploding, reaching a total of $3.5 billion in losses in 2022. more

The Highest Threat TLDs - Part 2

In the first article of this two-part blog series, we looked at how frequently domains were used by bad actors for phishing activity across individual top-level domains (TLDs) or domain extensions, using data from CSC's Fraud Protection services, powered by our DomainSecSM platform. In this second article, we analyze multiple datasets to determine the highest-threat TLDs, based on the frequency with which the domains are used egregiously for a range of cybercrimes. more

The Highest Threat TLDs - Part 1

A domain name consists of two main elements: the second-level domain name to the left of the dot - often consisting of a brand name or relevant keywords - and the domain extension or top-level domain (TLD) to the right of the dot. Domain names form the key elements of the readable web addresses allowing users to access pages on the internet and also allowing the construction of email addresses. more

2023 Review of the Online Brand Protection Market

Having been involved in this sector for over fifteen years now, the rate of change in the market dynamics continues to surprise me - from its early years when MarkMonitor and NetNames clearly led the space for several years, then seeing well-funded startups such as Yellow Brand Protection and Incopro challenge that, followed by a period of heavy M&A, it is now extremely diverse. more

How Safe Are Your .KIDS?

This year has been one of the busiest years for domain launches in quite a while. Before the end of 2022, we'll see one more significant domain launch, namely .KIDS, on November 29, 2022. This extension is being launched as a safe space on the internet for children and parents. The registry has set out some very strict use policies to make this happen. Some companies have already registered their brands during the Sunrise Period, while others have taken up names in the Community Sunrise. more

News Briefs

i2Coalition and The Domain Name Association Announce Their Intent to Merge

Verisign Extends COVID-19 Wholesale Restore Fee Waiver

Nominet, the .UK Operator Says Its Domain Dispute Resolution Service Has Saved £180 Million to Date

New Zealand’s Domain Name Commission Wins Appeal in Lawsuit Against US DomainTools

GrubHub Accused of Cybersquatting Thousands of Restuarant Domain Names

WIPO Reports Cybersquatting Cases Grew by 12% Reaching New Records in 2018

CENTR Publishes a Paper on Domain Name Registries and Online Content

Neglected Domain Renewals Increasingly Scooped Up by Crooks for Credit Card Stealing Purposes

U.S. Government Extends Its Cooperative Agreement With Verisign, Green Lights .Com Price Increase

Special Interests Circulating Draft Legislation to Cut Short ICANN’s Whois Policy Process

The .EU Top-Level Domain Facing Radical Shake Up as a Result of the Proposed New European Regulation

ICANN Files Legal Action Against Domain Registrar for Refusal to Collect WHOIS Data

A Short-Term Suspension of GDPR Enforcement on WHOIS May Be Necessary, Says U.S. Government

ICANN Releases Temporary WHOIS Specification Plan for GDPR Compliance With Deadline Two Weeks Away

ICANN CEO “Cautiously Optimistic” EU to Provide Clear Guidance for Domain Industry GDPR Compliance

Microsoft, Facebook and Others Demand ICANN Take a Closer Look at Questionable Registrars

EFF Warns ICANN Not to Engage in Censorship, Says It Should Stick to Technical Role

Dell Loses Key Customer Support Domain Name for a Month, Site Exposed to Questionable Content

Cycling Legend Greg LeMond Sues Cybersquatters Upward of $6.6 Million

Russian Interference More Vigorous than Assumed, Over 39 States Targeted During Election

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Industry Updates

New CSC Research Indicates Launch of Threads by Instagram is Already a Growing Target for Fraud and Brand Abuse

MOVEit Bug-CLOP Ransomware Threat Vector Identification Aided by DNS Intelligence

CSC Launches Groundbreaking Domaincasting Digital Blocking Network

New Global Initiative Aims to Strengthen Online Brand Protection

Subdomain Hijacking Vulnerabilities Report: One in Five DNS Records Are Left in a State in Which They Are Vulnerable to Subdomain Hijacking

Uncovering Other DarkTortilla Threat Vectors

Supply Chain Security: A Closer Look at the IconBurst and Material Tailwind Attacks

RedLine Stealer: IoC Analysis and Expansion

Robin Banks May Be Robbing You Blind

Investment-Related Cybersquatting: Another Way to Lose Money?

The Business of Cybercrime: Does Malicious Campaign Planning Take as Long as Legitimate Marketing Campaign Planning?

2022 CSC Domain Security Report Finds Nearly Three-Quarters of Global 2000 Companies are at Alarmingly High Risk of Exposure to Security Threats

Dormant Colors IoC Expansion: Don’t Install Browser Extensions from These Domains

A Call for Help May Lead to Malware: BazarCall IoC Analysis and Expansion

Insights Into an Active Spam Domain Portfolio

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