Domain Names

ICANN Terminates Two Registrars as DNS Abuse and Compliance Failures Escalate

ICANN has terminated two registrar accreditation agreements after unresolved compliance failures, citing Trustname's handling of DNS abuse and IPIP's failures involving RDAP, registration data escrow, accreditation fees, and access to non-public registration data. more

ICANN to Shut Down Open Data Platform and API September 1

ICANN will retire its Open Data Platform and API on September 1, shifting datasets to downloadable CSV files and forcing researchers, registries and domain-industry organizations to update automated workflows that rely on programmatic data access. more

After the Close: What the 2026 gTLD Round Has Already Revealed

ICANN's 2026 gTLD round drew more than 1,600 applications, led by ambitious portfolio investors. But scant brand disclosures and new rules banning private settlements could make contention costlier and reshape the economics of domain ownership. more

ICANN Draws More Than 1,600 Applications in New gTLD Round

ICANN has received more than 1,600 applications for new generic top-level domains, setting the stage for administrative checks, public disclosure and potentially fierce competition over sought-after additions to the internet's expanding domain-name system. more

Now That You’ve Applied for a New gTLD, Should You Reveal?

With applications closed, new gTLD hopefuls face a changed calculation: revealing strings early could expose contention while information remains financially valuable, helping applicants make better decisions before fees are paid and withdrawal becomes increasingly costly. more

ICANN’s New gTLD Application Window Set to Close, Capping a Landmark Expansion Round

ICANN's second major domain expansion round closes August 12, with costly applications, support for 27 non-Latin scripts and stricter technical vetting setting the stage for a broader, more multilingual internet naming system. more

Beyond DUMs: The Case for Tracking What a Namespace Is Made Of

Domains Under Management (DUM) measures a namespace's size, but not its character. Structural composition could reveal whether growth reflects durable adoption, speculative holdings or noise, giving registries a richer view of namespace health and strategy. more

Phantom Squatting: When LLMs’ Hallucination Becomes an Attacker’s Best Friend

As AI reshapes cybersecurity, attackers are exploiting a fundamental weakness in large language models. Phantom squatting turns hallucinated domain names into trusted attack vectors, creating a new class of DNS abuse that defenders cannot solve by eliminating hallucinations alone. more

Same Shape at Every Scale: What a Larger Domnain Namespace Confirmed - and What It Didn’t

A larger namespace confirms the same four-layer structural pattern found across nTLDs, while revealing wider operator-to-investor variation and distinctive noise signatures that expose different registration dynamics hidden behind headline registration totals. more

Call for Participation: DNSSEC and Security Workshop at ICANN87 (21 October 2026)

ICANN is inviting proposals for its DNSSEC and Security Workshop at ICANN 87, offering experts and practitioners a platform to share insights on DNS security, routing security, browser security, and emerging Internet infrastructure challenges. more

From Human Trust to Machine Cryptography: The Infrastructure Deficit in AI Interoperability

As AI agents begin collaborating across the open internet, the absence of trusted identity, authorization, and accountability frameworks threatens interoperability, making cryptographic trust infrastructure essential to building a secure and scalable agentic economy. more

ICANN Wiki, SHE.africa, AI, and the Integrity of Digital Platforms

As AI increasingly relies on digital archives, the quiet revision of ICANNWiki entries raises broader questions about platform accountability, historical integrity, and whether institutions can reshape the records that future researchers and machines will treat as fact. more

Who Registers the Domain That Steals Your Data? The Registrar Accountability Gap in India’s DNS Abuse Crisis

India's DNS abuse crisis exposes a registrar accountability gap: malicious domains remain online while vulnerable users bear the cost. Concentrated abuse patterns suggest stronger oversight and faster mitigation could significantly reduce predictable harms nationwide today. more

What Zone File Analysis Reveals About the Gap Between nTLD Registration Volume and Namespace Reality

Registration totals reveal size, not composition. Structural analysis of major new gTLDs finds strikingly similar architectures but meaningful differences in operator adoption, speculative holdings, and noise, suggesting namespace health requires more than volume metrics alone. more

The Question Isn’t Whether the Harm Is Real - It’s Who Should Act

Measuring online abuse can reveal its scale, but not who should intervene. Effective policy must distinguish harm from contractual responsibility, identify the actors best placed to act, and target remedies where they can work effectively. more