ICANN Chief Details Actions Against Pandemic-Related Domain Name Abuse
ICANN is acting against COVID-19 domain name system abuse, CEO Goran Marby blogged. There are wide reports of criminals using the pandemic to launch malicious online campaigns and increased use of COVID-19-related domains for DNS abuse, he wrote Monday: New…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
threats include phishing, business email compromise and malware distribution. Some cases allegedly involve fraudsters luring Internet users into giving away access credentials and confidential information with the promise that they are buying supposed cures for the coronavirus and personal protective equipment. The organization developed a system to help identify abusive domains that use terms such as "coronavirus" or "ncov"; assess them against threat intelligence sources to see if they're involved in phishing and malware; and notify authorities. "Combating abuse requires predictable and reliable access to domain name registration data with a legitimate interest," Marby wrote. ICANN is trying to clarify whether under the EU general data protection regulation, a unified access model for global top-level domain name registration is possible, Marby wrote: "The ICANN community has not received the requested guidance."