Cybercrime

Creating a Police State From the Ashes of the Internet

Former CIA Director, George J. Tenet recently called for measures to safeguard the United States against internet-enabled attacks. "I know that these actions will be controversial in this age when we still think the Internet is a free and open society with no control or accountability, but ultimately the Wild West must give way to governance and control." Mr. Tenet seems about as confused about the internet as the ITU... more

Zuccarini To Receive 30 Months in Prison

In a Press Release issued yesterday, February 26, 2004, it has been announced that Zuccarini (background here) will receive 30 months in prison for violating the Truth in Domain Names Act. At least two of the domain names mentioned in the press release, DINSEYLAND.COM and BOBTHEBIULDER.COM appear to have been registered by third parties and are pointing to pages of links... more

New TLDs, Swiftly: This Is No Beauty Contest!

In response to ICANN's request for proposal (RFP) for the selection of new sponsored Top-Level Domains, Wendy Seltzer for the At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) urges ICANN to move quickly beyond "testing" to more open addition of a full range of new gTLDs in the near future and offers some general principles to guide that expansion. more

Diverting Traffic On The Web: Trademarks And The First Amendment

What's at the heart of cybersquatting may also be at the heart of free speech on the Internet: the diversion of Internet users looking for plaintiff's web site to defendant's web site. Cybersquatters register domain names to accomplish this, while meta-infringers (as we will call them) use HTML code and search engine optimization techniques. Meta-infringers do this by creating keyword density by using competitor's trademarks and permutations thereof in their website in order to rank higher in the search engine results when someone searches on the competitor's trademarks. more

Attackers Hijack Government and School DNS Records to Promote Illegal Gambling

Infoblox researchers uncovered two operations exploiting government and educational DNS infrastructure across three countries to promote illegal gambling, exposing security weaknesses that conventional website monitoring may overlook. more

The Phishing Domain You Missed Shares a Nameserver With the One You Caught

Nameserver-based searches can uncover related domains that conventional phishing monitoring misses. An investigation of shared DNS infrastructure reveals how registration patterns, nameserver pairs and timely zone data can help identify suspicious domain clusters. more

Canadian Cybersecurity Executive Arrested Amid FBI Investigation Into ShinyHunters

A Canadian ransomware negotiator faces US federal extortion charges amid an FBI investigation into ShinyHunters, following a breach that exposed sensitive employee records through an unpatched third-party system. more

Microsoft Disrupts EvilTokens AI Cybercrime Service Linked to 12,000 Compromised Inboxes

Microsoft disrupted EvilTokens, an AI-enabled cybercrime service linked to more than 12,000 compromised inboxes, seizing websites and disabling domains used to automate mailbox analysis, impersonation and preparation for financial fraud. more

Two Years After His Arrest, Pavel Durov Wants to Run His Own Registry

Telegram says it has applied for .gram, potentially giving a billion users DNS addresses while putting its governance, abuse controls, legal exposure and infrastructure under scrutiny as ICANN prepares to reveal applications. more

Cyberattackers Are Using AI Across More of the Kill Chain, Anthropic Reports

Anthropic says attackers are increasingly using AI agents to orchestrate cyber operations, automating reconnaissance, exploitation, data theft and malware adaptation while lowering the expertise and resources previously required for sophisticated attacks. more

How Domain Abuse, Social Media, and AI Fuel Brand Attacks

CISOs expect social media impersonation to become their leading cybersecurity threat as attackers increasingly combine AI-enabled deception, executive impersonation, and domain abuse across multiple channels to conduct fraud and steal sensitive information. more

The Reporting Gap: What Happens Between a DNS Abuse Complaint and a Takedown

DNS abuse enforcement can stop abusive domains and drive systemic registrar reforms, but reporting barriers, inconsistent response times, and poorly documented complaints leave many phishing sites active before actionable cases ever reach enforcement. more

International Operation Disrupts Sality Botnet After More Than Two Decades

Authorities disrupted the decades-old Sality botnet by targeting its decentralized peer-to-peer network and supporting domains, cutting infected machines off from malicious payloads while beginning the longer task of identifying and remediating compromised systems. more

Thirty-Five Years Later, Moscow Comes Looking for the Soviet Union’s Domain

Russia is imposing state identity verification on .su, the Soviet Union's surviving domain, as researchers uncover criminal infrastructure across the namespace and ICANN pursues a retirement process that could eventually remove it from the global root. more

FulcrumSec Claims 86 GB Data Theft in Manchester Airports Breach

FulcrumSec claims it stole 86 GB from Manchester Airports Group, including detailed booking and travel data, while the operator has confirmed a breach but not the group's account of its scale or method. more