Comcast Domain Name Hacked, Website Breached for Several Hours

Shortly before 11 p.m. EDT yesterday, Comcast users began noticing that Comcast.net had been hacked. More technically, early indications are that someone hacked Comcast's registrar account at Network Solutions, changing the authoritative DNS servers for Comcast.net -- rerouting portal visitors to IP addresses in Germany or elsewhere. The front page of Comcast.net was replaced with a note saying the hackers had "RoXed" Comcast, according to postings at BroadbandReports.com. more»

Canadian Domain Whois Policy Changes Face Opposition from Law Enforcement

Sweeping changes to Canada's country code top-level domain, .ca, will put the country on the vanguard of Internet privacy. But while law enforcement isn't happy about potentially losing an important investigative tool, the half-million Canadians whose personal information is currently publicly available on the Internet shouldn't rest easy that they are safe from wired snoops. more»

ICANN Responds to "Worst Spam Offenders" and the Recent Knujon Report

ICANN has made an official announcement following earlier reports which suggested domain names registered by most spam sites where linked to a handful of domain registrars. From the ICANN Annoucement: "ICANN has sent enforcement notices and notices of concern to certain registrars, including those reported this week as being the registrars for the majority of websites advertised in spam emails... more»

Most Spam Sites Linked to Just About 10 Domain Name Registrars

New research suggests that more than three quarters of all websites advertised through spam are clustered at just 10 domain name registrars. The data comes from millions of junk messages collected over the past year by Knujon ("no junk" spelled backwards and pronounced "new john"), an anti-spam outfit that works by convincing registrars to dismantle spam sites. more»

Book by WSJ Reporter: The Domain Game

David Kesmodel is a Wall Street Journal reporter who has recently published a book on domain names titled "The Domain Game". He writes: "Almost everyone has heard a tale of someone getting rich by selling an Internet domain name for a staggering price. But few understand the secretive world of domain investing, a game that a growing number of people are playing around the globe. The Domain Game chronicles the exploits of leading domain investors and explains how this mysterious market works." more»

ICANN Preparing for Mass Introduction of Top-Level Domains?

At the request of ICANN, Paul E. Black, a computer scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed an algorithm that may guide applicants in proposing new Top-Level Domains (TLDs). As new TLDs are added to the familiar .com, .info, and .net, the algorithm checks whether the newly proposed name is confusingly similar to existing ones by looking for visual likenesses in its appearance. more»

Top-Level Domains .arpa, .org, and .uk Adopting DNSSEC

The Internet is slowly inching closer to ratcheting up the security of its Domain Name System (DNS) server architecture: The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) plans to go operational with DNSSEC later this year in one of its domains. more»

Google Re-Introduces WHOIS Search

Google, in partnership with DomainTools, is now offering a Whois search capability which allows users to find registration and expiration dates of domain names when followed by the word 'whois' in Google's search box. A similar short-lived service was offered by Google a few years ago. more»

Canada's New Policy Will Privatize Whois Data for .ca Domains

Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has posted its Change of Privacy Status... "As of June 10, 2008 the dot-ca (.ca) WHOIS will no longer release information about individual Registrants and their Adminstrative and Technical contacts, providing more thorough privacy protection for many of our Registrants." more»

Security Experts Disclose How ISPs' Typo-Domain Ad Systems are Major Security Holes

Seeking to make money from mistyped domains, some of the United States' largest ISPs instead created a massive security hole that allowed hackers to use domain names of eBay, PayPal, Google and Yahoo, and virtually any other large site. The vulnerability was a dream scenario for phishers and cyber attackers looking for convincing platforms to distribute fake websites or malicious code. The hole was quickly and quietly patched last Friday after IOActive security researcher Dan Kaminsky reported the issue to Earthlink and its technology partner, a British ad company called Barefruit. Earthlink users, and some Comcast subscribers, were at risk. more»

Soviet's .su Domain Resists Death

The Soviet Union may be in the dustbin of history, but there's one place the socialist utopia lives on: cyberspace. Sixteen years after the superpower's collapse, Web sites ending in the Soviet ".su" domain name have been rising -- registrations increased 45 percent this year alone. more»

Canada's Top-Level Domain .ca Hits One Million Mark

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) has announced that Canadian Internet users have registered one million dot-ca (.ca) domains. Dot-ca ranks as the seventeenth largest Internet domain name registry when compared to generic domain names like dot-com and country specific domain names like dot-uk (United Kingdom).  more»

WIPO Reports Record Number of Domain Disputes in 2007

World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has received 2,156 complaints alleging "abusive registration of trademarks on the Internet" in 2007, up 18 percent from 2006 and 48 percent more than the filings lodged in 2005. Most complaints came from the pharmaceutical, banking, telecommunications, retail and entertainment sectors. more»

Search Engine Killed The Domain Name Star? Japan Has a New Trend

It appears that many Japanese advertisers are no longer resorting to URL's as their primary means of promoting websites. While recently visiting Japan, blogger Cabel Sasser has made an interesting observation about this trend: "Within minutes of riding on the first trains in Japan, I notice a significant change in advertising, from train to television. The trend? No more printed URL's. The replacement? Search boxes! With recommended search terms! ...getting people to a specific page in a big site is difficult (who's going to write down anything after the first slash?)... But, I ask you: could this be done in the USA?" more»

33 Million Domain Names Registered in 2007, Total Domains Now Over 153 Million

The March 2008 Domain Name Industry Brief released by VeriSign reports that "the Domain Name Industry closed 2007 with more than 153 million domain name registrations worldwide across all of the Top-Level Domain Names (TLDs), an increase of nearly 33 million domain name registrations since the close of 2006." A summary of the report follows... more»