An
explosion in the number of new Internet addresses has created a wealth of
opportunities for criminals exploiting shady domains such as .zip, .kim or
.party, according to an industry study published this week.
Attackers are constantly in search of new
domains for links to lead users to download malware, divulge personal data or
spam their friends, and a liberalization of the Web has expanded the number of
top-level domains tenfold in the past two years.
An
analysis of tens of millions of websites by enterprise security company Blue
Coat found the most dangerous top-level domains (TLDs) were .zip,. review and
country, while the safest new ones were .london, .tel and .church.
“Ideally, TLDs would all be run by
security-conscious operators who diligently review new domain name
applications, and reject those that don’t meet a stringent set of criteria,”
Blue Coat wrote in its study.
“The
reality for many of these new neighborhoods is that this is not happening.”
ICANN, the body that manages Web
identifiers, launched an initiative to expand the number of TLDs to promote
competition and choice online. Originally, there were just six not including
country codes: .com, .edu, .gov, .mil, .net and. org.
Organizations who want to sell new TLDs have
had to pay a $185,000 fee to ICANN and demonstrate that they are capable of
running a registry.
The size of the global Web domain name sales market is hard
to determine because so many sales are private. Sought-after domains can change
hands for millions of dollars but more obscure ones can be had for as little as
99 cents.
Go Daddy,
the world’s largest accredited registrar of domain names, made sales of $1.4
billion last year and was valued at $3 billion in an initial public offering
this year.
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