Category: News

The .UK soon available to all: .CO.UK’s holders, don’t miss the end of the priority period!

The .UK soon available to all: .CO.UK’s holders, don’t miss the end of the priority period!
Image source: 12019 via Pixabay

Remember, in June 2014, Nominet, the registry of .CO.UK, launched the opening of the .UK registrations. At the time of the extension’s launch, the registry applied a 5 years restriction during which the .UK registration rights were restricted to the holders of the corresponding names in .CO.UK, .ORG.UK, .ME.UK, .NET.UK, .LTD.UK or .PLC.UK.

The 1st of July 2019 will mark the end of the period when .UK extensions were blocked from registration if the .CO.UK was not already registered. The names will then be opened to all! If you are already a .CO.UK domain name’s holder, don’t hesitate to contact your Nameshield’s consultant before the end of the priority period to reserve your corresponding name in .UK and thus prevent a third party to do it on the general availability period.

The .DEV available to all

The .DEV available to all
Image source: mohamed_hassan via Pixabay

After the launches of the .APP and .PAGE, Google launched .DEV on January 16, its new extension dedicated to developers and technology, following the calendar below:

  • Sunrise period: from 2019/01/16 to 2019/02/19
  • EAP (Early Access Program): from 2019/02/19 to 2019/02/28
  • General availability: from 2019/02/28

Since February 28, 2019, the .DEV is in general availability and already has more than 64 000 domain names’ registrations according to Domain Name Wire.

To promote this new extension and for the Google I/O 2019 , its annual event for developers (which will be held on May 7-9, 2019 at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View), Google proposes the free registration for 1 year of a .DEV domain name for all ticket booked. But the registrations resulting of this promotional campaign only represent a small part of the 64 000 .DEV domain names registered.

During the last months, Google itself has launched or relaunched many of its websites in .DEV: web.dev, opensource.dev, flutter.dev…

Other companies have also chosen to register their domain names in .DEV like Mozilla with mdn.dev, Salesforce with crm.dev and Level Access with accessibility.dev.

The HTTPS mandatory for all .DEV domain names

As mentioned in a previous article by Christophe GERARD, Nameshield’s Security Product Manager, as reminder, Google in its goal of a more secure Internet, makes HTTPS encryption mandatory for all its new extensions: .APP, .PAGE, .HOW, .DEV… (More details in this article).

Thus, .DEV extension is included on the HSTS pre-upload list, requiring HTTPS protocol on all .DEV domain names.

Therefore, in order to use a .DEV domain name, you will need to acquire a SSL certificate and deploy HTTPS.

From tools to platforms, programming languages to blogs, this extension will allow you to present your projects. Don’t hesitate to contact a Nameshield’s consultant for any questions regarding the conditions for the registration of your .DEV.

19 years after: UDRP in few figures

19 years after: UDRP in few figures
Image source : Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

Launched in 1999, the UDRP process (Uniform Domain Name Policy) is today the fastest and the most affordable solution for resolving clear cases of cybersquatting.

Indeed, UDRP offers to brands owners a transparent process, carried out by independent experts allowing them to retrieve or delete a domain name infringing their brands. It is important to note that the expert cannot allocate the damages and interests to the requester.

MARQUES, a European association representing brand owners’ interests, raised, on the 1st of February 2019 in a letter addressed to ICANN, the issue of the costs supported by the brands owners for the defense of their brands in case of cybersquatting.

The association collected several information regarding UDRP complaints registered with seven Arbitrage Centers providing or having provided this process, and in particular the ones concerning the number of UDRP complaints filed and the associated costs.

In particular, between 1999 and December 2018, the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) registered 42 535 complaints filings. Knowing that the cost of the arbitration fees of the WIPO (besides the representation fees) is at least $1,500 USD, WIPO then collected at least $63,802,500 USD from administrative fees over nearly 20 years.

Furthermore, MARQUES proceeded to an estimation of the costs regarding complaint filings by taking into account the fees of the representation by a legal consultation and concluded that the cost of a UDRP complaint filing would be $5,000 USD. Knowing the arbitration fees, the representation fees by a legal consultation would then be $3,500 USD.

Thus MARQUES estimates the costs (which regroup administrative fees and legal consultation fees) supported by the trademarks owners are $360,190,000 USD for the period 1999 to the end of 2018.

However, some members of the association, think that this is a low estimation and that it would not take into account other expenses related to the protection of their rights (revenue loss, monitoring costs, defensive registration, lifting anonymity, research, etc).

Attack on the domain name system: the priority is to protect your access

Cyberattack - DNS Hijacking - cyber espionage
Image source : Geralt via Pixabay

Last weekend, the media has widely communicated on the consequences of an unprecedented attack that targeted the domain names.

Indeed, during the night of 22-23 February ICANN reported the large-scale attacks on the domain names: it is DNS hijacking. These attacks consist in “replacing the authorized servers addresses” with “addresses of machines controlled by the attackers”, as explained by the organization, allowing the attackers to examine the data in order to find passwords, email addresses etc., even to completely capture the traffic towards their servers.

A wave of attacks that began in November 2018

Actually, this is not an attack but a wave of attacks that the domain names system has endured for several weeks now.

Since the end of November 2018, an attack has targeted Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates and affected .GOV domain names. In this attack, the cybercriminals have proceeded with DNS hijacking.

At the beginning of January 2019, the company FireEye reported in an article, a wave of DNS hijacking that has affected domain names belonging to government, telecommunications and internet infrastructure entities across the Middle East and North Africa, Europe and North America.

If the attackers were then not identified, the initial research suggested the attacks could be conducted by persons based in Iran.

Important fact regarding the attack of February 22: this time, it struck, sometimes successfully, important actors of the Internet.

What are these attacks?

The method used is the DNS hijacking deployed on a large scale. This is a malicious attack, also called DNS redirection. Its aim: overwrite the TCP/IP parameters of a computer in order to redirect it towards a fraudulent DNS server instead of the configured official DNS server. To do this, the attacker takes control of the targeted machine through different techniques to alter the DNS configurations.

The American government, among others, recently warned about these series of highly sophisticated attacks of which the aim would be to siphon a large volume of passwords. These attacks would target more specifically governments and private companies.

Between DNS hijacking and cyber espionage

According to Talos’ article of November 2018, the attackers behind these attacks would have collected emails and connection information (login credentials – passwords) by hijacking the DNS, so that the traffic of the emails and the VPN (Virtual Private Networking) of the targeted institutions would be redirected to a server controlled by the cybercriminals.

Once the connectors collected, other attacks can be launched for espionage purposes, like the Man-In-The-Middle.

Then how to effectively protect yourself?

You must be aware that if these attacks essentially aim the domain names system, we can never say it enough, the first entry point of your domain names portfolio for an attacker is your access to the management platform.

The first and utmost recommendation is to protect your access

For many years, Nameshield has developed securing measures for the access to the domain names management platform (IP filter, ACL, HTTPS) and in addition proposes the 2 factors authentication and the SSO.

If these complementary solutions are still not implemented, Nameshield strongly recommends to implement them, in particular the 2 factors authentication in order to fight against passwords thefts.

To implement the DNSSEC protocol

The implementation of DNSSEC, if it was more widely deployed, would prevent or at least lessen the impact of these attacks by limiting their consequences.

It’s becoming increasingly urgent that DNSSEC is adopted on a massive scale, for both resolvers and authoritative servers.

To protect your domain names

The implementation of a registry lock on your strategic names will prevent their fraudulent modifications.

Although no perfect solution exists today to fully protect the infrastructures from cyberattacks, it is the implementation of several preventive measures combined that will allow to reduce the vulnerabilities (so) easily exploited by the pirates.

Can Russia disconnect from the global Internet?

Can Russia disconnect from the global Internet?
Image source : bernswaelz via Pixabay

On February 13, 2019, the Duma (lower Chamber of the Russian Parliament) has begun to study a draft legislation with the aim to create a “sovereign Internet” in Russia, meaning an ability to function in total independence if Russia was cut from the major global servers. To achieve this, it will be necessary to create an “infrastructure allowing to ensure the functioning of the Russian Internet resources in case of the impossibility for the Russian operators to connect to the foreign sources Internet servers”.

The Internet providers will have to implement systems allowing a “centralized control of the traffic” on their networks.

The measures proposed would allow the Russian Internet (RuNet) to ensure that the Russian part of the Internet functions efficiently. In other words, the test will allow Russia to ensure that its domestic networks can operate in full autonomy.

A response to the penalty threats? 

If Russia talks about an assurance for a maintained local availability, particularly in case of a large-scale cyberattack, this draft legislation is also and clearly presented as a response to the “aggressive nature of the new American cybersecurity strategy adopted in September 2018” [mentioning Russia as a threat]. Indeed, Russia is the object of many accusations regarding cyberattacks and cyber espionage (disruptions of the American presidential elections in 2016 -exhortation of Stuart Peach, Chief of the UK Defence staff in NATO, to take measures against Russia in December 2017, after the Russian submarines were detected near the Atlantic submarine cables, which carry the communications between Europe and the USA – in January 2018, the Minister of UK Defence, Gavin Williamson, also accuses Russia of spying the critical infrastructure of his country with the aim to create a “total chaos” which could “result in thousands and thousands of deaths”, etc). NATO and its allies have then threatened to punish Russia for these cyberattacks.

It’s in this context that Russia is planning a full-scale test of disconnection of the global Internet network.

A full-scale test

For several years, this test has been prepared by Russian authorities, who planned a DNS local backup (tested in 2014 and in 2018).

Indeed, the law plans the creation of Russia’s internal DNS system, which would ensure the link between web address and IP address of the corresponding web servers, without resting on the root servers of the global Internet.

Validated by president Poutine, the draft legislation has all its chances to be quickly adopted despite the reluctance of some branches of the government because of the potential expenses entailed. On the Russian Internet providers’ side, they seem to agree with the draft legislation, as mentioned in the Russian press, but to this date, they do not validate its technical implementation, which could create important disturbances and other traffic disruptions in Russia.

Of course, it is easy to see that this experience will simultaneously test the Internet providers‘ ability to direct data towards routing points controlled by the Russian government, since a filter would be implemented to stop the flow of data towards foreign servers.

Would Russia move towards a system of traffic filtering, beyond ensuring a national intranet that maintains an operational connection inside the borders even in case of a massive cyberattack? It is reminiscent of the significant Chinese firewall (Internet monitoring and censorship project managed by the Ministry of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China, initiated in 1998 and of which activities began in November 2003).

The Russian test could happen on the 1st of April 2019. To be continued.