As with each event where massive interest is
expected, the launch of the final season of Game of Thrones is a golden
opportunity for pirates.
According to a Kaspersky’ study, this series would be the favorite of the cybercriminals. It represented 17% of the infected contents last year, i.e. 20 934 web users! According to this same study, the most targeted episodes are logically the first and last episodes of the season.
For if the fans are many in France, without
subscription, the only solution to watch the so awaited episodes is illegal
downloading on torrent websites.
It is through this means that the
cybercriminals infect the unsuspecting web users’ computers. First warning, do
not install programs at the request of the torrent websites, they can contain a
malware!
Indeed, two kinds of
frauds are principally used:
Malwares: the malicious software are launched on
torrent websites used by the fans of the series to access to the watching of
the precious episodes.
Phishing: many phishing attempts have been counted, the
pirates use the official image of Game of Thrones to try to retrieves your
personal data.
This season, the cybercriminals are almost as
creative as the scriptwriters of the successful series: many and various fake
contests allow these hackers to collect email addresses and other bank details.
Counterfeiting is also in the game, with an
observed increase of websites proposing many so-called “official” products but
being nothing more than counterfeits.
Thus, Nameshield
recommends to the fans to be highly vigilant!
For reminder, here are the basic principles to
respect in order to serenely navigate and not be trapped by unscrupulous
hackers:
Do
not download any plugin of suspicious origin
Properly
analyze the URLs before any purchase
Check
the presence of the famous HTTPS
Check
that the final address corresponds to the searched website
As always on the web, an extra vigilance is
needed, because if spring wins our regions, don’t forget that on the web,
winter is coming…
On April 15, 2019, ANSSI (the National Cybersecurity Agency of France), unveiled its annual report during a press conference. The agency identified 1869 alerts, 391 incidents without counting critical importance operators, 16 major incidents and 14 cyber defence operations for 2018. ANSSI also identified 5 major trends in terms of cyber threats observed in France and in Europe in 2018.
Analysis of cyber threat in 2018 – The 5 major trends
1.Cyber-espionage
Major concern for ANSSI in 2018, according to
the agency, cyber-espionage represents the highest risk for the organizations.
Extremely discrete, benefiting from important
financial resources, the attackers plan for many years highly targeted and
highly sophisticated attacks. In 2018, it was noted that the cyber attackers
are increasingly interested in vital activity sectors and specific critical
infrastructures like the defence, health or research sectors.
2.Indirect attacks
According to ANSSI, indirect attacks have known
an important increase in 2018. Indeed, to avoid the security measures
implemented by big companies, which are more and more aware of the cyber risk,
the attackers aim intermediaries, like providers, who are more vulnerable, to reach
their final targets.
Compromising one partner is enough to reach
many companies. So it is essential to choose partners that place their
information system’s security at the top of their concerns.
3.Destabilization and influence operations
Because of the nature of the targets and the
claims, these attacks though technically moderate, have often an important
symbolic impact. An increase has been observed in 2018.
4.Cryptojacking
For reminder, cryptojacking is a cyberattack
that consists in using the computer’s power of its victim to mine
cryptocurrency.
In 2018, many attacks of this kind were
observed. The more and more organized attackers benefit from the security flaws
to compromise their victims’ equipment by placing cryptocurrencies’ miners
without them knowing it.
5.Online frauds
Online frauds represent as much of a constant cyber threat for the companies and the big organizations as for the individuals. ANSSI noted an important growth of online frauds last year. Big operators are becoming more concerned about cybersecurity, so the attackers turn towards targets less exposed but more vulnerable, like territorial authorities or actors in the health sector which thus were the targets of many phishing attacks in 2018.
Conclusion
The multiplicity and the magnitude of the attacks observed during 2018, prove that it is essential to implement security measures to prevent these cyber threats, within big organizations, big groups as well as small companies.
“The
conclusion is clear: 2018 proves once again that digital risk, far from being
ethereal, must be at the heart of our concerns. Not only those of ANSSI! The
cyberattacks affect all of society. That is why we must all seize the matter.” explains
Guillaume Poupard, ANSSI’s General Director.
A month ago, ICANN held its first annual meeting with the
Internet community in Kobe, Japan. At this summit, ICANN presented the major
projects of the year and those of the coming years. Let’s look back at the main
topics.
The implicitely constraint
of the GDPR
While in May 2018, Europe adopted ambitious legislation to protect users’ personal data, ICANN imposed a regulatory framework on domain name players to bring the industry into line with the constraints of the GDPR.
In the absence of consensus, this framework was imposed when the GDPR came into force on May 25, 2018. It contains non-consensual provisions such as no longer publishing in the registry’s registration directory service, which currently operates via the Whois protocol, data that can be assimilated to personal data for contacts associated with domain names: registrant contacts, administrative contacts, technical contacts. Exit therefore the names, first names, postal addresses, telephone numbers and anonymization of email addresses or hidding via a contact form.
However, as provided for in the Bylaws, the rules governing the role and operation of ICANN, non-consensual rules may not be imposed beyond one year. ICANN therefore had the May 2019 deadline in mind throughout the Kobe meeting.
To build on this, last year ICANN initiated an expedited policy development process (ePDP) whose delicate mission was to develop consensus rules to replace the temporary provisions currently in place.
Shortly before ICANN64, this working group, in which Nameshield participates, submitted its proposals to the GNSO, the ICANN body that manages policy development for generic domain names. This report, which is currently open for comments, is expected to result in a final framework that will be submitted to the ICANN Board in early May for voting and promulgation.
The proposals outline a target date for implementation by 29 February 2020. ICANN has therefore focused its efforts on managing the transition period between May 2019 and this still distant deadline of February 2020. The prevailing approach is rather pragmatic as it consists in keeping the provisions currently in place such as the masking of personal data in the Whois until all the new provisions can be implemented by actors such as registrars and registries by the above-mentioned deadline.
Access to hidden data
subject to tensions
Launched in 2012 during the last round of openings of new domain name extensions but quickly relegated to the boxes, the RDAP (Registration Data Access Protocol), an alternative to the aging Whois protocol, has resurfaced with the GDPR because of its modularity, which allows, unlike Whois, to filter access to certain data according to the user’s profile.
ICANN confirmed in Kobe that this protocol will be widely deployed by this summer. First, this protocol will coexist alongside the Whois protocol. Registrars will therefore provide access to domain name data through both protocols.
The stakeholders present at ICANN64 also learnt about the project submitted by a technical study group mandated by ICANN on the operational way envisaged through the RDAP protocol for access to hidden domain name data. It has been the subject of tensions because it is not the result of a consensual process and ICANN suggested it could play a central role in collecting all requests to validate their authorization, with authentication of requests being carried out upstream by agents accredited by data protection authorities. This topic is also part of the new mission of the Policy Development Working Group (ePDP) in the coming months. Things can therefore evolve on this subject in the future.
A multi-year
strategic plan
At ICANN64, ICANN also presented progress on the implementation of a strategic operating plan for the organization for the period 2021-2025.
The adoption of a five-year plan is new for this organization, which has always operated on an annual basis. This plan must determine the priorities for the coming years, which is also a novelty in a context where multiple projects have always been carried out simultaneously without any real prioritization.
We already know that DNS security is one of the major issues of the coming period. Among the priorities identified are the reinforced fight against malware and the increased security of the DNS, in particular through a faster deployment of DNSSEC.
For the next round of new domain names extensions openings also mentioned, ICANN has also indicated that it will take into account the lessons learned from the previous round. Among them, new extensions are ten times more targeted than historical generic extensions (like .COM,.NET,.ORG,.BIZ,.INFO) by malicious practices such as typosquatting and dotsquatting on which phishing and pharming practices proliferate.
Feel free to contact your Nameshield consultant, who is very knowledgeable on all these subjects.
In its last quarterly report, Nexusguard stated that after the FBI closed 15 websites providing cyberattacks services, a decrease of 85% of the DDoS attacks’ scale and 24% of big attacks were observed.
In the same way, these closings would lead to the decrease of 11% of the
attacks’ volume comparing to the same period in 2018 and at an international
level.
Indeed, it was in December 2018 that the FBI successfully shut down 15 websites proposing DDoS attacks services, called “booters” or “booters services” in the business.
To achieve their goals, these booters use IP stresser, which originally are tools allowing to test the server or the network’s resilience. The cybercriminals hijack these IP stresser and send through them a large volume of requests towards the servers until they are overloaded and unable to respond anymore.
The Nexusguard report also indicates that the 15 websites closed by the FBI would be the technical source of about 11% of the global DDoS attacks of various sizes since 2014. Of course, this decrease might only be temporary, the multiplication of bot networks being the real plague of our decade in terms of cybercriminality.
In the domain names’ world, the rules applied by many registries of “first come, first served” often lead to many cases of abusive registrations and of cybersquatting in particular. This is a practice that consists in taking a domain name by registering it, using or mentioning a trademark, a business name, a patronym or any name on which the applicant has any right, in order to make material or moral profit from its current or future notoriety.
In order to fight against these fraudulent actions and to assert their rights, brands’ owners can implement a targeted action to recuperate or suppress the cybersquatted domain name, called UDRP procedure (Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy). This procedure is administered by an Arbitration Center like the one of the WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization.
According to the WIPO’s General Director, Francis
Gurry: “Domain names involving fraud and
phishing or counterfeit goods pose the most obvious threats, but all forms of
cybersquatting affect consumers. WIPO’s UDRP caseload reflects the continuing
need for vigilance on the part of trademark owners around the world.”
UDRP complaints filed with WIPO in 2018*
On March 15, 2019, the WIPO published its last annual report on domain names’ disputes.
In 2018, the WIPO’s Arbitration and Mediation Center received a record of 3447 UDRP cases filed by brands’ owners, i.e a rise of 12% compared to the previous year.
However these disputes concerned 5655 domain
names, a decrease comparing to 2017 which counted 6371 names.
The main gTLDs in the cases filed with WIPO are unsurprisingly, the .COM (far ahead with 72.88%), the .NET (4.62%), the .ORG (3.50%) and the .INFO (2.23%).
Regarding the disputes on the domain names registered in the new extensions, they represent nearly 13% of the disputes, mostly in .ONLINE, .LIFE and .APP domains.
And lastly, nearly 500 complaints regarding names registered in ccTLDs have been filed, nearly 15% of all the disputes administered by the WIPO in 2018.
The 3 main sectors of complainant activity are
the sectors of banking and finance, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, and
Internet and IT.
Geographically, France is placed second with 553 cases filed with the WIPO, just behind the United States (976 complaints) and is one the most reactive countries on this subject.
Note that on all the UDRP cases filed in 2018, Nameshield ranks second in the filing world complaints with 343 cases filed and 66 represented customers**.
Our teams are of course at your disposal to inform you on the possibilities of contentious domain names recovery actions.
*Source: WIPO Statistics Database
**Source: Nameshield’s report on UDRP procedures, 2018
On the article dated from February 22, 2019, we discussed about the Brexit’s consequences on the .EU domain names and the publication of the action plan by EURid, the .EU registry, following two scenarios, in case of no deal or in case of a withdrawal agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union.
In short, as a result of the Brexit, companies and individuals, holders
of a .EU will no longer be able to renew or register names in .EU if they are
not residing in the European Union.
In case of no deal, .EU domain names’ holders will have 2 months from March 30, 2019 to demonstrate their eligibility or to transfer their name to an
eligible registrant (whose country code isn’t either GB/GI). All registrants
who did not demonstrate their eligibility will be deemed ineligible and their
domain names will be withdrawn.
In case there is a withdrawal agreement, this plan of actions will be
implemented as of January
1, 2021.
Due to ongoing uncertainties over the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union, EURid announced on March 22, 2019, that this plan would be placed on hold while waiting for an official update from the European Commission.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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