New gTLD filing deadline delayed again

It looks like new gTLD applicants are in for more delays after ICANN announced that it will not reopen its TLD Application System tomorrow as planned.

In a statement tonight, chief operating officer Akram Atallah said that the recently discovered data leakage vulnerability has been fixed, but the fix is still being tested.

We believe that we have fixed the glitch, and we are testing it to make sure.

ICANN is committed to reopening the application system as soon as we can confirm that the problem has been resolved and we have had proper time for testing.

We also want to inform all applicants, before we reopen, whether they have been affected by the glitch. We are still gathering information so we can do that.

Accordingly, the application system will not reopen tomorrow.

ICANN shut down TAS last Thursday, just 12 hours before the new gTLD application filing deadline, after discovering a persistent bug that allowed some applicants to see the names of files uploaded by other applicants.

It had planned to open TAS again tomorrow and close it on Friday. However, that’s looking increasingly unlikely.

Atallah said that ICANN “will provide an update on the timing of the reopening no later than Friday, 20 April at 23.59 UTC.”

While ICANN said yesterday that it was still targeting April 30 for its Big Reveal event, subject to change, that’s now looking like an ambitious goal.

Pool.com offers $25k gTLD digital archery service

Domain name drop-catcher Pool.com hopes to make a quick buck out of ICANN’s new generic top-level domain application batching process.

The company has announced a Digital Archery Engine service, which it says could help new gTLD applicants get their applications near the top of the evaluation queue.

It’s based on Pool’s experience catching expiring names to auction, and ICANN’s controversial “digital archery” method of allocating applications into batches for processing.

Getting into the first batch of 500 applications is expected to knock at least five months off the wait time for new gTLD approval, delegation and launch. For many applicants, this time-to-market advantage is important.

But it’s not cheap. If Pool gets your application into the first batch it will set you back $25,000. If you’re in the top 50% of applications, the price tag is $10,000. Anything slower is free.

Domain hijack leads to registrar shutdown threat

ICANN has threatened to terminate Chinese domain name registrar eName Technology after the domain 1111.com was allegedly hijacked.

According to ICANN’s notice of breach (pdf), eName has refused to hand over data documenting the transfer of 1111.com as required by the Registrar Accreditation Agreement.

ICANN claims that when it tried to get eName’s help investigating a hijacking complaint, the company did not return its calls or emails.

The registrar now has 15 days to provide the transfer records as called for by the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy.

According to historical Whois records, 1111.com was transferred to eName between February 12 and 16 this year. After a complaint, ICANN started chasing eName for the data on February 28.

The domain appears to have been owned by at least four different parties and three different registrars – Network Solutions, then Joker, then eName – since the start of 2012.

It’s the second time that ICANN has sent a breach notice to a registrar over an alleged mishandling of a domain name hijacking, and the first time it’s actually named the domain in question.

In February, the organization threatened Turkish registrar Alantron with the suspension of its contract over the botched handling of pricewire.com.

Massive firewall vendor lets domain expire

Check Point Software, one of the world’s leading firewall vendors, forgot to renew its main domain name and it wound up parked by its registrar over the weekend.

The domain checkpoint.com had an expiry date of March 30.

According a screenshot over on The Register, it was resolving to a Network Solutions placeholder page until this afternoon.

The Whois record at DomainTools still shows NetSol’s pending renewal or deletion details, but the domain – a 1994 registration – appears to be resolving normally now.

The company has a market cap of $13.37 billion.

Rogue registrar suspended over “stolen” domain

ICANN has told Turkish domain name registrar Alantron that its accreditation will be suspended for a month due to its shoddy record-keeping.

The suspension, which will become effective March 8, follows an investigation into allegations of double-selling.

ICANN issued the suspension last Thursday after trying unsuccessfully for almost three months to get its hands on Alantron’s registration records.

The company now has until March 28 to sort out its compliance problems or face losing its accreditation entirely.

I understand the investigation was prompted by complaints filed by an American named Roger Rainwater over the potentially valuable domain name pricewire.com.

Pricewire.com spent a couple of years under Whois privacy but was grabbed last August by Turkish registrant Altan Tanriverdi, according to historical Whois records.

Rainwater, who says he had been monitoring it for three or four years, subsequently paid Tanriverdi an undisclosed sum for the domain, signing up for an Alantron account so it could be pushed.

Rainwater showed up in the Whois for pricewire.com on September 7 last year. But he says he was unable to change his name servers and 48 hours later the name disappeared from his account.

He says he was told by Alantron that it had put the domain in Tanriverdi’s account “by mistake” and that it was sold to SnapNames as part of a batch of dropping domains.

According to emails sent to Rainwater, seen by DI, Alantron said that pricewire.com was “registered via a partner company called Directi for a company called Snapnames”.

SnapNames had already auctioned the name – apparently there were more than 40 bidders – and the name has since been transferred to one Sammy Katz of Philadelphia.

However, given that Whois reliability is at question here, it’s not entirely clear who owns it. It’s currently parked at InternetTraffic.com.

Tanriverdi, who appears to be equally aggrieved, has published an extensive history of the dispute, along with screenshots, here (in Turkish).

In short: Alantron stands accused of double-selling pricewire.com.

ICANN’s compliance team has been unable to get its hands on the underlying transaction data despite repeated attempts because Alantron apparently doesn’t have it.

Its suspension notice alleges that Alantron was running two registration systems in parallel and that they weren’t talking to each other, resulting in the same name being sold to two parties.

Read ICANN’s suspension notice in PDF format here.