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“Arms dealer” registrar probed by ICANN

Kevin Murphy, August 20, 2020, Domain Registrars

ICANN’s top security thinkers are looking into hotly denied claims that an Israeli registrar collaborated with malware distributors.

Luckily for the registrar, GalComm, so far they’ve come up empty-handed and ICANN has told the company it does not consider it “malicious”.

ICANN told GalComm this week that its Security, Stability and Resiliency team is looking into a report published by security consultancy Awake Security in June entitled “The Internet’s New Arms Dealers: Malicious Domain Registrars”.

The report connected GalComm to over 100 malicious browser extensions, used to steal data, that have been installed 33 million times. GalComm was apparently the attackers’ registrar of choice.

While Awake did not report the registrar to ICANN, GalComm took it upon itself to write to ICANN to deny the allegations, saying that it merely acted as a neutral registrar and had no involvement in hosting or distributing the malware.

It also demanded that Awake retract its report and apologize or face legal consequences. The report is still available.

Now, ICANN has written back (pdf) to assure the registrar that its investigations to date has been “unable to corroborate the findings Awake Security presented and it does appear that Awake Security had an inaccurate picture of the total domains under management by GalComm”.

It added that the investigation is ongoing, however:

Based on the information we have been able to obtain to date, we have no reason to believe it appropriate for GalComm to be considered a “malicious domain registrar” as asserted by Awake Security. However, as noted in Awake Security’s report, the malicious actors behind the domains in question may be utilizing detection evasion techniques. As such, our investigations continue, and we appreciate GalComm’s cooperation and support of those investigations.

ICANN has previously told news outlets that it receives very few complaints about GalComm, none related to malware.