ICANN registrar database hacked

ICANN’s database of registrar contact information has been hacked and user data has been stolen.
The organization announced this morning that the database, known as RADAR, has been taken offline while ICANN conducts a “thorough review” of its security.
ICANN said:

This action was taken as a precautionary measure after it was learned that an unauthorized party viewed data in the system. ICANN has found no evidence of any unauthorized changes to the data in the system. Although the vulnerability has been corrected, RADAR will remain offline until a thorough review of the system is completed.

Users of the system — all registrars — have had their usernames, email addresses and encrypted passwords compromised, ICANN added.
ICANN noted that it’s possible to brute-force a hashed password into plaintext, so it’s enforcing a password reset on all users, but it has no evidence of any user accounts being accessed.
RADAR users may want to think about whether they have the same username/password combinations at other sites.
RADAR is a database used by registrars in critical functions such as domain name transfers.
Registrars can use it, for example, to white-list the IP addresses of rival registrars, enabling them to execute large amounts of Whois queries that would usually be throttled.
The news follows hot on the heels of a screwup in the Centralized Zone Data Service, which enabled any new gTLD registry to view data belonging to rival registries and other CZDS users.

4 Comments Tagged: glitch, ICANN, radar, security

Sex.xxx sells for $3m as PussyCash cites SEO value

ICM Registry has sold a package of 40 premium .xxx domain names with a total value of $5 million to Barron Innovations, operator of the PussyCash porn affiliate network.
The headline sale in the batch is sex.xxx, which carried a standalone $3 million price tag.
That’s the first .xxx name to sell for a seven-figure sum. The previous record for a single name was $500,000 for gay.xxx.
It’s also the highest-priced non-.com domain name ever sold, according to publicly available sale prices.
It beats shopping.de, which went for the euro equivalent of $2.85 million in 2008, making sex.xxx the 10th most-expensive domain we know about.
Sex.com is of course the highest priced domain ever sold, going for $13 million in 2010.
According to ICM, Barron bought cam.xxx, phone.xxx and black.xxx for undisclosed six-figure prices. The deal also included web.xxx, market.xxx, mate.xxx and education.xxx, the company said.
Barron is evidently affiliated with webcam-oriented porn sites ImLive.com and Webcamwiz.com, as well as the related lead-generation program PussyCash.com.
PussyCash was subject to this glowing review (NSFW) in the adult industry press recently and is apparently a bit of a big deal in that world.
ICM tells me Barron had been studying the search engine optimization performance of .xxx for some time before signing the deal. Shay Efron, spokesperson for the buyer, said in a press release:

We have studied the undeniably superior performance of .XXX domains in terms of SEO and conversion rates and decided to make a huge splash by acquiring the very best keyword generic names available. We evaluated SEX.xxx, the flagship domain, and decided it has the potential to became the leading brand in the entire adult industry, so it was an obvious part of a very large deal.

The company intends to develop the names, according to a press release.
This is pretty good news for ICM (because of the cash) but it’s also promising for new gTLDs as a whole.
I’m not privy to Barron’s research, but if it’s confident enough in the SEO benefits of .xxx to spend $3 million on one name, that might be a signal that other niche gTLDs could see the same benefits in future.
It might not happen overnight — ICM launched .xxx two and a half years ago — but premium names could appreciate in value, assuming new registries manage to get some actual users building sites.

9 Comments Tagged: barron innovations, icm registry, premium names, pussycash, sex.xxx, xxx

US House passes anti-ICANN bill

The US House of Representatives has passed the DOTCOM Act, which would prevent the Department of Commerce from walking away from its oversight of the DNS root zone.
The bill was approved as an amendment to a defense authorization act, with a 245-177 vote that reportedly saw 17 Democrats vote in line with their Republican opponents.
The DOTCOM Act has nothing whatsoever to do with .com. Rather, it’s a response to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s plan to relinquish its role in root zone management.
The bill as passed (pdf) would prevent NTIA from agreeing to any multistakeholder community-created IANA transition proposal until the Government Accountability Office had issued a study on the proposal.
The GAO would have one year from the point ICANN submits the proposal to come up with this report.
That means that if ICANN and NTIA want to stick to their September 2015 target date for the transition, either the ICANN community would need to produce a proposal at unprecedented and unlikely speed or the GAO would need to take substantially less than a year to write its report.
I don’t think it’s an impossible target, but it’s certainly looking more likely that NTIA will have to exercise one of the two-year automatic renewal options in the current IANA contract.
That’s all assuming that a matching bill passes through the Democrat-controlled Senate and then receives a presidential signature, of course, which is not a certainty.
Assuming a bloc vote by the 47 Republican Senators, only four Democrats (or independents) would need to switch sides in order for the DOTCOM Act to become, barring an unlikely presidential veto, law.
To the best of my knowledge there is not currently a matching bill in the Senate.

6 Comments Tagged: congress, dotcom act, iana, iana transition, ICANN, ntia

.club now biggest-selling new gTLD

.club has overtaken .guru to become the top-selling new gTLD on the market.
According to today’s zone file report, .club now has 59,120 domains, having grown by 2,504 yesterday. That’s compared to .guru, which grew by 181 names to 58,791.
It’s been 12 days since .CLUB Domains predicted it would be at the top of the league table “within days”.
It’s taken 20 days for the gTLD to beat .guru, something the registry at first reckoned would happen within its first week of full general availability.
I don’t think yesterday’s spike has anything to do with the 50 Cent endorsement deal.
As far as I can tell, Fiddy has only been linking to his .com shop on Twitter since his .club domain went live and the deal does not seem to have generated any media coverage outside of domain blogs.
Taking the number one spot is only a relative success, of course. What’s important is that .club is still managing to move 2,500 names in a day three weeks after launch, something no other new gTLD has managed to date.

10 Comments Tagged: .club, .club domains, .guru, donuts, new gTLDs

Fiddy drops da C-bomb at .club launch party

Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson accidentally supported “.com” while he was endorsing da new .club gTLD at a launch party at a New York nightclub last night.
As previously reported, Fiddy is da first significant celebrity endorser of a new gTLD. He’s being paid to use 50inda.club, a web site developed by .CLUB Domains, as his new social media hub.
“In Da Club” was of course his breakthrough hit, in 2003.
He showed up at da Tao nightclub in New York — which had been rebranded “.CLUB” for one night only — last night for about 90 minutes in order to meet fans and pose for selfies, etc.
I was there. As disclosure, .CLUB had paid for my airfare from London, a night in a hotel, and copious amounts of alcohol.
I didn’t attempt to get into da roped-off VIP area where Fiddy was being held, but I gather that da bouncers guarding it were somewhat selective in who he got to meet.
He also publicly spoke, alongside .CLUB’s CEO Colin Campbell and CMO Jeff Sass, for about 30 seconds, in order to provide his official endorsement of da new gTLD.
Da problem was that during his brief address he referred to his support for “.com”, which is a little bit like a celebrity being paid to endorse Pepsi referring to how much he loves Coke.
Probably just a Freudian slip. We’ve all done it.
Unfortunately, I can’t give you da full quote just yet. It was quite noisy in there, and I’d consumed quite a bit of Cristal with diamond flakes floating in it. But a lot of people who videoed da address on their phones tell me it will be on YouTube shortly.
Fortunately for .CLUB, I don’t think what he said matters that much.
What matters is how frequently his people link to his new .club domain on his social media channels, how much mainstream media coverage his endorsement generates, and how many people register .club domains as a result.
Getting Fiddy as an anchor tenant will not have come cheap — my guess, and it is just a guess, is that da deal is costing .CLUB high six figures at least — so da company will have to sell a lot of domains to make it pay off.
UPDATE May 26: Here’s .CLUB’s video of da event. Fiddy says he’s very excited to launch his “50 in da .com club”. He later gets it right, referring to “.club” more than once.

15 Comments Tagged: .club, .club domains, 50 cent, new gTLDs

Clinton.democrat sold to some guy in Kansas

Some guy in Kansas registered the domain name clinton.democrat before Rightside’s new gTLD went into general availability today.
It’s one of 38 .democrat domain names in today’s zone file — a mixture of trademark protections registered during the sunrise period and names sold during a three-week landrush.
Judging by the registration date, the name clinton.democrat appears to have been registered during landrush, one of only a small handful currently in the zone file.
The Whois record for the domain lists one Jared Mollenkamp of “Politically Correct Personal Computers” in Topeka, Kansas as the registrant.
While the email address appears to be protected by Whois privacy, a quick Google reveals that a genuine individual by that name lives in Topeka and is involved in PC enthusiast groups.
Quite why he wants clinton.democrat is not clear. There are many reasons the registration could be completely legit.
It seems to be the only personal name of a politician registered prior to .democrat going to general availability.
The Clintons — Bill and now Hillary, who is tipped for a 2016 run at the presidency — are of course one of the most famous Democratic dynasties, probably second only to the Kennedys.
The string “clinton” has been registered in 22 new gTLDs so far, including clinton.center, clinton.watch and clinton.sexy.
Rightside does not have any special mechanism in place to protect the names of politicians, though it has published a policy that prevents registrants using its gTLDs to mock its own employees.
Public figures generally do not have trademark protection for their personal names, and as such have been ripe for cybersquatting and other types of mischief over the years.

2 Comments Tagged: .democrat, clinton.democrat, hillary clinton, landrush, rightside

ICANN says Verisign should stay in charge of root zone

Verisign should stay in its key role in root zone management after the IANA transition process is complete, according to ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade.
The company currently acts as “maintainer”, alongside the US government as “administrator” and ICANN/IANA as “operator”.
This means Verisign is responsible for actually making changes — adding, deleting or amending the records for TLDs — in the root zone file.
In a blog post yesterday, Chehade said that ICANN will “establish a relationship directly with the third-party Maintainer”, adding:

As a means to help ensure stability, ICANN’s recommended implementation option is to have Verisign continue its role as the Maintainer. However, we will be working closely with all relevant parties including the Root Zone Operators to ensure there are contingency options in place to meet our absolute commitment to the stability, security and resiliency of the Domain Name System.

I wholeheartedly agree that Verisign should stay in its role, or at the very least that ICANN should not take over.
As we’ve learned over the last couple of years of software glitches in the new gTLD program, some of them security-related, ICANN would be a poor choice today to maintain this critical resource.
Chehade noted that the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration would be replaced in its “administrator” role by whatever mechanism the ICANN community comes up with during the transition process.

2 Comments Tagged: iana, iana transition, ICANN, root zone, verisign

ICANN snubs Belgium, gives Donuts the all-clear for .spa

ICANN has rejected demands by the Belgian government by giving Donuts the go-ahead to proceed with its application for .spa, which Belgium says infringes on a geographic name.
Noting that the Governmental Advisory Committee had submitted no consensus advice that Donuts .spa bid should be rejected, the ICANN board’s New gTLD Program Committee said last week “the applications will proceed through the normal process.”
That means the two-way contention set is presumably going to auction.
The English dictionary word “spa” derives from Spa, a small Belgian town with some springs.
The other applicant is Asia Spa and Wellness Promotion Council, which has made a deal with Spa to donate some of its profits to local projects and give the city some control over the registry.
Donuts refused to sign a similar deal, leading to Belgium last month asking ICANN to delegate the gTLD to ASWPC and not Donuts.
The GAC’s last word on .spa was this, from the recent Singapore meeting:

Regarding the applications for .spa, the GAC understands that the relevant parties in these discussions are the city of Spa and the applicants. The GAC has finalised its consideration of the .spa string and welcomes the report that an agreement has been reached between the city of Spa and one of the applicants.

There’s no ICANN fudging here; if the GAC wanted to issue a consensus objection it could have.
The question is: why didn’t it?
Why does the string “amazon”, which does not exactly match the name of a place in its local languages, qualify for a GAC objection, while “spa”, which exactly matches the name of a city, does not?

6 Comments Tagged: .spa, amazon, belgium, donuts, gac, geographic names, governmental advisory committee, new gTLDs

Will anyone buy .luxury names?

The new gTLD .luxury went into general availability this afternoon, having reported a surprisingly promising sunrise period, but will it attract any interest from early-bird registrants?
The gTLD’s names are priced at roughly $700 retail, regardless of name, which is usually high enough to deter many professional domainers. This should mean volumes on day on will be low.
But the registry, Luxury Partners, reckons it had over 600 sunrise registrations — made mostly by recognized luxury brands — which it said made it the biggest new gTLD sunrise to date.
Does that show demand by luxury brands, as the registry posits, or merely targeted defensive registration strategies by companies that feel a particular affinity with the “luxury” tag?
The registry said in a press release:

While most registrants expressed interest in securing their brand name under .LUXURY, the namespace also holds great appeal to companies and investors wanting to secure premium generic terms to target specific market verticals within the luxury sector.

For a high-priced name, it’s also got a surprising amount of registrar support. I count something like 50 accredited registrars listed on its nic.luxury web site.
GA started at 1500 UTC today. If the registry approves our request for zone file access we’ll have its day one numbers tomorrow.

1 Comment Tagged: .luxury, luxury partners, new gTLDs

.club pips .berlin to #2 spot

.CLUB Domains moved into the number two spot on the new gTLD league table overnight, but its growth appears to be slowing.
In today’s zone files, .club has 47,362 domains under management, having added 734 on Sunday; .berlin stood at 47,243, having added 33 yesterday.
.guru still leads with 56,813 names.
Sunday is typically a slow day for domain registrations across the industry, but .club’s growth does appear to be slowing compared to its first few days of general availability, regardless.
It saw 1,141 net new names on Friday and 1,351 on Saturday. The previous Friday and Saturday adds were at 4,904 and 3,828.
It’s difficult to get a comprehensive picture of daily growth due to the registry missing a few days of zone files last week.

Comment Tagged: .berlin, .club, .club domains, .guru, new gTLDs