Latest Go Daddy phishing attack unrelated to 2013 RAA

Fears that the 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement would lead to new phishing attacks appear to be unfounded, at least so far.
The 2013 RAA, which came into force at most of the big registrars on January 1, requires registrars to verify the registrant’s email address or phone number whenever a new name is registered.
It was long predicted that this new provision — demanded by law enforcement — would lead to phishers exploiting registrant confusion, obtaining login credentials, and stealing valuable domain names.
Over the weekend, it looked like this prediction had come true, with posts over at DNForum saying that a new Go Daddy scam was doing the rounds and reports that it was related to the 2013 RAA changes.
I disagree. Shane Cultra posted a screenshot of the latest scam on his blog, alongside a screenshot of Go Daddy’s actual verification email, and the two are completely dissimilar.
The big giveaways are the “Whois Data Reminder” banner and “Reminder to verify the accuracy of Whois data” subject line.
The new attack is not exploiting the new 2013 RAA Whois verification requirements, it’s exploiting the 10-year-old Whois Data Reminder Policy, which requires registrars annually to remind their customers to keep their contact details accurate.
In fact, the language of the new scam has been used in phishing attacks against registrants since at least 2010.
That’s not to say the attack is harmless, of course — the attacker is still going to steal the contents of your Go Daddy account if you fall for it.
We probably will see attacks specifically targeting confusion about the new address verification policy in future, but it seems to me that the confusion we’re seeing with the latest scam may be coincidental.
Go Daddy told DI yesterday that the scam site in question had already been shut down. It’s not clear if anyone fell for it while it was live.

Comment Tagged: 2013 raa, go daddy, ICANN, phishing, verification, wdrp, whois, whois data reminder policy

Google registers its first new gTLD domain

Google took part in dotShabaka Registry’s Sunrise period, according to today’s zone files.
The company registered جوجل.شبكة, in the .شبكة (Arabic “.web”) TLD, via MarkMonitor at some point prior to December 30.
“جوجل” seems to be the Arabic transliteration of “Google”.
The domain is not resolving, but Whois says it belongs to Google and it’s configured to use Google name servers.
It’s only the fifth confirmed Sunrise registration in the .شبكة space — the only new gTLD to so far conclude a Sunrise period.
Rolex registered its trademark and Richemont International registered three of its luxury goods brands. So far, Rolex is the only confirmed new gTLD registrant that is not also an applicant.
None of the registrants to date are from the Arabic-speaking regions.
These may all be defensive registrations, of course, and may never resolve to anything useful.

2 Comments Tagged: dotshabaka, google, new gTLDs, sunrise, شبكة

Vienna is the first city with its own TLD

The world’s first city gTLD, .wien, went live on the internet this morning.
It’s the TLD for what the English-speaking world calls Vienna, the Austrian capital.
While its nic.wien starter page doesn’t seem to be resolving yet, .wien itself is in the DNS root zone file.
punkt.wien, the new registry, said in its application that .wien names will be restricted to anyone who “can demonstrate that they have an economic, cultural, historical, social or any other connection” to Vienna.
The same test will apply to the use of .wien names — the registry plans to review the content of sites under the gTLD from time to time to ensure compliance.
The policy appears to be modeled somewhat on the .cat geo-gTLD.
According to the .wien application, about a quarter of the Austrian population lives in its environs, giving the gTLD a market of about 1.7 million people.
The registry is planning to launch properly in March, according to its web site.
While it’s the first city gTLD to go live, it isn’t the first geo to hit the root in this round — that honor belongs to .ruhr, which represents a German state.
(Note: Laos’ ccTLD, .la, is often marketed as a city TLD for Los Angeles, but it’s not quite the same thing.)

8 Comments Tagged: .wien, city gtlds, ICANN, new gTLDs, punkt.wien

.email and two other new gTLDs go live

Three more new gTLDs were delegated this afternoon, including the potentially interesting .email.
The other two were TLD Registry’s .在线 (Chinese for ‘.online’) and United TLD/Rightside’s .immobilien (German for ‘.realestate’).
The reason I think .email could be interesting is that it’s very close to “.mail”, which has been highlighted in several analyses as a potentially dangerous due to the risk of name collisions.
It’s also, I think, one of the highlights of Donuts’ portfolio, despite the fact that the company was the only applicant.
.immobilien is the third delegated gTLD for United TLD. It’s going to be competing against the arguably more attractive .immo — a well-known abbreviation — which is currently contested by four applicants.
For TLD Registry, .在线 is the first delegation. It’s planning to take both .在线 and its companion .中文网 (“Chinese website”) to Sunrise on January 17, so we might expect another delegation soon.

5 Comments Tagged: .immobilien, .在线, delegation, donuts, email, ICANN, new gTLDs, rightside, tld registry, united tld

Our unpredictions for 2014

Over the close to four years we’ve been publishing, DI has so far resisted running annual prediction lists.
As a reader, they always strike me as being largely holiday-period filler guff. As a writer, they kind of obligate you to revisit and score yourself a year later. Hugely embarrassing pain in the bum.
But this year we’ve had a change of heart.
It’s really, really quiet out there today.
So here’s our list of events we think will definitely, definitely, definitely happen in 2014.

• Bob Parsons will give ten bucks to a homeless guy outside a Scottsdale Starbucks, according to a Go Daddy press release.
• NomCom, hands tied by its gender quotas policy, will be forced to appoint a minor Kardashian to the ICANN board of directors.
• Pat Kane will quit Verisign in order to head up kp.com, the newly launched sub-domain service for North Koreans who couldn’t get the .kp name they really wanted.
• A pseudonymous domainer will send TLDH’s share price into a death spiral by predicting that “all new gltds will fail lol” in a comment on an industry blog.
• Tucows CEO Elliot Noss will accidentally blind four people during a particularly enthusiastic bout of gesticulation.
• An ICANN director will answer Paul Foody’s question during the Public Forum in Singapore. Foody will leave the room moments later, never to be seen again.
• Somebody will write a blog post about 27-year-old .xyz applicant Daniel Negari without mentioning his age.
• ICANN will blame a “glitch” after accidentally delegating .islam to a New York synagogue.
• Mike Berkens will use apostrophes correctly for a week straight.
• After the GNSO dies for the fifth time, the entire Council will regenerate as Peter Capaldi, forcing an immediate structural review.
• 1&1 will start selling pre-registrations in new gTLDs that it expects will probably be applied for at some point between 2018 and 2024.
• Fox will green-light the production of “Jeff Neuman vs Predator”.
• DotConnectAfrica will finally withdraw its application for .africa, but only after failed attempts to withdraw applications for .africas, .africka, and .dotdotafrica.
• Christine Jones will suffer a humiliating wardrobe malfunction during a campaign rally.
• A smartphone-friendly version of DI will be launched.
• During an unannounced visit to ICANN’s LA office, Fadi Chehade will stumble across John Jeffrey fucking an apple pie in the staff kitchen.
• Jennifer Wolfe will speak during a GNSO Council meeting.
• The Intellectual Property Constituency will complain that ICANN’s latest rights protection mechanisms “go too far to protect trademark owners” and demand an immediate rollback.
• Rick Schwartz will invest $200 million in Donuts.
• The sentence “Esther Dyson declined to comment.” will appear in a mainstream media article about new gTLDs.

Happy new year everyone!

9 Comments

These are the first four new gTLD domain names

Two luxury goods companies have the honor of being the first to register domain names in a new gTLD.
Today, the first four domain names registered to actual registrants popped up in the zone file for dotShabaka Registry’s Arabic “.web” — شبكة.
شبكة. exited its mandatory Sunrise period on Sunday; the four new names appear to be the first ones to get name servers after their Sunrise applications were approved.
The two registrants, according to Whois records, are Richemont International and Rolex.
Richemont is itself a new gTLD applicant. The company has taken a strong interest in the program, with head of digital IP Richard Graham even moderating a new gTLDs conference in March.
The four names (with my best guesses at a translation) are:

• لانسيل.شبكة — seems to mean “Lancel”, Richemont’s brand of expensive leather bags.
• مونتبلان.شبكة — “Montblanc”, Richemont’s brand for selling watches, pens, cufflinks and such.
• بياجيه.شبكة — “Piaget”, another Richemont brand of watches and jewelry.
• رولكس.شبكة — seems to be the translation or transliteration of “Rolex”.

None appear to be resolving on the web yet, not even to placeholder pages, at least from where I’m sitting.
Because they’re Sunrise names, it’s possible that all four are defensive registrations that may never lead anywhere meaningful.
Richemont used Com Laude as its registrar while Rolex used Key-Systems.
The Sunrise was limited to Arabic-script trademarks.
dotShabaka said yesterday that it had “very few” Sunrise applications. Now we know that number was at least four.

1 Comment Tagged: defensive, dotshabaka, new gTLDs, richemont, rolex, sunrise, شبكة

First new gTLD Sunrise ends with “very few” registrations

The first new gTLD Sunrise period was not a success, according to dotShabaka Registry.
The 60-day Sunrise for شبكة. (.web in Arabic) ended yesterday with “very few” registrations, the company told us today, due largely to poor promotion of the Trademark Clearinhouse in Arabic-speaking regions.
The gTLD is restricted to Arabic strings, and therefore Sunrise was restricted to Arabic trademarks.
dotShabaka said in a statement:

We always knew – with the convoluted process for registration and lack of information out to the MENA [Middle-East/ North Africa] region on the Trademark Clearinghouse – that this was going to be a quiet time for us. We have seen very few applications through the Sunrise period.
We know that the managers of the TMCH and ICANN are working hard to promote the TMCH. However, as a pioneer we have unfortunately not enjoyed the fruits of this labour. At the same time it should be noted that we have been buoyed by the level of interest from trademark holders and businesses in the region and expect this interest to translate into registrations once we move into Landrush and are free of the TMCH sunrise eligibility requirements.

The company did not provide exact numbers, but my guess is that we might be looking at single figures here.
According to today’s شبكة. zone file, there are no active third-party domains in the شبكة. namespace. Zero. None. The only live sites are “nic.” and its Arabic equivalent, which both belong to the registry.
That may quickly change, of course, as registrations don’t always immediately translate into zone file entries.

8 Comments Tagged: dotshabaka, idns, sunrise, trademark clearinghouse, شبكة

.ninja springs to life as a squirrel as 19 new gTLDs get delegated

ICANN may be taking Christmas week off, but Verisign apparently isn’t — another 19 new gTLDs were delegated to the DNS root system last night.
Most belong to Donuts: .training, .builders, .coffee, .codes, .education, .florist, .farm, .glass, .house, .holiday, .international, .institute, .solar, .repair and .solutions.
United TLD, the Demand Media/Rightside business that is also providing Donuts’ back-end, had .ninja and .kaufen (German for “buy”) delegated.
PeopleBrowsr’s .ceo also went live, as did I-REGISTRY’s .onl (for “online”).
Donuts is already redirecting its latest batch of nic.[tld] domains to donuts.co.
The web site at nic.ninja currently shows this image as part of a placeholder page:

UPDATE: It occurs to me that this might actually be a prairie dog or something, rather than a squirrel.

9 Comments Tagged: .ninja, delegation, demand media, donuts, ICANN, new gTLDs, peoplebrowsr, rightside

ICANN has spent $120 million on new gTLDs

The new gTLD program has cost ICANN almost $120 million so far, according to a quarterly financial report published earlier this week.
It’s the first time ICANN has published a quarterly statement. Normally it only files a formal report annually.
According to the report, ICANN has spent $119.2 million of its original £344.9 million program budget (which comprises application fees net of refunds).
As of September 30, it still had $225.7 million in cash dedicated to the program, which is accounted for separate to ICANN’s regular operating budget.
ICANN estimates its total spend will be $204.3 million. If you factor in the $108.9 million “risk reserve”, that would put the program $3 million over budget by the time it concludes.
None of this includes the likely proceeds of contention set auctions, which are expected to amount to many millions. This cash will also be accounted for separately, but the community discussion on how to spend it is only just beginning.

2 Comments Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs

Uniregistry plans “dot-spanning” Sunrise periods and anti-gaming protection

Uniregistry is to offer a second Sunrise period in its new gTLDs, going over and above what is required by ICANN, aimed at companies with trademarks that “span the dot”.
Say you run a tattoo parlor and have a trademark on “Joe’s Tattoo”. The ICANN-mandated Sunrise would only allow you to register joestattoo.tattoo, but Uniregistry will allow you to buy joes.tattoo as well.
It would also allow “plurals and conjugations”, so a company with a trademark on “Joe’s Tattoos” would presumably also be eligible for joes.tattoo, even though they’re not an exact match.
This Sunrise B plan appears to apply to all of Uniregistry’s forthcoming gTLDs and was approved by ICANN recently (pdf).
The additional service would be invitation-only, restricted to companies that have participated in the regular Sunrise period, which Uniregistry is calling Sunrise A.
For Sunrise A, Uniregistry plans to allow mark owners to register regular resolving domain names or purchase “blocking” registrations, where the domain resolves to a non-monetized Uniregistry placeholder.
Sunrise B participants would not be able to purchase blocking registrations; for “dot-spanning” trademarks the name must resolve.
Uniregistry also plans to implement an “anti-hijack” measure to help prevent — or at least add friction to — .eu-style gaming by domain speculators during its launch periods.
If you participate in either Sunrise period, you won’t be able to later transfer your name to a third party without providing the registry with proof that you’ve also transferred the corresponding trademark registration.

5 Comments Tagged: .tattoo, dot-spanning, gaming, ICANN, new gTLDs, sunrise, trademarks, uniregistry