Hackers stole data from Verisign, Blacknight

Hackers broke into Verisign’s corporate network and made out with sensitive data, it emerged today.
The attacks happened in 2010 and the company does not believe its all-important domain name infrastructure – which supports .com and several other top-level domains – was compromised.
Reuters broke the news today, but the attack was actually revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing last October. The filing said:

In 2010, the Company faced several successful attacks against its corporate network in which access was gained to information on a small portion of our computers and servers. We have investigated and do not believe these attacks breached the servers that support our Domain Name System (“DNS”) network. Information stored on the compromised corporate systems was exfiltrated.

The filing, which was required under recent SEC disclosure rules, goes on to say that the attacks were “not sufficiently reported to the Company’s management” until September 2011.
It adds that Verisign does not know whether the “exfilitrated” – ie, stolen – data was used by the attackers. The filing does not say what was taken.
Back in 2010, Verisign was still a security company. It did not sell off its SSL business to Symantec until August that year. The filing does not say whether SSL data was breached.
As one of the logical single points of failure on the internet, Verisign is of course the subject of regular attacks, mainly of the performance-degrading distributed denial of service variety.
The bigger worry, as Reuters rather breathlessly notes, is that if hackers could compromise the integrity of the DNS root or .com/.net zones, it could lead to mayhem.
In unrelated news, the domain name registrar Blacknight today revealed that it got hacked on Tuesday.
The attackers may have got away with contact information – including email addresses and telephone numbers – for up to 40,000 customers, the company said.
Financial information such as credit card numbers was not compromised, Blacknight said.
The company has contacted Irish data protection regulators and will also inform the police. Customers are advised to change their passwords.
If you’re a Blacknight customer you’ll also want to be on the lookout for “spear-phishing” attacks in the near future. When the bad guys know your name, it can lead to a more convincing phish.

1 Comment Tagged: blacknight, hacking, security, verisign

.me beating .co in start-ups?

The .co top-level domain may have more registrations, but more tech start-ups are opting for .me domain names, according to an informal study.
Doctoral student Thomas Park compiled a list of 1,000 start-ups added to TechCrunch’s CrunchBase database last year and found that entrepreneurs chose .co 1% of the time, versus 1.7% for .me.
As caveats, the difference between the two TLDs only works out to seven companies and .me, which launched in 2008, does of course have a two-year head start over .co.
I’m also guessing that CrunchBase has an English-language bias, which could skew the results. While .co has meaning in more countries it lacks the call-to-action punch of .me in English.
Nevertheless, I think the results are interesting because .CO Internet heavily targets start-ups in its marketing and currently has twice as many domains under management (over 1.1 million) as doMEn, the Afilias/Go Daddy joint-venture .me registry.
Park’s results show that .me had a 0.50% share in 2010 and a 0.80% share in 2009 while .co managed to get one company (0.10%) on the list during the half of 2010 it was live.
The survey found that .com is the runaway first choice for entrepreneurs, with about 85% of the start-up market, but you knew that already.

4 Comments Tagged: .co, .co internet, .me, afilias, domen, go daddy

Moniker and SnapNames join Key-Systems stable

KeyDrive has acquired rival registrar Moniker and rival aftermarket player SnapNames from Oversee.net, according to a statement on the company’s web site.
The deal, which closed in January, would make the combined company the sixth-largest ICANN-accredited registrar, with over 5.4 million domains under management, KeyDrive said.
KeyDrive formed with the merger of German registrar Key-Systems and aftermarket services provider NameDrive last July. It’s based in NameDrive’s native Luxembourg.
The deal gives the primarily European company an additional footprint in the US market. Moniker is based in Florida, SnapNames in Oregon.
It’s a not-too-soon exit for Moniker, which had a disappointing 2011 largely defined by the super-fast churning of domains under management and the regular canning of staff.
I’ve been hearing rumors that the two Oversee units were on the auction block for months.
It’s the fifth significant piece of M&A in the registrar market in the last six months, following the sale of Go Daddy and Group NBT to private investors, Tucows’ acquisition of EPAG and NetSol’s move to Web.com
Terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed. Indeed, there does not appear to have been an official announcement yet, beyond the KeyDrive home page.
The deal was first reported by DomainNameNews.
More details as they come in.

Comment Tagged: acquisitions, key-systems, keydrive, moniker, namedrive, oversee.net, snapnames

Exclusive: StarHub confirms dot-brand gTLD bid

Singapore telecommunications firm StarHub will become the fifth company to publicly reveal plans for a “dot-brand” generic top-level domain.
The company, which offers broadband internet, cable TV and mobile telephony and has annual revenue of about $2 billion, is set to announce tomorrow that it will apply to ICANN for .starhub.
It’s the first confirmed dot-brand applicant since ICANN opened the application window January 12. It’s also the first since Neustar announced its own plans last June.
StarHub plans to use the gTLD to enable domain names such as tv.starhub and broadband.starhub.
ARI Registry Services has the contract to run its registry back-end and Melbourne IT Digital Brand Services is its application consultant.
Oliver Chong, assistant vice president of brand and marketing communications at StarHub, said:

We believe the ‘.starhub’ Top-Level Domain will deliver clear marketing and advertising benefits to StarHub, such as improved online brand recall and a more intuitive consumer experience with easy to remember domain names such as ‘mobile.starhub’. We also anticipate potential Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) benefits by operating a more targeted and relevant naming system that is clearly matched with our website content.

To date, only Deloitte, Canon and Hitachi have publicly confirmed corporate dot-brand applications.
Registry services provider Neustar also wants .neustar, but its announcement was a little self-serving so I’m not sure that it “counts”.
We’re also aware of some other likely candidates, such as IBM and Unicef, but most companies are playing their cards pretty close to their chests.
ARI CEO Adrian Kinderis said he hopes the announcement of .starhub will “open the floodgates” for other Asian companies to apply for their own new dot-brand gTLDs.
While it’s a significant revelation – at least likely to drive StarHub’s competitors into action if they’re not already – similar predictions were made when Canon announced its dot-brand bid almost two years ago.
Many registry operators are already predicting as many as 1,000 dot-brand applicants.
I’m not ready to predict a slew of similar announcements just yet, but a confirmed dot-brand bidder will certainly do no harm to registries currently trying to persuade clients to sign on the dotted line.

Comment Tagged: ari registry services, dot-brand, ICANN, melbourne it, new gTLDs, starhub

Cybersquatters face jail time in the Philippines

Cybersquatting is about to be criminalized in the Philippines, and you’re not going to believe the penalties.
Squatters could face six to 12 years in jail if found guilty under Senate Bill 2796, which has reportedly just been approved by the country’s Senate.
Six years is the minimum term, but the bill does allow for an alternative punishment of a 500,000 peso fine, which works out to about $12,000.
That’s 300,000 pesos more than the fine for hacking, newly criminalized by the same bill, which also carries a six-to-12-year prison sentence.
Here’s the definition of “cyber-squatting” from the bill, courtesy of BlogWatch.tv:

The acquisition of a domain name over the internet in bad faith to profit, mislead, destroy reputation, and deprive others from registering the same, if such a domain name is:
i. Similar, identical, or confusingly similar to an existing trademark registered with the appropriate government agency at the time of the domain name registration
ii. Identical or in any way similar with the name of a person other than the registrant, in case of a personal name; and
iii. Acquired without right or with intellectual property interests in it

The bill also provides prison sentences for what the local media is calling “cyber sex”, but which appears to cover internet pornography in general.
A companion bill in the House has to be approved before the law hits the statute books.

Comment Tagged: cybersquatting, philippines

ICANN advertises new gTLDs on Twitter

ICANN has really ramped up the social marketing of its new generic top-level domain program for the last few weeks, and today it started plugging new gTLDs with some Twitter advertising.
It’s bought some “Promoted Tweets”, which means some Twitter users will see a designated ICANN tweet even if they don’t already follow ICANN.
Here’s an example captured by @andrewhennigan.

The Promoted Tweets ad service is bid-based and priced on a cost-per-engagement basis, so advertisers only pay when they get a reply, retweet, follow, etc. Reportedly, there’s a $15,000 minimum commitment.
Judging by Twitter noise today, I’m guessing that today ICANN is promoting its new gTLDs Twitter chat, which is happening at 1600 UTC tomorrow with the hashtag #newgtlds.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs, twitter

ARI signs up 21 new gTLD clients

ARI Registry Services says it signed up 21 new generic top-level domain clients in the first week after ICANN opened the program earlier this month.
The majority were dot-brand applicants, ARI said in a press release today. It has found that dot-brands represent about 60% of all the companies expressing interest in a new gTLD.
They all signed contracts between January 12, when ICANN starting taking applications, and January 19, the registry services provider said.
A spokesperson said that ARI expects to name some of its clients “in a matter of weeks”, but it’s not clear whether this will happen before March 29 – the deadline for making your first down-payment with ICANN – when it would be of most marketing use.
In the absence of this specific positive reinforcement of its message, the company today tried some FUD instead.
CEO Adrian Kinderis is quoted:

We have clients that are still undecided about whether they should apply. They have been put off by the negativity that has been surrounding the program. There have been delays and speculation. There is also a misguided perception amongst some that they can wait until the next round to secure their brand or generic category name. My message to those clients is that there is no certainty about when there will be another round. Potential applicants need to understand that if they take a ‘wait and see’ approach, they may miss out all together.

I’m not keen on this kind of fear-based marketing, but Kinderis has a point: the timing of the second-round is currently uncertain. Based on current evidence, I think an optimistic view is 2015.
I cover the subject in some depth on DomainIncite PRO (which you simply must subscribe to, otherwise your house will burn down with all of your cats inside… oh, look, I’m doing it now.)

Comment Tagged: ari registry services, dot-brands, ICANN, new gTLDs

Five amusing Twitter accounts to follow

One of the good things about Twitter is that there’s no Whois (yet), which makes it fertile ground for pseudonymous humor.
Here are the five bogus domain humor tweeters I find amusing.
No, before you ask, none of these are me. I’ve only written one thing under a fake identity since I launched DI.
@BobRecstrum
Bob tweets in-character as a “heightened” version of ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom.
He’s basically a globe-trotting narcissist hippy with delusions of grandeur and an obsessive penchant for taking panoramic iPhone photos of himself shaking hands with world leaders.
His avatar, inexplicably, is Sam Rockwell as Zaphod Beeblebrox.

@thereforeICANN
This account, which usually offers a satirical view of ICANN proceedings, typically peaks during its thrice-yearly public meetings.
Whoever is responsible for this account has clearly been around ICANN for a while – s/he goes to the meetings, reads the web site, and knows what’s coming before it happens.

@dns_borat
This one’s for the geeks. Imagine everyone’s favorite Kazakhstani roving reporter, but he’s a DNS administrator.
That’s pretty much it really.

@DotSucks
This account was only created in the last few days. I’d hazard a guess that it has links to the adult entertainment industry, due to the obvious anti-.xxx sentiment on display.
The premise, of course, is that new gTLDs are basically a massive shakedown. Shows promise.

(I’ll note that the first time I heard of .sucks back in 2000 when it was floated by then-chair of ICANN Esther Dyson, ironically now one of the new gTLD program’s highest-profile critics.)
@domainhumor
This one is slightly different for two reasons: 1) I know who it is. 2) He/she has not tweeted much funny stuff lately.
I follow it in the hope that this might change one day.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, twitter

Verisign to apply for a dozen new gTLDs

Verisign plans to apply to ICANN for about 12 new generic top-level domains, according to the executive in charge of registry services.
“We intend to do about 12. Most of those will be transliterations of .com,” senior vice president Pat Kane said on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call yesterday.
This does not mark a significant change of strategy – the company has been open about its intention to apply for internationalized domain name variants of .com for over a year – but I believe it’s the first time it’s put a number on it.
It will be interesting to see which gTLDs – if any – Verisign will go for which are not .com IDNs.
My view is that it would make more sense for the company to apply for potentially high-volume .com competitors, such as .web or .blog. It has the capacity, the channel and the cash.
Smaller niche gTLDs may not be worth the distraction and risk, and would be better suited to dedicated registries that can concentrate on more focused marketing.
In any event, we’re going to see some major consolidation in the new gTLD space four or five years from now, and Verisign could well vacuum up cash-making registries at that time.
CEO Jim Bidzos also said on the call that Verisign has been retained to provide the registry for “several” dot-brand applications, but that it will not see any material revenue until 2013.
The major event for 2012, he noted, is the renewal of the .com Registry Agreement with ICANN, which expires at the end of November.
Verisign is already “engaging” with ICANN on this, Bidzos said.
This contract will be posted for public comment and sent to the US Department of Commerce for approval.
I’m expecting controversy, particularly if the contract continues to allow Verisign to increase prices.
It’s going to be harder for Verisign to argue that it needs the extra cash to invest in its infrastructure if it’s also leveraging that infrastructure to win lucrative dot-brand contracts.

3 Comments Tagged: .com, dot-brand, ICANN, idns, new gTLDs, verisign

Manwin files its first cybersquatting complaint

Manwin Licensing, the company currently suing ICANN and ICM Registry claiming .xxx breaks US competition law, has filed its first cybersquatting complaint using the UDRP.
It’s over a .com domain, pornhubarchive.com (don’t go there, not only is it NSFW but it also looks like it panders to some very dubious tastes), which Manwin thinks infringes on its rights to the PornHub name
The domain is registered to a Russian, while pornhub.com itself is protected by Whois privacy.
There’s a certain irony here. PornHub is a “tube” site that allows users to upload content and has itself come under fire for violating intellectual property rights in the past.
It was sued by the the porn production company Pink Visual for copyright infringement in 2010.

Comment Tagged: cybersquatting, manwin, pornhub, pornhubarchive.com, udrp