Registrars “unprepared” for DNSSEC

Only one in 10 domain name registrars believes it is fully prepared to offer DNSSEC services today, according to new research out from Afilias, the .info registry.
The Registrar DNSSEC Readiness Report (pdf) also shows that a perceived lack of customer demand for the technology has translated into ambivalence at most registrars.
DNSSEC is a standard extension to DNS that helps prevent domain name hijacking through man-in-the-middle attacks.
The survey shows that 9.86% of registrars say they are “fully prepared” to offer DNSSEC to customers now, with 52.2% saying they were “somewhat” prepared. The remainder were not at all prepared.
A little over a quarter of respondents rated DNSSEC a “high” priority for the next 12 months, with less than 3% saying it was an “extremely high” priority.
Two of the biggest reasons for the lack of urgency were lack of customer demand – 59% of registrars said they saw no demand at all – and difficulties developing key management systems.
Despite this, when asked the question “Should TLD registries support DNSSEC?”, a whopping 80% responded in the affirmative.
I expect interest in the technology will pick up early next year, when VeriSign signs the .com zone.
The Afilias survey was conducted electronically earlier this month. The sample size was quite small, with only 71 respondents, and most of them were on the smaller side by domain count.
The report was released to coincide with Afilias’ launch of a broad effort to add DNSSEC support to all of the TLDs for which it provides registry services.
The company already offers the technology in .org, and that will now be extended to gTLDs including .info and ccTLDs such as .in. You can read the release at CircleID.

Comment Tagged: .in, .info, .org, afilias, DNSSEC, safeguard

ccTLDs under the hammer at UK domainer conference

The UK will get a rare domainer conference and live auction at the end of the week.
MeetDomainers, organized by NameDrive and the Polish domain investment outfit ddfund.eu, will open its doors for three days at the Hilton in Manchester.
Most of the action (if you don’t count getting drunk or paintballing) is focussed on Friday, culminating in a live auction with about 50 lots.
There are a couple of .coms in there, and one .co, but the majority of the domains are in the .uk namespace. Of the bunch, the most attractive .co.uk names to my eye appear to be:

CoffeeMachines.co.uk
QuadBikes.co.uk
ComputerRepair.co.uk
GymEquipment.co.uk
MediaSales.co.uk

From the .org.uk domains on offer, these look nice:

Shirts.org.uk
Vets.org.uk
Clothes.org.uk

There are also a couple of UK-related geographical .coms, referring to popular(ish) tourist areas in northern England: Penrith.com and Cumbria.com.
Any domainers with an interest in the South African market may well be interested in these category killers:

MobilePhones.co.za
Smartphones.co.za
Phone.co.za
Universities.co.za

The Isle of Man’s .im ccTLD also gets some love, with these domains on offer (note that, unlike .uk, direct second-level registrations are possible under .im as well as at the third level).

apartmentrentals.im
apartmentrentals.co.im
PropertyRentals.im
PropertyRentals.co.im
CarHire.co.im
CheapHotels.co.im
Flights.co.im
HolidayHomes.co.im
Holidays.co.im

And here’s the rest:

HotelBookings.co.uk
CoffeeMachine.co.uk
YouthClubs.co.uk
BowlingClub.co.uk
BowlingWear.co.uk
CampingGoods.co.uk
NewBrighton.co.uk
LinkBuildingServices.co.uk
PersonalisedGift.co.uk
AsbestosTests.co.uk
BlackBoards.co.uk
ChalkBoards.co.uk
StudentCreditCard.co.uk
VII.co.uk
TRX.co.uk
Holy.co.uk
TopUps.co.uk
Groom.co.uk
FashionDesigner.co.uk
Entry.co.uk
EuroPallets.co.uk
HomeCinemaSystems.co.uk
PhoneContract.co.uk
PrivateYachtHire.com
PrivateYachthire.co.uk
HolidayInsurance.CO
BackLinks.co.uk
ProductFeeds.co.uk
Blades.co.uk
Snorkel.co.uk
Media-Sales.co.uk
HighChair
HighChairs.co.uk
Invoicing.co.uk

Opening bids start anywhere from £50 to £20,000 ($31,000). The auction can be found here.
MeetDomainers is also the first domaining-oriented gathering I intend to attend in person. If you’re also planning on heading to Manchester this week, be sure to say hi if you spot me.

2 Comments Tagged: auction, cctlds, meetdomainers

Microsoft wins Kinect domains, but still doesn’t own kinect.com

Microsoft has successfully recovered two domain names that contain its Kinect games trademark, but kinect.com still belongs to another company.
A National Arbitration Forum UDRP panelist handed Microsoft kinectxbox.com and xbox-kinect.com, which were registered on the eve of Kinect’s launch, calling the registrations “opportunistic bad faith”.
The registrant, located in France, said in his defense that he’d planned to create a fan site for the Kinect, which is an upgrade for the Xbox games console.
But he didn’t get a chance – the domains were registered on June 12, Kinect was announced the following day, and Microsoft had slapped him with a UDRP complaint by June 29.
As I reported back in June, kinect.com is currently registered to an ad agency called CAHG. I’d be surprised if Microsoft hasn’t tried to buy the domain already.
Interestingly, Microsoft, which looks like a client of Melbourne IT’s brand management service, does own kinect.co, but it currently redirects to a Bing search.

Comment Tagged: kinect, melbourne it, Microsoft, naf, udrp

.CO landrush auctions raise over $50k so far

The ongoing .co landrush auctions have fetched well over $50,000 in sales so far, according to stats released by the registry, .CO Internet, today.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the biggest price tag among the 24 closed auctions is attached to a typo – 163.co went for $5,778. The .com equivalent is a Chinese portal with hundreds of millions of visitors.
The registry has not released any figures for adult-oriented domains, or any domains that look like they might have UDRP issues (why are these being sold?), so the list is far from complete.

163.co – $5,778
cityjobs.co – $4,600
dedicated.co – $3,600
airporttransfers.co – $3,200
christchurch.co – $3,100
boaterexam.co – $2,550
economist.co – $2,550
center.co – $2,150
globo.co – $2,050
exchangerates.co – $2,050
bonus.co – $2,000
customer.co – $1,550
abel.co – $1,470
communicate.co – $1,350
addiction.co – $1,300
elevator.co – $1,251
acid.co – $1,250
herbal.co – $1,201
duo.co – $1,161
cycles.co – $1,150
desi.co – $1,060
developers.co – $1,001
baker.co – $1,000
ace.co – $1,000

I’m told that the many of the “hotter” auctions are still open. Rules state that any new bid extends the auction by 24 hours. This could go on for a while yet.

1 Comment Tagged: .co internet, auctions, landrush

Russian domain crackdown halves phishing attacks

Phishing attacks from .ru domains dropped by almost half in the second quarter, after tighter registration rules were brought in, according to new research.
Attacks from the Russian ccTLD namespace fell to 528, compared to 1,020 during the first quarter, according to Internet Identity’s latest report.
IID attributed the decline to the newly instituted requirement for all registrants to provide identifying documents or have their domains cancelled, which came into effect on April 1.
The report goes on to say:

Following a similar move by the China Internet Network Information Center in December 2009, spam researchers suggested that this tactic only moves the criminals to a new neighborhood on the Internet, but has no real impact on solving the problem.

I wonder whose ccTLD is going to be next.
The IID report also highlights a DNS redirection attack that took place in June in Israel, which I completely missed at the time.
Apparently, major brands including Microsoft and Coca-Cola started displaying pro-Palestine material on their .co.il web sites, for about nine hours, after hackers broke into their registrar accounts at Communigal.

2 Comments Tagged: .ru, cnnic, communigal, internet identity, israel, Microsoft, phishing, russia

We Buy Any Car UDRPs webuyanymotors.com

If you live in the UK, you’ve probably seen the annoying-as-hell (yet consequently effective) WeBuyAnyCar.com commercials on TV.
Now the company is going after the domain webuyanymotors.com, owned by another British company with a similar business model, with a UDRP proceeding.
WeBuyAnyCar has obviously spent a fair bit of money building its brand up recently, but are “car” and “motors” really confusingly similar?
Trying singing along to the commercial using “motors”. It just doesn’t scan properly.

5 Comments Tagged: udrp, webuyanycar.com, webuyanymotors.com

Domainers get there before the dictionary

The new third edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English contains more than 2,000 new words, according to reports today, but it looks like domainers will find slim pickings.
For every neologism the dictionary now defines, you’ll find a .com equivalent that was registered years ago, in some cases over a decade ago.
Here are some newly official generic dictionary words, along with the earliest date I could find for their original .com registration.

SoftSkills – May 1996
Turducken – June 1997
ExitStrategy – August 1998
ChillPill – December 1999
CarbonCapture – May 2000
Cheeseball – August 2000
Vuvuzela – May 2004
PayWall – June 2004
Frenemy – February 2005
Defriend – June 2005
Staycation – November 2005
Bromance– April 2006
Microblogging – April 2007
Deleveraging – April 2007
TweetUp – June 2007
Overleveraged – July 2007
ToxicDebt – September 2007
QuantitativeEasing – November 2008
Catastrophizing – April 2009

Not all of these were registered by domainers, of course. Some are in use, though plenty are currently parked or marked for sale.
The Oxford dictionaries cover primarily UK English. Some of these words, like “cheeseball” or “turducken” are Americanisms that clearly saw some lag crossing the Atlantic.

1 Comment Tagged: domaining, oxford dictionary of english

Two registrars get stay of execution

ICANN has given two registrars another year of accreditation, after previously threatening to terminate their contracts for non-payment of fees.
Abansys & Hostytec and Namehouse, two small registrars, have had the terms of their registrar accreditation agreements extended to August 15, 2011 and July 6, 2011, respectively.
In June, ICANN had told both companies they would be de-accredited on July 1, 2010. Together, the two firms owed almost $20,000 in unpaid fees.
Yesterday, a small note appeared on ICANN’s compliance page:

18 August 2010: Abansys & Hostytec, S.L. RAA effective date extended to 15 August 2011.
18 August 2010: Namehouse, Inc. RAA effective date extended to 6 July 2011.

It’s not entirely clear to me whether this means the registrars have paid up or not. Unlike previous occasions, there’s no mention of whether the companies “cured all outstanding contract breaches”.
According to DotAndCo.net, neither registrar has any domains under management in the gTLDs, although Abansys & Hostytec claims to run over 100,000 domains.

3 Comments Tagged: abansys & hostytec, compliance, ICANN, namehouse, raa

ICANN releases (censored) board briefing docs

ICANN has given an unprecedented glimpse into the workings of its board of directors, with the release of hundreds of pages of staff briefing papers.
But the documents are quite heavily redacted, particularly when it comes to some of the more controversial topics.
The documents show what ICANN staffers told the board in the run-up to the Nairobi and Brussels meetings, dealing with important decisions such as .xxx and internationalized domain names.
The Brussels decision to put .xxx back on the track to approval sees more than its fair share of blacked-out text, but the documents do show that ICANN general counsel John Jeffrey’s recommendations were pretty much in line with how the board eventually voted.
Other topics seeing redaction include the implementation of DNSSEC at the root, the activities of the Internet Governance Forum, and specific discussion of IDN ccTLD delegations.
Some topics are deemed so sensitive that even the titles of the pages have been blacked out. But in at least one case somebody apparently forgot to redact the title from the PDF’s internal bookmarks.
So we know, for example, that a section entitled “Chronological-History-ICM” is deemed entirely unpublishable, even though ICANN has previously published a document with pretty much the same title (pdf).

Comment Tagged: cctlds, DNSSEC, ICANN, icm registry, idns, xxx

VeriSign plans single-letter .com auctions

VeriSign has confirmed that it wants to auction off single-character .com domain names, following a test with the equivalent .net domains.
The company recently asked ICANN for permission to sell one and two-letter .net domains. As Andrew Allemann noted at the time, that was a pretty strong indicator it would want to do the same with .com.
Now the company has admitted as much, and is looking for an online auction provider to handle the sales. It published a Request For Proposals today. The RFP says:

VeriSign intends to submit a proposal to ICANN through the RSEP [Registry Services Evaluation Process] and anticipates allocating .com single and two character domain name registrations through an auction as well

One and two-letter domains are currently restricted, due to the potential confusion with country-code TLDs. ICANN has been gradually lifting that restriction in some of the less-popular TLDs.
If VeriSign is also given permission, which seems likely, the auctions would certainly be lucrative.
If o.co can fetch $350,000, how much would Overstock, which has been screaming out for o.com for years, stump up for the .com equivalent? I also recall, years ago, Yahoo saying it wanted y.com.
But VeriSign might not be the main beneficiary of the proceeds. In its .net application, it says that it would use any money raised with the .com auctions for the common good.

VeriSign is not hereby proposing a release of .com single and/or two character domain names. VeriSign anticipates that any such proposal will be structured differently than the proposal for .net and will include use of proceeds from any auction for the benefit of the general Internet community.

That’s open to interpretation, of course. Investing a few million dollars in upgrading its infrastructure could be said to benefit the general internet community.

7 Comments Tagged: .com, .net, auctions, ICANN, verisign