CAUCE

Criminal Abuse of Domain Names: Bulk Registration and Contact Information Access

In this report, we study "bulk registration misuse" by criminal actors. Bulk registrations refers to the practice of rapidly acquiring domain names, using these in an attack, and abandoning them as if they were throw-away ("burner") phones. These domains are a critical resource for cyber criminals.

We use reputation block list (RBL) data to reveal how the use of bulk registrations, coupled with the crippling of registration data access by the ICANN Temp Spec for Whois, presents cybercrime investigators with the dual impediments of harder-to-pursue criminal activity and harder-to-obtain information about the criminals. From our analyses of sample RBL data for five Top-level Domains we:

• Confirm that cyber criminals take advantage of bulk registration services to "weaponize" large numbers of domains for their attacks,
• Identify four specific registrars at which abusive registration activity appears to be concentrated,
  profile registrants that misuse bulk registrations to acquire and weaponize thousands of domains,
• Confirm that ICANN's Temp Spec policy of redacting Whois point of contact information to comply with the GDPR significantly encumbers and delays cybercrime investigation.

Based on these findings, we recommend that the ICANN organization and community consider several Consensus Policies which, if adopted and incorporated into contracts, would contribute to reducing cybercrime and mitigating its effects on victims.

 

Read the full report: http://interisle.net/criminaldomainabuse.html

 

Dave Piscitello (CAUCE Director at large) ad Dr. Colin Strutt

GDPR Didn't Affect Spam? Not So Fast
By John Levine

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20180905_gdpr_didnt_affect_spam_not_so_fast/

RIP Don Blumenthal

It is with a heavy heart that we note the passing of dear friend, colleague and member of the CAUCE board board of directors, Don Blumenthal on September 28, 2019 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was 67.

Don was an anti-spammer for as long a there was an anti-spam community: he helped design, deploy and maintain the famous ‘Spam Fridge’, the repository of junk email maintained by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). He contributed the wisdom he gleaned from that experience to the design process of Canada’s Spam Freezer.

 

 

Don Blumenthal later worked at the Public Interest Registry (PIR.org) maintaining anti-abuse work for the .ORG TLD

Don was a welcome, active participant to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG.org), at the meetings held by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG.org), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (icaan.org) and, of course, he was a long-time board member of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE.org).

His interests also lay outside the realm of anti-abuse work, Don was a football scout for the Oakland Raiders.

Don Blumenthal worked tireless to make the Internet a better place, had a considerable degree of success doing so, and he will be sorely missed by us all. Simply put, he was a tremendously nice guy.

Rest in peace, Don.