The Register: Ex-boss of ICANN shifts from ‘advisor’ to co-CEO of private equity biz that tried to buy .org for $1bn+. “The former head of DNS regulator ICANN has been named as co-CEO of a company that launched a controversial attempt to purchase the .org internet registry earlier this year. The news has again raised concerns about the revolving doors between regulators and those who need regulation.”
domain name registration
The Register: Internet Society, remember your embarrassing .org flub? The actual internet society would like to talk about it
The Register: Internet Society, remember your embarrassing .org flub? The actual internet society would like to talk about it. “The non-profit organizations that fought to halt the sale of the .org registry to a newly created private equity firm are demanding an independent review into the fiasco, which pitted charities against domain registrars over the billion-dollar aborted deal.”
The Register: ICANN delays .org sell off after California’s attorney general intervenes at last minute, tears non-profit a new one over sale
The Register: ICANN delays .org sell off after California’s attorney general intervenes at last minute, tears non-profit a new one over sale. “ICANN has again delayed a decision on the sale of the .org registry, pushing the issue off for another month multiple sources with knowledge of Thursday’s meeting, have told The Register. The organization’s board of directors was due to decide [Thursday] on whether to approve the $1.13bn sale of the .org domain from the Internet Society to private equity firm Ethos Capital, but a last-minute letter from California’s attorney general Xavier Becerra appears to have upended the plan.”
The Register: Four months, $1bn… and ICANN still hasn’t decided whether to approve .org sale with just 11 days left to go
The Register: Four months, $1bn… and ICANN still hasn’t decided whether to approve .org sale with just 11 days left to go. “In 11 days, DNS overseer ICANN is supposed to rule on the $1.13bn purchase of a critical piece of the internet – the .org registry with its 10 million domain names. But ICANN has yet to even decide what criteria it will use decide whether to green-light the takeover.”
Krebs on Security: U.S. Govt. Makes it Harder to Get . Gov Domains
Krebs on Security: U.S. Govt. Makes it Harder to Get .Gov Domains. “The federal agency in charge of issuing .gov domain names is enacting new requirements for validating the identity of people requesting them. The additional measures come less than four months after KrebsOnSecurity published research suggesting it was relatively easy for just about anyone to get their very own .gov domain.”
Bleeping Computer: Zero-Day Bug Allowed Attackers to Register Malicious Domains
Bleeping Computer: Zero-Day Bug Allowed Attackers to Register Malicious Domains. “A zero-day vulnerability impacting Verisign and several SaaS services including Google, Amazon, and DigitalOcean allowed potential attackers to register .com and .net homograph domain names (among others) that could be used in insider, phishing, and social-engineering attacks against organizations.”
The Verge: ICANN’s founding chairman joins the battle to keep .org out of private hands
The Verge: ICANN’s founding chairman joins the battle to keep .org out of private hands. “The new non-profit cooperative corporation, officially called the Cooperative Corporation of .ORG Registrants, is led by many people who currently have or have had influence over the inner workings of the Internet, including Esther Dyson, the founding chairman of ICANN (the non-profit that oversees domain names on the internet), Katherine Maher, the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation (the parent company of Wikipedia), and William Woodcock, the executive director of Packet Clearing House (an organization that helps support internet infrastructure and the domain name system).”
Mashable: A private equity firm now runs .org, the domain for nonprofits
Mashable: A private equity firm now runs .org, the domain for nonprofits . “A private equity firm will soon run the internet’s top domain name extension for nonprofits after purchasing the nonprofit organization that runs it. Public Interest Registry (PIR), which runs the .org domain registry, has been sold to private equity firm Ethos Capital, according to the registry’s parent organization, Internet Society. The price of the acquisition is still unknown.”
Krebs on Security: Breaches at NetworkSolutions, Register. com, and Web. com
Krebs on Security: Breaches at NetworkSolutions, Register. com, and Web. com. “Top domain name registrars NetworkSolutions.com, Register.com and Web.com are asking customers to reset their passwords after discovering an intrusion in August 2019 in which customer account information was accessed.”
Ars Technica: GoDaddy weakness let bomb threat scammers hijack thousands of big-name domains
Ars Technica: GoDaddy weakness let bomb threat scammers hijack thousands of big-name domains. “Remember the December 13 email blast that threatened to blow up buildings and schools unless recipients paid a $20,000 ransom? It triggered mass evacuations, closures, and lockdowns in the US, Canada, and elsewhere around the world. An investigation shows the spam run worked by abusing a weakness at GoDaddy that allowed the scammers to hijack at least 78 domains belonging to Expedia, Mozilla, Yelp, and other legitimate people or organizations.”
Krebs on Security: That Domain You Forgot to Renew? Yeah, it’s Now Stealing Credit Cards
Krebs on Security: That Domain You Forgot to Renew? Yeah, it’s Now Stealing Credit Cards. “If you own a domain name that gets decent traffic and you fail to pay its annual renewal fee, chances are this mistake will be costly for you and for others. Lately, neglected domains have been getting scooped up by crooks who use them to set up fake e-commerce sites that steal credit card details from unwary shoppers.”
The Register: Dot-com web addresses prices to swell, thanks to sweetheart deal between Uncle Sam, Verisign
The Register: Dot-com web addresses prices to swell, thanks to sweetheart deal between Uncle Sam, Verisign . “The planet’s 138 million dot-com addresses are going to get significantly more expensive to renew over the next decade thanks to a contract signed between dot-com operator Verisign and the US government. New dot-com domains are also set to cost more.”
