Link: Why Phishers Love New TLDs Like .shop, .top and .xyz – Krebs on Security

Phishing attacks surged nearly 40% in the year ending August 2024, significantly driven by an increase in registrations at new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) like .shop, .top, and .xyz. These domains are popular among scammers due to their low costs and minimal registration requirements.

Despite these findings by Interisle Consulting, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) plans to introduce more gTLDs. New gTLDs currently represent a small market share but are disproportionately involved in cybercrime.

Interisle's study, supported by several anti-spam groups, reveals that while traditional domains like .com and .net still dominate the market, they accounted for just over 40% of cybercrime domains. In comparison, new gTLDs, though fewer in total, matched this figure at 37%.

Cybercriminals are drawn to new gTLDs because of the favorable conditions for anonymity and low costs, with some domains costing less than $1 to register. By contrast, the cheapest .com domain was priced at $5.91.

John Levine criticizes ICANN's approach, suggesting it frequently favors domain speculators over regulating effectively. He argues that selling domain registrations at such low prices, primarily to bulk buyers, is economically unsustainable as these buyers rarely renew their domains.

Notably, phishing tactics are evolving, with attackers increasingly utilizing subdomains from providers like blogspot.com, complicating mitigation efforts. This shift underscores the growing sophistication of phishing schemes, which now bypass traditional domain registration to exploit subdomain services. #

--

Yoooo, this is a quick note on a link that made me go, WTF? Find all past links here.