Not really local, but not life in general either.

This morning, from wired.com:

Dot-Name Becomes Cybercrime Haven

 

By Ryan Singel 09.28.07 | 12:00 AM

The company that controls the .name registry is charging for access to domain registration information, a step that security researchers say frustrates their ability to police the internet and creates a haven for hackers who run internet scams.

 

When security researchers investigate spam and phishing activity on the internet, they rely on special Whois directories, which list the owner of a domain name, their hosting service and their contact information.

 

They can use the information to track down who is responsible for a particular scam and to notify innocent webmasters if a portion of their site has been hijacked by black-hat hackers.

 

ICANN, which sets the rules for the internet's top-level domain names such as .com and .net, has traditionally required registrars to make Whois data publicly searchable as a condition of the companies' right to sell domain names.

 

But Global Name Registry, or GNR, which administers domain names ending in .name (that are intended for use by individuals e.g., johndoe.name), won the right to create tiered levels of Whois access, where public searches show very little information beyond what registrar sold the name and what name servers the site uses.

 

The site sells five passwords, good for 24 hours only, for $2.

 

That's $2 too much for security researcher Gadi Evron, one of the leading authorities on zombie computer networks. "What they have done is made sure the .name TLD is free haven for bad guys to lurk on," Evron said. "If I need to report 1,000 domains, I'm not going pay $2,000."

 

Paul Ferguson, a network architect at the security giant Trend Micro, said just this week he's seen black hats finding ways to spread malware through name computers.

 

Swa Frantzen, a Belgian volunteer handler at the SANS Internet Storm Center, which monitors the net for threats, brought the policy to light on Saturday, after he was looking into some odd JavaScript reported to the center.

 

The domain name indicated that a legitimate .name site might have been hacked, but the .name portion of the domain name didn't feel right, Frantzen said. The Whois information might have let him figure it out.

 

But Frantzen refused to pay.

 

"It feels like extortion," Frantzen said. "No matter the small amounts involved, it becomes a problem as it means spending money, authorizations, purchases orders and having authorized users for credit cards. All sorts of things that slow it down dramatically."

 

Whois data typically includes the name of the purchaser, a physical and e-mail address, as well as information about who hosts the site and what its name server is.

 

In recent years, registrars have been allowing veiled registrations so that domain-name owners can hide their identity, but still be contacted in case of an emergency or if they are served with legal papers.

 

Karen Lentz, ICANN's domain registrar liaison, says that GNR is allowed to keep the data behind a paid firewall as part of its contract with ICANN, and to comply with British privacy laws.

 

"There is certain data that is minimal data that is free, and there is tiered access to more detailed information," Lentz said. "One level involves paying a fee to get you access to more data for a limited period of time."

 

"The whole point of having this service is to make it efficient," Lentz said.

 

Another ICANN employee dismissed security researchers' concerns about paying for the data.

 

"I don't know why that matters," she said. "Is this (reporter phone call) really worth $2 of your life?"

 

GNR did not reply to a request for comment by deadline.

 

But security researcher Evron says the move to a pay system demonstrates a larger truth about names and the internet.

 

"The domain name system has grown bigger than it was ever planned to be, is doing more than it was ever intended to do and does it proudly," Evron said. "But the governance around it has become profit-based, and we have no fallback system to handle criminal organizations and countries that abuse domain names."

 

Storm center volunteer Frantzen suggests that most domain name owners would benefit from making e-mail address available through the Whois system.

 

"Just imagine you get a call from us telling you about a problem and offering help to fix it, versus you getting a call from your ISP informing you they shut down your server due to a breach of policy," Frantzen said.

Bad guys win another round.

Tracking.....

-KIE