ICANN Described As Facilitator of Internet Scams

According to a couple of reports released during the first week of September 2008, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has been interpreted as an enabler of online scams for cyber-criminals.

According to one PDF report, a group of three security researchers namely James McQuaid, Matt Jonkman and Jart Armin have provided details how LogicBoxes, one of ICANN's prized sponsors, has ties with Atrivo. Atrivo is a top ranking source of illegitimate online pharmacies and highly prolific malware on the Internet.

The report also says that LogicBoxes' ties with Atrivo, also known as Intercage, hosts 2,600 Web addresses. Of these, 7,340 contain infected Web links, 910 malicious Websites, 310 infected binaries and 113 botnet control and command servers. Some firms mentioned in the report include - EstDomains, EstHost, Hostfresh, and PrivacyProtect.

Apart from this, the report states that EstDomains is another registrar that supports malware domains, porn domains, illegal pharmacy domains, and has a clear association with PrivacyProtect.

Also, as per some security researchers' findings, it is found that Directi Group owns EstDomains, although it remains to be proved whether EstDomains is merged with Delaware or not. EstDomains might be one level higher than the phantom registrars as it is a corporation, though it distributes spam and malware under a reputed name.

And according to the second PDF report issued by an outfit named "Knujon", the agency proceeds to give the details of 48 phantom registrars of domain names with ICANN whose objective appears to register addresses employed for malware and spam campaigns. And all these can be traced to Directi Group that has long been providing URLs to scam artists to filter malware on systems and Websites.

However, it appears that some researchers, who defend ICANN's reputation, elucidate that the Internet is a big place where it is nearly impossible to be aware of the position of every entity ICANN accredits by way of accepting money from. However, it isn't irrational to expect ICANN to implement its own regulations considering the propagation of sites pushing malware, spam and other frauds.

Related article: ICANN Suggests Introduction of Banking Domain to Reduce Phishing Impact

» SPAMfighter News - 11-09-2008

All SPAMfighter products offer a free trial!

SPAMfighter is a free spam filter for Outlook, Outlook Express,Windows Mail, Windows Live Mail and Thunderbird.

Optimize your Slow PC for better performance. Try FREE scan now

Disk space recovery
and disk optimization. Try FULL-DISKfighter free

SPAMfighter Exchange Module is a Spam filter for Exchange server - Free 30 days trial.

Remove Spyware with SPYWAREfighter - Free 30 days trial

Antivirus software for your Windows PC - Free 30 days trial