KnujOn Enlisted 10 Most Spam-friendly Registrars

KnujOn, an anti-spam organization, recently released a list of top ten Internet registrars involved in hosting spam, exploit and other illegitimate online activities. According to the firm, nearly 83% of the total spam are linked to websites hosted on these 10 domain name registrars.

KnujOn also revealed that there are around 900 different Internet registrars for hosting websites, but these tens are mainly associated with malicious online activities.

These ten registers are - XIN NET, HICHINA Web Solutions, eNom, Wild West, Network Solutions, SpotDomains (domainsite), Register.com, OnlineNIC, PLANETONLINE and RegTime. Interestingly, eNom and XIN NET are the only two registrars that were enlisted in the last year's release. Moreover, XIN NET has become a distinguished registrar after securing the number one position consecutively for two years (since 2007).

According to the company's study, XIN NET seems to be linked with botnet Waledac (also known as Storm worm) and hosts fast-flux traffic. In 2008, Waledac botnet disappeared temporarily along with reduction in other malware infections.

Besides, KnujOn made the list of 10 worst registrars on the basis of four criteria - number of domains advertising spam hosted by a registrar, rate of spam generating from every domain, number of spam released to popularize the domains and the share of total registrars' business represented by these domains.

On the basis of these parameters, XIN NET occupied the first position with 3.5 Million spam messages, followed by eNom that sent 1.3 Million spam, but hosted the highest number of spammed domains at nearly 32,000.

Garth Bruen, Creator of KnujOn and author of the report, said that if a registrar has made place in the list, it doesn't mean that the registrar is criminal, as reported by DarkReading on February 5, 2009. It is possible that the registrar doesn't know about its customers' malicious activities or lacks resources to deal with the problem.

He further stated that if their operations are carefully examined, it seems that they lack proper policy and control. A large number of these organizations have a small staff to run their operations; as a result, their systems are easy to manipulate.

» SPAMfighter News - 2/17/2009