Cyber Crime

Cybersquatting has been a problem for many years, and one of the chief criticisms of ICANN has been its failure to stop the problem. With the new gTLD system coming next year, trademark holders are pushing ICANN to take action. Now a plan to stop cybersquatting is being planned. Known …

For years Cameroon’s government leased out the .cm domain to Agoga.com. Because .cm is a common typo of .com, the company set up a system where if you entered any address ending with .cm, it took you to a webpage filled with ads. Agoga made millions from this deal, profiting …

According to reports, North Korean hackers are believed to have launched cyber attacks on government offices in the US and South Korea. Some South Korean and US websites were momentarily taken down. Among the South Korean sites with service disruption were the Blue House, defense ministry, national assembly, Shinhan bank, …

American real estate company RE/MAX is suing Cristine Rosa Lefkowit, a realtor specializing in luxury sales, for cybersquatting and trademark infringement. It claims that she registered more than 50 domains in bad faith, including remaxbrazil.com and remaxfrance.com. Lefkowitz said she registered the domains many years ago with the hope of …

The U.S. Secret Service has signed an agreement to join forces with the Italian Police and Postal Service to fight cyber crime. The new team will be called The European Electronic Cime Task Force and will specialize in fighting identity theft, malicious hacking and other forms of cyber crime. The …

The names of the two Chinese domain registrars allegedly responsible for a large chunk of the world’s spam, have come under fire from University of Alabama’s director of research, Gary Warner. Last week I posted a short entry about Warner’s research, concluding that 70 percent of spam originated in China. …

ICANN officially announced today that Rod Beckstrom will be taking Paul Twomey’s place as CEO. According to ICANN Board Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush: Rod Beckstrom has exactly the sort of strong personal and technical background that ICANN needs, as we enter a period of unprecedented growth and change for the …

You may remember that Rod Beckstrom is the leading candidate for ICANN’s soon-to-be-vacant CEO position. While he may honestly desire the job, his conduct concerning his own domain name hasn’t been quite so forthcoming. Blog Domain Name Wire reports about a commenter who looked up Beckstrom’s domain, Beckstrom.com, in a …

Following suit with the American announcement of a new cyber security advisor position, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to announce the creation of Britain’s own cyber security chief. The new chief will be responsible for protecting the country from hackers, cyber spies and every other sort of tech …

A new report by the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) has concluded that as much as 70 percent of all spam sent in 2009 originated from domains ending in .cn, China’s top-level country domain. Furthemore, the report claims to have confirmed that nearly all of those spam messages originated …