Cyber-Crime Gets a Helping Hand

Web Address Explosion is Bonanza for Cyber-Criminals - Study

Reuters | September 1, 2015

An explosion in the number of new Internet addresses has created a wealth of opportunities for criminals exploiting shady domains such as .zip, .kim or .party, according to an industry study published on Tuesday.

"Due to the explosion of TLDs in recent years, we have seen a staggering number of almost entirely shady Web neighborhoods crop up at an alarming rate," said Dr. Hugh Thompson, CTO for Blue Coat Systems. http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-shadiest-characters-in-the-world-of-top-level-domains/

Attackers are constantly in search of new domains for links to lead users to download malware, divulge personal data or spam their friends, and a liberalisation of the Web has expanded the number of top-level domains tenfold in the past two years.

<more at http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/09/01/internet-security-domains-idINKCN0R13TC20150901; http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/252397-new-web-addresses-a-cybercrime-playground (New Web addresses a cybercrime playground. September 1, 2015) and http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-shadiest-characters-in-the-world-of-top-level-domains/ (The shadiest characters in the world of top-level domains; Research shows that a number of top-level domains are almost exclusively used for malicious purposes. September 2, 2015)>