Riskiest Web Domains To Visit

wiredmikey writes "According to a report released today, .COM is the riskiest top-level domain, the riskiest country domain is Vietnam (.VN). Japan's .JP ranks as the safest country domain for the second year in a row and TRAVEL as the safest overall domain. It's interesting to note that .JP (currently $89.99 at GoDaddy) and .TRAVEL ($89.99 at Moniker) domains are also some of the most expensive domains. Are cybercriminals getting cheap with other people's credit cards? Or do the higher price make it more risky?"

Comments

We need a new domain like .xxx

[Anonymous Coward]

We could call it .MALWARE or .INFECTED or .BADSTUFFINSTALLEDONYOURCOMPUTER. All the bad stuff would be relegated to this new domain.

Please note that my idea is no less insightful than the referenced article which is very insightful.

.cx is riskiest

[Norsefire]

Computers can be repaired, what has been seen cannot be unseen.

Re:.cx is riskiest

[tygerstripes]

It's true, Christmas Island is gaping hole of malware.

Even more safe

[Anonymous Coward]

My country domain (Bulgaria - bg) costs 130$ and only one company can sell is - register.bg. For many years we all have complained about this monopoly, there was many petitions and stuff (we won in some way - now there`re two resellers working for register.bg) but this way has some advantages for example:

1. No one could register government like domains - president.bg and so on
2. If you want to register company name. google.bg for example, you have to provide official registration papers for the company
3. There isn`t even one single spam or other related issue with .bg domain, if someone try to use it for illegal purpuses register.bg will wipe the domain and file official complain to the police.
4. Individuals cannot register .bg, they get to choose from yourname.[a-z].bg and you cannot register viagra.a.bg it got to be your real name(you can if your name is Viagra :D )

It is in some way very restrictive and the bureaucracy is a big pain, but the country domain name is important and if someone is misusing it everyone blame the country.

Handy malware domains lists

[Ponyegg]

I work in online advertising, specifically I look after a major UK publisher's adservers/ad-delivery. We use the following to keep an eye on identified malware delivering domains:

http://www.malwaredomainlist.com/mdl.php
http://www.malwaredomains.com/
http://www.malwareurl.com/
http://www.anti-malvertising.com/

Spammers use throwaway domains

[mysidia]

It is more expensive to register domains on a "premium" TLD. Since fewer domains are registered on the TLDs, there will be fewer used by spammers.

Because people black list domains used by spammers; URI-based blacklists, and RHS blacklists that blacklist by domain name. Spam filters start to recognize them, in any case.

So spammers register thousands of domains at the cheapest prices available (probably using stolen cards or multiple shell companies)

.NET and .COM are probably the cheapest TLDs to register throwaway domains on.

It follows, that spam might be reduced, with greater costs or qualifications to register a domain.

I for one would be in favor of a "paper" requirement.

ICANN should require that every domain have a primary 'contact address' verified by the registrar that is listed in public WHOIS.

ICANN should require registrars to verify BY PAPER certified+restricted mail to each new primary contact address, which must be an address in a country the registrar does business in, and may not be a PO Box or forwarded address.

The registrant should be required to SIGN a document mailed, and send it back, before the domain can be placed in the zone. And the signature must match the signature on the mail slip.

The slip signed must include a statement agreeing to the ICANN policies, and certifying that the signer is the principal, and the address provided belongs to the principal who owns the domain, and not a proxy, agent, or designee.

And from then on, that 'contact information' can be used by the owner of THAT account to designate as the org contact for domains registered or transferred. Using a different contact for a domain, requiring going through verification again.

For a minor inconvenience, spammers could be stopped.

Re:Surely

[John Hasler]

Are you kidding? Visit irs.gov and a third of your income vanishs.

Re:I'll just avoid all .com domains!

[RDW]

'This is quite possibly the most pointless report ever compiled.'

It doesn't even warn about the most dangerous TLD of all, ".pl", which is really just a trick to get the victim to execute a Perl script! URLs with this suffix usually map to a site with unintelligible placeholder text (looks like rot13 or something, e.g.: http://www.linux.pl/ ) but by the time you see this the script has already been run and the damage done!