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.zip top level domains being used in cyber attacks
- jacurtis 3y ago> It seems that Google has reduced the registration price to $15 per year for a .zip domain last week, which appears to be less than halve the previous price. The price drop appears to have increased interest for .zip domains, and some new registrations are already used in phishing campaigns. It is interesting that $15 a year is enough savings to justifying starting a new phishing attempt. I assumed there was so much money in phishing that an extra ~$1.05 a month could be easily absorbed. Either way, I'm shocked that a .zip domain was ever approved. This should have been obvious for whatever mysterious board approves TLDs.
- postalrat 3y agoIf https://microsoft-office.zip https://microsoft-office.zip can fool people then why not https://microsoft-office.info https://microsoft-office.info or https://microsoft-office.app https://microsoft-office.app or https://microsoft-office.ninja https://microsoft-office.ninja?
- firstlink 3y agoBecause the person pushing this panic never heard of those.
- sybercecurity 3y agoYears ago .info had the reputation of being only used by scammers/phishers. I knew several small mail service providers that just blocked *.info by default since the majority of delegations were not legitimate. Every new TLD suffers from this at first as there is a land rush by criminals. I think people are more worried about TLDs like .zip (and .app) since they look familiar to normal users and they routinely click on those and don't think about them being a valid URL now.
- JohnFen 3y agoNot just .info. Because of that, as unfair as it is, to this day when I see one of the extended TLDs, I get more suspicious about the site. I tend to avoid them unless I'm very sure they're legit.
- NikkiA 3y ago.biz is the one I always remember as being scam-central
- bonyt 3y agoIt's weird how entire TLDs get reputations like that. NY's transit agency - the MTA - used (and still uses) the domain mta.info. My high school blocked that domain, along with every other info domain. I have a .xyz domain that I briefly wanted to use for email, but services blocked it based entirely off the TLD. Using the same mail service (fastmail) I could send mail from my .net domains.
- yujian 3y agoI think this narrative is just being sold before .zip is a new domain, I find it interesting how fast things are leveraged for hacking though, I'm wondering why this isn't as commonly noted in the AI space (where I work)
- xg15 3y agoBecause they have already dealt with zipfiles, but not with infofiles or appfiles or ninjafiles.
- firstlink 3y agoNor COM files apparently.
- xg15 3y agoYes, because we're not in the 80s anymore. There are virtually no COM files around anymore. Compare that to zip files, which are still widely used in all kinds of jobs.
- postalrat 3y agoAnd people today are a lot dumber than people in the 90s?
- deprecative 3y agoIf nothing else, the average technological competency of the average computer user is significantly lower.
- zerd 3y agoThe problematic scenario is described here: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/13fsvl5/the_zip_tld_sucks_and_it_needs_to_be_immediately/jjxivcp/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/13fsvl5/the_zi...
- appleaday1 3y agoIsn't this a good chance to provide the public a way to save their time for those that are stuck in terminal only land.
- kevincox 3y agoAre there any TLDs that aren't being used in cyber attacks?
- 5e92cb50239222b 3y agoProbably most of this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains#Brand_top-level_domains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_dom...
- PenguinCoder 3y agoAnd here I thought Google purchased those TLDs to prevent spoofing and phishing attempts. Not to start selling domains under each.