Category Archives: John Levine

U.S. Govt. Makes it Harder to Get .Gov Domains

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The federal agency in charge of issuing .gov domain names is enacting new requirements for validating the identity of people requesting them. The additional measures come less than four months after KrebsOnSecurity published research suggesting it was relatively easy for just about anyone to get their very own .gov domain.

In November’s piece It’s Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name, an anonymous source detailed how he obtained one by impersonating an official at a small town in Rhode Island that didn’t already have its own .gov. Continue reading U.S. Govt. Makes it Harder to Get .Gov Domains→

It’s Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name

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Many readers probably believe they can trust links and emails coming from U.S. federal government domain names, or else assume there are at least more stringent verification requirements involved in obtaining a .gov domain versus a commercial one ending in .com or .org. But a recent experience suggests this trust may be severely misplaced, and that it is relatively straightforward for anyone to obtain their very own .gov domain. Continue reading It’s Way Too Easy to Get a .gov Domain Name→

A Tough Week for IP Address Scammers

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In the early days of the Internet, there was a period when Internet Protocol 4 (IPv4) addresses (e.g. 4.4.4.4) were given out like cotton candy to anyone who asked. But these days companies are queuing up to obtain new IP space from the various regional registries that periodically dole out the prized digits. With the value of a single IP hovering between $15-$25, those registries are now fighting a wave of shady brokers who specialize in securing new IP address blocks under false pretenses and then reselling to spammers. Here’s the story of one broker who fought back in the courts, and lost spectacularly.

On May 14, South Carolina U.S. Attorney Sherri Lydon filed criminal wire fraud charges against Amir Golestan, alleging he and his Charleston, S.C. based company Micfo LLC orchestrated an elaborate network of phony companies and aliases to gather more than 735,000 IPs from the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), a nonprofit which oversees IP addresses assigned to entities in the U.S., Canada, and parts of the Caribbean. Continue reading A Tough Week for IP Address Scammers→