ICANN issued a letter warning Jiangsu Bangning, the TOP domain name registry, due to its failure to effectively control hackers and phishing domain names.

The .top domain name is an approved top-level domain name on the Internet. Its applicant and registration authority is Jiangsu Bangning Science & Technolog Co. Ltd., which is the direct management and operating agency of the .top domain name. On July 16, ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, sent a letter to Jiangsu Bangning Technology accusing the company of failing to respond to reports of phishing attacks involving the .top domain name.

There are a large number of phishing websites on the Internet. These phishing websites are usually built by hackers and fraud groups. When security agencies discover phishing websites, they will submit feedback to ICANN or the top-level domain name registry. The registry has the power to block these abused domain names in accordance with the domain name agreement.

It is very rare for ICANN to send a separate letter to the domain name management agency, namely Bangning Technology. ICANN said:Based on information and records collected over several weeks, we have determined that the .top registry does not have a process in place to promptly, comprehensively, and appropriately investigate and handle reports of domain name abuse.

Data shows that .top has become the second largest phishing website domain name after COM. Hackers and fraud gangs commonly use .top domain names to build phishing websites. A research report released by the consulting group Interisle shows that 2 million phishing attacks occurred last year, of which .top domain names accounted for 4%.

It is worth noting that the current total number of .top domain names is 2.76 million, of which 117,000 were phishing domain names last year, equivalent to 1/3 of COM phishing domain names, and the number of COM phishing domain names reached 379,000.

Horizontal comparison can also reveal problems. COM phishing domain names account for only 0.24% of total COM domain names, while .top phishing domain names account for 4.2% of .top domain names. It can be seen that if Bangning Technology does not implement strong control policies, the abuse rate of .top domain names may continue to soar, and the potential harm caused is immeasurable.

As for why hackers and fraud gangs like .top domain names, it is actually very simple. Because the registration price of this domain name is very cheap and the registration office control is not strict, so it can take a long time to register a domain name before it is blocked.