Chicago (IL) - Security researchers feel that an Estonia-based seller of domain names has been a hideout for cyber-criminals for years. Internet authorities are now planning to pull the plug on the company.
On Tuesday, ICANN told EstDomains that it would be revoking their accreditation, because the company’s president Vladimir Tsastin was convicted in February in Estonia for both money laundering and online credit card fraud.
The news of the conviction of Tsastin was brought to the attention to ICANN via the Washinton Post, when Brian Krebs focused on EstDomains as part of multiple investigations into the Web’s most notorious domain name sellers and website hosts.
ICANN, which is responsible for the control of the Internet’s names and IP addresses, issued a notice Tuesday stating that EstDomain’s ability to register any new domain names would be frozen. They also stated that they were looking to find stewards for the 281,000 domain names currently managed by EstDomains.
Almost instantaneously, EstDomains appealed and ICANN immediately put the action to freeze their ability on hold. EstDomains claims that it hired a new CEO over a month ago.
The company told ICANN that Tsastin had been removed as CEO on June 25, prior to his conviction. Konstontin Poltev, the new CEO of EstDomain, admitted that the company failed to tell ICANN about the change, but said he had no idea that this was necessary: "The notification about the change of the EstDomains, Inc. Director has not been sent to ICANN as we have not found this point to be obligatory for the registrar company," Poltev wrote.
Trend Micro researcher Paul Ferguson still hopes that ICANN can find a reason to revoke the accreditation of EstDomains. "I personally hope ICANN finds some reason to terminate their accreditation, even if it is a Breach of Contract for failure to correct bogus WHOIS information, as they did with Joker," Ferguson said, referring to ICANN's decision in September to revoke the license of a Chinese domain name company that allowed fake information to be used to register domain names. "There has been demonstrable evidence for several years that Russian and Ukrainian criminals have used EstDomains services - and even preferred to use them - and I am hard-pressed to believe that EstDomains did not have explicit knowledge of their operations."
On Tuesday, ICANN told EstDomains that it would be revoking their accreditation, because the company’s president Vladimir Tsastin was convicted in February in Estonia for both money laundering and online credit card fraud.
The news of the conviction of Tsastin was brought to the attention to ICANN via the Washinton Post, when Brian Krebs focused on EstDomains as part of multiple investigations into the Web’s most notorious domain name sellers and website hosts.
ICANN, which is responsible for the control of the Internet’s names and IP addresses, issued a notice Tuesday stating that EstDomain’s ability to register any new domain names would be frozen. They also stated that they were looking to find stewards for the 281,000 domain names currently managed by EstDomains.
Almost instantaneously, EstDomains appealed and ICANN immediately put the action to freeze their ability on hold. EstDomains claims that it hired a new CEO over a month ago.
The company told ICANN that Tsastin had been removed as CEO on June 25, prior to his conviction. Konstontin Poltev, the new CEO of EstDomain, admitted that the company failed to tell ICANN about the change, but said he had no idea that this was necessary: "The notification about the change of the EstDomains, Inc. Director has not been sent to ICANN as we have not found this point to be obligatory for the registrar company," Poltev wrote.
Trend Micro researcher Paul Ferguson still hopes that ICANN can find a reason to revoke the accreditation of EstDomains. "I personally hope ICANN finds some reason to terminate their accreditation, even if it is a Breach of Contract for failure to correct bogus WHOIS information, as they did with Joker," Ferguson said, referring to ICANN's decision in September to revoke the license of a Chinese domain name company that allowed fake information to be used to register domain names. "There has been demonstrable evidence for several years that Russian and Ukrainian criminals have used EstDomains services - and even preferred to use them - and I am hard-pressed to believe that EstDomains did not have explicit knowledge of their operations."