ICANN has published an update regarding potentially malicious domain name registrations related to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Domain Incite, the new data came as an unpleasant surprise, as it indicates a rapid growth in such registrations. Similar statistics have been maintained by ICANN since May 2020. It is based on checking zone files against a list of 579 potentially pandemic-related keywords, and comparing the results with third-party blocklists that track malicious activity on domain names.
As of August 2021, ICANN reported 12,860 potentially malicious domain registrations related to the coronavirus pandemic and an additional 3,791 "high confidence" malicious domains. The latest data shows 23,452 domains "potentially active and malicious." It is extremely difficult to explain such rapid growth at a time when the pandemic is on the decline, or at least being pushed to the back of the global information agenda. However, it cannot be ruled out that the statistics reflect not so much the real increase in malicious registrations as ICANN's success in detecting them: the corporation is constantly updating the list of pandemic-related keywords that are used for search.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ has been keeping statistics on domain name registrations potentially associated with COVID-19. When comparing the number of registrations in the first 4 months of 2021 and 2022, Coordination Center’s experts do not record a trend in Russian national domains for an increase in the number of domain name registrations related to the coronavirus theme. In the .RU domain, in the first 4 months of 2021, 441 domains were registered containing keywords related to the name of the virus or the main vaccines, at the beginning of 2022 there were 266 such domains. In the .РФ domain, the situation is similar: 77 domains in 4 months of 2021 and 66 for the same period in 2022.
