On Tuesday, February 11, 2014, the 11th Safer Internet Day will be celebrated in 110 countries, including Russia. The day will feature worldwide events dedicated to safe and responsible use of web technology. The motto for the day is "Let's create a better Internet together".
The Coordination Center for TLD RU/РФ has always given a lot of attention to making the Internet safer for users. In 2012, the Coordination Center teamed up with its partners, which include Group-IB, Kaspersky Lab, Mail.ru, Rostelecom, RU-CERT, the Technical Center of Internet (ТCI) and Yandex, creating a research platform that would aggregate information on harmful websites. Last fall, this initiative evolved into creating an analytical portal on Internet security, the Netoscope. The resource stores information contributed by all the project partners and enables users to generate real-time reports on the types and numbers of existing malware, as well as to check a domain for harmful activity.
As of February 10, 2014, the Netoscope project database listed over 1.2 million .RU, .РФ, and .SU domain names. About 30% of them are no longer active, meaning they have been identified as sources of harmful activity and removed by their administrators or registrants. In comparison, at the end of 2013, removed domain names accounted for 27.5%, while in September – when the Netoscope went live – the number was 21.5%. The increase shows that the efforts to clear the .RU ccTLD from malware are gradually yielding results.
Harmful resources account for 3.5% of the second-level domain names in .RU, 0.5% in .РФ and 1.5% in .SU. Most of the domains included in the Netoscope database ended up there for spreading malware. At the same time, while such activity prevails among the harmful websites in .RU and .SU, the malicious websites in .РФ have mostly been caught in phishing activities.
More information on Russia's top-level domains as well as on the Netoscope project can be found in the monthly Netoscope report on the project website. January’s report is available in both Russian and English.
