The registration rate of .RU and .РФ domain names related to the coronavirus and measures taken against it in Russia has sped up.
In the week since the previous monitoring, 129 new coronavirus-related domains were registered in .RU and 38 in .РФ. The total increase was 167 domains, which is a bit higher than the week before (May 7-13), when 119 coronavirus-related domains were registered in .RU and .РФ. Perhaps the numbers were lower due to the holidays, when there are traditionally less registrations.
Over the entire monitoring period (January-May 2020), 3,371 domain names were added to the list of domains containing words such as corona, covid, pandemia, gosuslugi, корона, ковид, пандемия and госуслуги in .RU and 767 in .РФ, making 4,138 coronavirus-related domains in total.
At the same time, according to the monitoring data, the number of domain registrations related to state benefits and subsidies for Russians has decreased. Over the last week, 11 domains with the words выплата, vyplata, пособие, and posobie were registered in the Russian ccTLDs (7 domains in .РФ and 4 in .RU), which is 4.5 times fewer than before. There are a total of 62 such domains in both zones.
The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ regularly monitors the Russian ccTLDs to identify suspicious registrations and reduce potential harm from them with the help of competent organizations and the Netoscope project.
For example, Kaspersky Lab, which is a competent organization participating in the Netoscope project, flagged 1,855 coronavirus-related domains (1,557 in .RU and 298 in .РФ and 2 benefits-related domains in .РФ with “data loss threat” in its products (9 more since the previous check).
Read our material and a special interview with Kaspersky Lab’s leading expert, Sergei Golovanov, on ways to protect yourself from cybercriminals during the pandemic and in the future, as well as instructions on what to do if you find a fraudulent website.
