The latest monitoring of the register of .RU and .РФ national domains carried out by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ showed a continuation of the gradual decline in the number of registrations of new COVID-19-related domains.
For example, in the week since the previous research, 80 coronavirus-related domains were added to .RU and 7 to .РФ. The total increase was 87 domains which is a bit lower than the previous week when there were 90 new coronavirus-related domains in .RU and .РФ.
Over the entire monitoring period (January 1 – June 10, 2020) 3,634 domain names were added to the list of domains containing words such as corona, covid, pandemic, корона, ковид, and пандемия in .RU and 800 in .РФ, making 4,434 coronavirus-related domains in total.
The monitoring is aimed at identifying suspicious domains and reducing potential harm from them with the help of competent organizations. For example, Kaspersky Lab, which is a competent organization and participates in the Netoscope project, flagged 1,862 coronavirus-related domains (1,564 in .RU and 298 in .РФ) with “data loss threat” in its products.
To ensure protection from cybercriminals now, during the pandemic, and in the future, experts advise users to install antivirus software on every device with an internet connection, never to enter personal data or details of accounts or online banking on websites without encryption (no https:// before the address), to check domains for misspellings, to avoid opening executables in spam emails, to read official sources of information on the coronavirus (the Russian one is located at стопкоронавирус.рф). Read our instruction to find out what to do if you find a fraudulent website.
