The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ continues to monitor registrations of the .RU and .РФ ccTLDs related to COVID-19 and measures to prevent the spread of it.
In July, 178 coronavirus-related domain names were registered in .RU and 20 in .РФ. The total monthly increase was 198 domain names, which is 33.4 percent lower than in June (301 domain names) and almost 10 times lower than in March, the peak month when 1,936 domain names were registered.
Over the past seven months (January – June 2020), 3,966 names in .RU and 835 in .РФ were added to the list of domains containing the words corona, covid, pandemia, gosuslugi, ковид, пандемия, госуслуги, выплата and the like; overall, there are now 4,801 coronavirus-related domain names in Russian ccTLDs.
The aim of the research is to identify suspicious domain names and reduce the harm they could cause with the help of competent organizations. The Kaspersky Lab, which is a competent organization participating in the Netoscope scientific and technical project, flagged 1,864 coronavirus-related domains (1,565 domains in .RU and 299 domains in .РФ, 39 percent of the total number of ‘coronadomains’) as being a potential data loss threat in its products. In July, no harmful domains were spotted.
Information on online security to help users protect themselves from fraud and instructions on whom to address if a fraudulent website is suspected is available in the Media Center section of the Coordination Center website.
