The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ continues to monitor the registration of coronavirus-related domains in the Russian ccTLDs, .RU and .РФ. The monitoring is aimed at identifying potentially malicious domains and minimizing possible damage from them.
In August 2021, the rate of coronavirus-related domain registrations almost halved. In total, 85 new coronavirus-related domains appeared in August, including 74 in .RU and 11 in .РФ, while 147 such domains were registered in July.
At the same time, a majority of the new domains contain references to the virus (47 in .RU and 4 in .РФ), and another 35 are associated with vaccination (28 domains in .RU and 7 in .РФ). The number of domains related to testing has dropped significantly, but domains like bolelcovid.ru or perebolelcovid.ru have begun to appear.
Over the entire period of monitoring (January 2020 – August 2021), 6,949 domains containing the words “сorona,” “covid,” “pandemia,” “vaccine,” “ковид,” “пандемия” and “вакцина” among others have been added to the list: 5,820 in .RU and 1,129 in .РФ.
If you have been affected by visiting a website or reading an email using phishing domain names, including coronavirus-related names, please contact the hotline of a competent internet security organization. The hotline numbers can be found on the website of the Coordination Center’s other cybersecurity project, Domain Patrol, where industry news, useful instructions on what to do when faced with a cyber threat, and internet safety rules are also published.
