This year, the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ has been monitoring the pace of new registrations of domain names related to COVID-19 and measures to contain the pandemic on .RU and .РФ. In addition to the continued monitoring of .RU and .РФ registered names containing the words corona, covid, pandemia, ковид, пандемия, вакцина, etc., the Coordination Center monitored domain names specifically related to QR codes, vaccine certificates and health passports.
During the first 10 months of 2021, the number of such registrations fluctuated around 100 per month. The number of registrations was not really affected by the first announcement that QR codes would be required to visit public places in July 2021. The new measures introduced in November, however – when a number of regions in Russia mandated QR codes for public transport – increased the number of registrations associated with QR codes, certificates and health passports. The growth of such registrations peaked at the end of the fall – up almost 90% from 145 hits in October to 281 in November.
Interestingly, very few domain names associated with QR codes, certificates or health passports were registered in .РФ in the same period. This mainly happened because the registration rules in .РФ allow only Russian script characters, including ё, while Latin letters such as QR cannot be used in Cyrillic domains. This significantly complicated the visualization of such names for users en masse.
If you have been experiencing any negative consequences after visiting resources or opening emails that use phishing domain names, including coronavirus-related names, we strongly recommend that you contact the hotline of one of the competent organizations addressing internet security. Telephone hotlines for competent organizations can be found on the Coordination Center’s Domain Patrol project website. The site also contains news from the information security industry, instructions and advice on dealing with potential cyber threats, and rules of safe online behavior.
