Tomorrow, on September 5, the 17th International Conference of Registrars and Registrars of the CIS, Central and Eastern Europe (TLDCON 2024) will start in Minsk. And today, on the "zero day" of the Conference, the educational track, which has already become traditional, took place. This time, the Conference speakers gave lectures for students of the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics (BSUIR). By the decision of the Council of Heads of Government of the Commonwealth of Independent States in November 2005, BSUIR was awarded the status of the basic organization of the CIS member states for higher education in the field of computer science and radioelectronics.
The lectures brought together more than 100 students of the faculties of information security and computer design of BSUIR. Before the lectures began, Andrey Vorobyev, Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, addressed the students. He emphasized that lectures by TLDCON speakers have already become a good tradition. "For students, this is a unique opportunity to get acquainted with the structure of the Internet and the addressing system, learn about current trends and security issues from leading experts. For us, this is a chance to pass on experience and knowledge to the younger generation," he said. Andrey Vorobyev also told the audience about the Summer School on Internet Governance, which is annually organized by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ together with St. Petersburg State University and is the only Russian-language school of its kind in the world, and invited them to join the School next year.
Georgy Georgievsky, Head of the Department for Work with Registrars of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, gave a lecture on "The Global Domain Addressing System: Who Manages the DNS?" He spoke about how the DNS system is structured and operates, how domain registries operate, and what initiatives improve the reliability and security of DNS. Georgy Georgievsky noted that the domain name system is not a relic, and a domain name is an essential part of any link.
"Domains are still the most important element of the Internet, and today we have no other addressing system," he said.
The speaker also spoke about initiatives developing the domain name system: the European DNS4EU project, the AdGuard DNS project, and the Russian National Domain Name System.
ICANN Global Stakeholder Engagement Sr. Manager for Eastern Europe and Central Asia Mikhail Anisimov gave a lecture on DNS Abuse for BSUIR students. He examined in detail the five main types of DNS Abuse, emphasizing that spam is often the main tool for spreading other threats, such as phishing, malware, botnets, and pharming.
Mikhail also spoke about how the DNS system is used in major cyberattacks and shared examples of the most significant incidents. Among the most popular methods of using DNS for illegal purposes today, he named automatically generated domains, which, unlike phishing domains, are used not to deceive a person, but to bypass neural networks. Another interesting example of attacks using DNS is the use of domains as a hidden information channel, when information is broken down into many small fragments, each of which is transmitted as a DNS request. With their help, even the smallest pieces of viruses can penetrate well-protected networks, turning a seemingly small incident into a large-scale complex attack. In conclusion, real practitioners addressed the students – the head of projects of the Coordination Center Evgeny Pankov and the director of business development of Digital Risk Protection F.A.C.C.T. Stanislav Goncharov. They spoke about the Center’s project "Domain Patrol" and the cooperation of competent organizations, registrars and the Coordination Center.
