On November 20, the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ hosted its annual working meeting, bringing together representatives from organizations identified by the Center as competent in detecting internet violations, alongside accredited registrars. This meeting provided an opportunity to review the preliminary outcomes of the Domain Patrol project for 2024.
Andrey Vorobyev, Director of the Coordination Center, delivered his opening remarks. He highlighted that despite the presence of alternative initiatives and algorithms designed to combat illegal online activities, the Domain Patrol project remains highly effective due to its record-setting speed in blocking malicious resources, now averaging under 14 hours. Mr Vorobyev also elaborated on emerging trends in phishing, particularly "state phishing," where government agency websites are replicated not for stealing personal data or money, but to spread misinformation. The Director pointed out that there is often a surge in domain name registrations related to state phishing ahead of significant governmental events. For instance, cybersecurity experts are currently monitoring for such domains and websites in anticipation of the upcoming Direct Line with President Vladimir Putin.
Evgeny Pankov, Project Manager at the Coordination Center, presented a summary of the preliminary results of the Domain Patrol project for 2024. Over the first ten months, competent organizations submitted 46,338 appeals, with the National Computer Incident Response and Coordination Center (NCIRCC), F.A.C.C.T., BI.ZONE, and R&D Institute Integral being the most prominent contributors. Of these appeals, 85.7% were related to phishing, while 7.6% concerned malware distribution. As a result of these reviews, registrars and hosting providers have blocked 44,693 malicious domains in 2024. Mr Pankov noted that the number of appeals from competent organizations to registrars saw a modest increase of 3.2% compared to 2023.
The average response time – from the submission of an application to the undelegation of a domain – was reduced to 13.9 hours, with over 68% of applications processed in under 12 hours, marking a world record! For comparison, in 2023, this metric was 21.5 hours.
Olga Baskakova, another Project Manager at the Coordination Center, discussed the latest enhancements to the information system facilitating interaction between competent organizations and registrars, along with future plans for further improvements. These updates have speeded up the system, optimized search functions, added new communication contacts, and more, which will further expedite response times and enhance collaboration between registrars and competent organizations.
Anton Voronkin from the National Computer Incident Response and Coordination Center addressed the increasing sophistication of schemes employed by cybercriminals to host malicious content on legitimate domains and strategies to counteract them. He also noted that while the growth in detected and blocked malicious domains within Russian domain zones was 6% in 2024 (according to the NCIRCC), the increase in foreign domain zones was 725%.
The meeting concluded with a discussion addressing queries from competent organizations and registrars.
