ICANN | GNSO Fast Flux Hosting Working Group Publishes Final Report

In May 2008, the GNSO Council launched a Policy Development Process (PDP) that tasked a Working Group to answer a number of questions related to fast flux hosting. Fast flux hosting is a technique that utilizes short Time To Live settings and frequent updates of DNS records to increase a domain’s resiliency. It has legitimate uses, but is widely known as a tactic cybercriminals use to enhance their phishing and pharming gains. The questions the Working Group addressed included:

Who benefits from fast flux, and who is harmed?
Who would benefit from cessation of the practice and who would be harmed
What technical and policy measures could registries and registrars implement to mitigate the negative effects of fast flux?
What would be the impact of these limitations, guidelines, or restrictions to product and service innovation?
What are some of the best practices available with regard to protection from fast flux?

The Fast Flux Hosting Working Group has now submitted its final report providing answers to the questions posed by the GNSO Council. The group also developed a definition of fast flux attacks, to distinguish these from legitimate uses of fast flux; and compiled fast flux metrics, also in the report.

The Fast Flux Hosting Working Group has not made any recommendations for new consensus policy, nor changes to existing policy, but it has provided a number of ideas for next steps. These ideas include:

Highlight which solutions / recommendations could be addressed by policy development, best practices and/or industry solutions
Consider whether registration abuse policy provisions could address fast flux by empowering registries / registrars to take down a domain name involved in malicious or illegal fast flux
Explore the development of a Fast Flux Data Reporting System
Explore the possibility of ICANN as a best practices facilitator
Explore the possibility to involve other stakeholders in the fast flux policy development process
Redefine the issue and scope.

The report will now be reviewed and discussed by the GNSO Council, which will decide on the next steps accordingly.

For further information, please see the Fast Flux Hosting Final Report at http://gnso.icann.org/issues/fast-flux-hosting/fast-flux-final-report-06aug09-en.pdf [PDF, 5,060K].

Staff responsible: Marika Konings