ICANN Announcements

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ICANN Expands DNSTICR to Monitor Terms Related to Russia-Ukraine War

9 March 2022

In addition to the U.N. six languages, this content is also available in

When global events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, capture the world’s concern and human desire to help, bad actors lurk behind the scenes, seeking innovative ways to confuse, distract, and steal from the unsuspecting.

In response to these security threats, ICANN organization (org), through its Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO), developed the Domain Name Security Threat Information Collection and Reporting (DNSTICR) system to report COVID-19-related domain name system (DNS) security threats to the registrar responsible for the domains in question. DNSTICR is a robust, linguistically comprehensive, reliable and replicable system designed to specifically search for phishing or malware domain names that match with a set of COVID-related keywords.

ICANN org is now adding terms in English, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, and other appropriate languages to the DNSTICR watchlist to search for malicious domain registrations related to the Russia-Ukraine war. When evidence of maliciousness is found, the results are reported to the corresponding registrars.

ICANN org’s response to DNS security threats is an example of the org’s efforts to provide verifiable data, unbiased research, and expertise to facilitate fact-based discussions on the technical operations of the Internet. The system aligns with ICANN’s purpose and mission to promote broad participation of public and private actors to make the Internet safer, more secure, and interoperable.

To learn more about ICANN’s DNSTICR system, visit here.

About ICANN

ICANN's mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you need to type an address – a name or a number – into your computer or other device. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers across the world. ICANN was formed in 1998 as a nonprofit public benefit corporation with a community of participants from all over the world.