InternetNZ Thursday publicly disclosed a vulnerability against authoritative DNS servers such as the ones run by top-level domain (TLD) operators, like .nz. This vulnerability could be exploited to carry out Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks across the world.
InternetNZ Tuesday announced it is cementing its relationship further with their Canadian counterpart the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) through customising and deploying the CIRA Registry Platform for .nz. The new .nz registry will be fully operational by late 2022 and InternetNZ will continue to run and maintain it on-shore.
The European Union’s top-level domain .eu turned 15 this week, celebrating entering adolescence Wednesday.
This week GoDaddy Registry announced it was expanding its registry services with the acquisition of more than 30 new generic top-level domains (new gTLDs), including 28 from Minds + Machines, .club and .design, plus the provision of registry services for .basketball and .rugby and Ally Financial’s branded .ally domain. The move will see the company add over 3 million domains under management to their portfolio, although GoDaddy Registry already provides registry services for .club’s 1.1 million domain names. Upon close of the acquisitions, it will see GoDaddy Registry own, manage or operate more than 240 top-level domains, with more than 14 million DUM.
Ethos Capital announced Thursday it has completed an investment to acquire a controlling interest of Donuts Inc. from Abry Partners. Based in Seattle, Washington, Donuts holds the world’s largest portfolio of top-level domains with 260 new gTLDs as well as providing registry services for a number of other top-level domains (both gTLDs and ccTLDs) through both its Donuts and Afilias brands.
An Extraordinary General Meeting held Monday saw four of Nominet’s directors including Chair Mark Wood removed from their positions, while CEO and board member Russell Haworth stood down on Sunday, the day before the meeting. The Board clear-out follows a campaign for reform of the .uk ccTLD registry by Public Benefit .UK.
Nominet’s CEO Russell Haworth has become the sacrifice in the ongoing battles over management of the .uk ccTLD. In an announcement today, Nominet said Haworth “intends to step down from the Board and relinquish his duties as CEO. Russell will complete a short transition, arrangements for which details are being finalised. The board will announce interim leadership measures in due course.” Whether Haworth’s sacrifice minimises the fallout coming from today’s EGM remains to be seen.
PIR is on a mission to improve the domain name space for fellow registries, registrars and registrants. More than a year and a half ago – in May 2019 – the .org registry introduced the Quality Performance Index, or QPI. In doing so, they created a roadmap to identify best practices and incentives for registrars to reduce abuse rates and increase renewals of .ORGs.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced it will begin overseeing the .gov top-level domain (TLD) as of April 2021. CISA is working closely with the U.S. General Services Administration, who currently oversees the TLD, to ensure a seamless transition of daily operations for .gov customers.
Total new gTLD registrations have been on a downhill slide since late September 2020 according to nTLDstats.com and the decline is continuing. Verisign’s authorative Domain Name Industry Brief released this week reports that in the final quarter of 2020, new gTLD domain name registrations dropped 4.2 million to 26.0 million which equates to a drop of 13.8% compared to the third quarter of 2020. Over the year new gTLDs decreased by 3.3 million or 11.2%.