There are 1480 alternatives to .com. The worst has just happened to your safety
The Internet Authority for Assigned Numbers now lists 1,480 “domain top-loaders,” which are domain name suffixes more commonly known as TLDs, that make up the part at the right end of a URL. The best known of course is .com, and most sites use TLDs in reference to their country of origin (eg .fr in France). Two weeks ago, Google agreed to merge eight new TLDs. Among them, two pose major security problems.
The two controversial new TLDs are zip. and mov. It was acquired by Google in 2014 and two weeks after its launch, 1,200 domain names have already chosen to move to these two suffixes. Now on the Google search engine, sites will be able to use URLs with .zip or .mov files, to mark, for example, sites that run very quickly (.zip) or those that host movies or gifs (.mov).
Google’s worst idea
The problem is minor, but it’s already causing an internet nightmare. URLs in .zip or .mov format can easily be confused with file extensions in the same format. Files compressed in .zip are a boon for malicious files. On some platforms such as social networks, clicking on the .zip link will start the download directly. If it is no longer clear that the .zip files and . mov files or URLs, the Internet is in real danger.
The presence of these two new TLDs on Google is prompting a new hacking technique. It is enough for hackers to think that the link that Internet users should click turns out to be a website to add a malicious download file to. Same thing the other way around, passing a link to a file to download when it turns out to be a fraudulent website.
The SANS Institute, which launched the Internet Storm Center program, surveilles malveillance activities on the web and makes part of the principal organs avoir tire the alarm signal for avertir d’un gros problème en devenir avec ces deux nouveaux TLD de noms de area. Then he mentioned “Provide creative opportunities for malware distribution”. Some experts have been reporting malicious domain names on Twitter that they discovered among those recently registered and purchased from Google.
Some recently registered .ZIP domains 🤭 pic.twitter.com/rxEUa9D6iQ
– German Fernandez (@1ZRR4H) May 14, 2023
Respond to criticism
After being acquired in 2014 and marketing domain names with these suffixes, Google had to respond to criticism. To defend itself, the company actually came forward that confusion between URLs and file extensions was not new. “Google takes phishing and malware seriously, and Google Registry has mechanisms in place to suspend or remove malicious domains”can we read in the press release.
It’s unclear how Google can claim to have a firewall strong enough to limit malicious domain names with these suffixes. Some experts have for example mentioned URLs like familyphotos.zip that can become a real source of trouble when they don’t need to strive to spread their malicious site. With the number of people potentially typing this kind of zip file name per day to transfer images (via mail for example), it would be very easy to drive traffic.
– 🧗♂️ Matt Holt (@mholt6) May 12, 2023
“Incurable web evangelist. Hipster-friendly gamer. Award-winning entrepreneur. Falls down a lot.”