EstDomains fighting for life

By Shaun Nichols on Oct 30, 2008 3:13PM

ICANN threatens to pull accreditation from notorious registrar.

A domain registrar infamous amongst the security world is being faced with shutdown.

EstDomains was notified by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that it would be stripped of its accreditation due to the legal troubles of its chief executive. Vladimir Tsastsin was convicted in February of credit card fraud, forgery and money laundering in Estonia.

The company has since appealed, claiming that Tsastsin had previously resigned his post and is currently appealing the conviction.

News of the decision had drawn cheers from many in the security community. Many researchers have pointed to the company as one of the main registrars for use in cybercrime, particularly spam and malware attack sites.

"They've been on our map for years as they've been the largest registrar used by online criminals for their domain name registration needs," explained F-Secure chief research officer Mikko Hypponen.

"I never thought I’d see the day!" wrote McAfee research scientist Chris Barton.

"ICANN found its dentures down the back of the sofa and taken a bite out of the criminals domain registration empire."

The ICANN declaration would strip EstDomains of the rights to some 281,000 domains. The company had previously planned to terminate the accreditation on November 12, but upon receiving EstDomains' appeal, ICANN now says that it will postpone the move while it analysis the filing.