China has banned individuals from registering internet domain names
Virus Guy
reduction in the number of domains and servers hosting malware and
secondary payloads...
------------------------
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bc9684f6-e95d-11de-be51-00144feab49a.html
China tightens grip with review of personal websites
By Kathrin Hille in Beijing
Published: December 15 2009 10:10
China has banned individuals from registering internet domain names and
launched a review of millions of existing personal websites in the
toughest government censorship drive so far on the internet.
As of Monday, people applying to register a domain name in China must
present a company chop and a business licence, the China Internet
Network Information Center, a government-backed body, said in a
statement.
Internet service providers said they had started to review their client
base for potentially fraudulent or �harmful� individually owned sites.
The term �harmful� is often used by the government as a catch-all that
covers everything from pornography to anti-state activity.
As with many other issues considered sensitive by the government,
individual domain name ownership has always been a legal grey area in
China.
The government considered twice over the past 10 years whether to
explicitly allow personal websites but with no result. So far, however,
individuals could simply sign up for domain name ownership on the web.
This has now been replaced by the stricter application process outlined
in the CNNIC notice.
Individuals are estimated to account for the majority of all registered
domain names globally. But China does not disclose domain name
statistics by ownership category. According to CNNIC, China had 16.3m
domain names as of June this year, 80 per cent of which have the ending
�.cn�. The rest use �.org�, �.net� or �.com�.
The move follows a string of other measures to crack down on internet
and media content as the government is showing signs of increasing
unease, especially over user-generated internet content, which it
struggles to control.
Beijing controls the internet through a sophisticated multi-layered
system, which includes surveillance on all levels of government but also
relies heavily on portals and other sites hosting content to censor on
its behalf. This system has been increasingly strained by the fast rise
of social media dominated by user-generated content.
Last week, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television closed
down a number of video sharing websites, citing copyright violations and
lewd content. In the same week, the government said more than 3,000
people had been arrested nationwide for alleged involvement in posting
pornographic content on the internet.
Earlier this year, the authorities blocked a number of social media
sites, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter and some of their local
clones.
This comes against the background of a broader tightening in the
political climate as the country has seen a rise in social unrest, some
of which was allegedly organised or promoted through the internet,
peaking in ethnic riots in July in Xinjiang that killed almost 200
people, according to the government.
Hu Shuli, the founder and editor of Caijing, China�s most freewheeling
news magazine, quit last month following a spat with the magazine�s
publisher over commercial strategy and censorship. Last week, the editor
of Southern Weekend, another independent publication, was demoted after
censors expressed dissatisfaction with a story speculating about
personnel changes in the Communist party.
David H. Lipman
| If this is for real, then it might have some real implications for a
| reduction in the number of domains and servers hosting malware and
| secondary payloads...
< snip >
Yes... This could have a chilling effect of all those .CN servers hosting malware,
phishing and other nefarious content.
--
Dave
http://www.claymania.com/removal-trojan-adware.html
Multi-AV - http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp
Gabriele Neukam
On this special day, Virus Guy wrote:
> must
> present a company chop and a business licence,
Not really. There are a lot of sweatshops in China; and many of them
have only few workers. Also, it is still possible to change the name of
the 'company' or found yet another one, so that you can apply for
another domain. An established domain may have subdomains, and deeply
nested directories. The worst cases are these badly managed machines of
Chinese public sercvices.
I don't expect a drop in the deliverance of malware, at all.
Gabriele Neukam
--
Often those who most loudly proclaim their freedom to choose in some
fields are the most retentive about 'correcting' others' choices in
other fields.
(Brian Brunner in alt.games.diablo2)
David H. Lipman
| ------------------------
| http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bc9684f6-e95d-11de-be51-00144feab49a.html
David H. Lipman
| If this is for real, then it might have some real implications for a
| reduction in the number of domains and servers hosting malware and
| secondary payloads...
| ------------------------
| http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bc9684f6-e95d-11de-be51-00144feab49a.html
http://www.sophos.com/blogs/sophoslabs/?p=8024
Virus Guy
> | If this is for real, then it might have some real implications
> | for a reduction in the number of domains and servers hosting
> | malware and secondary payloads...
>
> http://www.sophos.com/blogs/sophoslabs/?p=8024
The question now is: Will the use of non-chinese free web-hosting
providers crack down on the use of their servers as spam-facilitators?
And perhaps more importantly - is it harder to host executable malware
on such servers? And easier / faster to take down when discovered?
David H. Lipman
| "David H. Lipman" wrote:
>> http://www.sophos.com/blogs/sophoslabs/?p=8024
We will find out those answers as time goes by.