ICANN De-Accredits EstDomains for CEO's Fraud Convictions

The entity responsible for overseeing the Internet's domain name system said Tuesday that it was revoking the right of registrar EstDomains.com to process new domain names, citing the company CEO's recent conviction on cyber crime charges.
I asked a couple of sources what they thought of this development, and whether it would have any lasting impact. Suresh Ramasubramanian, head of anti-spam operations at Hong Kong based Outblaze.com, sees this action as a mere speed bump for the bad guys, who won't soon make the same mistake of putting all of their criminal domains in one registrar's basket.

“While the Russkiy mob might resurrect EstDomains with a different patsy than Tsastsin, my suspicion is that they’ll do something I have observed for quite a while - shift to spreading the load among a large number of dumb registrars,” Ramasubramanian said. “I think there will be no further big juicy targets. No Intercage/Atrivo, no Estdomains, no recognizable entity called the Russian Business Network. These guys got cocky and were allowed to operate that way, but they can just as easily spread the load around and operate hidden in plain view.”

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/

Sad but true.

[b]EstDomains termination... stayed[/b]

Well, this is really frustrating. As DNW says it:

Domain registrar EstDomains might remain an accredited domain registrar after all.

Yesterday Domain Name Wire reported that EstDomains received a notice of termination from Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN cited the conviction of EstDomains’ president Vladimir Tsastsin for credit card fraud, money laundering and document forgery in February as the reason for the termination.

The company claims that Tsastsin resigned his position back in June, so the reasoning for ICANN’s termination is invalid. ICANN has issued a stay while it considers the matter. EstDomains will retain its accredited status during review.

More here.

You can see Estdomains’ request to ICANN here.

Alex Eckelberry

http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/estdomains-termination-stayed.html