The Russia disappeared from the map quite 20 years past, however on-line Associate in Nursing "evil empire" is flourishing.
Security specialists say the .su net suffix allotted to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1990 has become a haven for hackers who've flocked to the domain area to send spam and steal cash.
Capitalist issues instead of communist longing make a case for the move.
"I do not assume that this is often extremely a political issue," aforementioned Oren David, a manager at the protection firm RSA's anti-fraud unit. "It's all concerning business."
David et al. aforementioned scammers began to maneuver to .su when the directors of Russia's .ru domain area toughened their rutheniumles in late 2011.
Group-IB, that runs one amongst Russia's 2 official net watchdogs, aforementioned the amount of malicious .su websites doubled in 2011 and once more in 2012, surpassing the large variety of renegade sites on .ru and its newer Cyrillic-language counterpart.
The Soviet domain has several issues, Group-IB's Andrei Komarov aforementioned during a phone interview. "In my opinion quite 1/2 cybercriminals in Russia and former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics use it."
The most infamous web site was Exposed.su, that supposedly revealed credit records happiness to Michelle Obama, the Republican presidential challengers Mitt Romney and Donald Trump, and celebrities together with Britney Spears, Jay-Z, Beyoncé and Tiger Woods. the positioning is currently defunct.
Other .su sites ar wont to management botnets, the networks of hijacked computers wont to empty bank accounts, send spam and launch attacks against rival websites.
Internet hosting corporations typically eliminate such sites as presently as they are known, however Swiss security scientist Roman Huessy, whose abuse.ch web log tracks botnet management sites, aforementioned hackers primarily based within the .su domain will operate with exemption for months at a time.
Asked for examples, he hot and bothered off a series of websites actively operating within the on-line equivalent of broad daylight, hunting bank accounts and holding onerous drives captive reciprocally for ransom.
"I will continue posting this list for ages," he aforementioned via Skype.
The history of .su goes back to the first days of the net, once its architects were making the country code suffixes meant to confine a website's position. Some cold war-era domain names – like .yu for European nation or .dd for German Democratic Republic – disappeared beside the countries to that they'd been allotted. The .su domain, however, survived the dissolution of the Russia in 1991 and therefore the creation of the .ru domain in 1994, and has resisted continual tries to wipe it from the online as a result of its operators refused to tug the plug on each industrial and nationalistic grounds.
With quite one hundred twenty,000 domains presently registered, mothballing .su currently would be a mussy operation.
"It's like obstruction .com or .org," aforementioned Komarov. "Lots of legitimate domains ar registered there."
Among them ar Joseph Stalin.su, that eulogises the previous Soviet dictator and therefore the English-language chronicle.su, Associate in Nursing absurdist parody web site.
Experts say, however, that a lot of ar dishonest , and even the organisation behind .su accepts it's a retardant on its hands.
"We realise it is a threat for our image," aforementioned Sergei Ovcharenko, whose Moscow-based non-profit Foundation for net Development took responsibility for .su in 2007.
Ovcharenko insisted that solely atiny low variety of .su sites were malicious, though he acknowledged that criminal sites will keep on-line for terribly long periods of your time. He aforementioned his hands were tied by weak Russian legislation and out-of-date terms of service, however secure that stricter rules were on their approach when months of legal legwork.
"We ar nearly there," he said. "This summer we'll be rolling out our new policy."
Meanwhile .su has become Associate in Nursing progressively infamous corner of the net, an internet echo of the "evil empire" appellative allotted to the Russia by Ronald Reagan thirty years past.
David, the RSA manager, aforementioned the emergence of a communist relic as a twenty first century security threat was a unconventional blast from the past.
"I thought that the Berlin Wall and my grandma's borsh ar the sole remnants of the Russia," he said. "I was wrong."
Source of Cybercriminals Find Haven in .su Domain Space - Hack in the USSR
