An influential US senator has accused major registries and registrars including GoDaddy and Namecheap of facilitating Russian disinformation campaigns.
Senator Mark Warner, the Democrat chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told registrars that “legislative remedies” may be required unless they “take immediate steps to address the continued abuse of your services for foreign covert influence”.
The threat came in letters sent to registrar groups Namecheap, GoDaddy, Cloudflare, NewFold Digital, NameSilo, and .com registry Verisign today.
Warner’s letters seem to have been inspired by Facebook owner Meta, perhaps the domain industry’s most prolific antagonist, and align closely with Meta’s views on issues such as cybersquatting and Whois access.
The criticisms also stem from a recent FBI seizure of 32 domains that were being use to proliferate fake news about the invasion of Ukraine and the upcoming US presidential election.
The Russian campaign, known as Doppelganger, used domains such as fox-news.in and washingtonpost.pm to trick visitor into thinking they were reading news sources they trust.
Warner tells the registrars (pdf) they have “ostensibly facilitated sustained covert influence activity by the Russian Federation and influence networks operating on its behalf”.
The main concern appears to be the lack of access to private information in Whois records. Warner’s list of industry sins includes:
withholding vital domain name registration information from good-faith researchers and digital forensic investigators, ignoring inaccurate registration information submitted by registrants, and failing to identify repeated instances of intentional and malicious domain name squatting used to impersonate legitimate organizations
Warner called for “immediate” action “to address the continued abuse of your services” as the US presidential election looms, and in its aftermath. Voters go to the polls November 5.
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