Like .com, .net and .tv, Verisign is the registry provider for .cc, the country code for Cocos (Keeling) Islands. This is an Australian territory.
So TheGuardian published an article today from Josh Taylor with the headline, “Australia urged to take control of Cocos .cc internet domain to foil scammers and child abuse sites”.
Interestingly one of the researchers said, “It’s also very short and visually similar so the dot com,” he said. “So it’s always been good for spoofing somebody else’s website.”
Apparently the root of the concern is that according to the Australian National University researchers, .cc is very problematic when it comes to sites hosting child abuse type content.
Taylor makes note that The Internet Watch Foundation ranked .cc in the top 10 of most-abused top-level domains in 2019 for hosting child sexual abuse material but it dropped out of the top 10 in 2020.
It seems like the researchers want the Australian government to approach Verisign and basically get them to hand over or sell the .cc extension.
It will be interesting to see if anyone from the Australian government does takes any sort of steps along those lines. A spokesperson for Verisign said they remove domain names used for illegal purposes when notified.
