Spammers are moving their operations to Russian domains after domain regulator of China tightened rules last year. This information became known from the security researchers.

China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) introduced changes to the policy of domain registration therefore the applicants have to fill in a formal application to a registrar and they need official documents for that. The requirement of identification is a must. All criminals in the cyber space had to quit from Chinese domains in search for anonymity. Chinese domains are not so attractive for them any longer.

Actually, spammers migrated to the Russian top level domain .ru, having registered their domains there. At the end of summer it was observed that about 30% of unique domains, .ru domains in particular, happened to be in spam. They were registered for the most part via 2 registrars. These are Reg.ru and Naunet.

This is the biggest proportion of spammed domains and .com comes after it. This report was done by M86 researcher on security Gavin Neale. The data was posted on the 22^nd of September in the blog of the company .Security Labs.

The domain is advertised by spammers for two hours only and them the new domain is registered. During one month 4,000 .ru domains for spam were registered via Naunet and 1,800 via Reg.ru. They all had link to Canadian pharmacy resources. As it is very convenient to do it from Reg.ru because of the ability to register 600 domains simultaneously, spammers take advantage of this feature.

The domain registration procedure in Russia resembles the one in other parts of the world, but rules will not alter the situation. Only enforcement of rules matters. This is the opinion of Bradley Anstis, the vice president at M86.

He also added that China made spammers to return to Russia. They preferred China before because the rules were not strict or there were no rules altogether. The flexibility feature to be able to perform multiple registrations at once is carried out by the program. A year passed and the changes are noticed already.

He also points out that the set of rules must be developed by the Internet community and the responsibility should exist to be able to enforce the rules. Until there is lax policy concerning registration in some geographies the situation will not improve.