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The purpose of DNS is to spread scams
Interisle data cited by Terence Eden shows 8.5 million of 85 million new 2025 gTLD registrations blocklisted, implying a 10-20% scam domain abuse rate.
Terence Eden highlights statistics from an Interisle report on Domain Name System abuse. Of 85 million new gTLD registrations in 2025, 8.5 million were added to blocklists by May 2025, suggesting a 10% abuse floor that is likely closer to 20%. Eden calls the roughly one-in-five scam rate for newly registered gTLD domains a crisis and notes ICANN has discussed the problem for years.
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Hackers Spend Nearly $7 Million on Expired Domains to Redirect Traffic to Scams and Malware
Infoblox reports Sable Squirrel spent nearly $7 million on expired domains to redirect traffic to illegal sports streaming, gambling, and malware infrastructure.
Infoblox tracked 50,400 dropcatch domains re-registered daily in gTLDs during H1 2026, nearly 20% of all registrations, with .net and .xyz leading. The threat actor Sable Squirrel has acquired more than 10,000 expired domains supporting Asian sports piracy brands such as Xoilac, Cakhia, 90phut, Socolive, and MiTom while promoting betting services like VSBet, ColaScore, and 8xbet. The operation, assessed as Vietnam-based and overlapping the dismantled Xoi Lac TV streaming network, targets users in Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and Australia via a traffic distribution system, publishes Android apps through suspected compromised Google Play developer accounts, and deployed over 31,000 malware samples including Quasar RAT, AsyncRAT, DCRat, NanoCore, Remcos RAT, and njRAT.
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TLD Tracker: Exploring Newly Released Top
Unit 42 tracked 19 newly released top-level domains and found large-scale phishing, unwanted program distribution, and cybersquatting tied to TLD launch dates.
Researchers analyzed 19 new generic TLDs, including .zip, .bot, .ing, and .meme, released or approaching general availability over roughly 18 months. Data from passive DNS, registry zone files, newly registered domain feeds, and the Tranco top-1M list showed phishing campaigns, potentially unwanted program distribution, and domain squatting on these TLDs. Abuse correlated with each TLD's rollout phases, indicating attackers monitor general availability dates to register and weaponize domains. The IANA root database now lists over 1,000 generic TLDs.
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