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Blacklisting as an online security measure in danger of redundancy

Developments in technology are enabling cyber crooks to exploit botnet technology and launch attacks that leave many exposed to online threats, according to the Financial Times.

While commenting on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers's (ICANN) decision in June to open up top level domain names (TLDs), the Ft states that this will result in the failure of blacklisting as an online security measure.

The opening enables organisations to have any number of domain name combinations, which the Ft says will "drastically reduce the effectiveness of web security products based on URL filtering".

According to the newspaper the move has made blocking access to malicious websites using blacklists of URLs unreliable as cyber crooks will find ways of evading traditional spam filters.

Web filtering databases are already feeling the strain of new URLs coming online and it will take time before the URL blacklists can find and classify them, the paper concludes.

According to the Ft, current estimates put the number of new URLs at around 3,500 every day.

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