It has officially been over a year since the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) took effect and in that time, we’ve come to see both the benefits, and the very serious drawbacks of this program. While the implementation of GDPR has been heralded by privacy advocates as a major step forward in keeping the personal information of individuals safe, it has also had the unintended consequence of making it easier for individuals and/or entities with less than honorable intentions to effectively disappear online.
The WHOIS database, the formerly public registry of web domains that contained information about every registered domain including the registrant’s name and basic contact information, has been effectively rendered useless, with the information now largely redacted by domain name registrars. Methods for requesting obtaining that information is now unique to each registrar and even then, registrars are free to decide whether or not they want to comply with that request.
And within this void of unaccountability cybercriminals are exploiting this privacy loophole, as they now may launch malicious domains with anonymity. As a result, security researchers and law enforcement are finding that it’s now exponentially harder to do their jobs keeping the web safe. See EU Laws May be Hampering Pursuit of Terrorists.
Other groups facing similar problems with criminals utilizing this privacy loophole include consumer protection agencies, child advocacy groups, anti-human trafficking organizations, intellectual property rights holders and brand protection agencies, to name just a few.
IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Research recently released a report which shows just how ..
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