National domain names are one of the threats of 2010

2009 is the year of national domains in the domain name industry. In October 2009, ICANN authorized the use of national alphabets in domain names.

However, such domains can be used to launch various types of attacks. Trend Micro experts believe that national top-level domains (ccTLDs) can become a tool for phishing attacks—attacks that use domain names with similar names.

Websites with Cyrillic domains are particularly vulnerable to this threat, as some Cyrillic and Latin letters are written in the same way. When introducing national domains, specialists should take this into account and provide protection against this type of attack, according to Trend Micro analysts.