ZA Central Registry (ZACR), the organisation which administers top-level domains such as .ZA, .joburg, and .Africa, has said that it is looking into implementing registry locking for the .ZA namespace.<\/p>\n
MyBroadband recently reported on the lack of registry and registrar locking for .ZA domains<\/strong><\/a>, and the importance of having registry locking in light of the large-scale domain hijacking attacks earlier this year.<\/p>\n In response to the article, the ZACR has revealed that it is exploring the possibility of implementing Registry Lock functionality. It explained that this would require a change in registry policy, following the development of supplemental policies in consultation with the ZA Domain Name Authority (ZADNA).<\/p>\n DNS-ZA, the technical service provider to the ZACR and ZADNA, has also responded to the article in a blog post<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are also in advanced discussions with the ZACR to determine ways of implementing and promoting Domain Lock and Multi-Factor Authentication for all their second level and generic domains. Watch this space,\u201d DNS-ZA said.<\/p>\n While it may appear at first blush as though the ZACR and DNS-ZA are referring to the same thing, there is a big difference between registry and registrar locking.<\/p>\n When DNS-ZA referred to \u201cDomain Lock\u201d in its post, it linked to the Wikipedia page<\/a><\/strong> on Registrar Locking.<\/p>\n The ZACR used the definition from Wikipedia to differentiate between the two security measures, explaining that a Registrar Lock is a status code set on a domain name by its sponsoring registrar.<\/p>\n A registrar is the service provider you use to register and administer a domain, such as a web hosting company.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ZACR recognises the benefits that registrar lock provides to domain names under its administration and calls on its registrar community to consider offering this as a value added service to its end users without detracting from the rights that domain name holders have to manage their own domain names,\u201d the registry said.<\/p>\n While registrar locks would be great to have on .ZA domains, Verisign has warned<\/a><\/strong> that this would not necessarily prevent the kind of domain hijacking attacks executed against North African and Middle Eastern top-level domains.<\/p>\n Locking a domain at the registry level would mitigate against such attacks, though.<\/p>\n Essentially, any modification to a domain would have to be authenticated by the registry itself. Verisign said it contacts the requester by phone, who must provide a security phrase for the name to be unlocked.<\/p>\n It is this kind of Registry Lock that the ZACR said it is busy looking at implementing.<\/p>\n ZA Central Registry (ZACR), the organisation which administers top-level domains such as .ZA, .joburg, and .Africa, has said that it is looking into implementing registry locking for the .ZA namespace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":158921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,27],"tags":[19482,58564,35,19486],"class_list":["post-302886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","category-security","tag-za-domain-name-authority-zadna","tag-domain-name-system-pty-ltd-dns-za","tag-headline","tag-za-central-registry-zacr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302886"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":302932,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302886\/revisions\/302932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Registry vs. Registrar lock<\/h3>\n
Now read:\u00a0South Africa’s .ZA domain is a security disaster waiting to happen<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"