Weycrest Knowledgebase

It happens to virtually everyone with an email address these days . Its often known as a “joe job” where a spammer “hijacks” a person or organisation’s domain name when sending out UCE mails. All the spammer has to do is replace your email address in the “reply-to” field of his spam and all of a sudden you appear as one of the “bad boy’s” of the internet.

This time one of Nominet’s own domains - nominet.org.uk has been a victim of a similar attack. The snag is that Nominet is very reliant on communications between itself and its registrars. One of the most established ways registrars carry out domain name functions with Nominet’s “automaton” is via email communications.

Nominet have released the following statement:

http://www.nominet.org.uk/news/latest?contentId=4907

Nominet appear to be investigating the implementation of a new mechanism to help combat email spoofing called DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). This technology will not necessarily stop spam, but will allow users to be sure that the messages they receive are actually from the sending address. However this will rely on a heavy, large scale take up to be really effective.

Some protection is also possible with the use of SPF records in the DNS records of a particular domain name, but not all mail transfer agents support the lookup of SPF records.

Other posts related to Nominet:

Nominet Issues Spoofing Warning
DomainKey signing for nominet.org.uk e-mails… not just yet.
Nominet Welcome Email - Custom Options for Registrars
Nominet Retains First Class Star Status with Best Companies …
Nominet Foundation - Funding for ICT
Nominet takes myspace.co.uk of owner: registered 6 years before …