DEV Community

Cover image for How One Registrar Became Cybercrime's Best Friend
PhishDestroy
PhishDestroy

Posted on

How One Registrar Became Cybercrime's Best Friend

We report malicious domains daily. Most registrars take action within hours.

NiceNIC? Complete silence.

So we did what any security researcher would do β€” we investigated.

πŸ” What we found

After months of research, blockchain analysis, and OSINT work:

52,847    malicious domains
$1.2B+    crypto fraud traced
0         abuse reports answered
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Phishing kits. Malware droppers. Crypto drainers. Fake pharmacies. All protected by one registrar.

The corporate onion

We peeled back the layers:

  • Shell companies in Hong Kong
  • Directors that don't exist
  • Addresses that lead nowhere
  • Payment trails that vanish into crypto mixers

This isn't negligence. It's a business model.

πŸ’€ Why developers should care

That phishing page stealing your users' credentials? Probably hosted on a NiceNIC domain.

That malware dropper targeting your npm packages? Same story.

Bulletproof registrars are infrastructure for attacks on your users.

πŸ“’ What needs to happen

  • ICANN: investigate and accredit responsibly
  • Registries: stop accepting NiceNIC registrations
  • Payment processors: follow the money

πŸ”— Full investigation

We published everything β€” evidence, blockchain trails, corporate records:

Read the complete report β†’


If you work in security, share this. The more visibility, the harder it is to ignore.

Top comments (0)