The Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) in collaboration with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) conducted a training workshop on October 11 to build capacity and skills of senior technical officials and law enforcement officers responsible for investigating cybercrime specifically related to misuse and abuse of Domain Name System (DNS).
The participants were introduced to strategies, techniques and tools that information security professionals use to identify abuses of DNS, malicious registrations of domain names, addresses or hosting. Workshop, conducted by Dr. Richard Lamb, Sr. Program Manager DNSSEC, ICANN, included demonstrations, and hands-on exercises to provide direct experience to the attendees to better understand the methodology for collecting information needed to investigate a crime and that is also commonly needed for the preparation of court orders.
“CRA takes cybersecurity matters very seriously and through such strategic training workshops we intend to build capacity among relevant agencies and technical professionals to equip them with the required skills and knowledge to intercept and block any DNS related cybercrimes and to enhance their familiarity with internet protocols,” said Faisal Al-Shuaibi, CRA's Spokesperson.
The course modules covered different relevant concepts such as the challenges of distinguishing criminal use from legitimate use of DNS. Other modules covered details on accessing DNS, domain registration, and IP addressing related information. Finally, attendees were provided with useful tools to collect DNS and registration data and to locate and look at hosting sites and hosted data.
Participants in the workshop included representatives from CRA, Ministry of Transportation and Communications, Ministry of Interior, Public Prosecutor, QCERT, Qatar Armed Forces, Q-Post, Ooredoo, Woqod, Qatar Electricity and Water Company, Oryx GTL, Qatar Petroleum, Commercial Bank, Qatar Petrochemical Company, Qatar International Islamic Bank, and Kahramaa.
About ICANN
ICANN's mission is to ensure a stable, secure and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer - a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn't have one global Internet. ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet's unique identifiers. ICANN doesn't control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn't deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet's naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet. For more information, please visit: www.icann.org.