Domain names abuse and TLDs: From monetization towards mitigation

Hidden behind domain names, there are lucrative (and ingenious) business models that misuse/abuse the DNS namespace and employ a diversified form of monetization. To curb some of those abuses, many research works have been proposed. However, while having a clear contribution and advancing the state-of-the-art, these works are constrained by their limited datasets and none of them present a survey on the forms of DNS abuse. In this paper, we address these limitations by presenting a case study in one top-level domain (TLD) operator (.nl) with diverse longitudinal datasets.We then cover eight business models that DNS abusers employ and their respective monetization form, and discuss how TLD operators can employ these datasets to detect these forms of abuse.