Australian registrations of the .au second level country domain has hit the 2 million mark, putting it into the top 10 country codes worldwide. Despite a preponderance for businesses worldwide to go for top level domains, Australia has remained one of the countries where businesses, governments and not-for-profit organisations have largely opted to retain the local flavour that the .au domain imparts.

Security firm, AVG, says a two-month study has resulted in its discovery of a network of 1.2 million malware-infected computers controlled by cybercriminals who were using the Eleonore exploit toolkit, commercial attack software which enables cyber criminals to infect and monitor compromised PCs.

AVG says the myth that malicious code is primarily hosted in countries where e-crime laws are less developed has been shattered by its latest research which reveals that more than 40 percent of the world’s ‘bad’ websites are hosted in the United States.

New botnets are reportedly causing more havoc on the Internet, with botnets now responsible for sending 87.9 percent of all spam, including one of the oldest and largest botnets which has doubled in size in just four months.

Australian web hosting and domain name registrar, MelbourneIT, has snared a contract to manage the domain name portfolio for popular social networking site, Twitter.

Spammers have employed a new technique in their phishing attacks on the Australian Taxation Office website in an attempt to snatch tax refund details from users of the site doing their tax return online.

A staggering one billion malicious emails orginate from Australia every day of the week as spammers push out their emails to Internet users, enticing them to buy discounted pharmaceuticals, replica watches, greeting cards, or to sneak a peek at naked pictures of pop star Rhianna.

It’s an old cliché, but the fact is that when you’re promoting and advertising a product or service, sex does sell! At least, that certainly seems to be the case in the year-old Australian domain name aftermarket where a world record price for a .AU domain is claimed to have been paid for the domain, SexToys.com.au.

All is not what it seems on the Internet for those users unlucky enough to be duped by scammers posing as online payment services in order to steal your most private of personal information, including credit card details.

Tired of that old .com or .org web address you’ve been using for years? Fear not - you’ll soon be able to have any top-level domain you like ... for a price.