UK top level domain registry Nominet has tapped boffins at Oxford Brookes University to help it tackle spam and data theft aimed at .uk domains.

The partnership is being funded by government cash from the Department of Trade and Industry, and will create two new anti-abuse jobs at Nominet.

The University's researchers will help Nominet develop better algorithms and software tools to monitor dodgy activity in the registry, particularly botnets. One will use Artificial Intelligence to trawl for suspicious registration patterns in the Whois database, while the other will work on developing visualisation methods to make live monitoring of the registry easier.

"We’ve developed sophisticated systems to protect the .uk registry; but as we know, we need to make efforts to stay ahead of the abusers by developing increasingly complex systems," said Nominet IT director Jay Daley.

Nominet is in the process of electing two new board members. Many of the candidates are calling for the not-for-profit body to be more active in tackling abuse. ®

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