.as is the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

country code A country code is a short alphanumeric identification code for countries and dependent areas. Its primary use is in data processing and communications. Several identification systems have been developed. The term ''country code'' frequently re ...

top-level domain A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domain name, domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the DNS root zone, root zone of the nam ...

(

ccTLD A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all tw ...

) for

American Samoa American Samoa is an Territories of the United States, unincorporated and unorganized territory of the United States located in the Polynesia region of the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific Ocean. Centered on , it is southeast of the island count ...

Registration

Domain names are free of charge for businesses and individuals resident in or associated with American Samoa. It is administered by AS Domain Registry. Island Networks, which provides registry services for .gg and .je, is also responsible for the technical operations of .as. There is no restriction on registrants, and the domain is also popular outside of Samoa.

International use

A number of .as names have been registered to and used by people, companies and organizations with no connection to American Samoa (for example, people and organizations related to

Asturias Asturias (; ; ) officially the Principality of Asturias, is an autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in northwest Spain. It is coextensive with the provinces of Spain, province of Asturias and contains some of the territory t ...

, a Spanish region). In Australia, McDonalds uses the .as subdomain for their macc.as short URLS for their regional nickname "Maccas". "AS" or "A/S" is a suffix indicating a

joint stock company A joint-stock company (JSC) is a business entity in which shares of the company's capital stock, stock can be bought and sold by shareholders. Each shareholder owns company stock in proportion, evidenced by their share (finance), shares (certifi ...

in some countries including

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...

Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...

and

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

, so this TLD may be of use by companies of this sort. Also, some autonomous systems or websites providing information about autonomous systems or

BGP Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a standardized exterior gateway protocol designed to exchange routing and reachability information among autonomous system (Internet), autonomous systems (AS) on the Internet. BGP is classified as a path-vect ...

, such as bgp4.as, have registered domain names.

Domain hacks

The .as domain is, sometimes, used as a

domain hack A domain hack is a domain name that suggests a word, phrase, or name when concatenating two or more adjacent levels of that domain. For example, and , using the domains ''.bot'' and ''.le'', suggest the words ''robot'' and ''example'' respective ...

, since the suffix "-s" means plural in some languages like English, Spanish, and Portuguese, thus "-as" would be the end of the plural of a word that ends with an "a". Examples of such usage include the Brazilian website escol.as, meaning "schools", or macc.as/feedback for the public food service feedback form for

McDonald's McDonald's Corporation, doing business as McDonald's, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational fast food chain store, chain. As of 2024, it is the second largest by number of locations in the world, behind only the Chinese ch ...

in Australia, stemming from the colloquial use of 'Maccas' to describe the restaurant chain in the country.

2016 legacy registrar vulnerability

In April 2016, a security blog publicized a vulnerability in a .AS legacy registrar system which was claimed might have led to exposure of plain-text passwords of domain contacts associated with domains that did not have a registrar. This could have potentially allowed an attacker to make modifications to those domains, or even delete them. However, following publication, the AS Domain Registry confirmed to the reporter that legacy managed domains were subject to human oversight and authentication of all changes. No attempts had been made to take advantage of this apparent vulnerability, and the potential exploit was confirmed to have been closed.The Infosec Guy
2016-04-25

References

External links