Without even defining the term, you could probably guess that domain reputation attacks pose a serious threat to businesses. Attackers have a number of methods at their disposal with the goal of tarnishing the credibility of domains, and thus, the consequences can be severe—blacklisting by email providers or browsers, loss of customer trust, damage to brand identity, and more.
What Are Domain Reputation Attacks?
A domain reputation attack occurs when a domain is deliberately targeted to harm its perceived trustworthiness. Whether through domain spoofing, phishing, or typosquatting, cybercriminals exploit weak domain security practices, leading to severe consequences for businesses.
To explain, domain spoofing is a type of cyber-attack in which the attacker impersonates a legitimate domain to trick users into believing they are interacting with a trustworthy website. This can be done in several ways, such as creating a fake website that closely resembles a legitimate one or using a similar-looking domain name to deceive users. The goal of domain spoofing is to gain the user’s trust and steal sensitive information, such as login credentials or financial data.
Attackers may also use typosquatting, which is a type of domain spoofing attack in which the attacker registers a domain name that is similar to a legitimate one, but with a slight variation, such as a misspelled word or a different top-level domain (TLD). For example, if the legitimate domain is “example.com,” the attacker might register “examplle.com” or “example.net.”
Using the above as a jumping off point, here are the different types of domain reputation attacks.
Types of Domain Reputation Attacks
Domain Spoofing
Cybercriminals imitate a legitimate domain to deceive users into trusting fraudulent sites or emails. This is often achieved through typosquatting or DNS spoofing, which manipulates DNS records to reroute users to fake websites.
Domain Phishing
Attackers set up domains similar to real ones to phish sensitive information from unsuspecting users. This type of attack not only hurts the victims but also severely damages the reputation of the legitimate business associated with the domain, which leads us to…
Bad Domain Association
Association with bad domains can occur when attackers use malicious domains for activities like phishing, malware distribution, or spamming. Legitimate businesses may be inadvertently linked to these bad domains, which can result in their domain being flagged or blacklisted by email providers and search engines. This association harms the domain’s reputation, reducing customer trust and impacting web traffic.
Domain Phishing vs. Domain Spoofing
To clarify a point above, domain phishing and domain spoofing are in the same realm of cybersecurity attack methods used frequently by hackers, with just a slight difference.
Where domain phishing happens when bad actors create fake domains in order to poach sensitive information and coerce fake purchases, domain spoofing is more specifically used to impersonate a person or business’s identity. Spoofing attacks can involve an account being compromised by hackers with the goal of impersonation, instead of strictly financial gain through external trickery like domain phishing.
Preventative Measures for Domain Protection
An effective domain risk management program involves continuously monitoring and defending against the evolving threats to domain reputation. Risk prevention measures – including automated tools for phishing detection and takedown – allow businesses to respond to domain threats quickly, reducing the chances of lasting damage
To prevent domain reputation attacks, businesses must adopt a proactive defense strategy.
Proactive Domain Monitoring
Domain monitoring services continuously scan the internet for potential threats to your domain, such as typosquat variants and look-alike domains. With AI-driven detection, platforms – like Bolster – identify fraudulent domains quickly and accurately, allowing businesses to take swift action, including automatic takedowns. This proactive approach ensures that domains remain secure, and brands are protected from phishing attacks and other malicious activities.
DMARC and DNSSEC
Consider implementing Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) for your domain. DMARC is an email authentication protocol that helps prevent domain spoofing by verifying the sender of an email and ensuring that it matches the domain name.
Domain Name System (DNS) Security Extensions (DNSSEC) adds an extra layer of security to DNS by digitally signing the DNS records, making it more difficult for attackers to manipulate them.
Defensive Domain Acquisition
Businesses can take control of domain variations by acquiring common typosquatting versions of their domain. This reduces the likelihood of attackers using these variations for malicious purposes
At Bolster, we offer an innovative solution leveraging our AI engine to combine defensive domain acquisition with domain risk protection. With the solution customers can tap into Bolster AI to identify unregistered high-risk typosquatting variants and purchase them before bad actors do.
Getting Started
To go along with the above, Bolster users can upload lists of domains they own, and see what typosquat domains or phishing instances are present on the internet. Bolster will automatically scan for threats, or potential instances of a domain or brand identity being used by domains that you don’t own, and then can immediately mark them as malicious.
Depending on your organization’s preferences, you can also have Bolster automatically takedown malicious domains, without manual intervention. This greatly reduces the time threats are active against your network.
To learn more about how Bolster can help your organization defend against phishing attacks, request a free demo with our team today.
