Navigating the Complexities of Domain Monitoring in 2024: Challenges and Techniques

Introduction

In the digital age, the integrity and security of online domains are crucial for businesses and individuals alike. Domain monitoring emerges as a key practice in this landscape, offering proactive measures against various cyber threats. This technical article delves into the challenges of domain monitoring, exploring its definitions, techniques, limitations, use cases, automation, and the difficulties surrounding domain takedown.

Definitions

Domain Monitoring: The practice of tracking domain registrations and changes to domain name records to safeguard against cyber threats. This includes monitoring for domain expiration, unauthorized changes, and potentially malicious registrations.

Typosquatting: A technique used by cybercriminals involving the registration of domain names that closely resemble legitimate domains, but with slight typographical errors. These domains can be used for phishing, malware distribution, or to damage a brand’s reputation.

Spoofing: The act of disguising a malicious website or email to appear as if it comes from a legitimate source, often used in phishing attacks to deceive recipients into divulging sensitive information.

Use Cases

Preventing Phishing and Malware: By monitoring domain registrations similar to a company’s domain, it’s possible to identify and mitigate phishing or malware attacks before they reach users.

Brand Protection: Monitoring helps in identifying potential infringements on trademarks and intellectual property, particularly through typosquatting and spoofing.

Challenges due to the decentralized nature of domain registrations

Unlike certain databases that are centralized and easily accessible, the world of domain registration is decentralized. No single, unified repository lists all newly registered domains. This decentralization poses a significant hurdle for those tasked with monitoring domain registrations, as they must navigate a myriad of sources to gather comprehensive data. Here are some strategies to overcome those challenges.

Access to domain data: Third-Party Services alternatives

Given the challenges associated with directly accessing and analyzing WHOIS and DNS data, many organizations turn to third-party services. These services often aggregate data from various sources, providing a more streamlined and comprehensive view of newly registered domains. They can offer advanced search capabilities, alerts, and analytics, making the process more efficient. But how do such third-party-services get to their domain data?

1. Aggregating Data from Multiple Registries

Registry Data: Each TLD is managed by a registry, and some of these registries provide access to their zone files or registration data. Providers can collect data from these registries either through direct access agreements or via services like ICANN’s Centralized Zone Data Service (CZDS) for gTLDs. Please not that ICANN has a delay of at least a week for each zone request.

Bulk Access Agreements: Some registries offer bulk access to registration data under specific agreements, which can be a source for this information.

2. WHOIS Databases

WHOIS Queries: WHOIS databases contain information about domain registrations. By performing regular WHOIS queries, providers can gather data about new registrations. However, this approach has limitations due to rate limits and increasing privacy measures.

Historical WHOIS Data: Providers also use historical WHOIS data to track changes in domain registrations over time.

3. Monitoring DNS Records

DNS Queries: Regularly querying DNS records can reveal new domain registrations when a domain starts resolving to an IP address.

Tracking Name Server Changes: Monitoring for changes in DNS, especially name server records, can indicate new domain activations.

4. Public Data and Research Projects

Internet-Wide Scans: Some research projects and security organizations conduct internet-wide scans to gather data about active domains.

Collaborative Sharing Platforms: Cybersecurity entities often participate in threat intelligence sharing platforms where information about suspicious or newly registered domains is exchanged.

• OpenDNS (Cisco) – Primary Focus: OpenDNS primarily provides DNS resolution services and security features, such as blocking phishing sites or filtering content.

New Domain Visibility: While OpenDNS has extensive DNS data, it’s not typically used for monitoring newly registered domains directly. Its primary use is more about security and web filtering.

• Farsight Security’s DNSDB – Historical DNS Data: DNSDB specializes in historical DNS data, tracking changes in DNS records over time.

New Domain Visibility: It can potentially be used to identify newly registered domains by observing newly created DNS records. However, its strength lies more in historical analysis rather than real-time monitoring of domain registrations.

• SecurityTrails – Domain and IP Intelligence: SecurityTrails offers a historical record of DNS data, including information about domains and IPs.

New Domain Visibility: SecurityTrails allows you to track domain history and DNS records. It can be useful for identifying newly registered domains, particularly through historical data analysis and tracking domain name changes over time.

5. Web Crawling and Indexing

Search Engines and Crawlers: By scanning and indexing web content, some providers detect new domains when they become active with a website.

6. Monitoring Domain Auctions and Marketplaces

Domain Sales and Auctions: Monitoring domain sales platforms and auction sites can provide information on newly registered and soon-to-be-released domains.

7. Proactive Typosquatting Monitoring

Generating Potential Typo squatted Domain Lists: By anticipating common typographical errors or creating variations of a brand’s domain name, organizations can compile a list of potential typo squatted domains. Specifically focusing on the NS (Name Server) records of these domains can reveal when a potentially malicious domain becomes active. An active NS record might indicate that the domain is in use, warranting further investigation.

Automation

Given the sheer volume of possible typo squatted domains, manual monitoring is impractical. Automated scripts and specialized software can continuously track these domains, alerting cybersecurity teams when a potentially malicious domain is registered or becomes active. If you don’t want to build such a workflow yourself we recommend using our partner Urlscore.ai. Otherwise here are the technical aspects of building such an application:

1. Initial Domain Capture

Real-time Monitoring: Implement real-time monitoring tools to capture domain registrations as they happen, using Kaduu for example.

2. WHOIS Details Lookup

WHOIS API Integration: Utilize WHOIS APIs to retrieve registration details of domains. This includes registrant information, registrar details, and registration dates.

3. Domain Age Calculation

Date Parsing: Extract the domain registration date from WHOIS data and calculate the domain’s age by comparing it to the current date.

4. Blacklist Checking

Integration with Blacklist Databases: Use APIs from various blacklist databases (like Google Safe Browsing, Spamhaus, etc.) to check if the domain is listed.

5. Website Presence Verification

HTTP(S) Requests: Implement a system to send HTTP and HTTPS requests to the domain to check for an active website. Analyze the server response to determine if a website is operational (e.g., HTTP status codes, response headers).

6. Spoofing and Element Matching

Web Scraping: Develop a web scraping mechanism to extract elements from the website (like logos, text, styles). Compare these elements against a database of your organization’s assets to detect potential spoofing. Implement machine learning algorithms for more sophisticated analysis of visual and textual content.

7. Automation and Workflow

Automated Workflows: Create automated workflows to process each domain through these checks sequentially or in parallel, as appropriate.

Conclusion

Domain monitoring stands as a vital component in the cybersecurity toolkit, yet it’s fraught with technical and procedural challenges. Despite these hurdles, developing robust domain monitoring strategies, coupled with automated tools and awareness, can significantly mitigate risks associated with typosquatting, spoofing, and other domain-related threats.