Cybersquatting: Attackers Mimicking Domains of Major Brands Including Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Netflix to Scam Consumers
released on 2020-09-01 @ 03:43:34 PM
Users on the internet rely on domain names to find brands, services, professionals and personal websites. Cybercriminals take advantage of the essential role that domain names play on the internet by registering names that appear related to existing domains or brands, with the intent of profiting from user mistakes. This is known as cybersquatting.
The Palo Alto Networks squatting detector system discovered that 13,857 squatting domains were registered in December 2019, an average of 450 per day. We found that 2,595 (18.59%) squatted domain names are malicious, often distributing malware or conducting phishing attacks, and 5,104 (36.57%) squatting domains we studied present a high risk to users visiting them, meaning they have evidence of association with malicious URLs within the domain or are utilizing bulletproof hosting.