Adversaries may acquire domains that can be used during targeting. Domain names are the human readable names used to represent one or more IP addresses. They can be purchased or, in some cases, acquired for free.

Adversaries may use acquired domains for a variety of purposes, including for Phishing, Drive-by Compromise, and Command and Control.^[1] Adversaries may choose domains that are similar to legitimate domains, including through use of homoglyphs or use of a different top-level domain (TLD).^[2],[3] Typosquatting may be used to aid in delivery of payloads via Drive-by Compromise. Adversaries may also use internationalized domain names (IDNs) and different character sets (e.g. Cyrillic, Greek, etc.) to execute "IDN homograph attacks," creating visually similar lookalike domains used to deliver malware to victim machines.^{[4],[5],[6],[7],[8]}

Different URIs/URLs may also be dynamically generated to uniquely serve malicious content to victims (including one-time, single use domain names).^{[9],[10],[11],[12]}

Adversaries may also acquire and repurpose expired domains, which may be potentially already allowlisted/trusted by defenders based on an existing reputation/history.^{[13],[14],[15],[16]}

Domain registrars each maintain a publicly viewable database that displays contact information for every registered domain. Private WHOIS services display alternative information, such as their own company data, rather than the owner of the domain. Adversaries may use such private WHOIS services to obscure information about who owns a purchased domain. Adversaries may further interrupt efforts to track their infrastructure by using varied registration information and purchasing domains with different domain registrars.^[17]

In addition to legitimately purchasing a domain, an adversary may register a new domain in a compromised environment. For example, in AWS environments, adversaries may leverage the Route53 domain service to register a domain and create hosted zones pointing to resources of the threat actor’s choosing.^[18]

References

1. CISA. (2020, September 14). Alert (AA20-258A): Chinese Ministry of State Security-Affiliated Cyber Threat Actor Activity. Retrieved October 1, 2020.
2. FireEye. (2015). APT28: A WINDOW INTO RUSSIA’S CYBER ESPIONAGE OPERATIONS?. Retrieved August 19, 2015.
3. Bob Sullivan. (2000, July 24). PayPal alert! Beware the 'PaypaI' scam. Retrieved March 2, 2017.
4. CISA. (2019, September 27). Security Tip (ST05-016): Understanding Internationalized Domain Names. Retrieved October 20, 2020.
5. Malhotra, A., Thattil, J. et al. (2022, March 29). Transparent Tribe campaign uses new bespoke malware to target Indian government officials . Retrieved September 6, 2022.
6. Malhotra, A., McKay, K. et al. (2021, May 13). Transparent Tribe APT expands its Windows malware arsenal . Retrieved July 29, 2022.
7. RISKIQ. (2022, March 15). RiskIQ Threat Intelligence Roundup: Campaigns Targeting Ukraine and Global Malware Infrastructure. Retrieved July 29, 2022.
8. RISKIQ. (2017, December 20). Mining Insights: Infrastructure Analysis of Lazarus Group Cyber Attacks on the Cryptocurrency Industry. Retrieved July 29, 2022.
9. Ostorlab. (n.d.). iOS URL Scheme Hijacking. Retrieved February 9, 2024.
10. Michael Cobb. (2007, October 11). Preparing for uniform resource identifier (URI) exploits. Retrieved February 9, 2024.
11. Nathan McFeters. Billy Kim Rios. Rob Carter.. (2008). URI Use and Abuse. Retrieved February 9, 2024.
12. Australian Cyber Security Centre. National Security Agency. (2020, April 21). Detect and Prevent Web Shell Malware. Retrieved February 9, 2024.
13. MDSec Research. (2017, July). Categorisation is not a Security Boundary. Retrieved September 20, 2019.
14. Krebs, B. (2018, November 13). That Domain You Forgot to Renew? Yeah, it’s Now Stealing Credit Cards. Retrieved September 20, 2019.
15. Mudge, R. (2017, February 6). High-reputation Redirectors and Domain Fronting. Retrieved July 11, 2022.
16. Fehrman, B. (2017, April 13). How to Bypass Web-Proxy Filtering. Retrieved September 20, 2019.
17. Mandiant. (n.d.). APT1 Exposing One of China’s Cyber Espionage Units. Retrieved July 18, 2016.
18. Invictus Incident Response. (2024, January 31). The curious case of DangerDev@protonmail.me. Retrieved March 19, 2024.

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