We all want our website to act as a trusted source for customers, prospects, colleagues, and the public. But when criminals create a lookalike domain in an attempt to scam your customers, that trust is endangered. Unlike more direct cyberattacks, your team may not even be aware of a malicious lookalike until it’s too late. Can domain spoofing be prevented? And how can your team find lookalikes before they do real damage to your customers and your brand?
Lookalike Domain Prevention: An Overview
What is a lookalike domain?
Lookalike domains, also called spoofed domains, are an attempt by threat actors to direct legitimate traffic to your domain to a malicious site — usually for phishing attacks, theft, brand impersonation, fraud, and malware distribution. Often, lookalike domains closely resemble actual domain names but use slight modifications. The hope is that users, bombarded with messages all day, will only quickly glance at the URL before clicking. Common strategies include:
- Typosquatting: g00gle.com instead of google.com
- Homoglyphs: rnicrosoft.com, using “rn” instead of “m”
- Misspellings or extra characters: paypal-secure.com
- Different top-level domains: amazon.net instead of amazon.com
Some less sophisticated attackers may not even try to disguise their domain, hoping that victims won’t even look at the address.
What is lookalike domain prevention?
Lookalike domain prevention is a strategy aimed at detecting, blocking, and mitigating threats posed by domains that mimic legitimate websites. It often includes elements of education so that users are less likely to be fooled by a false site, and may also include strategies that make it difficult for criminals to spoof your domain, such as email authentication, and the use of threat intelligence.
Can you prevent your domain from being spoofed?
You can’t completely stop a criminal who wants to set up a lookalike domain, but you can make it more difficult for potential domain spoofers to do so:
- Proactive domain registration: Use attackers’ tricks against them and register any similar domains and common misspellings of your brand.
- Domain monitoring: Use domain monitoring tools to detect newly registered lookalike domains.
- Use DMARC, SPF, and DKIM: DMARC, SPF, and DKIM are email authentication protocols that verify the domain or IP address the email was sent from.
- User education: Teach users about lookalike domains, so they can recognize them before clicking.
- Threat intelligence: Use security platforms that scan for impersonating domains.
Why Lookalike Domain Prevention is an Increasingly Important Security Strategy
Why is it important to be aware of lookalike domains?
Domain spoofing is a common tactic among threat actors, mostly because spoofing is such a big part of phishing strategies. About 1 in 5 phishing attacks come from spoofed domains, mostly because threat actors are relying on the lookalike domain to make their message seem legitimate. If a lookalike domain is able to fool a user, they’re more likely to click.
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What is the impact of lookalike domains?
Aside from the fact that your spoofed site is likely being used as part of a phishing campaign, the lookalike domain alone can damage your brand and your reputation. Your customers, potential clients and possibly even your own employees are being attacked via this false domain, which can have consequences for you.
How can you detect domain spoofing?
Early detection is key when it comes to mitigating risk from a lookaline domain, but manually scanning for duplicates isn’t a practical solution. By using an automated solution to scan for malicious domains and lookalikes, you can find suspicious activity early and take down lookalike domains before they can cause damage to your brand, customers, or reputation. It also helps to monitor the forums and social media where bad actors congregate; scanning for hacker chatter lets you know if your domain, digital assets, or brand has been compromised. This proactive approach to cybersecurity empowers you to take action before further harm can be done.
How Flare Aids in Lookalike Domain Prevention
What do you get with Flare’s lookalike domain prevention solution?
You can’t always prevent every attempt at spoofing, so the best defense against lookalike domains is to find them as soon as they pop up. However, manually searching for duplicate domains is impractical. This is where automation comes in. Flare’s Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) platform lets your team find and respond to lookalike domains by automatically scanning for malicious spoofed domains, notifying your team as soon as one is found, and initiating a domain takedown.
How does a domain takedown work?
The only way to get a suspicious domain removed is to report it and request that it’s taken down. Depending on the domain, you may have to report it to one of a few organization:
- Law enforcement
- The relevant domain registrar
- The hosting provider
Before you report it, however, you’ll need to investigate the site to ensure it truly is malicious, and then you will need to monitor the site to make sure it’s actually removed, and follow up if it is not.
What are the benefits of Flare’s lookalike domain prevention service?
- Unlimited autonomous takedowns: Flare streamlines the process of requesting and monitoring takedowns of spoofed sites so that your team doesn’t have to keep track manually.
- Data leak detection: If any information from your actual site appears in a malicious site, Flare will find it and alert your team.
- Automated scanning and evaluation: Rather than scanning manually, your analysts are notified when a lookalike domain is discovered, and given the information they need to verify the threat.
Lookalike Domain Prevention and Flare
The Flare Threat Exposure Management (TEM) solution empowers organizations to proactively detect, prioritize, and mitigate the types of exposures commonly exploited by threat actors. Our platform automatically scans the clear & dark web and prominent threat actor communities 24/7 to discover unknown events, prioritize risks, and deliver actionable intelligence you can use instantly to improve security.
Flare integrates into your security program in 30 minutes and often replaces several SaaS and open source tools. Learn more by signing up for our free trial.
