Impostor Domains Seen as the Primary Reason for Massive Data Breach

No person wants to experience being taken advantage of or stealing their hard work. For centuries, thousands of people have been victims of theft in some way. Even the cyber world is not safe from incidents of theft. 

Data breaches have become alarmingly more common and devastating in recent years. Cybercriminals worldwide have found several methods to access private and sensitive information illegally. It  leaves organizations and individuals vulnerable to financial loss, identity theft, and other severe consequences.

While most individuals know of phishing scams, malware attacks, and hackers, cybercriminals can take advantage of people on the web in more ways. One of the most significant causes of these data breaches is email spoofing or Business Email Compromise and the increasing presence of imposter domains.

This article will explore and cover everything you need to know about impostor domains, from how they work and their role in massive data breaches. It will also cover everything organizations and individuals need to know about protecting themselves from these data breach attacks.

What is a data breach?

A data breach is releasing private, sensitive, or confidential data into an unsecured location. A data breach can happen due to deliberate hacker or malware attacks or by accident.

Millions of individuals and organizations are victims of data breaches every year. It can happen when a physician makes the mistake of looking at the wrong patient's chart. It can also occur in more severe cases where someone attempts to crack government computers to steal confidential information.

Data breaches are a serious security issue since sensitive information goes through constant transmissions over the internet. These nonstop data transfers over the internet give hackers and cybercriminals an avenue to attempt data breaches on businesses and individuals with an online presence.

Additionally, businesses worldwide have adopted storing their information digitally as technology has improved. These servers responsible for keeping massive amounts of sensitive information are usually vulnerable to many data breaches and cyber-attacks.

What are the usual targets for data breaches?

Prominent businesses and major corporations are the prime targets for cybercriminals and hackers to attempt data breaches. These online entities typically have massive payloads that these hackers can steal or corrupt depending on their intentions.

Whatever data these cybercriminals manage to take can all be sold on the black market, used for blackmail, or other nefarious deeds. While the most typical targets are large corporations and businesses, that does not mean individuals or lesser-known companies are safe.

Cyber attackers prey on anyone and everyone on the internet, provided they have data valuable enough to steal or ransom. Almost all confidential or personal information is valuable to hackers, and there are always buyers somewhere in the world willing to pay for it.

The different  types of data breaches

As established, there are many avenues hackers can take to attempt a data breach on people and companies alike. However, what types of data breaches exist in today's digital world?

Here is a list of the most well-known types of data breaches and how these cybercriminal masterminds use them to trick and exploit unwitting victims.

Social engineering attacks

A social engineering attack entails using psychological manipulation to fool individuals into providing sensitive information. A good example is when a hacker contacts an individual under the guise of an IRS agent. The fake IRS agent will call the victim and convince them to provide their bank account information over the phone.  

Malware infections

Malware is the shortened version of malicious software, which describes a program designed to track user activities or steal data. After a malware program extracts information from a victim, it sends the data gathered to a service controlled by the attacker.

Insider threats

An Insider threat involves individuals with credentials to access confidential information and deliberately expose that data for personal gain. A straightforward example of an insider threat is a waiter at a restaurant writing down a customer's credit card number. A more extreme example is a high-ranked government employee selling their country's secrets to foreign states.

Stolen or lost credentials

The simplest way to access private data online is by utilizing another person's login credentials to access a service. Hackers employ many strategies to retrieve these login credentials, including on-path attacks and brute force attacks.

Stolen or lost equipment

A stolen or lost smartphone or computer that contains sensitive information can spell severe consequences if the wrong hands retrieve it. In today's information age, nearly everyone has a treasure trove of confidential data stored in their personal computers or smartphones, which hackers maliciously covet.

Physical point-of-sale attacks

Physical point-of-sale attacks target debit and credit card information and typically involve devices scanning and reading these cards. A typical example of a physical point-of-scale attack is when someone installs a scanner into a legitimate ATM or sets up a fake one. The purposes of these ATM scams are to gather credit and debit card numbers and their PINs.

Misconfigured web server or app

If an application, web server, or website is not set up appropriately, it may leave information vulnerable to anyone with a stable internet connection. Sensitive data could be visible to users who stumble onto it accidentally or by hackers who are deliberately looking for it.

Lack of encryption

Lack of encryption refers to a website that collects financial or personal information without SSL/TLS encryption. That is a severe problem because it means anyone can monitor transfers between the website and the user to perceive that data in plaintext.

Credential stuffing

Credential Stuffing refers to a cybercriminal attempting to reuse the same credentials extracted from a previously exposed data breach across other platforms. This method of a data breach can be hit-and-miss depending on how a user maintains unique login credentials across multiple platforms.

However, if a user's login credentials are the same across multiple services and platforms, the hacker can access them. These include the victim's social media, online banking, and email accounts.

Vulnerability exploits

Almost every organization worldwide utilizes a variety of software products that contribute to fulfilling specific tasks to keep operations running smoothly. Due to the complexity of these software products, they can contain a few flaws called vulnerabilities.

A cybercriminal with enough knowledge and skill can exploit these software vulnerabilities to gain access and copy or view confidential information.

What is an imposter domain?

Over the years, the growing issue of impostor domains has made headlines in the tech industry. Also known as homoglyph, some experts define impostor domains as a character that is identical or almost identical in appearance to another but differs in what it represents.

Microsoft defines impostor domains as cybercriminals exploiting similar alphanumeric characters to build misleading domains to unlawfully impersonate legitimate organizations.

Essentially, these impostor domains are designed to look like legitimate websites, which makes it easy for cybercriminals to fool users into giving their login credentials and other sensitive data. Impostor domains are similar to URL hijacking or typosquatting, which refers to the intentional registration of domains of popular websites using intentionally misspelled domains.

Creators of impostor domains achieve that by replacing characters in a web domain in a strategic manner to avoid rousing suspicion from the victim. Common examples of exploiting alphanumeric characters are substituting the number "0" for an "O" or the number "1" with a lowercase "l" or an uppercase "I."

It is easy to mistake an impostor domain for a legitimate one because it looks almost identical to what users expect to see. This fraudulent method escalated so far that it caused Microsoft to take a West-African based organization to court in July 2021.

The court case ended with Microsoft gaining permission to seize control over 17 domains used by cybercriminals for a business email compromise campaign or BEC. Microsoft added that even small businesses in the United States were unsafe as they were also targeted by the West-African company.

How To Identify an Impostor Domain

Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of vigilant people and organizations to mitigate damage and take down domain impostors and lookalikes, they are still a growing problem. From a business owner's and consumer's perspective, it is critical to be proactive in detecting and avoiding these impostor domains.

Here are some strides you can take to prevent becoming a victim.

Look closely and pay attention to the domain name of the sites you visit

One of the most apparent signs of an impostor domain is the typographical or spelling errors visible on the domain or display name. It can range from a different typecase to an extra letter placed in the domain name. You should also check where the physical location is if it is listed.

Analyze what mood the website's text or content projects

Another red flag to watch out for is if a website's content focuses on triggering an emotional response like fear, urgency, or anger. In most cases, a website will also offer something you cannot miss out on or that is too good to be true.

If a website projects any of these moods in the text or content, that is a red flag that the website is not legitimate.

Check for grammar, spelling, and syntax errors

Some of the most popular and legitimate top-level domains may have their fair share of grammar, syntax, and spelling errors. However, impostor domains typically have more significant and noticeable grammatical errors.

Whenever visiting a website that looks legitimate but has a noticeable number of grammar and syntax errors, take a few moments to scrutinize the finer details. It is especially critical to practice double-checking the finer details when online purchases are involved.

Search for a seal of trust

Due to the increasing types of attacks from malicious actors like phishing attacks, and domain spoofing and impersonation, most end users have become more vigilant online. Today, the visibility of those small padlocks is commonplace on most websites, especially sites for products and service providers.

If you are skeptical about a domain despite making the necessary tests, search for a seal of trust. A seal of trust will look like a seal or badge with the words verified or secure on it. You should see information on the specific company after clicking it.

How To Check If You Are a Victim of Impostor Domains

As a business owner, you must take every precaution to protect your assets from malicious actors and the impostor domains they create. To take a proactive approach, here are some steps to stay ahead of malicious web activity.

Google Search Your Website Content

Visit your website and copy a few sentences to place into the Google search bar with double quotes, then hit search. Ideally, your website should be visible in the web search results. However, if other websites appear in the search results with identical phrasing, you might be the victim.

Utilize Web Analytics Tools

If you are utilizing a Real User Management or RUM service, it should load into the pages of your website via coding. Should the service determine that a page visit or other forms of user activity happen, it will send a message to the collection system. That data will then be processed, aggregated, and saved for later analysis.

Verify the Domain Registration

Copy your URL, paste it into a site like who.is or lookup.icann.org, and search for your domain. After that, search for any domains that share similarities with yours. Go to those similar websites and search for any content that might be similar or even identical to yours.

Protect Yourself and Your Website

Unfortunately, only searching for impostor domains of your business website once will not be enough. A secure website at ten o'clock in the morning could become a victim by eleven o'clock in the morning.

With that in mind, what can a business owner do to protect their website?  It is doubtful you will have time to constantly check your website every hour.

Luckily, some organizations have specialized divisions for tracking and monitoring malicious and fraudulent web activity. Some of the best companies include Cipher, PhishLabs, Domain Tools, and ImmuniWeb.