Why Phishers Love New TLDs Like .shop, .top and .xyz

Phishing attacks increased nearly 40 percent in the year ending August 2024, with much of that growth concentrated at a small number of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) — such as .shop, .top, .xyz — that attract scammers with rock-bottom prices and no meaningful registration requirements, new research finds. Meanwhile, the nonprofit entity that oversees the domain name industry is moving forward with plans to introduce a slew of new gTLDs.

A study on phishing data released by Interisle Consulting finds that new gTLDs introduced in the last few years command just 11 percent of the market for new domains, but accounted for roughly 37 percent of cybercrime domains reported between September 2023 and August 2024.

Interisle was sponsored by several anti-spam organizations, including the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE), and the Messaging, Malware, and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG).

The study finds that while .com and .net domains made up approximately half of all domains registered in the past year (more than all of the other TLDs combined) they accounted for just over 40 percent of all cybercrime domains. Interisle says an almost equal share — 37 percent — of cybercrime domains were registered through new gTLDs.

Spammers and scammers gravitate toward domains in the new gTLDs because these registrars tend to offer cheap or free registration with little to no account or identity verification requirements. For example, among the gTLDs with the highest cybercrime domain scores in this year’s study, nine offered registration fees for less than $1, and nearly two dozen offered fees of less than $2.00. By comparison, the cheapest price identified for a .com domain was $5.91.

Currently, there are around 2,500 registrars authorized to sell domains by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the California nonprofit that oversees the domain industry.

Incredibly, despite years of these reports showing phishers heavily abusing new gTLDs, ICANN is shuffling forward on a plan to introduce even more of them. ICANN’s proposed next round envisions accepting applications for new gTLDs in 2026.

John Levine is author of the book “The Internet for Dummies” and president of CAUCE. Levine said adding more TLDs without a much stricter registration policy will likely further expand an already plentiful greenfield for cybercriminals.

“The problem is that ICANN can’t make up their mind whether they are the neutral nonprofit regulator or just the domain speculator trade association,” Levine told KrebsOnSecurity. “But they act a lot more like the latter.”

Levine said the vast majority of new gTLDs have a few thousand domains — a far cry from the number of registrations they would need just to cover the up-front costs of operating a new gTLD (~$180,000-$300,000). New gTLD registrars can quickly attract customers by selling domains cheaply to customers who buy domains in bulk, but that tends to be a losing strategy.

“Selling to criminals and spammers turns out to be lousy business,” Levine said. “You can charge whatever you want on the first year, but you have to charge list price on domain renewals. And criminals and spammers never renew. So if it sounds like the economics makes no sense it’s because the economics makes no sense.”

In virtually all previous spam reports, Interisle found the top brands referenced in phishing attacks were the largest technology companies, including Apple, Facebook, Google and PayPal. But this past year, Interisle found the U.S. Postal Service was by far the most-phished entity, with more than four times the number of phishing domains as the second most-frequent target (Apple).

At least some of that increase is likely from a prolific cybercriminal using the nickname Chenlun, who has been selling phishing kits targeting domestic postal services in the United States and at least a dozen other countries.

Interisle says an increasing number of phishers are eschewing domain registrations altogether, and instead taking advantage of subdomain providers like blogspot.com, pages.dev, and weebly.com. The report notes that cyberattacks hosted at subdomain provider services can be tough to mitigate, because only the subdomain provider can disable malicious accounts or take down malicious web pages.

“Any action upstream, such as blocking the second-level domain, would have an impact across the provider’s whole customer base,” the report observes.

Interisle tracked more than 1.18 million instances of subdomains used for phishing in the past year (a 114 percent increase), and found more than half of those were subdomains at blogspot.com and other services operated by Google.

“Many of these services allow the creation of large numbers of accounts at one time, which is highly exploited by criminals,” the report concludes. “Subdomain providers should limit the number of subdomains (user accounts) a customer can create at one time and suspend automated, high-volume automated account sign-ups – especially using free services.”

Dec. 4, 10:21 a.m. ET: Corrected link to report.

Phish-Friendly Domain Registry “.top” Put on Notice

The Chinese company in charge of handing out domain names ending in “.top” has been given until mid-August 2024 to show that it has put in place systems for managing phishing reports and suspending abusive domains, or else forfeit its license to sell domains. The warning comes amid the release of new findings that .top was the most common suffix in phishing websites over the past year, second only to domains ending in “.com.”

On July 16, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) sent a letter to the owners of the .top domain registry. ICANN has filed hundreds of enforcement actions against domain registrars over the years, but in this case ICANN singled out a domain registry responsible for maintaining an entire top-level domain (TLD).

Among other reasons, the missive chided the registry for failing to respond to reports about phishing attacks involving .top domains.

“Based on the information and records gathered through several weeks, it was determined that .TOP Registry does not have a process in place to promptly, comprehensively, and reasonably investigate and act on reports of DNS Abuse,” the ICANN letter reads (PDF).

ICANN’s warning redacted the name of the recipient, but records show the .top registry is operated by a Chinese entity called Jiangsu Bangning Science & Technology Co. Ltd. Representatives for the company have not responded to requests for comment.

Domains ending in .top were represented prominently in a new phishing report released today by the Interisle Consulting Group, which sources phishing data from several places, including the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), OpenPhish, PhishTank, and Spamhaus.

Interisle’s newest study examined nearly two million phishing attacks in the last year, and found that phishing sites accounted for more than four percent of all new .top domains between May 2023 and April 2024. Interisle said .top has roughly 2.76 million domains in its stable, and that more than 117,000 of those were phishing sites in the past year.

ICANN said its review was based on information collected and studied about .top domains over the past few weeks. But the fact that high volumes of phishing sites are being registered through Jiangsu Bangning Science & Technology Co Ltd. is hardly a new trend.

For example, more than 10 years ago the same Chinese registrar was the fourth most common source of phishing websites, as tracked by the APWG. Bear in mind that the APWG report excerpted below was published more than a year before Jiangsu Bangning received ICANN approval to introduce and administer the new .top registry.

A fascinating new wrinkle in the phishing landscape is the growth in scam pages hosted via the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), a decentralized data storage and delivery network that is based on peer-to-peer networking. According to Interisle, the use of IPFS to host and launch phishing attacks — which can make phishing sites more difficult to take down — increased a staggering 1,300 percent, to roughly 19,000 phishing sites reported in the last year.

Last year’s report from Interisle found that domain names ending in “.us” — the top-level domain for the United States — were among the most prevalent in phishing scams. While .us domains are not even on the Top 20 list of this year’s study, “.com” maintained its perennial #1 spot as the largest source of phishing domains overall.

A year ago, the phishiest domain registrar by far was Freenom, a now-defunct registrar that handed out free domains in several country-code TLDs, including .tk, .ml, .ga and .cf. Freenom went out of business after being sued by Meta, which alleged Freenom ignored abuse complaints while monetizing traffic to abusive domains.

Following Freenom’s demise, phishers quickly migrated to other new low-cost TLDs and to services that allow anonymous, free domain registrations — particularly subdomain services. For example, Interisle found phishing attacks involving websites created on Google’s blogspot.com skyrocketed last year more than 230 percent. Other subdomain services that saw a substantial growth in domains registered by phishers include weebly.com, github.io, wix.com, and ChangeIP, the report notes.

Interisle Consulting partner Dave Piscitello said ICANN could easily send similar warning letters to at least a half-dozen other top-level domain registries, noting that spammers and phishers tend to cycle through the same TLDs periodically — including .xyz, .info, .support and .lol, all of which saw considerably more business from phishers after Freenom’s implosion.

Piscitello said domain registrars and registries could significantly reduce the number of phishing sites registered through their services just by flagging customers who try to register huge volumes of domains at once. Their study found that at least 27% of the domains used for phishing were registered in bulk — i.e. the same registrant paid for hundreds or thousands of domains in quick succession.

The report includes a case study in which a phisher this year registered 17,562 domains over the course of an eight-hour period — roughly 38 domains per minute — using .lol domains that were all composed of random letters.

ICANN tries to resolve contract disputes privately with the registry and registrar community, and experts say the nonprofit organization usually only publishes enforcement letters when the recipient is ignoring its private notices. Indeed, ICANN’s letter notes Jiangsu Bangning didn’t even open its emailed notifications. It also cited the registry for falling behind in its ICANN membership fees.

With that in mind, a review of ICANN’s public enforcement activity suggests two trends: One is that there have been far fewer public compliance and enforcement actions in recent years — even as the number of new TLDs has expanded dramatically.

The second is that in a majority of cases, the failure of a registry or registrar to pay its annual ICANN membership fees was cited as a reason for a warning letter. A review of nearly two dozen enforcement letters ICANN has sent to domain registrars since 2022 shows that failure to pay dues was cited as a reason (or the reason) for the violation at least 75 percent of the time.

Piscitello, a former vice president of security at ICANN, said nearly all breach notices sent out while he was at ICANN were because the registrar owed money.

“I think the rest is just lipstick to suggest that ICANN’s on top of DNS Abuse,” Piscitello said.

KrebsOnSecurity has sought comment from ICANN and will update this story if they respond.

ICANN said most of its investigations are resolved and closed through the initial informal resolution stage, and that hundreds of enforcement cases are initiated during this stage with the contracted parties who are required to demonstrate compliance, become compliant, and/or present and implement remediation plans to prevent the recurrence of those enforcement issues.

“It is important to take into account that, prior to issuing any notice of breach to a registrar or registry operator, ICANN Compliance conducts an overall contractual compliance ‘health check’ of the relevant contracted party,” ICANN said in a written response to questions. “During this check, ICANN Compliance proactively reviews the contracted party’s compliance with obligations across the agreements and policies. Any additional contractual violation found during these checks is added to the Notice of Breach. It is not uncommon for parties who failed to comply with contractual obligations (whether they are related to DNS Abuse, RDDS, or others) to also be in arrears with ICANN fees.”

Update, 11:49 p.m. ET: Added statement from ICANN. Clarified Piscitello’s former role at ICANN.

“Customer complaint” email scam preys on your fear of getting into trouble at work

Stop. Think. Connect. Don't let the crooks trick you into acting in haste.

How to Stay Safe as Online Coronavirus Scams Spread

Few national emergencies have the ability to strike panic into the populace quite like a virus pandemic. It’s fortunately something most of us have never had to experience, until now. At the time of writing, the number of global confirmed cases of Coronavirus infection, or COVID-19, has reached nearly 174,000 worldwide. Although the official US total currently remains a fraction of that (around 4,000), problems with testing mean many cases are likely to be going unreported here.

This is a difficult time for many Americans, as it is for citizens all over the world. But unfortunately it’s extraordinary global events like this that cyber-criminals look for in order to make their schemes more successful. True to form, they’re using mass awareness of the outbreak and a popular desire for more information on the virus, to trick users into giving away personal information and log-ins, or to unwittingly install malware on their devices.

As organizations enforce remote working to reduce the impact of the virus, many of you will be logging-on from home or your mobile computing devices, which may have fewer built-in protections from such threats. This makes it more important than ever to know how the bad guys are trying to cash in on COVID-19 and what you can do to stay safe.

Here’s a quick guide to the key online threats and security tips:

Phishing for trouble

Decades before COVID-19 burst onto the scene, a different kind of pandemic was spreading across the globe. Phishing messages have been one of the most popular tools in the hackers’ arsenal for years. In fact, Trend Micro blocked nearly 48 billion email-borne threats in 2019, 91% of the total we detected. Phishing is designed to trick the user into handing over their log-ins or personal and financial details, or persuading them to unwittingly download malware. Cyber-criminals typically achieve this by spoofing an email to make it appear as if sent from a legitimate and trustworthy source.

Once a user has been hooked, they are enticed into clicking on a malicious link or opening a malware-laden attachment. This could be anything from a banking trojan designed to steal online banking log-ins, to a piece of ransomware which will lock the user out of their PC until they pay a fee. It could even be cryptojacking malware which sits on the infected machine, quietly mining for Bitcoin while running up large energy bills and slowing down your PC.

The bad news is that phishing messages — whether sent by email, social media, text or messaging app — are getting harder to spot. Many now feature perfect English, and official logos and sender domains. They also often use current newsworthy events to trick the user into clicking. And they don’t get more high-profile than the COVID-19 pandemic.

Depending on how well protected your computing devices are, you may be more likely to receive one of these scam messages than be exposed to the virus itself. So, it pays to know what’s out there.

Watch out for these scams

The phishing landscape is evolving all the time. But here is a selection of some of the most common scams doing the rounds at the moment:

‘Official’ updates

Many of these emails purport to come from official organizations such as the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), or the World Health Organization (WHO). They claim to contain key updates on the spread of the virus and must-read recommendations on how to avoid infection. Booby-trapped links and attachments carry malware and/or could redirect users to phishing sites.

Coronavirus map

Sometimes legitimate tools can be hijacked to spread malware. Researchers have spotted a version of the interactive Coronavirus dashboard created by Johns Hopkins University which was altered to contain information-stealing malware known as AZORult. If emails arrive with links to such sites, users should exercise extreme caution.

Corporate updates

Many big brands are proactively contacting their customer base to reassure them of the steps they are taking to keep staff and customers safe from the virus. But here too, the hackers are jumping in with spoof messages of their own purporting to come from the companies you may do business with. FedEx is one such global brand that has been spoofed in this way.

Donations

Another trick is to send phishing emails calling for donations to help fund research into the virus. One, claiming to come from the “Department of Health” has a subject line, “URGENT: Coronavirus, Can we count on your support today?” A key tactic in phishing emails is to create a sense of urgency like this to rush the reader into making hasty decisions.

Click here for a cure

One scam email claims to come from a medical professional and contains details about a vaccine for COVID-19 which has been “hushed up” by global governments. Of course, clicking through to find the non-existent ‘cure’ will bring the recipient nothing but trouble.

Tax refunds

In the UK, users have received emails spoofed to appear as if sent from the government, and promising a tax refund to help citizens cope with the financial shock of the pandemic. As governments in the US and elsewhere start to take more interventionist measures to prop up their economies, we can expect more of these types of phishing email.

How to stay safe

The good news is that there’s plenty you can do to protect you and your family from phishing emails like these. A blend of the following technical and human fixes will go a long way to minimizing the threat:

Be cautious of any unsolicited emails/social media messages etc, even if they appear to come from a reputable organization or a known contact. Don’t click through on any links/buttons in unsolicited emails, or download attachments. If an email asks you for personal data, check directly with the sender rather than clicking through and entering those details. Invest in cybersecurity tools from a trusted vendor like Trend Micro, to spot and block scam emails and block malicious downloads and websites. Disable macros in Office files – these are often used by hackers to run malware.

How Trend Micro can help

Fortunately, Trend Micro Security can also help. Among its anti-phishing features are the following:

Antispam for Outlook: includes checks on email sender reputation, employs web threat protection to block malicious URLs in messages, and scans for threats in files attached to email messages.

Fraud Buster: uses leading-edge AI technology to detect fake emails in Gmail and Outlook webmail that don’t contain malicious URLs or attachments, but still pose a risk to the user.

To find out more about how Trend Micro can help keep your family safe from online threats and phishing, go to our Trend Micro Security homepage, or watch our video series: How to Prevent Phishing, Part 1 and Part 2.

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Tax Scams – Everything you need to know to keep your money and data safe

Tax season has always been a pretty nerve-wracking time for hard-working Americans. But over the years, technology advances have arrived to gradually make the process a bit easier. The bad news is that they can also introduce new cyber risks and even more stress.

There are two things that cybercriminals are always on the hunt for: people’s identity data from their accounts, and their money. And during the tax-filing season both can be unwittingly exposed. Over the years, cybercriminals have adapted multiple tools and techniques to part taxpayers with their personal information and funds.

Let’s take look at some of the main threats out there and what you can do to stay safe.

What do they want?

Cybercrime is a highly efficient money-making business. Some reports suggest this underground economy generates as much as $1.5 trillion each year. (See Into the Web of Profit, April 2018, McGuire, Bromium.) And tax-related scams are an increasingly popular way for the bad guys to drive-up profits. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) claims that “thousands of people have lost millions of dollars and their personal information” to such attacks.

The bottom line is that they’re after one of two things: to trick you into wiring funds to them, and/or to get hold of your personally identifiable information (PII), including bank account and Social Security Numbers (SSNs). This personal data can subsequently be used to defraud you or the IRS, or may be deployed in follow-on identity fraud schemes to capture illicit funds from you.

There are various ways cyber-criminals can achieve these goals. The most common is by using social engineering tactics to trick taxpayers into sending money or personal information. But they might also use malware, either delivered to you personally or targeted at your tax preparer. This means you not only have to look after your own cybersecurity but also demand that the third-party businesses you work with store and transmit your sensitive information securely.

Look out for these scams

Here’s a round-up of the most popular tactics used by tax scammers today:

Impersonation: The fraudster gets in touch pretending to be an IRS representative. This could be via email, phone, social media or even SMS. They usually claim you owe the IRS money in unpaid taxes or fines and demand a wire transfer, or funds from a prepaid debit card. Sometimes they may ask for personal and financial details—for example, by claiming you’re entitled to a large tax refund and they just need you to supply your bank account info.

These interactions are usually pushy. The scammer knows the best way of making you pay up is by creating a sense of urgency and, sometimes, shaming the individual into believing they’ve been withholding tax payments. Phishing emails may look highly convincing, right down to the logo and sender domain, while phone callers will use fake names and badge numbers. Sometimes the scammers use personal data they may have stolen previously or bought on the Dark Web to make their communications seem more convincing.

In some impersonation scams, the fraudsters may even pretend to work for charities and ask for personal details to help disaster victims with tax refund claims.

Spoofing, phishing, and malware: In some cases, a text, email or social media message spoofed to appear as if sent from the IRS or your tax preparer actually contains malware. The scammers use the same tactics as above but trick the recipient into clicking on a malicious link or opening an attachment laden with malware. The covert download that follows could result in: theft of your personal information; your computer being completely hijacked by hackers via remote control software; or a ransomware download that locks your computer until you pay a fee.

Fake tax returns: Another trick the scammers employ is to use stolen SSNs and other personal information to file tax returns on your behalf. They can then try to claim a large payment in tax refunds from the IRS. The PII they use to file in your name may have been taken from a third-party source without your knowledge, and the first you might hear of it is when you go to file a legitimate tax return. It can take months to resolve the problem.

Attacks targeting tax preparers: Over half of Americans use third-party tax preparation companies to help them with their returns. However, this offers another opportunity for scammers to get hold of your sensitive information. In one recently discovered campaign, malware deployed on tax preparers’ websites was designed to download to the visitor’s computer as soon as they loaded the page. The IRS warns that businesses large and small are potentially at risk, as scammers are keen to get hold of tax information which enables them to file highly convincing fake returns in your name.

What to do

The good news is that by taking a few simple steps you can insulate yourself from the worst of these scams. Remember: the IRS does not contact taxpayers by email, text messages or social media to request personal/financial information— so if you receive communications that do, they are definitely a scam. It’s also important to remember that scams happen all year round, not just in the run-up to the tax filing deadline. That means, unfortunately, that you need to be on your guard all the time.

Here are a few other recommendations:

Install anti-malware from a reputable provider to block phishing emails and websites and prevent malware downloads. Be wary of any unsolicited messages purporting to come from your tax preparer or the IRS. Always contact them directly to check whether it’s a genuine communication or not. Don’t click on any links in unsolicited emails, or download attachments. Obtain an Identity Protection PIN from the IRS before filing your taxes. This will prevent fake returns being filed in your name. Alert phishing@irs.gov about any unsolicited emails from IRS scammers. Protect your log-ins with tax preparation companies. Switch on multi-factor authentication (MFA) if available, and/or use a password manager to make your logins hard to guess or crack.

It also pays to demand that your tax preparer take their own precautions to keep your data secure. They should not be sending sensitive data or documents unencrypted in emails and must take steps on their own to combat phishing emails that target employees, since these can cascade to you during your tax preparation process. Whether hosted in the cloud or running on-premises, the servers that hold your data should also have adequate protection—and you have a right (and a duty to yourself) to ask ahead of time what they’re doing to protect it.

According to the IRS tax preparers should put the following internal controls in place:

Install anti-malware on all web and storage servers and keep their software automatically updated. Encourage the use of unique, strong passwords via a password manager for each account, and deploy multi-factor authentication technology for clients. Encrypt all sensitive files and emails exchanged with strong password protections. Back-up sensitive data regularly to a secure off-site source. Wipe clean/destroy any old hard drives and printers containing sensitive data. Limit access to taxpayer data to staff who need to know.

How Trend Micro can help

Trend Micro offers a range of security tools to help taxpayers keep their personal and financial information safe from fraudsters.

Our flagship consumer solution Trend Micro Security (TMS) provides the following protections:

Protects against phishing links in emails that can take you to fraudulent sites. Its Fraud Buster feature for Gmail and Hotmail extends this to webmail. Blocks malicious website downloads and scans for malware hidden in attachments. Protects against ransomware and theft of sensitive data via Folder Shield. Protects and manages strong, unique passwords with Password Manager, which is bundled with Trend Micro Maximum Security.

To find out more, go to our Trend Micro Security website.

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