A new tool has been announced by the safety consciousness training and phishing simulation platform supplier KnowBe4 that can assist firms to identify ‘evil twin domains’ – lookalike deceived domains that are usually used by cybercriminals for phishing and spreading malware.
An evil twin domain is very similar to a real website that is used by a firm. It might contain an additional letter such as faceboook.com, have lost letters such as welsfargo.com, contain altered letters such as faecbook.com to catch out uncaring typists, or use substitute TLDs such as a.co.uk or .ca in place of a .com.
Evil twin domains are exceptionally common. A study carried out by Farsight Security between Oct. 17, 2017 and Jan. 10, 2018 found 116,000 domains that deceived well-known products. The study disclosed that for each real domain there were 20 duplicate domains and 90% of those domains tried to deceive visitors into thinking they were the actual domain used by the firm that was being deceived.
These duplicate domains can be used to get login identifications to the sites they imitate. Mail servers are set up using the domains for transmitting spam and phishing electronic mails to clients and workers, or for a range of other evil purposes. Checking for these bogus domains is therefore in the interest of all firms, from SMBs to big enterprises.
The tool – named Domain Doppelgänger – lets businesses to easily check for domains that might be deceiving their brand, letting them take action to take down the domains and warn clients and workers of the danger.
The free web-based tool will search for duplicate domains and will send back a detailed PDF report describing the number of private domains found, whether the domains have an active mail server, whether there is an active web server and the risk level linked with those domains.
“In place of using several methods to search for at-risk domains, IT experts can use KnowBe4’sDomain Doppelgänger tool as a one-stop shop to find, aggregate, examine and evaluate these domains,” said Stu Sjouwerman, CEO, KnowBe4. “By learning the duplicate domains that might impact your product, you can better safeguard your company from cybercrime.”