Domain Spoof Testing

Domain spoof testing is a cybersecurity practice that evaluates an organization's vulnerability to domain spoofing attacks. It involves simulating an attack to see if an attacker can successfully impersonate a company's domain. The primary purpose of this test is to identify weaknesses in an organization's email and web security defenses before a real attacker can exploit them.

Types of Domain Spoofing and Associated Testing

Domain spoofing can take several forms, and testing methods vary depending on the type of attack being simulated.

• Email Spoofing: This is the most common form of domain spoofing. Attackers forge the "From" address in an email header to make it appear as if it came from a legitimate source, such as an employee, a CEO, or a trusted company.

  • Testing: This is typically done by sending test emails from an external server that pretends to be from your domain. A successful test would be an email that bypasses your security filters and lands in an employee's inbox. The testing process also involves checking the configuration of email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. These protocols are designed to prevent email spoofing by verifying the sender's identity.

• Website Spoofing (or Typosquatting): This involves an attacker registering a domain name that is very similar to a legitimate one, often by using a common typo (e.g., gooogle.com instead of google.com). They then create a fake website that looks identical to the real one to trick users into entering sensitive information.

  • Testing: This form of testing often involves proactively searching for and monitoring newly registered domains that are visually similar to the organization's. This includes checking for common misspellings or the use of homoglyphs, which are characters from different languages or character sets that look identical to one another (e.g., the Cyrillic 'а' and the Latin 'a').

• DNS Spoofing (or DNS Cache Poisoning): This is a more sophisticated attack where an attacker corrupts a DNS server's cache. This redirects users who are trying to access a legitimate website to a malicious one without them even knowing.

  • Testing: This type of testing involves running checks to ensure that DNS records are not vulnerable to manipulation and that the DNS server is configured to validate all incoming data.

Importance of Domain Spoof Testing

Domain spoof testing is a crucial part of a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy. Here’s why it's so important:

• Protects Against Phishing and Financial Loss: By identifying and closing vulnerabilities to spoofing, organizations can significantly reduce the risk of successful phishing attacks that can lead to data breaches and financial fraud.

• Preserves Brand Reputation: A successful spoofing attack can damage a company's reputation and lead to a loss of customer trust. Proactive testing helps prevent this by ensuring that your domain cannot be used to scam customers or partners.

• Enhances Security Awareness: The results of a domain spoof test can be used to demonstrate to employees how easily they can be tricked by a fake email or website, underscoring the importance of cybersecurity awareness training.

• Compliance: Many data protection regulations require organizations to have robust security measures in place to protect against impersonation and fraud. Regular testing helps ensure that these requirements are met.

ThreatNG helps with domain spoof testing by providing a comprehensive, external-facing view of an organization's digital assets and vulnerabilities. It identifies potential spoofing threats by simulating an attacker's perspective, without needing internal access or connectors.

External Discovery and Assessment

ThreatNG's External Discovery capabilities find all internet-accessible assets, which is critical for identifying unauthorized or look-alike domains that could be used for spoofing. The External Assessment feature then evaluates the susceptibility of these assets to various attacks, including those related to domain spoofing.

• BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: This assessment, derived from ThreatNG's Domain Intelligence, examines DNS capabilities and email intelligence to see if the organization is vulnerable to business email compromise (BEC) and phishing. For instance, it can predict email formats and assess the presence of email security protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, which are designed to prevent email spoofing.

• Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: This score is based on an analysis of externally accessible parts of a web application to identify potential entry points for attackers who might try to redirect users to a spoofed site.

• Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: ThreatNG evaluates this by analyzing a website's subdomains, DNS records, and SSL certificate statuses. This helps identify vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to take control of a subdomain and host a spoofed page.

• Brand Damage Susceptibility: This assessment considers domain intelligence, including domain name permutations, to gauge the risk of a spoofing attack damaging the brand's reputation.

For example, ThreatNG could discover a newly registered domain that is a common misspelling of the company's official domain (e.g., microsft.com instead of microsoft.com) and find that it is vulnerable to a web application hijack.

Investigation Modules

ThreatNG's Investigation Modules are crucial for detailed analysis during a domain spoofing investigation.

• Domain Intelligence: This module provides a detailed view of domain-related assets.

  • DNS Intelligence: This part of the module helps in identifying the origin of a spoofed website. The Domain Name Permutations feature is particularly effective for detecting typosquatting or look-alike domains. It identifies taken and available domain manipulations, such as substitutions, additions, and homoglyphs, across various TLDs, including generic, country code, and new gTLDs. A specific example is mycompany-login.com, which could be a spoofed login portal for a legitimate company.

  • Email Intelligence: This feature checks for email security presence, such as DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records, which are vital for preventing email spoofing.

• Cloud and SaaS Exposure: This module can find sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services and impersonations. This could reveal a spoofed login page hosted on an unrecognized cloud service.

Intelligence Repositories

ThreatNG's continuously updated Intelligence Repositories (branded as DarCache) provide critical context for domain spoof testing.

• Dark Web (DarCache Dark Web) and Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): These repositories track compromised credentials, which could be used to facilitate a domain spoofing attack by an attacker who has already gained initial access.

• Vulnerabilities (DarCache Vulnerability): This repository provides context on the real-world exploitability of known vulnerabilities. It includes data from NVD, EPSS, and KEV, and links to verified Proof-of-Concept (PoC) exploits on platforms like GitHub. This helps a security team understand how a vulnerability could be used to manipulate a legitimate domain to create a spoofed site or to find and test for a new domain that has similar vulnerabilities.

For instance, if ThreatNG's intelligence repositories reveal a new exploit for a web server technology used by a company, and the investigation modules subsequently identify a newly registered domain permutation utilizing that same technology, the security team would prioritize investigating that domain.

Reporting and Continuous Monitoring

ThreatNG provides various reports, including Executive, Technical, and Prioritized reports, which can detail the findings of domain spoof tests. The reports categorize risks as high, medium, low, or informational and offer reasoning, recommendations, and reference links to help organizations take action. The Continuous Monitoring capability ensures that the external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings are continuously tracked. This ongoing monitoring is essential for detecting new spoofed websites or changes in existing ones that may emerge after an initial test.

Complementary Solutions

While ThreatNG provides a comprehensive view of external threats, it can be complemented by other security solutions to create a more robust defense against domain spoofing.

• Email Security Gateways: ThreatNG's Email Intelligence can identify if a domain's DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records are correctly configured. This information can be fed into a solution like Microsoft Defender for Office 365, which can use its "spoof intelligence insight" to manage legitimate spoofed senders and block others, reducing the risk of phishing emails reaching employees.

• Phishing Simulation Tools: ThreatNG's ability to find typosquatted domains and vulnerable subdomains can provide real-world examples for a company to use in phishing simulation tests. This helps train employees to recognize and report spoofing attempts.

• DNS Protection Services: ThreatNG's DNS Intelligence can identify potential DNS spoofing vulnerabilities. This information can be used to inform and enhance a DNS protection service that can add a layer of security by digitally signing DNS data to ensure its authenticity, preventing DNS tampering.