Clone Websites
In cybersecurity, clone websites are fraudulent replicas of legitimate sites created with malicious intent. These sites closely imitate the original in design and content to deceive users.
Here's a breakdown of clone websites:
Deceptive Imitation: Clone websites mimic the visual components of legitimate sites, including layout, branding, and logos, to deceive users into thinking they are engaging with the authentic website.
Malicious Purpose: The primary goal of clone websites is to steal sensitive information, like login credentials, financial details, or personal data.
Phishing Attacks: Clone websites are commonly used in phishing attacks, where users are directed to the fake site through deceptive emails or links.
Variations in Complexity: The sophistication of clone websites can vary; some are basic copies, while others involve more complex scripting and functionality to enhance the deception.
Here’s how ThreatNG can assist in tackling the issue of clone websites:
ThreatNG's external discovery is crucial as it allows the platform to map an organization's online presence without requiring internal connections. This capability helps identify all the web assets that could be targets for cloning.
ThreatNG's external assessment capabilities are valuable in evaluating the risks associated with clone websites:
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: ThreatNG analyzes the externally accessible parts of web applications to identify potential entry points for attackers. This is important because attackers might hijack parts of a legitimate web application to redirect users to a clone website.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: ThreatNG assesses a website's susceptibility to subdomain takeovers by analyzing subdomains, DNS records, and SSL certificate statuses. Attackers often use compromised subdomains to host clone websites, making this assessment essential.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: ThreatNG derives this from a combination of factors, including Sentiment and Financials Findings, Domain Intelligence, and Dark Web Presence (Compromised Credentials). This assessment is highly relevant since clone websites are frequently employed in phishing and Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks. For instance, ThreatNG's Domain Intelligence capabilities, such as Domain Name Permutations, can reveal if attackers have registered slightly altered domain names to deceive users.
Brand Damage Susceptibility: ThreatNG uses attack surface intelligence, digital risk intelligence, ESG Violations, Sentiment and Financials, and Domain Intelligence (including Domain Name Permutations and Web3 Domains). Clone websites can severely damage an organization's brand reputation, and ThreatNG's assessment helps understand and mitigate this risk.
Cyber Risk Exposure: ThreatNG considers parameters from its Domain Intelligence module, like certificates, subdomain headers, vulnerabilities, and sensitive ports, to determine cyber risk exposure. This helps identify potential weaknesses attackers could exploit to create convincing clone websites.
3. Reporting
ThreatNG provides various reports, including security ratings and ransomware susceptibility reports. These reports can highlight the risks associated with clone websites.
ThreatNG's continuous monitoring of the external attack surface and digital risk is vital for the timely detection of clone websites or related malicious activity.
ThreatNG's Investigation Modules provide detailed analysis capabilities:
Domain Record Analysis: ThreatNG analyzes domain records, including IP and vendor/technology identification. This can help trace the origin and infrastructure of a cloned website.
Domain Name Permutations: ThreatNG identifies taken and available domain name permutations. This is valuable for detecting typosquatting domains often used in clone website attacks. For example, if a company's domain is "example.com," ThreatNG can find out if "examp1e.com" or "example.net" are registered.
Web3 Domains: ThreatNG identifies taken and available Web3 domains. As Web3 use grows, this capability becomes essential to address clone websites in decentralized environments.
Email Intelligence: ThreatNG analyzes email security presence (DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records), predicts email formats, and harvests emails. This helps understand email spoofing, a common tactic to direct users to clone websites.
WHOIS Intelligence: ThreatNG provides WHOIS analysis and identifies other domains owned. This can uncover connections between clone websites and other potentially malicious domains.
Subdomain Intelligence: ThreatNG analyzes subdomains, HTTP responses, headers, server headers, cloud hosting, content identification (including admin pages and APIs), ports, known vulnerabilities, and web application firewall discovery. This detailed analysis can reveal vulnerabilities attackers might exploit to host clone pages.
IP Intelligence: ThreatNG provides information on IPs, shared IPs, ASNs, country locations, and private IPs. This is useful for tracking down the servers hosting clone websites.
Certificate Intelligence: ThreatNG analyzes TLS certificates, including their status and issuers. This can help identify suspicious certificates used by clone sites.
Social Media: ThreatNG analyzes social media posts. This can help in detecting social media campaigns that promote clone websites.
Sensitive Code Exposure: ThreatNG discovers public code repositories and uncovers exposed credentials, secrets, and configuration files. Attackers might use this information to create more convincing clone websites or target their attacks.
Mobile Application Discovery: ThreatNG discovers mobile apps in marketplaces and analyzes their contents. This is relevant because clone attacks can also involve fake mobile apps that direct users to clone websites or steal credentials directly.
Search Engine Exploitation: ThreatNG helps investigate an organization’s susceptibility to exposing information via search engines. Attackers might use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to make their clone sites appear higher in search results.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: ThreatNG identifies sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services and SaaS implementations, which helps identify potential cloud-based clone website attacks.
Online Sharing Exposure: ThreatNG identifies an organization's presence within online code-sharing platforms. Attackers might find and leverage information on these platforms.
Sentiment and Financials: ThreatNG analyzes lawsuits, layoff chatter, SEC filings, and ESG violations. This can provide context for potential clone website attacks, as attackers might exploit negative news or events.
Archived Web Pages: ThreatNG analyzes archived web pages. This can help understand website changes and identify potential spoofing tactics for creating clone sites.
Dark Web Presence: ThreatNG monitors the dark web for organizational mentions, ransomware events, and compromised credentials. Compromised credentials can facilitate clone website attacks.
Technology Stack: ThreatNG identifies the technologies used by the organization. Attackers might use this information to craft more convincing clone sites.
ThreatNG maintains intelligence repositories for various data, including dark web information, compromised credentials, ransomware events, and domain-related data. These repositories provide context for investigating and understanding clone website threats.
7. Working with Complementary Solutions
While the document doesn't detail specific integrations, ThreatNG's data and analysis capabilities can enhance other security tools:
SIEM (Security Information and Event Management): ThreatNG's findings can be integrated into a SIEM to correlate external attack surface data with internal security events, providing a more complete security picture.
SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation and Response): ThreatNG can trigger automated responses in SOAR platforms to take down clone websites or block malicious IPs.
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): ThreatNG's intelligence on domain permutations, Web3 domains, and dark web activity can enrich TIPs, improving threat detection.
Email Security Solutions: Integrating ThreatNG's Email Intelligence can enhance the detection of phishing emails that direct users to clone websites.
Examples of ThreatNG Helping:
ThreatNG's Domain Name Permutations capability detects a newly registered domain that is a very close variation of a company's e-commerce site. An alert is triggered, and the security team discovers a clone site designed to steal customer payment information.
ThreatNG's Subdomain Intelligence has identified a newly created subdomain on a suspicious IP address that serves content nearly identical to the company's customer support portal. This suggests a potential clone site for phishing user credentials.
ThreatNG's Search Engine Exploitation feature identifies that search engines are indexing the company's employee directory. Attackers could use this information to make their cloned websites more convincing by incorporating real employee names.
Examples of ThreatNG Working with Complementary Solutions:
ThreatNG detects a clone website and sends an alert to a SIEM. The SIEM correlates this with web traffic logs to identify employees who have visited the clone site.
ThreatNG's threat intelligence on malicious domains is shared with a web application firewall (WAF), which is updated to block traffic to these domains.
A SOAR platform uses ThreatNG's API to automate reporting the clone website to hosting providers and search engines to get it taken down.
ThreatNG provides a comprehensive suite of capabilities that assist organizations in identifying, assessing, monitoring, and investigating clone website threats. Its intelligence repositories and investigation modules, especially Domain Intelligence, offer valuable insights and can improve the effectiveness of other security tools.
