WhoisXML API Blog

WHOIS Lookups & Enterprise Cybersecurity Policies: A Secure Way to Search for Domain Names

These days, it’s unwise to assume that all websites are safe to access. For this reason, security teams typically advise employees against clicking on any links embedded in an email, especially from an unknown sender. This recommendation may even extend to suspicious search results that appear in search engines.

What’s more, for most companies, visiting websites that are not related to an employee’s work is a violation of established cybersecurity policies and procedures. Most cybersecurity policies include:

• Standard steps for accessing work data and applications remotely
• Rules for encrypting emails
• Instructions on creating and managing passwords
• Rules on using social media
• Guidelines for accessing nonwork-related websites

While this last policy may sound extreme to some, it has become common practice, especially among companies that want to beef up their cybersecurity posture. Their stance is ‘Prevention is better than cure’. And keeping employees from visiting potentially dangerous websites is always safer and more cost-effective than dealing with a ransomware attack or data breach.

Given this policy, though, how can one search for domain names that might help the business gain more customers? In parallel, how can security operation centers (SOCs) investigate suspicious online activities with domain names possibly involved in an attempt or attack? Thankfully, tools such as WHOIS Lookup enable SOCs and businesses in general to do extensive research without violating the cybersecurity policies mentioned above.

IP2Location vs. WhoisXML API vs. IPify: 3 Best IP Geolocation Services Compared

IP geolocation is an important source of intelligence with benefits in cybersecurity and marketing. Its use cases include cybercrime prevention, fraud detection, website traffic generation, and many others. Thus, it isn’t surprising to find out that a web search for the keyword “ip geolocation” would return millions of results, many of which include the service pages of some of the best IP geolocation / IP-to-location providers.

Yet with many options available, how would you know which one to choose? We did a comprehensive review of three IP geolocation vendors to answer this question.

How to Take a Screenshot of a Website Page without Visiting the URL

Screenshots have become an important means of communication, making them crucial to certain business processes, how-to tutorial creation, web design, and even cybersecurity.

Most tools require you to visit a website to take a screenshot. However, with the proliferation of risky websites that may contain malware or serve as a phishing page or spam host, it is often safer to avoid accessing a website and taking screenshots manually. That said, we’ll discuss how to screenshot a web page here.

Find Out More About an IP Address via WHOIS Lookup and WHOIS API

IP addresses are unique identifiers for devices hooked to the internet. These addresses, which are represented by numerical values, allow computers to communicate over the Transmission Control Protocol via IP (TCP/IP). The protocol routes users looking for Internet-connected hosts or websites to the right destinations using IP addresses as a reference. 

However, notably because of inherent design flaws, attackers can spoof IP addresses with the intention of, for example, misdirecting users to dangerous sites. For this reason, among others, it is critical to routinely scan IP addresses passing your network filters to ensure their integrity and identify any potential links to malicious campaigns or networks. 

As part of this process, it is possible to do an IP lookup via WHOIS Lookup and WHOIS API to extract the ownership details of a given address for further inspection. What’s more, both products permit gathering all sorts of relevant details such as if an IP address hosts a domain and which regional Internet registry (RIR) manages the resource.

ProPrivacy Open Data Project: Mapping Malicious Coronavirus Domains Using WHOIS Data

The COVID-19 pandemic has driven many people to do almost everything within the confines of their homes. Nearly exclusive reliance on digital means to work, study, shop, and communicate amid uncertainty opened many avenues for cybercrime to take place—notably through the use of coronavirus-related domain names.

To demonstrate this trend, ProPrivacy has partnered with WhoisXML API and VirusTotal to investigate the extent to which cybercriminals are weaponizing the Domain Name System (DNS) in an open data project called “COVID-19 Malicious Domain Research Hub.”

Relieving Network Concentration Risks Aided by IP Netblocks Lookup

It is normal for large enterprises, especially multinational corporations (MNCs), to maintain an IP netblock or several IP ranges for their website hosting requirements. This approach allows them to quickly set up sites as the need arises. There might be problems, though, when a company relies on a single service provider. Any operational disruption on the provider’s part means a halt to its business as well.

This post tackles the challenges that relying on a single web host brings and how access to an IP Netblocks WHOIS database may help alleviate them. In case you are not fully familiar with the notion of netblocks, check this post for an introduction to the subject.

Detect Possible Domain Spoofing and Homograph Attacks with Typosquatting Data Feed

Charles Caleb Colton once said that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery. This proverbial expression finds its origins in the 19th century and other historical writings before that. What likely wasn’t foreseen at the time, however, was that certain forms of imitation in the 21st century could give organizations terrible headaches. We are talking about domain spoofing and homograph attacks.

Imitators in our contemporary context can register one or several domain names highly similar to that of an established brand and use these to deceive people and trick them into sharing sensitive information or even transfering funds to fraudulent bank accounts.

Registering copycat domain names of known brands and organizations isn’t the only way to fool victims, though. At the height of coronavirus-themed attacks, the Typosquatting Data Feed proved useful in spotting potentially dangerous footprints containing thousands of domain names with word strings such as “covid” and “coronavirus” combined with “mask,” “vaccine,” “donation,” “lawsuit,” and plenty of others.

In this post, we put the feed’s capabilities to the test to detect spoofed domain names, including Punycode domains, that could be used to abuse employees, customers, and other parties who regularly interact with Lloyds Bank and Apple. We will also show how other sources of intelligence can help learn more about possible impersonators and the infrastructure they use.

How to Conduct a Website Domain Search for Cybersecurity Purposes

WHOIS lookups are a viable way for cybersecurity professionals to analyze domains’ integrity. Though they may seem less exciting than, say, deploying some nifty pen-testing tools, WHOIS lookups remain useful as a first step in catching threat actors. 

In fact, identifiers in WHOIS records can clue investigators in on a domain’s past usage and allow them to pinpoint indicators of compromise (IoCs) residing within their networks. With WHOIS data, they can also identify domain associations and effectively map attacks that happened or could happen on their infrastructure. Read on to learn more about why conducting website domain searches is critical to your digital operations, and how WHOIS API and WHOIS Lookup can facilitate it.