WhoisXML API Blog

Take Control of Nameserver Records with a Reverse Nameserver Lookup API

One reason why cyber risks are far more serious today than in the past is the widespread and cheap access to services from registrars and hosting providers. From amateur bloggers to small business owners, anyone can register a domain and create a website for whatever purpose.

The problem is that not everyone has the right skills to properly configure servers — e.g., define hosts or set up address (A) or pointer (PTR) records, among other things.

Website owners are lucky if issues from nameserver misconfigurations only result in reduced website availability. There are other consequences, though, such as higher spamming scores and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) authentication errors or vulnerabilities that could potentially lead to security compromises.

Enhancing Packet Filtering via a Reverse IP/Domain Check

Spoofing is a cyber attack method where the adversary impersonates a legitimate user to gain access to a network or device. Once inside the target network, the attacker can then perform large-scale attacks, steal sensitive information, and inject systems connected to the network with malware.

Although there are several types of spoofing, the most common being IP spoofing. This method allows attackers to launch denial-of-service (DoS) and man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks, two of today’s most prevalent cyber attack types. At present, we see 30,000 DoS attacks per day, whereas MitM attacks account for 35% of exploitations that target inadvertent system or software weaknesses.

How to Block Inappropriate Websites in a Workplace

Accessing explicit or illegal content from the office network can be a serious liability for your company. Blocking inappropriate websites at a workplace protects your network from malware, legal issues, and low employee productivity.

Monitoring workplace Internet activity manually could be a time-consuming task. Fortunately, the blocking of inappropriate websites can be automated. We’ll show you how to block inappropriate websites by using five tricks with varying degrees of reliability.

How to Trace an IP Address From an Email Explained

Ever felt the need to see what’s happening with the recipient after you sent an email? You may have. In this post, we’ll look at how email tracing is done for different email service providers as well as explore the reasons why you might find it useful.

How Email Tracing Works, in a Nutshell

Email tracing refers to the process of finding out what actions a recipient performed after getting an email such as when he or she opened or read it. Email tracing also lets senders know if intended recipients clicked on embedded links or downloaded attachments.

Warding Off Threats Spawned by the Abuse of Newly Registered Domains

When the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) agreed to the addition of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) in 2012 through the New gTLD Program, the number of spam emails coming from these domains started to rise significantly.

In fact, studies revealed that a new malicious site is hosted on a domain with a new gTLD extension every 15-20 seconds. What’s more, seven out of 10 newly registered domains are classified as either suspicious or downright malicious and thus should not be accessed.

Threat Prediction Based on Domain Registration History

There is a tendency to look at the past to anticipate what the future may hold. The historical performance of financial investment products, for example, is always showcased, although with a disclaimer that they don't guarantee any future results. Athletes watch past performance of their would-be opponents, so they know what strategies to formulate for the future encounters.

This train of thought is also applicable, at least to some extent, to the field of cybersecurity. Knowing more about past attacks can help security teams strategize and improve their current and future cybersecurity posture.

Criminal Profiling and Evidence Gathering with Website and Domain Name Monitoring Tools

Cybercrime is a major threat to all sectors of the community, including government institutions, businesses, and non-profit organizations. It continuously hurts the global economy by sucking up billions of dollars each year, prompting the head of the U.K.’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) to declare that fighting cybercrime should be accorded the same priority as fighting terrorism.

But is it really possible to “fight” cybercrime? Some security experts have long ceded and started focusing on cyber-resilience (the ability to bounce back after a cyber attack) instead of cybersecurity (the prevention of a cyber attack). Aside from business continuity, part of cyber-resiliency should be the legal ramifications that the victim must set in motion against the attacker. Herein lies a big challenge — discovering who the cybercriminals are.

Now, You Can Get More Information from Our Updated IP Netblocks WHOIS Database

More comprehensive IP intelligence means more value to our clients. That’s why we are proud to announce an important update on our IP Netblocks WHOIS Database, which now has significantly higher proportions of non-empty or non-redacted fields across IP netblocks.

Empty and redacted fields can create significant challenges for IP netblocks users. Cybersecurity professionals, for example, may not be able to check if certain IP addresses in a given netblock belong to the same registrant or someone else. When investigating an attack involving several individuals, it may also be harder, for example, to pinpoint if several compromised addresses are all from one IP netblock and are, therefore, linked.