WhoisXML API Blog

WHOIS running the Internet from May 25, 2018 onwards?

The virtual space of the Internet is a relevant scene of our everyday life. And the elements of reality and their virtual counterparts – friends with social media contacts, shops and web shops, companies and websites, etc. – are becoming more and more confusable. Albeit this must have been in principle already expected by the founding fathers and mothers of the Internet, in many respects the Internet has been developing not quite as they had envisaged.

For instance, it had been clear from the very beginning that there should be a link between Internet domains and the real-life people and entities responsible for them. In the beginning, the motivation was mainly technical, of course: if something went wrong on the network, the operators needed to know whom to contact. This demand gave birth to the WHOIS protocol, a standard way to learn who is responsible for a high-level Internet domain.

DRS Video Tutorial #1 — A Brief Overview

Check out this explanatory video looking at a series of examples and DRS queries for security and other purposes.

What is email verification or validation and how does it work?

The verification or validation of email addresses is a fundamental need in many applications, ranging from protection against phishing and various other email-based threats through the validation of data filled in into an online form to the purification of marketing or other email lists from invalid addresses to maintain sender reputation and avoid bouncing or other unnecessary email traffic. These have been illustrated in detail in several other blogs. 

DNS Hijacking Prevention: How to Detect Suspicious Subdomains with Passive DNS

Earlier this year, we saw several cyberattacks target European and Middle Eastern governments and other organizations. Their modus operandi? DNS hijacking. The attackers intercepted Internet traffic going to the victimized websites, likely enabling them to obtain unauthorized access to the intended targets’ networks.

That’s just one of the many occasions when organizations fell prey to DNS hijacking attacks. More can succumb to the threat if we’re to consider that 34% more companies in 2019 alone suffered from a DNS attack (not limited to DNS hijacking) compared to 2018, costing each victim an average of almost $1.1 million.

DNS hijacking notably occurs when hackers tamper with the Domain Name System (DNS) to redirect a target website’s visitors to fake login pages designed to capture their passwords and other information they may unknowingly fill in.

But to what extent can DNS hijacking affect organizations with a widespread online presence?

This post aims to answer this question by looking into eBay’s potential domain attack surface and the numerous subdomains that contain its brand aided by passive DNS and publicly accessible data.

Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Started with NRD 1.0

Domain intelligence gleaned from WhoisXML API’s Newly Registered & Just Expired Domains can help companies in multiple ways, including but not limited to:

• Supporting threat intelligence collection and correlation;
• Looking into domain registration trends and market shares;
• Enhancing brand and trademark protection strategies;
• Gathering data for competitor analysis and anticipating the rivals’ next moves.

We tackle these use cases with illustrations in this in-depth guide, along with details on how to access such a source via flexible pricing plans.

A toolkit for testing domains and their webpages

In the present blog, we demonstrate how to perform a variety of technical and security tests against a domain by using WhoisXML API's Domain Reputation API. It is a RESTFul API that can be used in a broad range of popular programming environments, including e.g., BASH shell scripts, Windows PowerShell, Python, Java, C++, to name a few. It can be seen as a toolkit performing many tests ranging from DNS checks through revealing e-mail and web server configuration shortcomings to safe web browsing issues such as SSL problems or the presence of the domain in blacklists. The API has recently been updated to provide numeric codes for various tests and warnings; let us see what they can be good for.

HOW Does IPv6 Compare with IPv4 Geolocation?

IP geolocation databases can provide the physical location of a computer or device connected to the Internet. This data is useful for targeted advertising and implementing location-specific features or obtaining usage statistics. Despite becoming the Internet Standard in July 2017, IPv6 remains less commonly used and documented than IPv4 worldwide. Therefore, the available IP geolocation lookup data tend to be more accurate for IPv4 than for IPv6.

Geo Targeting: How Is It Helping Businesses Improve The Bottom Line?

Maximizing the profit is the ultimate goal of every business—and there are several ways to achieve that. For instance, you can reduce your expenses and product costs or increase your product or service prices. But generally, these strategies should be accompanied by techniques that seek to increase sales and find new customers too.

There are existing technologies in the digital world that can help you meet your business goals, and IP geolocation is one of them. In a nutshell, geolocation is the process of identifying the physical location of online users.

Whether intentional or not, businesses with an online presence—that is to say, almost all businesses have become global. Right now, people from any part of the world could be browsing your website! You can confirm that by looking at your traffic analytics.

The question is, how can you convert this traffic into sales to improve your bottom line? Geo targeting or geotargeting (regardless how you spell it) might be the key to that.