WhoisXML API Blog

3 Steps in Using Reverse IP/DNS Checks to Create an Attack Profile

Knowing the enemy, as they say, is winning half the battle. But in the world of cybersecurity, identifying the enemy can be very difficult sometimes. That said, creating an attack profile to know what type of enemy you could be up against is a good starting point. For all you know, a cyber attacker could be halfway around the world or right next door.

For that reason, organizations should enlist all possible resources to help them create an attack profile. Reverse IP/DNS API, which performs reverse IP/DNS checks, is one resource worth looking into. In a nutshell, the program allows cybersecurity experts to get a list of all domains that share the same IP address. As such, it could help unmask connections between indicators of compromise (IoCs), specifically, IP addresses and domain names.

Bulk Email Verification and Validation for 3 Cyber Threat Protection Use Cases

Email validation is one of the most potent measures to ensure that digital marketers’ messages get through to their intended recipients. But amid the rise in cybercrime and fraud, the practice has become more than that. Today, email validation is also a means for infosec professionals to vet senders to make sure that opening their messages won’t lead to a compromise.

Email validation has also turned into a viable option for streaming service providers to prevent fake or fraudulent subscribers from gaining access to the content they’re unauthorized to view. Amid this backdrop, organizations would do well to add bulk email verification to their standard business protocols. Here is why.

Integrating a Newly Registered Domains Database into Enterprise Cybersecurity Strategies

It’s generally agreed that newly registered domains are potential sources of threats. After all, many of these domain registrations are made opportunistically—sometimes even in bulk, following public announcements and global events. While not all of these domains have to be avoided at all costs, they certainly deserve more scrutiny than others that have been established for years.

The good news is that monitoring newly registered domains is doable with the help of the Newly Registered & Just Expired Domains Database.

How a Domain Checker Helps in Digital Forensics and Incident Response

Digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) experts have a unique yet essential role in maintaining the overall cybersecurity of any organization. They are responsible for gathering data about ongoing attacks or attempts, mitigating their possible effects, and implementing post-attack actions. That includes digging deeper to obtain evidence to enhance their cyber defense as well as aiding in law enforcement efforts.

The fact that attacks are getting stealthier and more sophisticated, though, in terms of tools, tactics, and procedures (TTPs) make DFIR experts’ jobs ever more difficult. They must not only resolve issues in as little time as possible but also be there to prevent successful attacks from causing irreparable damage to systems or their companies’ reputations.

Timely detection is, therefore, the answer. Then again, DFIR experts get bombarded by numerous notifications from security tools every day and thus can get easily overwhelmed by false positives. So they need solutions that can help them quickly verify the validity and quality of domains, IP addresses, and email addresses that their users come in contact with. Domain search solutions such as WHOIS Lookup and its API version WHOIS API may just be what they are looking for. Let’s discuss the reasons why.

Domain and IP Intelligence: Tracking the Spike in Coronavirus-Themed Domain Registrations

The first cases of COVID-19 infection came to the fore in December 2019. Five months later, the world is still reeling from the disease. The numbers are overwhelming. According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, more than 4 million people worldwide have gotten infected, over 290,000 of whom have died from the disease at the time of writing. And dismayingly, these numbers are still expected to rise.

In response, governments all over the world have imposed varying degrees of social distancing strategies. People are urged to stay home, schools are closed, mass transportation in many countries is suspended, and countless small businesses have ceased operations. For the majority, one consolation of being in home quarantine is their access to the Internet and, therefore, the world. But even on the Web, people are not safe from the virus.

Using our IP and domain intelligence, we detected an increasing trend toward coronavirus-themed domain bulk registrations—some of which may have to do with the proliferation of coronavirus-themed cybercrimes taking advantage of the pandemic. Let us show you our key findings.

Essential tools for server operators in action

The Internet is a very dangerous place. A server with a public IP address could become the subject of an attack virtually at any time of its operation. Indeed, any service that is vulnerable to any extent is likely to be exploited at some point if left this way; no server operator can deny playing this cat-and-mouse game with hackers. 

Not all hackers meet the stereotypes attributed to them, though. One does not have to be an ingenious IT specialist with very tricky ideas to try and exploit servers. Picking an exploit kit written by someone else, and letting it run on arbitrary IP addresses is essentially free, and it will surely harvest something: sooner or later it will run into a content management system on a website whose owner failed to apply some important security update, or web-based database management console left open to the public. All these could result in an administrator’s access to the server, which may lead to dramatic consequences for the owner. 

It is always instructive, for instance, to frequently take a good look at the access log of your web servers. Let us conduct a bit of an investigation to illustrate what is typically going on.

Make the Most Out of SEO with a Reverse IP Search Tool

Today, it is no longer enough for organizations to advertise their products and services online. Markets are pretty saturated, and so companies need to put extra effort into making sure they come out on top. In particular, businesses need to drive traffic to their websites, much like brick-and-mortar shop owners convince would-be customers to come through their doors.

One of the most effective ways to do that is by making your company’s domain rank with the help of innovative search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. Apart from just stuffing content with the right keywords for search engines to track, SEO has a technical aspect to it as well, and a reverse IP search tool like Reverse IP/DNS Lookup can help enhance it.

We’ll delve into the more technical aspect of SEO in this post, but first, let’s discuss why SEO is vital for any organization that does business online.

Is This Email Address Valid? Here Are 5 Ways to Check and Why It Matters

Based on research data, the global email user base will be increasing by 2-3% every year until it reaches 4.4 billion users in 2023. So, more than ever, email marketers need to be able to answer the following questions: Are all the email addresses in my recipient lists valid? Will my messages be able to reach intended recipients or not? Also, do any of my collected addresses have ties to malicious activity?

Each day, users send an average of 54 billion legitimate emails across the globe. Interestingly, a whole lot more malicious spam messages get sent, averaging 302.99 billion a day. When threats are everywhere, the mere act of opening spam could lead to becoming the next victim of phishing or an even more sinister attack.

On the other side of the fence, meanwhile, marketers are worried that their messages may not reach the right people. A lot of organizations suffer from high bounce and low open rates, with adverse effects on their marketing efforts. Sadly, no matter how great your campaigns are, if your emails do not reach loyal customers or leads of interest, your efforts are bound to go down the drain.

To alleviate these and other issues, organizations need a means to be able to check the validity of email addresses they come in contact with. So, email verification with products such as Email Verification Lookup or its counterparts Email Verification API or Email Verification Bulk API can be integral to any company’s successful and efficient operations. To illustrate how these tools work exactly, we listed down five supported email checks in this post.