Press Releases & Product Updates

Product and Feature Updates for Q3 2022

In line with WhoisXML API’s commitment to improving its services, we made the following changes and product feature upgrades in Q3 2022:

• DNS database now includes PTR records. A new important update was made to our DNS Database by adding pointer (PTR) records. PTR records are reverse DNS records that map domain names to IP addresses. They are, by definition, the opposite of A or AAAA records that provide the IP addresses associated domains point to. With this additional information, new use cases are enabled for users. For instance, they can now utilize our DNS Database to intensify mail server validation, among other processes.

In addition to this and the overall DNS database coverage increase announced in Q2, we now also extract domains and subdomains from A, AAAA, MX, NS, CNAME, TXT, and SOA records—and pass them back to DNS resolving. 

• GoLang libraries were released for several APIs, including:
  • Reverse IP/DNS API
  • Domains & Subdomains Discovery API
  • Website Contacts API
  • DNS Lookup API
  • Subdomains Lookup API 

These APIs were made more inclusive with the release of GoLang libraries. Aside from Python, developers can now easily use the APIs with tools developed using Go. The APIs can also be integrated into Splunk.

• Pagination has been added to our IP Netblocks API. Users of our IP Netblocks API can now retrieve more than the first 100 records with the release of the pagination feature. With this feature, users can gain greater visibility into IP netblock data with detailed IP range ownership details.

• Raw fields in our Domain Registration Streaming feed can now be omitted. The omitRaw flag has been added to our Domain Registration Streaming feed as an optional parameter. When set to “1,” raw text fields will not be included in the output. This modification makes data transmission simpler and faster, requiring less storage and computing power.

• Introduction of NRD 2.0 Database Ultimate Simple. Users of NRD 2.0 with an Ultimate subscription now have the option to download the Ultimate_Simple version, which is intended to be easier to work with. This version doesn’t have raw text fields, so it’s lighter and doesn’t take up as much disk space, as file sizes have decreased by 83% for CSV files and 35.5% for JSON files.

• Users can now scroll through the whole web page of Screenshot API results. A new input parameter (scrollPosition) has been added to our Screenshot API, making it possible for users to scroll to the top or bottom of a web page and take a screenshot from their preferred position or view. 

Stay tuned for more product and feature improvements in the coming quarters.

Product and Feature Updates for Q2 2022

WhoisXML API made some significant changes and product feature upgrades in Q2 2022 . We are proud to announce the following updates:

• The coverage of our DNS database has increased. Our DNS Database v2.0 data coverage increased by 521% as of June 2022. Daily updates were also developed, and AAAA records were added on top of the existing DNS records— i.e., A, MX NS, TXT, CNAME, and SOA records. These updates allow for more extensive and accurate threat hunting, cybercrime investigation, cyber forensics analysis, and other security and business processes.

• Our data coverage for NRDs has increased. Our Newly Registered Domains (NRD) Database formerly covered 746 gTLDs and 1,510 ccTLDs. In June 2022, we added new data sources, increasing the coverage for .cn and .tw domains. We continuously update the database with 210,000+ new domains and 230,000+ expired domains daily.

• End-users can now access part of NRD 2.0 statistics. We made selected NRD 2.0 statistics publicly available for users in June 2022. The data can be accessed by going to the NRD 2.0 homepage, toggling to “Related Products” on the right-hand corner, and selecting “Statistics.” End-users can view the NRD statistics by domain status, TLD type, and TLD.

• We released SSL Certificates Quarterly DB. End of May 2022 marked the release of our SSL_Q2. Users can now enjoy more up-to-date SSL certificate data, including SSL certificate chain hierarchy, serial number, validation period, and signature algorithm. These are just some of the 50+ data points included in our SSL Certificates Database, which is downloadable in JSON format.

• A new developer library for WHOIS API and Email Verification API is now available. Coding with Email Verification API and WHOIS API just got easier and more accessible to developers with the addition of GoLang Lib in May 2022. Java, JavaScript, and Python are among the other developer libraries available for WHOIS API. For Email Verification API, developers can code with PHP, Node.js, Flask, Express.js, and Python. Aside from these libraries, both APIs are available as Splunk applications.

• IP Netblocks Data Feed BGP-enriched files are now available. WhoisXML API has included Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) as one of the data sources for our IP Netblocks Data Feed, making our coverage more comprehensive. BGP-enriched files include a parent field, which refers to the block from which the data was taken. This field indicates that the IP block details are from BGP routing tables.

Stay tuned for more product and feature improvements in the coming quarters.

Product and Feature Updates for Q1 2022

In line with WhoisXML API’s commitment to improve its services, we released the following products and specific improvements so far in Q1 2022:

• Real-Time Domain Registration Streaming: We now have a new domain data delivery model that enables organizations to get a steady stream of newly registered, updated, discovered, and dropped domain names with their corresponding WHOIS information with data delivery cycle intervals between 1 and 59 minutes. With Real-Time Domain Registration Streaming, clients no longer need to wait for the next batch feed file or manually perform API calls to get the data they need.

• SSL Certificate Chain product line: WhoisXML API introduces another source of Internet data visibility with our SSL Certificate Chain product line. Users can obtain the SSL certificates of a given domain name, learn critical details about them, trace their complete SSL certificate chain, and verify their validity with a single query. SSL certificate and SSL certificate chain data can be accessed through various consumption models—SSL Certificate Chain API, SSL Certificate Chain Lookup, SSL Certificate Chain Data Feed, and Real-Time SSL Certificate Chain Streaming.

• White-Label Domain Research Suite (DRS) demo: Organizations can offer DRS to their clients under their own label, and a white label demo for DRS version 2.0 has been made available. DRS is a 9-in-1 domain research and monitoring interface gleaning intelligence from our extensive WHOIS and Domain Name System (DNS) databases.

• Improved IP geolocation coverage: We enhanced our IP geolocation coverage to continuously capture 99.5% of all IPv4 and IPv6 addresses in use. Our IP geolocation data is accessible through various delivery models, including IP Geolocation Lookup, IP Geolocation API, Bulk IP Geolocation API, Bulk IP Geolocation GUI, and IP Geolocation Data Feed.

• Increased IPv6 Autonomous System number (ASN) field capture for IP netblocks: Our IP netblocks database now has more ASN field coverage for IPv6 addresses from 68% to 96%. WhoisXML API covers more than 10.3 million IP netblocks and over 65,000 unique ASNs, all accessible via IP Netblocks Lookup, IP Netblocks API, and WHOIS Database.

• Bulk Email Verification Python client library: WhoisXML API’s engineering team developed a Bulk Email Verification client library in Python. The Python client library is available on GitHub and PyPI. Bulk Email Verification allows users to check the validity and existence of up to 50,000 email addresses in one go.

• Bulk WHOIS API Python client library: A Python client library was also created for Bulk WHOIS API and is available on GitHub and PyPI. Bulk WHOIS API enables users to look for the WHOIS registration details of up to 500,000 domain names per query.

WhoisXML API continues to improve its products to maintain data freshness and quality, continuously offering exhaustive coverage and providing better data accessibility.

Response to LOG4J vulnerability

WHOIS API, Inc. is a highly distributed, globally deployed platform, and ensuring the security of all our users is a top priority for us. Our engineering and security teams have been urgently assessing any potential impact on our system following the recent Log4J/Log4Shell vulnerability announcement (CVE-2021-44228).

An initial analysis has shown that appropriate mitigations are in place to protect our customer data and system integrity and that our system's security has not been breached. Due to the distributed nature and complexity of our platform, we are continuing our analysis to formally confirm that all possible attack vectors relating to this vulnerability have been identified and that required mitigations have been implemented.

The next update will be posted when we have completed the final analysis. For more information, please contact us at [email protected].

- Jonathan Zhang, WhoisXML API CEO

Reference:

• NIST Vulnerability Database: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-44228
• CISA: https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/apache-log4j-vulnerability-guidance