Are Tasted Domain Names used in Phishing Attacks?
The Anti-Phishing Working Group has published a report on the relationship between tasted domain names and phishing attacks. The report summarizes the findings of two studies that sought to determine whether parties who taste domain names also use these names to facilitate phishing attacks. One APWG member began with a set of domain names that had been used in phishing attacks and tried to determine if these names had been cancelled during the Add Grace Period. A second APWG member began with a huge set of domain names that were tasted during a one week period – FYI, the value of “huge” in this case exceeded three million tasted domains – and then attempted to match domain names used in phishing attacks against this list. The results of both studies indicate that “there are very few cases of possible domain name tasting performed by phishers and that the cases that do exist have possible explanations that are not related to tasting”. Perhaps more important than the study results are ob
