OUR PLANS

Every website’s domain has hundreds, if not thousands, of permutations. Permutations are created by changing one or more characters in a domain name. For example, permutations of briantrace.com would be:

• briantrace.com (transpose the “a” and “i”)
• braintracè.com (homoglyph character)
• br-aintrace.com (hyphenation)
• braintraces.com (additional character)

The Threat

Permutated domains are commonly used in a number of ways:

• Phishing Campaigns. These phishing campaigns are effective because anti-spoofing tools will not catch the phishing emails because they are coming from actual matching domain addresses.
• Compromised Login Credentials. Your employee thinks he or she is signing into a familiar employee-used website or sub-domain but enters his or her credentials to an imposter website made to look similar or identical.
• Redirect Traffic. Permutated domains can be used to redirect traffic when people mistype the domain.
• Fraudulent Transactions. By mimicking a legitimate website, fraudsters can mislead consumers into making inadvertent purchases.

The Solution

The only way to defend against this kind of threat is by knowing when a permutated website is created or changed. Braintrace’s Domain Protection Service marries technology with analytical investigation. Our technology gathers all permutations of a domain and notifies us when there is a change in an existing permutated domain or when a new permutated domain is created. Our analysts then investigate the potentially malicious activity.