Over 1 Million Domains at Risk of 'Sitting Ducks' Domain Hijacking Technique
Aug 01, 2024
Vulnerability / Threat Intelligence
Over a million domains are susceptible to takeover by malicious actors by means of what has been called a Sitting Ducks attack. The powerful attack vector, which exploits weaknesses in the domain name system (DNS), is being exploited by over a dozen Russian-nexus cybercriminal actors to stealthily hijack domains, a joint analysis published by Infoblox and Eclypsium has revealed. "In a Sitting Ducks attack, the actor hijacks a currently registered domain at an authoritative DNS service or web hosting provider without accessing the true owner's account at either the DNS provider or registrar," the researchers said. "Sitting Ducks is easier to perform, more likely to succeed, and harder to detect than other well-publicized domain hijacking attack vectors, such as dangling CNAMEs ." Once a domain has been taken over by the threat actor, it could be used for all kinds of nefarious activities, including serving malware and conducting spams, while abusing the