Spammers continue to notice new ways that to lure unsuspecting users on the web into clicking malicious links or buying illegitimate products. in an exceedingly recent crushing, GoDaddy has finish off over 15,000 subdomains linked to spammers.
These subdomains were getting used to sell fake products. what is interesting here is that the rightful homeowners of the domain names weren’t even aware this was happening.
Jeff White, a security scientist at Palo Alto Networks, spent 2 years investigating these spammers. The operation concerned causing spam emails in bulk and obtaining users to click on these subdomains that sold pretend products.
A subdomain includes a prefix to a web name which may be directed to an informatics address. GoDaddy customers will produce up to 100 subdomains per domain name. In his white paper, White explained that the scammers may have tricked millions of users. The report was 1st noticed by ZDNet.
Since users landed on websites that appeared to be subdomains of legitimate domains, they were conned into believing they were buying a real product. of these subdomains featured landing pages with pretend celebrity endorsements.
The spammers were making an attempt to sell supplements, diet pills, and other pretend products.
The websites hosted on these subdomains carried fake endorsements from celebrities like stephen hawking, Jennifer Lopez, Gwen Stefani, and even the Shark Tank tv show. The websites also linked to many affiliate networks to generate revenue.
White’s investigation took around 2 years. once collection all the knowledge on the scammers, White reported his findings to GoDaddy’s abuse team that was fast to take action by taking down all the malicious subdomains.
GoDaddy’s customers weren’t aware that their domains were being ill-used to make such fake websites. The scammers probably gained access to such accounts via phishing or credential stuffing methods. GoDaddy has reset passwords for all affected accounts.
In case you come across an email that produces insane promises, otherwise you land on a webpage full of celebrity-endorsed products, it is usually smart to search the net for additional details rather than falling for a scam.
