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Research

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Author avatar of Andrea KaiserAndrea Kaiser
Updated — February 28, 2024 • 3 minute read
View blog >

A common metaphor for the Internet is that it’s divided into neighborhoods. If your website is hosted on an IP address and using nameservers that allow or encourage criminal activity, then you’re in a “bad neighborhood”. Bad neighborhoods can exist because some hosting providers offer a space for criminals to set up domains to serve malicious content to visitors.  Under these circumstances, the hosting providers turn a blind eye as long as they are making money.  Another contributing factor that creates bad neighborhoods are compromised hosts used maliciously without the owners knowledge.

We’re going to take a walk through one of these bad neighborhoods in this blog post.

Enter at the Gate

Our introduction to this neighborhood began when we were alerted to network communications with a URL ending in ‘gate.php’. URLs ending in ‘gate.php’ are indicative of default C2 URL configurations for multiple botnet families; ZeuS, Andromeda, and Pony downloader.
Network communications:
http://exportproducts[.]se/axump/gate[.]php

exportproducts[.]se/axump/ login panel
Login panel
This particular one looks to be AZORult. AZORult steals credential and credit card/payment information. Researchers have seen it involved in attack campaigns with Chthonic and Ramnit.

Once we started to look at the infrastructure behind this, the nameservers stood out as suspicious. The nameservers are: ns1[.]steeldns[.]com and ns2[.]steeldns[.]com. A suspicious feature here is that the parent domain points to: localhost and 127.0.0.1.

IP analysis of steeldns[.]com
Cisco Umbrella Investigate showing IP Address information
Furthermore, the TTL (Time To Live) change frequently on both nameservers; rotating between low-high values. DNS responses with low TTL values are indicative of Fast Flux botnets. In conjunction with compromised hosts acting as proxies, it creates a resilient command and control infrastructure. The multiple nodes or hosts within the network register and de-register their addresses as part of the DNS A record, changing the IP addresses. Each record has a very short TTL. This creates a constantly changing list of IP addresses for a domain name.

This particular host is consistently changing to a low TTL, but not changing the IP address. It doesn’t appear they’re successfully utilizing a Fast Flux technique, but it’s enough to appear suspicious.

List of IP addresses showing changing TTL
Cisco Umbrella Investigate showing changing TTL

A co-occurrence for ns1[.]steeldns[.]com is another nameserver ns2[.]metaldns[.]com. A co-occurrence is when two or more domains are being accessed by the same users within a small window of time.  This top domain, metaldns[.]com is also pointed to localhost 127.0.0.1.

Nameserver co-occurrence of ns1[.]steeldns[.]com
IP analysis of metaldns[.]com

Thanks to our passive DNS data, we have domain names that we’ve seen resolving to the IP addresses of these suspicious nameservers. The following are a few interesting sights seen in this neighborhood while crawling through the domains found.

Lots of Open Space

There are plenty of open directories that lead to various phishing pages and kits.

Path directory listing of administratore[.]com/email/emailamin/
Open directory for phishing pages

Index of tuasopdoc[.]com
Open directory of phishing pages and kits

Index of docusigndatallc[.]com
Open directory with phishing pages

Phishing Pond

If you continue down the walking path from the open space, you’ll make your way to the local phishing pond.

Phishing for credentials
Credential harvesting
Phising by banking impersonating https://www[.]alliancebank[.]com[.]my
Impersonating https://www[.]alliancebank[.]com[.]my
Phising by impersonating DocuSign
Multiple phishes
Microsoft login phishing
Microsoft login phishing

Index of uoplo[.]com/mm/

Information harvesting - showing email that receives data
Information harvesting – showing email that receives data

Have Some Crypto

By now, you’re probably getting tired and ready to take a break with some crypto. Here’s some of what the neighborhood has to offer for cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency phishing
OSINT gathered indicates this is a scam
Coinhive miner
Just a Coinhive miner

Crypto phising for wallet

Crypto phishing
Site claims to exploit Bitcoin wallets and deliver the payouts to other people

Need a Boost?

There appears to be a large area devoted to Pharmaceutical fraud. Here are just a few.

buylegitmeds[.]com phising site
Pharma Fraud

Phishing site

acelabs[.]pro phishing site
Steroid sales

The Local Hangout

End your day by meeting some of the locals.

Crypto-terrorism promotional

It looks like you’re being invited to check out the local’s Bullet Proof Hosting (BPH) located at ns1[.]666webhost[.]com and ns2[.]666webhost[.]com.
At Cisco Umbrella, we see these neighborhoods of the Internet as hosting nothing but potential threats to our customers. We categorize them as Bulletproof Hosting, and have blocked all of the infrastructure highlighted above.
IPs:
193[.]109[.]68[.]43
193[.]109[.]68[.]58
5[.]39[.]219[.]119
101[.]99[.]72[.]47
111[.]90[.]144[.]253
141[.]105[.]67[.]101
111[.]90[.]144[.]251
BPH Nameservers:
ns1[.]steeldns[.]com
ns2[.]steeldns[.]com
ns1[.]metaldns[.]com
ns2[.]metaldns[.]com
ns1[.]666webhost[.]com
ns2[.]666webhost[.]com

Suggested Blogs

  • Cloud Application Security – Risks, Questions, Insights, and Solutions July 1, 2021 3 minute read
  • Cisco Umbrella discovers evolving, complex cyberthreats in first half of 2020 August 18, 2020 6 minute read
  • New research shows consumers want cybersecurity from service providers July 7, 2020 4 minute read

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