Category: DNS Forensics

In the discipline of DNS forensics, behavioral profiling of domain registrants has emerged as a crucial technique for attributing malicious infrastructure, identifying emerging threats, and proactively defending against cyberattacks. Domain registrants, whether legitimate entities or malicious actors, leave behind traces of their behavior patterns through the choices they make when acquiring, configuring, and operating domains.…

DNS chaff generation has emerged as a sophisticated anti-forensic technique used by adversaries to obscure malicious activities within a flood of benign-looking DNS traffic. In the context of DNS forensics, the primary goal of investigators is to identify meaningful patterns of behavior, link domain resolutions to malicious infrastructure, and trace the operational footprints of threat…

Anycast DNS services have become a backbone feature of modern internet infrastructure, providing high availability, fault tolerance, and performance improvements by routing client DNS queries to the nearest instance of a distributed set of servers using identical IP addresses. From a user experience and network resilience standpoint, anycast brings undeniable benefits, but from a DNS…

The process of extracting indicators of compromise (IOCs) from DNS-related threat reports is a fundamental task in the practice of DNS forensics and threat intelligence analysis. As the volume and velocity of threat reports continue to grow, manual extraction of relevant DNS artifacts such as malicious domains, suspicious subdomains, rogue nameservers, and anomalous IP addresses…

DNS tunnels have long been a favored method for adversaries to bypass perimeter defenses, establish covert channels, and exfiltrate data from compromised environments. As organizations have evolved their defenses by deploying network sandboxing solutions to analyze, emulate, and contain suspicious network traffic, attackers have adapted their DNS tunneling techniques to increase resilience against such detection…

Business Email Compromise (BEC) is one of the most financially devastating cybercrimes, relying on the manipulation of trusted email channels to deceive organizations into transferring funds or revealing sensitive information. While much of the investigation into BEC attacks traditionally focuses on email headers, message content, and account access logs, DNS forensics provides critical evidence that…

State-sponsored threat actors have increasingly leveraged DNS redirection techniques as a sophisticated component of their cyber operations. DNS redirection, when used maliciously, involves altering the normal resolution path of domain names to reroute traffic to attacker-controlled infrastructure without the knowledge of the user or system. In the context of state-sponsored campaigns, this tactic is often…

In the evolving landscape of cybersecurity, the early detection of zero-day attacks remains one of the most critical and challenging tasks. Traditional defense mechanisms often fail to recognize these threats because zero-day exploits target unknown vulnerabilities and employ novel tactics, techniques, and procedures that evade signature-based detection. However, one area that offers a promising path…

In the practice of DNS forensics, domain age analysis has proven to be a highly effective predictor of malicious activity. Threat actors engaged in phishing, malware distribution, credential harvesting, and command-and-control operations often rely on newly registered domains to evade detection and maximize the initial impact of their campaigns. Because these domains have no long-standing…

The increasing complexity and frequency of DNS-based attacks have necessitated a shift toward more intelligent, automated incident response strategies. Traditional manual response methods, reliant on human analysts parsing logs, interpreting alerts, and coordinating mitigation actions, are no longer sufficient against the speed and sophistication of modern threats. AI-driven incident response, specifically tailored for DNS-based attacks,…