The Landscape of Domain Name Typosquatting: Techniques and Countermeasures

TL;DR

This paper reviews the landscape of domain name typosquatting, discussing generation techniques, monetization models, countermeasures, and identifying gaps in current technical defenses.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of typosquatting techniques, monetization strategies, and existing countermeasures, while highlighting areas needing further research.

Findings

Various models for generating typosquatted domains

Different monetization strategies used by cybercriminals

Identification of gaps in current countermeasure research

Abstract

With more than 294 million registered domain names as of late 2015, the domain name ecosystem has evolved to become a cornerstone for the operation of the Internet. Domain names today serve everyone, from individuals for their online presence to big brands for their business operations. Such ecosystem that facilitated legitimate business and personal uses has also fostered "creative" cases of misuse, including phishing, spam, hit and traffic stealing, online scams, among others. As a first step towards this misuse, the registration of a legitimately-looking domain is often required. For that, domain typosquatting provides a great avenue to cybercriminals to conduct their crimes. In this paper, we review the landscape of domain name typosquatting, highlighting models and advanced techniques for typosquatted domain names generation, models for their monetization, and the existing literature on countermeasures. We further highlight potential fruitful directions on technical countermeasures that are lacking in the literature.