Uncovering IP Address Hosting Types Behind Malicious Websites

TL;DR

This paper investigates methods to identify the hosting types of IP addresses behind malicious websites, which is crucial for effective mitigation and understanding attacker strategies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to classify IP hosting types behind malicious domains, addressing the shift from bulletproof hosting to regular providers.

Findings

Accurately classifies IP hosting types with high precision.

Reveals attacker migration towards regular hosting providers.

Supports improved mitigation strategies for malicious domains.

Abstract

Hundreds of thousands of malicious domains are created everyday. These malicious domains are hosted on a wide variety of network infrastructures. Traditionally, attackers utilize bullet proof hosting services (e.g. MaxiDed, Cyber Bunker) to take advantage of relatively lenient policies on what content they can host. However, these IP ranges are increasingly being blocked or the services are taken down by law enforcement. Hence, attackers are moving towards utilizing IPs from regular hosting providers while staying under the radar of these hosting providers. There are several practical advantages of accurately knowing the type of IP used to host malicious domains. If the IP is a dedicated IP (i.e. it is leased to a single entity), one may blacklist the IP to block domains hosted on those IPs as welll as use as a way to identify other malicious domains hosted the same IP. If the IP is a shared hosting IP, hosting providers may take measures to clean up such domains and maintain a high reputation for their users.