Executive summary

• A suspicious website is a web resource that cannot be definitively classified as phishing, but whose activities are unsafe. Such sites manipulate users, tricking them into voluntarily transferring money for non-existent services, signing up for hidden subscriptions, or disclosing personal data through carefully crafted terms of service. These include fake online stores, dubious crypto exchanges, investment platforms, and services with paid subscriptions.
• Kaspersky has introduced a new web filtering category, “Sites with an undefined trust level,” into its security products (Kaspersky Premium, Android and iOS apps, etc.). The system analyzes the domain name and age, IP address reputation, DNS configuration, HTTP security headers, and SSL certificate to automatically detect suspicious resources.
• According to Kaspersky data for January 2026, the most widespread global threat is fake browser extensions that mimic security products — they were detected in 9 out of 10 regions analyzed worldwide. Such extensions intercept browser data, track user activity, hijack search queries, and inject ads.
• Kaspersky’s regional statistics reveal the specific nature of these threats: in Africa, over 90% of the top 10 suspicious websites are online trading scam platforms; in Latin America, fake betting services predominate; in Russia, fake binary options brokers and “educational platforms” with fraudulent subscriptions lead the way; in CIS countries — crypto scams and bots for inflating engagement.
• Key indicators of a suspicious website to check: a strange domain name with numbers or random characters, cheap top-level domains (.xyz, .top, .shop), a recently registered domain (less than 6 months old according to WHOIS data), unrealistic promises (“100% guaranteed income,” “up to 300% profit”), lack of company contact information, and payments only via cryptocurrency or irreversible bank transfers.

Introduction

The online landscape is filled with various traps lying in wait for users. One such threat involves websites that can’t be strictly classified as phishing, yet whose activities are inherently unsafe. These sites often operate on the fringes of the law, even if they aren’t directly violating it. Sometimes they use a cleverly crafted Terms of Service document as a loophole. These agreements might include clauses such as no-refund policies or forced automatic subscription renewals.

Fake online stores, dubious financial platforms, and various online services that mimic legitimate business operations are all categorized as suspicious. Unlike actual phishing sites, which aim to steal sensitive data like banking credentials or passwords, these suspicious sites represent a far more cunning trap. Their goal is manipulation: tricking the victim into willingly paying for non-existent goods and services or signing them up for a subscription that’s nearly impossible to cancel. Beyond financial gain, these sketchy websites may also hunt for personal data to sell later on the dark web.

Our solutions categorize them as having an “undefined trust level”. This article explains what these sites look like, how to identify them, and what you can do to stay safe.

The dangers of shady websites

One of the biggest risks associated with making a purchase from an untrusted website that seems to be an online store is the financial loss and falling victim to fraud. Fake shops will entice you with attractive deals to get you hooked. After you pay, you may never receive what you paid for, or you may receive some cheap piece of unusable junk instead of the item you ordered. Investment or “guaranteed income” programs are another type of classic scam — they promise rapid returns, and once they take your deposits, they disappear without a trace.

Visiting or buying from untrusted suspicious websites can expose you to various risks that go beyond a single bad purchase. Fraudulent websites often collect your personal information even if you do not end up making a purchase. By completing a form or signing up for a “free offer”, you may be providing the scammer with access to your information.

Personal data collection can happen in a fairly straightforward and obvious way — for instance, through a standard order delivery form. In this scenario, attackers end up with sensitive information like the user’s full name, shipping and billing addresses, phone number, email address, and, of course, payment details. As we’ve previously discussed, fraudsters sell this kind of information, and there’re countless ways it can be used down the line. For example, this data might be leveraged for spam campaigns or more serious threats like stalking or targeted attacks.

Common types of suspicious sites

Let’s take a closer look at the different types of shady sites out there and how interacting with them can lead to financial loss, data leaks, the unauthorized use of personal information, and other consequences.

It’s worth noting that rogue websites can masquerade as legitimate ones in almost any industry. The first type of fraudulent site we’ll look at is fake online stores. These can appear as clones of real brand websites or as standalone stores. Usually, the scam follows one of two paths: the buyer either receives a counterfeit or poor-quality product, or they receive nothing at all. These sites lure victims in with suspiciously low prices and “exclusive” deals. Often, users are subjected to psychological pressure: the time to make a purchase decision is purposefully limited, provoking the victim, as with any other scam, into making an impulse purchase.

Another common type of shady site includes online exchanges and trading platforms. These primarily target cryptocurrency, as the lack of legislative regulation for digital currency in certain countries makes them a magnet for fraudsters. These suspicious sites often lure victims with supposedly favorable exchange rates or other enticing gimmicks. If the user attempts to exchange cryptocurrency, their tokens are gone for good. Beyond simple exchanges, rogue sites offer investment services and even display a fake balance growth to appear credible. However, withdrawing funds is impossible; when the victim tries to cash out, they’re prompted to pay some fee or fictional tax.

Subscription traps are also worth noting, offering everything from psychological tests to online video streaming platforms. The hallmark of these sites is that they deliberately withhold critical information, such as recurring charges, or hide the fact it even exists. Typically, the scheme works like this: a user is offered a subscription for a nominal fee, like $1. While that seems attractive, the next charge – perhaps only a week later – might be as much as $50. This information is intentionally obscured, buried in fine print or tucked away in the Terms of Service where it’s harder to find. Legitimate services always clearly disclose subscription terms and provide an easy way to cancel before a trial period ends. Scam services, on the other hand, do everything possible to distract the user from the actual terms of use and subscription.

Shady sites can also masquerade as providers of mediation services, such as legal or real estate assistance. In reality, the service is either never delivered or provided in a stripped-down, incomplete form. For example, a user might be prompted to pay for a service that’s normally provided for free. The danger here lies not only in losing money for non-existent services but also in the significant risk of exposing personal data, such as ID details, taxpayer identification numbers, social security numbers, or driver’s license information. Once in the hands of attackers, this data can become a tool for executing further scams or targeted attacks.

On the whole, suspicious sites are fairly difficult to distinguish from legitimate, trustworthy services. Masquerading as a legitimate business is the primary goal of these sites, and the fraudulent schemes they employ are not always obvious. Nevertheless, there are protective measures as well as certain indicators that can help you suspect a site is unsafe for purchases or financial transactions.

How to identify suspicious or fraudulent websites

Despite the increasingly convincing attempts to create fake shops, the majority of them still lack the quality of real online stores, and there are many signs that may give them away. Some of these signs can be caught by the eye while others require a bit of technical investigation. By combining visual inspection, technical checks, and trusted online tools, you can protect yourself from financial loss or data theft.

Visual and manual clues

You don’t need to be a cybersecurity expert to catch many red flags just by observing the site’s domain, visuals, language and behavior. For instance, scam sites often have strange or randomly generated names, filled with numbers, underscores, hyphens, or meaningless words, like best-shop43.com. In addition, such vague top-level domains as .xyz, .top, or .shop are also frequently used in scams because they’re cheap and easy to register.

Furthermore, most fake stores sites look unprofessional, with poor visuals, pixelated images, mismatched fonts, or copied templates. Many fraudulent websites borrow layouts or logos from other brands or free templates, which makes them appear generic and sketchy.

Another major giveaway lies in the content itself. Be aware of persuasive language, unrealistic promises, or emotional triggers such as No KYC, Risk-free returns, 100% guaranteed income, Up to 300% profit, or Passive income with zero effort. Unrealistic deals are another red flag. If the products are listed at extremely low prices, continuous countdown timers, and “limited time only” messages that are often used to pressure you into making a quick purchase, it’s a clear tell of a fraudulent website.

Legitimate businesses always provide verifiable contact details, such as a physical address, company name, and customer support. On the contrary, scam sites hide this information. You may also notice the non-functioning pages, broken or suspicious links leading to unrelated external sites which indicate poor maintenance or malicious intent.

Another important signal is the website’s social media presence. Legitimate online businesses usually maintain at least one active social media account to promote their products and communicate with customers. In most cases, these businesses have long-established social media accounts with harmonized posting history and engagement from real users, consistency between the brand website and social media profiles (same name, logo, and links). The links to social media profiles from the website are usually direct. In contrast, fraudulent or deceptive websites often lack any meaningful social media presence or display signs of superficial or artificial activity. This may include missing social media accounts altogether, social media icons that lead to non-existent, inactive, or unrelated pages, or recently created profiles with very few posts and minimal user engagement. In some cases, comment sections are disabled or dominated by spam and automated content, suggesting an attempt to avoid public interaction rather than engage with customers.

Lastly, the payment options offered by the site can also tell a lot about its legitimacy. Be extremely cautious if a website only accepts cryptocurrency, wire transfers, or third-party P2P payments. These payment methods are irreversible and are preferred by scammers. Legitimate e-commerce platforms typically offer secure and reversible payment options, such as credit cards or trusted payment gateways that include buyer protection policies.

However, the absence or existence of any of these factors alone does not necessarily indicate malicious intent. It should be evaluated in combination with technical, linguistic, and behavioral indicators, rather than treated as a standalone signal of legitimacy.

Technical indicators to check

Looking into technical signs can reveal whether a website is trustworthy or potentially fraudulent.

One of the first things to check is the domain age. Scam websites are often short-lived, appearing only for a few weeks or months before disappearing once users start reporting them. To check when the domain was created, use a WHOIS lookup. If it’s less than six months old, be cautious — especially for e-commerce or investment sites, where legitimacy and trust take time to build.

Let’s take a look at the registration details for the popular online marketplace Amazon. As we can see from the WHOIS information, it was registered in 1994.

Meanwhile, a reported suspicious online store was created a couple of months ago.

Legitimate websites usually operate on stable hosting platforms and remain on the same IP addresses or networks for long periods. In contrast, fraudulent websites often move between servers (in most cases using a cheap shared hosting service) or reuse infrastructure already associated with abuse. Checking the IP address reputation can reveal if the website or the hosting server has previously been linked to suspicious activities. Even if the website looks legitimate, a poor IP reputation can expose it.

In addition to that, looking at the infrastructure behavior over time can reveal patterns about its legitimacy. Websites associated with fraudulent activity often show short lifespans, sudden spikes in activity, or rapid appearance and disappearance, which indicates a coordinated campaign rather than a legitimate business.

Another important clue is hidden ownership. When the WHOIS details show “Redacted for Privacy” or leaves the organization name blank, it may indicate that the website owner is deliberately hiding their identity.

We should point out that while this can raise suspicion during investigations, hidden WHOIS data is not inherently malicious. Many legitimate businesses use privacy protection services for valid reasons. These may include protection from spam and phishing after public email addresses are taken from WHOIS databases, personal safety for small business owners, and brand protection to prevent competitors or malicious actors from targeting the registrant. This means that some businesses can use services like WHOIS Privacy Protection, Domains By Proxy, or PrivacyGuardian.org to remove the WHOIS data while still operating transparently on their websites through clear contact details, customer support channels, and legal pages (e.g. terms of use).

Therefore, hidden ownership should be treated as a contextual risk indicator, not a standalone proof of fraud. It becomes more suspicious when combined with other signals such as newly registered domains, and lack of legal information.

Next, you can check the security headers of the website. Legitimate websites are usually well maintained and include several key HTTP headers for protection. Some examples include:

• Content-Security-Policy (CSP) provides strong defense against cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks by defining which scripts are allowed to run on the site and blocking any malicious JavaScript that could steal login data or inject fake forms.
• HTTP Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS) forces browsers to connect to the site only over HTTPS. It ensures all communication is encrypted and prevents redirecting users to an insecure (HTTP) version of the site.
• X-Frame-Options prevents clickjacking, which is a type of attack where a legitimate-looking button or link on a malicious page secretly performs another action in the background.
• X-Content-Type-Options blocks MIME-type attacks by preventing browsers from misinterpreting file types.
• Referrer-Policy controls how much information about your previous browsing (referrer URLs) is shared with other sites.

These headers form the “digital hygiene” of a website. Their absence doesn’t always mean a site is malicious, but it does suggest a lack of security awareness or professional maintenance — both strong reasons to be cautious.

You should also check the SSL certificate. Scam sites may use self-signed or short-lived SSL certificates. You can inspect this by clicking the padlock icon in your browser’s address bar — if it says “not secure” or the certificate authority seems unfamiliar, that’s a red flag.

You can check the security headers and the SSL certificate by sending an HTTP request programmatically or by using some online service.

Another indicator that provides insight into how well a website is done and managed is DNS configurations. Legitimate businesses typically use reliable DNS providers and maintain consistent DNS records. Missing the name server NS or mail exchange MX records may indicate poor DNS configuration. In addition to NS and MX, reputable sites also configure SPF and DMARC records to protect their brand from email spoofing and phishing. Something scam website developers won’t bother with because they don’t intend to build a long-standing reputation.

You can check the configurations of DNS records either programmatically or by using an online service.

Another recommendation is to pay attention to website behavior. If there are frequent redirects, pop-up ads, or background requests to unknown domains, this may indicate unsafe scripting or tracking.

How to protect yourself

Tools and databases for detecting suspicious websites

We at Kaspersky have built an intelligent system for detecting suspicious web resources and added this new type of protection into many of our products, including Kaspersky Premium, Kaspersky for Android and iOS, and others. Our detection model is based on many factors, including but not limited to the following:

• domain name and age,
• IP reputation,
• stability of the infrastructure used,
• DNS configurations,
• HTTP security headers,
• digital identity and popularity of the web resource.

Kaspersky has been certified as a provider of effective protective technology for fake shop detection.

When a user tries to visit a site flagged as having an undefined trust level, our solutions show a warning to stop the visitor from becoming a victim of personal data leaks, financial losses or a bad purchase:

This component is on by default.

Moreover, there are several online tools and databases that can help assess a website’s legitimacy:

• ScamAdviser analyzes trust based on WHOIS, server location, and web reputation.
• APIVoid provides risk scoring using DNS, IP, and domain reputation databases.
• National government databases often maintain official lists of fraudulent or blacklisted domains.

Preventive measures

To protect yourself from such threats, it might a good idea to take some additional preventive measures. Always double-check the URL and domain name, especially when you are about to click a link or make a payment. Make sure the site uses HTTPS and has a trusted certificate.

You can use standard browser tools to verify site security. For example, in Google Chrome, clicking the site information button (the lock or settings icon in the address bar) displays details about the connection security and the site’s certificate.

In the Security section, you can check whether the site supports HTTPS – it should say “Connection is secure” – and view the site’s digital certificate.

Additionally, keep reliable security software with real-time protection running on your device to stop you from accessing dangerous websites. Do not download any files or enter your personal information on websites that look unprofessional or suspicious. And finally, remember the golden rule: if a deal seems too good to be true, it often is.

If you realize that you’re on a scam website, it’s important to perform certain post-incident actions immediately. First, contact your bank or payment provider as soon as possible to block the transaction or card. Then, change your passwords for the services which might have been compromised, and run a full antivirus scan on your device to detect and remove any potential threats. Lastly, consider reporting the website to the cybercrime agency in your country or to the consumer protection agency. Sharing your experience online by leaving a review or warning will give notice to potential customers alike.

By staying careful and taking quick actions, you can significantly reduce the chances of being a target and help make the internet a safer place for everyone.

An overview of detection statistics for sites with an undefined trust level

To illustrate the types of suspicious sites prevalent in various regions around the world, we analyzed anonymized detection data from Kaspersky solutions for the “websites with an undefined trust level” category in January 2026. For each region, we identified the 10 most frequently encountered sites and calculated the share of each within that list. To maintain privacy, specific domains are not listed directly; instead, they’re described based on their functionality and characteristics.

Most visited suspicious sites

First, let’s examine the sites that appear across multiple regions, indicating a high prevalence.

In 9 out of the 10 regions analyzed, we encountered a suspicious image processing platform (*a*o*.com). This site positions itself as a photo editing tool, but in reality, it serves as an intermediary server for uploading images used in phishing and other campaigns. By interacting with such a site, users risk exposing personal data under the guise of uploading images or falling victim to a phishing attack.

Percentage of the *a*o*.com domain detections by region, January 2026 (download)

This site has the largest share of detections in the Russian Federation, where it ranks first in the TOP 10 with a 40.80% share. It is also prevalent in Latin American countries (21.70%) and the CIS (14.64%), while it’s least common in Canada at 0.24%.

The next site appeared in 7 regions. It consists of a landing page for a fake antivirus solution presented as a browser extension (*n*s*.com). This extension redirects the user to a fake search engine page allowing it to collect data and track user activity, specifically search queries.

Percentage of the *n*s*.com domain detections by region, January 2026 (download)

This site is most frequently detected in South Asia, with a share of 33.31%. Its presence in Canada and Oceania is roughly equal (15.47% and 15.09%, respectively). We recorded the lowest number of detections in Africa, at 2.99%.

Another suspicious browser extension appeared in the TOP 10 in 6 out of the 10 regions. It’s a fake privacy-enhancing tool hosted at *w*a*.com. Instead of providing the advertised privacy features, this extension carries a high risk of intercepting browser data. It can modify browser settings, harvest user data, and swap the default search engine for a fake one. Furthermore, it maintains full control over all browser traffic.

Percentage of the *w*a*.com domain detections by region, January 2026 (download)

This “service” has its largest share, 22.25%, in the Middle East and North Africa, and is also quite common in Canada (16.26%). It’s least frequently encountered in Latin America (5.38%) and East Asia (4.02%).

The site *o*r*.com appeared in five regional rankings. It’s a fake security service promising to provide online safety by warning users about malicious sites and dangerous search queries. This extension has the potential to steal cookies (including session cookies), inject advertisements, spoof login forms, and harvest browser history and search queries. We noted that this site made the TOP 10 in Africa (0.59%), the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region (4.57%), Europe (5.61%), Canada (7.21%), and Oceania (1.93%).

In 4 out of the 10 regions, we identified several other recurring sites. One of them (*n*p*.xyz) mimics a repository for creative AI image generation prompts while capturing browser data. The domain hosting this site exhibits several red flags: it was recently registered, and the owner’s information is hidden. This site reached the TOP 10 in Africa (0.51%), the MENA region (7.04%), Latin America (22.54%, ranking first in that region), and South Asia (5.91%).

The second service (*i*s*.com) positions itself as a tool for safe searching, protecting the browser from threats, and verifying extensions. However, this is a typical browser hijacker, much like the others mentioned above. It made the TOP 10 in South Asia (8.03%), Oceania (17.97%), Europe (3.90%), and Canada (14.35%).

The third site (*h*t*.com) poses as a private browsing extension. In reality, it’s another potentially unwanted application designed for browser hijacking: it modifies settings, steals sensitive data (cookies, browser history, and queries), and can redirect the user to phishing pages. Users have specifically noted the difficulty involved in removing the extension. This site appears in the TOP 10 for the MENA region (10.17%), Canada (7.06%), Europe (3.81%), and Oceania (2.81%).

Another domain (*o*t*.com) that reached the TOP 10 in four regions is a service mimicking a browser extension for safe searching and web browsing. It’s dangerous because it injects ads and steals user data. It’s important to note that such extensions can be installed without explicit user consent – for example, via links embedded in other software. This service holds the number one spot in two regions: Canada (25.72%) and Oceania (30.92%), while also appearing in the TOP 10 for East Asia (8.01%) and Africa (0.88%).

Consequently, we can see that the majority of suspicious sites detected by our solutions worldwide are browser hijackers masquerading as security products. Nevertheless, other categories of sites also appear in the TOP 10.

Next, we’ll examine each region individually, focusing on descriptions of domains not previously covered. For clarity, the sites mentioned above will be marked as [MULTI-REGION], while those appearing in only two or three regions will include the names of those specific areas. We’ll observe several regional overlaps and similarities, allowing us to determine which types of suspicious sites are popular both within specific regions and globally.

Africa

Distribution of the TOP 10 suspicious websites in Africa, January 2026 (download)

The three most prevalent domains in African countries are found exclusively in this region. All of them – *i*r*.world (60.27%), *m*a*.com (22.84%), and *e*p*.com (9.36%) – are potentially fraudulent online trading platforms suspected of using forged licenses. These sites employ classic scam schemes where it’s impossible to withdraw any alleged earnings. In fifth place is a domain we’ll also see in the European TOP 10, *r*e*.com (1.46%): a platform marketed as a tool for retail and semi-professional traders. It charges for services available elsewhere for free. Eighth place is held by a site that also appears in the Russian TOP 10: *a*c*.com (0.56%). This is a dubious AI tool that claims to offer free subscriptions to a premium graphics editor. In ninth place is a domain that also surfaces in the Canadian TOP 10: *u*e*.com (0.53%), a browser extension of the “web protection” variety that we’ve encountered previously.

In summary, the African region is dominated by financial scams within the online trading and brokerage sectors. These include fake platforms that make it impossible to withdraw funds and use fake licenses and classic schemes to steal users’ money. Additionally, Africa sees paid tools that duplicate free services and questionable AI-based subscriptions. The primary threat in this region is financial loss through fraudulent investment-themed sites.

MENA

Distribution of the TOP 10 suspicious websites in the Middle East and North Africa, January 2026 (download)

In the MENA region, the site *a*v*.su holds the top spot with a 28.64% share; notably, this site also appears in the TOP 10 for Russia. It markets itself as a tool for building custom VoIP-PBX systems. However, it has an extremely low trust rating and is frequently associated with phishing, and hidden redirects. Using this service carries significant risks, including data leaks, and financial loss.

Ranked seventh is *a*r*.foundation (6.32%), an AI bot allegedly designed for trading, which we also identified in the TOP 10 for Oceania. This service has been flagged as an investment scam operating as a pyramid scheme with the hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme.

The ranking is rounded out by two domains not found in any other region. The first one, *l*e*.pro (4.42%), is a spoof of a popular betting service. The second, *p*r*.group (2.21%), is a clone of a well-known broker. Both sites are scams.

In the MENA region, the landscape is dominated by fake VoIP services as well as counterfeits of financial and betting platforms, which attackers use to conduct phishing attacks, and perform hidden redirects. A significant portion of suspicious sites consists of fake online privacy tools and browser hijackers masquerading as security extensions. Ponzi schemes and cryptocurrency scams are also prominent. The primary risks for the region are data theft, and financial loss.

Latin America

Distribution of the TOP 10 suspicious websites in Latin America, January 2026 (download)

In Latin America, we identified five popular suspicious sites specific to this region, which is unusual compared to other areas where more overlaps are typically observed. Ranking third with a share of 10.81% is the fake betting platform *b*e*.net. In fifth place is *r*e*.club, an illegitimate clone of a well-known bookmaker, with a share of 7.82%.

Further down the list of local threats are *a*a*.com.br (7.02%), a Brazilian Ponzi scam; *s*a*.com (5.07%), which offers dubious investment programs; and *t*r*.com (4.53%), a potentially dangerous trading platform.

In Latin America, the most-visited suspicious sites are betting-themed scams, including both clones of legitimate sites and those built from scratch. Also prevalent are Ponzi schemes, fake investment programs, and dubious online brokers. A significant portion of these sites consists of browser hijackers posing as crypto platforms and AI bots. The primary threats in Latin American countries include financial loss through gambling and Ponzi schemes, as well as the theft of NFTs and other tokens.

East Asia

Distribution of the TOP 10 suspicious websites in East Asia, January 2026 (download)

In the East Asian TOP 10, we see the highest concentration of domains that are absent from other regional rankings.

In first place, with an 18.77% share, is the fake broker *r*x*.com, which can be used to steal personal data or funds. Second place is held by a crypto-gaming site (16.44%) that we previously encountered in the Latin American TOP 10. Visitors to this site risk losing NFTs and other tokens. In third place is the domain *u*h*.net (11.61%), used for redirects, which can hijack sessions. Following this is *s*m*.com (9.98%), a domain typically used as a browser-hijacking server and for phishing attacks, serving as a link in an infection chain.

Rounding out the local threats in East Asia are the following domains: *e*v*.com (9.37%), utilized in drive-by attacks; *a*k*.com (9.16%), an API-like domain associated with suspicious scripts and extensions; and *b*l*.com (4.38%), a domain potentially used for redirects.

East Asia has a high concentration of region-specific fake brokers, crypto gaming platforms, and NFT marketplaces. The primary threats for this region include the loss of financial data, NFTs, and other tokens, as well as session hijacking.

South Asia

Distribution of the TOP 10 suspicious websites in South Asia, January 2026 (download)

In South Asian countries, we also observe a concentration of local suspicious sites specific to the region.

The second most popular site in the region is *a*s*.com (12.01%), a poor-reputation, high-risk microloan service typical of South Asia. By interacting with these sites, users risk not only losing significant funds but also compromising their overall security. Following this are *v*n*.com with a 9.47% share and *l*f*.com with 8.65%. These domains are employed in various fraudulent schemes, ranging from phishing to spam.

The TOP 10 also includes *s*o*.com (4.80%), a free video downloading service associated with a high risk of infection. The final site we analyzed in the South Asia region is *c*o*.site (1.89%), a pseudo-tool for local SEO optimization that carries the danger of data loss and a high risk of financial fraud through subscription sign-ups.

In summary, the region is dominated by fake antivirus extensions, microloan services, dubious video downloaders, and counterfeit SEO tools. The primary risks for South Asia include financial fraud, phishing and spam distribution, and data theft.

CIS

When analyzing statistics for suspicious sites in CIS countries, we treat Russia as a separate region due to the unique characteristics of its online space which are not found in any other CIS member states. However, we’ve placed these two regions in the same section, as we’ve observed overlaps between them that are not seen in other parts of the world.

Distribution of the TOP 10 suspicious websites in the CIS, January 2026 (download)

The top two sites in the CIS TOP 10 also appear in the Russian TOP 10. The domain *r*a*.bar, which ranks first in the CIS (39.50%), holds the second spot in Russia (15.93%) and is a fake trading site. It’s worth noting that sites in the .bar domain zone are frequently used for scams. In second place in the CIS (15.29%) and sixth in Russia (3.75%) is the domain *p*o*.ru, which is often associated with bots for inflating follower counts and automating community management.

Domains from fourth to eighth place are specific only to the CIS region and don’t appear in the Russian TOP 10. These sites include:

• *a*e*.online (8.42%): an online image editor that carries risks of data harvesting
• *n*a*.io (6.51%): a high-risk cryptocurrency trading platform
• *e*r*.com (3.72%): a site promising free cryptocurrency and posing the risk of compromising visitors’ private keys and digital wallets
• *s*o*.ltd (3.70%): a domain with an extremely low trust rating
• *s*.gg (3.49%): a scam site masquerading as a play-to-earn blockchain game

The ranking concludes with sites that overlap with the Russian region. *a*.consulting (2.42%) is a fake clone of a binary options site, and *a*.lol (2.32%) is a domain suspected of dubious activity.

The CIS landscape is dominated by fake trading platforms (particularly crypto exchanges), promises of easy profits, play-to-earn scams, and dubious investment projects. We also observe many bots for inflating social metrics and automation. The primary threat in the CIS is the theft of private keys, digital wallets, and funds through investment schemes and lures involving online promotion.

Distribution of the TOP 10 suspicious websites in Russia, January 2026 (download)

The Russian TOP 10 includes three unique domains not found in the rankings of other regions. The first, *n*m*.top (7.84%), is an imitator of a well-known binary options broker. This suspicious site was recently registered and has a tellingly low rating on domain verification services. The second, *t*e*.ru (3.25%), claims to be an educational platform and has a dubious subscription system with a high probability of fraud involving difficulties in canceling subscriptions. The third site, *e*e*.org (3.14%), positions itself as a tool for a popular media platform, but it’s actually a scam that fails to provide its stated services.

Overall, the Russian landscape is characterized by fake binary options brokers and sketchy sites with fraudulent subscriptions posing as e-learning platforms. There are also frequent instances of sites spoofing well-known legitimate services. The primary risks in Russia are scams related to the knowledge business sector, as well as the theft of money and personal data.

Europe

Distribution of the TOP 10 suspicious websites in Europe, January 2026 (download)

In the European region, we’ve found two unique domains. The first of these, *c*r*.org, has been identified as part of a chain for massive phishing and spam attacks. It accounts for a 16.08% share of the TOP 10. The second site, *o*n*.de, is an unofficial reseller with a poor reputation and a high likelihood of fraud. This domain ranks second to last in our statistics with a 5.95% share.

Among the sites not previously covered, the European TOP 10 includes one site that also appears in the Oceania TOP 10: *o*i*.com (6.61%). This is a classic cryptocurrency scam promising passive income.

A significant portion of suspicious sites in Europe consists of intermediary sites for phishing and spam, fake security extensions, and crypto scams. Unofficial sales services and paid trading tools are also on the list. The primary threats in the European region include session hijacking, data theft, spam, and investment fraud.

Canada

Distribution of the TOP 10 suspicious websites in Canada, January 2026 (download)

Canada has been designated as a separate region to illustrate prevailing trends within North America. The first four positions in the Canadian TOP 10 are held by multiregional domains discussed previously. In fifth place is *t*c*.com (10.88%), which also appears in the TOP 10 rankings for Oceania and South Asia. This is yet another browser extension masquerading as a security solution. Occupying the final spot is the domain *e*w*.com (0.17%), which is unique to the Canadian market. This site operates a dropshipping scam, offering products at prices significantly below market value. Customers typically either never receive their orders or get low-quality counterfeits.

The landscape of dubious websites in Canada is largely defined by fraudulent extensions capable of hijacking browser data, tracking user activity, spoofing search queries, harvesting cookies, and injecting ads. This is further compounded by dropshipping schemes involving counterfeit goods. The primary risks for users in Canada include data theft and financial loss from purchasing substandard products.

Oceania

Distribution of the TOP 10 suspicious websites in Oceania, January 2026 (download)

The final region under consideration is Oceania. Notably, we didn’t identify a single domain unique to this region. Every site appearing in the TOP 10 represents a global threat that’s already been detailed in previous sections. To summarize the findings for this region: the primary threats consist of fake security extensions and privacy products designed for browser hijacking, tracking user activity, displaying advertisements, and stealing data. There’s a minimal presence of crypto Ponzi schemes in this area. The main risk for users in Oceania is the loss of privacy and confidentiality through unwanted apps.

Conclusion

Suspicious websites are particularly dangerous because they often masquerade as legitimate sites with high levels of persuasiveness. They mimic online stores, subscription-based streaming platforms, repair firms, and various other services. Unlike standard phishing sites, they employ more sophisticated manipulations to deceive users, tricking them into voluntarily handing over their personal data and transferring funds.

By examining the TOP 10 suspicious sites across the world’s major regions, we can draw several conclusions. On average, the most prevalent threats globally are fraudulent extensions masquerading as security solutions and privacy services. Their true purpose is to hijack browser data, track user activity, and display ads. We also frequently encounter phishing platforms for image processing and financial scams involving trading, cryptocurrency, betting, and microloans. Our statistics demonstrate that these sites not only employ classic fraudulent schemes centered on easy money but also adapt to contemporary trends targeting younger audiences and specific regional characteristics. The primary risks for users interacting with these sites are a combination of privacy threats and financial loss.

To help protect users from these shady sites, we’ve introduced the category of “websites with an undefined trust level” as part of the web filtering features in our solutions. However, it’s important to note that user awareness and individual responsibility play a significant role in ensuring safe web browsing. It’s essential for users to be able to recognize suspicious sites and remain vigilant toward any that appear untrustworthy.

The post CoreDNS Security Alert: Multiple High-Severity Vulnerabilities Patched in Version 1.14.3 appeared first on Daily CyberSecurity.

The post The .gov Illusion: Inside the 16,800-Domain “Operation Trust Trap” Campaign appeared first on Daily CyberSecurity.

British security officials found that a group linked to the Russian military is spying on users of compromised Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) routers in a broad cyber espionage campaign. A Microsoft blog goes into the technical details of these attacks.

The group, which we’ll refer to as APT28, but is also known under names like Fancy Bear, BlueDelta, and Forest Blizzard, changes the DNS settings of compromised routers so their traffic is sent through servers under their control, which enables APT28 to spy on users.

The domain name system (DNS) is the way that internet domain names are located and translated into Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Devices usually get network settings from routers using Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP).

If an attacker can tamper with the router’s DNS settings, they can silently steer traffic through infrastructure they control, harvest login details, and in some cases position themselves between the user and the real service. This is why the campaign can support credential theft and even targeted interception of Microsoft 365 and other cloud traffic.

An FBI public service announcement says that APT28:

“…has harvested passwords, authentication tokens, and sensitive information including emails and web browsing information normally protected by secure socket layer (SSL) and transport layer security (TLS) encryption.”

The FBI says the group cast a wide net over US and globally, before narrowing down their victims to those with access to information related to military, government, and critical infrastructure.

The NCSC advisory singles out a single model of TP-Link (WR841N) with a known vulnerability that enables an unauthenticated attacker to obtain information such as usernames and passwords via specially crafted HTTP GET requests. This router model is widely sold to consumers and small businesses and not typically used as standard equipment by major internet service providers. The article also includes a long but not exhaustive list of other TP-Link router models targeted by APT28.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence says it has identified over 200 organizations and 5,000 consumer devices impacted by Forest Blizzard’s malicious DNS infrastructure.

The router ban debate

A few weeks ago, we commented on the FCC’s decision to effectively stop foreign-made routers from being imported unless their manufacturers obtain an exemption, due to what the FCC called an “unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the safety and security of United States persons.”

APT28’s actions show the kind of risk the FCC is trying to stop, but they also reinforce our point: while the debate over router bans and supply-chain restrictions often focuses on national origin, the bigger issue is whether the devices are secure in practice. If a router ships with weak defaults, poor update support, or a confusing setup process, it becomes a target regardless of where it was made. Attackers do not need perfection. They only need enough exposed devices to build a large, quiet infrastructure for spying and redirection.

What you can do

To check whether your settings are OK, we can only give general directions since they are sometimes very device-specific. But this method usually works:

How to check that your router’s DHCP settings match what your ISP intends:

1. Check your current DHCP information on a device.
   On a PC or phone connected to your home network, open the network details and note the IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, and DNS servers your device is using.
2. Log in to your router and find its WAN/Internet settings.
   In the router’s web interface, look at the “Status” or “Internet” page to see what address it has received from the ISP, and which DNS servers it is configured to use.
3. Compare against what your ISP documents or tells you.
   Check your ISP’s support pages or contact support to confirm what they expect: whether your connection should use DHCP or PPPoE, what range your public IP should come from, and which DNS servers they normally provide. Large mismatches (for example, DNS servers in a different country or from an unknown organization) are a reason to investigate further.
4. If you use custom DNS, document it.
   If you deliberately use alternative DNS (for example, a privacy or security resolver), write that down and periodically re‑check that your router and clients are still using the addresses you chose.

Other measures

If you can afford it and haven’t already, upgrade to Wi-Fi 7 to help future-proof your setup while current models are still in stores.

You should at least:

• Change your router’s default usernames and passwords to something less easy to guess.
• Check the vendor’s website for updates and confirm the EOL date and update to the latest firmware versions.
• Disable remote management interfaces from the Internet where possible.
• All users should carefully consider certificate warnings in web browsers and email clients because they indicate something is wrong with the secure connection and could mean you are not talking to the genuine site.

For technically confident users, replacing vendor firmware with open-source alternatives like OpenWrt or DD-WRT can extend a router’s secure lifespan. But this comes with risks, including voiding warranties or potentially bricking your device. You should only do this, or have it done, if you’re comfortable troubleshooting.

If a US citizen suspects they have been targeted or compromised by a Russian cyberintrusion, they are asked to report the activity to their local FBI field office or file a complaint with the IC3. Be sure to provide details about the affected router, including device type and DHCP configurations.

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Privacy risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep your online privacy yours by using Malwarebytes Privacy VPN.

We've identified an aspect of Azure’s Private Endpoint architecture that could expose Azure resources to denial of service (DoS) attacks.

The post DNS OverDoS: Are Private Endpoints Too Private? appeared first on Unit 42.

Over the past few days Cloudflare has been notified through our vulnerability disclosure program and the certificate transparency mailing list that unauthorized certificates were issued by Fina CA for 1.1.1.1, one of the IP addresses used by our public DNS resolver service. From February 2024 to August 2025, Fina CA issued twelve certificates for 1.1.1.1 without our permission. We did not observe unauthorized issuance for any properties managed by Cloudflare other than 1.1.1.1.

We have no evidence that bad actors took advantage of this error. To impersonate Cloudflare's public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1, an attacker would not only require an unauthorized certificate and its corresponding private key, but attacked users would also need to trust the Fina CA. Furthermore, traffic between the client and 1.1.1.1 would have to be intercepted.

While this unauthorized issuance is an unacceptable lapse in security by Fina CA, we should have caught and responded to it earlier. After speaking with Fina CA, it appears that they issued these certificates for the purposes of internal testing. However, no CA should be issuing certificates for domains and IP addresses without checking control. At present all certificates have been revoked. We are awaiting a full post-mortem from Fina.

While we regret this situation, we believe it is a useful opportunity to walk through how trust works on the Internet between networks like ourselves, destinations like 1.1.1.1, CAs like Fina, and devices like the one you are using to read this. To learn more about the mechanics, please keep reading.

Cloudflare operates a public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1 service that millions of devices use to resolve domain names from a human-readable format such as example.com to an IP address like 192.0.2.42 or 2001:db8::2a.

The 1.1.1.1 service is accessible using various methods, across multiple domain names, such as cloudflare-dns.com and one.one.one.one, and also using various IP addresses, such as 1.1.1.1, 1.0.0.1, 2606:4700:4700::1111, and 2606:4700:4700::1001. 1.1.1.1 for Families also provides public DNS resolver services and is hosted on different IP addresses — 1.1.1.2, 1.1.1.3, 1.0.0.2, 1.0.0.3, 2606:4700:4700::1112, 2606:4700:4700::1113, 2606:4700:4700::1002, 2606:4700:4700::1003.

As originally specified in RFC 1034 and RFC 1035, the DNS protocol includes no privacy or authenticity protections. DNS queries and responses are exchanged between client and server in plain text over UDP or TCP. These represent around 60% of queries received by the Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 service. The lack of privacy or authenticity protection means that any intermediary can potentially read the DNS query and response and modify them without the client or the server being aware.

To address these shortcomings, we have helped develop and deploy multiple solutions at the IETF. The two of interest to this post are DNS over TLS (DoT, RFC 7878) and DNS over HTTPS (DoH, RFC 8484). In both cases the DNS protocol itself is mainly unchanged, and the desirable security properties are implemented in a lower layer, replacing the simple use of plain-text in UDP and TCP in the original specification. Both DoH and DoT use TLS to establish an authenticated, private, and encrypted channel over which DNS messages can be exchanged. To learn more you can read DNS Encryption Explained.

During the TLS handshake, the server proves its identity to the client by presenting a certificate. The client validates this certificate by verifying that it is signed by a Certification Authority that it already trusts. Only then does it establish a connection with the server. Once connected, TLS provides encryption and integrity for the DNS messages exchanged between client and server. This protects DoH and DoT against eavesdropping and tampering between the client and server.

The TLS certificates used in DoT and DoH are the same kinds of certificates HTTPS websites serve. Most website certificates are issued for domain names like example.com. When a client connects to that website, they resolve the name example.com to an IP like 192.0.2.42, then connect to the domain on that IP address. The server responds with a TLS certificate containing example.com, which the device validates.

However, DNS server certificates tend to be used slightly differently. Certificates used for DoT and DoH have to contain the service IP addresses, not just domain names. This is due to clients being unable to resolve a domain name in order to contact their resolver, like cloudflare-dns.com. Instead, devices are first set up by connecting to their resolver via a known IP address, such as 1.1.1.1 in the case of Cloudflare public DNS resolver. When this connection uses DoT or DoH, the resolver responds with a TLS certificate issued for that IP address, which the client validates. If the certificate is valid, the client believes that it is talking to the owner of 1.1.1.1 and starts sending DNS queries.

You can see that the IP addresses are included in the certificate Cloudflare’s public resolver uses for DoT/DoH:

Certificate:
  Data:
      Version: 3 (0x2)
      Serial Number:
          02:7d:c8:c5:e1:72:94:ae:c9:ed:3f:67:72:8e:8a:08
      Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption
      Issuer: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, CN=DigiCert Global G2 TLS RSA SHA256 2020 CA1
      Validity
          Not Before: Jan  2 00:00:00 2025 GMT
          Not After : Jan 21 23:59:59 2026 GMT
      Subject: C=US, ST=California, L=San Francisco, O=Cloudflare, Inc., CN=cloudflare-dns.com
      X509v3 extensions:
          X509v3 Subject Alternative Name:
              DNS:cloudflare-dns.com, DNS:*.cloudflare-dns.com, DNS:one.one.one.one, IP Address:1.0.0.1, IP Address:1.1.1.1, IP Address:162.159.36.1, IP Address:162.159.46.1, IP Address:2606:4700:4700:0:0:0:0:1001, IP Address:2606:4700:4700:0:0:0:0:1111, IP Address:2606:4700:4700:0:0:0:0:64, IP Address:2606:4700:4700:0:0:0:0:6400

The section above describes normal, expected use of Cloudflare public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1 service, using certificates managed by Cloudflare. However, Cloudflare has been made aware of other, unauthorized certificates being issued for 1.1.1.1. Since certificate validation is the mechanism by which DoH and DoT clients establish the authenticity of a DNS resolver, this is a concern. Let’s now dive a little further in the security model provided by DoH and DoT.

Consider a client that is preconfigured to use the 1.1.1.1 resolver service using DoT. The client must establish a TLS session with the configured server before it can send any DNS queries. To be trusted, the server needs to present a certificate issued by a CA that the client trusts. The collection of certificates trusted by the client is also called the root store.

Certificate:
  Data:
      Version: 3 (0x2)
      Serial Number:
          02:7d:c8:c5:e1:72:94:ae:c9:ed:3f:67:72:8e:8a:08
      Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption
      Issuer: C=US, O=DigiCert Inc, CN=DigiCert Global G2 TLS RSA SHA256 2020 CA1

A Certification Authority (CA) is an organisation, such as DigiCert in the section above, whose role is to receive requests to sign certificates and verify that the requester has control of the domain. In this incident, Fina CA issued certificates for 1.1.1.1 without Cloudflare's involvement. This means that Fina CA did not properly check whether the requestor had legitimate control over 1.1.1.1. According to Fina CA:

“They were issued for the purpose of internal testing of certificate issuance in the production environment. An error occurred during the issuance of the test certificates when entering the IP addresses and as such they were published on Certificate Transparency log servers.”

Although it’s not clear whether Fina CA sees it as an error, we emphasize that it is not an error to publish test certificates on Certificate Transparency (more about what that is later on). Instead, the error at hand is Fina CA using their production keys to sign a certificate for an IP address without permission of the controller. We have talked about misuse of 1.1.1.1 in documentation, lab, and testing environments at length. Instead of the Cloudflare public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1 IP address, Fina should have used an IP address it controls itself.

Unauthorized certificates are unfortunately not uncommon, whether due to negligence — such as IdenTrust in November 2024 — or compromise. Famously in 2011, the Dutch CA DigiNotar was hacked, and its keys were used to issue hundreds of certificates. This hack was a wake-up call and motivated the introduction of Certificate Transparency (CT), later formalised in RFC 6962. The goal of Certificate Transparency is not to directly prevent misissuance, but to be able to detect any misissuance once it has happened, by making sure every certificate issued by a CA is publicly available for inspection.

In certificate transparency several independent parties, including Cloudflare, operate public logs of issued certificates. Many modern browsers do not accept certificates unless they provide proof in the form of signed certificate timestamps (SCTs) that the certificate has been logged in at least two logs. Domain owners can therefore monitor all public CT logs for any certificate containing domains they care about. If they see a certificate for their domains that they did not authorize, they can raise the alarm. CT is also the data source for public services such as crt.sh and Cloudflare Radar’s certificate transparency page.

Not all clients require proof of inclusion in certificate transparency. Browsers do, but most DNS clients don’t. We were fortunate that Fina CA did submit the unauthorized certificates to the CT logs, which allowed them to be discovered.

Our immediate concern was that someone had maliciously used the certificates to impersonate the 1.1.1.1 service. Such an attack would require all the following:

1. An attacker would require a rogue certificate and its corresponding private key.

2. Attacked clients would need to trust the Fina CA.

3. Traffic between the client and 1.1.1.1 would have to be intercepted.

In light of this incident, we have reviewed these requirements one by one:

1. We know that a certificate was issued without Cloudflare's involvement. We must assume that a corresponding private key exists, which is not under Cloudflare's control. This could be used by an attacker. Fina CA wrote to us that the private keys were exclusively in Fina’s controlled environment and were immediately destroyed even before the certificates were revoked. As we have no way to verify this, we have and continue to take steps to detect malicious use as described in point 3.

2. Furthermore, some clients trust Fina CA. It is included by default in Microsoft’s root store and in an EU Trust Service provider. We can exclude some clients, as the CA certificate is not included by default in the root stores of Android, Apple, Mozilla, or Chrome. These users cannot have been affected with these default settings. For these certificates to be used nefariously, the client’s root store must include the Certification Authority (CA) that issued them. Upon discovering the problem, we immediately reached out to Fina CA, Microsoft, and the EU Trust Service provider. Microsoft responded quickly, and started rolling out an update to their disallowed list, which should cause clients that use it to stop trusting the certificate.

3. Finally, we have launched an investigation into possible interception between users and 1.1.1.1. The first way this could happen is when the attacker is on-path of the client request. Such man-in-the-middle attacks are likely to be invisible to us. Clients will get responses from their on-path middlebox and we have no reliable way of telling that is happening. On-path interference has been a persistent problem for 1.1.1.1, which we’ve been working on ever since we announced 1.1.1.1.

A second scenario can occur when a malicious actor is off-path, but is able to hijack 1.1.1.1 routing via BGP. These are scenarios we have discussed in a previous blog post, and increasing adoption of RPKI route origin validation (ROV) makes BGP hijacks with high penetration harder. We looked at the historical BGP announcements involving 1.1.1.1, and have found no evidence that such routing hijacks took place.

Although we cannot be certain, so far we have seen no evidence that these certificates have been used to impersonate Cloudflare public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1 traffic. In later sections we discuss the steps we have taken to prevent such impersonation in the future, as well as concrete actions you can take to protect your own systems and users.

All unauthorized certificates for 1.1.1.1 were valid for exactly one year and included other domain names. Most of these domain names are not registered, which indicates that the certificates were issued without proper domain control validation. This violates sections 3.2.2.4 and 3.2.2.5 of the CA/Browser Forum’s Baseline Requirements, and sections 3.2.2.3 and 3.2.2.4 of the Fina CA Certificate Policy.

The full list of domain names we identified on the unauthorized certificates are as follows:

fina.hr
ssltest5
test.fina.hr
test.hr
test1.hr
test11.hr
test12.hr
test5.hr
test6
test6.hr
testssl.fina.hr
testssl.finatest.hr
testssl.hr
testssl1.finatest.hr
testssl2.finatest.hr

It’s also worth noting that the Subject attribute points to a fictional organisation TEST D.D., as can be seen on this unauthorized certificate:

        Serial Number:
            a5:30:a2:9c:c1:a5:da:40:00:00:00:00:56:71:f2:4c
        Signature Algorithm: sha256WithRSAEncryption
        Issuer: C=HR, O=Financijska agencija, CN=Fina RDC 2015
        Validity
            Not Before: Nov  2 23:45:15 2024 GMT
            Not After : Nov  2 23:45:15 2025 GMT
        Subject: C=HR, O=TEST D.D., L=ZAGREB, CN=testssl.finatest.hr, serialNumber=VATHR-32343828408.306
        X509v3 extensions:
            X509v3 Subject Alternative Name:
                DNS:testssl.finatest.hr, DNS:testssl2.finatest.hr, IP Address:1.1.1.1

All timestamps are UTC. All certificates are identified by their date of validity.

The first certificate was issued to be valid starting February 2024, and revoked 33 min later. 11 certificate issuances with common name 1.1.1.1 followed from February 2024 to August 2025. Public reports have been made on Hacker News and on the certificate-transparency mailing list early in September 2025, which Cloudflare responded to.

While responding to the incident, we identified the full list of misissued certificates, their revocation status, and which clients trust them.

The full timeline for the incident is as follows.

Date & Time (UTC)	Event Description
2024-02-18 11:07:33	First certificate issuance revoked on 2024-02-18 11:40:00
2024-09-25 08:04:03	Issuance revoked on 2024-11-06 07:36:05
2024-10-04 07:55:38	Issuance revoked on 2024-10-04 07:56:56
2024-10-04 08:05:48	Issuance revoked on 2024-11-06 07:39:55
2024-10-15 06:28:48	Issuance revoked on 2024-11-06 07:35:36
2024-11-02 23:45:15	Issuance revoked on 2024-11-02 23:48:42
2025-03-05 09:12:23	Issuance revoked on 2025-03-05 09:13:22
2025-05-24 22:56:21	Issuance revoked on 2025-09-04 06:13:27
2025-06-28 23:05:32	Issuance revoked on 2025-07-18 07:01:27
2025-07-18 07:05:23	Issuance revoked on 2025-07-18 07:09:45
2025-07-18 07:13:14	Issuance revoked on 2025-09-04 06:30:36
2025-08-26 07:49:00	Last certificate issuance revoked on 2025-09-04 06:33:20
2025-09-01 05:23:00	HackerNews submission about a possible unauthorized issuance
2025-09-02 04:50:00	Report shared with us on HackerOne, but was mistriaged
2025-09-03 02:35:00	Second report shared with us on HackerOne, but also mistriaged.
2025-09-03 10:59:00	Report sent on the public certificate-transparency@googlegroups.com mailing picked up by the team.
2025-09-03 11:33:00	First response by Cloudflare on the mailing list about starting the investigation
2025-09-03 12:08:00	Incident declared
2025-09-03 12:16:00	Notification of an unauthorised issuance sent to Fina CA, Microsoft Root Store, and EU Trust service provider
2025-09-03 12:23:00	Cloudflare identifies an initial list of nine rogue certificates
2025-09-03 12:24:00	Outreach to Fina CA to inform them about the unauthorized issuance, requesting revocation
2025-09-03 12:26:00	Identify the number of requests served on 1.1.1.1 IP address, and associated names/services
2025-09-03 12:42:00	As a precautionary measure, began investigation to rule out the possibility of a BGP hijack for 1.1.1.1
2025-09-03 18:48:00	Second notification of the incident to Fina CA
2025-09-03 21:27:00	Microsoft Root Store notifies us that they are preventing further use of the identified unauthorized certificates by using their quick-revocation mechanism.
2025-09-04 06:13:27	Fina revoked all certificates.
2025-09-04 12:44:00	Cloudflare receives a response from Fina indicating “an error occurred during the issuance of the test certificates when entering the IP addresses and as such they were published on Certificate Transparency log servers. [...] Fina will eliminate the possibility of such an error recurring.”

Cloudflare has invested from the very start in the Certificate Transparency ecosystem. Not only do we operate CT logs ourselves, we also run a CT monitor that we use to alert customers when certificates are mis-issued for their domains.

It is therefore disappointing that we failed to properly monitor certificates for our own domain. We failed three times. The first time because 1.1.1.1 is an IP certificate and our system failed to alert on these. The second time because even if we were to receive certificate issuance alerts, as any of our customers can, we did not implement sufficient filtering. With the sheer number of names and issuances we manage it has not been possible for us to keep up with manual reviews. Finally, because of this noisy monitoring, we did not enable alerting for all of our domains. We are addressing all three shortcomings.

We double-checked all certificates issued for our names, including but not limited to 1.1.1.1, using certificate transparency, and confirmed that as of 3 September, the Fina CA issued certificates are the only unauthorized issuances. We contacted Fina, and the root programs we know that trust them, to ask for revocation and investigation. The certificates have been revoked.

Despite no indication of usage of these certificates so far, we take this incident extremely seriously. We have identified several steps we can take to address the risk of these sorts of problems occurring in the future, and we plan to start working on them immediately:

Alerting: Cloudflare will improve alerts and escalation for issuance of certificates for missing Cloudflare owned domains including 1.1.1.1 certificates.

Transparency: The issuance of these unauthorised 1.1.1.1 certificates were detected because Fina CA used Certificate Transparency. Transparency inclusion is not enforced by most DNS clients, which implies that this detection was a lucky one. We are working on bringing transparency to non-browser clients, in particular DNS clients that rely on TLS.

Bug Bounty: Our procedure for triaging reports made through our vulnerability disclosure program was the cause for a delayed response. We are working to revise our triaging process to ensure such reports get the right visibility.

Monitoring: During this incident, our team relied on crt.sh to provide us a convenient UI to explore CA issued certificates. We’d like to give a shout to the Sectigo team for maintaining this tool. Given Cloudflare is an active CT Monitor, we have started to build a dedicated UI to explore our data in Radar. We are looking to enable exploration of certs with IP addresses as common names to Radar as well.

This incident demonstrates the disproportionate impact that the current root store model can have. It is enough for a single certification authority going rogue for everyone to be at risk.

If you are an IT manager with a fleet of managed devices, you should consider whether you need to take direct action to revoke these unauthorized certificates. We provide the list in the timeline section above. As the certificates have since been revoked, it is possible that no direct intervention should be required; however, system-wide revocation is not instantaneous and automatic and hence we recommend checking.

If you are tasked to review the policy of a root store that includes Fina CA, you should take immediate actions to review their inclusion in your program. The issue that has been identified through the course of this investigation raises concerns, and requires a clear report and follow-up from the CA. In addition, to make it possible to detect future such incidents, you should consider having a requirement for all CAs in your root store to participate in Certificate Transparency. Without CT logs, problems such as the one we describe here are impossible to address before they result in impact to end users.

We are not suggesting that you should stop using DoH or DoT. DNS over UDP and TCP are unencrypted, which puts every single query and response at risk of tampering and unauthorised surveillance. However, we believe that DoH and DoT client security could be improved if clients required that server certificates be included in a certificate transparency log.

This event is the first time we have observed a rogue issuance of a certificate used by our public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1 service. While we have no evidence this was malicious, we know that there might be future attempts that are.

We plan to accelerate how quickly we discover and alert on these types of issues ourselves. We know that we can catch these earlier, and we plan to do so.

The identification of these kinds of issues rely on an ecosystem of partners working together to support Certificate Transparency. We are grateful for the monitors who noticed and reported this issue.