Latest News

1 November 2023

Interisle's Andy Malis Awarded 10th Patent

Andy Malis was granted US Patent 11,792,045, Elastic VPN That Bridges Remote Islands, on October 17, 2023. This patent enables enterprise networks that employ cloud computing to offload processing tasks to third party data centers. Virtual private networking techniques can be used to securely transmit data between the enterprise networks and the data centers housing the cloud networks via the Internet. This allows enterprise users to move application functionality between data centers, for example to dynamically allocate processing power at data centers that are geographically closest to an active end user base at any specified date/time. This approach allows processing power to be dynamically allocated and deallocated to support branch office networks that rely on the enterprise network.

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23 October 2023

Cybercrime Supply Chain 2023

Interisle has published a major new research report, Cybercrime Supply Chain 2023: Measurements and Assessments of Cyber Attack Resources and Where Criminals Acquire Them, finding persistent patterns of exploitation and abuse. Interisle analyzed more than 10 million cybercrime records and found distinct, persistent patterns of exploitation and abuse covering a 365-day period from September 2022 to August 2023. The report notes that current reactive efforts cannot curtail cybercrime and the harm it inflicts on Internet users, and recommends implementation of measures that, working together, policy regimes, governments, service providers, and private sector can use to disrupt the cybercrime supply chain. The study was sponsored by APWG, CAUCE, and M3AAWG.

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12 October 2023

Interisle Responds to UK DSTI on Domain Abuse

Cybercrime and domain name abuse are key concerns of governments and other stakeholder worldwide. Successful mitigation of these problems will require a global, cross-sectoral approach, including appropriate action by governments. Interisle Consulting Group contributed to the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology's (DSTI) recent consultation Powers in Relation to UK-Related Domain Name Registries, which seeks input on policies for mitigating domain name abuse and misuse in UK-related top-level domains (TLDs). Drawing on finding from its recent Phishing Landscape 2023 report, Interisle's response underscores how effective policies and procedures must aim at preventing criminals from maliciously registering names in the first place, not just cleaning up after abuse has already occurred. It also discusses the benefits in using the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime's descriptions of harmful activities as a basis for defining prohibited uses of domain names, including facilitating multi-jurisdictional abuse mitigation and enforcement. Read our full contribution.

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1 September 2023

Why is .US Being Used to Phish So Many of Us? (1 September 2023)

Brian Krebs, reporting at KrebsOnSecurity, citing Interisle's Phishing Landscape 2023 report, noted that "domains names ending in .US […] are among the most prevalent in phishing scams".
Krebs notes that .US is overseen by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an executive branch agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce and NTIA contracts out management of .US to GoDaddy. However, "In response to questions from KrebsOnSecurity, GoDaddy said all .US registrants must certify that they meet the NTIA's nexus requirements. But this appears to be little more than an affirmative response that is already pre-selected for all new registrants."
Data from the Cybercrime Information Center show many examples of common brand names being used in .US domain names that have been registered and subsequently identified in phishing attacks.

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9 August 2023

Phishing Landscape 2023

Interisle Consulting Group has published a major new research report, Phishing Landscape 2023: An Annual Study of the Scope and Distribution of Phishing. Interisle has collected more than 11 million phishing reports over a three-year period, showing a tripling of phishingn attacks since May 2020, and a 65% increase since the previous yearly study. The number of unique domains names continues to increase. 90% of phishing domains in new gTLDs are in just 25 new gTLDs. Two-thirds of phishing domain names were registered specifically for phishing. The report includes recommendations for registries and registrars, emphasizing that mitigation requires cross-industry collaboration. Absent effective mitigation, litigation has yielded results — when Freenom stopped offering domain names, the number of Freenom domains used for phishing plummeted.

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31 May 2023

Interisle research on display at Krebs on Security

American journalist and investigative reporter Brian Krebs cited data and findings from Interisle's 2021 Phishing Landscape Study in a March 7 column, ‘Sued by Meta, Freenom Halts Domain Registrations’. Following several exchanges on Mastodon, Brian took a deeper dive into Freenom's Freefall with Interisle partners Dave Piscitello and Colin Strutt. Brian then published a follow-up piece, ‘Phishing Domains Tanked After Meta Sued Freenom, where he shares charts and trendlines prepared by Colin using data collected at the Cybercrime Information Center and observations by Dave on why legal action may be an effective recourse for brands targeted by phishers.

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12 April 2023

Collateral Damage from Freenom Phishing Attacks

Brian Krebs, reporting at KrebsOnSecurity, recently reported that, sued by Meta, registry operator Freenom halted domain registrations.
According to Krebs, Meta alleges the company ignores abuse complaints about phishing websites while monetizing traffic to those abusive domains.
Meta's actions come as no surprise to us. The Cybercrime Information Center has collected phishing data since May 2020. Freenom's commercialized ccTLDs have repeatedly appeared among the TLDs with the most phishing domains and highest phishing scores.
While brands and individuals of victims of phishing attacks are the most obvious harmed parties, other parties such as hosting operators received collateral damage from phishing attacks. In a post on the CyberCrime Information Center we show that while brands and individuals of victims of phishing attacks are the most obvious harmed parties, other parties such as hosting operators received collateral damage from phishing attacks as well.

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16 March 2023

Interisle Welcomes New Associate Karen Rose

No, not the romantic suspense author who wrote Cold Blooded Liar-the internationally recognized Internet policy and digital economy expert who served as Senior Director of Strategy and Analysis at the Internet Society. Karen's 30 years of public and private sector experience and her reputation for insightful analysis of global Internet issues extend and amplify Interisle's ability to provide authoritative advice to its clients. You can watch her describe ICANN's relationship with the U.S. Government—and her role in creating it—in this interview for the ICANN History Project.

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14 March 2023

Malware Landscape 2023

Interisle Consulting Group has published a major new research report, Malware Landscape 2023: A Study of the Scope and Distribution of Malware. Interisle reviewed over 7 million reports of distinct malware events from January 2022 to December 2022 collected by the Cybercrime Information Center, examining malware that attacks both IoT and user-attended devices ("endpoints"). This year Interisle also studied reports of malicious traffic sources: malware that is used to scan web sites for exploitable vulnerabilities, to inject malicious content into web forms, or to conduct denial of service attacks.

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9 March 2023

Interisle's Andy Malis Awarded 7th Patent

Andy Malis was granted US Patent 11,582,148 on February 14, 2023, MPLS Extension Headers for In-Network Services. This patent describes methods and devices (e.g., routers) that add in-network services to a multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) network. This can include an MPLS network router receiving and modifying a packet by adding one or more MPLS extension headers, adding one or more extension header(s), and adding an indication within an MPLS label stack that one or more MPLS extension headers have been added to the packet.

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28 February 2023

Another Quarter's Malware Analyzed

Analysis of the October to December 2022 malware data from the CyberCrime Information Center shows a 34% increase in IoT malware and a 31% increase in endpoint malware compared to the previous quarter. Mozi is on the rise again, and vulnerability scanners are running rampant. Also noteworthy, there was a 121% increase in domains names reported for hosting malware.