2. Bypass Website Country Restrictions

Some website services are restricted to users form only a selected list of countries. For example, a paid survey may be restricted only to countries like United States and Canada. So a user from say China may use a proxy so as to make his IP appear to have come from U.S. so that he can earn from participating in the paid survey.

Proxy Detection Services

So in order to stop such online frauds, Proxy Detection has become a critical component. Today most companies, credit card merchants and websites that deal with e-commerce transactions make use of Proxy Detection Services like MaxMind and FraudLabs to detect the usage of proxy or spoofed IP from users participating online.

Proxy Detection web services allow instant detection of anonymous IP addresses. Even though the use of proxy address by users is not a direct indication of fraudulent behaviour, it can often indicate the intention of the user to hide his or her real IP. In fact, some of the most used ISPs like AOL and MSN are forms of proxies and are used by both good and bad consumers.

How Proxy Detection Works?

Proxy detection services often rely on IP addresses to determine whether or not the IP is a proxy. Merchants can obtain the IP address of the users from the HTTP header on the order that comes into their website. This IP address is sent to the proxy detecting service in real time to confirm it’s authenticity.

The proxy detection services on the other hand compare this IP against a known list of flagged IPs that belong to proxy services. If the IP is not on the list then it is authenticated and the confirmation is sent back to the merchant. Otherwise it is reported to be a suspected proxy. These proxy detection services work continuously to grab a list or range of IPs that are commonly used for proxy services. With this it is possible to tell whether or not a given IP address is a proxy or spoofed IP.

How to Tell Whether a given IP is Real or a Proxy?

There are a few free sites that help you determine whether or not a given IP is a proxy. You can use free services like WhatisMyIPAddress to detect proxy IPs. Just enter the suspected IP in the field and click on “Lookup IP Address” button to check the IP address. If it is a suspected proxy then you will see the results something as follows.

So for all those who think that they can escape by using a spoofed IP, this post is the answer. I hope this information helps. Pass your comments.

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Domain Hijacking – How to Hijack a Domain





Domain hijacking

In this post I will tell you about how the domain names are hacked and how they can be protected. The act of hacking domain names is commonly known as Domain Hijacking. For most of you, the term “domain hijacking” may seem to be like an alien. So let me first tell you what domain hijacking is all about.

Domain hijacking is a process by which Internet Domain Names are stolen from it’s legitimate owners. Domain hijacking is also known as domain theft. Before we can proceed to know how to hijack domain names, it is necessary to understand how the domain names operate and how they get associated with a particular web server (website).

The operation of domain name is as follows

Any website say for example gohacking.com consists of two parts. The domain name (gohacking.com) and the web hosting server where the files of the website are actually hosted. In reality, the domain name and the web hosting server (web server) are two different parts and hence they must be integrated before a website can operate successfully. The integration of domain name with the web hosting server is done as follows.

1. After registering a new domain name, we get a control panel where in we can have a full control of the domain.

2. From this domain control panel, we point our domain name to the web server where the website’s files are actually hosted.

For a clear understanding let me take up a small example.

John registers a new domain “abc.com” from an X domain registration company. He also purchases a hosting plan from Y hosting company. He uploads all of his files (.html, .php, javascripts etc.) to his web server (at Y). From the domain control panel (of X) he configures his domain name “abc.com” to point to his web server (of Y). Now whenever an Internet user types “abc.com”, the domain name “abc.com” is resolved to the target web server and the web page is displayed. This is how a website actually works.

What happens when a domain is hijacked

Now let’s see what happens when a domain name is hijacked. To hijack a domain name you just need to get access to the domain control panel and point the domain name to some other web server other than the original one. So to hijack a domain you need not gain access to the target web server.

For example, a hacker gets access to the domain control panel of “abc.com”. From here the hacker re-configures the domain name to point it to some other web server (Z). Now whenever an Internet user tries to access “abc.com” he is taken to the hacker’s website (Z) and not to John’s original site (Y).

In this case the John’s domain name (abc.com) is said to be hijacked.

How the domain names are hijacked

To hijack a domain name, it’s necessary to gain access to the domain control panel of the target domain. For this you need the following ingredients

1. The domain registrar name for the target domain.

2. The administrative email address associated with the target domain.

These information can be obtained by accessing the WHOIS data of the target domain. To get access the WHOIS data, goto whois.domaintools.com, enter the target domain name and click on Lookup. Once the whois data is loaded, scroll down and you’ll see Whois Record. Under this you’ll get the “Administrative contact email address”.

To get the domain registrar name, look for something like this under the Whois Record. “Registration Service Provided By: XYZ Company”. Here XYZ Company is the domain registrar. In case if you don’t find this, then scroll up and you’ll see ICANN Registrar under the “Registry Data”. In this case, the ICANN registrar is the actual domain registrar.

The administrative email address associated with the domain is the backdoor to hijack the domain name. It is the key to unlock the domain control panel. So to take full control of the domain, the hacker will hack the administrative email associated with it. Email hacking has been discussed in my previous post how to hack an email account.

Once the hacker take full control of this email account, he will visit the domain registrar’s website and click on forgot password in the login page. There he will be asked to enter either the domain name or the administrative email address to initiate the password reset process. Once this is done all the details to reset the password will be sent to the administrative email address. Since the hacker has the access to this email account he can easily reset the password of domain control panel. After resetting the password, he logs into the control panel with the new password and from there he can hijack the domain within minutes.

How to protect the domain name from being hijacked

The best way to protect the domain name is to protect the administrative email account associated with the domain. If you loose this email account, you loose your domain. So refer my previous post on how to protect your email account from being hacked. Another best way to protect your domain is to go for private domain registration. When you register a domain name using the private registration option, all your personal details such as your name, address, phone and administrative email address are hidden from the public. So when a hacker performs a WHOIS lookup for you domain name, he will not be able to find your name, phone and administrative email address. So the private registration provides an extra security and protects your privacy. Private domain registration costs a bit extra amount but is really worth for it’s advantages. Every domain registrar provides an option to go for private registration, so when you purchase a new domain make sure that you select the private registration option.

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