Introducing Spamhaus’ Quarterly Domain Reputation Update: what’s it all about?

Why is it important to understand the domain reputation ecosphere?

Fundamentally, no matter what you’re doing on the internet, legitimate or otherwise, you must almost always use a domain name. Without a domain name, most malicious activity wouldn’t get started, let alone be successful. It’s as simple as that.

So it’s essential that we shine a light on this kind of nefarious activity to raise awareness and help make the internet a safe place. In equal measure, it’s also important to promote positive behavior and feature service providers who go above and beyond to ensure they don’t give safe refuge to bad actors.

What is the researchers’ insight based on?

We’ve been building threat intelligence for over 20 years. In that time, our researchers have built strong relationships with the internet community, who share connection data and support our vast sensor network. From government organizations to global industry-leading internet providers and specialized researchers and analysts.

For anyone with alarm bells ringing in relation to data sharing, fear not. This data never contains any personally identifiable information (PII) but rather information regarding the activity of internet-based resources.

This big data is analyzed by our researchers using machine learning, manual investigations, and heuristics to identify any badness. Malicious IPs, domains, or content are listed on the relevant dataset. Of course, for this report, it’s purely our domain data that fuels the insight.

What can you find in this report?

You’ll find 21 pages filled with data and commentary across the domain name ecosphere, including, but not limited to:

• Number of new domains observed
• Number of top-level domains listed
• Top-level domain comparisons
• Trending terms in new domains
• Trending phishing terms in domains listed
• Trends in abuse type – bad reputation, malware, phishing, botnet C&C
• Monthly breakdowns by abuse type

You can find the report here.

Got some feedback on how we can enrich future reports?

With this being our first release, we don’t doubt that there’s more intelligence you’d like us to share in future iterations. We already have enhancements planned for Q3 (so watch this space!), but we’d love to know what you, the reader, would like to see adding.

So let us know your feedback via our social channels – Twitter or LinkedIn. In the meantime, get stuck into the report and spread the word, so as a community, we start to affect positive change and influence better online behavior.