Phishing Activity in Hosting Networks (ASNs)
August 1, 2021 - October 31, 2021

To see where phishing sites were being hosted, we collected the IP addresses that phishing domains and phishing URLs were resolving to when phishing activity was detected and added to a threat or block list. We then identified the ASN where the IP prefix containing the IP address of the phish is allocated and this number identifies the hosting network where phishing attacks were reported.

For the period, we identified

- 186 hosting networks with 100 or more reported phishing attacks.

- 59 hosting networks with 500 or more reported phishing attacks. and

- 31 hosting networks with 1000 or more reported phishing attacks.

- 8 hosting networks with 5000 or more reported phishing attacks.

We measure phishing attacks to show where phishing sites are hosted and to identify the hosting service that has been allocated the IPv4 address space wherein the IP address of the phishing site lies.

A phisher may use one, several, or large numbers of URLs in a single phishing campaign. We apply rules to our phishing reports to de-duplicate URLs and to analyze hostname, URL path composition, target, and abuse report dates for similarities to obtain sets of URLs that we consider to be involved in one phishing attack. We also apply additional rules to group URLs into attacks based on observed cases.

In the table below, we show the twenty hosting networks with the highest numbers of reported phishing attacks.

Ranking of Hosting Networks (ASNs) by Phishing Attacks
(August to October 2021)

Rank AS Name AS number # Routed
IPv4 Addresses
Phishing Attacks ▼ Phishing Attack Score
1 CLOUDFLARENET 13335 2,354,688 23,747 100.85
2 UNIFIEDLAYER-AS-1 46606 1,393,408 12,895 92.54
3 CNNIC-ALIBABA-US-NET-AP Alibaba (US) Technology Co. 45102 4,721,408 10,599 22.45
4 NAMECHEAP-NET 22612 91,648 8,844 965.00
5 DIGITALOCEAN-ASN 14061 2,599,168 6,810 26.20
6 MICROSOFT-CORP-MSN-AS-BLOCK 8075 46,778,368 6,208 1.33
7 GOOGLE 15169 23,095,040 6,109 2.65
8 AMAZON-02 16509 41,473,536 5,605 1.35
9 WEEBLY 27647 2,048 4,144 20234.38
10 BCPL-SG BGPNET Global ASN 64050 316,416 3,726 117.76
11 OVH - OVH SAS 16276 3,979,264 3,505 8.81
12 ASN-QUADRANET-GLOBAL 8100 664,320 3,377 50.83
13 CONTABO - Contabo GmbH 51167 237,312 2,796 117.82
14 AMAZON-AES 14618 16,338,944 2,782 1.70
15 AWEX - Hostinger International Limited 204915 768 2,516 32760.42
16 FASTLY 54113 521,472 2,070 39.70
17 DDOS-GUARD CORP. 262254 16,640 2,006 1205.53
18 DDOS-GUARD - DDOS-GUARD LTD 57724 5,632 1,925 3417.97
19 AS-REGRU - "Domain names registrar REG.RU", Ltd 197695 93,696 1,902 203.00
20 AS-COLOCROSSING 36352 783,104 1,788 22.83

To allow comparison of large and small Hosting Networks (ASNs), we also rank Hosting Networks based on a metric, phishing attack score, which is calculated by dividing the number phishing attacks reported against an ASN by the number of routable IPv4 addresses allocated to that ASN.

Hosting (ASN) Phishing Attack Score = (number of phishing attacks/IP Addresses in ASN) * 10,000

In the table below, we show the top 20 hosting operators based on phishing attack score.

Ranking of Hosting Networks (ASNs) by Phishing Attack Score
(August to October 2021)

Hosting Networks (ASNs) with a minimum of 50,000 IPv4 addresses and 25 phishing attacks

Rank AS Name AS number # Routed IPv4
Addresses
Phishing attacks Phishing Attack Score ▼
1 NAMECHEAP-NET 22612 91,648 8,844 965.00
2 AS-REGRU - "Domain names registrar REG.RU", Ltd 197695 93,696 1,902 203.00
3 PONYNET 53667 60,928 901 147.88
4 INMOTI-1 54641 56,832 782 137.60
5 IMH-WEST 22611 56,832 738 129.86
6 TIMEWEB-AS - TimeWeb Ltd. 9123 55,040 685 124.45
7 CONTABO - Contabo GmbH 51167 237,312 2,796 117.82
8 BCPL-SG BGPNET Global ASN 64050 316,416 3,726 117.76
9 AS-HOSTINGER - Hostinger International Limited 47583 106,240 1,083 101.94
10 CLOUDFLARENET 13335 2,354,688 23,747 100.85
11 UNIFIEDLAYER-AS-1 46606 1,393,408 12,895 92.54
12 NOCIX 33387 57,344 463 80.74
13 ASN-QUADRANET-GLOBAL 8100 664,320 3,377 50.83
14 NFORCE - NForce Entertainment B.V. 43350 85,504 398 46.55
15 IS-AS-1 19318 133,120 577 43.34
16 HKKFGL-AS-AP HK Kwaifong Group Limited 133115 51,712 222 42.93
17 WII 32097 94,464 404 42.77
18 HOSTWINDS 54290 327,424 1,394 42.57
19 FASTLY 54113 521,472 2,070 39.70
20 DEDIPATH-LLC 35913 308,992 1,119 36.21