Phishing Activity in Hosting Networks (ASNs)
February 1, 2022 - April 30, 2022

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 February 1, 2022 - April 30, 2022 period, we identified

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

- 47 hosting networks with 500 or more reported phishing attacks.

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

and 10 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.

Table 1 shows the twenty hosting networks with the highest numbers of reported phishing attacks.

Ranking of Hosting Networks (ASNs) by Phishing Attacks (February to April 2022)

Rank AS Name AS number # Routed
IPv4 Addresses
Phishing Attacks ▼ Phishing Attack Score
1 CLOUDFLARENET 13335 2,400,256 28,581 119.07
2 UNIFIEDLAYER-AS-1 46606 1,207,808 16,306 135.00
3 GOOGLE 15169 23,099,904 13,845 5.99
4 MICROSOFT-CORP-MSN-AS-BLOCK 8075 45,502,976 12,787 2.81
5 ASN-QUADRANET-GLOBAL 8100 574,208 8,509 148.19
6 FASTLY 54113 457,728 8,326 181.90
7 AWEX - Hostinger International Limited 204915 768 8,142 106015.63
8 WEEBLY 27647 2,048 6,976 34062.50
9 WIX_COM - Wix.com Ltd. 58182 1,792 6,837 38152.90
10 NAMECHEAP-NET 22612 102,912 6,120 594.68
11 AS-COLOCROSSING 36352 771,328 6,052 78.46
12 AMAZON-02 16509 42,667,520 5,307 1.24
13 DIGITALOCEAN-ASN 14061 2,701,056 5,300 19.62
14 AMAZON-AES 14618 16,401,664 4,076 2.49
15 BCPL-SG BGPNET Global ASN 64050 431,360 3,436 79.66
16 CONTABO - Contabo GmbH 51167 285,440 3,360 117.71
17 GREENFLOID-AS - ITL-Bulgaria Ltd. 204957 14,336 3,279 2287.25
18 CMNET-GD Guangdong Mobile Communication Co.Ltd. 9808 62,936,064 3,176 0.50
19 LINODE-AP Linode 63949 654,848 3,129 47.78
20 OVH - OVH SAS 16276 4,043,520 2,811 6.95

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

Table 2 shows the top 20 hosting operators based on phishing attack score.

Ranking of Hosting Networks (ASNs) by Phishing Attack Score (February to April 2022)

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 102,912 6,120 594.68
2 CONTABO 40021 52,992 2,066 389.87
3 AS-HOSTINGER - Hostinger International Limited 47583 124,672 2,275 182.48
4 FASTLY 54113 457,728 8,326 181.90
5 ENZUINC- 18978 73,472 1,104 150.26
6 ASN-QUADRANET-GLOBAL 8100 574,208 8,509 148.19
7 AS-REGRU - "Domain names registrar REG.RU", Ltd 197695 91,648 1,348 147.08
8 UNIFIEDLAYER-AS-1 46606 1,207,808 16,306 135.00
9 INMOTI-1 54641 61,440 814 132.49
10 CLOUDFLARENET 13335 2,400,256 28,581 119.07
11 CONTABO - Contabo GmbH 51167 285,440 3,360 117.71
12 TIMEWEB-AS - TimeWeb Ltd. 9123 59,136 646 109.24
13 PONYNET 53667 63,232 610 96.47
14 IMH-WEST 22611 56,832 455 80.06
15 BCPL-SG BGPNET Global ASN 64050 431,360 3,436 79.66
16 AS-COLOCROSSING 36352 771,328 6,052 78.46
17 PEGTECHINC-AP-03 398993 65,536 514 78.43
18 ASBAXETN - LLC Baxet 49392 88,320 635 71.90
19 GHOST - G-Core Labs S.A. 202422 62,464 390 62.44
20 UHGL-AS-AP UCloud (HK) Holdings Group Limited 135377 138,240 753 54.47