How AI is Supercharging Domain Attacks and Why Brands Must Level Up

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become the world’s most powerful productivity engine, but it’s also arming bad actors with new precision, speed and scale. In the past year, organisations have seen a marked rise in “AI-assisted domain abuse”, including fake websites, cloned storefronts, and phishing pages built in minutes rather than days. These attacks blur the line between automation and deception, forcing brands to rethink how they secure and monitor their domain portfolios. 

What Are Domain-Based Attacks?

Domain-based attacks are cyber operations that target either the Domain Name System (DNS) or the administrative layer of a domain, such as registrar accounts, ownership details, and configuration settings - while exploiting the trust users place in familiar web addresses. They’re diverse, adaptable, and often layered together for maximum deception.

Common domain-based attacks include:

• Website spoofing: fake websites built to look like legitimate brand sites.
• Domain spoofing: URLs that imitate real ones (e.g., “paypa1.com”).
• Email domain phishing: messages sent from realistic-looking domains to trick users into clicking malicious links or attachments.
• DNS hijacking: redirects traffic from legitimate domains to attacker-controlled ones.
• Domain hijacking: Unauthorised takeover of a registered domain name by manipulating account access, registrar credentials, DNS settings, or ownership records.
• Subdomain hijacking: Unauthorised takeover of a subdomain because the DNS still points to a decommissioned or unclaimed external service (“dangling DNS”).
• Domain shadowing: creates malicious subdomains under a compromised but trusted domain.
• Search engine poisoning: uses AI-generated content to make fake or malicious domains rank high in search results.

Cybercriminals often blend several of these techniques, for example, sending a phishing email from a spoofed domain that links to a cloned website used to harvest credentials.

Why These Attacks Are Growing

According to research by Darktrace, 78% of surveyed organisations reported significant impact from AI-powered threats, with AI-driven phishing topping the list.

AI has made domain-based attacks faster, smarter, and harder to detect through:

1. Speed and scale through automation

AI allows attackers to generate hundreds of lookalike domains, complete with realistic copy, imagery, and even dynamic product listings.

• Phishing campaigns are now capable of launching hundreds of fake sites within hours, each using personalised generative AI-written text indistinguishable from brand marketing.
• Cybercriminals can launch hundreds of domain attacks simultaneously, overwhelming manual monitoring.
• Attackers rely on automated scripts to register domain variants and deploy cloned sites via cloud-hosting APIs.

2. Realism that drives results

Generative AI produces brand-accurate tone, typography, and design. One study showed AI-generated phishing emails achieved a 54% click-through rate, compared with 12% for human-written ones (Crowdstrike). When that content sits on a domain that visually matches a trusted brand, users are far more likely to hand over credentials or payment data.

3. Domain infrastructure as a weapon

Domains are more than names; they are the infrastructure for trust. Attackers weaponise them through:

• DNS manipulation: fast-flux or hijacked subdomains.
• SSL/TLS abuse: legitimate certificates on fake sites lend credibility.
• Short-lived domain lifecycles: constant rotation to evade blacklists.

According to Indusface, 87% of organisations now report experiencing DNS-related attacks, showing how deeply the domain layer is being targeted.

“AI doesn’t just accelerate attacks; it multiplies the number of attack surfaces, turning every neglected domain and subdomain into a potential breach point."

- Jeanett Tesfaledet, Registrar Compliance Manager, Domain Management

The Rise of “Bionic Infringers”

A new breed of attacker is emerging: the so-called “bionic infringer.”

This term describes threat actors who blend AI’s scale and speed with human cunning. Artificial intelligence generates text, imagery, and even product catalogues, while humans refine and deploy them strategically, resulting in hundreds of fake domains and web shops that mimic legitimate brands almost perfectly.

The results are staggering. A study by Hoxhunt found a 4,151% increase in phishing email volume following the release of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT. Meanwhile, DNSFilter reported a 140% surge in new domain registrations in early 2025, with nearly one in five flagged as malicious. What once took weeks now happens in minutes: AI builds the clone, humans fine-tune the scam, and brands pay the price.

These “bionic” operations exploit every layer of domain infrastructure, from registrations and DNS to certificates and web hosting, making them faster, smarter, and harder to stop.

Why Domain Portfolios Are a Strategic Risk for Brands

This threat isn’t just a technical annoyance; for any organisation managing domain assets, there are direct business, customer and reputational implications.

• Brand trust erosion: Customers who land on fake versions of your site, or fall for phishing emails, may associate this negative experience with your brand. The damage done by one successful impostor site can ripple across social media, legal claims and regulatory scrutiny, and highlights the need for domain and email security.
• Customer data and payment exposure: Fake shops and credential capture domains yield stolen payment data, chargebacks, fraud losses and customer harm. That harms your bottom line and your standing.
• Operational and legal cost: You may face significant takedown efforts, legal notices, breach notifications, regulatory penalties, especially if customer identities or payment information is compromised.
• Domain assets as attack vector: Your portfolio isn’t static. Domains you’ve registered, DNS records you’ve forgotten, certificates you didn’t monitor become openings. Attackers treat them as entry points. Research shows that a majority of organisations are still behind: one post indicated “68% of Global 2000 companies have implemented less than half of recommended domain security measures.”

Simply put: the domain layer is now part of your perimeter. If it’s unmanaged, unchecked or poorly monitored, that asset becomes your liability.

“A domain portfolio is no longer a static asset, it’s a frontline in brand defense. A proactive portfolio turns risk into resilience."

- Jeanett Tesfaledet, Registrar Compliance Manager, Domain Management

Strategic Response: Building a Robust Defence for Domain Asset

Addressing this risk requires more than registering more domains or buying ad hoc detection tools. The defence strategy must be holistic, combining technical controls, process maturity and brand safe culture. Below are key pillars of an effective approach:

• Technical fundamentals: Ensure your portfolio infrastructure is fortified. Domains should be tracked and inventoried; Registry Lock and 2FA should be employed; DNS zones locked (enable DNSSEC); SSL certificates monitored via certificate transparency logs; subdomains reviewed and cleaned up.
• Continuous monitoring and detection: Deploy tools that automatically scan for newly registered lookalike domains, certificate issuance for suspicious domains, hosting changes, DNS anomalies and abnormal redirect behaviours. Automation is critical because manual discovery is too slow.
• Rapid takedown & escalation workflows: Prebuild your playbooks: registrar abuse templates, hosting provider contacts, legal escalation paths, payment processor blocks. When you detect a malicious domain impersonating you, you must act quickly.
• Hybrid human + AI detection: Attackers are already using AI, so your defences must too. Leveraging machine learning models and behavioural telemetry is important, but human analysts still need to validate high-risk cases, interpret context and make judgement calls.
• Brand centric customer and partner communication: Educate your customers and partners about your official domains, trusted stores and verification methods. Provide them straightforward ways to verify legitimacy (e.g., “check the URL, look for valid certificates, don’t trust unsolicited links”).
• Governance, metrics and reporting: Treat domain portfolio safety as a board level issue. Track metrics such as “number of impersonation domains detected”, “time to takedown”, “customer complaints linked to domain abuse”, and “number of unused domains deleted”. Report them regularly.
• Employee training: Build domain awareness into security culture. Train employees to recognise suspicious domains, spoofed emails, and fake shops. Encourage them to verify URLs before sharing links publicly, and to escalate suspected impersonation attempts through defined internal channels.