Adversaries may hijack domains and/or subdomains that can be used during targeting. Domain registration hijacking is the act of changing the registration of a domain name without the permission of the original registrant.(Citation: ICANNDomainNameHijacking) Adversaries may gain access to an email account for the person listed as the owner of the domain. The adversary can then claim that they forgot their password in order to make changes to the domain registration. Other possibilities include social engineering a domain registration help desk to gain access to an account or taking advantage of renewal process gaps.(Citation: Krebs DNS Hijack 2019)

Subdomain hijacking can occur when organizations have DNS entries that point to non-existent or deprovisioned resources. In such cases, an adversary may take control of a subdomain to conduct operations with the benefit of the trust associated with that domain.(Citation: Microsoft Sub Takeover 2020)

Adversaries who compromise a domain may also engage in domain shadowing by creating malicious subdomains under their control while keeping any existing DNS records. As service will not be disrupted, the malicious subdomains may go unnoticed for long periods of time.(Citation: Palo Alto Unit 42 Domain Shadowing 2022)
Domains
source_name: mitre-attack  url: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1584/001  external_id: T1584.001     source_name: Krebs DNS Hijack 2019  description: Brian Krebs. (2019, February 18). A Deep Dive on the Recent Widespread DNS Hijacking Attacks. Retrieved February 14, 2022.  url: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/02/a-deep-dive-on-the-recent-widespread-dns-hijacking-attacks/     source_name: ICANNDomainNameHijacking  description: ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee. (2005, July 12). Domain Name Hijacking: Incidents, Threats, Risks and Remediation. Retrieved March 6, 2017.  url: https://www.icann.org/groups/ssac/documents/sac-007-en     source_name: Palo Alto Unit 42 Domain Shadowing 2022  description: Janos Szurdi, Rebekah Houser and Daiping Liu. (2022, September 21). Domain Shadowing: A Stealthy Use of DNS Compromise for Cybercrime. Retrieved March 7, 2023.  url: https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/domain-shadowing/     source_name: Microsoft Sub Takeover 2020  description: Microsoft. (2020, September 29). Prevent dangling DNS entries and avoid subdomain takeover. Retrieved October 12, 2020.  url: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/security/fundamentals/subdomain-takeover     