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CIA 2010 covert communication websites (Iran, China)

This article is about covert agent communication channel websites used by the CIA in many countries from the late 2000s until the early 2010s, when they were uncovered by counter intelligence of the targeted countries circa 2011-2013. This discovery led to the imprisonment and execution of several assets in Iran and China, and subsequent shutdown of the channel.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cirosantilli/media/master/CIA_Star_Wars_website_promo.jpg
Video 1.
How I found a Star Wars website made by the CIA by Ciro Santilli
. Source. Slightly edited VOD of the talk Aratu Week 2024 Talk by Ciro Santilli: My Best Random Projects.
The existence of such websites was first reported in November 2018 by Yahoo News: www.yahoo.com/video/cias-communications-suffered-catastrophic-compromise-started-iran-090018710.html.
Previous whispers had been heard in 2017 but without clear mention of websites: www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies-espionage.html:
Some were convinced that a mole within the C.I.A. had betrayed the United States. Others believed that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the C.I.A. used to communicate with its foreign sources. Years later, that debate remains unresolved.
[...]
From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, [...] the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the C.I.A.’s sources. [...] One was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building — a message to others who might have been working for the C.I.A.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cirosantilli/media/master/Yahoo_CIA_website_article.png
Then in September 2022 a few specific websites were finally reported by Reuters: www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-spies-iran/, henceforth known only as "the Reuters article" in this article.
Figure 1.
Banner of the Reuters article
. Source.
Figure 2.
Reuters reconstruction of what the applet would have looked like
. Source.
Figure 3.
Inspecting the Reuters article HTML source code
. Source. The Reuters article only gave one URL explicitly: iraniangoals.com. But most others could be found by inspecting the HTML of the screenshots provided, except for the Carson website.
Ciro Santilli heard about the 2018 article at around 2020 while studying for his China campaign because the websites had been used to take down the Chinese CIA network in China. He even asked on Quora: www.quora.com/What-were-some-examples-of-the-websites-that-the-CIA-used-around-2010-as-a-communication-mechanism-for-its-spies-in-China-and-Iran-but-were-later-found-and-used-to-take-down-their-spy-networks but there were no publicly known domains at the time to serve as a starting point. Chris, Electrical Engineer and former Avionics Tech in the US Navy, even replied suggesting that obviously the CIA is so competent that it would never ever have its sites leaked like that:
Seriously a dumb question.
So when Ciro Santilli heard about the 2022 article almost a year after publication, and being a half-arsed web developer himself, he knew he had to try and find some of the domains himself using the newly available information! It was an irresistible real-life capture the flag. The thing is, everyone who has ever developed a website knows that its attack surface is about the size of Texas, and the potential for fingerprinting is off the charts with so many bits and pieces sticking out. Chris, get fucked.
Figure 4.
"Seriously a dumb question" Quora answer by Chris from the US Navy
. Source.
In particular, it is fun to have such a clear and visible to anyone examples of the USA spying on its own allies in the form of Wayback Machine archives.
Given that it was reported that there were "more than 350" such websites, it would be really cool if we could uncover more of those websites ourselves beyond the 9 domains reported by Reuters!
This article documents the list of extremely likely candidates Ciro has found so far, mostly using:
more details on methods also follow. It is still far from the 885 websites reported by citizenlabs, so there must be key techniques missing. But the fact that there are no Google Search hits for the domains or IPs (except in bulk e.g. in expired domain trackers) indicates that these might not have been previously clearly publicly disclosed.
If anyone can find others, or has better techniques: Section "How to contact Ciro Santilli". The techniques used so far have been very heuristic, and that added to the limited amount of data makes it almost certain that several IP ranges have been missed. There are two types of contributions that would be possible:
Perhaps the current heuristically obtained data can serve as a good starting for a more data-oriented search that will eventually find a valuable fingerprint which brings the entire network out.
Disclaimer: the network fell in 2013, followed by fully public disclosures in 2018 and 2022, so we believe it is now more than safe for the public to know what can still be uncovered about the events that took place. The main author's political bias is strongly pro-democracy and anti-dictatorship.
May this list serve as a tribute to those who spent their days making, using, and uncovering these websites under the shadows.
If you want to go into one of the best OSINT CTFs of your life, stop reading now and see how many Web Archives you can find starting only from the Reuters article as Ciro did. Some guidelines:
  • there was no ultra-clean fingerprint found yet. Some intuitive and somewhat guessy data analysis was needed. But when you clean the data correctly and make good guesses, many hits follow, it feels so good
  • nothing was paid for data. But using cybercafe Wifi's for a few extra IPs may help.
Figure 5.
viewdns.info activegameinfo.com domain to IP
. Source.
Figure 6.
viewdns.info aroundthemiddleeast.com IP to domain
. Source.
Figure 7.
DNS Census 2013 website
. Source. This source provided valuable historical domain to IP data. It was likely extracted with an illegal botnet. Data excerpt from the CSVs:
amazon.com,2012-02-01T21:33:36,72.21.194.1
amazon.com,2012-02-01T21:33:36,72.21.211.176
amazon.com,2013-10-02T19:03:39,72.21.194.212
amazon.com,2013-10-02T19:03:39,72.21.215.232
amazon.com.au,2012-02-10T08:03:38,207.171.166.22
amazon.com.au,2012-02-10T08:03:38,72.21.206.80
google.com,2012-01-28T05:33:40,74.125.159.103
google.com,2012-01-28T05:33:40,74.125.159.104
google.com,2013-10-02T19:02:35,74.125.239.41
google.com,2013-10-02T19:02:35,74.125.239.46
Figure 8.
The four communication mechanisms used by the CIA websites
. Java Applets, Adobe Flash, JavaScript and HTTPS
Figure 9.
Expired domain names by day 2011
. Source. The scraping of expired domain trackers to Github was one of the positive outcomes of this project.
Video 2.
Compromised Comms by Darknet Diaries (2023)
Source.
It was the YouTube suggestion for this video that made Ciro Santilli aware of the Reuters article almost one year after its publication, which kickstarted his research on the topic.
Full podcast transcript: darknetdiaries.com/transcript/75/

Results

words: 5k articles: 3

Selected screenshots

words: 340
Figure 10.
2010 Wayback Machine archive of starwarsweb.net
.
The Star Wars one. Clearly branded websites like this are rare, which makes finding them all the much more fun. The Reuters article had two of them (Carson and rastadirect.net), so these were probably manually selected from the full hit dataset, and did not serve specifically as entry points. Most of the websites are quite boring and forgetful as you'd expect.
The subtitle "Beyond The Unknown" may be a reference to the Unknown Regions in the Star Wars fictional universe.
Figure 11.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of iranfootballsource.com
. The third Iranian football on top of the two other published by Reuters: iraniangoalkicks.com and iraniangoals.com! Admittedly, this one is the most generic and less well designed one. But still. They pushed the theme too far!
Figure 12.
2010 Wayback Machine archive of dedrickonline.com
.
The German one.
The CIA has had a few Germany espionage scandals in the 2010s:
Figure 13.
2010 Wayback Machine archive of lesummumdelafinance.com
. A French one. Because it mentions VTT (Mountain Biking in French), it must focus France.
Figure 14.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of attivitaestremi.com
. An Italian one about extreme sports.
Figure 15.
2010 Wayback Machine archive of noticiasmusica.net
.
The Brazilian one.
In 2013 Glen Greenwald claimed that the espionage in Brazil was merely a bridge to other countries of interest such as China and Iran
Figure 16.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of economicnewsbuzz.com
. The Korean one. Love the kawaii style!
Figure 17.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of snapnewsfront.net
. The Japanese one.
Figure 18.
2010 Wayback Machine archive of philippinenewsonline.net
. The Philippine one one.
Figure 19.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of feedsdemexicoyelmundo.com
. The Mexican one.
Figure 20.
2012 Wayback Machine archive of easytraveleurope.com
.
Figure 21.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of tee-shot.net
. One of the many golf-themed sites. Golf appears to be quite popular over in Langley. It's exactly what you'd expect for a mid-level spook to do in their free time!
Figure 22.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of nouvellesetdesrapports.com
.
Figure 23.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of pangawana.com
.
Figure 24.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of recuerdosdeviajeonline.com
.
Figure 25.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of theworld-news.net
.
Figure 26.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of kessingerssportsnews.com
.
Figure 27.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of negativeaperture.com
.

USA spying on its own allies

words: 505
Being Brazilian, Ciro Santilli is particularly curious about the existence of a Brazilian-focused website one mentioned in the article, as well as in other democracies.
WTF the CIA was doing in Brazil in the early 2010s! Wasn't helping to install the Military dictatorship in Brazil enough!
Here are the democracies found so far, defining a democracy as a country with score 7.0 or more in the Democracy index 2010. In native language:
In English, so more deniable:
"Almost democracies":
Ciro couldn't help but feel as if looking through the Eyes of Sauron himself!
It is worth noting that democracies represent just a small minority of the websites found. The Middle East, and Spanish language sites (presumably for Venezuela + war on drugs countries?) where the huge majority. But Americans have to understand that democracies have to work together and build mutual trust, and not spy on one another. Even some of the enlightened people from Hacker News seem to not grasp this point. The USA cannot single handedly maintain world order as it once could. Collaboration based on trust is the only way.
Snowden's 2013 revelations particularly shocked USA allies with the fact that they were being spied upon, and as of the 2020's, everybody knows this and has "stopped caring", and or moved to end-to-end encryption by default. This is beautifully illustrated in the Snowden when Snowden talks about his time in Japan working for Dell as an undercover NSA operative:
NSA wanted to impress the Japanese. Show them our reach. They loved the live video from drones. This is Pakistan right now [video shows CIA agents demonstrating drone footage to Japanese officials]. They were not as excited about that we wanted their help to spy on the Japanese population. They said it was against their laws.
We bugged the country anyway, of course.
And we did not stop there. Once we had their communications we continued with the physical infrastructure. We sneaked into small programs in their power grids, dams, hospitals. The idea was that if Japan one day was not our allies we could turn off the lights.
And it was not just Japan. We planted software in Mexico, Germany, Brazil, Austria.
China, I can understand. Or Russia or Iran. Venezuela, okay.
But Austria? [shows footage of cow on an idyllic Alpine mountain grazing field, suggesting that there is nothing in Austria to spy on]
Another noteworthy scene from that movie is Video "Aptitude test scene from the Snowden 2016 film", where a bunch of new CIA recruits are told that:
Each of you is going to build a covert communications network in your home city [i.e. their fictitious foreign target location written on each person's desk, not necessarily where they were actually born], you're going to deploy it, backup your site, destroy it, and restore it again.

List of websites

words: 4k
As a JSON: github.com/cirosantilli/media/blob/master/cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/hits.json. OurBigBook Markup to JSON conversion helper cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/bigb-to-json:
cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/bigb-to-json cia-2010-covert-communication-websites.bigb
Hit criteria: has Wayback Machine archive, and clear indication of a known communication mechanism. The mechanism itself doesn't need to be archived however, a link to it is enough given other supporting elements: IP range, site style, date, web archive date pattern. JS commons are always quickly visually inspected, other mechanisms we look only at filename patterns. Commented edge cases that didn't make the cut can be found mostly under Section "IP range search" and Section "2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches".
ipdomainWayback Machinelanguagecountry mentionscommsthemenotes
?all-sport-headlines.com2011ArabicJARnewssplit images[ref][ref]Arabic-looking alphabet, image only so can't Google translate easily.
?firstnewssource.com2011FarsiIranJARnewsCopyright 2009. Split images. rss-items.
?global-view-news.com2011EnglishJARnewssplit images[ref][ref]
?globaltourist.net2010EnglishJARtravelsplit images[ref][ref], rss-items. speed.jar "speed test" JAR pattern. Seems to have been legit both before.
?hassannews.net2010ArabicSWFnewsCSS or archive quite broken. Split images[ref][ref]. rss-items.
?health-men-today.com2011ArabicJARnewsrss-items. Encoding broken.
?intlnewsdaily.com2011EnglishJARnewsrss-items
?newdaynewsonline.com2011EnglishJARnews
?newsincirculation.com2011ArabicJARnews
?newsworldsite.com2011PashtoAfghanistanJARnews
?pars-technews.com2011FarsiIranJARnews"pars" presumably means "Parsi" or something of the same root
?sportsnewsfinder.com2011ChineseChinaJARnews体育新闻发现者 (sports news finder)
?terrain-news.com2011PashtoAfghanistanJARnews
?theworldnewsfeeds.com2011EnglishJARnewsrss-items. Split images[ref][ref]
?todayoutdoors.com2011EnglishJARsports, travelsplit images[ref][ref]
?todaysnewsreports.net2010ArabicJARnews
?weblognewsinfo.com2011EnglishJARnewsSplit images, rss-items.
?opensourcenewstoday.com2010ArabicJARnewscopyright 2010
?techwatchtoday.com2011EnglishJARtech, newsMarked copyright 2008. Split images[ref][ref]. Later legit.
?cyhiraeth-intlnews.com2011EnglishJARnewsen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyhyraeth "The cyhyraeth is a ghostly spirit in Welsh mythology, a disembodied moaning voice that sounds before a person's death." WTF! So the serious looking black actress lady is meant to represent the voice of death?. Split images[ref][ref]. rss-items
?24hoursprimenews.com2009EnglishJARnewssplit images[ref][ref]
?dailynewsandsports.com2013EnglishJARsports
?europeannewsflash.com2011EnglishJARnewsSplit images[ref][ref]
?farsi-newsandweather.com2011FarsiIranJARnewssplit images[ref][ref]
?iranfootballsource.com2011FarsiJSsports, football
?iraniangoalkicks.com2008FarsiIranJARsports, football
?iraniangoals.com2009FarsiIranJSsports, football
?mywebofnews.com2011ArabicJARnewsSplit images[ref][ref]. rss-items.
?news-latina.com2011EnglishJARnewscopyright 2007
?outlooknewscast.com2011FarsiIranJARnews
?rastadirect.net2010EnglishJARfansite
?todaysengineering.com2011EnglishCGIengineering
?worldofonlinenews.com2011EnglishJARnewssplit images[ref][ref]. Later legit.
62.22.60.42newsupdatesite.com2011EnglishJARnewsrdns source
62.22.60.46flyingtimeline.com2011EnglishJARairplanes
62.22.60.48currentcommunique.com2011EnglishEgyptSWFnews
62.22.60.49telecom-headlines.com2011EnglishJStech
62.22.60.52collectedmedias.com2011FrenchJSnewsMarked copyright 2008
62.22.60.55thefilmcentre.com2011EnglishJSfilms
62.22.60.56traveltimenews.com2011EnglishJSnews
62.22.61.193awfaoi.org2010ArabicIraqJARnot-for-profitThis was the first clear .org hit with comms we've been able to find. Title translation: "Arab women to help Iraq", so perhaps "awfaoi" stands for "Arab Women For A O? Iraq". This fits well into the .org theme. Marked copyright 2008.
62.22.61.197rc5sports.com2011EnglishJARsports
62.22.61.198inside-vc.com2011EnglishCGIfinance"vc" is a standard abbreviation for venture capital
62.22.61.202bailsnboots.com2011EnglishSWFsports, cricket"Bail" is one part of the thing your're supposed to hit with th eball in cricket.[ref]
62.22.61.203the-cricketer-online.com2011EnglishJARsports, cricketmarked copyright 2009.
62.22.61.204hollywoodscreen.net2011EnglishJSfilms
62.22.61.206worldnewsnetworking.com2011ArabicJARnews
62.22.61.212nuestrasfinanzas.com2011SpanishJARfinance
62.22.61.217court-masters.com2011EnglishJARsports, tennis
62.22.61.219allworldstatistics.com2011EnglishJSstatistics
62.22.61.220newsjaka.com2011EnglishIndonesiaJSnews"jaka" presumably means Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. There is a Indonesia section on the left sidebar. But the news are quite global however.
63.131.229.2fightskillsresource.com2011EnglishJSsports, martial arts
63.131.229.4unitedterritorynews.com2011EnglishJSnews
63.131.229.9show-dustry.com2011EnglishCGIentertainmentThe website name is a neologism with "show" and "industry".
63.131.229.11mythriftytrip.com2011EnglishCGItravelthrifty means: "using money and other resources carefully and not wastefully"
63.131.229.12cyberreportagenews.com2011EnglishJARnewsrdns source
63.131.229.13sunrise-news.com2011EnglishJARnewsrdns source
63.131.229.15cricketnewsforindia.com2013EnglishIndiaJSsports, cricketarchive quite broken, lots of missing files, including the JS
63.131.229.16nutricion-saludable.net2010SpanishCGIhealth
63.131.229.20fixashion.net2011EnglishJSfashion
63.130.160.50theglobalheadlines.com2010EnglishJARnewsthis has several archives from 2013, marked as Live Web Proxy Crawls and explained "mostly by the Save Page Now", so presumably by counter intelligence or amateurs
63.130.160.51hai-pow.com2011EnglishJARsports, martial arts
63.130.160.53echessnews.com2011ChineseChinaJARsports, boxingChinese title: 我的象棋世界 (My Chinese Chess world). rdns source. Split images[ref][ref]
63.130.160.60boxingstop.net2010PolishPolandJARsports, boxing
63.130.160.62azerinews.org2009AzerbaijaniAzerbaijanJARnewsrdns source. Split images, rss-items.
64.16.204.55holein1news.com2010EnglishJARsports, golf
64.16.204.58tech-topix.com2013EnglishCGItechArchive quite broken, but link to CGI comms.
65.61.127.163capture-nature.com2011EnglishJARphotographyReuters example. Since became legitimate, Ciro contacted the owner, and he was unaware of the domain's history.
65.61.127.166globalnewsbulletin.com2013EnglishTunisia, Afghanistan, Iran, EgyptCGInewsPHP pages, images /images/index_01.jpg
65.61.127.169crossovernews.net2011EnglishJARsports, basketball
65.61.127.174dedrickonline.com2010GermanJSsports
65.61.127.175altworldnews.com2013EnglishCGInewsEpoch times link, PHP pages
65.61.127.178tee-shot.net2011EnglishSWFsports, golfnice domain name
65.61.127.182pangawana.com2011ArabicAfghanistanJSnews
65.61.127.183cutabovenews.com2011EnglishAlgeria, various othersJSsports, basketball
65.61.127.184worldwildlifeadventure.com2011EnglishJARtravel
65.61.127.186explorealtmeds.com2013EnglishJARhealththe JAR was not archived, but there's a link to it
65.218.91.9welcometonyc.net2010EnglishCGItravel
65.218.91.17alljohnny.com2004EnglishCGIfansitemega early hit from 2004 to 2005. Then a gap, then they redid the domain: 2011. Same authors given content similarities e.g. "Submit Your Favorite Carson Moment". Reusing the domain after all these years, the lack of OPSEC is just mind blowing! New website marked Copyright 2003. Part of Oleg Shakirov's findings. One of the Reuters websites. Search documented at: Searching for Carson.
66.45.179.192thegraceofislam.com2011EnglishCGIreligion, Islam
66.45.179.193arabicnewsunfiltered.com2011ArabicJARnewsrdns source
66.45.179.194raulsonsglobalnews.com2011EnglishJARnews
66.45.179.195aryannews.net2010PashtoAfghanistanJARnewsrdns source. Heil.
66.45.179.199attivitaestremi.com2011ItalianCGIsports
66.45.179.201hitthepavementnow.com2011EnglishCGIsports, running
66.45.179.202newimages.org2011TurkishTurkeyJARphotographyJAR unarchived
66.45.179.203noticiascontinental.com2011SpanishSouth AmericaCGInews
66.45.179.205noticiasporjanua.com2011SpanishJARnews
66.45.179.206podisticamondiale.com2010ItalianItalyJARsports, runningmarked copyright 2010
66.45.179.207reflectordenoticias.com2011SpanishJARnews
66.45.179.208havenofgamerz.com2011EnglishCGIgamingmarked copyright 2009
66.45.179.210sa-michigan.com2011EnglishJARsports"sa" is an abbreviation for the site title "Sports Alive"
66.45.179.211absolutebearing.net2010EnglishCGItravel, sports, boats
66.45.179.213myportaltonews.com2011EnglishJSnews
66.45.179.214investmentintellect.com2011EnglishJARfinance
66.45.179.215nigeriastar.net2011EnglishNigeriaJARnewsContains link to unarchived JAR
66.104.169.163doctorsoncallsite.com2011EnglishJARhealth
66.104.169.164lightandshadowonline.com2010EnglishJARphotography
66.104.169.168plugged-into-news.net2010EnglishJARnewsJAR uses .zip extension! First instance, wow
66.104.169.171golf-on-holiday.com2011EnglishJARsports, golf
66.104.169.172perspectiva-noticias.com2011SpanishJSnews
66.104.169.175aquaswimming.com2009EnglishJARsports, swimming
66.104.169.177dojo-temple.com2011EnglishCGIsports, martial artsTODO meaning of "kama"? Kama lol?
66.104.169.179neighbour-news.com2010EnglishGermanyJARnewsMentions of Goethe-Institut and Germany all over. JAR unarchived
66.104.169.180medicatechinfo.com2010EnglishJShealth
66.104.169.181brickmanfinancialnews.com2011EnglishJSfinance
66.104.169.182casanewsnow.com2011EnglishJARJAR unarchived. TODO why "casa"? Doesn't seem to have any link to Spanish or Portuguese.
66.104.169.184bcenews.com2011AlbanianAlbaniaJARnews
66.104.173.163runakonews.com2011EnglishAfricaCGInews"Runako" is an African given name.
66.104.173.164shoppingadventure.net2010EnglishJARtravel, shoppingJAR unarchived
66.104.173.165entertaining-ly.com2011EnglishJARentertainment
66.104.173.166zubeenews.com2011EnglishJSnews"Zubee" is a Muslim name: muslimnames.com/zubee.
66.104.173.169smart-financeology.com2011EnglishJARfinance
66.104.173.175media-coverage-now.com2010EnglishSWFnews
66.104.173.176jbc-online-news.com2011EnglishJSnewsTODO meaning of "JCB". JS unarchived.
66.104.173.177webscooper.com2011EnglishJARnews
66.104.173.178dk-dcinvestment.com2010EnglishJARfinanceTODO meaning of "dk;dc".
66.104.173.180stara-turistick.com2011CroatianJARtourism
66.104.173.181playbackpolitics.com2011EnglishJSnews
66.104.173.182snapnewsfront.net2011EnglishJapanJSnews
66.104.173.183ingenuitytrendz.com2011EnglishJARtech
66.104.173.184armashoy.com2011SpanishSpainSWFgunsmeaning: "Weapons Today". In First World countries the CIA felt it would be safe to touch edgier subjects like guns
66.104.173.185baocontact.comEnglishJARHTML archive almost empty, but JAR was archived. One wonders what "bao" refers to, could be Chinese, but the small snippet of visible website is in English.
66.104.173.186myworldlymusic.com2011EnglishPakistanJARmusicJAR unarchived
66.104.173.189hitpoint-gaming.com2011EnglishJSgamingMarked copyright 2010
66.104.175.34itwebtoday.com2011EnglishJStech
66.104.175.35drglobalnews.com2011EnglishJARnewsTODO meaning of "dr"? rdns source.
66.104.175.36adilnews.net2010ArabicSWFnewsAdil is an Arabic masculine name
66.104.175.40beyondnetworknews.com2011EnglishEgyptCGInews
66.104.175.41grubbersworldrugbynews.com2011EnglishJSsports, rugby
66.104.175.44yourtripfinder.net2010EnglishCGItravelcomms not found, CGI from unarchived subpage assumed
66.104.175.45rollinsnetwork.com2011EnglishCGItechCGI linked to but not archived
66.104.175.46infosharenews.com2011EnglishJARnews
66.104.175.47southasiaheadlines.com2011EnglishBangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka TibetJARtravelJAR linked to but missing from archive
66.104.175.48worlddispatch.net2010ArabicSWFnews
66.104.175.49webworldsports.com2011ArabicJARsports
66.104.175.50fly-bybirdies.com2011EnglishJARtravel
66.104.175.51businessexchangetoday.com2011EnglishCGInews, financePHP pages
66.104.175.52mensajeradenoticias.com2011SpanishCGInewsCGI unarchived
66.104.175.53info-ology.net2010EnglishJARnews
66.104.175.54marketflows.net2011EnglishJARfinance
66.104.175.57metanewsdaily.com2010EnglishCGInews
66.175.106.134paddlescoop.com2011EnglishBangladesh, Pakistan, India, EnglandJARsports, cricket
66.175.106.137kessingerssportsnews.com2010EnglishJSsports
66.175.106.138factorforcenews.com2009EnglishJARnews
66.175.106.142kanata-news.com2010EnglishCanadaJSnews"Kanata" is a place in Ottawa, Canada. The name is likely of Indigenous origin.
66.175.106.143thecricketfan.com2011EnglishJARnews
66.175.106.146inews-today.com2011EnglishEgyptJARnewsMarked copyright 2008
66.175.106.147starwarsweb.net2010EnglishSWFfansitewell, not even the CIA can escape Star Wars. TODO identify boy.
66.175.106.148activegaminginfo.com2011ChineseJARgamingthe website is entitled "活跃游戏" which means "Lively games", or "active games" as in the domain name itself
66.175.106.149feedsdemexicoyelmundo.com2011SpanishMexicoJSnews
66.175.106.150noticiasmusica.net2010Brazilian PortugueseBrazilJARmusic
66.175.106.155atomworldnews.com2011EnglishEgyptJARnews
66.175.106.158nouvellesetdesrapports.com2011FrenchEgypt, TunisiaJARnews
66.237.236.227newsandmusicminute.com2011PashtoJSmusic
66.237.236.229pearls-playlist.com2011EnglishSWFmusic
66.237.236.230beyondthefringe.info2012EnglishJARrugsJAR unarchived
66.237.236.231primetimemovies.net2009EnglishJSfilmsJS unarchived
66.237.236.235persephneintl.com2013JARarchive very broken, JAR unarchived. Full title: "Persephne International", reference to Greek Goddess of "spring, the dead, the underworld, grain, and nature"
66.237.236.236directoalgrano.net2010SpanishJARnews
66.237.236.240actualizaciondebeisbol.com2011SpanishJSsports, baseball
66.237.236.243mygadgettech.com2009ChineseCGItechArchive very broken
66.237.236.247comunidaddenoticias.com2011SpanishEcuadorJARnews
66.237.236.249sumerjaseahora.com2011SpanishCGIsports, SCUBA divingsubmerge yourself now
69.84.156.69al-ashak-news-me.com2011ArabicJSnews
69.84.156.71worldfinancetoday.net2011EnglishJARfinance
69.84.156.72autonewsarabia.com2011ArabicJARcars
69.84.156.74blue-moon-news.com2011ArabicJSnews
69.84.156.76tnc-urdu.com2011UrduJARtechTODO meaning of "tnc"?
69.84.156.82arabicnewsonline.com2011ArabicJARnewsrdns source. Some very similar domains: modernarabicnews.com, arabicnewsource.com. Needed more creativity here! Later legit.
69.84.156.83unganadormundial.com2010SpanishCGIsports, fitness
69.84.156.88diariodeelmundo.com2011SpanishJARnews
69.84.156.89todaysarabnews.com2011ArabicJARnewsJAR unarchived.
69.84.156.90stickshiftnews.com2011EnglishJARcars
69.84.156.91theinternationalgoal.com2011SpanishCGInews
72.34.53.174electronictechreviews.com2011EnglishJARtechJAR unarchived. Split images, rss-items. Present at "Mass Deface III" pastebin.
72.34.53.174just-the-news.com2011ArabicJARnewscopyright 2009. Present at "Mass Deface III" pastebin. JAR unarchived.
72.34.53.174kickitnews.com2010ArabicJARsports, footballcopyright 2009. Present at "Mass Deface III" pastebin.
72.34.53.174moyistochnikonlaynovykhigr.com2011RussianRussiafansitecopy of myonlinegamesource.com, but on a Russian transliterated domain rather than the English one, very interesting
72.34.53.174myhealthlibrary.net2011EnglishJARhealthpresent at: "Mass Deface III" pastebin.
72.34.53.174myonlinegamesource.com2011RussianRussiagamingCan't find comms, but stylistically perfect. rss-items. Present at "Mass Deface III" pastebin.
72.34.53.174mytravelopian.com2011EnglishJARtravel
72.34.53.174recursosdenoticias.com2011SpanishJARnewsSplit images, rss-items. Present at "Mass Deface III" pastebin.
72.34.53.174sayaara-auto.com2010ArabicJARcars
72.34.53.174technologytodayandtomorrow.com2011EnglishJARtechrss-items. Present at "Mass Deface III" pastebin.
72.34.53.174todaysnewsandweather-ru.com2011RussianRussiaJSnewsJavaScript with SHAs
74.116.72.227dayenews.com2011EnglishJARnewsrdns source. Previously 69.74.45.67.
74.116.72.229guide-daventure.com2011FrenchFranceJARtravel
74.116.72.231bleachersfootballnews.com2011EnglishJARsports, footballTODO meaning of "Bleacher"? Possible reference to Bleacher Report.
74.116.72.232indirectfreekick.com2011EnglishJARsports, football
74.116.72.233wwiichronicles.net2011EnglishCGIhistory
74.116.72.234petroleumagenews.com2011EnglishJARoil
74.116.72.235the-open-book-online.com2011EnglishJSliterature
74.116.72.236techtopnews.com2011EnglishJARtech
74.116.72.239crickettoday.info2013PashtoJSsports, cricketJS unarchived. The requested URL /cricket.js was not found on this server
74.116.72.240zafernews.com2011ArabicJARnews
74.116.72.242gdgtsource.com2011EnglishCGItechPresumably "gdgt" stands for "GaDGeT", which is mentioned on subtitle
74.116.72.246vuvuzelanews.com2011EnglishJARsports, footballVuvuzela is this plastic horn, popular in football stadiums. The term is of African origin. Later legit. rdns source. Previously at 69.74.45.86.
74.116.72.247ballbatstumpsandbails.com2011EnglishJARsports, cricket
74.116.72.249round-trip-travel.com2010EnglishCGItravelthis got archived a lot of times, though all seem to be Alexa crawls.
74.116.72.250arabicnewsource.com2011ArabicCGInews
74.254.12.163half-court.net2010EnglishPhilippinesJARsports, basketball
74.254.12.164dailywellnessnews.com2011EnglishJARhealthrdns source. split images[ref][ref].
74.254.12.165dylandon.net2011ChineseSWFmusic"Dylan" presumably a reference to Bob Dylan? "Don" unclear. Maybe Don McLean?
74.254.12.166afghanpoetry.net2010EnglishAfghanistanSWFpoetryAlso at 63.131.229.10[ref] in a range.
74.254.12.168non-stop-news.net2010FarsiJARnews
74.254.12.169soldiersofsouthasia.com2011EnglishJARhistory
74.254.12.171autism-news.org2011EnglishSWFhealthcopyright 2007. Split images. rss-items. Previously at 69.74.45.67.
74.254.12.176pakcricketgrd.com2011UrduJARsports, cricketTODO meaning of "grd"
74.254.12.177networkofnews.com2011EnglishJARnewsrdns source. Later legit.
74.254.12.179wineconnaisseur.net2010EnglishJSwine
74.254.12.180helpinghandssite.com2011EnglishJARnews
74.254.12.188first-tee-golf.com2011EnglishJARsports, golf
74.254.12.189fabu-foto.com2011EnglishCGIphotography
74.254.12.190viptravelabroad.com2011EnglishJStravel
199.85.212.105mide-news.com2010EnglishCGInews"MIDE" stands for "Middle East". Comms not archived, presumably CGI comms variant.
199.85.212.111newsandsportscentral.com2009EnglishJARnewsrdns source
199.85.212.118just-kidding-news.com2011EnglishJARnewsepic name
204.176.38.130i-pressnews.com2011EnglishJARnews
204.176.38.132turkishnewslinks.com2011EnglishTurkeyJARnews
204.176.38.134photographyarecord.com2011EnglishCGIphotographyCute
204.176.38.135breakingthewicket.com2011EnglishCGIsports, cricket
204.176.38.136politicalworldtoday.com2011EnglishEgyptJARnews
204.176.38.137hi-tech-today.com2011EnglishJARtech
204.176.38.139bigscreenbattles.com2011EnglishJARfilms
204.176.38.141rakotafootball.com2011EnglishJARsports, football"Rakota" is an Indian family name
204.176.38.143noticiassofisticadas.com2011SpanishCGInews
204.176.38.142senderosdemontana.com2011SpanishJSsports, cyclingTalks about mountain biking and Eurobike 2010, so likely Spain focused, but it is not direct enough to be certain. JS unarchived.
204.176.38.144techno-today.com2011EnglishJARtechwas legit previously.
204.176.38.145tickettonews.com2011EnglishJARnewsrdns source. Epoch times link.
204.176.38.146dps-digitalphotosharing.com2011EnglishJARphotography
204.176.38.147theputtingreen.com2011EnglishJARsports, golf
204.176.38.149sportsnewstodayar.com2011ArabicLebanon, othersJARsports"ar" on domain name presumably means "Arabic"
204.176.38.159kairuafricanews.com2011EnglishAfricaJARnewswhat is "Kairu"? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairu a place in India? en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kairu "frog" in Japanese? rdns source
204.176.39.97beamingnews.com2011ArabicJARnewsNice design. rdns source
204.176.39.98cubriendonoticias.com2011SpanishJARnewsarchive quite broken. JAR unarchived.
204.176.39.100rowleyworldpost.com2011EnglishEgypt, othersJARnews
204.176.39.103economicnewsbuzz.com2011KoreanCGIfinanceLove the kawaii style
204.176.39.104spectranewsonline.com2011EnglishCGInewsmarked copyright 2010.
204.176.39.105entertainmentnewscompany.com2011ChineseSWFfilms, musicTitle: "娱乐新闻公司", lit. Entertainment News Company
204.176.39.110arabnewsatdawn.com2011ArabicCGInewscute, the Arab chick's drink actually has a cocktail umbrella on it. Marked copyright 2010.
204.176.39.115globalprovincesnews.com2010ArabicJSnews
204.176.39.116mahparah-news.com2011FarsiJSnews
204.176.39.119commercialspacedesign.com2013FarsiCGIarchitectureC O N C E P T U A L design. A rare example of a fake company website.
207.210.250.131starrynightnews.com2011ArabicJSnewsinteresting design
207.210.250.132aeronet-news.com2011EnglishJARairplanes
207.210.250.133bakaribulletin.com2011EnglishAfricaJSnewsBakari could either be a given name, or a village in Togo
207.210.250.134deprensaenlarevisiondehoy.com2011SpanishJARnews
207.210.250.135icwb-news.com2011EnglishJARnewsICWB stands for "Inner Circle Worldwide Business (News)", the title of the website
207.210.250.136sportsreelhighlights.com2011EnglishJARsports
207.210.250.138inquiry-human-past.com2011EnglishJARhistory
207.210.250.139thefairwaysaregreen.com2011ThaiJARsports, golf
207.210.250.143archaeologyreview.net2010EnglishJARhistory, archeology
207.210.250.146noticias-caracas.com2011SpanishVenezuelaCGInewsCaracas is the capital of Venezuela. But you knew that, right?
207.210.250.147bailandstump.com2011EnglishJSsports, cricket"Bail" and "Stump" are the two parts of the thing your're supposed to hit with the ball in cricket.[ref]
207.210.250.149globalventurestat.com2008EnglishSWFnews
207.210.250.152al-rashidrealestate.com2010ArabicEgyptCGIfinance, real-estate
207.210.250.153newsintheworld-ru.com2011RussianJARnews
208.254.40.96sixty2media.com2011EnglishVariousJARnewsEpoch times link
208.254.40.99newspoliticssource.com2013ArabicJARnewsOne of the news mentions Snowden
208.254.40.110musical-fortune.net2010EnglishCGImusicimages /images/banner-02.jpg
208.254.40.113ashoka-gemstones.com2010EnglishJARjewelry
208.254.40.117worldnewsandent.com2010ArabicEgyptCGImews
208.254.40.124riskandrewardnews.com2013EnglishCGIfinance
208.254.42.194it-proonline.com2011EnglishCGItechimages /images/header_01.jpg
208.254.42.205driversinternationalgolf.com2011EnglishCGIsports, golf
208.254.42.209mardelsurnoticias.com2011SpanishJARnewsweird mixture of Portuguese and Spanish language external links
208.254.42.215nowfreshfinances.com2011EnglishCGIfinanceCGI unarchived
208.254.42.216circulatingnews.net2010EnglishJARtravel
208.254.42.219westingtonpassnews.com2011EnglishJARnews
210.80.75.36e-commodities.net2011EnglishJARfinance
210.80.75.37trekkingtoday.com2011EnglishJARsports, runningsplit images[ref][ref]. rdns source.
210.80.75.41multinews-33.comJARnewsNo archives of the HTML, but the JAR was archived
210.80.75.43gulfandmiddleeastnews.com2011ArabicJSnews
210.80.75.44whirlybirdinflight.com2011EnglishJARhelicopters
210.80.75.45kings-game.net2011EnglishJARgaming, chessJAR unarchived
210.80.75.46topglobalnewsdaily.com2011EnglishJSnews
210.80.75.49recipe-dujour.com2011EnglishJARcookingnice design
210.80.75.55philippinenewsonline.net2010PhilippinesJARnews
210.80.75.56technewsforme.com2011FarsiJARtech
212.4.16.224lanoticiasdehoyelinforme.com2010SpanishJARnews
212.4.16.232mynewscheck.com2011EnglishCanadaJARnewsrdns source
212.4.16.245financial-crisis-news.com2011RussianRussiaJARnewsrdns source
212.4.16.252minutosdenoticias.com2010SpanishCGInewsCSS
212.4.17.38fightwithoutrules.com2011RussianJARsports, combat sports
212.4.17.41newtechfrontier.com2010EnglishCGItechsince became legit: newtechfrontier.com/
212.4.17.43smart-travel-consultant.com2011ChineseCGItravelajaxtax.js may be of interest for fingerprinting. Title: "智能旅行顾问", lit. Smart Travel Consultant
212.4.17.46atentlaloc.com2009EnglishQuatar, Lebanon, Israel, IranJSjewelryTlaloc is an Aztec deity, and Aten is an Egyptian deity. Both appear to be somewhat linked to gold, thus their usage in a jewelry website. Creative domain name.
212.4.17.53newsresolution.net2010EnglishCôte d'Ivoire, Lebanon, SudanJARnews, UN Peacekeeping
212.4.17.56lesummumdelafinance.com2010FrenchFranceJARfinance
212.4.17.98topbillingsite.com2011EnglishCGIfilms
212.4.17.122b2bworldglobal.com2011EnglishCGInews
212.4.18.14football-enthusiast.com2011EnglishEuropeJSsports, football
212.4.18.129sightseeingnews.com2010EnglishJARtravel
212.209.74.105globalbaseballnews.com2011EnglishJSsports, baseball
212.209.74.106football-de-luxe.com2010FrenchFranceJARsports, football
212.209.74.112developmental-league.com2010EnglishCGIsports, American footballCGI comms variant?
212.209.74.115mediocampodefutbol.com2010SpanishJARsports, football
212.209.74.117myengineeringaffinity.com2011EnglishJARtech
212.209.74.123worldfinancialexchangenews.com2010EnglishSWFfinanceSWF unarchived.
212.209.74.125avoilurefixe.com2011FrenchTunisiaJARairplanes"à voilure fixe" is French for "with fixed wing", i.e. fixed wing aircraft
212.209.74.126headlines2day.com2011FarsiJARnewsmarked copyright 2009
212.209.79.34fgnl.net2011EnglishIranCGInewsfour letter domain! FGNL stands for "Farsi Global News Links" Marked copyright 2009.
212.209.79.37fitness-sources.com2010EnglishJSsports, fitness
212.209.79.40hydradraco.com2011EnglishJARsports, American footballTODO meaning of the name?
212.209.79.41noticiasdelmundolatino.com2011SpanishJARnews
212.209.79.42suparakuvi.com2011FrenchFranceJARnewsa Tour Eiffel image, and young people stuff, i.e. first world stuff. It's for France alright. But TODO meaning of domain name? Ciro's second language French didn't cut it this time.
212.209.79.46cetusdelph.com2011EnglishJSsports, scuba
212.209.79.47willtoworship.com2011EnglishJARreligion, Christianitymarked copyright 2007 (!)
212.209.79.48themvconnection.com2011EnglishJARmusic
212.209.79.51pi-resources.net2010EnglishJSprivate investigators"pi" stands for Private Investigators. The CIA must have had some fun making this one.
212.209.79.53ourscubaworld.com2011EnglishJSsports, scuba
212.209.79.58tech-love-home.com2011ChineseJStechTitle: "消费类电子产品", lit. Consummer Electronics
212.209.79.60first-solo-aviation.com2010EnglishJARairplanes
212.209.79.61china-destinations.org2011ChineseJStraveltitle: "中国目的地指南", lit. "China Destination Guide"
212.209.90.69worldedgenews.com2011EnglishJARnews
212.209.90.80nsmovies.net2010EnglishJARfilms"ns" stands for "Nirguna Saguna", two separate Hindu names/deities. But there are no other Indian references beyond those.
212.209.90.82middleeastjournal.net2010ArabicJSnews
212.209.90.84thenewseditor.com2011EnglishJARnews
212.209.90.87newsandweathersource.com2009EnglishJARnewsmarked copyright 2009.
212.209.90.89pakisports.com2010EnglishPakistanSWFsports
212.209.90.90vriha-aesthetics.com2011ArabicJSnews
212.209.90.92amishkanews.com2011EnglishIndiaJSnewsAmishka is an Indian name, plus some prominent mentions of Bollywood both point to India specifically
212.209.90.93theentertainbiz.com2011EnglishJARentertainment
212.209.90.94eurosportssummary.com2011EnglishJARsports
216.93.248.194esmundonoticias.com2011SpanishJARnewsrss-items. Shares IP with kukrinews.com.
216.93.248.194kukrinews.com2010EnglishJSNewsJavaScript with SHAs. Talks to /cgi-bin/news.cgi. A Kukri is the national weapon of Nepal. Slogan: "Nepal's Sharp Edge", thus matching the website name. Split image header. Copyright 2009. Shares IP with esmundonoticias.com.
216.105.98.139cultura-digital.net2008SpanishCGInewsMarked copyright 2008. Previously legit.
216.105.98.140uaeshoppingspree.com2013EnglishUAEJARshoppingArchive quite broken, but has link to unarchived JAR. Has an unusually personal touch "As you can probably tell from the title of my website, shopping is my very favorite pastime."
216.105.98.145montanismoaventura.com2012SpanishSpainJSsports, mountaineeringJS unarchived. Marked copyright 2010.
216.105.98.147nepalnewsbrief.com2008EnglishNepalJARnewsMarked copyright 2006 (!) If true this would be the earliest known reference to a date in the websites.
216.105.98.152modernarabicnews.com2013ArabicJARnewsHTML archive quite broken, but JAR was archived thankfully.
216.105.98.154everythingcricket.org2011EnglishJARsports, cricketAlso has archives from 2009, but they were a bit broken. The 2011 one is marked copyright 2011, so they actually bothered to updated that.
216.105.98.156familyhealthonline.net2011EnglishCGIhealth
219.90.61.110surya-brahma.com2011SpanishJARnewsSurya and Brahman are Hindu concepts, but the website appears to have nothing to do with India or Hinduism. Interesting.
219.90.61.111classicalmusicboxonline.com2010EnglishCGImusic
219.90.61.116athletepro.net2010EnglishJARsports
219.90.61.117lajornadanow.com2010SpanishJARnews
219.90.61.120theinternationalworld.com2011EnglishJARnewsrdns source. rss-items.
219.90.61.121thepyramidnews.com2011FarsiIranJARnews
219.90.61.122iran-newslink-today.com2011FarsiIranJARnews
219.90.61.123journeystravelled.com2011EnglishJARtravel
219.90.62.229information-junky.com2011EnglishGhanaJARnews
219.90.62.231todosperuahora.com2011SpanishPeruCGInews
219.90.62.233theworld-news.net2010UrduCGInews
219.90.62.234recuerdosdeviajeonline.com2011SpanishSWFtravelmarked "Copyright 2009"
219.90.62.237elcorreodenoticias.com2011SpanishVenezuelaJARnews
219.90.62.237ride-captain.com2011EnglishJARsports, motorcyles
219.90.62.238freshtechonline.com2011EnglishCGItech
219.90.62.241newscentertoday.com2011EnglishJARnewsCopyright 2008. rdns source. rss-items. Later legit, with a pause The domain name you have entered is not available. It has been taken down because the email address of the domain holder (Registrant) has not been verified..
219.90.62.243fitness-dawg.com2021EnglishJARsports, fitness
219.90.62.244easytraveleurope.com2012EnglishJARtravelnice design
219.90.62.245world-news-now.net2011EnglishJARnews
219.90.62.246negativeaperture.com2011EnglishCGIphotographynice domain name
219.90.62.247conquermstoday.com2011EnglishCGIhealthMS means multiple sclerosis. Comms not found, CGI from unarchived subpage assumed. Has a subdomain "heal.conquermstoday.com" according to 2013 DNS Census, but no links to it in the archive.

Methodology

words: 15k articles: 53

Gathering key points from the articles

words: 415
citizenlab.ca/2022/09/statement-on-the-fatal-flaws-found-in-a-defunct-cia-covert-communications-system/ did an investigation and found 885 such websites, but decided not to disclose the list or methods:
Using only a single website, as well as publicly available material such as historical internet scanning results and the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, we identified a network of 885 websites and have high confidence that the United States (US) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used these sites for covert communication.
The websites included similar Java, JavaScript, Adobe Flash, and CGI artifacts that implemented or apparently loaded covert communications apps. In addition, blocks of sequential IP addresses registered to apparently fictitious US companies were used to host some of the websites. All of these flaws would have facilitated discovery by hostile parties.
The websites, which purported to be news, weather, sports, healthcare, and other legitimate websites, appeared to be localized to at least 29 languages and geared towards at least 36 countries.
The question is which website. E.g. at citizenlab.ca/2021/07/hooking-candiru-another-mercenary-spyware-vendor-comes-into-focus/ they used data from Censys.
We searched historical data from Censys
citizenlab.ca/2016/08/million-dollar-dissident-iphone-zero-day-nso-group-uae/ mentions scans.io/. citizenlab.ca/2020/12/running-in-circles-uncovering-the-clients-of-cyberespionage-firm-circles/ mentions: www.shodan.io/, Censys really seems to be their thing.
Another critical excerpt is:
The bulk of the websites that we discovered were active at various periods between 2004 and 2013. We do not believe that the CIA has recently used this communications infrastructure. Nevertheless, a subset of the websites are linked to individuals who may be former and possibly still active intelligence community employees or assets:
  • Several are currently abroad
  • Another left mainland China in the time frame of the Chinese crackdown
  • Another was subsequently employed by the US State Department
  • Another now works at a foreign intelligence contractor
Given that we cannot rule out ongoing risks to CIA employees or assets, we are not publishing full technical details regarding our process of mapping out the network at this time. As a first step, we intend to conduct a limited disclosure to US Government oversight bodies.
This basically implies that they must have found some communication layer level identifier, e.g. IP registration, domain name registration, or certificate because it is impossible to believe that real agent names would have been present on the website content itself!
The websites were used from at least as early as August 2008, as per Gholamreza Hosseini's account, and the system was only shutdown in 2013 apparently. citizenlab.ca/2022/09/statement-on-the-fatal-flaws-found-in-a-defunct-cia-covert-communications-system/ however claims that they were used since as early as 2004.
Notably, so as to be less suspicious the websites are often in the language of the country for which they were intended, so we can often guess which country they were intended for!

The Reuters websites

words: 351
The Reuters article directly reported only two domains in writing:
But by looking at the URLs of the screenshots they provided from other websites we can easily uncover all others that had screenshots, except for the Johnny Carson one, which is just generically named. E.g. the image for the Chinese one is www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/assets/usa-spies-iran/screencap-activegaminginfo.com.jpg?v=192516290922 which leads us to domain activegaminginfo.com.
Also none of those extra ones have any Google hits except for huge domain dumps such has Expired domain trackers, so maybe this counts as little bit of novel public research.
The full list of domains from screenshots is:
This brings up to 8 known domain names with Wayback Machine archives, plus the yet unidentified Johnny Carlson one, see also: Section "Searching for Carson", which is also almost certainly is on Wayback Machine somewhere given that they have a screenshot of it.

Fingerprints

words: 364
From The Reuters websites and others we've found, we can establish see some clear stylistic trends across the websites which would allow us to find other likely candidates upon inspection:
  • natural sounding, sometimes long-ish, domain names generally with 2 or 3 full words. Most in English language, but a few in Spanish, and very few in other languages like French.
  • shallow websites with a few tabs, many external links, sometimes many images, and few internal pages
  • lots of rectangular images make up the top bar banner image. Stock images are often used to make the full image, and then the full image is split. An example
  • common themes include:
    • news
    • hobbies, notably sports, travel and photography. Golf seems overrepresented. Must be a thing over there in Langley.
  • .com and .net top-level domains, plus a few other very rare non .com .net TLDs, notably .info and .org
  • each one has one "communication mechanism file": communication mechanisms
  • narrow page width like in the days of old, lots of images
  • each hit domain is the only domain for its IP, i.e. the websites are all private hosted, no shared web hosting service examples have been found so far
  • split images images: many of the website banners are composed of several images cut up. Stock images were first assembled into the banner, and then the resulting image was cut. Possibly this was done to make reverse image search to their stock image provider harder. But it somewhat backfired and serves as a good marker that confirms authorship. Maybe it is some kind of outdated web design thing, which they took much further in time than the average website, like the JAR. It would be fun to actually reverse search into one of their stock image provider's original images. Their websites do appear to follow common style guidelines form earlier eras, around the early 2000s notably, some legit sites that look a lot like hits:
  • many of the websites use the following pattern in their news summaries: ul.rss-items > li.rss-item, e.g.: web.archive.org/web/20110202092126/http://beamingnews.com/
The most notable dissonance from the rest of the web is that there are no commercial looking website of companies, presumably because it was felt that it would be possible to verify the existence of such companies.
One promising way to find more of those would be with IP searches, since it was stated in the Reuters article that the CIA made the terrible mistake of using several contiguous IP blocks for those website. What a phenomenal OPSEC failure!!!
The easiest way would be if Wayback Machine itself had an IP search function, but we couldn't find one: Search Wayback Machine by IP.
viewdns.info was the first easily accessible website that Ciro Santilli could find that contained such information.
Our current results indicate that the typical IP range is about 30 IPs wide.
E.g. searching: viewdns.info/iphistory and considering only hits from 2011 or earlier we obtain:
  • capture-nature.com
    • 65.61.127.163 - Greenacres - United States - TierPoint - 2013-10-19
  • activegaminginfo.com
    • 66.175.106.148 - United States - Verizon Business - 2012-03-03
  • iraniangoals.com
    • 68.178.232.100 - United States - GoDaddy.com - 2011-11-13
    • 69.65.33.21 - Flushing - United States - GigeNET - 2011-09-08
  • rastadirect.net
    • 68.178.232.100 - United States - GoDaddy.com - 2011-05-02
  • iraniangoalkicks.com
    • 68.178.232.100 - United States - GoDaddy.com - 2011-04-04
  • headlines2day.com
    • 118.139.174.1 - Singapore - Web Hosting Service - 2013-06-30. Source: viewdns.info
    • 184.168.221.91 2013-08-12T06:17:39. Source: 2013 DNS Census grep
  • fightwithoutrules.com
    • 204.11.56.25 - British Virgin Islands - Confluence Networks Inc - 2013-09-26
    • 208.91.197.19 - British Virgin Islands - Confluence Networks Inc - 2013-05-20
    • 212.4.17.38 - Milan - Italy - MCI Worldcom Italy Spa - 2012-03-03
  • fitness-dawg.com
    • 219.90.62.243 - Taiwan - Verizon Taiwan Co. Limited - 2012-01-11
Neither of these seem to be in the same ranges, the only common nearby hit amongst these ranges is the exact 68.178.232.100, and doing reverse IP search at viewdns.info/reverseip/?host=68.178.232.100&t=1 states that it has 2.5 million hostnames associated to it, so it must be some kind of Shared web hosting service, see also: superuser.com/questions/577070/is-it-possible-for-many-domain-names-to-share-one-ip-address, which makes search hard.
Ciro then tried some of the other IPs, and soon hit gold.
Initially, Ciro started by doing manual queries to viewdns.info/reversip until his IP was blocked. Then he created an account and used his 250 free queries with the following helper script: cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/viewdns-info.sh. The output of that script can be seen at: github.com/cirosantilli/media/blob/master/cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/viewdns-info.sh.
Ciro then found 2013 DNS Census which contained data highly disjoint form the viewdns-info one!
Summaries of the IP range exploration done so far follows, combined data from all databases above.

Hits without nearby IP hits

words: 2k articles: 1
Here we list domains for which the correct IP was apparently not found since there are no neighbouring hits.
These are suspicious, and suggest either that we didn't obtain the correct reverse IP, or a change in CIA methodology from an older time at which they were not yet using the obscene IP ranges.
For example, in the case of inews-today.com, 2013 DNS Census gave one IP 193.203.49.212, but then viewdns.info gave another one 66.175.106.146 which fit into an existing IP range, and which assumed to be the correct IP of interest.
A similar case happened when we found IP 212.209.74.126 for headlines2day.com with dnshistory.org: dnshistory.org/historical-dns-records/a/headlines2day.com.
It is interesting to note that Reuters seems to have featured disproportionately many hits from that range, one wonders why that happened. It is possible that they chose these because they actually didn't have any nearby hits to give away less obvious information, though they did pick some from the ranges as wel.
In what follows we list the domains with possible reverse IPs and what was explored so far for each. We consider IPs not in a range to be uncertain, and that instead their domains might have been previously in a range which we
dailynewsandsports.com. Found with: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches
  • 216.119.129.94. rdns source: viewdns.info "location": "United States", "owner": "A2 Hosting, Inc.", "lastseen": "2012-04-13". Tested viewdns.info range: 216.119.129.85 - 216.119.129.86, 216.119.129.89 - 216.119.129.99, ran out of queries for 87 and 88
    • 216.119.129.90: eastdairies.com 2011-04-04. Promising name and date, but no archives alas.
    • 216.119.129.97: miideaco.com 2016-02-01
  • 216.119.129.114 Found with: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches, also present on viewdns.info but at a later date from previous "location": "United States", "owner": "A2 Hosting, Inc.", "lastseen": "2013-11-29". Tested viewdns.info range: 216.119.129.109 - 216.119.129.119
    • 216.119.129.110: dommoejmechty.com.ua. Legit.
    • 216.119.129.111: dailybeatz.com: Legit
    • 216.119.129.113:
      • audreygeneve.com
      • reyzheng.com
      • jacintorey.com
    • 216.119.129.114: dailynewsandsports.com. hit.
    • 216.119.129.115: afxchange.com legit/broken
    • 216.119.129.116: danafunkfinancial.com: legit
  • 208.73.33.194 on securitytrails.com
iranfootballsource.com:
  • 34.98.99.30 Kansas City - United States Google LLC 2021-05-24
  • 184.168.221.94 United States GoDaddy.com 2020-07-21
  • 50.63.202.66 United States GoDaddy.com 2020-07-07
  • 50.63.202.86 United States GoDaddy.com 2020-05-28
  • 184.168.221.94 United States GoDaddy.com 2020-05-13
  • 50.63.202.74 United States GoDaddy.com 2020-04-29
  • 50.18.223.191 San Jose - United States Amazon.com 2015-03-23. Sources: 2013 DNS Census and viewdns.info
    • no viewdns.info hits +- 10
  • 85.13.200.108 United Kingdom Coreix Dedicated Customer Allocation 2013-06-30. Source: viewdns.info
    • 85.13.200.108: 1000 hits, so unlikely to be the one
iraniangoalkicks.com:
iraniangoals.com:
football-enthusiast.com:
  • 212.4.18.14: Tested viewdns.info range: 212.4.18.1 - 212.4.18.29. This is a curious case, rather close to 212.4.18.129 sightseeingnews.com, but not quite in the same range apparently. Viewdns.info also agrees on its history with only "212.4.18.14", "location" : "Milan - Italy", "owner" : "MCI Worldcom Italy Spa", "lastseen" : "2013-06-30" of interest.
rastadirect.net:
todaysengineering.com:
  • 208.254.38.39. rdns source: both viewdns.info and 2013 DNS Census. Tested viewdns.info range: 208.254.38.34 - 208.254.38.44. Weirdly empty, doesn't even show the domain iteslf!
  • 68.178.232.100: source: securitytrails.com. 2009-11-24 - 2009-12-11, GoDaddy.com, LLC
worldofonlinenews.com:
mywebofnews.com:
cyhiraeth-intlnews.com:
news-latina.com:
europeannewsflash.com:
outlooknewscast.com:
  • dnshistory.org/historical-dns-records/a/outlooknewscast.com
    • 2009-08-08 -> 2011-02-11 74.53.159.130. Tested viewdns.info range: 74.53.159.120 - 74.53.159.140
      • 74.53.159.130: aeromedhistory.org 2014-11-29
      • 74.53.159.130: mariposahorticultural.com 2022-11-28
      • 74.53.159.130: thewritestuffresume.com 2011-04-04. Legit.
  • viewdns.info/iphistory/?domain=outlooknewscast.com
    • 204.93.178.121 Chicago - United States SERVERCENTRAL 2011-09-08. Tested viewdns.info range: 204.93.178.111 - 204.93.178.131. Skimmed through, nothing of great interest.
    • 74.53.159.130 United States SOFTLAYER 2011-04-04. Tested.
24hoursprimenews.com:
farsi-newsandweather.com:
global-view-news.com:
health-men-today.com:
  • dnshistory.org/historical-dns-records/a/health-men-today.com
    • 2009-11-30 -> 2010-05-27 67.220.228.224. New range with global-view-news.com? Tested viewdns.info range: 67.220.228.214 67.220.228.234
      • 67.220.228.223: stagedwithdistinction.com 2011-10-09. One archive of godaddy only.
    • 2009-08-01 -> 2009-09-19 69.42.58.50. Tested viewdns.info range: 69.42.58.40 - 69.42.58.60. Virtuals, canada.
    • 2011-01-07 -> 2011-01-07 69.90.162.165. Tested viewdns.info range: 69.90.162.155 - 69.90.162.175. Virtuals.
  • viewdns.info/iphistory/?domain=health-men-today.com
    • 204.11.56.19 British Virgin Islands CONFLUENCE-NETWORK-INC 2014-04-19. Virtuals.
    • 208.91.197.19 British Virgin Islands CONFLUENCE-NETWORK-INC 2013-05-20. Unknown range.
    • 69.90.162.165 Canada COGECO-PEER1 2012-06-29. Tested.
firstnewssource.com:
theworldnewsfeeds.com:
pars-technews.com:
newdaynewsonline.com:
sportsnewsfinder.com:
newsworldsite.com:
  • viewdns.info/iphistory/?domain=newsworldsite.com
    • 68.178.232.100 United States AS-26496-GO-DADDY-COM-LLC 2013-05-20 big virtual
    • 204.93.159.80 Chicago - United States SERVERCENTRAL 2013-04-21. Tested viewdns.info range: 204.93.159.70 204.93.159.90
      • 204.93.159.84: team-merk.com 2011-08-11. No archives.
todaysnewsreports.net:
  • viewdns.info/iphistory/?domain=todaysnewsreports.net
    • 208.91.197.132 British Virgin Islands CONFLUENCE-NETWORK-INC 2013-07-01
    • 205.178.189.129 United States NETWORK-SOLUTIONS-HOSTING 2013-05-20 likely virtual
    • 173.255.131.72 Reno - United States UK-2 Limited 2012-08-27. Tested viewdns.info range: 173.255.131.62 173.255.131.82. Virtual and modern hits only.
    • 67.213.211.232 United States UK-2 Limited 2011-09-07 unknown. Tested viewdns.info range: 67.213.211.222 67.213.211.242
      • 67.213.211.236: icf-finan.com 2015-01-20
      • 67.213.211.237: playinside.me 2016-02-04. Nice domain hack, but no.
      • 67.213.211.239: reality-sexxx.com 2011-09-08
hassannews.net:
weblognewsinfo.com:
newsincirculation.com
  • dnshistory.org/historical-dns-records/a/newsincirculation.com
    • 2010-03-10 -> 2010-08-15 64.120.20.234 virtual with weblognewsinfo.com
    • 2013-11-26 -> 2013-11-26 70.32.43.226
  • viewdns.info/iphistory/?domain=newsincirculation.com
    • 70.32.43.226 Lombard - United States LEASEWEB-USA-CHI 2014-01-31
    • 50.63.202.77 United States AS-26496-GO-DADDY-COM-LLC 2013-10-19. virutal?
    • 70.32.43.226 Lombard - United States LEASEWEB-USA-CHI 2013-09-26 virtual?
    • 69.147.228.5 Chicago - United States LEASEWEB-USA-CHI 2012-11-12 unknown. Tested viewdns.info range: 69.147.228.1 69.147.228.15. Nope.
    • 173.208.81.2 Lombard - United States LEASEWEB-USA-CHI 2011-04-04 virtual
todayoutdoors.com:
esmundonoticias.com:
globaltourist.net:
  • dnshistory.org/historical-dns-records/a/ 2009-07-30 -> 2011-01-01 69.59.20.215 unknown. Tested viewdns.info range: 69.59.20.205 69.59.20.225. Virtuals.
  • viewdns.info/iphistory/?domain=globaltourist.net
    • 216.172.170.14 United States NETWORK-SOLUTIONS-HOSTING 2013-07-08
    • 216.21.239.197 United States NETWORK-SOLUTIONS-HOSTING 2012-06-25
    • 68.178.232.100 United States AS-26496-GO-DADDY-COM-LLC 2012-04-09 big virtual
    • 174.136.34.154 United States IHNET 2012-03-12 unknown. Tested viewdns.info range: 174.136.34.144 174.136.34.164
    • 74.119.145.101 Frankfurt am Main - Germany PERFORMIVE 2011-09-07. Tested viewdns.info range: 74.119.145.91 74.119.145.111. One virtual.
    • 69.59.20.215 United States ATLRETAIL 2011-06-22. Tested
all-sport-headlines.com:
  • viewdns.info/iphistory/?domain=all-sport-headlines.com
    • 68.178.232.100 United States AS-26496-GO-DADDY-COM-LLC 2012-11-12 virtual
    • 216.104.38.114 United States SINGLEHOP-LLC 2012-09-21. Tested viewdns.info range: 216.104.38.104 216.104.38.124
      • 216.104.38.110: afterawhilecrocodile.info 2011-07-26. Legit.
technologytodayandtomorrow.com:
  • viewdns.info/iphistory/?domain=technologytodayandtomorrow.com
    • 68.178.232.100 United States AS-26496-GO-DADDY-COM-LLC 2011-11-13 virtual
    • 72.34.53.174 United States IHNET 2011-09-08. Tested viewdns.info range: 72.34.53.164 72.34.53.184
      • 72.34.53.166: bjellaagency.com 2023-03-07
      • 72.34.53.174: businesscardprinternyc.info 2012-04-18
      • 72.34.53.174: dermozamsoe106.com 2011-07-02
      • 72.34.53.174: electronictechreviews.com 2011-09-08. Hit.
      • 72.34.53.174: glialcells2009paris.com 2012-11-12
      • 72.34.53.174: hysfreedom.net 2013-07-08. Legit.
      • 72.34.53.174: integrativetherapiesec.com 2013-06-30
      • 72.34.53.174: intloil.org 2012-04-27. Possible hit, a bit off style, but possibly because too broken. Copyright 2005. Present at pastebin.com/CTXnhjeSp.
      • 72.34.53.174: islamicnewsonline.com 2013-03-23. No archives in date range.
      • 72.34.53.174: larumbaknox.com 2012-01-11. Parked domain girl
      • 72.34.53.174: myonlinegamesource.com 2012-01-11
      • 72.34.53.174: mytravelopian.com 2011-04-04. Feels legit, but there's some chance.
      • 72.34.53.174: recursosdenoticias.com 2012-06-29. Hit.
      • 72.34.53.174: todaysnewsandweather-ru.com 2012-01-11. Hit.
      • 72.34.53.181: theebizguy.com 2022-12-26
      • 72.34.53.183: nofatchics.com 2012-01-11
terrain-news.com:
intlnewsdaily.com
  • dnshistory.org/historical-dns-records/a/intlnewsdaily.com 2010-02-21 -> 2010-08-06 75.126.136.179. unknown range.
  • viewdns.info/iphistory/?domain=intlnewsdaily.com
    • 208.91.197.19 British Virgin Islands CONFLUENCE-NETWORK-INC 2013-05-20. Virtual. Tested.
    • 63.247.95.50 Austell - United States NTHL 2012-06-29 unknown. Tested viewdns.info range: 63.247.95.40 63.247.95.60
      • 63.247.95.50: 2b-sports.com 2013-04-21
      • 63.247.95.50: caldentalinsurance.com 2014-07-05
      • 63.247.95.50: cameronbal-photography.com 2012-06-29
      • 63.247.95.50: congbetham.com 2014-07-05
      • 63.247.95.50: essentialintelligenceagency.com 2023-03-07
      • 63.247.95.50: isabellavalentina.com 2014-07-05
      • 63.247.95.50: jhraccounting.com.au 2021-05-03
      • 63.247.95.50: missouribreaks294.com 2012-06-29
      • 63.247.95.50: startorganize.com 2011-08-11
      • 63.247.95.50: tifocus.net 2011-08-11
      • 63.247.95.50: tifocus.org 2011-08-10
      • 63.247.95.50: whitepartyorlando.com 2012-01-11
    • 204.11.56.25 (ipinf.ru)
opensourcenewstoday.com:
techwatchtoday.com:
Possible hits that are too broken to be sure
words: 317
Likely hits possible but whose archives is too broken to be easily certain. If:
  • nearby IP hits
  • proper reverse engineering of their comms if any, or any other page fingerprints
were to ever be found, these would be considered hits.
africainnews.com
  • no archives of the HTML
  • SWF. A reverse engineering of the SWF should be able to confirm.
  • web.archive.org/web/20111007194814/http://africainnews.com/robots.txt
  • dnshistory.org/historical-dns-records/a/africainnews.com
    • 2009-12-29 -> 2010-07-28 72.167.232.43. Tested viewdns.info range: 72.167.232.33 - 72.167.232.53. Several virtual hosts there.
    • 2011-10-14 -> 2011-10-14 68.178.232.100 virtual
    • 2012-08-12 -> 2012-08-12 97.74.42.79. Tested viewdns.info range: 97.74.42.69 - 97.74.42.89
      • 97.74.42.74: landtex.net 2023-03-22
      • 97.74.42.76: solidasshonky.com 2023-03-07
      • 97.74.42.77: solidasshonky.com 2023-03-07
      • 97.74.42.78: blakebrothers.co 2018-05-05
      • 97.74.42.78: learningjbe.com 2023-02-02
      • 97.74.42.78: solidasshonky.com 2023-03-07
      • 97.74.42.78: sourceuae.com 2023-03-07
      • 97.74.42.78: superiorfoodservicesales.com 2017-09-10
      • 97.74.42.79: large virtual
      • 97.74.42.80: waiasialtd.com 2016-10-17
  • viewdns.info/iphistory/?domain=africainnews.com
    • 50.63.202.92 United States AS-26496-GO-DADDY-COM-LLC 2013-06-30. Likely large virtual.
    • 97.74.42.79 United States AS-26496-GO-DADDY-COM-LLC 2013-05-20. tested.
    • 68.178.232.100 United States AS-26496-GO-DADDY-COM-LLC 2012-06-29 virtual
    • 68.178.232.99 United States AS-26496-GO-DADDY-COM-LLC 2011-11-13
    • 68.178.232.100 United States AS-26496-GO-DADDY-COM-LLC 2011-10-09 virtual
    • 72.167.232.43 United States GO-DADDY-COM-LLC 2011-09-08. Tested.
globalsentinelsite.com
viewdns.info/reverseip/?host=74.124.210.249&t=1 has 347 hits
?globalsentinelsite.com2011EnglishJARnewswide, has a few sections, but somewhat shallow. Copyright 2008.
todaysolar.com. This might just be legit, but keeping it around just in case.
2011JARdnshistory.org/historical-dns-records/a/todaysolar.com 2009-08-11 -> 2011-03-01 74.208.62.112 unknownviewdns.info/iphistory/?domain=todaysolar.com 74.208.62.112 United States PROFITBRICKS-USA 2012-11-12

Hits with nearby IP hits

words: 3k
alljohnny.com: one of the Reuters websites.
62.22.60.49: telecom-headlines.com. Found with: visual inspection of full 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup list just before worldnewsnetworking.com. Tested viewdns.info range: 62.22.60.34 - 62.22.60.66
  • 62.22.60.33: newsperk.com. Unclear. Stylistically perfect, but no comms not found. 2011. English. Egypt. news.
  • 62.22.60.34: freeslideshow.net. Legit? Attempting to open any HTML archives leads to an infinite page load loop, e.g. 2010. A subpage however exists: web.archive.org/web/20101230001640/http://freeslideshow.net/index_files/a.htm and appears legit.
  • 62.22.60.40: travel-passage.com. Unclear. No archives of toplevel, only subpage: 2009. No clear comms. Chinese.
  • 62.22.60.42: newsupdatesite.com. Hit.
  • 62.22.60.46: flyingtimeline.com. Hit.
  • 62.22.60.47: globalemergenceadvisorsbkserver.com. Legit.
  • 62.22.60.48: currentcommunique.com. Hit.
  • 62.22.60.49: telecom-headlines.com. Hit.
  • 62.22.60.52: collectedmedias.com. Hit.
  • 62.22.60.54: romulusactualites.com. No archives.
  • 62.22.60.55: thefilmcentre.com. Hit.
  • 62.22.60.56: traveltimenews.com. Hit.
62.22.61.206 worldnewsnetworking.com. Found with: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches. Tested viewdns.info range: 62.22.61.188 - 62.22.61.224
63.131.229.12 cyberreportagenews.com. Tested viewdns.info range: 63.131.228.248 - 63.131.229.30
  • 63.131.229.2: fightskillsresource.com. Hit
  • 63.131.229.4: unitedterritorynews.com. Hit
  • 63.131.229.9: show-dustry.com. Hit
  • 63.131.229.10: afghanpoetry.net. Hit. Also at 74.254.12.166 in another range.
  • 63.131.229.11: mythriftytrip.com. Hit
  • 63.131.229.12: cyberreportagenews.com. Hit.
  • 63.131.229.13: sunrise-news.com. Hit.
  • 63.131.229.15: cricketnewsforindia.com. Archive quite broken, likely hit.
  • 63.131.229.16:
    • nutricion-saludable.info. No archives.
    • nutricion-saludable.net. Hit.
  • 63.131.229.18: itnl-xchange.com. Hit.
  • 63.131.229.20:
    • fixashion.net. Hit.
    • a few others
63.130.160.50 theglobalheadlines.com. Found with: 2013 DNS census secureserver.net MX records intersection 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup. Tested viewdns.info range: 63.130.160.35 - 63.130.160.75
  • 63.130.160.50: theglobalheadlines.com. Hit.
  • 63.130.160.51:
    • hai-pow.com. Hit.
    • secudenetworksecurity.com. No archives.
  • 63.130.160.53: echessnews.com. Hit.
  • 63.130.160.59: technologiewissen.com. No archives from the time. Would be Technology knowledge in German, so another likely German hit. Shame.
  • 63.130.160.60: boxingstop.net. Hit.
  • 63.130.160.61: bookmarksthis.com. No archives.
  • 63.130.160.62: azerinews.org. Hit.
64.16.204.55 holein1news.com. Found with: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches. Tested viewdns.info range: 64.16.204.50 - 64.16.204.63. With did Wayback Machine have so few archives here? TODO stopping viewdns.info exploration a bit short due to that.
  • 64.16.204.35: ironcityfootball.com. Legit/broke.
  • 64.16.204.51: africannewsandsports.com. No archives. rdns source: viewdns.info
  • 64.16.204.53: bosniakbusinessnews.com. No archives. A Bosniak is someone from an ethnicity from Bosnia.
  • 64.16.204.54: affairesdumonde.com. No archives. rdns source: viewdns.info
  • 64.16.204.55: holein1news.com. Hit.
  • 64.16.204.56: fightorgohome.com. No archives. rdns source: viewdns.info
  • 64.16.204.58: tech-topix.com. Hit.
  • 64.16.204.60: pakpoldaily.com. No archives. rdns source: viewdns.info. TODO meaning? Might be Indonesian, maybe linked to police: www.facebook.com/watch/?v=880204266271955
65.61.127.163 capture-nature.com. whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-65-61-96-0-1/pft?s=65.61.127.163: Net Range: 65.61.96.0 - 65.61.127.255. Organization. Name: TierPoint, LLC. Tested viewdns.info range: 65.61.127.149 -
66.45.179.205 noticiasporjanua.com. Found with: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup. Tested viewdns.info range: 66.45.179.187 - 66.45.179.223
  • 66.45.179.187: mail03.gatesfoundation.org. Legit.
  • 66.45.179.192: thegraceofislam.com. Hit.
  • 66.45.179.193: arabicnewsunfiltered.com. Hit.
  • 66.45.179.194: raulsonsglobalnews.com. Hit.
  • 66.45.179.195: aryannews.net. Hit.
  • 66.45.179.199: attivitaestremi.com. Hit.
  • 66.45.179.200: foodwineandsuch.com. No archives.
  • 66.45.179.201: hitthepavementnow.com. Hit.
  • 66.45.179.203: noticiascontinental.com. Hit.
  • 66.45.179.205: noticiasporjanua.com. Hit.
  • 66.45.179.206: podisticamondiale.com. Hit.
  • 66.45.179.207: reflectordenoticias.com. Hit.
  • 66.45.179.208: havenofgamerz.com. Hit.
  • 66.45.179.209: vejaaeuropa.com. web.archive.org/web/20130810131440/http://www.vejaaeuropa.com/: Welcome to the US Petabox. Shame, could be another Brazil hit since "veja" (look in Brazilian Portuguese) would be "mira" in Spanish, not "veja".
  • 66.45.179.210: sa-michigan.com. Hit.
  • 66.45.179.211: absolutebearing.net. Hit.
  • 66.45.179.212: grandretirement.net. No archives.
  • 66.45.179.213: myportaltonews.com. Hit.
  • 66.45.179.214: investmentintellect.com. Hit.
  • 66.45.179.215: nigeriastar.net 2012-03-12. Hit.
66.104.169.184 bcenews.com. Found with: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches. Tested viewdns.info range: 66.104.169.158 - 66.104.169.189
  • 66.104.169.162: bestsportsnews.net. Archive broken.
  • 66.104.169.163: doctorsoncallsite.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.169.164: lightandshadowonline.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.169.168: plugged-into-news.net. Hit.
  • 66.104.169.169: worldsportsite.com. Likely hit, but comms not found. 2011. Arabic. . sports. has some apparently unrelated archives from 2008.
  • 66.104.169.171: golf-on-holiday.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.169.172: perspectiva-noticias.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.169.175: aquaswimming.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.169.177: dojo-temple.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.169.179: neighbour-news.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.169.180: medicatechinfo.com. Hit.
    • 205.178.189.131: securitytrails.com 2009-06-25 - 2009-07-02 Network Solutions, LLC., "ip_count": 726755. Moved to new one 2009-07-02 - 2010-11-03
  • 66.104.169.181: brickmanfinancialnews.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.169.182: casanewsnow.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.169.183: aworldofnews.com. No archives.
  • 66.104.169.184: bcenews.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.169.197: teamshula.com. Legit.
66.104.173.186 myworldlymusic.com. Found with: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches. Tested viewdns.info range: 66.104.173.158 - 66.104.173.194
  • 66.104.173.161: fanatic-pc-gamers.com. 2013: Welcome to the US Petabox
  • 66.104.173.163: runakonews.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.173.164: shoppingadventure.net. Hit.
  • 66.104.173.165: entertaining-ly.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.173.166: zubeenews.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.173.169: smart-financeology.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.173.173: remarkably has two potential hits, both shown in viewdns.info, and one of them was also in the 2013 DNS Census.
    • worldfeedstoday.com. No main page archives. Subpage archive: 2011. English. news.
    • world-newsfeeds.com. No archives.
  • 66.104.173.175: media-coverage-now.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.173.176: jbc-online-news.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.173.177: webscooper.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.173.178: dk-dcinvestment.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.173.179: newsforthetech.com. Welcome to the US Petabox.
  • 66.104.173.180: stara-turistick.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.173.181: playbackpolitics.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.173.182: snapnewsfront.net. Hit.
  • 66.104.173.183: ingenuitytrendz.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.173.184: armashoy.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.173.185: baocontact.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.173.186: myworldlymusic.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.173.189: hitpoint-gaming.com. Hit.
66.104.175.40 beyondnetworknews.com. whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-66-104-0-0-1/pft?s=66.104.175.40. Net Range:66.104.0.0 - 66.107.255.255. 2012 Internet Census puts most/all hits in this range under ip66-104-175-34.z175-104-66.customer.algx.net, algx.net redirects to verizon.com as of 2023. Related: superuser.com/questions/956568/why-are-my-pings-going-to-customer-algx-net. Tested viewdns.info range: 66.104.175.24 - unknown
  • 66.104.175.34: itwebtoday.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.175.35: drglobalnews.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.175.36: adilnews.net. Hit.
  • 66.104.175.37: technewstogo.com. web.archive.org/web/20110201205946/http://technewstogo.com/ "UNDER CONSTRUCTION"
  • 66.104.175.40: beyondnetworknews.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.175.41: grubbersworldrugbynews.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.175.44: yourtripfinder.net. Hit.
  • 66.104.175.45: rollinsnetwork.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.175.46: infosharenews.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.175.47: southasiaheadlines.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.175.48: worlddispatch.net. Hit.
  • 66.104.175.49: webworldsports.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.175.50: fly-bybirdies.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.175.51: businessexchangetoday.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.175.52: mensajeradenoticias.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.175.53: info-ology.net. Hit.
  • 66.104.175.54: marketflows.net. Hit.
  • 66.104.175.57: metanewsdaily.com. Hit.
  • 66.104.175.218: remote.taxconsultantsgroup.com. No archives.
66.175.106.148 activegaminginfo.com. whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-66-175-106-128-1/pft?s=66.175.106.148: Net Range: 66.175.106.128 - 66.175.106.159. Customer Name: DIAMOND-COLESON. Tested viewdns.info range: 66.175.106.131 - 66.175.106.178
  • 66.175.106.10: nationalchecktrust.com. Legit?
  • 66.175.106.134: paddlescoop.com. Hit.
  • 66.175.106.137: kessingerssportsnews.com. Hit.
  • 66.175.106.138: factorforcenews.com. Hit.
  • 66.175.106.140: aroundthemiddleeast.com. No Wayback Machine hits. Last resolved: 2012-06-29.
  • 66.175.106.142: kanata-news.com. Hit.
  • 66.175.106.143: thecricketfan.com. Hit.
  • 66.175.106.146: inews-today.com. Initially found with 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches which gave IP address 193.203.49.212. But that has no nearby hits. 66.175.106.146 was later found on viewdns.info, and slotted into this other existing IP range.
    • 193.203.49.211 datingso.com: legit? Russian dating website
    • 193.203.49.212 inews-today.com. Hit.
    • 193.203.49.223 zatysi.net: legit
    • 193.203.49.226 kinotopik.com: legit? Russian
    • 193.203.49.229 rotor-volgograd.com. Legit.
    • 193.203.49.233 ordercytotec.com. Broken.
  • 66.175.106.147: starwarsweb.net. Hit.
  • 66.175.106.149: feedsdemexicoyelmundo.com. Hit.
  • 66.175.106.150: noticiasmusica.net. Hit.
  • 66.175.106.155: atomworldnews.com. Hit.
  • 66.175.106.158: nouvellesetdesrapports.com. Hit.
  • 66.175.106.166: exchange.katzbarron.com. Legit. Reverse IP source: 2012 Internet Census
  • 66.175.106.183: mail.lfdatacenter.com. No archives.
66.237.236.247 comunidaddenoticias.com. Tested viewdns.info range: 66.237.236.222 - 66.237.236.254
  • 66.237.236.227: newsandmusicminute.com. Hit.
  • 66.237.236.229: pearls-playlist.com 2011-11-13. Hit.
  • 66.237.236.230: beyondthefringe.info 2013-01-02. Hit.
  • 66.237.236.231: primetimemovies.net 2011-06-22. Hit.
  • 66.237.236.235: persephneintl.com. Hit.
  • 66.237.236.236: directoalgrano.net 2012-01-23. Hit.
  • 66.237.236.240: actualizaciondebeisbol.com. Hit.
  • 66.237.236.243: mygadgettech.com. Hit.
  • 66.237.236.247: comunidaddenoticias.com. Hit.
  • 66.237.236.249: sumerjaseahora.com. Hit.
69.84.156.90 stickshiftnews.com. Found with: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches. Tested viewdns.info range: 69.84.156.64 - 69.84.156.95
  • 69.84.156.69: al-ashak-news-me.com. Hit.
  • 69.84.156.70: theventurenews.info. No archives. business.
  • 69.84.156.71: worldfinancetoday.net. Hit.
  • 69.84.156.72: autonewsarabia.com. Hit.
  • 69.84.156.74: blue-moon-news.com. Hit.
  • 69.84.156.75: theoutergreen.com. No archives. Might have been another golf hit.
  • 69.84.156.76: tnc-urdu.com. Hit.
  • 69.84.156.79: jassimnews.com. No archives/broken.
  • 69.84.156.80: noticiasdenuestromundo.com. No archives. Spanish. news.
  • 69.84.156.82: arabicnewsonline.com. Hit.
  • 69.84.156.83: unganadormundial.com. Hit.
  • 69.84.156.84: focusonbokeh.com. No archives/broken. Only a "Sony" logo remains: web.archive.org/web/20110207222330/http://focusonbokeh.com/images/logo_014.jpg
  • 69.84.156.85: classic-rocktopia.com. No archives. Presumably rock climbing.
  • 69.84.156.87: i7diver.com. No archives.
  • 69.84.156.88: diariodeelmundo.com. Hit.
  • 69.84.156.89: todaysarabnews.com. Hit.
  • 69.84.156.90: stickshiftnews.com. Hit.
  • 69.84.156.91: theinternationalgoal.com. Hit.
74.116.72.236 techtopnews.com. Found with: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches. Tested viewdns.info range: 74.116.72.215 - 74.116.72.254
  • 74.116.72.199: newsungraphics.com. Legit.
  • 74.116.72.209: newsung.com. Legit/broken.
  • 74.116.72.214: ofinancialinc.com. Legit.
  • 74.116.72.219: stockpromoters.com. Legit.
  • 74.116.72.227: dayenews.com. hit.
  • 74.116.72.229: guide-daventure.com. Hit.
  • 74.116.72.230: spaceage-exchange.com. No archives.
  • 74.116.72.231: bleachersfootballnews.com. Hit.
  • 74.116.72.232: indirectfreekick.com. Hit.
  • 74.116.72.233: wwiichronicles.net. Hit.
  • 74.116.72.234: petroleumagenews.com. Hit.
  • 74.116.72.235: the-open-book-online.com. Hit.
  • 74.116.72.236: techtopnews.com. Hit.
  • 74.116.72.237: noticiasdiariasdedeportes.com. No archives. Sad, another potential Brazil hit.
  • 74.116.72.238: pohandakhbar.com. No archives. TODO meaning. "akhbar" is news in Arabic. But what is "Poh"? Sounds like a South Asian name.
  • 74.116.72.239: crickettoday.info. Hit.
  • 74.116.72.240: zafernews.com. Hit.
  • 74.116.72.241: itechnewstoday.com. Broken/GoDaddy takeover
  • 74.116.72.242: gdgtsource.com. Hit.
  • 74.116.72.243: waronfilmonline.com. No archives.
  • 74.116.72.244: arborstribune.org. No archives.
  • 74.116.72.245: wineenthusiastonline.com. Welcome to the US Petabox.
  • 74.116.72.246: vuvuzelanews.com. Hit.
  • 74.116.72.247: ballbatstumpsandbails.com. Hit.
  • 74.116.72.248: kioni-sailing.com. No archives.
  • 74.116.72.249: round-trip-travel.com. Hit.
  • 74.116.72.250: arabicnewsource.com. Hit.
74.254.12.168 non-stop-news.net. Found with: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches. Tested viewdns.info range: 74.254.12.158 - 74.254.12.195. This domain exceptionally also has a second IP also with multihits: 207.239.196.230. The fact that the range has rdns sources with hits from both 2013 DNS Census and viewdns.info suggests this range is correct.
  • 74.254.12.163: half-court.net. Hit.
  • 74.254.12.163: dailywellnessnews.com. Hit.
  • 74.254.12.165: dylandon.net. Hit. rdns source: viewdns.info.
  • 74.254.12.166: afghanpoetry.net. Hit.
  • 74.254.12.168: non-stop-news.net. Hit.
  • 74.254.12.169: soldiersofsouthasia.com. Hit.
  • 74.254.12.170: greek-news.info. 2013. Welcome to the US Petabox. rdns source: viewdns.info
  • 74.254.12.171: autism-news.org. Hit.
  • 74.254.12.172: thesportsguidebook.com. rdns source: 2013 DNS Census. Only has archive of one subpage: 2009. English. sports.
  • 74.254.12.174: reliefline.info. web.archive.org/web/20090416064302/http://www.reliefline.info:80/ Archive too broken.
  • 74.254.12.176: pakcricketgrd.com. Hit.
  • 74.254.12.177: networkofnews.com. Hit.
  • 74.254.12.179: wineconnaisseur.net. Hit.
  • 74.254.12.180: helpinghandssite.com. Hit.
  • 74.254.12.185: newskwest.com. No archives.
  • 74.254.12.187: efiinvestment.com. No archives.
  • 74.254.12.188: first-tee-golf.com. Hit.
  • 74.254.12.189: fabu-foto.com. Hit.
  • 74.254.12.190: viptravelabroad.com. Hit.
199.85.212.118 just-kidding-news.com
  • 199.85.212.118 rdns source: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches, dnshistory.org (2009-09-23 -> 2011-01-25) and viewdns.info: "location": "United States", "owner": "VIMRO, LLC", "lastseen": "2012-01-11". Tested viewdns.info range: 199.85.212.95 - 199.85.212.128. Not sure worth it given the many 2013 DNS Census misses surrounding.
    • 199.85.212.98: colorsxpress.com. Legit
    • 199.85.212.104:
      • jobindons.com 2013-10-19.
      • piogroup.org 2012-12-29.
    • 199.85.212.105: mide-news.com. Hit.
    • 199.85.212.109: game2be.com. Infinite load loop: web.archive.org/web/20080102074404/http://www.game2be.com/
    • 199.85.212.111:
      • newsandsportscentral.com. Hit.
      • and many many others, not bothering with it
    • 199.85.212.115: veryperi.com. Legit? 2011. Style is similar.
    • 199.85.212.116: approselect.com. Legit?
    • 199.85.212.117: innovative-software-solutions.com. broken/legit
    • 199.85.212.118: just-kidding-news.com. Hit.
    • 199.85.212.119: invisus.com. Legit
    • 199.85.212.120: allurebyjustine.com. Legit?
    • 199.85.212.121: stockprouniversity.com
    • 199.85.212.122: stjosephswoodshop.com Legit?
    • 199.85.212.125: time-spacer.net. Welcome to the US Petabox.
    • 199.85.212.132: qualitytrans.net. Legit?
    • 199.85.212.134: mywellnessminder.com. Legit?
    • 199.85.212.138: crystalglassinc.com
    • 199.85.212.140: davistech-llc.com
  • 68.178.232.100: see rastadirect.net. rdns source: viewdns.info: "location": "United States", "owner": "GoDaddy.com, LLC", "lastseen": "2012-06-29"
  • 209.85.45.84. Tested viewdns.info range: 209.85.45.74 - 209.85.45.94.
    • 209.85.45.2: dz8.dailyrazor.com
    • 209.85.45.2: jr4consulting.com
    • 209.85.45.41: guitarzza.com. No archives of time.
    • 209.85.45.46: evergraindecking.com. No archives of time.
    • 209.85.45.114: mauritiuspropertyconsultant.com. Legit/ broken.
    • 209.85.45.160: bieltvedt.net. No archives of time.
    • 209.85.45.160: golfstats.dk. No archives.
    • 209.85.45.225: infokus.ca
    • 209.85.45.225: mail.tomlatham.net
    • 209.85.45.225: mail.tomlatham.org
    • 209.85.45.239: flavacationcenter.com
204.176.38.143 noticiassofisticadas.com. Found with: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup. Tested viewdns.info range: 204.176.38.125 - 204.176.38.154
  • 204.176.38.130: i-pressnews.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.38.132: turkishnewslinks.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.38.134: photographyarecord.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.38.135: breakingthewicket.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.38.136: politicalworldtoday.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.38.137: hi-tech-today.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.38.138: continental-business-news.com. TODO. 2011. Cannot find comms. Also header and footer are not limited width which is unusual. Further HTML similarity reversing would be needed.
  • 204.176.38.139: bigscreenbattles.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.38.141: rakotafootball.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.38.142: senderosdemontana.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.38.143: noticiassofisticadas.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.38.144: techno-today.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.38.145: tickettonews.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.38.146: dps-digitalphotosharing.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.38.147: theputtingreen.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.38.149: sportsnewstodayar.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.38.150: kairuafricanews.com. Hit.
204.176.39.115 globalprovincesnews.com. Tested viewdns.info range: 204.176.39.93 - 204.176.39.124
  • 204.176.39.97: beamingnews.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.39.98: cubriendonoticias.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.39.100: rowleyworldpost.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.39.101: noticiastopicas.com. No archives.
  • 204.176.39.103: economicnewsbuzz.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.39.104: spectranewsonline.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.39.105: entertainmentnewscompany.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.39.107: guidetoelectronics.net. Uncertain. 2010. English. tech, electronics. Possible CGI comms variant.
  • 204.176.39.110: arabnewsatdawn.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.39.114: messengergalaxy.com. Uncertain. 2011. Would be the first example of something more commercial/service offering we've seen so far. Possible CGI comms variant.
  • 204.176.39.115: globalprovincesnews.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.39.116: mahparah-news.com. Hit.
  • 204.176.39.119: commercialspacedesign.com. Hit.
207.210.250.132 aeronet-news.com. Found with: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches. Tested viewdns.info range: 207.210.250.126 - 207.210.250.157
  • 207.210.250.131: starrynightnews.com. Hit.
  • 207.210.250.132: aeronet-news.com. Hit.
  • 207.210.250.133: bakaribulletin.com. Hit.
  • 207.210.250.134: deprensaenlarevisiondehoy.com. Hit.
  • 207.210.250.135: icwb-news.com. Hit.
  • 207.210.250.136: sportsreelhighlights.com. Hit.
  • 207.210.250.137: fashionforward.info. No archives.
  • 207.210.250.138: inquiry-human-past.com. Hit.
  • 207.210.250.139: thefairwaysaregreen.com. Hit.
  • 207.210.250.142: russiaupdate.com 2011-11-13. No archives of the time, only older unrelated archives: web.archive.org/web/20010429003443/http://russiaupdate.com/.
  • 207.210.250.143: archaeologyreview.net. Hit.
  • 207.210.250.144: highspeed-news.com. No archives.
  • 207.210.250.146: noticias-caracas.com. Hit.
  • 207.210.250.147: bailandstump.com. Hit.
  • 207.210.250.148: classicalmusic4arab.com. No archives.
  • 207.210.250.149: globalventurestat.com. Hit.
  • 207.210.250.152: al-rashidrealestate.com. Hit.
  • 207.210.250.153: newsintheworld-ru.com. Hit.
  • 207.210.250.154: news-unlimited.info. No archives. Shame, as perfect theme, and has per ipinf.ru/domains/207.210.250.154/
208.254.40.117 worldnewsandent.com. whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-208-192-0-0-1/pft?s=208.254.40.117: Net Range 208.192.0.0 - 208.255.255.255. Tested viewdns.info range: 208.254.40.92 - 208.254.40.135
  • 208.254.40.96: sixty2media.com. Hit.
  • 208.254.40.99: newspoliticssource.com. Hit.
  • 208.254.40.110 musical-fortune.net. Hit.
  • 208.254.40.113: ashoka-gemstones.com. Hit.
  • 208.254.40.117: worldnewsandent.com. Hit.
  • 208.254.40.124: riskandrewardnews.com. Hit.
  • 208.254.40.129: mailb.casella.com. Legit.
208.254.42.205 driversinternationalgolf.com. Not too far from 208.254.40.117 right? Tested viewdns.info range: 208.254.42.178 - 208.254.42.233.
210.80.75.55 philippinenewsonline.net. Tested viewdns.info range: 210.80.75.30 - 210.80.75.67
  • 210.80.75.35: aroundtheworldnews.net. No archives. ipinf.ru/domains/210.80.75.33/ disagrees and places it at .33.
  • 210.80.75.36: e-commodities.net. Hit.
  • 210.80.75.37: trekkingtoday.com. Hit.
  • 210.80.75.41: multinews-33.com. Hit.
  • 210.80.75.42: movimientodenticias.com. No archives.
  • 210.80.75.43: gulfandmiddleeastnews.com. Hit.
  • 210.80.75.44: whirlybirdinflight.com. Hit.
  • 210.80.75.45: kings-game.net. Hit.
  • 210.80.75.46: topglobalnewsdaily.com. Hit.
  • 210.80.75.49: recipe-dujour.com. Hit.
  • 210.80.75.53: sportsman-elite.com. No archives.
  • 210.80.75.55: philippinenewsonline.net. Hit.
  • 210.80.75.56: technewsforme.com. Hit.
  • 210.80.75.59: goldeportesnoticias.com. No archives.
  • 210.80.75.68: gigabyte-usa.com. Legit.
212.4.16.232 mynewscheck.com. Found with: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches. Tested viewdns.info range: 212.4.16.214 - 212.4.17.10.
Other hits:
  • 208.91.197.132. rdns source: viewdns.info: "location" : "British Virgin Islands", "owner" : "Confluence Networks Inc", "lastseen" : "2013-09-26". So this is after the previous one, unlikely to be correct.
  • 205.178.189.131. source: securitytrails.com
212.4.17.38 fightwithoutrules.com. whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-208-192-0-0-1/pft?s=208.254.40.117. Net Range: 208.192.0.0 - 208.255.255.255. Organization: Name: Verizon Business. Tested viewdns.info range: 212.4.17.8 - 212.4.17.79
  • 212.4.17.41: newtechfrontier.com. Hit.
  • 212.4.17.43: smart-travel-consultant.com. Hit.
  • 212.4.17.46: atentlaloc.com. Hit.
  • 212.4.17.53: newsresolution.net. Hit.
  • 212.4.17.56: lesummumdelafinance.com. Hit.
  • 212.4.17.56: thepinnacleoffinance.com. No Wayback machine archives.
  • 212.4.17.61: tech-stop.org. Archive: 2011. Feels likely. No commons found. .org hit? Has subdomain "gear.tech-stop.org" according to 2013 DNS Census, which suggests CGI comms, but no links to it
  • 212.4.17.98: topbillingsite.com. Hit.
  • 212.4.17.122: b2bworldglobal.com. Hit.
There were also some other reverse IP hits for fightwithoutrules.com, but no CIA websites there:
  • 204.11.56.25 - British Virgin Islands - Confluence Networks Inc - 2013-09-26. Many domains.
  • 208.91.197.19 - British Virgin Islands - Confluence Networks Inc - 2013-05-20. Many domains.
212.4.18.129 sightseeingnews.com. Found with: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches. Tested viewdns.info range: 212.4.18.115 - 212.4.18.148. TODO expand. Interesting wide/sparse range? Or perhaps it's two separate ranges?
212.209.74.105 globalbaseballnews.com. Tested viewdns.info range: 212.209.74.100 - 212.209.74.132. Found with: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches
  • 212.209.74.105: globalbaseballnews.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.74.106: football-de-luxe.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.74.111: worldconcerns.info. No archives.
  • 212.209.74.112: developmental-league.com. Unclear. CGI comms variant? 2010. English. CGI. American football.
  • 212.209.74.115: mediocampodefutbol.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.74.117: myengineeringaffinity.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.74.122: atthemovies.biz. Archive very broken. Has link to unarchived JAR: web.archive.org/web/20110809232811oe_/http://www.atthemovies.biz/movieslides.jar. Would have been the fist .biz hit found: Non .com .net TLDs
  • 212.209.74.123: worldfinancialexchangenews.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.74.124: urouttahere.com. No archives. Meaning presumably "you're out of here"? One wonders what the theme would have been!
  • 212.209.74.125: avoilurefixe.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.74.126: headlines2day.com. Hit.
    • 118.139.174.11. Reverse IP source: viewdns.info
      • 118.139.174.11: 712 domain hits on it
      • 118.139.174.21: theargentineanwineco.com 2013-09-26. No Wayback machine archive.
      • nothing else on the +-20 range
    • 184.168.221.91. Reverse IP source: 2013 DNS Census
  • 212.209.74.127: construction-zones.com. Unclear. CGI comms variant? 2009. No known comms found. English. construction. Has a login page: web.archive.org/web/20091130144158/http://construction-zones.com/login.html so maybe CGI comms variant
212.209.79.40 hydradraco.com. Found with: visual inspection of full 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup list just after globalbaseballnews.com. Tested viewdns.info range: 212.209.79.35 - 212.209.79.63
  • 212.209.79.34: fgnl.net. Hit. securitytrails.com provides IP history:
    • 212.209.79.34: 2008-09-01 - 2010-04-19.
    • 212.4.18.133: 2010-04-19 - 2019-06-19. Tested viewdns.info range: 212.4.18.122 - 212.4.18.148
    both under MCI Communications Services, Inc. d/b/a Verizon Business.
  • 212.209.79.37: fitness-sources.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.79.40: hydradraco.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.79.41: noticiasdelmundolatino.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.79.42: suparakuvi.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.79.44: myigadgets.net. Unclear. 2010. tech. Contains some helpers to: iGoogle. This page is very interesting. and quite different from the others, as it contains highly specialized functionality. No known comms found. The choice of homepage languages is also very suspicious: Arabic, Farsi, French, Chinese and Spanish.
  • 212.209.79.46: cetusdelph.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.79.47: willtoworship.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.79.48: themvconnection.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.79.51: pi-resources.net. Hit.
  • 212.209.79.52: newel-adserver.com. Redirects to newel.com which is legit.
  • 212.209.79.53: ourscubaworld.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.79.58: tech-love-home.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.79.60: first-solo-aviation.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.79.61: china-destinations.org. Hit.
212.209.90.84 thenewseditor.com. Found with: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches. Tested viewdns.info range: 212.209.90.64 - 212.209.90.99
  • 212.209.90.69: worldedgenews.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.90.72: talkingpointnews.info. No archives.
  • 212.209.90.75: prebitinvestment.com. No archives.
  • 212.209.90.77: energy-bulb.com 2011. English. energy. Comms not found, but has unarchived link to: web.archive.org/web/20110128182345/https://webmail.energy-bulb.com/login.html. CGI comms variant?
  • 212.209.90.79: freeblink.com. No archives for timerange, then legit.
  • 212.209.90.80: nsmovies.net. Hit.
  • 212.209.90.82: middleeastjournal.net. Hit.
  • 212.209.90.84: thenewseditor.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.90.87: newsandweathersource.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.90.89: pakisports.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.90.90: vriha-aesthetics.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.90.92: amishkanews.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.90.93: theentertainbiz.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.90.94: eurosportssummary.com. Hit.
  • 212.209.91.14: teracom.net. Legit
216.105.98.152: modernarabicnews.com. Found with: 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches. Tested viewdns.info range: 216.105.98.125 - 216.105.98.167
  • 216.105.98.118:
    • estudashboard.com: broken
    • fintrade.us: legit
  • 216.105.98.132: europeantravelcafe.com. Likely a hit, but comms not found. 2010. English. Europe. travel. Marked copyright 2009. There's a currency converter at: web.archive.org/web/20100724024644/http://www.europeantravelcafe.com/tools.html which could be suspicious.
  • 216.105.98.134: fuenteneta.com. No archives.
  • 216.105.98.135: ilat-news.com. No archives.
  • 216.105.98.136: etherealinspirations.net. No archives.
  • 216.105.98.137: the-news-zone.com. Archive very broken: web.archive.org/web/20130814194744/http://the-news-zone.com/
  • 216.105.98.138: photozoomnews.com. No archives.
  • 216.105.98.139: cultura-digital.net. Hit.
  • 216.105.98.140: uaeshoppingspree.com. Hit.
  • 216.105.98.141: jabarifootball.com. No archives. "Jabari" is a Swahili/Arabic name[ref]
  • 216.105.98.142: globalreview-ar.com. No archives. Shame, could have been our first Argentinian site.
  • 216.105.98.144: garanziadellasicurezza.com. Archives quite broken: web.archive.org/web/20110424044637/http://www.garanziadellasicurezza.com:80/ Unarchived JAR: /web/20110424044637oe_/http://www.garanziadellasicurezza.com/garanzia.jar Would be another precious Italy hit...
  • 216.105.98.145: montanismoaventura.com. Hit.
  • 216.105.98.146: large-format-news.com. No archives.
  • 216.105.98.147: nepalnewsbrief.com. Hit. dnshistory.org marks it as having IP 2010-03-10 -> 2010-08-15 216.169.148.94 [ref]. This range does feel a bit different from the others, too many broken archives, and relatively early ones too. Explored viewdns.info range: 216.169.148.84 - 216.169.148.104, empty for period.
  • 216.105.98.148: teclafinance.com. No archives. One wonders what "tecla" would have stood for. It is Portuguese for "keyboard key", but finance is English so.
  • 216.105.98.149: entreman.com: legit? web.archive.org/web/20110128212738/http://entreman.com/
  • 216.105.98.152: modernarabicnews.com. Hit.
  • 216.105.98.153: global-headlines.com. No archives of the period, then was a legitimate WordPress website for a while.
  • 216.105.98.154: everythingcricket.org. Hit.
  • 216.105.98.156: familyhealthonline.net. Hit.
  • 216.105.98.157: delacorne.com. No archives.
  • 216.105.98.158: econfutures.com. No archives.
  • 216.105.98.161: kstcloud.com. No archives.
219.90.61.123 journeystravelled.com Tested viewdns.info range: 219.90.61.100 - 219.90.61.133
  • 219.90.61.100: pressstory.com: "Under construction". web.archive.org/web/20110128124548/http://pressstory.com/
  • 219.90.61.103: bet2plays.com. "Under construction". Unlikely thematic, too spicy.
  • 219.90.61.110: surya-brahma.com. Hit
  • 219.90.61.111: classicalmusicboxonline.com. Hit.
  • 219.90.61.116: athletepro.net. Hit.
  • 219.90.61.117: lajornadanow.com. Hit.
  • 219.90.61.119: aviation-navigation.com. No archives.
  • 219.90.61.120: theinternationalworld.com. Hit.
  • 219.90.61.121: thepyramidnews.com. Hit.
  • 219.90.61.122: iran-newslink-today.com. Hit.
  • 219.90.61.123: journeystravelled.com. Hit.
219.90.62.243 fitness-dawg.com. whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-219-0-0-0-1/pft?s=219.90.62.243. Net Type: Allocated to APNIC. Tested viewdns.info range: unknown - 219.90.62.255
  • 219.90.62.173:
    • dominatingduos.com: 2013-08-12T17:53:09. No archive
    • has other domains
  • 219.90.62.193: centralnewsreleasers.com. Only a 2018 of the robots.txt: web.archive.org/web/*/http://centralnewsreleasers.com/* so likely not a hit
  • 219.90.62.209: penniesbythemillions.com. No archives.
  • 219.90.62.229: information-junky.com. Hit.
  • 219.90.62.231: todosperuahora.com. Hit.
  • 219.90.62.232: race26point2.com. Hit. No archives, but has subdomain: secure.race26point2.com, so likely CGI comms.
  • 219.90.62.233: theworld-news.net. Hit.
  • 219.90.62.234: recuerdosdeviajeonline.com. Hit
  • 219.90.62.235: ordenpolicial.com. No Wayback Machine archives. Last resolved: 2012-01-11.
  • 219.90.62.237: elcorreodenoticias.com. Hit.
  • 219.90.62.238: freshtechonline.com. Hit.
  • 219.90.62.240: cityworldnewsnow.com. Hit. No archives but has subdomain: secure.cityworldnewsnow.com so likely CGI comms.
  • 219.90.62.241: newscentertoday.com. Hit.
  • 219.90.62.242: ride-captain.com. Hit.
  • 219.90.62.244: easytraveleurope.com. Hit.
  • 219.90.62.245: world-news-now.net. Hit.
  • 219.90.62.246: negativeaperture.com. Hit.
  • 219.90.62.247: conquermstoday.com. Hit
  • 219.90.62.249: forensic-exchange.com. 2013 archive: web.archive.org/web/20130714094026/http://forensic-exchange.com/. Appears to be a buggy Wayback Machine archive somehow, so inconclusive.

TODO

words: 272 articles: 4
Tagged

Find missing hits in IP ranges

words: 35
All IP ranges have some holes in them for which we don't have a domain name.
It is because there was nothing there, or just because we don't have a good enough reverse IP database?

How did Alexa find the domains?

words: 77
It can't be HTML crawl because presumably there wouldn't have been links to those websites? Presumably this is why Common Crawl doesn't seem to have any hits.
So they must have had some kind of DNS A record database?
Or would IPv4 sweep have worked, without the Host header with the CIA's setup?
The same question also applies to the 2013 DNS Census. It has less hits, but still has many.
Whatever they did, we are so so glad that they did!

Non .com .net TLDs

words: 160 articles: 1
.com and .net are very dominant. Here we list other choices made:
  • .info: has a few hits:
    • archived comms:
      • beyondthefringe.info
    • unarchived comms:
      • crickettoday.info
    • unarchived:
      • talkingpointnews.info
      • theventurenews.info
      • worldconcerns.info
    Did a full Wayback Machine CDX scanning on .info after:
    grep -e news -e noticias -e nouvelles -e world -e global
    That makes about 10k domains, so it's about the right size.
  • .org: has a least one hit, see: Are there .org hits?
  • .biz:
    • unarchived comms:
      • atthemovies.biz
Are there .org hits?
words: 91
Previously it was unclear if there were any .org hits, until we found the first one with clear comms: web.archive.org/web/20110624203548/http://awfaoi.org/hand.jar
Later on, two more clear ones were found with expired domain trackers:
  • azerinews.org
  • autism-news.org
further settling their existence. Later on newimages.org also came to light.
Others that had been previously found in IP ranges but without clear comms:
  • 65.61.127.177: material-science.org
  • 212.4.17.61: tech-stop.org
Others in IP ranges by unarchived:
  • 74.116.72.244 arborstribune.org
.org is very rare, and has been excluded from some of our search heuristics. That was a shame, but likely not much was missed.

Data sources

words: 6k articles: 25
This is a dark art, and many of the sources are shady as fuck! We often have no idea of their methodology. Also no source is fully complete. We just piece up as best we can.
Some links of interest:

Reuters article (2022-09-29)

words: 65
www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-spies-iran
This is our primary data source, the first article that pointed out a few specific CIA websites which then served as the basis for all of our research.
We take the truth of this article as an axiom. And then all we claim is that all other websites found were made by the same people due to strong shared design principles of the such websites.

Wayback Machine

words: 730 articles: 4
D'oh.
But to be serious. The Wayback Machine contains a very large proportion of all sites. It is the most complete database we have found so far. Some archives are very broken. But those are rares.
The only problem with the Wayback Machine is that there is no known efficient way to query its archives across domains. You have to have a domain in hand for CDX queries: Wayback Machine CDX scanning.
The Common Crawl project attempts in part to address this lack of querriability, but we haven't managed to extract any hits from it.
CDX + 2013 DNS Census + heuristics however has been fruitful however.
Wayback Machine CDX scanning
words: 606 articles: 2
The Wayback Machine has an endpoint to query cralwed pages called the CDX server. It is documented at: github.com/internetarchive/wayback/blob/master/wayback-cdx-server/README.md.
This allows to filter down 10 thousands of possible domains in a few hours. But 100s of thousands would be too much. This is because you have to query exactly one URL at a time, and they possibly rate limit IPs. But no IP blacklisting so far after several hours, so it's not that bad.
Once you have a heuristic to narrow down some domains, you can use this helper: cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/cdx.sh to drill them down from 10s of thousands down to hundreds or thousands.
We then post process the results of cdx.sh with cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/cdx-post.sh to drill them down from from thousands to dozens, and manually inspect everything.
From then on, you can just manually inspect for hist on your browser.
Wayback Machine CDX scanning with Tor parallelization
words: 337
Dire times require dire methods: cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/cdx-tor.sh.
First we must start the tor servers with the tor-army command from: stackoverflow.com/questions/14321214/how-to-run-multiple-tor-processes-at-once-with-different-exit-ips/76749983#76749983
tor-army 100
and then use it on a newline separated domain name list to check;
./cdx-tor.sh infile.txt
This creates a directory infile.txt.cdx/ containing:
  • infile.txt.cdx/out00, out01, etc.: the suspected CDX lines from domains from each tor instance based on the simple criteria that the CDX can handle directly. We split the input domains into 100 piles, and give one selected pile per tor instance.
  • infile.txt.cdx/out: the final combined CDX output of out00, out01, ...
  • infile.txt.cdx/out.post: the final output containing only domain names that match further CLI criteria that cannot be easily encoded on the CDX query. This is the cleanest domain name list you should look into at the end basically.
Since archive is so abysmal in its data access, e.g. a Google BigQuery would solve our issues in seconds, we have to come up with creative ways of getting around their IP throttling.
The CIA doesn't play fair. They're actually the exact opposite of fair. So neither shall we.
Distilled into an answer at: stackoverflow.com/questions/14321214/how-to-run-multiple-tor-processes-at-once-with-different-exit-ips/76749983#76749983
This should allow a full sweep of the 4.5M records in 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup in a reasonable amount of time. After JAR/SWF/CGI filtering we obtained 5.8k domains, so a reduction factor of about 1 million with likely very few losses. Not bad.
5.8k is still a bit annoying to fully go over however, so we can also try to count CDX hits to the domains and remove anything with too many hits, since the CIA websites basically have very few archives:
cd 2013-dns-census-a-novirt-domains.txt.cdx
./cdx-tor.sh -d out.post domain-list.txt
cd out.post.cdx
cut -d' ' -f1 out | uniq -c | sort -k1 -n | awk 'match($2, /([^,]+),([^)]+)/, a) {printf("%s.%s %d\n", a[2], a[1], $1)}' > out.count
This gives us something like:
12654montana.com 1
aeronet-news.com 1
atohms.com 1
av3net.com 1
beechstreetas400.com 1
sorted by increasing hit counts, so we can go down as far as patience allows for!
New results from a full CDX scan of 2013-dns-census-a-novirt.csv:
  • 219.90.61.123 journeystravelled.com
JS CDX scanning
words: 132
JAR, SWF and CGI-bin scanning by path only is fine, since there are relatively few of those. But .js scanning by path only is too broad.
One option would be to filter out by size, an information that is contained on the CDX. Let's check typical ones:
grep -f <(jq -r '.[]|select(select(.comms)|.comms|test("\\.js"))|.host' ../media/cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/hits.json) out | out.jshits.cdx
sort -n -k7 out.jshits.cdx
Ignoring some obvious unrelated non-comms files visually we get a range of about 2732 to 3632:
net,hollywoodscreen)/current.js 20110106082232 http://hollywoodscreen.net/current.js text/javascript 200 XY5NHVW7UMFS3WSKPXLOQ5DJA34POXMV 2732
com,amishkanews)/amishkanewss.js 20110208032713 http://amishkanews.com/amishkanewss.js text/javascript 200 S5ZWJ53JFSLUSJVXBBA3NBJXNYLNCI4E 3632
This ignores the obviously atypical JavaScript with SHAs from iranfootballsource, and the particularly small old menu.js from cutabovenews.com, which we embed into cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/cdx-post-js.sh.
The size helps a bit, but it's not insanely good unfortunately, only about 3x, these are some common JS sizes right there!
Many hits appear to happen on the same days, and per-day data does exist: archive.org/details/widecrawl but apparently cannot be publicly downloaded unfortunately. But maybe there's another way? TODO select candidates.

viewdns.info

words: 327
Accounts used so far: 6 (1500 reverse IP checks).
Their historic DNS and reverse DNS info was very valuable, and served as Ciro's the initial entry point to finding hits in the IP ranges given by Reuters.
Their data is also quite disjoint from the data of the 2013 DNS Census. There is some overlap, but clearly their methodology is very different. Some times they slot into one another almost perfectly.
You can only get about 250 queries on the web interface, then 250 queries per free account via API.
Since this source is so scarce and valuable, we have been quite careful to note down all the domain and IP ranges that have been explored.
They check your IP when you signup, and you can't sign in twice from the same IP. They also state that Tor addresses are blacklisted.
At news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38496244, the creator of the viewdns.info, "Hughesey", also stated that he'd able to give some free credits for public research projects such as this one. This would have saved up going to quite a few Cafes to get those sweet extra IPs! But it was more fun in hardmode, no doubt.
They also normalize dots in gmail addresses, so you need more diverse email accounts. But they haven't covered the .gmail vs .googlemail trick.
We do API access to IP ranges with this simple helper: cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/viewdns-info.sh, usage:
./viewdns-info.sh <apikey> <start-ipv-address> <end-ipv-address>
e.g.:
./viewdns-info.sh 8b890b00b17ed2d66bbed878d51200b58d43d014 66.45.179.187 66.45.179.210
For domain to IP queries from the API you should use "iphistory" viewdns.info/api/docs/ip-history.php:
curl 'https://api.viewdns.info/iphistory/?domain=todaysengineering.com&apikey=$APIKEY&output=json'
Very curiously, their reverse IP search appears to be somewhat broken, or not to be historic, e.g.
We've contacted viewdns.info support and they replied:
The reverse IP tool will only show a domain if that is it's current IP address.
This is likely not accurate, more precisely it likely only works if it was the last IP address, not necessarily a current one.

DNS Census 2013

words: 2k articles: 6
Main article: DNS Census 2013.
This data source was very valuable, and led to many hits, and to finding the first non Reuters ranges with Section "secure subdomain search on 2013 DNS Census".
Hit overlap:
jq -r '.[].host' ../media/cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/hits.json ) | xargs -I{} sqlite3 aiddcu.sqlite "select * from t where d = '{}'"
Domain hit count when we were at 279 hits: 142 hits, so about half of the hits were present.
The timing of the database is perfect for this project, it is as if the CIA had planted it themselves!
2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup
words: 660 articles: 1
We've noticed that often when there is a hit range:
  • there is only one IP for each domain
  • there is a range of about 20-30 of those
and that this does not seem to be that common. Let's see if that is a reasonable fingerprint or not.
Note that although this is the most common case, we have found multiple hits that viewdns.info maps to the same IP.
First we create a table u (unique) that only have domains which are the only domain for an IP, let's see by how much that lowers the 191 M total unique domains:
time sqlite3 u.sqlite 'create table t (d text, i text)'
time sqlite3 av.sqlite -cmd "attach 'u.sqlite' as u" "insert into u.t select min(d) as d, min(i) as i from t where d not like '%.%.%' group by i having count(distinct d) = 1"
The not like '%.%.%' removes subdomains from the counts so that CGI comms are still included, and distinct in count(distinct is because we have multiple entries at different timestamps for some of the hits.
Let's start with the 208 subset to see how it goes:
time sqlite3 av.sqlite -cmd "attach 'u.sqlite' as u" "insert into u.t select min(d) as d, min(i) as i from t where i glob '208.*' and d not like '%.%.%' and (d like '%.com' or d like '%.net') group by i having count(distinct d) = 1"
OK, after we fixed bugs with the above we are down to 4 million lines with unique domain/IP pairs and which contains all of the original hits! Almost certainly more are to be found!
This data is so valuable that we've decided to upload it to: archive.org/details/2013-dns-census-a-novirt.csv Format:
8,chrisjmcgregor.com
11,80end.com
28,fine5.net
38,bestarabictv.com
49,xy005.com
50,cmsasoccer.com
80,museemontpellier.net
100,newtiger.com
108,lps-promptservice.com
111,bridesmaiddressesshow.com
The numbers of the first column are the IPs as a 32-bit integer representation, which is more useful to search for ranges in.
To make a histogram with the distribution of the single hostname IPs:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
bin=$((2**24))
sqlite3 2013-dns-census-a-novirt.sqlite -cmd '.mode csv' >2013-dns-census-a-novirt-hist.csv <<EOF
select i, sum(cnt) from (
  select floor(i/${bin}) as i,
         count(*) as cnt
    from t
    group by 1
  union
  select *, 0 as cnt from generate_series(0, 255)
)
group by i
EOF
gnuplot \
  -e 'set terminal svg size 1200, 800' \
  -e 'set output "2013-dns-census-a-novirt-hist.svg"' \
  -e 'set datafile separator ","' \
  -e 'set tics scale 0' \
  -e 'unset key' \
  -e 'set xrange[0:255]' \
  -e 'set title "Counts of IPs with a single hostname"' \
  -e 'set xlabel "IPv4 first byte"' \
  -e 'set ylabel "count"' \
  -e 'plot "2013-dns-census-a-novirt-hist.csv" using 1:2:1 with labels' \
;
Which gives the following useless noise, there is basically no pattern:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cirosantilli/media/master/cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/2013-dns-census-a-novirt-hist.svg
2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches
words: 218
There are two keywords that are killers: "news" and "world" and their translations or closely related words. Everything else is hard. So a good start is:
grep -e news -e noticias -e nouvelles -e world -e global
iran + football:
  • iranfootballsource.com: the third hit for this area after the two given by Reuters! Epic.
3 easy hits with "noticias" (news in Portuguese or Spanish"), uncovering two brand new ip ranges:
  • 66.45.179.205 noticiasporjanua.com
  • 66.237.236.247 comunidaddenoticias.com
  • 204.176.38.143 noticiassofisticadas.com
Let's see some French "nouvelles/actualites" for those tumultuous Maghrebis:
  • 216.97.231.56 nouvelles-d-aujourdhuis.com
news + world:
  • 210.80.75.55 philippinenewsonline.net
news + global:
  • 204.176.39.115 globalprovincesnews.com
  • 212.209.74.105 globalbaseballnews.com
  • 212.209.79.40: hydradraco.com
OK, I've decided to do a complete Wayback Machine CDX scanning of news... Searching for .JAR or https.*cgi-bin.*\.cgi are killers, particularly the .jar hits, here's what came out:
  • 62.22.60.49 telecom-headlines.com
  • 62.22.61.206 worldnewsnetworking.com
  • 64.16.204.55 holein1news.com
  • 66.104.169.184 bcenews.com
  • 69.84.156.90 stickshiftnews.com
  • 74.116.72.236 techtopnews.com
  • 74.254.12.168 non-stop-news.net
  • 193.203.49.212 inews-today.com
  • 199.85.212.118 just-kidding-news.com
  • 207.210.250.132 aeronet-news.com
  • 212.4.18.129 sightseeingnews.com
  • 212.209.90.84 thenewseditor.com
  • 216.105.98.152 modernarabicnews.com
Wayback Machine CDX scanning of "world":
  • 66.104.173.186 myworldlymusic.com
"headline": only 140 matches in 2013-dns-census-a-novirt.csv and 3 hits out of 269 hits. Full inspection without CDX led to no new hits.
"today": only 3.5k matches in 2013-dns-census-a-novirt.csv and 12 hits out of 269 hits, TODO how many on those on 2013-dns-census-a-novirt? No new hits.
"world", "global", "international", and spanish/portuguese/French versions like "mondo", "mundo", "mondi": 15k matches in 2013-dns-census-a-novirt.csv. No new hits.
2013 DNS census MX records
words: 383
Let' see if there's anything in records/mx.xz.
mx.csv is 21GB.
They do have " in the files to escape commas so:
mx.py
import csv
import sys
writer = csv.writer(sys.stdout)
with open('mx.csv', 'r') as f:
    reader = csv.reader(f)
    for row in reader:
        writer.writerow([row[0], row[3]])
Would have been better with csvkit: stackoverflow.com/questions/36287982/bash-parse-csv-with-quotes-commas-and-newlines
then:
# uniq not amazing as there are often two or three slightly different records repeated on multiple timestamps, but down to 11 GB
python3 mx.py | uniq > mx-uniq.csv
sqlite3 mx.sqlite 'create table t(d text, m text)'
# 13 GB
time sqlite3 mx.sqlite ".import --csv --skip 1 'mx-uniq.csv' t"

# 41 GB
time sqlite3 mx.sqlite 'create index td on t(d)'
time sqlite3 mx.sqlite 'create index tm on t(m)'
time sqlite3 mx.sqlite 'create index tdm on t(d, m)'

# Remove dupes.
# Rows: 150m
time sqlite3 mx.sqlite <<EOF
delete from t
where rowid not in (
  select min(rowid)
  from t
  group by d, m
)
EOF

# 15 GB
time sqlite3 mx.sqlite vacuum
Let's see what the hits use:
awk -F, 'NR>1{ print $2 }' ../media/cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/hits.csv | xargs -I{} sqlite3 mx.sqlite "select distinct * from t where d = '{}'"
At around 267 total hits, only 84 have MX records, and from those that do, almost all of them have exactly:
smtp.secureserver.net
mailstore1.secureserver.net
with only three exceptions:
dailynewsandsports.com|dailynewsandsports.com
inews-today.com|mail.inews-today.com
just-kidding-news.com|just-kidding-news.com
We need to count out of the totals!
sqlite3 mx.sqlite "select count(*) from t where m = 'mailstore1.secureserver.net'"
which gives, ~18M, so nope, it is too much by itself...
Let's try to use that to reduce av.sqlite from 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup a bit further:
time sqlite3 mx.sqlite '.mode csv' "attach 'aiddcu.sqlite' as 'av'" '.load ./ip' "select ipi2s(av.t.i), av.t.d from av.t inner join t as mx on av.t.d = mx.d and mx.m = 'mailstore1.secureserver.net' order by av.t.i asc" > avm.csv
where avm stands for av with mx pruning. This leaves us with only ~500k entries left. With one more figerprint we could do a Wayback Machine CDX scanning scan.
Let's check that we still have most our hits in there:
grep -f <(awk -F, 'NR>1{print $2}' /home/ciro/bak/git/media/cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/hits.csv) avm.csv
At 267 hits we got 81, so all are still present.
secureserver is a hosting provider, we can see their blank page e.g. at: web.archive.org/web/20110128152204/http://emmano.com/. security.stackexchange.com/questions/12610/why-did-secureserver-net-godaddy-access-my-gmail-account/12616#12616 comments:
secureserver.net is the name GoDaddy use as the reverse DNS for IP addresses used for dedicated/virtual server hosting
2013 DNS census secureserver.net MX records intersection 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup
words: 92
We intersect 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup with 2013 DNS census MX records and that leaves 460k hits. We did lose a third on the the MX records as of 260 hits since secureserver.net is only used in 1/3 of sites, but we also concentrate 9x, so it may be worth it.
Then we Wayback Machine CDX scanning. it takes about 5 days, but it is manageale.
We did a full Wayback Machine CDX scanning for JAR, SWF and cgi-bin in those, but only found a single new hit:
2013 DNS census NS records
words: 291
ns.csv is 57 GB. This file is too massive, working with it is a pain.
We can also cut down the data a lot with stackoverflow.com/questions/1915636/is-there-a-way-to-uniq-by-column/76605540#76605540 and tld filtering:
awk -F, 'BEGIN{OFS=","} { if ($1 != last) { print $1, $3; last = $1; } }' ns.csv | grep -E '\.(com|net|info|org|biz),' > nsu.csv
This brings us down to a much more manageable 3.0 GB, 83 M rows.
Let's just scan it once real quick to start with, since likely nothing will come of this venue:
grep -f <(awk -F, 'NR>1{print $2}' ../media/cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/hits.csv) nsu.csv | tee nsu-hits.csv
cat nsu-hits.csv | csvcut -c 2 | sort | awk -F. '{OFS="."; print $(NF-1), $(NF)}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -k1 -n
As of 267 hits we get:
      1 a2hosting.com
      1 amerinoc.com
      1 ayns.net
      1 dailyrazor.com
      1 domainingdepot.com
      1 easydns.com
      1 frienddns.ru
      1 hostgator.com
      1 kolmic.com
      1 name-services.com
      1 namecity.com
      1 netnames.net
      1 tonsmovies.net
      1 webmailer.de
      2 cashparking.com
     55 worldnic.com
     86 domaincontrol.com
so yeah, most of those are likely going to be humongous just by looking at the names.
The smallest ones by far from the total are: frienddns.ru with only 487 hits, all others quite large or fake hits due to CSV. Did a quick Wayback Machine CDX scanning there but no luck alas.
Let's check the smaller ones:
inews-today.com,2013-08-12T03:14:01,ns1.frienddns.ru
source-commodities.net,2012-12-13T20:58:28,ns1.namecity.com -> fake hit due to grep e-commodities.net
dailynewsandsports.com,2013-08-13T08:36:28,ns3.a2hosting.com
just-kidding-news.com,2012-02-04T07:40:50,jns3.dailyrazor.com
fightwithoutrules.com,2012-11-09T01:17:40,sk.s2.ns1.ns92.kolmic.com
fightwithoutrules.com,2013-07-01T22:46:23,ns1625.ztomy.com
half-court.net,2012-09-10T09:49:15,sk.s2.ns1.ns92.kolmic.com
half-court.net,2013-07-07T00:31:12,ns1621.ztomy.com
Doubt anything will come out of this.
Let's do a bit of counting out of the total:
grep domaincontrol.com ns.csv | awk -F, '{print $1}' | uniq | wc
gives ~20M domain using domaincontrol. Let's see how many domains are in the first place:
awk -F, '{print $1}' ns.csv | uniq | wc
so it accounts for 1/4 of the total.
2013 DNS census SOA records
words: 6
Same as 2013 DNS census NS records basically, nothing came out.

dnshistory.org

words: 240
dnshistory.org contains historical domain -> mappings.
We have not managed to extract much from this source, they don't have as much data on the range of interest.
But they do have some unique data at least, perhaps we should try them a bit more often, e.g. they were the only source we've seen so far that made the association: headlines2day.com -> 212.209.74.126 which places it in the more plausible globalbaseballnews.com IP range.
TODO can it do IP to domain? Or just domain to IP? Asked on their Discord: discord.com/channels/698151879166918727/968586102493552731/1124254204257632377. Their banner suggests that yes:
With our new look website you can now find other domains hosted on the same IP address, your website neighbours and more even quicker than before.
Owner replied, you can't:
At the moment you can only do this for current not historical records
This is a shame, reverse IP here could be quite valuable.
In principle, we could obtain this data from search engines, but Google doesn't track that entire website well, e.g. no hits for site:dnshistory.org "62.22.60.48" presumably due to heavy IP throttling.
Homepage dnshistory.org/ gives date starting in 2009:
Here at DNS History we have been crawling DNS records since 2009, our database currently contains over 1 billion domains and over 12 billion DNS records.
and it is true that they do have some hits from that useful era.
Any data that we have the patience of extracting from this we will dump under github.com/cirosantilli/media/blob/master/cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/hits.json.

securitytrails.com

words: 87
They appear to piece together data from various sources. As a result, they have a very complete domain -> IP history.
TODO reverse IP? The fact that they don't seem to have it suggests that they are just making historical reverse IP requests to a third party via some API.
Account creation blacklists common email providers such as gmail to force users to use a "corporate" email address. But using random domains like ciro@cirosantilli.com works fine.
Their data seems to date back to 2008 for our searches.

Common Crawl

words: 303
So far, no new domains have been found with Common Crawl, nor have any existing known domains been found to be present in Common Crawl. Our working theory is that Common Crawl never reached the domains How did Alexa find the domains?
Let's try and do something with Common Crawl.
Unfortunately there's no IP data apparently: github.com/commoncrawl/cc-index-table/issues/30, so let's focus on the URLs.
Using their Common Crawl Athena method: commoncrawl.org/2018/03/index-to-warc-files-and-urls-in-columnar-format/
Hello world:
select * from "ccindex"."ccindex" limit 100;
Data scanned: 11.75 MB
Sample first output line:
#                            2
url_surtkey                  org,whwheelers)/robots.txt
url                          https://whwheelers.org/robots.txt
url_host_name                whwheelers.org
url_host_tld                 org
url_host_2nd_last_part       whwheelers
url_host_3rd_last_part
url_host_4th_last_part
url_host_5th_last_part
url_host_registry_suffix     org
url_host_registered_domain   whwheelers.org
url_host_private_suffix      org
url_host_private_domain      whwheelers.org
url_host_name_reversed
url_protocol                 https
url_port
url_path                     /robots.txt
url_query
fetch_time                   2021-06-22 16:36:50.000
fetch_status                 301
fetch_redirect               https://www.whwheelers.org/robots.txt
content_digest               3I42H3S6NNFQ2MSVX7XZKYAYSCX5QBYJ
content_mime_type            text/html
content_mime_detected        text/html
content_charset
content_languages
content_truncated
warc_filename                crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-25/segments/1623488519183.85/robotstxt/CC-MAIN-20210622155328-20210622185328-00312.warc.gz
warc_record_offset           1854030
warc_record_length           639
warc_segment                 1623488519183.85
crawl                        CC-MAIN-2021-25
subset                       robotstxt
So url_host_3rd_last_part might be a winner for CGI comms fingerprinting!
Naive one for one index:
select * from "ccindex"."ccindex" where url_host_registered_domain = 'conquermstoday.com' limit 100;
have no results... data scanned: 5.73 GB
Let's see if they have any of the domain hits. Let's also restrict by date to try and reduce the data scanned:
select * from "ccindex"."ccindex" where
  fetch_time < TIMESTAMP '2014-01-01 00:00:00' AND
  url_host_registered_domain IN (
   'activegaminginfo.com',
   'altworldnews.com',
   ...
   'topbillingsite.com',
   'worldwildlifeadventure.com'
 )
Humm, data scanned: 60.59 GB and no hits... weird.
Sanity check:
select * from "ccindex"."ccindex" WHERE
  crawl = 'CC-MAIN-2013-20' AND
  subset = 'warc' AND
  url_host_registered_domain IN (
   'google.com',
   'amazon.com'
 )
has a bunch of hits of course. Also Data scanned: 212.88 MB, WHERE crawl and subset are a must! Should have read the article first.
Let's widen a bit more:
select * from "ccindex"."ccindex" WHERE
  crawl IN (
    'CC-MAIN-2013-20',
    'CC-MAIN-2013-48',
    'CC-MAIN-2014-10'
  ) AND
  subset = 'warc' AND
  url_host_registered_domain IN (
    'activegaminginfo.com',
    'altworldnews.com',
    ...
    'worldnewsandent.com',
    'worldwildlifeadventure.com'
 )
Still nothing found... they don't seem to have any of the URLs of interest?

Internet Census 2012

words: 1k articles: 2
Does not appear to have any reverse IP hits unfortunately: opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/1951/dataset-of-domain-names/21077#21077. Likely only has domains that were explicitly advertised.
We could not find anything useful in it so far, but there is great potential to use this tool to find new IP ranges based on properties of existing IP ranges. Part of the problem is that the dataset is huge, and is split by top 256 bytes. But it would be reasonable to at least explore ranges with pre-existing known hits...
We have started looking for patterns on 66.* and 208.*, both selected as two relatively far away ranges that have a number of pre-existing hits. 208 should likely have been 212 considering later finds that put several ranges in 212.
tcpip_fp:
  • 66.104.
    • 66.104.175.41: grubbersworldrugbynews.com: 1346397300 SCAN(V=6.01%E=4%D=1/12%OT=22%CT=443%CU=%PV=N%G=N%TM=387CAB9E%P=mipsel-openwrt-linux-gnu),ECN(R=N),T1(R=N),T2(R=N),T3(R=N),T4(R=N),T5(R=N),T6(R=N),T7(R=N),U1(R=N),IE(R=N)
    • 66.104.175.48: worlddispatch.net: 1346816700 SCAN(V=6.01%E=4%D=1/2%OT=22%CT=443%CU=%PV=N%DC=I%G=N%TM=1D5EA%P=mipsel-openwrt-linux-gnu),SEQ(SP=F8%GCD=3%ISR=109%TI=Z%TS=A),ECN(R=N),T1(R=Y%DF=Y%TG=40%S=O%A=S+%F=AS%RD=0%Q=),T1(R=N),T2(R=N),T3(R=N),T4(R=N),T5(R=Y%DF=Y%TG=40%W=0%S=Z%A=S+%F=AR%O=%RD=0%Q=),T6(R=N),T7(R=N),U1(R=N),IE(R=N)
    • 66.104.175.49: webworldsports.com: 1346692500 SCAN(V=6.01%E=4%D=9/3%OT=22%CT=443%CU=%PV=N%DC=I%G=N%TM=5044E96E%P=mipsel-openwrt-linux-gnu),SEQ(SP=105%GCD=1%ISR=108%TI=Z%TS=A),OPS(O1=M550ST11NW6%O2=M550ST11NW6%O3=M550NNT11NW6%O4=M550ST11NW6%O5=M550ST11NW6%O6=M550ST11),WIN(W1=1510%W2=1510%W3=1510%W4=1510%W5=1510%W6=1510),ECN(R=N),T1(R=Y%DF=Y%TG=40%S=O%A=S+%F=AS%RD=0%Q=),T1(R=N),T2(R=N),T3(R=N),T4(R=N),T5(R=Y%DF=Y%TG=40%W=0%S=Z%A=S+%F=AR%O=%RD=0%Q=),T6(R=N),T7(R=N),U1(R=N),IE(R=N)
    • 66.104.175.50: fly-bybirdies.com: 1346822100 SCAN(V=6.01%E=4%D=1/1%OT=22%CT=443%CU=%PV=N%DC=I%G=N%TM=14655%P=mipsel-openwrt-linux-gnu),SEQ(TI=Z%TS=A),ECN(R=N),T1(R=Y%DF=Y%TG=40%S=O%A=S+%F=AS%RD=0%Q=),T1(R=N),T2(R=N),T3(R=N),T4(R=N),T5(R=Y%DF=Y%TG=40%W=0%S=Z%A=S+%F=AR%O=%RD=0%Q=),T6(R=N),T7(R=N),U1(R=N),IE(R=N)
    • 66.104.175.53: info-ology.net: 1346712300 SCAN(V=6.01%E=4%D=9/4%OT=22%CT=443%CU=%PV=N%DC=I%G=N%TM=50453230%P=mipsel-openwrt-linux-gnu),SEQ(SP=FB%GCD=1%ISR=FF%TI=Z%TS=A),ECN(R=N),T1(R=Y%DF=Y%TG=40%S=O%A=S+%F=AS%RD=0%Q=),T1(R=N),T2(R=N),T3(R=N),T4(R=N),T5(R=Y%DF=Y%TG=40%W=0%S=Z%A=S+%F=AR%O=%RD=0%Q=),T6(R=N),T7(R=N),U1(R=N),IE(R=N)
  • 66.175.106
    • 66.175.106.150: noticiasmusica.net: 1340077500 SCAN(V=5.51%D=1/3%OT=22%CT=443%CU=%PV=N%G=N%TM=38707542%P=mipsel-openwrt-linux-gnu),ECN(R=N),T1(R=N),T2(R=N),T3(R=N),T4(R=N),T5(R=Y%DF=Y%TG=40%W=0%S=Z%A=S+%F=AR%O=%RD=0%Q=),T6(R=N),T7(R=N),U1(R=N),IE(R=N)
    • 66.175.106.155: atomworldnews.com: 1345562100 SCAN(V=5.51%D=8/21%OT=22%CT=443%CU=%PV=N%DC=I%G=N%TM=5033A5F2%P=mips-openwrt-linux-gnu),SEQ(SP=FB%GCD=1%ISR=FC%TI=Z%TS=A),ECN(R=Y%DF=Y%TG=40%W=1540%O=M550NNSNW6%CC=N%Q=),T1(R=Y%DF=Y%TG=40%S=O%A=S+%F=AS%RD=0%Q=),T2(R=N),T3(R=N),T4(R=N),T5(R=Y%DF=Y%TG=40%W=0%S=Z%A=S+%F=AR%O=%RD=0%Q=),T6(R=N),T7(R=N),U1(R=N),IE(R=N)
2012 Internet Census hostprobes
words: 731
Hostprobes quick look on two ranges:
208.254.40:
... similar down

208.254.40.95	1334668500	down	no-response
208.254.40.95	1338270300	down	no-response
208.254.40.95	1338839100	down	no-response
208.254.40.95	1339361100	down	no-response
208.254.40.95	1346391900	down	no-response
208.254.40.96	1335806100	up	unknown
208.254.40.96	1336979700	up	unknown
208.254.40.96	1338840900	up	unknown
208.254.40.96	1339454700	up	unknown
208.254.40.96	1346778900	up	echo-reply (0.34s latency).
208.254.40.96	1346838300	up	echo-reply (0.30s latency).
208.254.40.97	1335840300	up	unknown
208.254.40.97	1338446700	up	unknown
208.254.40.97	1339334100	up	unknown
208.254.40.97	1346658300	up	echo-reply (0.26s latency).

... similar up

208.254.40.126	1335708900	up	unknown
208.254.40.126	1338446700	up	unknown
208.254.40.126	1339330500	up	unknown
208.254.40.126	1346494500	up	echo-reply (0.24s latency).
208.254.40.127	1335840300	up	unknown
208.254.40.127	1337793300	up	unknown
208.254.40.127	1338853500	up	unknown
208.254.40.127	1346454900	up	echo-reply (0.23s latency).

208.254.40.128	1335856500	up	unknown
208.254.40.128	1338200100	down	no-response
208.254.40.128	1338749100	down	no-response
208.254.40.128	1339334100	down	no-response
208.254.40.128	1346607900	down	net-unreach
208.254.40.129	1335699900	up	unknown

... similar down
Suggests exactly 127 - 96 + 1 = 31 IPs.
208.254.42:
... similar down

208.254.42.191	1334522700	down	no-response
208.254.42.191	1335276900	down	no-response
208.254.42.191	1335784500	down	no-response
208.254.42.191	1337845500	down	no-response
208.254.42.191	1338752700	down	no-response
208.254.42.191	1339332300	down	no-response
208.254.42.191	1346499900	down	net-unreach

208.254.42.192	1334668500	up	unknown
208.254.42.192	1336808700	up	unknown
208.254.42.192	1339334100	up	unknown
208.254.42.192	1346766300	up	echo-reply (0.40s latency).
208.254.42.193	1335770100	up	unknown
208.254.42.193	1338444900	up	unknown
208.254.42.193	1339334100	up	unknown

... similar up

208.254.42.221	1346517900	up	echo-reply (0.19s latency).
208.254.42.222	1335708900	up	unknown
208.254.42.222	1335708900	up	unknown
208.254.42.222	1338066900	up	unknown
208.254.42.222	1338747300	up	unknown
208.254.42.222	1346872500	up	echo-reply (0.27s latency).
208.254.42.223	1335773700	up	unknown
208.254.42.223	1336949100	up	unknown
208.254.42.223	1338750900	up	unknown
208.254.42.223	1339334100	up	unknown
208.254.42.223	1346854500	up	echo-reply (0.13s latency).

208.254.42.224	1335665700	down	no-response
208.254.42.224	1336567500	down	no-response
208.254.42.224	1338840900	down	no-response
208.254.42.224	1339425900	down	no-response
208.254.42.224	1346494500	down	time-exceeded

... similar down
Suggests exactly 223 - 192 + 1 = 31 IPs.
Let's have a look at the file 68: outcome: no clear hits like on 208. One wonders why.
It does appears that long sequences of ranges are a sort of fingerprint. The question is how unique it would be.
First:
n=208
time awk '$3=="up"{ print $1 }' $n | uniq -c | sed -r 's/^ +//;s/ /,/' | tee $n-up-uniq
t=$n-up-uniq.sqlite
rm -f $t
time sqlite3 $t 'create table tmp(cnt text, i text)'
time sqlite3 $t ".import --csv $n-up-uniq tmp"
time sqlite3 $t 'create table t (i integer)'
time sqlite3 $t '.load ./ip' 'insert into t select str2ipv4(i) from tmp'
time sqlite3 $t 'drop table tmp'
time sqlite3 $t 'create index ti on t(i)'
This reduces us to 2 million IP rows from the total possible 16 million IPs.
OK now just counting hits on fixed windows has way too many results:
sqlite3 208-up-uniq.sqlite "\
SELECT * FROM (
  SELECT min(i), COUNT(*) OVER (
    ORDER BY i RANGE BETWEEN 15 PRECEDING AND 15 FOLLOWING
  ) as c FROM t
) WHERE c > 20 and c < 30
"
Let's try instead consecutive ranges of length exactly 31 instead then:
sqlite3 208-up-uniq.sqlite <<EOF
SELECT f, t - f as c FROM (
  SELECT min(i) as f, max(i) as t
  FROM (SELECT i, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY i) - i as grp FROM t)
  GROUP BY grp
  ORDER BY i
) where c = 31
EOF
271. Hmm. A bit more than we'd like...
Another route is to also count the ups:
n=208
time awk '$3=="up"{ print $1 }' $n | uniq -c | sed -r 's/^ +//;s/ /,/' | tee $n-up-uniq-cnt
t=$n-up-uniq-cnt.sqlite
rm -f $t
time sqlite3 $t 'create table tmp(cnt text, i text)'
time sqlite3 $t ".import --csv $n-up-uniq-cnt tmp"
time sqlite3 $t 'create table t (cnt integer, i integer)'
time sqlite3 $t '.load ./ip' 'insert into t select cnt as integer, str2ipv4(i) from tmp'
time sqlite3 $t 'drop table tmp'
time sqlite3 $t 'create index ti on t(i)'
Let's see how many consecutives with counts:
sqlite3 208-up-uniq-cnt.sqlite <<EOF
SELECT f, t - f as c FROM (
  SELECT min(i) as f, max(i) as t
  FROM (SELECT i, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY i) - i as grp FROM t WHERE cnt >= 3)
  GROUP BY grp
  ORDER BY i
) where c > 28 and c < 32
EOF
Let's check on 66:
grep -e '66.45.179' -e '66.45.179' 66
not representative at all... e.g. several convfirmed hits are down:
66.45.179.215   1335305700      down    no-response
66.45.179.215   1337579100      down    no-response
66.45.179.215   1338765300      down    no-response
66.45.179.215   1340271900      down    no-response
66.45.179.215   1346813100      down    no-response
2012 Internet Census icmp_ping
words: 246
Let's check relevancy of known hits:
grep -e '208.254.40' -e '208.254.42' 208 | tee 208hits
Output:
208.254.40.95	1355564700	unreachable
208.254.40.95	1355622300	unreachable
208.254.40.96	1334537100	alive, 36342
208.254.40.96	1335269700	alive, 17586

..

208.254.40.127	1355562900	alive, 35023
208.254.40.127	1355593500	alive, 59866
208.254.40.128	1334609100	unreachable
208.254.40.128	1334708100	alive from 208.254.32.214, 43358
208.254.40.128	1336596300	unreachable
The rest of 208 is mostly unreachable.
208.254.42.191	1335294900	unreachable
...
208.254.42.191	1344737700	unreachable
208.254.42.191	1345574700	Icmp Error: 0,ICMP Network Unreachable, from 63.111.123.26 
208.254.42.191	1346166900	unreachable
...
208.254.42.191	1355665500	unreachable
208.254.42.192	1334625300	alive, 6672
...
208.254.42.192	1355658300	alive, 57412
208.254.42.193	1334677500	alive, 28985
208.254.42.193	1336524300	unreachable
208.254.42.193	1344447900	alive, 8934
208.254.42.193	1344613500	alive, 24037
208.254.42.193	1344806100	alive, 20410
208.254.42.193	1345162500	alive, 10177
...
208.254.42.223	1336590900	alive, 23284
...
208.254.42.223	1355555700	alive, 58841
208.254.42.224	1334607300	Icmp Type: 11,ICMP Time Exceeded, from 65.214.56.142 
208.254.42.224	1334681100	Icmp Type: 11,ICMP Time Exceeded, from 65.214.56.142 
208.254.42.224	1336563900	Icmp Type: 11,ICMP Time Exceeded, from 65.214.56.142 
208.254.42.224	1344451500	Icmp Type: 11,ICMP Time Exceeded, from 65.214.56.138 
208.254.42.224	1344566700	unreachable
208.254.42.224	1344762900	unreachable
Let's try with 66. First there way too much data, 9 GB, let's cut it down:
n=66
time awk '$3~/^alive,/ { print $1 }' $n | uniq -c | sed -r 's/^ +//;s/ /,/' | tee $n-up-uniq-c
OK down to 45 MB, now we can work.
grep -e '66.45.179' -e '66.104.169' -e '66.104.173' -e '66.104.175' -e '66.175.106' '66-alive-uniq-c' | tee 66hits
Nah, it's full of holes:
4,66.45.179.187
12,66.45.179.188
2,66.45.179.197
1,66.45.179.202
2,66.45.179.205
2,66.45.179.206
1,66.45.179.207
won't be able to find new ranges here.

tb0hdan/domains

words: 51
Domain list only, no IPs and no dates. We haven't been able to extract anything of interest from this source so far.
Domain hit count when we were at 69 hits: only 9, some of which had been since reused. Likely their data collection did not cover the dates of interest.

Expired domain trackers

words: 977 articles: 1
When you Google most of the hit domains, many of them show up on "expired domain trackers", and above all Chinese expired domain trackers for some reason, notably e.g.:
  • hupo.com: e.g. static.hupo.com/expdomain_myadmin/2012-03-06（国际域名）.txt. Heavily IP throttled. Tor hindered more than helped.
    Scraping script: cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/hupo.sh. Scraping does about 1 day every 5 minutes relatively reliably, so about 36 hours / year. Not bad.
    Results are stored under tmp/humo/<day>.
    Check for hit overlap:
    grep -Fx -f <( jq -r '.[].host' ../media/cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/hits.json ) cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/tmp/hupo/*
    The hits are very well distributed amongst days and months, at least they did a good job hiding these potential timing fingerprints. This feels very deliberately designed.
    There are lots of hits. The data set is very inclusive. Also we understand that it must have been obtains through means other than Web crawling, since it contains so many of the hits.
    Nice output format for scraping as the HTML is very minimal
    They randomly changed their URL format to remove the space before the .com after 2012-02-03:
    Some of their files are simply missing however unfortunately, e.g. neither of the following exist:
    webmasterhome.cn did contain that one however: domain.webmasterhome.cn/com/2012-07-01.asp. Hmm. we might have better luck over there then?
    2018-11-19 is corrupt in a new and wonderful way, with a bunch of trailing zeros:
    wget -O hupo-2018-11-19 'http://static.hupo.com/expdomain_myadmin/2018-11-19%EF%BC%88%E5%9B%BD%E9%99%85%E5%9F%9F%E5%90%8D%EF%BC%89.txt
hd hupo-2018-11-19
    ends in:
    000ffff0  74 75 64 69 65 73 2e 63  6f 6d 0d 0a 70 31 63 6f  |tudies.com..p1co|
00100000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
0018a5e0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00                       |.........|
    More generally, several files contain invalid domain names with non-ASCII characters, e.g. 2013-01-02 contains 365<D3>л<FA><C2><CC>.com. Domain names can only contain ASCII charters: stackoverflow.com/questions/1133424/what-are-the-valid-characters-that-can-show-up-in-a-url-host Maybe we should get rid of any such lines as noise.
    Some files around 2011-09-06 start with an empty line. 2014-01-15 starts with about twenty empty lines. Oh and that last one also has some trash bytes the end <B7><B5><BB><D8>. Beauty.
  • webmasterhome.cn: e.g. domain.webmasterhome.cn/com/2012-03-06.asp. Appears to contain the exact same data as "static.hupo.com"
    Also heavily IP throttled, and a bit more than hupo apparently.
    Scraper cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/webmastercn.sh.
    Also has some randomly missing dates like hupo.com, though different missing ones from hupo, so they complement each other nicely.
    Some of the URLs are broken and don't inform that with HTTP status code, they just replace the results with some Chinese text 无法找到该页 (The requested page could not be found):
    Several URLs just return length 0 content, e.g.:
    curl -vvv http://domain.webmasterhome.cn/com/2015-10-31.asp
*   Trying 125.90.93.11:80...
* Connected to domain.webmasterhome.cn (125.90.93.11) port 80 (#0)
> GET /com/2015-10-31.asp HTTP/1.1
> Host: domain.webmasterhome.cn
> User-Agent: curl/7.88.1
> Accept: */*
> 
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2023 15:12:23 GMT
< Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
< X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
< Content-Length: 0
< Content-Type: text/html
< Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDCSTTTBAD=BGGPAONBOFKMMFIPMOGGHLMJ; path=/
< Cache-control: private
< 
* Connection #0 to host domain.webmasterhome.cn left intact
    It is not fully clear if this is a throttling mechanism, or if the data is just missing entirely.
    Starting around 2018, the IP limiting became very intense, 30 mins / 1 hour per URL, so we just gave up. Therefore, data from 2018 onwards does not contain webmasterhome.cn data.
    Starting from 2013-05-10 the format changes randomly. This also shows us that they just have all the HTML pages as static files on their server. E.g. with:
    grep -a '<pre' * | s
    we see:
    2013-05-09:<pre style='font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; '><strong>2013<C4><EA>05<D4><C2>09<C8>յ<BD><C6>ڹ<FA><BC><CA><D3><F2><C3><FB></strong><br>0-3y.com
2013-05-10:<pre><strong>2013<C4><EA>05<D4><C2>10<C8>յ<BD><C6>ڹ<FA><BC><CA><D3><F2><C3><FB></strong>
  • justdropped.com: e.g. www.justdropped.com/drops/030612com.html
  • yoid.com: e.g.: yoid.com/bydate.php?d=2016-06-03&a=a
This suggests that scraping these lists might be a good starting point to obtaining "all expired domains ever".
We've made the following pipelines for hupo.com + webmasterhome.cn merging:
./hupo.sh &
./webmastercn.sh &
wait
./hupo-merge.sh
# Export as small Google indexable files in a Git repository.
./hupo-repo.sh
# Export as per year zips for Internet Archive.
./hupo-zip.sh
# Obtain count statistics:
./hupo-wc.sh
The extracted data is present at:
Soon after uploading, these repos started getting some interesting traffic, presumably started by security trackers going "bling bling" on certain malicious domain names in their databases:
  • GitHub trackers:
    • admin-monitor.shiyue.com
    • anquan.didichuxing.com
    • app.cloudsek.com
    • app.flare.io
    • app.rainforest.tech
    • app.shadowmap.com
    • bo.serenety.xmco.fr 8 1
    • bts.linecorp.com
    • burn2give.vercel.app
    • cbs.ctm360.com 17 2
    • code6.d1m.cn
    • code6-ops.juzifenqi.com
    • codefend.devops.cndatacom.com
    • dlp-code.airudder.com
    • easm.atrust.sangfor.com
    • ec2-34-248-93-242.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com
    • ecall.beygoo.me 2 1
    • eos.vip.vip.com 1 1
    • foradar.baimaohui.net 2 1
    • fty.beygoo.me
    • hive.telefonica.com.br 2 1
    • hulrud.tistory.com
    • kartos.enthec.com
    • soc.futuoa.com
    • lullar-com-3.appspot.com
    • penetration.houtai.io 2 1
    • platform.sec.corp.qihoo.net
    • plus.k8s.onemt.co 4 1
    • pmp.beygoo.me 2 1
    • portal.protectorg.com
    • qa-boss.amh-group.com
    • saicmotor.saas.cubesec.cn
    • scan.huoban.com
    • sec.welab-inc.com
    • security.ctrip.com 10 3
    • siem-gs.int.black-unique.com 2 1
    • soc-github.daojia-inc.com
    • spigotmc.org 2 1
    • tcallzgroup.blueliv.com
    • tcthreatcompass05.blueliv.com 4 1
    • tix.testsite.woa.com 2 1
    • toucan.belcy.com 1 1
    • turbo.gwmdevops.com 18 2
    • urlscan.watcherlab.com
    • zelenka.guru. Looks like a Russian hacker forum.
  • LinkedIn profile views:
    • "Information Security Specialist at Forcepoint"
Check for overlap of the merge:
grep -Fx -f <( jq -r '.[].host' ../media/cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/hits.json ) cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/tmp/merge/*
Next, we can start searching by keyword with Wayback Machine CDX scanning with Tor parallelization with out helper cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/hupo-cdx-tor.sh, e.g. to check domains that contain the term "news":
./hupo-cdx-tor.sh mydir 'news|global' 2011 2019
produces per-year results for the regex term news|global between the years under:
tmp/hupo-cdx-tor/mydir/2011
tmp/hupo-cdx-tor/mydir/2012
OK lets:
./hupo-cdx-tor.sh out 'news|headline|internationali|mondo|mundo|mondi|iran|today'
Other searches that are not dense enough for our patience:
world|global|[^.]info
OMG news search might be producing some golden, golden new hits!!! Going full into this. Hits:
  • thepyramidnews.com
  • echessnews.com
  • tickettonews.com
  • airuafricanews.com
  • vuvuzelanews.com
  • dayenews.com
  • newsupdatesite.com
  • arabicnewsonline.com
  • arabicnewsunfiltered.com
  • newsandsportscentral.com
  • networkofnews.com
  • trekkingtoday.com
  • financial-crisis-news.com
and a few more. It's amazing.
Related:
club.domain.cn
words: 96
TODO what does this Chinese forum track? New registrations? Their focus seems to be domain name speculation
Some of the threads contain domain dumps. We haven't yet seen a scrapable URL pattern, but their data goes way back and did have various hits. The forum seems to have started in 2006: club.domain.cn/forum.php?mod=forumdisplay&fid=41&page=10127
club.domain.cn/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=241704 "【国际域名拟删除列表】2007年06月16日" is the earliest list we could find. It is an expired domain list.
Some hits:
  • club.domain.cn/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=709388 contains alljohnny.com The thread title is "2009.5.04". The post date 2009-04-30
    Breadcrumb nav: 域名论坛 > 域名增值交易区 > 国际域名专栏 (domain name forum > area for domain names increasing in value > international domais)

"Mass Deface III" pastebin

words: 144
pastebin.com/CTXnhjeS dated mega early on Sep 30th, 2012 by CYBERTAZIEX.
This source was found by Oleg Shakirov.
Holy fuck the type of data source that we get in this area of work!
This pastebin contained a few new hits, in addition to some pre-existing ones. Most of the hits them seem to be linked to the IP 72.34.53.174, which presumably is a major part of the fingerprint found by CYBERTAZIEX, though unsurprisingly methodology is unclear. As documented, the domains appear to be linked to a "Condor hosting" provider, but it is hard to find any information about it online.
Ciro Santilli checked every single non-subdomain domain in the list.
Other files under the same account: pastebin.com/u/cybertaziex did not seem of interest.
The author's real name appears to be Deni Suwandi: twitter.com/denz_999 from , but all accounts appear to be inactive, otherwise we'd ping him to ask for more info about the list.

ipinf.ru

words: 112
OK, Oleg Shakirov's findings inspired Ciro Santilli to try Yandexing a bit more...
alljohnny.com had a hit: ipinf.ru/domains/alljohnny.com/, and so Ciro started looking around... and a good number of other things have hits.
Not all of them, definitely less data than viewdns.info.
But they do reverse IP, and they show which nearby reverse IPs have hits on the same page, for free, which is great!
Shame their ordering is purely alphabetical, doesn't properly order the IPs so it is a bit of a pain, but we can handle it.
OMG, Russians!!!
The data here had a little bit of non-overlap from other sources. 4 new confirmed hits were found, plus 4 possible others that were left as candidates.

Reverse engineering

words: 932 articles: 8
In this section we document the outcomes of more detailed inspection of both the communication mechanisms (JavaScript, JAR, swf) and HTML that might help to better fingerprint the websites.

Communication mechanism (Comms)

words: 667 articles: 3
There are four main types of communication mechanisms found:
  • Java JAR
    There is also one known instance where a .zip extension was used! web.archive.org/web/20131101104829*/http://plugged-into-news.net/weatherbug.zip as:
    <applet codebase="/web/20101229222144oe_/http://plugged-into-news.net/" archive="/web/20101229222144oe_/http://plugged-into-news.net/weatherbug.zip"
    JAR is the most common comms, and one of the most distinctive, making it a great fingerprint.
    Several of the JAR files are named something like either:
    • meter.jar
    • bandwidth.jar
    • speed.jar
    as if to pose as Internet speed testing tools? The wonderful subtleties of the late 2000s Internet are a bit over our heads.
    All JARs are directly under root, not in subdirectories, and the basename usually consist of one word, though sometimes two camel cased.
  • JavaScript file. There are two subtypes:
    • JavaScript with SHAs. Rare. Likely older. Way more fingerprintable.
    • JavaScript without SHAs. They have all been obfuscated slightly different and compressed. But the file sizes are all very similar from 8kB to 10kB, and they all look similar, so visually it is very easy to detect a match with good likelyhood.
  • Adobe Flash swf file. In all instances found so far, the name of the SWF matches the name of the second level domain exactly, e.g.:
    http://tee-shot.net/tee-shot.swf
    While this is somewhat of a fingerprint, it is worth noting that is was a relatively commonly used pattern. But it is also the rarest of the mechanisms. This is a at a dissonance with the rest of the web, which circa 2010 already had way more SWF than JAR apparently.
  • CGI comms
These have short single word names with some meaning linked to their website.
Because the communication mechanisms are so crucial, they tend to be less varied, and serve as very good fingerprints. It is not ludicrous, e.g. identical files, but one look at a few and you will know the others.
CGI comms
words: 387 articles: 2
We've come across a few shallow and stylistically similar websites on suspicious ranges with this pattern.
No JS/JAR/SWF comms, but rather a subdomain, and an HTTPS page with .cgi extension that leads to a login page. Some names seen for this subdomain:
  • secure.: most common
  • ssl.: also common
  • various other more creative ones linked to the website theme itself, e.g.:
    • musical-fortune.net has a backstage.musical-fortune.net
The question is, is this part of some legitimate tooling that created such patterns? And if so which? Or are they actual hits with a new comms mechanism not previously seen?
The fact that:
  • hits of this type are so dense in the suspicious ranges
  • they are so stylistically similar between on another
  • citizenlabs specifically mentioned a "CGI" comms method
suggests to Ciro that they are an actual hit.
In particular, the secure and ssl ones are overused, and together with some heuristics allowed us to find our first two non Reuters ranges! Section "secure subdomain search on 2013 DNS Census"
Some currently known URLs
If we could do a crawl search for secure.*com/cgi-bin/*.cgi that might be a good enough fingerprint, maybe even *.*com/cgi-bin/*.cgi. Edit: it is not perfect, but we kind of did it: Section "secure subdomain search on 2013 DNS Census".
CGI comms variant
words: 78
Later on, we've also come across some stylistic hits in IP ranges with apparent slight variations of the CGI comms pattern:
Since these are so rare, it is still a bit hard to classify them for sure, but they are of great interest no doubt, as as we start to notice these patterns more tend to come if it is a thing.
SSL certificate
words: 112
The CGI comms websites contain the only occurrence of HTTPS, so it might open up the door for a certificate fingerprint as proposed by user joelcollinsdc at: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36280801!
crt.sh appears to be a good way to look into this:
They all appear to use either of:
  • Go Daddy
  • Thawte DV SSL CA
  • Starfield Technologies, Inc.
crt.sh/?q=globalnewsbulletin.com has a hit to: crt.sh/?id=774803. With login we can see: search.censys.io/certificates/5078bce356a8f8590205ae45350b27f58f4ac04478ed47a389a55b539065cee8. Issued by www.thawte.com/repository/index.html. No hits for certificates with same public key: search.censys.io/search?resource=certificates&q=parsed.subject_key_info.fingerprint_sha256%3A+714b4a3e8b2f555d230a92c943ced4f34b709b39ed590a6a230e520c273705af or any other "same" queries though.
Let's try another one for secure.altworldnews.com: search.censys.io/certificates/e88f8db87414401fd00728db39a7698d874dbe1ae9d88b01c675105fabf69b94. Nope, no direct mega hits here either.

JavaScript reverse engineering

words: 236 articles: 3
JavaScript with SHAs
words: 144 articles: 1
There are two types of JavaScript found so far. The ones with SHA and the ones without. There are only 2 examples of JS with SHA:
Both files start with precisely the same string:
var ms="\u062F\u0631\u064A\u0627\u0641\u062A\u06CC",lc="\u062A\u0647\u064A\u0647 \u0645\u062A\u0646",mn="\u0628\u0631\u062F\u0627\u0632\u0634 \u062F\u0631 \u062C\u0631\u064A\u0627\u0646 \u0627\u0633\u062A...\u0644\u0637\u0641\u0627 \u0635\u0628\u0631 \u0643\u0646\u064A\u062F",lt="\u062A\u0647\u064A\u0647 \u0645\u062A\u0646",ne="\u067E\u0627\u0633\u062E",kf="\u062E\u0631\u0648\u062C",mb="\u062D\u0630\u0641",mv="\u062F\u0631\u064A\u0627\u0641\u062A\u06CC",nt="\u0627\u0631\u0633\u0627\u0644",ig="\u062B\u0628\u062A \u063A\u0644\u0637. \u062C\u0647\u062A \u062A\u062C\u062F\u064A\u062F \u062B\u0628\u062A \u0635\u0641\u062D\u0647 \u0631\u0627 \u0628\u0627\u0632\u0622\u0648\u0631\u06CC \u06A9\u0646\u064A\u062F",hs="\u063A\u064A\u0631 \u0642\u0627\u0628\u0644 \u0627\u062C\u0631\u0627. \u062E\u0637\u0627 \u062F\u0631 \u0627\u062A\u0651\u0635\u0627\u0644",ji="\u063A\u064A\u0631 \u0642\u0627\u0628\u0644 \u0627\u062C\u0631\u0627. \u062E\u0637\u0627 \u062F\u0631 \u0627\u062A\u0651\u0635\u0627\u0644",ie="\u063A\u064A\u0631 \u0642\u0627\u0628\u0644 \u0627\u062C\u0631\u0627. \u062E\u0637\u0627 \u062F\u0631 \u0627\u062A\u0651\u0635\u0627\u0644",gc="\u0633\u0648\u0627\u0631 \u06A9\u0631\u062F\u0646 \u062A\u06A9\u0645\u064A\u0644 \u0634\u062F",gz="\u0645\u0637\u0645\u0626\u0646\u064A\u062F \u06A9\u0647 \u0645\u064A\u062E\u0648\u0627\u0647\u064A\u062F \u067E\u064A\u0627\u0645 \u0631\u0627 \u062D\u0630\u0641 \u06A9\u0646\u064A\u062F\u061F"
Good fingerprint present in all of them:
throw new Error("B64 D.1");};if(at[1]==-1){throw new Error("B64 D.2");};if(at[2]==-1){if(f<ay.length){throw new Error("B64 D.3");};dg=2;}else if(at[3]==-1){if(f<ay.length){throw new Error("B64 D.4")
iraniangoals.com JavaScript reverse engineering
words: 42
JavaScript file: web.archive.org/web/20110202091909/http://iraniangoals.com/journal.js
Some reverse engineering was done at: twitter.com/hackerfantastic/status/1575505438111571969?lang=en.
Notably, the password is hardcoded and its hash is stored in the JavaScript itself. The result is then submitted back via a POST request to /cgi-bin/goal.cgi.
TODO: how is the SHA calculated? Appears to be manual.
feedsdemexicoyelmundo.com JavaScript reverse engineering
words: 92
The JavaScript of each website appears to be quite small and similarly sized. They are all minimized, but have reordered things around a bit.
For example consider: web.archive.org/web/20110202190932/http://feedsdemexicoyelmundo.com/mundo.js
First we have to know that the Wayback Machine adds some stuff before and after the original code. The actual code there starts at:
ap={fg:['MSXML2.XMLHTTP
and ends in:
ck++;};return fu;};
We can use a JavaScript beautifier such as beautifier.io/ to be abe to better read the code.
It is worth noting that there's a lot of <script> tags inline as well, which seem to matter.
Further analysis would be needed.

Google searches for known domains and IPs

words: 238
Googling most domains gives only very few results, and most of them are just useless lists of expired domains. Skipping those for now.
Googling "dedrickonline.com" has a git at www.webwiki.de/dedrickonline.com# Furthermore, it also contains the IP address "65.61.127.174" under the "Technik" tab!
Unfortunately that website appears to be split by language? E.g. the English version does not contain it: www.webwiki.com/dedrickonline.com, which would make searching a bit harder, but still doable.
But if we can Google search those IPs there, we might just hit gold.
IP search did work! www.webwiki.de/65.61.127.174
But doesn't often/ever work unfortunately for others.
Googling "activegaminginfo.com" has a git at: cqcounter.com/whois/site/activegaminginfo.com.html which actually contains the IP 66.175.106.148! But I can't find a reverse IP search method. And perhaps due to having lots of CAPTCHAs, Google doesn't seem to index that website very well... it even has a tiny screenshot! And it also shows some more metadata beyond IP, e.g. HTTP response headers, which notably contain stuff like Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1.
Forward search of expired domains appears to often work however, and contains correct IPs and the screenshots. Note that direct access as follows does not work for some reason, you have to type them into the search bar manually:
OMG so close. If only Google would index that website we'd be done!!!
Apparently also mirrored at "dawhois":
Searching on github.com: github.com/DrWhax/cia-website-comms from September 2022 contains some of the links to some of the ones reported by Reuters.

Breakthroughs

words: 834 articles: 4
Some less-trivial breakthroughs:

Non Reuters ranges

words: 204 articles: 1
secure subdomain search on 2013 DNS Census
words: 204
Grepping the 2013 DNS Census first by overused CGI comms subdomains secure. and ssl. leaves 200k lines. Grepping for the overused "news" led to hits:
  • secure.worldnewsandent.com,2012-02-13T21:28:15,208.254.40.117
  • ssl.beyondnetworknews.com,2012-02-13T20:10:13,66.104.175.40
Also tried but failed:
OK, after the initial successes in secure., we went a bit more data intensive:
New results: only one...
  • 208.254.42.205 secure.driversinternationalgolf.com,2012-02-13T10:42:20,
After 2013 DNS Census virtual host cleanup heuristic keyword searches we later understood why there were so few hits here: the 2013 DNS Census didn't capture the secure. subdomains of many domains it had for some reason. Shame, because if it had, this method would have yielded many more results.
Figure 28.
You can never have enough Wayback Machine tabs open
.

Oleg Shakirov's findings (Communicated January 15, 2024)

words: 612 articles: 1
Starting at twitter.com/shakirov2036/status/1746729471778988499, Russian expat Oleg Shakirov comments "Let me know if you are still looking for the Carson website".
He then proceeded to give Carson and 5 other domains in private communication. His name is given here with his consent. His advances besides not being blind were Yandexing for some of the known hits which led to pages that contained other hits:
  • moyistochnikonlaynovykhigr.com contains a copy of myonlinegamesource.com, and both are present at www.seomastering.com/audit/pefl.ru/, an SEO tracker, because both have backlinks to pefl.ru, which is apparently a niche fantasy football website
  • 4 previously unknown hits from: "Mass Deface III" pastebin. He missed one which Ciro then found after inspecting all URLs on Wayback Machine, so leading to a total of 5 new hits from that source.
Unfortunately, these methods are not very generalizable, and didn't lead to a large number of other hits. But every domain counts!
Searching for Carson
words: 469
Edit: Carson was found Oleg Shakirov's findingsby Oleg Shakirov: alljohnny.com, communicated at: twitter.com/shakirov2036/status/1746729471778988499, earliest archive from 2004 (!): web.archive.org/web/20040113025122/http://alljohnny.com/, The domain was hidden in plain sight, it was present in a not very visible watermark visible in the Reuters article screenshot! The watermark was added to the CIA to the background image, it is actually present on the website. In retrospect, it was actually present at on the expired domain trackers dataset, but the mega discrete all second word made Ciro Santilli miss it: github.com/cirosantilli/expired-domain-names-by-day-2015/blob/9d504f3b85364a64f7db93311e70011344cff788/07/05/02#L1572
Figure 29.
2004 Wayback Machine archive of alljohnny.com
.
What follows is the previous
The fact that the Reuters article has a screenshot of it, and therefore a Wayback Machine link, plus the specificity of the website topic, will likely keep Ciro awake at night for a while until someone finds that domain.
Some text visible on the Reuters screenshot:
  • Johnny Carson and The Tonight Show
  • Your Favorite Host and Comedic Genius
  • Submit Your Favorite Carson Moment
  • Heeere's Johnny!
    Holy crap, the "Here's Johnny" line from The Shining (1980) is a reference to Johnny Carson: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDpipB4yehk, www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYnyPAkgyvc, Ciro never knew that... but every American would have understood it at the time.
It is unclear however if this text is plaintext or part of a an image.
Some failed attempts, either dry guesses or from DNS grepping dataset searches:
Searching the Wayback Machine proved fruitless. There is no full text search: Wayback Machine full text search, and a heuristic web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/Johnny%20Carson search has relevant hits but not the one we want.
Another attempt was to search for "carson" on webmasterhome.cn which lists expired domains in bulk by expiration day, and it search engine friendly. It contains most of the domains we've found so far. Google either doesn't support partial word search or requires you to be a God to find it
so we settle for DuckDuckGo which supports it: duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Awebmasterhome.cn+%22carson%22&t=h_&ia=web Adding years also helps: duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Awebmasterhome.cn+%22carson%22+2011&ia=web with this we might be getting all possible results. Ciro went through all in 2011, 2012 and 2013 but no luck. Also fuck en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carson_City,_Nevada and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carson,_California :-)
Let's search tools.whoisxmlapi.com/reverse-whois-search for "carson" contained in any historic domain name. 10,001 lines. Grepping those, no good Wayback machine hits for those that also contain "johnny" or "show". Data at: raw.githubusercontent.com/cirosantilli/media/master/cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/tools.whoisxmlapi.com_reverse-whois-search_carson.csv in case anyone want to try and dig...
Let's also search the fortuitously timed 2013 DNS Census.

Work log

words: 938 articles: 9

Wakatime redirects

words: 538
Summary: this is just a red herring. Wakatime owner likely registered the domains just after this article was published as a publicity stunt. Fair play though.
As raised at: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36280666, many, but not all, of the domains currently redirect to wakatime.com/ as of 2023, and apparently they were taken up in 2013 (TODO how to confirm that). TODO what is the explanation for that? Some examples that do:
But some failed resolution examples:
Even more suspiciously, according to his LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/alanhamlett/, the owner of Wakatime, Alan Hamlett, worked at WhiteHat Security, Inc from Aug 2011 - Sep 2013. The company was then acquired by Synopsys in 2022. Holy crap!!! As shown at: web.archive.org/web/20131013193406/https://www.whitehatsec.com/ that company made website security tools. Did that dude use the tools to find the vulnerabilty and then just gobble up all the domains??? What a fucking legend if he did!!!
Let's try:
Running e.g.
curl -vvv dedrickonline.com
gives:
*   Trying 162.255.119.197:80...
* Connected to dedrickonline.com (162.255.119.197) port 80 (#0)
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> Host: dedrickonline.com
> User-Agent: curl/7.88.1
> Accept: */*
> 
< HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
< Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 20:30:19 GMT
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
< Content-Length: 55
< Connection: keep-alive
< Location: https://wakatime.com
< X-Served-By: Namecheap URL Forward
< Server: namecheap-nginx
< 
<a href='https://wakatime.com'>Moved Permanently</a>.

* Connection #0 to host dedrickonline.com left intact
so we see that he must have setup redirection with Namecheap as mentioned at: www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/385/2237/how-to-redirect-a-url-for-a-domain/
Let's also try DNS history
  • whoisrequest.com/history/:
    • dedrickonline.com: registered: 1 Nov, 2010, dropped: 24 Nov, 2013
    • activegaminginfo.com : registered: 1 Feb, 2010, dropped: 1 Apr, 2012
  • tools.whoisxmlapi.com/whois-history-search
    • dedrickonline.com:
      • CIA (registrar: Godaddy, registrant name: domainsbyproxy.com)
        • Created Date: October 27, 2010 00:00:00 UTC
        • Updated Date: October 28, 2013 00:00:00 UTC
        • Expires Date: October 27, 2014 00:00:00 UTC
      • Alan (namecheap):
        • Created Date: June 11, 2023 09:59:25 UTC
        • Expires Date: June 11, 2024 09:59:25 UTC
    • activegaminginfo.com:
      • CIA (Network Solutions, registrant name: LLC. Corral, Elizabeth|ATTN ACTIVEGAMINGINFO.COM|care of Network Solutions)
        • Created Date: January 26, 2010 00:00:00 UTC
        • Updated Date: November 27, 2010 00:00:00 UTC
        • Expires Date: January 26, 2012 00:00:00 UTC
      • Alan:
        • Created Date: June 11, 2023 09:59:40 UTC
        • Expires Date: June 11, 2024 09:59:40 UTC
    • iraniangoalkicks.com:
      • CIA (registrar: Godaddy, registrant name: domainsbyproxy.com)
        • Created Date: April 9, 2007 00:00:00 UTC
        • Updated Date: March 2, 2011 00:00:00 UTC
        • Expires Date: April 9, 2011 00:00:00 UTC
      • Alan:
        • Created Date: June 11, 2023 09:59:20 UTC
        • Expires Date: June 11, 2024 09:59:20 UTC
    • iraniangoals.com:
      • CIA (registrar: Godaddy, registrant name: domainsbyproxy.com):
        • Created Date: March 6, 2008 00:00:00 UTC
        • Updated Date: March 7, 2011 00:00:00 UTC
        • Expires Date: March 6, 2014 00:00:00 UTC
      • Reuters:
        • Created Date: September 29, 2022 11:16:09 UTC
        • Updated Date: September 29, 2022 11:16:09 UTC
        • Expires Date: September 29, 2023 11:16:09 UTC
So these suggest Alan might have just come along in 2023 way after the 2022 Reuters article and did the same basic IP range search that Ciro is doing now, so possibly no new tech. Let's ask... twitter.com/cirosantilli/status/1668369786865164289
The domain name history presented is however of interest, and could lead to patterns being found.
Searching tools.whoisxmlapi.com/reverse-whois-search with term "Corral, Elizabeth" gave no results unfortunately.
Basic search under tools.whoisxmlapi.com/reverse-whois-search for "Corral" also empty. They can't see their own data? Ah, need advanced. Marked "Historic" and selected "Corral, Elizabeth", ony one hit, activegaminginfo.com.

IP and DNS metadata

words: 400 articles: 7
Some dumps from us looking for patterns, but could not find any.

iraniangoals.com

words: 78
whoisxmlapi WHOIS history April 11, 2011:
  • Created Date: March 6, 2008 00:00:00 UTC
  • Updated Date: March 7, 2011 00:00:00 UTC
  • Expires Date: March 6, 2014 00:00:00 UTC
  • Registrant Name: domainsbyproxy.com.
  • Registrant Organization: Domains by Proxy, Inc.
  • Registrant Street: 15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160,
  • Registrant City: Scottsdale
  • Registrant State/Province: Arizona
  • Registrant Postal Code: 85260
  • Registrant Country: UNITED STATES
  • Name servers: NS29.WORLDNIC.COM|NS30.WORLDNIC.COM
Folowed by reuters registration in 2022.
whoisrequest.com/history/ mentions:
  • 1 Apr, 2008: Domain created*, nameservers added. Nameservers:
  • ns1.webhostingpad.com
  • ns2.webhostingpad.com

iraniangoalkicks.com

words: 43
whoisxmlapi WHOIS history March 23, 2011:
  • Created Date: April 9, 2007 00:00:00 UTC
  • Updated Date: March 2, 2011 00:00:00 UTC
  • Expires Date: April 9, 2011 00:00:00 UTC
  • Registrant Name: domainsbyproxy.com
  • Name servers: dns1.registrar-servers.com|dns2.registrar-servers.com
whoisrequest.com/history/ mentions:
1 May, 2007: Domain created*, nameservers added. Nameservers:
  • ns1.qwknetllc.com
  • ns2.qwknetllc.com

activegameinfo.com (66.175.106.148)

words: 95
whoisxmlapi WHOIS history March 22, 2011:
  • Registrar Name: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
  • Created Date: January 26, 2010 00:00:00 UTC
  • Updated Date: November 27, 2010 00:00:00 UTC
  • Expires Date: January 26, 2012 00:00:00 UTC
  • Registrant Name: Corral, Elizabeth|ATTN ACTIVEGAMINGINFO.COM|care of Network Solutions
  • Registrant Street: PO Box 459
  • Registrant City: PA
  • Registrant State/Province: US
  • Registrant Postal Code: 18222
  • Registrant Country: UNITED STATES
  • Administrative Name: Corral, Elizabeth|ATTN ACTIVEGAMINGINFO.COM|care of Network Solutions
  • Administrative Street: PO Box 459
  • Administrative City: Drums
  • Administrative State/Province: PA
  • Administrative Postal Code: 18222
  • Administrative Country: UNITED STATES
  • Administrative Email: xc2mv7ur8cw@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com
  • Administrative Phone: 5707088780
  • Name servers: NS23.DOMAINCONTROL.COM|NS24.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

feedsdemexicoyelmundo.com (66.175.106.149)

words: 37
whoisxmlapi WHOIS record on April 28, 2011
  • Registrar Name: GODADDY.COM, INC
  • Created Date: February 9, 2010 00:00:00 UTC
  • Updated Date: February 9, 2010 00:00:00 UTC
  • Expires Date: February 9, 2015 00:00:00 UTC
  • Registrant Name: domainsbyproxy.com
  • Name servers: NS55.DOMAINCONTROL.COM|NS56.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

noticiasmusica.net (66.175.106.150)

words: 102
whoisxmlapi WHOIS record on September 13, 2011
  • Registrar Name: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC
  • Created Date: February 17, 2010 00:00:00 UTC
  • Updated Date: February 17, 2010 00:00:00 UTC
  • Expires Date: February 17, 2015 00:00:00 UTC
  • Registrant Name: See, Megan|ATTN NOTICIASMUSICA.NET|care of Network Solutions
  • Registrant Street: PO Box 459
  • Registrant City: PA
  • Registrant State/Province: US
  • Registrant Postal Code: 18222
  • Registrant Country: UNITED STATES
  • Administrative Contact
  • Administrative Name: See, Megan|ATTN NOTICIASMUSICA.NET|care of Network Solutions
  • Administrative Street: PO Box 459
  • Administrative City: Drums
  • Administrative State/Province: PA
  • Administrative Postal Code: 18222
  • Administrative Country: UNITED STATES
  • Administrative Email: hf3eg77c4nn@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com
  • Administrative Phone: 5707088780
  • Name Servers: NS45.WORLDNIC.COM|NS46.WORLDNIC.COM
2012:
  • Registrant Country: PANAMA

atomworldnews.com (66.175.106.155)

words: 33
whoisxmlapi WHOIS record on April 17, 2011
  • Created Date: April 9, 2010 00:00:00 UTC
  • Updated Date: April 9, 2010 00:00:00 UTC
  • Expires Date: April 9, 2012 00:00:00 UTC
  • Registrant Name: domainsbyproxy.com
  • Name servers: NS33.DOMAINCONTROL.COM|NS34.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

iranfootballsource.com

Initial announcements by self on 2023-06-10:
Shared by others soo after:
2023-10-26 twitter.com/cirosantilli/status/1717445686214504830: announcement by self after finding 75 more sites
Second wave:
Some more:
/ny

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