= CGI
{synonym}

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! <secure subdomain search on 2013 DNS Census>{full}

Some currently known URLs
* https://backstage.musical-fortune.net/cgi-bin/backstage.cgi
* https://clients.smart-travel-consultant.com/cgi-bin/clients.cgi
* https://members.it-proonline.com/cgi-bin/members.cgi
* https://members.metanewsdaily.com/cgi-bin/ABC.cgi
* https://miembros.todosperuahora.com/cgi-bin/business.cgi
* https://secure.altworldnews.com/cgi-bin/desk.cgi
* https://secure.driversinternationalgolf.com/cgi-bin/drivers.cgi
* https://secure.freshtechonline.com/cgi-bin/tech.cgi
* https://secure.globalnewsbulletin.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi
* https://secure.negativeaperture.com/cgi-bin/canon.cgi
* https://secure.riskandrewardnews.com/cgi-bin/worldwide.cgi
* https://secure.theworld-news.net/cgi-bin/news.cgi
* https://secure.topbillingsite.com/cgi-bin/main.cgi
* https://secure.worldnewsandent.com/cgi-bin/news.cgi
* https://ssl.beyondnetworknews.com/cgi-bin/local.cgi
* https://ssl.newtechfrontier.com/cgi-bin/tech.cgi
* https://www.businessexchangetoday.com/cgi-bin/business.cgi
* https://heal.conquermstoday.com (path unknown)
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: <secure subdomain search on 2013 DNS Census>{full}.


Cia 2010 covert communication websites/cgi comms

ID: cia-2010-covert-communication-websites/cgi-comms