CIA 2010 covert communication websites Updated 2025-02-22 +Created 1970-01-01
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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/
Read the full article
feedsdemexicoyelmundo.com JavaScript reverse engineering Updated 2025-02-22 +Created 1970-01-01
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The JavaScript of each website appears to be quite small and similarly sized. They are all minimized, but have reordered things around a bit.
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.
Read the full article
Gathering key points from the articles Updated 2025-02-22 +Created 1970-01-01
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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!
Read the full article
Hits with nearby IP hits Updated 2025-02-22 +Created 1970-01-01
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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.
Read the full article
IP range search Updated 2025-02-22 +Created 1970-01-01
View more
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.
Read the full article
List of websites Updated 2025-02-22 +Created 1970-01-01
View more
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.
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Oleg Shakirov's findings Updated 2025-02-22 +Created 1970-01-01
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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!
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Searching for Carson Updated 2025-02-22 +Created 1970-01-01
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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 1.
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.
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secure subdomain search on 2013 DNS Census Updated 2025-02-22 +Created 1970-01-01
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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 1.
You can never have enough Wayback Machine tabs open
.
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Selected screenshots Updated 2025-02-22 +Created 1970-01-01
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Figure 1.
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 2.
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 3.
2010 Wayback Machine archive of dedrickonline.com
.
The German one.
The CIA has had a few Germany espionage scandals in the 2010s:
Figure 4.
2010 Wayback Machine archive of lesummumdelafinance.com
. A French one. Because it mentions VTT (Mountain Biking in French), it must focus France.
Figure 5.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of attivitaestremi.com
. An Italian one about extreme sports.
Figure 6.
2010 Wayback Machine archive of noticiasmusica.net
.
The Brazilian one.
Figure 7.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of economicnewsbuzz.com
. The Korean one. Love the kawaii style!
Figure 8.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of snapnewsfront.net
. The Japanese one.
Figure 9.
2010 Wayback Machine archive of philippinenewsonline.net
. The Philippine one one.
Figure 10.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of feedsdemexicoyelmundo.com
. The Mexican one.
Figure 11.
2012 Wayback Machine archive of easytraveleurope.com
.
Figure 12.
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 13.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of nouvellesetdesrapports.com
.
Figure 14.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of pangawana.com
.
Figure 15.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of recuerdosdeviajeonline.com
.
Figure 16.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of theworld-news.net
.
Figure 17.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of kessingerssportsnews.com
.
Figure 18.
2011 Wayback Machine archive of negativeaperture.com
.
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