I generated 16 character (upper/lower) subdomain and set up a virtual host for it in Apache, and within an hour was seeing vulnerability scans.

How are folks digging this up? What's the strategy to avoid this?

I am serving it all with a single wildcard SSL cert, if that's relevant.

Thanks

Edit:

  • I am using a single wildcard cert, with no subdomains attached/embedded/however those work
  • I don’t have any subdomains registered with DNS.
  • I attempted dig axfr example.com @ns1.example.com returned zone transfer DENIED

Edit 2: I'm left wondering, is there an apache endpoint that returns all configured virtual hosts?

Edit 3: I'm going to go through this hardening guide and try against with a new random subdomain https://www.tecmint.com/apache-security-tips/

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[–] 84 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (8 children)

if you use Let’s Encrypt (ACME protocol) AFAIK you can find all domains registered in a directory that even has a search, no matter if it’s wildcard or not.

It was something like this https://crt.sh/ but can’t find the site exactly anymore

LE: you can also find some here https://search.censys.io/

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  • [–] 49 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Holy shit, this has every cert I’ve ever generated or renewed since 2015.

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  • [–] 24 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    This.

    That's why temping obscurity for security is not a good idea. Doesn't take much to be "safe", at least reasonably safe. But that not much its good practice to be done :)

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (3 children)

    No. Not this.

    Op is doing hidden subdomain pattern. Wildcard dns and wildcard ssl.

    This way subdomain acts as a password and application essentially inaccessible for bot crawls.

    Works very well

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