Reverse IP lookup is a technique used to distinguish hostnames that have DNS, (A) registers connected with an (internet protocol) IP address. This can be very helpful in many situations including when you are trying to trace the origin of malicious activity, or when you want to know if an email was sent from a specific domain. Reverse IP lookup can also help web developers trace back potential security vulnerabilities on their sites. Breaking through the site’s security safeguards.
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Reverse IP Search in Bing
There are generally not several reasons to utilize Bing, but the reverse IP search feature is occasionally useful. The only search engine that can resolve hostnames from an (internet protocol)IP address is Bing. It was a pretty famous approach to discover virtual web hosts from an IP a few years ago. The search term is simple to use. Here’s the example:
ip:256.34.x.x
To obtain this data, make a query like it is shown in the case to search IP addresses that match your query. Bing performs a reverse IP lookup using its search index and surprisingly it is still used by many users.
Reverse IP Lookup use cases
Attack discovery
When launching an attack on a host, the most important task is to try to figure out the host’s attack cover. The subsequent move is to list all of the services and applications in use. A competent penetration tester is going to recognize areas where vulnerabilities might become exploitable weak spots.
It’s feasible to discover websites on the host side that may be vulnerable to attack by utilizing the Reverse IP Lookup approach. Also, if there are no security flaws discovered, knowledge disclosure might be utilized to help the penetration tester gain a better understanding of the target.
Information discovery cycles can be significantly sped up. If you expand the scope of your search to include only those hostnames that are connected to the target. As a result, further hostnames that are linked to the target may provide further information by revealing new records of DNS that may lead to new host targets.
Threat Report
A reverse IP lookup can reveal hostnames and trace IP address linked with an attacking system, whether reacting to an incident, recognizing a botnet C2, or just tracing boisterous Internet scanning. These findings may help the investigation by providing new sources of information.
Web Hosting Reputation
Hosts with negative reputations may slow down email delivery, blacklisting your site, and search engine ranking. To discover other sites on your hosting provider, use the reverse (internet protocol) IP address lookup service. To evaluate the quality of these additional hosts, use investigative tools to look for signs of low quality, such as phishing or spam domains.
Web Hosting Oversubscribed
When you purchase web server hosting especially in a shared environment, the host company generally sells modest quantities of supplies (resources) on each server to multiple websites. The provider of web hosting may undersell, which is to sell more websites than the hardware (server) can manage to reduce costs. This is typical in low-cost shared hosting services, where a particular web server may host a large number of low-ranking websites. You can find out several sites you’re sharing with the reverse (internet protocol)IP address lookup.
If you want to prevent email issues.
When you host your email server, rDNS becomes quite useful for outgoing emails. An rDNS record allows you to determine the source of an email, boost the reputation of your email server, and become a trusted source for several major email services including Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and others. If you don’t have an rDNS record set up, some incoming email servers will refuse to accept your emails. So if you’re using your mail server, keep it in mind.
When you’re performing a cybercrime investigation.
Reverse DNS records are also used to expose potential attacks and mass scanning throughout the Internet. You or your staff can simply identify the authors and networks behind massive scanning, malware propagation, or other harmful activities by utilizing both security API endpoints, as well as web-based solutions like SurfaceBrowser.
Final thoughts
Reverse DNS is not only a wonderful tool for investigating cybercrime, but it’s also a fantastic method to keep your email in tiptop form by utilizing the proper PTR records.
When performing manual rDNS lookups is sufficient for dealing with single instances, it’s a wonderful technique. However, when you need to examine a hundred or a thousand IP addresses, this becomes an incredibly time-consuming procedure that might take hours, if not days in some cases.
