Fake domains that are only slightly different from the domain of a legitimate company are often leveraged in attacks, and researchers at Anomali recently discovered that cybercriminals abused this technique to target companies in the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 (FTSE 100).

Brand spoofing is not a novelty in the cybercriminal world, and it does not come as a surprise that FTSE 100 companies are targeted in such attacks. By creating dummy websites, cybercriminals trick users into supplying private data, and Anomali says that 81 companies in the FTSE 100 had potentially malicious domain registrations against them in the past three months.

According to the security company’s The FTSE 100: Targeted Brand Attacks and Mass Credential Exposures report, 527 malicious domain names were registered over the last three months, an average of 5 per company. The Financial Services industry was hit the most, at 376 domains, followed by Retail at 175, and Critical Infrastructure at 75.

The report also reveals that the largest number of these suspicious domains were registered using a Chinese address. Moreover, the second most were from the US, while the third most were from Panama, the researchers say.