It’s not uncommon to see news stories that blame piracy or prerelease leakages for poor movie revenue turnouts. We’ve seen that happen over time with movies like “X-Men: Origins Wolverine,” “Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith,” and “Expendables 3.” All of them were victims of digital pirates, which caused financial losses to their producers not just from lost ticket sales but also legal battles with those behind the leaks.

Could domain and subdomain monitoring help in detecting Internet properties that could hint at illegitimate releases? After all, movie pirates need websites or pages to distribute their stolen wares. Movie-related squatting properties could also be particularly effective phishing lures, as avid fans may be eager to download whatever file is made available to them in the hopes that it will actually contain the content they want.

We sought to explore those scenarios by checking out domain and subdomain registration trends for the most-awaited movies in the coming months.

Domains and Subdomains Related to the Most-Awaited Fall 2021 Movies

The long wait for the next blockbusters is finally over with the reopening of movie theaters. Crowd favorites from the Marvel cinematic universe, sequels of much-loved classics, and the latest works of the hottest Hollywood stars are among the movies we tracked the domain and subdomain registration trends of.

We checked the Domain Name System (DNS) for the volume of registrations containing these search strings:

• “Shang-chi + movie” for the Marvel movie “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”
• “Eternals + movie” for the Marvel movie “Eternals”
• “Ghostbusters + afterlife” for the upcoming Ghostbusters sequel “Ghostbusters: Afterlife”
• “Red + notice + movie” for the upcoming Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Gal Gadot, and Ryan Reynolds action movie “Red Notice”
• “Top + gun + maverick” for the upcoming Top Gun sequel “Top Gun: Maverick”

Searches for the strings mentioned above on Domains & Subdomains Discovery gave us the following results:

A bulk WHOIS lookup for the 106 domains revealed the following findings:

• Only 11 of the total number of domains are publicly attributable to the movies’ rightful owners based on their registrant email addresses. The chart below shows the details.

  

  The domains that are publicly attributable to the production outfits could have been registered for promotional purposes or to reserve spaces for the five movies when they’re released for public viewing. Examples of these would be shang-chithemovie[.]com, eternalsmovie[.]at, and rednoticemovie[.]com.

  Shang-chithemovie[.]com, according to a screenshot lookup, appeared to be live but under maintenance as of 13 September 2021. Still, it could soon potentially allow visitors to learn more about “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” as its WHOIS record shows Disney as its registrant.

  

  Eternalsmovie[.]at, meanwhile, is parked and likely awaiting the official launch of “Eternals.” Come 5 November 2021, the site, which Disney owns, could tell visitors where to watch the movie.

  

  Finally, rednoticemovie[.]com appears to redirect to netflix[.]com as of this writing. Starting 12 November 2021, the page may let people stream “Red Notice” after logging into their Netflix accounts, of course, since the domain is Netflix-owned.

  

• On average, the oldest domains related to awaited fall movies were registered around five years before their official U.S. release dates, which could coincide with how long they’ve been under development. For instance:
  • The oldest domain related to “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” (shang-chithemovie[.]com) was registered around 16 years before 3 September 2021 (specifically on 27 May 2005), its official U.S. release date. The movie entered development in 2001, which could be the reason why domains pertaining to it were registered as early as 2005.
  • The oldest domain related to “Eternals” (eternalsalvationmovie[.]com) was registered around three years before 5 November 2021 (specifically on 25 February 2019), its official U.S. release date. The movie entered development in 2018, a possible explanation for the date when the first domain was created.
  • The oldest domain related to “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” (marudai-ghostbusters-afterlife-cp[.]jp) was registered around nine months before 11 November 2021 (specifically on 21 February 2021), its official U.S. release date.
  • The oldest domain related to “Red Notice” (rednoticethemovie[.]com) was registered around four years before 12 November 2021 (specifically on 29 March 2018), its official U.S. release date. The domain creation date coincides with the start of the movie’s development.
• While none of the domains and subdomains are being flagged “malicious” when subjected to a bulk malware check on the Threat Intelligence Platform, some are suspicious, namely:
  • ghostbustersafterlifefullmovie[.]com
  • rednoticefullmovie[.]com
  • topgunmaverickfull[.]org
  • topgunmaverickfull[.]com
  • topgunmaverickmoviefull[.]com
  • topgunmaverickfullmovie[.]org
  • topgunmaverickfullmovie[.]com
  • topgunmaverickfullmovie[.]net
  • topgunmaverick-fullmovie[.]com
  • topgun2maverickfullmovie[.]com
  • topgunmaverick2020fullmovie[.]com

  “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” “Red Notice,” and “Top Gun: Maverick” haven’t been officially released yet, but the domain names suggest they could be available for viewing already. Should bad guys control these domains, they could weaponize them with malware files that could get downloaded onto visitors’ computers upon accessing the URLs.

As we get closer to the movie release dates, we may see more domains and subdomains containing strings related to the five featured films crop up on the DNS. And if the trend we saw so far continues, a significant share of them probably won’t be publicly attributable to the movies’ rightful owners. A number of them could lead to malware infection or worse.

Interested in conducting a similar study? You may contact us for collaboration or to get a copy of the complete list of domains and subdomains related to the awaited fall 2021 movies.