Bitsquatting

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Bitsquatting is a type of cybersquatting that happens when a bit-flip error occurs during a DNS request. Such errors can be caused by faulty hardware or cosmic rays. When a bit flips in the domain name, a user may end up visiting a domain that looks almost identical but has one incorrect bit. A 2011 Black Hat paper examined this idea, showing eight legitimate domains were targeted with 31 bitsquatted domains. Over about seven months, there were 52,317 requests to the bitsquat domains.