Phantom Squatting: LLM Hallucinations Enable Domain Takeover
Researchers have identified a novel attack vector dubbed 'Phantom Squatting', in which LLMs consistently hallucinate plausible but non-existent web domains for legitimate brands, which attackers can then register and weaponise. Unlike traditional typosquatting, these hallucinated domains carry implicit trust because they originate from AI-generated outputs that users and developers may act upon without verification. The technique is difficult to detect because the domains are not misspellings but plausible inventions, making automated defences less effective.