Your users are one DNS query away from a perfect clone of your platform. That clone is live right now, waiting to drain wallets the moment someone lands on it.
Real-time blocklists (RBLs) fill a critical gap: the window between when a threat goes live and when your security team learns it exists. That window is where the damage happens.
Here are five ways crypto, DeFi, and Web3 platforms can deploy RBLs to protect users before threats reach them.
1. Block Phishing Sites at the DNS Level—Before Users Ever Reach Them
When someone types a URL into their browser, their device queries DNS to find where that domain points. That query happens before the page loads, before any content renders, before your user sees anything.
That’s your intervention point.
By integrating an RBL into your DNS resolver or security stack, you can intercept queries to known hostile domains and return a block page instead of letting the request through. The phishing site never loads. Your user never sees the fake login form. The attack stops at the DNS layer.
How it works in practice:
The Domainsure Crypto Defender RBL maintains a live feed of phishing sites, clones, and malware distribution points targeting crypto platforms. When we identify a hostile domain—whether it’s a fake exchange, a counterfeit wallet site, or a DeFi platform clone—it gets flagged in the RBL within minutes.
Your DNS resolver queries the RBL: {domain}.crypto.rbl.domainsure.zone
If the domain is flagged, you get a response. Block the request. If it’s clean, the query returns nothing and the request proceeds normally.
This isn’t theoretical. DNS-level blocking catches threats that bypass traditional security layers because they’re brand new, hosted on trusted infrastructure, or using techniques that signature-based detection misses.
2. Protect Your Email Infrastructure from Crypto-Targeted Spam and Business Email Compromise
Phishing doesn’t just happen through fake websites. Some of the most damaging attacks start in your inbox.
Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks use lookalike domains to impersonate executives, partners, or service providers. They send emails that appear to come from legitimate sources, requesting wire transfers, credential resets, or access to sensitive systems.
For crypto platforms, these attacks are particularly dangerous because they target the people who have access to hot wallets, withdrawal systems, and administrative controls.
RBLs can block these attacks at the mail server level:
Configure your mail server (Postfix, Exchange, whatever you’re running) to query RBLs before accepting incoming mail. If the sending domain is flagged in the Domainsure RiffRaff or Verified Phishing RBLs, reject the message before it reaches your users’ inboxes.
Example Postfix configuration:
smtpd_sender_restrictions = reject_rhsbl_sender riffraff.rbl.domainsure.zoneThis stops phishing emails, spam campaigns, and BEC attempts at the perimeter. Your security team doesn’t need to train users to spot sophisticated fakes if those fakes never arrive in the first place.
3. Feed RBL Data Into Your Security Stack for Layered Defense
No single security control stops every attack. RBLs integrate into existing security infrastructure as an additional data source.
Integration points:
- Firewall rules: Query RBLs and dynamically update blocklists
- Proxy servers: Check outbound requests against RBLs before allowing connections
- SIEM platforms: Correlate RBL data with other threat indicators
- Incident response: Automatically flag and investigate traffic to RBL-listed domains
For platforms with mature security operations, RBLs become another signal in the correlation engine. For smaller teams, they’re a turnkey way to block known threats without building custom detection logic.
4. Monitor for Brand Impersonation and Clone Sites in Real-Time
Attackers register lookalike domains, deploy perfect clones of your platform, and wait for organic traffic from typos or phishing campaigns. By the time you discover these sites, they’ve often been live for days, draining user wallets.
RBLs compress that exposure window:
The Domainsure Crypto Defender RBL actively tracks clones and impersonation sites. When a fake version of your platform goes live, it gets flagged and added to the feed within minutes.
Monitor the RBL for variants of your domain name and get alerts when new clones appear. This shifts you from reactive takedowns to proactive blocking—detecting threats as they emerge and preventing access before damage occurs.
5. Share Threat Intelligence Across Your Security Ecosystem
Crypto platforms don’t operate in isolation. You have security vendors, DNS providers, and infrastructure partners that all play a role in protecting users.
RBLs enable threat intelligence sharing across this ecosystem without complicated integrations or custom APIs. Your security vendor, DNS resolver, email gateway, and monitoring tools can all query the same feed, working from identical threat data updated in real-time.
The Domainsure RBLs are designed for this use case. We make threat intelligence available to security vendors, DNS resolvers, and service providers because the faster hostile domains get blocked across the ecosystem, the harder it becomes for attackers to operate.
Implementation: Start Where It Matters Most
You don’t need to implement all five approaches simultaneously. Start with the intervention point that matches your infrastructure:
DNS infrastructure: Integrate the Crypto Defender RBL into your resolvers to block threats at the DNS layer.
Email security: Configure mail servers to query RiffRaff and Verified Phishing RBLs.
Mature security stack: Feed RBL data into your existing tools as another signal for detection.
Getting access:
The Domainsure RBLs use standard DNS-based queries:
- Crypto Defender:
{domain}.crypto.rbl.domainsure.zone - Verified Phishing:
{domain}.verified.rbl.domainsure.zone - RiffRaff Domains:
{domain}.riffraff.rbl.domainsure.zone
For deeper integration, request access to the Response Policy Zones (RPZ). Full documentation: domainsure.com/rbl-realtime-blocklists.
The Window Is Closing
Every hour your platform operates without RBL integration is an hour when users can reach threats you haven’t discovered yet. Real-time blocklists fill the gap between threat emergence and threat response.
That gap is where your users lose money. Close it.
Ready to integrate real-time threat intelligence?
Access the Domainsure RBLs or request a free Domain Threat Assessment to see which threats are currently targeting your platform.
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