this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2026
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I generated 16 character (upper/lower) subdomain and set up a virtual host for it in Apache, and within an hour was seeing vulnerability scans.

How are folks digging this up? What's the strategy to avoid this?

I am serving it all with a single wildcard SSL cert, if that's relevant.

Thanks

Edit:

  • I am using a single wildcard cert, with no subdomains attached/embedded/however those work
  • I don’t have any subdomains registered with DNS.
  • I attempted dig axfr example.com @ns1.example.com returned zone transfer DENIED

Edit 2: I'm left wondering, is there an apache endpoint that returns all configured virtual hosts?

Edit 3: I'm going to go through this hardening guide and try against with a new random subdomain https://www.tecmint.com/apache-security-tips/

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[–] sommerset@thelemmy.club 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

No. Not this.

Op is doing hidden subdomain pattern. Wildcard dns and wildcard ssl.

This way subdomain acts as a password and application essentially inaccessible for bot crawls.

Works very well

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] sommerset@thelemmy.club 0 points 5 months ago

minimal setup is still required 🤷

[–] fodor@lemmy.zip 5 points 5 months ago

Hmm. I feel like conflating a subdomain with a password is a particularly sketchy idea, but you do you.