exposure · severity high

Subdomain takeover

Share of domains with at least one subdomain whose dangling record is a takeover candidate.

Measured every Saturday · last updated

How it is measured

Tier 1. Subdomain enumeration (CT + DNS) plus dangling-target analysis, via one cached DomainAPI call per domain. Denominator: any, on a capped subset (heavy).

Why it matters

The archetypal quiet failure — a CNAME left pointing at a cancelled SaaS account. Nothing is broken, nothing alerts, and anyone who registers that account now serves content on your domain, with your name and often your cookies.

The base rate

Two independent populations. The global, domain-anchored figure is unbiased; the company-anchored figures are built by matching company names to domains and skew toward more digitally-mature firms. Both are published, so the gap is visible.

Global (all domains) 2.6% fail · n=14,893
safe: 97.4%dangling: 2.6%
France companies 1.97% fail · n=862
safe: 98.03%dangling: 1.97%
UK companies 4.03% fail · n=2,652
safe: 95.97%dangling: 4.03%
Norway companies 4.34% fail · n=990
safe: 95.66%dangling: 4.34%
safe · 95.66%dangling · 4.34%

By company size band

Company-anchored cuts (national registries with a size proxy), split by size band. Right-hand figure is the share not meeting the control.

France
micron=229
safe: 98.25%dangling: 1.75%
1.75%
smalln=253
safe: 98.42%dangling: 1.58%
1.58%
mediumn=200
safe: 99%dangling: 1%
1%
largen=180
safe: 96.11%dangling: 3.89%
3.89%
UK
micron=230
safe: 98.26%dangling: 1.74%
1.74%
smalln=961
safe: 96.15%dangling: 3.85%
3.85%
medium/largen=1061
safe: 95.66%dangling: 4.34%
4.34%
dormantn=194
safe: 96.91%dangling: 3.09%
3.09%
no-accountsn=206
safe: 93.2%dangling: 6.8%
6.8%
Norway
micron=278
safe: 96.4%dangling: 3.6%
3.6%
smalln=253
safe: 95.26%dangling: 4.74%
4.74%
mediumn=266
safe: 96.62%dangling: 3.38%
3.38%
largen=193
safe: 93.78%dangling: 6.22%
6.22%

Every segment

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From the newsletter

Where this base rate turned up as a real, fixable exposure.

Slices below 100 measured members are withheld rather than shown with a wide interval — an absent country or issuer means too little data, not zero failures. Licensed CC BY 4.0. Machine-readable data per segment: append .json or .csv to its URL.