A critical analysis of various web domains in pakistan anomalies and countermeasures

Abstract

The Internet is a worldwide network concerning millions of computers and it has become a vital part of our lives [1]. Internet in Pakistan has been available since the early 1990s [2]. Nowadays, it is nearly essential for organizations including governmental, educational and commercial entities to maintain their websites, not only for a better projection of their work but also for a swift interaction with their viewers. With the advancement in the modern world, the attack surface of the internet has increased manifold. Breaches of security, hacking of personal data and confidential information are a common phenomenon in the current world. Presently, Pakistan’s internet architecture is facing multifaceted challenges including limited internet connectivity through submarine cables, use of foreign satellites for satellite internet connectivity and dependency on the international internet exchange points (IXP) for routing of local internet traffic. On the other hand, organizations getting webhosting services from international webhosts is also a grave issue. The research aims to find the security vulnerabilities and data traffic anomalies in the websites of various sub-domains of .pk domain name space in Pakistan by compiling a data set of websites from the identified sub-domains. The main contribution of the research is to identify various critical websites that are hosted and being routed outside Pakistan from the compiled data set and provide comprehensive guidelines to mitigate the identified problems.