instruction-aave[.]xyz

On 24 July 2026 the domain instruction-aave.xyz was identified as part of a brand‑impersonation campaign targeting users of the Aave protocol. The domain was registered on 9 May 2026 through PDR Ltd. d/b/a PublicDomainRegistry.com and is hosted behind Cloudflare, as indicated by the authoritative nameservers etta.ns.cloudflare.com and yadiel.ns.cloudflare.com and the presence of Cloudflare Browser Insights and HTTP/3 in the technology fingerprint. DNS resolution points to the IP address 188.114.97.3, which belongs to Cloudflare, Inc. in Canada. The site presented a TLS certificate issued by Let’s Encrypt (certificate identifier “E8”), confirming the use of a free SSL certificate.

The HTTP response carried the page title “Aave”, matching the declared brand target and confirming that the domain is being used to masquerade as an official Aave service. Gridinsoft assigned a trust score of 0 out of 100, reflecting a high confidence in malicious intent. Automated scanning on VirusTotal reported that three of ninety‑two security vendors flagged the domain, and the domain appears on four external blocklists. Defensive feeds including PhishDestroy, MetaMask, ScamSniffer, and SEAL have already listed the domain as malicious, leading to its current offline status.

The available evidence suggests a typical brand‑impersonation infrastructure: a freshly registered domain, rapid provisioning behind a reputable CDN, a legitimate‑looking TLS certificate, and immediate detection by multiple security vendors. No additional content or page‑level analysis is available, and the exact phishing payload or credential‑harvesting mechanism has not been observed. Analysts should continue to monitor the IP address 188.114.97.3 for any future re‑use, update proxy and DNS blocklists to include the domain and its name‑server hosts, and advise end‑users to verify the authenticity of any Aave‑related communications that reference this URL.