xa44d-cointelegraph[.]com

The domain xa44d-cointelegraph.com was registered on 10 October 2025 through NiceNIC International Group Co., Limited. It resolves to 104.21.68.241, an address owned by Cloudflare (AS13335) located in the United States. The site was hosted behind Cloudflare's DNS service using the nameservers eric.ns.cloudflare.com and vita.ns.cloudflare.com. No TLS certificate was observed, indicating that HTTPS was not configured at the time of analysis. The HTTP service returned an offline status, and the domain is currently taken offline.

The page title retrieved from the site reads “Elon Musk Officially Launches XA44D ICO”, a clear attempt to associate the domain with a high‑profile individual and to promote a cryptocurrency offering. The domain is classified as a brand‑impersonation scam, specifically targeting the brand “Across”. The malicious content is listed on at least one security blocklist and has been blocked by PhishDestroy. VirusTotal scans show that three of ninety‑five security vendors flagged the domain, providing additional corroboration of malicious intent. Reputation services assign a Gridinsoft trust score of 0 out of 100, reflecting an extremely low confidence in the site’s legitimacy.

The registrar information, lack of SSL, low trust score, and presence on blocklists together form a consistent profile of an active phishing infrastructure. Uncertainties remain regarding the full payload delivered to victims, the specific phishing kit used, and whether any credential‑harvesting forms were present, as the page content has not been captured. Defenders should continue to block the domain at network perimeter, update DNS sinkhole lists with the observed IP and nameserver information, and monitor for any re‑hosting attempts that may use the same IP range or Cloudflare account. Security teams should also add the domain to internal threat intel feeds and advise users to ignore any unsolicited communications referencing “XA44D ICO” or the brand “Across”.