CRIMINALS are using AI website builders to clone major brands, creating near‑perfect lookalikes in minutes by simply obtaining a domain name and employing AI to copy layouts, colours and branding. According to Malwarebytes, the incident with installmalwarebytes[.]org showed how a clone can mirror a real site from logo to layout, with PayPal payments hidden from confirmation screens to mask the merchant’s identity.
Data cited by Malwarebytes indicate a flood of fake sites, with researchers observing more than 18,000 holiday-themed domains, at least 750 of which were malicious, and around 19,000 additional domains registered to impersonate major retail brands, nearly 3,000 of which hosted phishing pages or fraudulent storefronts. The report notes that attackers use SEO poisoning, ad abuse and comment spam to push these lookalikes into search results and social feeds, making them appear legitimate to users on mobile devices.
It also points to a broader pattern of abuse of AI-assisted builders like Vercel’s v0 platform to generate phishing pages impersonating sign‑in portals for various brands, enabling fast deployment of credential‑stealing pages. According to Malwarebytes, while some providers are starting to add brand-protection controls, the overall risk persists as attackers move to alternative tools and open‑source clones.