Brand hijacking is the abuse of a trusted brand name, logo, or reputation to mislead users or conceal malicious activity. Attackers may copy a familiar identity, place harmful content behind a reputable service, or use trusted delivery infrastructure so their traffic appears legitimate at first glance.
In cyber security, this matters because trust is often used as a security signal. If a user, browser, or monitoring tool assumes that a known brand is safe, it may miss phishing pages, spoofed portals, or hidden command-and-control traffic. Brand hijacking can also weaken incident response when logs show a trusted surface but not the real destination underneath. Defenders look for mismatches between DNS, TLS, and HTTP headers, monitor for lookalike domains and impersonation, and apply controls that verify ownership and routing rather than relying on reputation alone.