There are basically two options to protect computer systems (and their users) from phishing attacks. The first are protections in programs like email clients or instant messengers that are commonly used to spread phishing links while the second method blocks the web browser from opening those links (when they have already been clicked on). The [...]

Categories: Browsing, Firefox

Microsoft has recently confirmed that thousands of Windows Live Hotmail customer’s credentials were exposed on a third party website. According to Neowin the account information were posted by an anonymous user at the pastebin website. The list that was posted contained over 10.000 account details of accounts starting with the letters A and B which [...]

Categories: Email, Security

For anti-phishing tools to work, phishing sites must be identified to analyse and to warn people about. Sites like Web of Trust allow users to share information about phishing sites, but scores of similar tools exist and as it would be counter-productive for each to maintain their own database of phishing sites. PhishTank centralises phishing [...]

Categories: Security

A web browsing security test that pitted Internet Explorer 8 against Firefox 3, Opera 10, Safari 4 and Google Chrome 4 came to the conclusion that Internet Explorer 8 is the most secure web browser, at least in the area that were tested by security research company NSS Labs. The report, which is available at [...]

Categories: Browsing, Internet Explorer

Inexperienced users and even some experienced users have troubles identifying fake emails from legit ones. It is sometimes hard to tell if the email that just arrived in your mail inbox came from a legit company like eBay, Amazon or Citibank or if it is just another phishing attempt. There are some basic guidelines that [...]

Categories: Email, Security

The hostname is basically the root url of a website, for Ghacks it would be www.ghacks.net. Adding that information to the titlebar has two apparent benefits. Number one is related to phishing. Antiphishing measures have been implemented in many web browsers and security software programs which could lead to the assumption that “yet another” way [...]

Categories: Browsing, Firefox

Most systems which warn of unsafe websites, like OpenDNS and Google, work in mysterious, non-transparent ways and websites are often deemed as unsafe for reasons other than safety. Web of Trust is a Firefox extension which rates the safety of websites based on ratings received by other users of the plug-in. Users rate websites on [...]

Categories: Browsing, Security

The usual phishing email is still claiming that “action” is required because of something that just happened. This can be a fake eBay purchase, PayPal or bank account transactions. While these methods are still highly successful it becomes widely known by the general Internet user that they should not click on emails that contain such [...]

Categories: Browsing, Security

If you run an old version of a browser you will more likely be subject of an attack, that’s a fact I think that we can all agree on. The latest browser versions are not as vulnerable as old versions, especially if you take into consideration that known vulnerabilities are much easier to exploit than [...]

Categories: Browsing, Security, The Web