Thursday, August 26, 2010

Reports of New Security Threat: Tabnabbing


We all know that online security can be extremely vulnerable in our day and age. It seems that there are new security warnings coming out every week, if not every day! Here at XPERTECHS, we want to make sure that our customers and friends are well educated in the technology field, and that we do our best to keep you up-to-date on the latest threats, and help you protect your businesses from them.


One of the latest reports that we have seen involves a new type of security threat for web browsers: "the latest malware fools forgetful users of tabbed browsers into entering their login information (to e-mail, banks, etc.) to a page that looks like a login page but really is designed to steal passwords."


This type of "attack" most often occurs when you have multiple tabs open in your internet browser - one of these pages can be manipulated to look like a personal email or banking login page, and for those of us who multitask, we may fall victim to placing our personal information into these pages and having it stolen. Tabnabbing was recently identified by Aza Raskin, who founded the music site, Songza.


So far, there are not many known instances of tabnabbing being used maliciously, but that is not to say that it is not headed in that direction. In order to protect yourself from tabnabbing, you should always used a browsing tool that has a solid anti-phishing feature, and always make sure that you security software is updated.


For the full article (from Inc. Technology) click here. It is worth the visit - the link about half way down the page will show you a real example of how tabnabbing works, using the ever popular, Gmail.

1 comment:

Stuart R. Crawford said...

Michael, great post and I can see how Tabnabbing for those serious multitaskers could be a bad thing if they lose focus. I know for myself I move between browser tabs quite frequently and sometimes I will have over 20 open.

Thanks for this, I will be more careful with my tabs.

Cheers

Stuart Crawford
MSP Marketing Consultant
403.775.2205