Typosquatting
Do you often make mistakes when typing? Is the Backspace key your friend? Well, you are not alone! Most of us make typing errors once in a while, but what if those errors could cause data leakage?
Typosquatting exploits common typing errors made when entering a Web address in a browser--typing “a” instead of “s”, for example, or “e” instead of “r”--resulting in URL hijacking, malware injection, or phishing. Popular social networking sites, like Facebook, are often targets of typosquatting. With over 800 million active users, it’s no surprise the social networking giant is a target of such exploits.
Say you’re in a hurry to check out the latest update from your friends on facebook.com, but in your excitement, you enter faccenook.com instead. There could be several outcomes. If the Web site designers anticipated your clumsiness, you still get to the desired destination. Otherwise, you might get an error message saying that the page is unavailable. Or you could get a page that looks like facebook.com, but that actually redirects you to phishing or other potentially harmful sites, injects malware, infects your system with spyware, and ruins your day.
After carefully studying the objectionable links generated by common typos for Facebook, we found that over 62% of links lead to bot networks, phishing, or malicious web sites.
Websense Security Labs researchers investigated the top ranked domain (www.facebook.com) and generated common typos based on keyboard character distance, common repeats, and even omissions, anticipating common typos that result in fake or malicious pages. Websense software protects users, their data, and their systems with its unique backtracking algorithm to identify altered domain names. The Advanced Classification Engine (ACE) provides real-time content analysis to keep you safe no matter how bad a tyspist yu aree.
