Hackers unleash smart Twitter phishing tool that snags two in three users

pkost

Trusted Information Resource
although shorturls are a risk, the interesting part of this article is that the system reviews your previous tweets to specifically tailor it's message for you so that you are more likely to click
 

Marc

Fully vaccinated are you?
Leader
Yup - The "bad guys" keep up with the latest technology/code.
 
N

ncwalker

Keep up with it?

They're ahead of it.

All the defenses against hackers are always reactionary. Someone finds a chink in the armor, exploits it, and this draws attention. THEN it is discovered and fixed (and not always on the first try).

Basically, if you're going to ride the front of the wave for new technologies, you are statistically FAR more likely to get hacked, regardless of what you do.

Anyone who is interested, there is a fantastic YouTube channel called "Computerphile". There's lots of vidoes abotu EVERYTHING to do with computers. But if you want to learn how to protect yourself, watch anything with the word "attack" in the title. SQL injection attack, man in the middle attack, etc.... And any video about how manage passwords.
 

Marc

Fully vaccinated are you?
Leader
True. I posted about this one because it is relatively unique and not well publicised. Personally I very rarely use Twitter for anything so it doesn't affect me, but I know how popular Twitter is.

I mainly keep up with the new stuff that is discovered by visiting tech sites, though. One does the best one can. I've never been hacked so far, but I am well aware that someday... It may come to pass. Just did an upgrade on Elsmar for John late Friday night to patch a vulnerability discovered about a week ago.
 
N

ncwalker

It's insane.

So we have the Delta outage today. They said it was power. Maybe. But if it actually WAS hacked - we should not be surprised.

The operating system companies keep pumping out "new releases" that are configured differently. Just shiny different buttons to push.

Honestly - how many of us REALLY need anything more than what was available on Win NT?

In very, very few instances. And computers get better. But do we reap those benefits? Nooooooooo...... we just hang a bigger, sexier operating system on it and lose ground. Ugh.

Can you imagine how quickly Win NT would run on a CURRENT system?
 

pkost

Trusted Information Resource
shorturls do exactly what their name suggests....urls can be very long these days with various details in included in them....

e.g (not real)
Code:
http://elsmar.com/Forums/showthread.php?p=582135#post582135?name=pkost?reply=somethread?unknownkey=da87vsjhf374fhasldfnvslvbsfg3l4fkjrfg

This isn't particularly tidy, easy to remember, easy to encode in a QR code, or possible to post on twitter. There are services that will translate this...for example tinyurl

A person making a shorturl will enter the link above, the service will then store this and create a shorturl that links to the longer link. e.g. tinyurl.com/sdf89

anyone can now enter "tinyurl.com/sdf89" and it will take them to the main link

The problem is that a malicous person could create a shorturl for a malicious site "www.virusesrus/infecteveryonewhoclickshere"...all you would see is tinyurl.com/fgf2s until it was too late
 
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