Earlier this year, I wrote about various extensions available to bolster your browser’s defenses against malicious sites. Today, let’s look at another such extension: the Microsoft Defender Browser Protection extension. I first helped out with extension back in 2018 when I was an engineer on the Chrome Security team, and this spring, I was taskedContinue reading “Improving the Microsoft Defender Browser Protection Extension”
Tag Archives: security
New TLDs: Not Bad, Actually
The Top Level Domain (TLD) is the final label in a fully-qualified domain name: The most common TLD you’ll see is com, but you may be surprised to learn that there are 1479 registered TLDs today. This list can be subdivided into categories: Some TLD owners will rent domain names under the TLD to anyContinue reading “New TLDs: Not Bad, Actually”
Explainer: File Types
On all popular computing systems, all files, at their most basic, are a series of bits (0 or 1), organized into a stream of bytes, each of which uses 8 bits to encode any of 256 possible values. Regardless of the type of the file, you can use a hex editor to view (or modify)Continue reading “Explainer: File Types”
Attack Techniques: Open Redirectors, CAPTCHAs, Site Proxies, and IPFS, oh my
The average phishing site doesn’t live very long– think hours rather than days or weeks. Attackers use a variety of techniques to try to keep ahead of the Defenders who work tirelessly to break their attack chains and protect the public. Defenders have several opportunities to interfere with attackers: Each of these represents a weakContinue reading “Attack Techniques: Open Redirectors, CAPTCHAs, Site Proxies, and IPFS, oh my”
Attack Techniques: Priming Attacks on Legitimate Sites
Earlier today, we looked at two techniques for attackers to evade anti-phishing filters by using lures that are not served from http and https urls that are subject to reputation analysis. A third attack technique is to send a lure that entices a user to visit a legitimate site and perform an unsafe operation onContinue reading “Attack Techniques: Priming Attacks on Legitimate Sites”