Sneaky phishing technique that spoofs a tab in the browser can fool you into login to your email or bank

Phishing illustrations PC1 News

If you’re like me you have several tabs open in your browser at once. A Mozilla (Firefox) employee has identified a new phishing threat that can create a copy of another tab that is open. Then it fools you into logging in again. Presto ipso facto the thieves have your login and password.

This is not an imaginary threat. In October 2009 while investigating a story about a fake Chinese Adobe site, the malware crossed from one tab to the other and I gave them my website password. For almost a month, the trojan infected NJN Network with a re-direct to their site. Google alerted me to high traffic and we fixed it in November. However, back then no one could explain how the Chinese site got my password. Now we know.

The ComputerWorld article explains the technique. People from Safari, Chrome and IE deny that the exploit is in play. They are lying through their teeth. The Chinese are using this regularly to get identities.

A friend said last year “I don’t worry about anti-phishing since I have very little money in the bank.”  That’s pretty careless. People who steal your identity can compromise your email accounts, your friends email accounts, Facebook, your websites and they can ruin your credit by borrowing money that you might have to repay.

Here’s how to avoid the problem

1. Don’t open tabs of the same browser session for private sites. If you are logging onto Facebook, your bank or a website that is password protected use a new session of the browser.  In Firefox that is “File New Window.” In IE 8, click on the IE icon again to open another session. So far they don’t think the malware can jump between two sessions of the browser.

2. Turn on anti-phishing tools in your browser and anti-virus software. IE has “Smartscreen”. Turn it on and leave it on.

3. Don’t login on a tab you didn’t open. That’s not much help if you are like me and keep tabs open for hours. This exploit pretends that you have been logged or timed out to fool you into doing it again. We’re all lazy but more vigilance will be required to keep ahead of these thieves.

For more details on protecting your computer, see  How to foil Web browser ‘tabnapping’

Sneaky browser ‘tabnapping’ phishing tactic surfaces

Mozilla outlines how hackers can trick users by silently changing open browser tabs

Computerworld – A Mozilla employee yesterday outlined a sly new attack tactic dubbed “tabnapping” that can dupe users into giving up passwords by secretly changing already-open browser tabs.

All of the major browsers on Windows and Mac OS X are vulnerable to the attack.

Aza Raskin, Firefox’s creative lead, spelled out the scenario, which is striking in its assumption: Most people keep multiple tabs open, often for long periods.

Raskin’s technique requires that identity thieves trick users into visiting a malicious or compromised site — no problem in today’s spam- and scam-infected online world. They can then use JavaScript to quietly change the contents and label of an open-but-not-active tab to resemble the log-in screen of a bank or credit card company or Amazon.com or Gmail.

“As the user scans their many open tabs, the favicon and title act as a strong visual cue — memory is malleable and moldable and the user will most likely simply think they left a Gmail tab open,” said Raskin, referring to his example of a spoofed Google Gmail log-in. “When they click back to the fake Gmail tab, they’ll see the standard Gmail log-in page, assume they’ve been logged out, and provide their credentials to log in.”

There’s no need for the attacker to change the actual URL that shows in the browser’s address bar, since the tactic banks on the trust that tabs can’t suddenly mutate. “The attack preys on the perceived immutability of tabs,” Raskin said.

Raskin also laid out several ways hackers could boost tabnapping’s sneakiness, ranging from sniffing out sites that the victim actually visits — put up a fake Facebook log-in, say, rather than simply betting that the user opens Gmail — to changing the text on the bogus page. “You can mention that the session has timed out and the user needs to re-authenticate,” Raskin said. “This happens often on bank Web sites, which makes them even more susceptible to this kind of attack.”

Computerworld ran Raskin’s proof-of-concept — his blog post explaining the attack includes the necessary code — and found that Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari in Mac OS X 10.6 all showed the fake Gmail tab and contents. In Windows XP, Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera did the same.

But some browsers were more susceptible than others. In both Windows and Mac OS X, for instance, Raskin’s code changed only Firefox’s “favicon,” the small icon that typically shows a miniature site logo. In other browsers, the favicon for Raskin’s blog remained, though the label and content was that of Gmail.

Google’s Chrome seemed especially resilient to the tactic. On the Mac, Raskin’s trick sometimes changed the tab, often did not. Computerworld was not able to nail down the specific situations when Chrome fell victim, however.

Raskin did not reply to questions about what steps Firefox and other browser makers might take to stymie such attacks. In his blog, Raskin touted ongoing work on a new username/password tool called “Account Manager” that is tentatively slated to show up in Firefox 4, the ambitious upgrade Mozilla plans to release this November.

Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security, doubted whether there is an easy fix. “I can’t think of anything off hand that could be done,” Storms said via instant message. “That’s the part of the new dynamic nature of Web browsing. You can alter the look/feel of the experience for both good and bad.”

Jerry Bryant, a group manager with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), said his team is looking into Raskin’s claims, but hinted that Microsoft wouldn’t be patching IE anytime soon. “I wouldn’t classify this as a ‘vulnerability’ though,” Bryant said in an e-mail answer to questions.

When Microsoft declines to name an issue a security vulnerability, it generally means that if a fix does come, it won’t appear until a service pack or next major upgrade is released. In the case of Internet Explorer, that would be IE9, which remains in the early development stage.