With banks, newspapers, and politicians in Britain overrun by a blatant Twitter phishing scam, it’s time to point some fingers. Most disappointing are browsers and users, both of which failed to recognize an obvious ruse.
In fairness, Firefox is usually better than this. A report by NSS Labs last year found that Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 8 blocked 80 percent and 83 percent of phishing sites, respectively — far superior to the competition. But what good are those numbers if you don’t block the big one? It’s like batting with the highest average during the regular season and choking in the playoffs.
I imagine that older versions of browsers fell prey to the attacks as well,
It’s also hard to believe that so many Twitter users fell for the phishing scam. This one had all the telltale signs: A shortened URL, an actual URL hosted on a different domain (kevanshome.org) and a login page that doesn’t quite follow Twitter’s format, but has all the same graphics. And if you’re already signed in to Twitter, there’s no reason you’d need to sign in again.
As with any phishing attack on a social network, Twitter shoulders some of the blame fo
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