Phishing is one of the most popular types of hacks that malicious actors can ever go for because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up allowing them to gain access to other people’s accounts. A lot of people seem to think that phishing is a really difficult thing to accomplish, but the truth is that there are several toolkits that can make it surprisingly easy.
Analysts at Stony Brook University discovered around 1,200 sites that were offering toolkits that could help people with phishing. Some of these toolkits were free of charge, whereas others would require someone to make a payment in order to be able to use them with all things having been considered and taken into account. The truly chilling thing about these toolkits is that some of them are advanced enough to circumvent two factor authentication.
These are called MITM or Man in the Middle toolkits. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that they work quite similarly to reverse proxies in that while the site that the user is on is authentic its information would be getting sent to an external source. This means that the cookie that stores the 2FA data would end up in the hands of malicious actors which would enable them to gain access to their account in no time at all.
People often assume that phishing toolkits and hacking in general occurs in places like Russia or Africa, but that is not the case in this regard. The vast majority of sites offering hacking toolkits originated in the USA or Europe, which means that this industry is truly global and it will make it difficult for users to enjoy any kind of online security unless some major changes are made to authentication protocols.
Read next: More than 100 Real Estate Websites are in danger because of malicious script codes in the player of the cloud video platform
Analysts at Stony Brook University discovered around 1,200 sites that were offering toolkits that could help people with phishing. Some of these toolkits were free of charge, whereas others would require someone to make a payment in order to be able to use them with all things having been considered and taken into account. The truly chilling thing about these toolkits is that some of them are advanced enough to circumvent two factor authentication.
These are called MITM or Man in the Middle toolkits. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that they work quite similarly to reverse proxies in that while the site that the user is on is authentic its information would be getting sent to an external source. This means that the cookie that stores the 2FA data would end up in the hands of malicious actors which would enable them to gain access to their account in no time at all.
People often assume that phishing toolkits and hacking in general occurs in places like Russia or Africa, but that is not the case in this regard. The vast majority of sites offering hacking toolkits originated in the USA or Europe, which means that this industry is truly global and it will make it difficult for users to enjoy any kind of online security unless some major changes are made to authentication protocols.
Read next: More than 100 Real Estate Websites are in danger because of malicious script codes in the player of the cloud video platform