The thought of clicking on a notification or alert and simply accepting it without paying attention to what’s written is a common practice in the digital world. But did you know that such actions can now have dubious consequences?
The news comes to us from leading security researchers who are raising the alarm against such behavior on Chrome as a new threat appears to be on the rise. Simply pressing the Allow button can have serious consequences as dubious websites are now disguising themselves in a bizarre manner.
Their goal is to present all kinds of advertisements, and malware, and conduct phishing attempts against a particular user’s credentials too. Furthermore, recent stats prove how such a trend is now increasing as we speak.
So many webpages are requesting for permission when you arrive and their goal is to present notifications whereby users simply click on yes. And surprisingly, people are actually agreeing with what’s written and that’s causing so many individuals to be at a high risk.
You’ll be amazed at how just one permission is all that’s necessary to white-list malware’s arrival and that’s a warning coming from the co-founder for Cybersecurity.
He claims that the technique is one of the most common ones out there today. All it takes is malware delivery and it’s just so easy to conduct the attack that continues to attain attention.
It’s not rare to hear queries from users who speak about how they cannot a virus yet they’re accustomed to seeing all sorts of bizarre alerts and popups on a computer.
What is taking place right now is malicious alerts are arising from all directions and they multiply inside the browser belonging to a particular user. Moreover, you’ll see new laptops take in these popups after users log into a particular browser.
While the mechanism of action seems to be awfully simple, it’s got some serious consequences that aren’t restricted to ads only. For instance, when a pop-up arises and the user approves the request, you’ll see the page rolling out push alerts on a browser and system alerts as well. Be it a phone or a computer, the alerts pop up on the main screens of a device and it’s quite like the alerts from OS.
Such push alerts make use of social engineering to instill fear of a new kind into a user’s mind regarding virus infections or a number of other issues. Their goal is to manipulate users and comprise their trust.
One perfect example of this shocking behavior is Omnatuour.com which has attained access to close to 65k devices on a daily basis. It redirects the user to ads linked to browser extensions, adult pages, and online games among others. Moreover, the ads continue to be shown and serve as great harm to a device when the wrong program gets installed.
We agree that sometimes, the right kind of notifications turn into valuable tools that keep users updated about the latest findings, risks, and actions necessary. But that does not mean threat actors are on the rise to use such alerts as a vector to spread dangerous content and viruses.
Some experts claim it’s even difficult for them to distinguish real and fake alerts from one another. Moreover, cybercriminals are very deceptive in their behavior and that makes their chances of success twofold. Therefore, they recommend keeping an extra eye out to detect poor quality images, grammar, logos, and bizarre URLs too.
Above all, you need to be more selective when it comes to accepting notifications and visiting websites.
Read next: US Government Vows To Crack Down Against Data Brokers Selling Users’ Sensitive Personal Data
The news comes to us from leading security researchers who are raising the alarm against such behavior on Chrome as a new threat appears to be on the rise. Simply pressing the Allow button can have serious consequences as dubious websites are now disguising themselves in a bizarre manner.
Their goal is to present all kinds of advertisements, and malware, and conduct phishing attempts against a particular user’s credentials too. Furthermore, recent stats prove how such a trend is now increasing as we speak.
So many webpages are requesting for permission when you arrive and their goal is to present notifications whereby users simply click on yes. And surprisingly, people are actually agreeing with what’s written and that’s causing so many individuals to be at a high risk.
You’ll be amazed at how just one permission is all that’s necessary to white-list malware’s arrival and that’s a warning coming from the co-founder for Cybersecurity.
He claims that the technique is one of the most common ones out there today. All it takes is malware delivery and it’s just so easy to conduct the attack that continues to attain attention.
It’s not rare to hear queries from users who speak about how they cannot a virus yet they’re accustomed to seeing all sorts of bizarre alerts and popups on a computer.
What is taking place right now is malicious alerts are arising from all directions and they multiply inside the browser belonging to a particular user. Moreover, you’ll see new laptops take in these popups after users log into a particular browser.
While the mechanism of action seems to be awfully simple, it’s got some serious consequences that aren’t restricted to ads only. For instance, when a pop-up arises and the user approves the request, you’ll see the page rolling out push alerts on a browser and system alerts as well. Be it a phone or a computer, the alerts pop up on the main screens of a device and it’s quite like the alerts from OS.
Such push alerts make use of social engineering to instill fear of a new kind into a user’s mind regarding virus infections or a number of other issues. Their goal is to manipulate users and comprise their trust.
One perfect example of this shocking behavior is Omnatuour.com which has attained access to close to 65k devices on a daily basis. It redirects the user to ads linked to browser extensions, adult pages, and online games among others. Moreover, the ads continue to be shown and serve as great harm to a device when the wrong program gets installed.
We agree that sometimes, the right kind of notifications turn into valuable tools that keep users updated about the latest findings, risks, and actions necessary. But that does not mean threat actors are on the rise to use such alerts as a vector to spread dangerous content and viruses.
Some experts claim it’s even difficult for them to distinguish real and fake alerts from one another. Moreover, cybercriminals are very deceptive in their behavior and that makes their chances of success twofold. Therefore, they recommend keeping an extra eye out to detect poor quality images, grammar, logos, and bizarre URLs too.
Above all, you need to be more selective when it comes to accepting notifications and visiting websites.
Read next: US Government Vows To Crack Down Against Data Brokers Selling Users’ Sensitive Personal Data
