Spoofed URL

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Spoofed URL describes one website that poses as another. It sometimes applies a mechanism that exploits bugs in web browser technology, allowing a malicious computer attack. Such attacks are most effective against computers that lack recent security patches. Others are designed for the purpose of a parody.

During such an attack, a computer user innocently visits a web site and sees a familiar URL in the address bar such as http://www.wikipedia.org but is, in reality, sending information to an entirely different location that would typically be monitored by an information thief. When sensitive information is requested by a fraudulent website, it is called phishing.

The user is typically enticed to the false website from an email or a hyperlink from another website.

In another variation, a website may look like the original, but is in fact a parody of it. These are mostly harmless, and are more noticeably different from the original, as they usually do not exploit bugs in web browser technology.

[edit] See also

• Spoofing attack
• Social engineering (computer security)
• Computer insecurity
• IDN homograph attack

[edit] External links

• Secunia security describes Microsoft Internet Explorer URL spoofing vulnerability 2003
• Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 833786 - Steps that you can take to help identify and to help protect yourself from deceptive (spoofed) Web sites and malicious hyperlinks.