Chrome and Firefox Phishing Attack Uses Domains Identical to Known Safe Sites

There is a phishing attack that is receiving much attention today in the security community.

A phishing attack happens when an attacker sends you an email with a link to a malicious website. You click on the link because it appears to be trusted and may either infect your computer or be tricked into signing into the malicious site with credentials from the real website. The attacker then has access to your username, password and any other sensitive information you may inadvertently provide.

This particular phishing attack uses malicious registered domains that look identical to real domains in your browser.

WordFence, the force behind of one of the best WordPress security plugins set up a test case to demonstrate how this attack works in case you are interested in technicalities, but the most important thing to do if you are using Chrome or Firefox is staying safe, and the easiest thing to do when you are about to log into a website you trust is this.

Copy the URL in the location bar and paste it into any program on your device that allows to paste as plain text.

A fake domain will appear as starting with https://xn--. A real website will look exactly as in your browser’s location bar.

In Chrome, you can even copy the domain and paste it right back into the location bar and the fake website’s domain will reveal itself.

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