Typosquatters Take Advantage of Simple Mistakes to Download Malware

Simple mistakes really can harm you and typosquatting is one way hackers take advantage of people’s typographical mistakes. Also referred to as domain jacking (or do-jacking), this type of hack is when the cyber criminals intentionally register web domains that are slightly different from something that is well-known and likely to be mistyped at some point. For example, instead of “bank,” the registered site might be bnak in hopes that someone will be in a hurry and mistype the domain when going to their bank’s online site.

These are not the only typosquatting methods used. The site can also be .cm or .om instead of .com. Other prominent examples are twtter or appl and often this trick is employed when phishing email messages are sent out.

Education is critical to avoiding this. Jim Stickley of Stickley on Security says that if your customers are not educated on security, you may be accepting additional and unnecessary risk. The more they are educated, the less likely they will fall victim and that helps everyone.

Recently, it was found that the .om versions of several popular websites, such as Netflix and Citibank were registered in Oman. While sometimes these may be legitimate sites for those companies, they were not in this case. These were intended specifically to install adware malware onto user’s computers. These do-jacked websites would redirect multiples times before displaying an Adobe Flash update dialogue. If the announcement was accepted, malware was installed that advertised software that generated revenue for its author.

If you see a dialogue pop up on your computer, don’t simply click something to get the message to go away. Make sure to read it and choose the desired answer. Don’t fall victim to popup or warning notice fatigue. Hackers are counting on this and will take advantage at every opportunity.

While you’re at it, if you need to update software on your system, use the update feature of the software or go to the developer’s website directly. Dialogue boxes are often used to download malware.

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