Don’t Let Your Browser Get Tabnapped

Posted by Rochelle in Misc. on 05 28th, 2010 | 3 responses

Tabnapping.  Ever heard of it?  I hadn’t until this morning, when my mom so kindly forwarded an email to me about it.  I’m willing to be most of you haven’t heard of it, either.  So, I decided to write a post about this potential danger.

Chances are, you have all heard of phishing sites.  They are fraudulent sites that attempt to steal your login information by posing as legitimate sites.  It might look like your Chase bank site, and hope to steal your information, so the bad guys can ultimately steal your funds.  And so on.

Well, tabnapping is pretty much the same thing.  In this situation, if you keep multiple tabs open on your browser, the bad guys hope that you won’t notice if the sneak in a fake tab.  Again, it might look like you opened a tab to Chase bank.  When you click on the fake tab, you will be required to login.  The bad guys are hoping you won’t realize that you never opened this tab.  Instead, they are counting on you thinking that you opened it and logged in at a previous time, and that the site timed out, requiring you to login again now.

This is a pretty new form of phishing, and isn’t prevalent at this time.  But, I know that I use tabs very heavily (as of this writing, I have 10 tabs open in Safari and 13 tabs open in Firefox), and I prefer to educate myself about the potential risk.  I’m assuming that you, too, would prefer to be educated, rather than fall victim.

There is an excellent post about tabnapping, what to look for, and how to prevent it, at http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/6441316/2153244/290784/0/.

~ Rochelle