Most phishing attacks depend on an original deception. If you detect that you are at the wrong URL, or that something is amiss on a page, the chase is up. You've escaped the attackers. In fact, the time that wary people are most wary is exactly when they first navigate to a site.
What we don't expect is that a page we've been looking at will change behind our backs, when we aren't looking. That'll catch us by surprise.
How Phishing Attack Using Tabnabbing Works
- A user navigates to your normal looking site.
- You detect when the page has lost its focus and hasn't been interacted with for a while.
- Replace the favicon with the Gmail favicon, the title with "Gmail: Email from Google", and the page with a Gmail login look-a-like. This can all be done with just a little bit of Javascript that takes place instantly.
- As the user scans their many open tabs, the favicon and title act as a strong visual cue—memory is malleable and moldable and the user will most likely simply think they left a Gmail tab open. When they click back to the fake Gmail tab, they'll see the standard Gmail login page, assume they've been logged out, and provide their credentials to log in. The attack preys on the perceived immutability of tabs.
- After the user has entered their login information and you've sent it back to your server, you redirect them to Gmail. Because they were never logged out in the first place, it will appear as if the login was successful.
In this attack, the phisher need not even change the Web address displayed in the browser's navigation toolbar. Rather, this particular phishing attack takes advantage of user trust and inattention to detail, or what Raskin calls "the perceived immutability of tabs." Then, as the user scans their many open tabs, the favicon and title act as a strong visual cue, and the user will most likely simply think they left a Gmail tab open.
"When they click back to the fake Gmail tab, they'll see the standard Gmail login page, assume they've been logged out, and provide their credentials to log in," Raskin explained. "After the user has enter they have entered their login information and sent it back your server, you redirect them to Gmail. Because they were never logged out in the first place, it will appear as if the login was successful."
For Firefox users with the Noscript plugin, there is an update to the program that can block these types of tabnabbing attacks.
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