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Netcraft Releases Anti-Phishing Toolbar
AgainstHate writes "Netcraft has released an Anti-Phishing Toolbar that provides detailed information about the website you are visiting (sites' hosting location, country, longevity and popularity) at all times to help users to validate fraudulent URLs. It also natively traps cross site scripting and other suspicious URLs. The toolbar also enables users to report phishing attacks to Netcraft, thus blocking any other unsuspecting users from being harmed (Netcraft supervisor validation is used to contain the impact of any false reporting). Currently the toolbar is only available for IE but a Firefox version is under development."
Firefox SpoofStick Extension
I installed it at work yesterday because I like Netcraft and I only use the Google toolbar on IE to block popups (although I use Firefox 99% of the time anyway). I noticed it didn't block popups from the sites I visit (ex: cnn.com), even though it has the option to "block unrequested popup windows" in Options. The anti-phishing is great, but it would be nice if the popup blocking worked for those who can't install XP SP2.
I could care less since I use Firefox. My parents could use it since they have XP SP2. I guess the people who have to decide between blocked popups and blocking phishing sites are those who run 2000 or Windows 9x, although I think Earthlink has a toolbar that will block both (not sure how well it works though). Again, no big deal, but I thought it was strange that they didn't include a working popup blocker. Seems like a automatic throw-in for all modern IE toolbars, though anyone still using IE is likely either required to (through shoddy programming or "advanced" IE-only features (what I call "screw you" features, since they're basically saying that to anyone who doesn't run windows, is disabled, or uses a text reader of some sort (braille, cell phone)) or is too novice to understand why IE == death.
Anything but IE in 2005! Viva la revolución!
Already available from Corestreet for Firefox and IE http://www.corestreet.com/spoofstick/
8 Advertising and sponsorship
Part of the Toolbar may contain advertising and sponsorship. Advertisers and sponsors are responsible for ensuring that material submitted for inclusion on the Toolbar complies with relevant laws and codes. We will not be responsible for any error or inaccuracy in advertising and sponsorship material.
So, be warned: it may contain some kind of adware, and it may be the kind you find hard to ignore. I'm not installing it until I know more.
John
http://www.cgisecurity.com/articles/xss-faq.shtml
Hmmmm... I'm almost afraid to admit this, but I'm a Firefox user who might be able to use this. There's a lot of information there that I've never been able to figure out how to determine using publicly available resources. According to TFA, Netcraft will report site, domain, ip address, country, date first seen, organization, last reboot, netblock owner, site rank, name server, DNS admin, and reverse DNS. Obviously I can use nslookup to figure out the IP address, and internic.net to look up the domain and figure out name server, dns admin, etc. but country? netblock owner? Date first seen?
The example shown in TFA, for example, shows netcraft.com being hosted in the UK... obviously, this is more sophisticated than just checking to see if the domain is co.uk. It seems like they actually are providing some value by maintaining a database... figuring out the hosting country from an IP address is supposed to be impossible.
Of course, I'm not downloading anything until I've seen it reviewed for a while to see if the database they're maintaining is useful in any way, shape or form - if 99% of the sites aren't in their database (and they're just showing me WHOIS lookups), then yeah, I guess I fall into the "don't really need it" category.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
As if there wasn't enough screen space taken up already.
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Switch to Firefox and enable the non-spoofing features and you don't need a toolbar (don't allow URL to be hidden, etc.)
In firefox, type in about:config
then set these to TRUE and never be "fooled" again:
recommended:
disable_window_open_feature.locat
disable_window_open_feature.status
disable_w
disable_window_status
optional:
disable_window_move_resize
disable_
disable_window_open_fea
disable_window_open_feature.menu
disable_window_open_feature.minimizable
disa
disable_windo
disable_window_open_feat
disable_window_open_feature.toolba
Reason: Tools and overt actions are not solutions for stupid people.
Evidence: Warning labels on coffee.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
OK, I'm a WinXP user, SP2, pop-ups turned completely off, run SpyBot, AdAware and look at my BHO's at least once a week because I don't trust computer programs, even though/because I write them for a living...
:-), and have a couple of first impressions. I'm going to apply the "Mother Test" to the tool bar to evaluate it's usefullnes.
:-)
Installed it, read the instructions and FAQ (I know, I'm not supposed to do that
The tool bar installs with initally two items, Netcraft, and Services. Services is simply a drop down with links to all of Netcrafts services, trying to drum up business. I initally thought that services would hot link to some of the Netcraft tools like uptime and what is that site running, but no, just links to the main pages for them. There are 7 main items under serives, and 19 sub-items. Offerings
are impressive, but I don't think my mother would care at all about Hosting Providers or Web site auditing.
I can't evaluate the pop-up blocker since I have pop-ups completely turned off via XP SP2. I also run the Google toolbar, so pop-ups haven't bothered me in quite some time (except those occational ones that sneak through when you hold down the ctrl key to click a pop-up link. Who ever thought of using the same key to allow all pop-ups and allow one pop-up should be shot.)
As for the phishing, looks like it will work fine. The toolbar will have to pull down a new definitions file every couple of hours (2 by default), but that should be fine. Reporting a site is relatively easy. This is a thumbs up for the Mother Test
The Stats that it displays are pretty worthless. Pretty flags, but other than that, who cares. Rank is meaningless unless they get rid of their own sites. Pretty obvious that the most visited site is http://toolbar.netcraft.com.
The thing that most disturbs me are the stats that are gathered: http://toolbar.netcraft.com/stats/topsites
*Without*any*privacy*statement*, I have no idea what they are doing with my browsing information. This certainly scares me enough to uninstall this sucker. I understand that privacy is going away, I just like to fight it tooth and nail. (Except google, their cool. Until their IPO. oh wait...
Oh yea. Regarding my subject: look at line 12 of the stats:
Rank Site First Seen Netblock Site Report Country
12 http://banners.netcraft.com June 2003 Netcraft Go UK
www.christopherlewis.com