open redirect vulnerability | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

After Heartbleed bug , a security flaw in widely used open-source software OpenSSL that puts countless websites at risk, another vulnerability has been found in popular authentication software OpenID and authorization software OAuth. Wang Jing , a Chinese mathematics Ph.D student at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, found that the OAuth and OpenID open source login tools are vulnerable to the " Covert Redirect " exploit. The login tools ' OAuth ' and 'OpenID' protocols are the commonly used open standard for authorization. OAuth designed as a way for users to sign in or sign up for other services using an existing identity of a site such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft or Twitter, whereas OpenID is a decentralized authentication system for the Internet that allows users to log in at websites across the internet with same digital identity. The Covert Redirect vulnerability could affect those who use 'OAuth' and 'OpenID' protocols to 'login' to the websites

Security Researcher Dan Melamed discovered an Open URL redirection vulnerability in Facebook that allowed him to have a facebook.com link redirect to any website without restrictions. An open URL Redirection flaw is generally used to convince a user to click on a trusted link which is specially crafted to take them to an arbitrary website, the target website could be used to serve a malware or for a phishing attack . An Open URL Redirection url flaw in Facebook platform and third party applications also exposes the user's access token at risk if that link is entered as the final destination in an Oauth dialog . The Facebook Open URL Redirection vulnerability exists at landing.php  page with " url " parameter, i.e. https://facebook.com/campaign/landing.php?url=https://yahoo.com This URL will always redirects user to the Facebook 's homepage, but it is sufficient to manipulate the "url" parameter assigning a random string: https://facebo

Symantec has reported an increase in spam messages containing .gov URLs. Cybercriminals are using 1.usa.gov links in their spam campaigns to trick users into thinking the links lead to genuine US government Web sites. Spammers have created these shortened URLs through a loophole in the URL shortening service provided by bit.ly. USA.gov and bit.ly have collaborated, enabling anyone to shorten a .gov or .mil URL into a trustworthy 1.usa.gov URL. The click rate of the campaign has been significant, redirecting more than 16,000 victims over a five day period to a malicious website designed to look like a CNBC news article pushing several work from home scams. According to researchers from security firm Symantec , they simply leveraged an open-redirect vulnerability present on the official government site of Vermont (Vermont.gov) . Therefore, something like 1.usa.gov/…/Rxpfn9 takes you to labor.vermont.gov/LinkClick.aspx?link=[spam site] which then redirects you to the sp