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I don't get it, why is it a "vulnerability" if you send people emails that contain a link to example.com? What exploit is possible?
by arrowsmith 2y ago
I don't get it, why is it a "vulnerability" if you send people emails that contain a link to example.com? What exploit is possible?
- TonyTrapp 2y agoUnsanitized web form mailers are a common source of spam mails, in particular if that form allows specifying an arbitrary email address to send the mail to. Essentially what the website owner meant to do was sending an innocent email (maybe for leaving feedback, or for a signup link), and the email text then gets mangled by the spammer in a way that you are seeing a link to product they want you to buy. It is not a vulnerability in the sense that it leads to malicious code being executed, but it allows spammers to send their spam links through "reputable" email sources, increasing the likelihood that it will make it through spam filters.
- pdonis 2y agoYou're missing the point: he did not send an email with a link, he sent an email in plain text, no hyperlink, containing the ASCII characters "example.com", and the recipient's email client silently changed it into a hyperlink. And of course that doesn't just happen with "example.com"; it happens with any piece of plain text that the email client decides might be a URL, which includes many file names since many common file extensions are also TLDs. That is the security issue.
- paranoidrobot 2y agoBecause some unsuspecting user may think we are linking them to some random site, even if we are not. If that domain is "important-banking-info.zip" then people are less likely to be suspicious if their browser happens to download a file of the same name.