#1:  What the HELL is Google Thinking? Author: [HSX]coRpSE, 

Okay, I saw this headline a few days ago but, didn't pay much attention to it for I was busy doing other things. I finally learned more this late on Friday night, Saturday Morning when I was watching the WAN show. Well, when it popped up as one of their talking points, I brought up the article from arstechnica.com and read through it and I have to agree with many of the security circles that are bringing up a valid security issue with this. I will not go into the in-depth issues, and I will just highlight what is going on and what to look out for, and if you like to know more, I will link several sites to read over.

Now, what is going on, what did Google do now?

This can be a bit confusing at first, but this comes down with a couple of TLDs that Google added to the internet a couple of weeks ago. A TLD, also known as a "Top Level Domain", is the same thing as a .com, .net, .org, .gov, and so on. Those are TLD's. Now, you may ask, what is so bad with adding more. There is nothing wrong unless those new TLDs are prominent in other areas, and since being well known in other areas, they could help manipulate/disguise links to send people to sites/locations that are harmful.

Well, the new TLDs Google has introduced is .zip and .mov. For anyone of you that have ever downloaded a file from our site, or other sites, there is a good chance that it was packed into a zip folder. If you look at the file path in the URL for one of these files, it usually ends with a .zip, like fakesite.com/file.zip. There are other compressions we use like .rar, which I like, and also 7z. The other new TLD that is causing concern is .mov, which is associated with Apples Quicktime format for their videos.

Googles marketers say that the goal is to designate .zip with "tying things together or moving really fast", and with .mov, "moving pictures and whatever moves you", but you have to be a freaking idiot to think this was a good idea. I can see this as being something that can be used to hurt people more than anything, and that marketing, well, that's just a fucking joke IMO and who ever thought that should be fired, IMO.

How and why is this a bad thing?

I am going to quote "DAN GOODIN" from arstechnica,

Many security practitioners are warning that these two TLDs will cause confusion when they’re displayed in emails, on social media, and elsewhere. The reason is that many sites and software automatically convert strings like "arstechnica.com" or "mastodon.social" into a URL that, when clicked, leads a user to the corresponding domain. The worry is that emails and social media posts that refer to a file such as setup.zip or vacation.mov will automatically turn them into clickable links—and that scammers will seize on the ambiguity.

output generated using printer-friendly topic mod. All times are GMT - 7 Hours